“We know that the law is spiritual, but I am not. I am so human. Sin rules me as if I were its slave. I don’t understand why I act the way I do. I don’t do the good I want to do, and I do the evil I hate.” - Romans 7:14-15
Do you ever see a quote or a scripture and it stops you in your tracks? That’s what happened to me this week as I was reading this passage in the ERV translation. I’ve read the verse a hundred times because, if we’re honest, we can all relate to this concept can’t we? “I don’t understand why I act the way I do. The things I want to do, I don’t do, and the things I don’t want to do, I still end up doing.” That’s about as real as it gets. But never before have I seen that first part worded that specific way. “I am so human.” That gets me. That RESONATES. Because if I’m honest, I REALLY try to convince myself sometimes that I’m not subject to this whole “being human” thing. Frankly, I really don’t want to be. I don’t want to have to rest. I don’t want to have to admit that sometimes, I let my anxiety and old hurts get the better of me. I don’t want to be overcome with emotions and make decisions I regret. I don’t want to do the things I know I shouldn’t. I don’t want to hurt people I care about. Stop me if I’m sounding familiar. Maybe the lyrics of your song are a bit different than mine, but I’m willing to bet the melody sounds about the same.
Do you know what I think is the really hard part of being human? (Besides the whole “paying rent” thing of course.) I think the really hard part is when we go long enough at convincing ourselves that we’ve evolved beyond our mortality that for a brief moment, we actually start to believe it. We think that maybe we’ve FINALLY figured out this whole life thing, which inevitably leads to us thinking we can handle everything without help. And then, in one quick moment, it all comes crashing down. We say something we shouldn’t have, we fail to do something we know we should have, we let someone we care about down, and suddenly we are once again face to face with that same inconvenient truth that we seem incapable of escaping: We are terribly and inescapably human. There’s a story that in 1905, The Daily News asked famous authors, “What’s wrong with the world?” Famed Christian author G.K. Chesterton responded simply: “I am.” Me too, G.K. I am so human. And if the consequences of our human nature were inescapable even for the best leaders of the faith, where does that leave us?
The good news for us is that as we read on, Paul tells us two things. Firstly, he says “The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind.” Secondly, Paul tells us in chapter 8 that as we seek God first, focusing more on Him and less on ourselves, the Spirit is at work in us and making us more alive in Him. It is a process, but when our eyes are on Him, He constantly makes us more like Him. Paul says “You who welcome Him, in whom He dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms.” So when we mess up, when we fall short, we apologize to anyone we’ve hurt, we repent before God, and we fix our eyes on Him, experiencing life on God's terms.
It can be easy to give ourselves a false sense of self-righteousness by dwelling on our failures as if by doing so, we are somehow paying the price for our sins, but A: You don’t have that kind of cash. B: Jesus already did that. Focusing on failure and sin will only lead to more failure and sin. So don’t “forgive your own debts” and think you can live however you want, but recognize that He already paid those debts, and the best thing you can do is direct your focus to Him. Repent, take accountability and do whatever you can to make it right with the people in your life you’ve let down, then fix your eyes on Him. Because focusing on Him is how you make sure those things don’t happen as often as they used to, and an apology without changed behavior is just manipulation with more steps. Focusing on Him is the only way we can truly hope to change. Because that’s the thing, to be human IS to need Him. To be human IS to recognize how desperately hopeless we would be without His leading. To be human is to live in the tension of already forgiven and not yet completely sanctified. To be human is to hope in Him because, as the old hymn says, without Him, I would be nothing.
I am so human, how about you?
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