Romans 7:22-23 (NKJV)

“For I delight in the law of God…But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”

The only way to understand how bondage works is to understand its operations. There are three sets of laws: the law of God, the law in my body and the law of my mind. In reality, I want to obey the law of God, because the law of God is good. The law of God says: be kind, be gentle, be generous, be loving and so forth. These are good. The law of my mind rationalizes the law of God and agrees that the law of God should be obeyed. So my mind sets out a plan of action to obey the law of God, but very quickly, it encounters a problem: the law in my members, which is the law of sin. The law of sin is the barrier that stops the law of my mind from executing its honest desire to fulfill the law of God.

The law of God will not fight for you because it is the holy standard of God. It is just and true, and is the umpire in the game of life. It cannot help the drowning man struggling to obey the law of God. The law of sin, by reason of its superior power and legal rights received from Adam, continually overpowers and drowns out every effort by the law of the mind, leaving me constantly frustrated by my repeated failures to do what I really want to do, which is obey the law of God. My situation seemed hopeless, until God stepped into the scene through Christ. Until that happened, I was but a “wretched man, sold under bondage to sin, desperately needing deliverance.”

“O thank You Lord for breaking the vicious cycle and freeing me from the overpowering bondage to sin. My wretchedness would have been endless if not for Your intervention. I am forever grateful. Amen.”