Tradition:
To win over the enemies of your soul you must (grit your teeth) and exercise will
power
vs. Truth:
To win over the enemies of your soul you must allow God's power to be exercised
by faith
In our last newsletter we learned of God's
victory plan to defeat the world which is the first enemy of our soul. The
second enemy, the flesh, is considered to be most effective in side-tracking
the born-again the Bible way Christian from serving the Lord. The flesh
consists of the various physical/emotional lusts of our old man.
And, we are told that it is constantly at
war with the indwelling Holy Spirit: "For the flesh lusts against the
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the
other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."(Galatians 5:17)
Paul, in his "Book for the Battle"
the book of Ephesians, devotes chapters 4,5 & 6:1-9 to providing us with
God's victory plan for the flesh. We must again turn our attention to his
summary and outline for the book of Ephesians found in 6:10,11: "Be
strong...in the power of His might"; literally, "Be continually
strengthened in the power of His might".
This pointed command can only be referring
to our being continually strengthened in the power of the Holy Spirit, for this
is where God's might is located! Paul in
chapters 4 & 5 of Ephesians commands the believer to "walk" in a
certain manner on 5 occasions and to "Be continually filled with the
Spirit"!
These are the positive steps for victory
over the flesh! Just as he commanded us to "Walk in the Spirit, and ye
shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh."(Galatians 5:16) In addition, he commanded us to "Put ye
on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the
lusts thereof."(Romans 13:14) These
are all positive commands to provide us with victory over the flesh.
However, the Scripture also includes
negative commands for us to obey in order to secure the victory over these
sinful fleshly lusts: "Flee fornication"(all types of sex sins) (I
Corinthians 6:18); "Flee these
things" (love of money/covetousness) (I Timothy 6:11); "Flee youthful lusts"
(II
Timothy 2:22); "Abstain from
fleshly lusts which war against the soul"(I Peter 2:12).
So, if we are to have the victory over
this formidable foe, we must obey both the positive and the negative commands
of Scripture, removing ourselves from the presence of tempting lustful sins of
the flesh, and yielding ourselves fully to the control of the indwelling Holy
Spirit!
These positive and negative commands
involve positive steps of faith, and negative steps of flight. The steps of
faith: Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ; Walking by the power of the Holy
Spirit; walking worthy of our vocation; walking not as other Gentiles; walking
in love; walking as children of light; walking circumspectly; require the
source of faith, the Word of God to be dwelling in us richly, so that we can
put on the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, so that we can have His mind in us, so
that we can be continually filled with the Holy Spirit!
For this type of spiritual success we will
need to be faithfully memorizing and meditating on the liberating Word of God!
The steps of flight are just as necessary for victory, because if we do not
remove ourselves from the place/places of vulnerability, the places of physical
temptation, we are in essence inviting a fall into sin, and no matter how much
faith we think we have, it will not overcome our willingness to invite and
expose our hearts and minds to these lustful, fleshly sins!
Therefore, God's way to victory over the
flesh is simple childlike obedience to His Word utilizing the faith we gain by
digesting this miraculous Book as our necessary food, and putting into practice
His flight plan for our spiritual safety!
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