11-07-10 The Mind Of The Flesh- The Mind Of The Spirit

We are returning to our study of Romans chapter 8 this morning,

and also entering a section in Paul’s letter

that will require us to look closely

and listen carefully to what Paul is saying.

If you’ve been with us the past few weeks in this study

you know already that Romans chapters 7 and 8 are a unified statement,

a crucial section of Paul’s letter in which he is talking with us

about the ongoing internal battles that every Christian faces.

He’s not talking here about our efforts to fight evil in the world around us,

he’s talking about our battles to fight the evil within -

the sometimes powerful pulls toward evil

that continue to fight against the life and Spirit of God within us.

We have already looked closely at Paul’s comments in the last half of chapter 7,

listening as he put into words

what every Christian has faced at times.

For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want...I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. Rom 7:19, 21

It was a terrifying realization for Paul when he saw this in himself as a Christian,

just as it’s a terrifying realization for each of us.

Because, you see, we have also seen within ourselves

that hunger and thirst for righteousness

that entered our lives

when the Spirit of God entered our lives at the time we came to Him.

We have seen the longing in our spirits

for a life that honors our Lord,

a life that proclaims to our world

the truth that our God doesn’t just redeem us He recreates us.

We know that we truly are new creations in Christ, through Christ.

And that truth,

that reality makes this discovery of evil within us

all the more painful,

all the more terrifying,

all the more hideous.

And yet there we are, understanding perfectly

exactly what Paul means when he says, I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

But that wasn’t where Paul stopped.

He then went on to explain how this evil could continue to exert such force over us

even after our spirits have been cleansed, and purified, and recreated by God.

And in Romans 7:22-23 we heard Paul reveal to us the problem we face, For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.

And when we listened carefully to what Paul was saying

we discovered that it wasn’t all that complicated.

He traces the problem to what he calls the members of my body.

And what he meant was exactly, literally what he said.

Our physical bodies,

this physical plant in which our spirit dwells during our time on this earth

was totally trained to reason, and respond, and feel

under the leadership of a spirit that was in open rebellion against God.

And all of those reasoning processes,

and emotional responses,

and habits and addictive behaviors,

and memories of a life without our God are still in place within us.

And all of them actively, aggressively war against the new life in our spirit.

And in his final verse in Romans chapter 7

Paul captured the daily warfare of our lives in a single sentence.

...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.

But then, as Paul moves into chapter 8,

after so carefully, clearly revealing to us the source of the problem,

he then helps us to understand how to view it,

and how to deal with it in our daily lives.

And the first thing he says to us

is the first thing we most desperately needed to hear:

In Romans 8:1 he says, Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

This is where the growth process begins -

knowing how our Lord views this body-spirit battle

and how He responds to it.

And when it comes to the evil that continues to dwell in the members of our body

Paul wants us to know

that God does not condemn us for the existence of that evil within us.

When He looks at us

He looks at the true us - the holy and pure spirt

that now lives within this body.

And then Paul goes on in 8:2

to tell us that the whole foundation of our life has changed in Christ.

He says, For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

And we saw last week

that the heart of that law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus

is our God removing our sin debt from us forever,

then placing His Spirit within us,

and through His Spirit revealing to us

an ever growing understanding of the love of our God for us,

a love that, more and more, becomes our reason for being,

our reason for doing.

Paul goes on in verse 3 to tell us that, ...what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did...

The law could never give us a heart for God,

it could never give us an awareness of God’s love for us,

and it could never give us a hunger and thirst for righteousness.

But all of that and more

God Himself did within us through Christ,

so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (8:4)

OK, that’s where we stopped last week,

but it isn’t where Paul stops.

In the next 9 verses

Paul does something that could never have happened in our lives

prior to our entrance into this grace in which we stand. (5:2)

It could never have happened

as long as we continued to view God as our Judge

and as long as we lived in fear of Him and His condemnation.

In these next 9 verses

Paul calls us to look honestly at our life in the flesh,

and then to set that life next to the life that the Spirit of God is seeking to produce in and through us.

And as he does this

he is seeking to arm us

with one of the greatest resources we will ever have

as we seek to bring these bodies of ours

into subjection to the new spirit God has created within us.

And before we look at this

I simply must emphasize again

the way Paul began this discussion,

with his clear, bold, unqualified affirmation that ...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And I emphasize that once again

because as soon as we start hearing Paul’s words about life in the flesh

all of those screaming religious lies within us

will surge into our thinking

and we will instantly assume

that Paul is telling us that if we don’t shape up and get it right

God will pour out his wrath on us.

My friends, there is no more wrath ever again for the child of God

because it has all been poured out on Christ, once for all.

