God, at times, gives us over to our sinful ways so that we will come to the end of ourselves, to the end of self-reliance and self-dependence, so that we may see our need for him. He is not concerned with the preservation and comfort of our self-life. Even though He will never tempt us, He will allow us to go through things that cause death to the flesh in us so that we can be cut off from those things and be made anew in those areas. God 'prunes' us in love so that we may grow and become even more fruitful for Him. Moreover, the flesh has been crucified, buried, destroyed, in Christ. Our old life ended at the cross and our new life began at the resurrection.

Our former self was never free, in fact is was a slave to sin. It had no freedom to live anything other than a spiritually dead life. It was not free, and it was not alive to God. We had to die before we could live. We had to be purchased with the atoning blood of Christ before we could be free. We had to lose our life to save it. We had to be cut off from the former to be set free in the new. Freedom and liberty only occur when death has taken place. Positionally we are free because we have died and been resurrected in Christ.

Only through death do we have life, and freedom can only exist in our new life in Christ. Freedom is the absence of bondage and our old nature is in bondage to sin, therefore it is not free. So in Romans 7, we can see a common struggle, one in which we can all relate to. For in Him, we are free, but in our members, sin still works its destructive ways. This battle is forged in our minds, for even though we are new creations in Christ, we still remember our former ways. We are told to reckon ourselves dead to sin, dead to that which previously held us captive. We have been set free from the penalty of sin and now He is working in us to set us free from the power of sin. Since sin still around, we must know where our freedom lies. We only truly live in Christ, therefore we are only truly free in Him. That is our hope-that we will always be free because of Him and in Him. "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." 2 Cor 3:17 If we try to assert our spiritual, God-given, In-Christ, freedom in the flesh, we will surely find the bitter taste of futility.