Skeleton in the Attic

Romans 8:1. “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.“

You just have to love old houses. They are full of surprises and you never know what you will find. Sometimes the surprises are fun, like when we took down our aged mantle piece and discovered some charred postcards written in the 1800’s along with an old coin from 1825, and a couple of pictures from years past. But other surprises are not so pleasant.

I ran up the stairs the other day to grab something from my room when I noticed a clump of gray fuzz on the floor underneath the pull down attic. I figured a piece of insulation fluff had fallen down the last time someone had gone up there and ran over to throw it away. Imagine my dismay when I realized the gray fluff was actually the skeleton of a dead bird. Gross! The bird probably got into the attic through the ventilation grate, got stuck and died. It must have been there a long time to have rotted down to the bare bones.

For whatever reason it had fallen down onto the carpet, completely scaring me out of my wits. Who knows how long we had been living and sleeping in our comfortable house never knowing about the dead thing up in the attic?

This is often the way we live our lives. We go about our daily business putting on a pleasant face when deep in the recesses of our soul sin has entered and taken up residence. Every human on earth struggles with this issue because we were born into a fallen world and we fight a constant battle with our sinful nature. In and of ourselves we are completely helpless in this struggle between right and wrong because it is the sin inside that controls us.

The apostle Paul describes the struggle this way, “I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to, but I can’t. When I want to do good, I don’t. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. But if I am doing what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing it; the sin within me is doing it. It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another law at work within me that is at war with my mind. This law wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still in me.”

What a miserable mess this is? Is there any way to be free? Thank God! The answer to this problem is in Jesus Christ our Lord. The power of His life-giving Spirit has freed us from the power of sin that leads to death. God destroyed sin’s control over us by giving His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. When we become children of God, we receive His Spirit in our hearts. We now no longer need to follow our sinful natures, but instead can be controlled by God’s Spirit within us. We can finally be set free from this struggle that ultimately brings death. “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”

Love,

Mama