It is hard to overstate how much our minds are like battlefields. This is true for all believers in Christ, including the apostle Paul, who describes his own struggles in our text for today.

In this passage Paul says that one set of thoughts in his mind is turned toward God and aims to do good. The other set of thoughts, however, is turned toward evil and wants to sin. Paul thanks God in Christ that he is indeed saved. But in the very next verse he recognizes that he is still of two minds; he is a slave to God’s law at the same time that he is a slave to sin. In verse 24 Paul seems to despair of living in this sort of spiritual duplicity. “What a wretched man I am!” he says.

In this way Paul expresses the frustrating way the Christian life goes—we are pulled one way and tugged the other by opposing powers within us. Though we are truly and irrevocably saved through the blood of Jesus Christ, we are at the same time slaves to our sinful old selves.

Thus we are in constant battle. Who will rule our heart and mind today? Who will rule our thinking about our work, marriage, or politics? The inner thoughts that we barely even notice may really be spiritual combat.

Though the battle rages on, we can ultimately say, with Paul, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”