And when Paul opens up this discussion

about life in the flesh

he does it not to create within us a fear of condemnation,

but rather to call us to an honest evaluation of what the flesh can produce in our lives.

OK, let me read the next few verses for us

and then we’ll dig into them and see if we can understand what Paul is saying.

In Romans 8:5-8 Paul says,

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

And before we go any farther with this

it will help if I first offer a simple working definition

of what Paul is talking about when he talks about the flesh.

You see, I know what happens with passages like this one

when we first bump up against them in Scripture.

We hear the word FLESH,

and we automatically tend to think

of all the really base body-oriented sinful behaviors

that cater to the misuse of our physical bodies -

sexual perversion,

adultery,

drunkenness,

drug addiction,

and stuff like that.

Now, there is a place under this term “the flesh”

where those things certainly fit in,

but that is not the primary thrust

of what Paul is talking about here.

He is talking with us

about our basic approach to life.

And the easiest way I could define the flesh for us

as Paul is using it in this passage

is to say that the flesh is all those things we brought with us into this world at birth.

It is all those things we possess

because of these remarkable, utterly unique physical dwellings given to us by our Lord.

It includes,

but is in no way limited to our actual individual physical structure,

our unique personalities,

our IQ’s,

our creative abilities,

our special talents and gifts.

It includes our sense of humor,

our strength of will,

our learned reasoning processes and recorded emotional responses.

It includes all of those carefully developed techniques we have worked out

for meeting our needs,

for protecting ourselves from pain,

for giving ourselves a sense of security, or identity.

The flesh includes everything we brought with us into this world at birth,

everything we have done with those things we brought with us,

and everything we have achieved through them.

Maybe this will help...

There are two basic types of flesh-based living

that Paul is addressing in this passage,

two potential paths the flesh will seek to follow,

two flesh substitutes to the true life with and in the Spirit of God.

And the thing that fascinates me so much about these two possible paths

is that, from our human point of view,

we look at them and see them as direct opposites.

And yet both of them are the direct product of the flesh

and as such both of them are equally destructive to the true life our Lord has called us to.

And from Satan’s point of view

both of them are equally effective weapons

in his attempts to obstruct our walk with the King.

The first of these two expressions of the flesh will come as no surprise to you.

It is when we attempt to meet some need in our life

outside of God’s protective moral framework.

The moral boundaries given to us by our God

are among the greatest gifts He’s given to us.

They explain to us how our deepest needs can truly be met.

They protect us and guard us from an approach to life that will ultimately work to our own destruction.

But with all of us

there will be times when our flesh will lunge out at some need-meeting technique

that we are certain we simply must follow

if we are ever to have the life we think we really want.

We will find ourselves believing

that a lie or a series of lies

will serve our purposes far better than honesty.

We will find ourselves convinced

that using another person for our own gain,

or crushing another person in order to elevate ourselves

will get us where we want to be.

We will believe that the end justifies the means,

or that the boundaries our God has given us in the area of sex

simply deprive us of what we must have in order to be happy.

Or we will view the authority structure our Lord has placed over us

as our great enemy,

an enemy that walls us off from what we believe we must have

for success, or happiness, or freedom, or fulfillment in life.

And everyone of us bring with us into our walk with the King

certain areas in which we have broken out of God’s protective moral framework

and discovered too late

that immorality always has hooks,

hooks that turn what we thought was “freedom”

into addiction, and bondage, and slavery, and compulsion.

Or we discover that the very things we thought we needed in our attempts to meet our life needs

end up being the things that deprive us of truly deep love relationships,

destroying trust,

wounding the spirits of those around us,

driving us into isolation and greater loneliness,

robbing us of the respect and integrity that must exist in all true love relationships.

When it comes to Satan’s tactics in these moral battles,

it’s all smoke and mirrors.

From the very beginning it’s always lies,

lies that reach into our deepest needs

and promise us what we hunger for the most.

And too late we find out

that what we thought we had to have for fulfillment

is the very thing that shatters any hope of true fulfillment in our lives.

Ever wonder why something that appears to be as petty and harmless as gossip

made it onto God’s list of moral boundaries?

Do you know why people gossip?

They do it because they hunger for love

and they’re looking for something that can help them feel emotionally connected with another person.

And when they begin a conversation by saying,

“Hey, you want to hear something interesting about so-and-so...”,

it creates the illusion of emotional intimacy between the two people.

But the end result is exactly the opposite -

the last person we would ever truly open up to,

or share our lives with at a deep level

is someone we know to be a gossip.

And the very thing the gossip longs for - deep trust friendship with another person

is the one thing they will never have.

