Body of

 “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. … For I delight in the law of God… . But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity…” (Romans 7:19-22).

And then a heart-rending cry from the depths of despair:

“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24).

Paul is referring to a contemporary form of execution described in Virgil’s Aeneid, the poet tells of a “curs’d” king who, in a fatal hour:

Aſſum’d the crown with arbitrary pow’r

What words can paint thoſe execrable times…

The living and the dead, at his command,

Were coupled, face to face, and hand to hand;

Till choak’d with ſtench, in loath’d embraces ty’d,

The ling’ring wretches pin’d away and dy’d.

Such is the “loath’d embrace” of the “flesh” that “literally” consumes us — unless we walk not after the flesh, but after the “Spirit of Life”:

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. …

An age of Death

 Imagine laying one hand upon the head of a lamb without blemish, and the other unsheathing the knife. And then the sensation of life ever so slowly ebbing away ─ for “your” sin ─ as the pure white head under your hand sinks unto the blood sullied dust (cf. Leviticus 4:32-35)!

Such was life “under the Law” – “year by year continually”.

Although the Law was “a shadow of good things to come,” it could “never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect” (cf. Hebrews 10:1).

Christendom yet languishes in that same “Dispensation of Death” ─ whereunder our Lord also died, as the propitiation for our sins: “and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (cf. 1John 2:2). 

Not knowing that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the law of sin and death (cf. Rom 8:2). 

Today, priests yet attempt to liturgically “replicate” a “Holy Sacrifice” before a crucifix ─ “year by year continually” ─ contrary to Scripture:   

“For Christ hath once suffered for sin” (cf. 1Pe 3:18)  ─ “He died unto sin once” (cf. Rom 6:10) ─ “But now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (cf. Heb 9:26)! 

While other confessions yet preach “other gospels” salvaged from a “Dispensation of Death” ─ “year by year continually” ─ they likewise do so contrary to the Word of God:

“Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 

As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:8-9)!

Christendom has yet to reconcile the preaching of “any other gospel” than that which “Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead)” preached! (cf. Gal 1:1)