Spiritually Minded 01

You’ve heard the expression, “He is so heavenly-minded that he’s no earthly good.”
Yet sometimes we’re in danger of being so earthly-minded that we are no heavenly good!

Let’s turn to Romans 7…
19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Paul has a problem. He wants to do the right thing, but keeps finding himself doing the wrong thing. Anyone ever had that experience? In the last week? This morning?
Isn’t it comforting to know that we’re in good company?

But it’s even more comforting to see that there is an answer! Let’s read on…
25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
1Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

If we have received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, our sin has been atoned for, and we are completely forgiven. But Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on in the verses that follow to describe the difference between the carnal-minded person and the spiritually-minded person.

That is what I will be focusing on in the next several posts.