Sunday Bun
by
L. A. Marzulli
The Tension that we Live in.

Romans 7:23-25 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. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Romans 8: [There is] therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, [fn] who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

There is a tension that exists in the believer and it is precisely what Paul describes in Romans and in other places in scripture. This tension is a constant tugging between what our flesh, what our human nature wants to do and live by, and the born-from-above spirit that resides in us, that seeks to live in the kingdom of God. There are days that we do the things that we do not want to do. We say things that we later regret. We act in a hurtful way or have unforgiveness in our hearts. We lie, cheat, steal, murder, lash out, hold grudges, and do all sorts of acts and think things that we later regret.

The good news is this, that there is now no condemnation. In other words as 1 John tells us, we have an advocate, a high priest who paid the price for all of our little nasties. We are cleansed constantly by the blood of Yashua/Jesus. We have but to go to the throne of grace and mercy to receive it. However, this is certainly not an excuse for sin, and as I know in my own walking this out for 31 years, there comes a time when he holds us accountable not to go back to the slop of our sin. He is the God who forgives not 7 times but 77 times, and even after that.

When I was taken a while back and brought into the heavenly scene of the Rapture, I was only there for 3 seconds. At the passing of the third second, I suddenly realized that my sin nature was gone, and then I was back. I will, however, never forget the liberating feeling that I had. The tension between the sin nature and the spirit were gone as there was no more sin nature. This is where we all are headed. This is our hope, that one day we will be like Him. There is no other belief system on this planet that offers that, and having experienced it, even if it was only for a few seconds was a life-changing experience for me.

In closing today’s BUN: As we walk through life there will be days that we feel like we have “arrived,” in that the works of the flesh are suppressed and the works of the spirit, which are love, peace, joy, long-suffering, kindness, meekness, and brotherly love manifest through us. Those are good days! However, the next day we can kick the dog, yell at our wife or husband, cheat on the golf course, add more time to our work card, lie to our neighbor and on and on it goes. The good news is that we all are under construction and we will never be perfect while we are here…. never! We will live in this tension and learn how to deal with it on a day-to-day basis, knowing that we are forgiven and covered by the blood of our saviour, Yashua/Jesus.