It’s a trap and I fall for it every time — spiritually placing my faith in myself … Snap! Trapped again!

Have you ever blurted out an unkind, thoughtless comment to someone and been surprised at the hurt look on their face? Have you entered a sensitive conversation with a friend or loved one without so much as a thought to how God would want you to handle the situation?

No wonder so many of our relationships end up in tatters.

The common denominator in all such cases is that we are operating out of what the Bible calls “the flesh.” We are counting on our own resources, and our resources don’t amount to much.

Then to compound the damage, we go on the defensive. After all (we think), aren’t self-reliance and self-confidence supposed to be good things?

That’s what I was taught growing up. It was literally pounded into me from kindergarten o—,trust yourself, “just do it.” Wrong.

The trouble lies in that little word “self.” It assumes that we are trustworthy in ourselves, despite countless biblical warnings that we are descendants of Adam, and therefore congenitally flawed spiritually. Absent the Holy Spirit in our lives, we’re toast.

That’s a big pill to swallow for Christians and non-Christians alike.

The Least Trustworthy Part of Me: Me!

Early in his ministry, the Apostle Paul thought he had a lot to brag about, giving him the right to continue to do things on his own.

Evidently, he had to learn the hard way, as he wrote about the perils of self-confidence in Philippians 3:3-6:

“… for we … take pride in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh,although I myself could boast as having confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he is confident in the flesh, I have more reason: circumcised the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.”

Worldly credentials are worthless in the spiritual realm, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage battle according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ …”

So, what is this “flesh thing” and why must I avoid placing any confidence in it?

The Saboteur Within

Immediately after becoming a Christian, Paul described an internal struggle that he discovered in his soul that he had never experienced before — a struggle for domination between two powerful forces, the Flesh, and the Spirit.

From Romans 7:21-23:

“I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully agree with the law of God in the inner person, but I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, the law which is in my body’s parts … 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.”

Before becoming a Christian, Paul had no inner struggle because he had not yet been indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Upon conversion, the Spirit arrived, and the battle was on.

It is the same for every believer, you and I included.

So, why bother?

Because, by living in tune with the Holy Spirit and denying the incessant demands of the flesh, we stand to “gain Christ” in a new and intimate way, bearing fruit in ways we never imagined.

Again, in Philippians 3:7-11, Paul concludes:

“But whatever things were gain to me, these things I have counted as loss because of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count. them mere rubbish, so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

How About You?

The Christian life is all about Christ and very little about us. And that’s exactly as it should be. Do you buy that?