I am the king of excuses sometimes. When I was young, I saw the art of justifying what I did as a skill to be developed into a fine weapon. Now, God is getting the last laugh. He gave me four children. I do love the creativity it inspires in them as they squirm and try to find a way to absolve themselves of their latest crime against humanity. My favorites are probably 1) blame brother or sister (which is our fault since we had so many); 2) blame teacher (who is out to get me); 3) all my friends get to do that (sinister plot of parental oppression); and finally 4) I am just a sinner saved by grace.
Oh, wait a minute, that last excuse is my favorite one, not my kids. Having an understanding of what Paul calls “the flesh” (NIV translates as sinful nature) has had an all together negative effect on my personal accountability. It gave me the ultimate parachute for sin, “God knows I am a creature of the flesh, and until I get my glorified body, this is just who I am.” The last main area of spiritual warfare that we are going to discuss is the flesh, or our sinful nature. Demons are out there, the anti God worldview and culture is surrounding us, yet I think the flesh might be our toughest enemy. Why? It is us.
What is the flesh anyway? Some people believe that it is a spiritual taint that is literally in our flesh and blood; a curse leading us to gross sin and immorality. If that is what we think, then we agree with a lovely group of people we call ascetics. Time to pick out your favorite form of self-abasement and beat yourself silly. Beat that sin out of you I say! Thankfully, this isn’t a Biblical understanding. In Romans 7:5, Paul gives us a clear definition, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” Our sinful passions are the things we want to do, believe will bring us pleasure, yet lead us to death in all its forms (spiritual, emotional, and physical).
Galatians 5:19-21 breaks it down into the practical, everyday fruit of our flesh, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.” We need to go back way further to see where this all began, Genesis 2-3. God created Adam and Eve with a free will, and then told them what were the right things to do (tend the garden, multiply, etc..). The only thing He said NOT to do was to eat of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Why wouldn’t God want them to have a knowledge of good and evil? Wouldn’t that help them avoid choosing evil?
Though we are made in God’s image, He held a few things back just for Himself: omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. What do you need in order to truly decide whether your action will be good or evil? bad or good consequences? You need to know the future, you need to have all the information currently available (people’s feelings, reactions, etc..), and you need to be able to see any or all ripple effects (be everywhere at once). In other words, though God gave us free will, He didn’t give us the full ability to be able to decide good from evil. That seems like God was setting us up for failure.
The truth is that God created us to be dependent on Him, created us to be in relationship with Him. We have to submit our free will to God and trust Him that He knows what is best for us and for the world. When we rebel against Him and don’t trust Him, we are choosing our “flesh” and our sinful nature is in full effect. So, we fight against the flesh in spiritual warfare by living a life of submission to God. We listen to the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, read and know the Word of God which teaches us, and are daily transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. Sinful nature doesn’t make you do squat. You are sinful nature! Trust, obey, and submit, or choose to make the same mistake as Adam and Eve. Apple anyone?
The Bible Nerd 