“O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:24-25)!
Paul in his wretchedness, controlled by a body of death which drove him against his good intentions into evil practices, cried out in desperation for deliverance. And by a glorious revelation, he found deliverance was ordained of God by grace for him in Jesus Christ. With relief and hope, he exclaimed, I thank God – deliverance from the body of this death is available through Jesus Christ!
Yes, through Jesus Christ had come to Paul a deliverance he had desperately sought in vain through every moral self-effort he could muster, and through every precept of his religion he tried to uphold. Broken and humbled by his moral weakness and failure in spite of being a religious zealot, Paul at last found full hope in Jesus Christ.
Sin or the body of death is a universal characteristic with which every human being is born. The need and the search for deliverance from its control are universal. Basic in every religion in every culture among every tribe and people of the earth is some form of obtaining redemption or deliverance from sin. Paul's religion had presented him with its form of deliverance from this haunting body of sin and death.
But, like Paul discovered in his religion, so it is in all religions, the righteousness provided by the practice of religious precepts are like filthy rags in the sight of God and cannot bring one justification and deliverance from sin. “We are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6).
God by grace has provided universal remission and deliverance from sin for all of mankind through Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone became the universal answer for the universal problem of sin and death. He alone stands before all mankind as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
The Bible is quite plain on the truth that only through Jesus Christ our Lord human beings of all creeds and race can find freely by grace forgiveness and deliverance from sin and death. “So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:21).
Father, open my eyes to behold and my heart to receive Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone as the only Saviour of the world - as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.