Romans 7:15-25: The Hero of my Story

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. - Romans 7:15-25

What do you do when you're in an argument with yourself? This feels like the plot of a typical good guy vs. bad guy story, where both sides are equally powerful, but the bad guy can use all of the possible tactics but the good guy is limited by his moral compass to only do good things. 

"For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me." Even as God is renewing our mind and changing, slowly but surely, the things that we delight in, there is the legacy of desires from my self which seek to reassert their dominance of my will. My self has history with these desires--learned inclinations from the self-centered childhood through the self-centered adulthood. I am comfortable with them. I can slip back into them and know exactly what I am getting. The fact that they lead towards death is a distant consideration compared to the immediate gratification that living according to their dictates provides. The good guy loses because the bad guy looks like the real-world winner.

That is why I need rescue: "Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" One of the trickiest parts of winning this battle is that you must be willing to admit that you need rescue. That the "good guy" is not going to win all on his own, but will only prevail if he is willing to submit. Swapping "prisoner of the law" for "slave to God's law" I can no longer be the hero of my story. Jesus is.