Introduction: What is your favorite “rescue” story? Who comes to mind when you are asked to name the first person who ever rescued you?
Read Romans 7:4-6,14-25 in your Bible and look for what Paul said about the believer’s struggle with sin. What do these verses reveal about our dependence on Christ?
What practical difference should it make that a believer belongs to Christ? In what ways does it change your identity and purpose?
In what ways are you bearing fruit for God in your daily life? Where do you need to rely more on the Spirit than on your own effort?
Do these verses encourage you or discourage you? Explain your answer.
How does recognizing sin’s presence in you change the way you depend on God?
In light of the difficulty in battling sin, what keeps us from despair and hopelessness?
In what ways can you live more consciously in the freedom Christ provides?
Discuss with others in the Bible study group a believer’s conflict over sin. What approach do they take in dealing with it? How does the conflict make them more productive and grateful believers?
When did you recognize that sin would always present a problem for you? How do you show your gratitude to God for helping you to be victorious through Christ?
* Discussion questions are from LifeWay’s Explore the Bible: Romans curriculum.
⁽⁴⁾ Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in relation to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another. You belong to him who was raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. ⁽⁵⁾ For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused through the law were working in us to bear fruit for death. ⁽⁶⁾ But now we have been released from the law, since we have died to what held us, so that we may serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the old letter of the law.
⁽¹⁴⁾ For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave under sin. ⁽¹⁵⁾ For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. ⁽¹⁶⁾ Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. ⁽¹⁷⁾ So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me. ⁽¹⁸⁾ For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. ⁽¹⁹⁾ For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. ⁽²⁰⁾ Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me.
⁽²¹⁾ So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. ⁽²²⁾ For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, ⁽²³⁾ but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. ⁽²⁴⁾ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ⁽²⁵⁾ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.
