I. When a man begins to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and, discontented with himself, attempts to improve himself, he soon begins to find a painful truth in many a word of the Bible to which he gave little heed, as long as he was contented with himself and with doing just what pleased him, right or wrong. He soon finds out the meaning and the truth of that terrible struggle between the good in him and the evil in him, of which St. Paul speaks so bitterly in the text. How, when he tries to do good, evil is present with him. How he delights in the law of God with his inward mind, and yet finds another law in his body warring against the law of God, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin. How he is crippled by old habits, weakened by cowardice, by laziness, by vanity, by general inability of will, till he is ready disgusted at himself and his own weakness to cry, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
II. Let him but utter that cry honestly; let him once find out that he wants something outside himself to help him, to deliver him, to strengthen him, to stir up his weak will, to give him grace and power to do what he knows instead of merely admiring it and leaving it undone; let a man only find out that; let him see that he needs a helper, a deliverer, a strengthener, in one word a Saviour, and he will find one. Like St. Paul, after crying "O wretched man that I am!" he will be able to answer himself, "I thank God God will deliver me, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ will stir up this weak will of mine, Christ will give me strength and power, faithfully to fulfil all my good desires, because He Himself has put them into my heart not to mock me, not to disappoint me, not to make me wretched with the sight of noble graces and virtues to which I cannot attain, but to fulfil His work in me."
C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day,p. 41.
References: Romans 7:22-25. Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. iii., p. 34.Romans 7:23. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxv., No. 1459. Romans 7:24. Good Words,vol. iii., p. 445; T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 37; C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of the Cross and Passion,p. 227.