One of the greatest crises of Christianity is that we've lost our understanding of how to actually do what Paul Is teaching in this passage of Romans. I'm not exaggerating! By and large over most of the past 2,000 years church leaders have tried to make God's people holy by warning them not to do bad things and scolding them when they did which, as we all know, doesn't work. Like the man Paul describes in Romans 7:15-25, after a good scolding we grow sorrowful and try to exert our willpower to change our behavior or attitudes only to find our flesh is too strong to resist. We end up feeling like prisoners trapped in our own bodies. After enough attempts and failures, people generally resort to one of two options: either they live a double life pretending to be a good Christian while secretly carrying on some kind of hypocrisy, or they grow exasperated with themselves and God and quit trying altogether announcing they simply aren't able to live the Christian life, so they might as well enjoy a life of sin. The tragedy here is that there really Is a way to experience genuine transformation. That cycle of frustration and condemnation so associated with Christianity is absolutely unnecessary. But in order to find freedom and live a victorious Christian life, a person must learn to "walk according to the Spirit." Isn't it time to stop scolding and start teaching people how? Somewhere over the centuries the Church forgot how to access the power of the Holy Spirit, but that's what Paul is teaching us again today.

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