On my drive in to work this morning, I was thinking about my sin – my ongoing struggle against sin that I face every moment of every day of my life.

There are some particular sins that I’ve been dealing with lately, to be sure. But not only that, there is also the neverending battle with the fact that I do sin – what might be called my “sinful nature.” What Paul would call the “flesh.” When I think of my sin like I did this morning, I can’t help but think, I just can’t deal with it.

I think this is what drives the “self-help” industry, why it is so successful. One article states that for 1998 (almost ten years ago), self-help book sales hit $581 million. The prevailing mentality is that we can deal with most of it ourselves, we just need a little help. We can handle 90% of our problems, it’s that last 10% we have real difficulty with. Or maybe we can deal with 80%, but 20% give us trouble. Maybe we’re in really bad shape, and we can only deal with 5% of our problems.

Me? I just can’t deal with it at all. I can’t deal with my sin. I just can’t. Not 90%. Not 80%. Not even 5%. Not even .0001%. I can’t.

Most of time, I think I can deal with it. I fool myself all of the time into thinking that I just need help with my sin. I think, “I can deal with it, I just need a little bit (or even a lot) of help.” But the truth is, I just can’t deal with it.

Sounds pretty hopeless, doesn’t it? It’s not. It’s actually the most hopeful thing I’ve ever learned in life. The truth is, I can’t deal with it. I am completely incapable of dealing with my sin. Left to my own devices, I am utterly and totally helpless. I just can’t deal with it.

But Christ can.

And He did.

And He does.

Romans 7:24-25

24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (ESV)

I, like Paul, cannot deal with my sin. I cannot deal with my sin, “waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” (Romans 7:23) But like Paul, I praise God that Christ delivers me from this body of death. That He dealt with my sin, and He continues to deal with it in me.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

- “It Is Well With My Soul,” Horatio Spafford, 1873