For the past year or so, I have been having a discussion with God about what is expected of us as Christians regarding sin/weakness in our lives. Often Paul's lament that What I know to do, I do not has come to mind.
In my early Christian life, I heard many sermons in the Baptist church on putting the old man to death and not being subject to sin any longer, once you became a Christan.
When I was in my 20s, I heard preachers like Jimmy Swaggart brag about "walking in the Spirit" for the past 12 years. Of course we later found out that the spirit was walking him right to many rendezvous with a hooker. But at the time I felt challenged to attain this sinless life and walking in the Spirit state or what I perceived it to be.
So once again I came back to Paul. In Romans he makes it quite clear that we will not obtain a sinless state in this life. Our victory over sin is in Jesus, not in our current flesh.
Also over the last several years I've pondered things that Paul wrote that don't seem to line up with the hard and fast word of God. The type statements that make it hard to defend "believing every word in the Bible to be from God's lips". I no longer believe that God dictated in the apostles ears or wrote the words guiding their hands, like he did on the mount for Moses with the Ten Commandments. I believe God spoke to them, much like he does to us today and they wrote their impressions down. But I don't believe every word is for us today. Women not to speak in church? Not God's word to women today.
With Paul, who we get to see the most in the new testament, God wanted to give us a picture of a mature christian. Not perfect. He allowed Paul's sin/weakness to be written down so we could see even a very mature Christian who has been taken to the 3rd heaven can still have sins/weaknesses. Paul's main sin was spiritual pride. His thorn in the flesh was not being able to become sinless. That is what he asked God for and was denied. No man lives a single day sinless. Misconception the church creates. They deify Paul, Peter etc. and say we should strive for that deified state too.
The alternative explanations I've heard for the thorn in the flesh, a person in Paul's circle who opposed him....puhlease...that wouldn't shake Paul at all. His eyesight failing him? Once again, Paul wasn't concerned with the physical but the spiritual. His great cry? Why can't I stop sinning even for one day? Why can't I arrive?
God's answer. That's not going to happen until the second coming when we get a new flesh. This flesh lives under the curse. Even after we become Christians.
So stop living under condemnation. God didn't come into the world to curse it, to bash it, to blame it, but to save it. John 3:17.
And as Paul concludes, so what do we do, just sin and accept it. God forbid (his response). We are to keep trying, just don't beat ourselves into dust because we fail.
