Rom 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing:
I have only one enemy in this life: My flesh.
This flesh hates God. It has no desire for the Perfection of Beauty. It looks at the cross with contempt and would that God were not. It wants its own and will kill, steal, and destroy to obtain. It is a slave to corrupt passions and desires so to be. It knows not God and is content as such. It will not obey the truth of the gospel, but rather enjoys unrighteousness and sin. It would rather suffer in the torments of eternal hell than to submit to Christ as Sovereign Lord, bowing in honor and fear to Him, even for a moment. There is no good thing in my flesh. It wages war against the Spirit that God has graciously put within me, and is capable of doing the worst acts of sin any human has ever committed in order to destroy this Spirit. It never will. My flesh will not believe this though. It refuses God’s Word and is not subject to it. It is God’s enemy as it is mine. Through Christ I can be separated from myself, yea, I already have been. I can hate with righteous anger that which if it could, would crucify Christ forever and never be tired of causing Him sufferings. But praise be to God, for grace has given me freedom from this filthy heaven-hater. He has delivered me from the bondage of sin and death. O my soul, look unto your mediator! He ever lives to intercede on your behalf! He will not forsake you utterly, nor leave you to be ever wounded by this selfish carnality that temporarily abides within you. He is your victory and has overcome this perversion of nature. O thou flesh! You are and have nothing! You are despicable and I indeed rejoice with my God in your death. Thank you precious Father for yielding your sword and crucifying this flesh in your Son at Calvary! Thank you for raising Christ from the dead and thus raising me to newness of life in Him! Thank you.
Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
3 comments:
A wonderful post David. I can agree and even relate to what you have written.
But a newly born-again Christian may ask - “In what sense then has Christ defeated sin in the believer?” The answer is that He has overthrown its rule, weakened its power, and even killed its root so that it cannot bear the fruit of eternal death in a believer! Sadly, few people have come to terms with the law of sin. But when the elect discovers this law in him, the Apostles cry echoes down his bones – “Who shall deliver me?”
If you remember nothing else, just remember this, God’s elect are the only people who ever find the law of sin at work in them! The non elect cannot feel it! The law of sin is a raging river, carrying them along; and they cannot measure the force of the current, because they have surrendered themselves to it and are borne along by it. The elect child of God on the other hand, swims upstream- he meets sin head-on and strains under its strength!
But here is the great difference – as powerful as this law of sin is, it doesn’t rule the heart of the believer. It is not his dictator. The elect march to a different Drummer: “I want to do good,” Paul says [Rom 7;21] –I want to please God, give Him glory, serve His people and honour his Name etc. And for the most part the Christian is enabled by divine grace to do this. Oh thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift!
It is true as you said that Christ has defeated sin and has given us all things for life and godliness. A comforting thought that the Lord has established in my heart is that which is associated with the scripture "Christ in you the hope of glory". God has made a difference with us and that difference is Christ himself. He has put His spirit within us and we no longer are slaves to sin and satan, but rather to righteousness. It is important to note the difference however, between the new man which according to 1 John "sinneth not" and the old man which according to Paul in Rom. 7 "dwells no good thing". In this lifetime if we still experience sin it is not "christ in you the hope of glory" that sins, but rather this flesh which we are not in bondage to obey. The warfare comes as the spirit overcomes the flesh, and as the flesh resists the spirit. Our source of perfection comes from the Holy Spirit, which is the summation of the fullness of God abiding in man, whereby God quickens us unto a lively hope, abiding with Him in tender love and affection. Making this distinction enables me to understand what it means in 1 John when it says that they that are begotton of God cannot sin specifically because they are 'born of God'. This indicates to me that when God causes a man to be born again, He does not regenerate the flesh, but rather He 'takes out the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh'. I used to have a blurred understanding of the distinction between my flesh and my spirit, because I saw in one place in the Scriptures victorious language such as "by faith we overcome the world" and "sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace"; but in another place I saw verses clearly showing that in our experience we can still sin, "In me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing", and "but put off these, malice, strife, etc." (showing that these sins may indeed be present)... not to mention in my experience I still have to come to the throne of grace to find help in time of need, and I have to understand that I have "not yet resisted unto the shedding of blood against sin", as my Saviour has.
Here is it simply put by the apostle Paul, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me". We can understand it like this: "I am crucified with Christ (not the new man, but the old), nevertheless I live (Paul physically), yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (not the old man, but the new)..." It is interesting to note that in both cases Paul uses the word "I", to denote that He is both in on sense the old man crucified with Christ and in another sense the new man with whom Christ abides. Consider what it means to be crucified with Christ. I understand it to mean that the flesh is the subject of the wrath and hatred of God (as Christ was in the atonement). There is nothing to be improved upon with the flesh. Some, as I did, misunderstand the doctrine of sanctification as referring to God improving my flesh, rather than in actuality, God killing it (as Christ died at Calvary). There is nothing good in my flesh, and so if i sin it is the flesh because nothing good comes from the flesh. If I do righteousness, it is from the Spirit of Life (who is "I", as Paul said) but who is actually "Christ living in me", because only good comes from the Spirit. This is the blessing of God, that we are His Children who have His seal upon us that we may walk in the good gifts which He has afore prepared that we should walk in them.
Thank you Lord for giving us, that which we need and that which enables us to reflect your kindness and glory to the world around us. Please shower us with the fragrance of virtue and steadfastness and cause us to hope in your Word as we fight this good fight of faith. Be to us a banner and shelter, and magnify your Son in us by mortifying the flesh within us. Perform your perfect work, Lord, for we long, and we need, and we are frail, and confounded without you. We look by faith to the blood and righteousness of Jesus. In Christ's Name, Amen.
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