²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

Dilemma finally solved—and what a great solution it is. Knowing where this train of thought is leading, Paul can no longer contain his excitement. Sanctification for the Christian is found in the same place as our justification. That place is in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord! Connecting back to Romans 1:21, if the first step away from God was not honoring Him as God or giving thanks to Him, then it makes sense that the first step back to God would be honoring Him by giving thanks to Him. That is true when a person comes to God for salvation through Christ. Although the word “thanks” may not have been uttered, we are implicitly thankful to Him, for it is what God has done to save us, not what we have done. He provided the solution.

Now the first step of honoring God with gratitude should become a way of life for the believer. Justification has an ongoing effect in our lives, for we continue to be justified by grace. By this we don’t mean we get justified repeatedly, with the fear that God might stop doing that. No. The justification we receive applies to our entire life; it is a dynamic that began, as it were, the day we turned to God’s grace in faith, but it has an ongoing reality in our lives, permeating our eternal existence. Paul in another place put it this way: “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him” (Col 2:6).

The solution, we must make absolutely clear, is found in the person of “Jesus Christ our Lord.” He is our new master, and we have been freed from the judgment of the Law that had resulted previously in sin being our master. One might think then, “Ok, so how do I keep from sinning?” But that is not the question Paul is answering at this point. He began this chapter speaking about the Law having jurisdiction over the person, and therefore breaking the Law leaves a person under the judgment of the Law. But now we have been freed from that jurisdiction. So when Paul breaks out in gratitude to God in our verse today, he is going back to that freedom from the jurisdiction from the Law. So the solution is not that Christians stop sinning, for he says, he (and we) continue to serve the law of sin with the flesh, but that does not bring us under God’s condemnation (here we are sneaking into the next verse, Romans 8:1). But the point is that sanctification does not mean we will never sin. However, just as in salvation, so also in our sanctification, it is all about the Lord Jesus Christ!

Father, help me keep focusing on what You have done through Your Son, and not on the things I do. In You only am I justified, by Your grace. Thank You.