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Meditation Two Hundred Seventy Seven

The Fourth Week of June 2008 

We are Held Accountable

 

 Begin with prayer to the Holy Spirit 

 

Reading: Romans 3:9-20

 

      

As we continue with this week’s meditation, St. Paul uses a technique common to many good teachers: repetition. He reiterates his teaching on original sin and the power it has in our lives.  This reference to being under sin’s power is defined more extensively in the original Koine Greek as a covert inferior influence. Sin’s corrupting influence pervert’s man’s thinking and natural spiritual inclination toward God. St. Paul in Romans 7:13-25, speaks of this duality within man that tends to make him as one who is warring within himself. This internal war is that power of sin working in our flesh or in our humanity, apart from the power of creation which has made man in God's image.  

 

    When Paul speaks of the law being powerless he means that it is, powerless as an agent in itself to prevail over the influence of sin. But the law is still perfect as a signpost that teaches us what sin is. Mere knowledge, however, is not enough to break the hold over mankind that sin has had since the fall. The Gentile was ignorant and self-absorbed and the Jew was too proud and stubborn, to see that this Jesus was the Messiah to whom all the sacrificial system pointed as a foreshadowing of redemption. The law working together with the sacrificial system was a promise and foreshadowing of Messianic redemption through the blood of Jesus and He has become the final and ultimate sacrifice.

 

     Mankind is not only proud and stubborn, groping about like sheep who have gone astray but, due to their unwillingness to follow and serve God on His terms, they have reaped much misery. Paul makes mention of this in verses 11-15. He writes of man’s ungodly actions, thoughts, words, deeds, and chosen pathways. The results of St. Paul ’s decisions have brought him ruin, misery, lack of peace, and disrespect towards God. Paul calls mankind to account their decisions and choices.  It has been made clear that mankind's only escape from this dilemma of darkness is the victory that Jesus provided over sin and death. St. Paul makes this clear in the remainder of this chapter and next week’s meditation. 

 

 

 

                                                                                                            

Quotation for Meditation

 

Be it ever so little, if anything is loved and valued more than it deserves, it holds you back from Me, the Highest Good, and it weakens your soul. The man who looks only for worldly satisfactions, becomes blind to the loving presence of his Creator.

  

Anthony J. Paone, S.J., My Daily Bread, Brooklyn, N.Y., Confraternity OF The Blood Of Jesus, Pg.10

Quiet Time and Then Discussion

 

Questions for Meditation

 

1. Discuss the power that sin has over mankind.

 

2. Read Romans 7:13-25 and discuss the internal war that Paul is speaking of.  

 

3. According to Paul what power does the law have?

 

Prayer