I Wish Someone Had Taught Me About the Flesh

The flesh is still with us.

We are not defimed by the flesh, but by the Spirit.

That's why Paul told us to walk in the Spirit, and thus we would never fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

Never.

Yet too many Christians, of which I was one, are convinced that we are called to live a life of perfecting our thoughts and feelings, that we can walk in victory to the degree that we keep trying to fix ourselves.

There is no such course of action.

Self-help is not help at all.

We cannot help ourselves, we cannot fix ourselves, our selves are corrupted thoroughly.

Born dead in Adam, we are invited through Christ Jesus to have life and that more abundantly, to reign in this life.

To reign in His Life.

Jesus is so awesome.

Greater than every need and want, filling in every gap and limit in our lives.

For the longest time, I treated Jesus as too small to meet every need that I was facing.

Or worse,  I treated Him as though His presence depended on how I was feeling from day to day.

That is just ridiculous, but I was so busy trying to create peace through what I was feeling rather than recognizing how great He truly is.

I was wandering and wondering like a weary Israelite in the wilderness for years and years.

I treated every hurt, every bad feeling, every upset as though it was something that I had to deal with, something which had to be put away.

But there is no putting away the sense of fear and upset in our lives. There is no putting away through our efforts the sinful tendencies in our minds and bodies.

We do need to be reborn. We do need a new life.

This new birth, this new life we find in Christ, or rather we receive through Jesus.

I wish that someone had told me about the flesh. I remember reading about it briefly when I was a first year student at UC Irvine.

If we do not see Jesus as our Savior every day, not just from death to life, then we will find ourselves creating more death than life in our daily walk.

Back to Paul's Epistle to the Galatians:

"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." (Galatians 5: 16)

"Walk in" means identify with.

As we see ourselves more in Christ, we find that the dead sins of our old man start to fall away from us.

Instead of trying to fix ourselves, the Holy Spirit transforms us from glory to glory.

Look at Jesus, not yourself. Let Him take stock of who you are in Him, and realize that you are not your flesh, but that you are Spirit, and His Spirit will transform you.