and good. And he made up his mind
to keep this holy and just and good law of God. But he soon discovered
that beside this law of God outside him, which was holy and just and good,
that there was another law inside him directly contrary to this law of God
outside him. While the law of God outside him said, "This good thing" and
"this good thing" and "this good thing" and "this good thing thou shalt
do," the law within him said, "You cannot do this good thing that you
would;" and a fierce combat ensued between this holy and just and good law
without him which Paul himself approved after the inward man, and this
other law in his members which warred against the law of his mind and kept
constantly saying, "You cannot do the good that you would." But this law
in his members (the law that the good that he would do, he did not, but
the evil that he would not he constantly did, v. 19) gained the victory.
Paul's attempt to keep the law of God resulted in total failure. He found
himself sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of sin, constrained and
dragged down by this law of sin in his members, until at last he cried
out, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me out of the body of
this death?" (v. 24, R. V.). Then Paul made another discovery. He found
that in addition to the two laws that he had already found, the law of God
without him, holy and just and good, and the law of sin and death within
him, the law that the good he would he could not do and the evil he would
not, he must keep on doing, there was a third law, "the law of the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus," and this third law read this way, "The
righteousness which you cannot achieve in your own strength by the power
of your own will approving the law of God, the righteousness which the law
of God without you, holy and just and good though it is, cannot accomplish
in you, in that it is weak through your flesh, the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus can produce in you so that the righteousness that the law
requires may be fulfilled in you, if you will not walk after the flesh but
after the Spirit." In other words when we come to the end of ourselves,
when we fully realize our own inability to keep the law of God and in
utter helplessness look up to the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus to do for us
that which we cannot do for ourselves, and surrender our every thought and
every purpose and every desire and every affection to His absolute control
and thus walk after the Sp