The human body is a bacterial battlefield. There are in our body friendly bacilli whose job it is to maintain our physical health. Also present are the unfriendly bacilli whose activities break down the tissues and generate disease and death. These opposing and antagonistic germs create a civil war in our body. We should be well, but disease is ever present.

This is similar to our spiritual life. We should do good, but evil is always present. One side of our nature approves the righteous ideal, and the other side betrays us with moral evil. In the healing of disease two things are necessary. There must be a skill to diagnose the trouble and a knowledge to prescribe the remedy. In the spiritual life we must understand the conflict and learn the means of overcoming it. What is the bad thing we call sin, and what is the good thing we call salvation?

Take a stone. Like everything, it is subject to the laws of gravity. I hold it in my hand and just as I am about to drop it I command it not to fall. But of course it does. My instruction only revealed its inability to obey. In the same way God’s law finds me wanting. When it says “You shall not covet,” it simply reveals my weakness. The law of the Spirit of life frees us from the bondage of sin. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, said, “For sin shall not be your master because you are not under law, but under grace.” What this means is that potentially this freedom from sin is ours. No one need be burdened by the guilt or temptation of sin if they want to be free of it. Jesus came to set people free and died that we might be forgiven. To achieve this freedom we need daily instalments of spiritual courage and vigour.

A man stood before a jeweller’s window and compared his watch with the alarm clock on display. “I am three minutes fast” he said, correcting his watch. Did he fix the problem? No, he didn’t. Obviously his watch was keeping incorrect time and needed a regulatory adjustment rather than a resetting of the hands.

How similar to our spiritual life. Constant adjustment to conventional standards can be a pain. What we want is a daily dose of God’s Word, freely available, and designed to regulate and guide our path through life.

Have a good week. Pastor Ron

Optional Bible readings: Deuteronomy 5, verses 1 to 22, and Romans 6, verses 8 to 23.