15th Sunday after Pentecost

 

In my inmost self…

(Romans 7:22)

“My inmost self”? I wonder where that is? How does one journey to their “inmost self”? And, what do we find when we get there? “I find,” writes the Apostle Paul, who dares to take the journey, “that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self; but sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting… making me captive to the law of sin.” The tenth commandment does him in: ^“I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.”

“All kinds of covetousness”—the tenth commandment does go on and on: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's." Paul does seem to resent, for example, how Peter got to travel about with his wife (1Cor 9).  Is that coveting? Maybe so.

The point being, that however deep we go into our inmost self; we find conflict, disappointment, and condemnation. We fall short—even the Apostle. We find ourselves “condemned”. That’s why we need Pentecost: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Ro 8).

The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free for one another and even for our “inmost self”.