Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
—Romans 7:24-25
I’m a huge baseball fan, and one of the all-time greats was Babe Ruth. He came from the humblest of beginnings, abandoned by his parents at seven and raised in an orphanage. But it was discovered early that young George Herman Ruth could hit a baseball like almost no one before or since.
Ruth became a legend on the field. But off the field, and sometimes on it, his troubles followed him everywhere. He longed to manage a team one day, but he was never given the job, because his behavior kept getting in the way. For all his outward success, Babe Ruth was fighting a huge battle on the inside, a war within his own spirit. And tragically, I don’t know if he ever won it.
Every one of us faces a battle like that. It may not be as public as the Babe’s, but it’s just as real. And here in Romans 7, even the great apostle Paul cries out from the middle of his own war: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” That’s the cry of a man who feels the weight of his own inner conflict, who longs to do right and finds the flesh dragging him toward wrong.
If that’s where you are today, worn out by the war within, frustrated by the gap between what you want to be and what you keep doing, take heart. You’re in good company. The man who wrote much of the New Testament felt the very same thing. The battle is not a sign that something has gone wrong with your faith; it’s the normal experience of a believer who genuinely wants to please God.
But Paul doesn’t leave us in the cry. He doesn’t end on “wretched man.” In the same breath he gives the answer to his own question: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The deliverance he’s desperate for has a name. The way out of the body of death is a Person.
Notice how Paul finds victory, not by mustering more willpower, not by gritting his teeth and trying harder, but by looking away from himself and to Christ. “Who will deliver me?” he asks, and then immediately: Jesus will. The battle is won not by the strength of the soldier but by the rescue of the Savior.
And that’s the key for you. The difference between Babe Ruth’s tragic, unfinished war and the believer’s victory is help, divine help. You were never meant to win this fight in your own power. The same Jesus who delivered Paul stands ready to deliver you.
So, when you feel the war raging, don’t despair and don’t give up. Stop looking inward at your own failure and look upward to your Deliverer. Submit to the Spirit of God in your life, lean on Christ, and you will find victory over the war within.
FIND VICTORY OVER THE WAR WITHIN BY LOOKING NOT TO YOURSELF BUT TO YOUR DELIVERER, JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.
