Our Battle With Our Flesh
This topic begins with an understanding of what the Bible means our Flesh. The flesh is contrasted with spiritual death. Spiritual death means to have no relationship with God. To walk in conformity with culture. To indulge the lusts of our bodies.
By now, most of those who may be reading this are believers. If not, you are still welcome here. You may learn something about Christians.
It is not a secret. It is obvious to everyone, even to ourselves. We go to some kind of church on Sundays. It may be an Orthodox Church, or an Evangelical Church, a Catholic Church, a Pentecostal Church, a Baptist Church etc. Now in Russia and Ukraine, as well as in America there are now many churches. On any Sunday, or on many other days as well, you will be told in those churches to be good.
Do this or do that. Do not do this or that. Come to these meetings, perform these rituals, sing these songs, etc. Yet in most of those churches you will not be told how to be good.
So the frustration only continues. Except now, as believers, they are more convinced that the promises of God, the joy the answered prayers, the peace, the abundance is not for them. At least not in this miserable world. Maybe, maybe, if they are good enough and respectable enough these things will be in heaven.
So most Christian just bump along. They do what is expected to be accepted in their particular church group. They want to be respectable. Anything more is impossible, they think.
God has given us good news. He has given us a way to do it.
However, along with the good news, the really good news of a way to do it, is the realization that we are in a battle. It is a battle that we can always win. Actually it is a battle that has already been won for us. But it is a battle that we can lose if we try to fight it in our own power.
The problem is our flesh. This is not animal flesh. It is not physical. It is rather a term to describe an indwelling force. It is a force that I rely on in my own strength for everything that I should get from God. The flesh is what causes us to fail to be good. Even though we have died to sin through Christ’s death and resurrection.
The flesh is not changed by our belief in Christ. The flesh is always in bondage to sin.
The flesh is like human nature. It makes us do evil even though we truly want to do good. The flesh does not mean our physical body. The word sarx is the word for it in the Bible. This is distinct from soma, which is our body. Our body can be used to glorify God. Our flesh however, can never glorify God.
Our flesh is always driving us to live as if we are spiritually dead.
Think about how this is real in your life.
Now think about what happened spiritually when you died to the sin in your life, when you believed in Jesus Christ.
The two realities do not match sometimes.
What do you do with the problem of sin and your flesh? Sin can drive us to Christ once again. Or we can quit. Many Christians are in this situation. We have tried and found that it is impossible to live the life that we know God wants us to live. So we make excuses. Or we live in an acceptable, even respectable way in our particular church culture. But we do not love. We are not love.
The world and its corruptions mold us into the mold of the world. We are often just like the world around us. Unless you caught us going into a church building, you’d never know.
That is the real test of weather we are living in God’s power, or in our flesh. Look at your family, your friends, your church, other Christians. Do you really love them. Do you really love those who hurt you, who do not claim Christ as their savior?
There will be a great struggle. However, there is hope. Everyone can be free of their bondage to their flesh.
The difference is what we do when we face our flesh. The flesh can drive us to the Cross of Christ. In our flesh we are helpless apart from God’s help. However, because of the Cross, we can have grace and power in Christ. Power to overcome our flesh.
