Sometimes a person in Scripture who seemed unremarkable when we were younger becomes much more relatable later in life.
Has there been a Bible character you understand or appreciate more now than you used to?
For me, that would be King David. Oh I liked the David & Goliath story like everyone else but as I began maturing in the Lord, that David is a man after God’s own heart struck me even deeper. David did not run from the Lord when he sinned. He’d turn right back to Him in repentance every time.
When we feel like hiding from God after we sin is the exact time we need to run, not walk, back to the Lord. Fall 7 times? Get back up 8 times. That taught me more than David & Goliath did!
The apostle Paul always struck me as some kind of super Christian. He represented to me something that was possible but elusive. It didn’t make him unremarkable in my eyes, but it made him unattainable.
I’ve been going through Romans and 1 Corinthians again and I’m able to see that man more clearly. Paul talks about doing the things he hates even though he knows it to be wrong. He says nothing good lives in him and he wants to do good, but it doesn’t always happen.
In this chapter 7, Paul becomes like each of us who struggle with the sin nature we were born with. I’ve come to understand through Paul that the sin nature has been paid for by Jesus. We are not condemned over our sin. We have been given a new nature by the Spirit and it’s this nature that God sees and the Spirit works in. Our old nature is not worked on or made holy. It will be what it will be. It’s our new nature found in Christ that is being made holy and it’s this nature and the Spirit who lives in it that can overcome the nature we were born into. This is the Christian life and I have a new appreciation for this servant of God.