Living in Flesh but Not IN the Flesh

One of the most difficult aspects of living the Christian life is living in flesh without living through the flesh.  We must live in the flesh as that is life itself, and even the Lord Jesus Christ lived IN flesh.  But we are admonished again and again in the Scriptures never to live through/by the power of the flesh.  Before ANYONE makes it sound simple and rebuffs my words here, let me remind them that even the Apostle Paul had a serious battle with this as he states in Romans 7:22-24:

“For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

Clearly Paul sees that this is the greatest battle of our personal lives and not just some outside force or doctrinal error taught by another, though those things are grievous for sure.  So herein is the real paradox, the flesh is never our friend when it comes to living for God but it is only through our life in flesh that we get to serve the Lord here on earth.

When I stand before a group of people to teach or preach, I must do so living in a body of flesh while not allowing that flesh to overcome my actions and words.  I must preach truths that impact the flesh without my flesh driving the preaching itself and that is not always easy because the flesh is my vessel of life and service here on earth.  I live in flesh and nothing I do can change that.

For instance, I have preached messages and sought to make an important point about some issue which the Bible clearly teaches about, such as selfishness.  Now mind you, I have liberty to preach that truth, but, only within the bounds of Scripture.  However, my flesh can rise up in anger and frustration at the lack of response of people toward that truth and thus my preaching on that issue has now become fleshly in its reaction, which is not right in God’s sight.  My flesh will then seek to justify it’s control over my preaching by trying to convince me that Jesus got angry at sin and thus its control over my preaching is simply “righteous anger” when it was fleshly control.  In other words, my flesh will say I was angry “at the sin” and that is justifiable because of Jesus’ example.  Yet the truth is that my flesh, for a moment of time, got the better of my preaching and I said things out of angry because people were clearly not heeding what I was saying and that is fleshly not spiritual for sure.

On the flip side, people can hear my preaching on the subject of selfishness and easily react in their flesh by rejecting the truth of the message as well.  They may do this either because they do not like the method of my delivery and thus justify that my message was fleshly and reject-able or because they are angered by the truth and justify their rejection just as my flesh tried to justify my delivery mentioned above.  Either way they reject the message because of the messenger.

Let me remind each one of us that once again Paul struggled with this in Romans 7 as he states in verse 15 “…for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.”  I do not think that Paul was struggling with some ministry ending sin such as fornication or drunkenness as he would have been forced to step aside of the ministry.  I am convinced that Paul, given the entire context of Romans chapters 5 to 10, was struggling to separate between ministering in flesh and ministering through the flesh, as Paul constantly spoke of this struggle in various terms such as 1 Corinthians 15:31 where he says he has to …”die daily.”  Paul was human and not a super hero, folks.

This article is not to give us license to sin or to simply write this issue off as a anomaly of the flesh, but to give us pause for ourselves and others in these areas:

1. The power of hell wants us to be defeated either by our current unconfessed sin or by the guilt of our past sin.  If we have failed in some area of your lives, Satan will gladly remind us of it so that we might be defeated by the guilt, whether real or imagined.  He will also seek to defeat us by the unconfessed sin itself.  If he can keep us in sin’s control we are defeated either by that sin or the guilt that cripples us afterwards.  We must recognize that our confessed sin is under the blood of Christ and that accord to 1 John 1:9, our confessed sin is GONE and FORGIVEN!
2. We must be patient with one another, including your pastor.  We all live in flesh and sometimes that flesh takes unwitting control for a short period of time.  I have said many things that were right to say but said them in a manner than could easily be seen as fleshly.  If the truth is there, accept the truth for what it is, and do not just ignore the truth because the vessel of that truth erred by letting the flesh control the method of delivery for a moment.  Truth is truth no matter it’s method of delivery.  On the other hand, pastors need to be patient with their people when they do not immediately respond to the preaching as the people are also flesh and struggle with it just as their pastor does.
3. We must learn to die to self and live unto God.  This is not a “one and done” situation but a daily struggle as Paul attested to in the verse I mentioned from Romans 7 and 1 Corinthians 15.  We cannot make excuses for our sin, but we also cannot live defeated our entire lives because of our past confessed sin which is now under the blood of Christ (1 John 1:7).

We must live in flesh and we must seek to live through the Spirit’s control each day, even when we fail and sin against a holy God.  Live in His victory not your defeat!