(5 Minute Christianity video)
Are you often caught between knowing how you should be living your Christian life, and yet seemingly powerless to do so? Are you being sabotaged by something, or someone, that you can’t control?
Early in my Christian pilgrimage, I became aware of the presence of a “new me” and an “evil twin” living in the same body. I had no such awareness before I was converted — that was because I was 100% evil twin — even though I would have told you that I was just fine.
My “evil twin” left me alone for a while, then he asserted himself after the glow of my salvation experience started wearing off. I found myself in the middle of a pitched battle over who was going to dictate the terms of my life — would it be the old me (theologically termed, “the flesh”) or the new me (termed, in “the Spirit”)?
I knew that I was saved, sealed and settled as to my eternal destination, but the battle for my “sanctification,” as theologians call it, was still being fought on hotly contested turf.
I identified with the Apostle Paul who, in Romans 7:15,19-20, once exclaimed, “For I do not understand what I am doing; for I am not practicing what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate … For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I do the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me.”
He went on to wail, “Woe is me” before he got the message that Christ’s victory was his victory.
Sound familiar?
Pastor John MacArthur recently preached an enlightening sermon about this pitched internal battle between the flesh and the Spirit with a brilliant illustration from John 11:38-44:
“So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb … Jesus *said, ‘Remove the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.’ … He cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ Out came the man who had died, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”
You and I were also dead in our sins until we heard the Savior’s voice and by faith came out in resurrection. But we still had remnants of our old lives, those stinking grave clothes still clinging to us. The Apostle Paul once wrote, in Romans 7:24-25, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.”
While Jesus has promised to unbind us and set us free to walk in newness of life, we have a part to play in this process …
Paul went on to victoriously declare in Romans 8:12-17, “So then, brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh … if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live … For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’”
God’s greatest desire for us, His Children, is that we display a growing family resemblance in our daily lives. This calls for willfully refusing to obey the corrupt desires of the flesh and releasing the power of the Holy Spirit Who indwells us.
And to our delight, as we cooperate with God in removing those rotting grave clothes, we discover a brand-new set of spiritual clothes underneath that were placed there by God at salvation, as written in Galatians 3:26-28: “For you are all sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”
How About You?
So, why settle for walking around in those tattered, decaying spiritual grave clothes looking like a spiritual beggar? Don’t be bullied around by a defeated foe. Shed the old stuff and let Christ shine through you to a benighted world hungry for light.
— D.C. Collier is a Bible teacher, discipleship mentor and writer focused on Christian apologetics. A mechanical engineer and internet entrepreneur, he is the author of My Origin, My Destiny, a book focused on Christianity’s basic “value proposition.” Click here for more information, or contact him at don@peervalue.com. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.