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Before that, however, a final warning must be sounded. "Growing in grace" is not a path straight to perfection. Quite the contrary. The Christian is one who realizes that he always stands in need of God's forgiveness and grace, to the very last moment of his life. Paul has seen this clearly:
For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin ( Rom. 7: 22-25).
Notice that the quotation does not end when Paul is delivered from "this body of death." Even after his deliverance, Paul does wrong. He still serves "the law of sin." Paul is very perceptive about this. It would be too simple to say that the battle is won once and never needs to be waged again. It is a battle that is always being waged, a battle in which we cannot relax our defenses.
But it is a battle that is a glorious battle, because as Martin Luther put it in "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," "the right Man [is] on our side, the Man of God's own choosing:
"Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is He."
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