I do what I want to do ... no, wait ... I don't do what I do when I want ... no ... I do the do when I do the don't ... meh!

Forgiveness

Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin.

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

- Romans 7:13-25

I remember hearing this passage in church when I was a kid. My best friend Trav and I sat in the front row and giggled throughout, much to the annoyance of my parents. At home, we got out a Bible and read it again. We challenged each other to read it five times fast. We couldn’t make head nor tails of it, but we knew it sounded hilarious. We wanted to shout, “Wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this convoluted sentence structure?”

The passage continued to elicit giggles from me well into high school. One night at summer camp, each of the campers was asked to share a passage of scripture that was meaningful to us. I thought I’d lighten the mood a bit, so I read this passage and received, to my delight, many more chuckles from my fellow campers. But Father Phil, the head of the camp, smiled knowingly: “You may think it’s funny now, but once you understand it, you won’t find it funny at all.”

When we’ve lived long enough, we do understand it. No matter how hard we try, we can’t “be good.” We continue to do things wrong. We continue to mess up—not only by accident, but even willfully—all the time. We justify our actions one way or another, and then we feel awful when we suffer the consequences. Are we sorrier for the action, or for the consequences?

Yet the most important line in the passage is this one: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” We have nothing to fear, because Jesus knows our hearts and understands our struggles. Each time we fall down, we can get back up again, not with groveling, but with dignity … because we are God’s beloved children.

Is there any greater reason to forgive others than the realization that we ourselves have been forgiven?

Here’s Susan Werner with the best song I know on the topic … “Forgiveness.”

I'm free to decide

Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 – Romans 6:12-23

At first this passage may seem like a scary bit of Orwellian doublethink: slavery is freedom. But consider that Paul is constrasting two different types of slavery: slavery to that which is not God, and slavery to God. Slavery to the other is true slavery: we are controlled by our moment-to-moment urges regardless of the consequences. We might score a victory of willpower here or there, but ultimately, we can’t escape human nature. We will screw up again.

What Paul calls being “enslaved to God,” he’s not talking about slavery at all, but rather, freely chosen obligation. Am I enslaved to my family? Only if I view my lifelong commitments to them as a loathsome burden—which I may do in a moment of weakness, but certainly not over the long haul.

It’s the same with God. If I understand myself to have been forgiven for everything I’ve ever done wrong and ever will do wrong, I have a choice. I can take advantage of God’s generosity by doing whatever I feel like, regardless of how it may hurt others. But if I do, this will enslave me and strain my relationship with the all-forgiving God. On the other hand, I can do my best, knowing that my best is never perfect, and be in relationship with God and the people in my life day by day. Either way, I’m forgiven. But this way leads to happiness. What good is forgiveness without happiness?

Many Christians concern a lot of their time with how these dynamics play out in an “afterlife.” I don’t know about an afterlife, but I am counting on some sort of “outside life,” not chronologically later than my time on earth, but at a remove from it in both space and time. If we can indeed meet God face to face, I want to have been communicating with God during my time on earth. I figure I’ll find it easier to recognize and understand God when the time—er, when the not-time—comes. But in the meantime, I’m “Free to Decide.” Here are the Cranberries.