Backslider

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” – Romans 7:15-18

One of the great mysteries in the journey of faith is the propensity for us all to backslide. Back into old ways. Back into sin. When I was a new believer this used to really frustrate me. I thought that any true faith required a ton of trust and, once broken, little or no forgiveness. You were either in or you were out, and there was no room for backsliding. It was a betrayal of God and, really, what could be worse than that?

But that definition of faith was my own, not God’s. It was built up over a lifetime of hurts and misguided beliefs. In my world there was no room for mistakes or backsliding in either my business or personal relationships. This was also how I judged myself. With each mistake I pushed myself further from God, convinced once again that I simply was not good enough for Him. On good days I told myself I was just a poor believer. On bad days I convinced myself that I was just a creature better suited for evil.

In Romans 7:15-18 we have Paul, a titan of the faith, expressing with shocking honesty that even he backslid from time to time. In Ellicott’s commentary on this section of Romans (and on 7:17 in particular) he says: “This, then, appears to be the true explanation of the difficulty. There is really a dualism in the soul. I am not to be identified with that lower self which is enthralled by sin.”

A dualism of the soul. It is, to me at least, an adequate and profound explanation for the tug of war I engage in, almost daily, with what I want to do versus what I ought to do. Yet we must remember to take comfort in the endless examples the Bible gives (David, Solomon, The Prodigal Son, etc.) that show just how willing God is to seek us out, love us and forgive us.

God knows our struggles, and he is not nearly as interested in our failures as he is in our loving efforts to show Him that we will try, and try again, to overcome them. So the next time you backslide? Remember: with fist to the ground and heels dug in deep? Push on.