O Wretched Man That I Am

The Chain

Paul reaches genuine despair here, wretched, a word carrying real weight, and it is worth noticing this cry comes at the actual bottom of his honest wrestling with sin’s ongoing power, not skipped past quickly, but reached, genuinely, as the honest low point this whole struggle eventually, actually produces.

This is worth holding as permission for whatever genuine despair your own struggle has produced. This book will not rush you past this cry toward premature resolution. Paul himself did not rush past it. He reached it honestly, named it directly, wretched man that I am, before the answer this movement’s later days will explore.

Notice the question itself: who shall deliver me. Not what technique, what strategy, what sufficient effort, but who, a person sought, not merely a method applied. This reframes the whole struggle. Deliverance, this question already assumes, comes from someone, not merely from something you yourself must sufficiently accomplish.

Whatever genuine wretchedness your own struggle has produced, voice it today, honestly, the way Paul did. O wretched man that I am. And ask, as he asked, who shall deliver me, trusting that this question, honestly asked, is itself already moving toward the actual answer this whole book will eventually name directly.