Who Will Rescue Me

Romans 7:24-25. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. The cry and the answer sit side by side, with no gap between them for despair to settle in.

Paul has just spent a long paragraph describing a divided self. He wants to do good and does not do it. He does not want to do evil and does it anyway. Christians have argued for centuries about exactly whom he is describing, but nobody who reads the paragraph honestly can fail to recognize the experience. The law is good, the will is willing, and the doing still fails.

Notice the shape of the rescue. He does not say what will rescue me, as if a better method were needed. He says who. The answer to a divided self is not a technique but a person. On a Tuesday when you have already broken a resolution you made on Sunday, the question and the answer are both still true.