One of my favorite stories is Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. The story is all about a Dr. Jekyll who is working on a potion that allows him to actually become the man of Edward Hyde. The two men couldn’t be more different, Dr. Jekyll is nice and well respected whereas Edward Hyde is malicious and a cold blooded killer. At first Dr. Jekyll can control the Hyde within him but then after awhile Hyde begins to emerge on his own taking control of Dr. Jekyll’s life. The two men fight for control over the body in which they live. Robert Louis Stevenson’s story is simply about the battle that rages in every person, and the apostle Paul knew about this battle as well.
Romans 7:15 read.
In this passage we have Paul talking about the two natures that fight for control of his life. The one nature, Dr. Jekyll, agrees that God is good and that the things of God are good for his life. But, Mr. Hyde is in him as well wanting only what the flesh wants resisting the will of God and asserts his rights or his free will whenever he wants. It occurred to me that if this battle raged inside of Paul, then we all probably have a little of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde within us.
In our lives we go through most of our days as people who want to please God and who want to live God’s will in our own lives. We look for ways that we can help people and we truly enjoy helping someone out. If we could live simply as Dr. Jekyll we would find the Christian life a whole lot easier. But, a battle rages within us as well, Mr. Hyde shows his face whenever he wishes and ruins the very things that we sought to build. Mr. Hyde crushes relationships, he veers us off the path of righteousness, and he seeks only to fulfill his own desires. It is this battle that shows us that our old nature, our sinful nature is still with us even after we accept Jesus Christ.
Listen to how Paul described his battle with his own flesh:
· (v15 NLT) “ I don’t understand myself at all!”
· (v16 NLT) “I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong.”
· (v17 NLT) “ I can’t help myself”
· (v18 NLT) “ I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned”
· (v18 NLT) “ No matter which way I turn – I can’t make myself do right”
· (v21 NLT) “When I do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.”
· (v24 NLT) “ What a miserable person I am.”
Many times when we as Christians encounter Mr. Hyde in our lives we do so full knowing that he is in control. And, yet when Dr. Jekyll returns we are filled with remorse for what he have done. We begin to feel as if we aren’t the Christians that we should be and we convince ourselves that something must be wrong with us. Sometimes we doubt our own salvation.
For many of us this battle of natures is waged in secret. Nobody else knows about the terrible fight that goes on within our minds. Nobody else knows the struggle that we face. For many of us we keep Mr. Hyde hidden from view. If you asked our friends they would each say that we were nice people who loved the Lord and who were really good Christians. I wonder, if we each were to tell honestly about our own lives, would we see the righteousness of Jekyll or would we see the sin of Hyde? Which of our natures would we say that we most resemble?
Knowing this leads us to feeling unworthy of Christ. So many times I have heard from people, “God will never forgive me for the things that I have done.” We begin to focus on the things in our life that bring us shame.
“I don’t understand myself at all!”
“I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong.”
“I can’t help myself”
“I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned”
“No matter which way I turn – I can’t make myself do right”
“When I do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.”
“What a miserable person I am.”
Surely God must hate me because of the things that I do. Surely he must look on me with shame and horror at the sin in my life. How can I possibly be forgiven of all that I have done?
We get caught in this web of doubt this web that says, “Look at my life, and you tell me if you think it deserves forgiveness.”
But we cannot get caught in this mindset, because this ignores what God has told us through scripture.
1 John 1:8-10
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
The answer is in confessing our sins. In order for us to confess our sins we must acknowledge our sins. We must call them what they are and simply ask God for forgiveness. Jesus died on the cross so that we would be able to do this very thing. This is what his sacrifice was all about. We have this assurance that God will forgive us of our sins, but we must confess our sins to him.
How do we live like Jekyll and forget Hyde?
Hyde will always be with us in some form reminding us of who we were. He will occasionally slip in and ruin something in our lives. But there is hope and that hope lies with Jesus Christ. We must have confidence in the forgiveness that Jesus offers us. We cannot get caught up in the thought that we are so unworthy that God will never forgive us. We must lean on the promise of salvation that we have been given, for when we lean on that promise we can then begin to see that, while we are broken Christ is reaching out to mend our hearts.
We must admit that we are broken and that we cannot fix ourselves. In our hearts we each now that we have done things that are wrong, but we must not rely on ourselves to fix it.
If you hired a plumber to come in and rework the plumbing in your house, and when he was done none of the plumbing worked right and all the joints leaked, would you hire that same plumber back to fix what he messed up? Or would you call someone more qualified to repair the damage, and send the other guy the bill? When we convince ourselves that we can fix our lives we are simply hiring the same person who messed things up to begin with. Personally, I want someone more experienced than me to fix things in my life, and that person is Jesus Christ.
We must submit our lives to God and release our will to him. And when we fail, notice I didn’t say if, we have to return to the arms of God. We cannot allow ourselves to begin thinking that God will never forgive us of the things we have done as Mr. Hyde.
We must rely solely upon his grace and mercy for the sins in our lives. This is the only way to silence Mr. Hyde. Only when we fall into the arms of Christ can we begin to forget the other nature that lives within us.