I’m getting side-tracked here,

but what I wanted to point out

is that the first of the two flesh-driven enemies of the true life in the Spirit

is that of believing we must step outside the protective moral framework given to us by our God

in order to meet some need in our life.

But the second expression of the flesh

is just as destructive,

just as addicting,

just as powerful in it’s ability to subvert the leadership of Spirit of God in our lives.

It is attempting to live with God

and to fulfill the calling He has given us

on the basis of our flesh-based gifts and abilities and training.

One entire book in the New Testament

was written by Paul

for the express purpose of correcting a group of believers

who were attempting to do this very thing.

It’s the book of Galatians,

and at one point in that letter

he asks them a question intended to force them into an honest recognition

of what they were doing.

In the first three verses of chapter three he says,

You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Certainly each of us possess our own unique gifts and abilities and talents and personalities,

all of which can become powerful

and truly beautiful avenues of expression

for the Spirit of God through us.

And Paul is not telling us

that any of those things are necessarily evil.

But what Paul wants us to know

is that none of those things that flow out of our flesh

can ever provide us with an adequate basis

for living the life our Lord has called us to live,

and any attempt to walk with the King

and fulfill the callings He’s given us in this life

on the basis of our flesh abilities

WILL FAIL!

Certainly it may make us look very good to others around us

who are also operating in the flesh,

but it cannot and will not produce a growing walk with God.

And when Paul says, ...the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God...

he is pointing out to us

the most fundamental principle of the flesh-based walk with God,

the belief that we are called to rally all of our human resources

in an attempt to live for God.

And we simply cannot do it.

Our King gave it to us perfectly in a single sentence.

"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing ...” John 6:63

And I know that right here is where I am probably going to get myself in trouble

because what I’ve just said

could easily sound like meaningless words.

I’ve just said that all of our unique personal talents and abilities and characteristics,

all of those things that make each of us uniquely us

can become beautiful channels through which the life of the Spirit expresses Himself.

And yet I then went on to say

that any attempt to live an effective, powerful, productive walk with God

on the basis of those flesh abilities is destined for utter failure.

So what in the world is the difference between those two?

Simply stated,

the difference between the life in the flesh

and life in the Spirit

is found in the goals each of them are seeking.

I can give it to you in a single sentence,

but then I need to expand it a bit.

But let’s start with the sentence.

The goal of the flesh is to elevate and glorify itself

and the goal of the Spirit is to elevate Christ.

And let me talk first of all about the flesh elevating itself,

and then I’ll talk about the way the Spirit elevates Christ.

The basic goal of our flesh as Paul is using it in this passage

is to make itself look good and feel good.

That’s what the flesh wants.

Now naturally we think first of all about the flesh doing this

through accumulating wealth,

or through becoming famous through sports or entertainment or politics or any other track to fame,

using whatever natural abilities the person has

to elevate themselves.

But remarkably one of the most common

and most effective arenas for seeking flesh success is through the world of religion.

Have you ever wondered about that comment made by Christ in Matthew 7:22-23

where the Lord says,

"Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.’

Did you notice that He never disputes what they did.

Basically they come to Him and say, “LOOK! We did all sorts of really great and impressive things in Your name, in Your Church, for Your people.”

And He responds by saying, “Yes, you did, but you didn’t do them as an expression of my life in you, you did them in order to give yourself success and power and prestige. You used ME to elevate YOURSELF.”

That’s what the flesh does.

That’s the goal the flesh has - to make itself look good and feel good.

But the life in the Spirit,

the life our Lord calls us to is totally different.

When Christ is living His life out through us

our goal, our longing is to honor Him,

to elevate Him,

to proclaim Him,

to submit to Him,

and to obey Him no matter how it plays out for our own glory or success.

I can simplify it.

The calling our Lord gives us is clear and simple:

we are to love our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind,

we are to learn how to love the people around us,

and we are to hunger and thirst for righteousness

and then seek to live lives of the highest moral purity and integrity.

And the flesh is utterly incapable

of ever fulfilling any of those goals.

In fact the flesh rejects them outright

because they all go directly against its chosen goal of making itself feel good and look good.

OK, but then if we are truly living out the life of the Spirit,

pursuing the goals He’s given us,

then how do our flesh abilities become effective channels through which the Spirit can express Himself?

When our heart is right

and our goals are right

we will find God’s Spirit moving through every aspect of who we are.

We’ll find within ourselves a growing love for our Lord and a longing to express that love.

And we’ll find a growing love for the people He’s placed around us.

And then we’ll find

that we can express that love, both for Him, and for other people

through the skills or talents or abilities God’s given us,

and we do it not to make ourselves look good,

but because we really care.

Jenny stood up at the mic a few weeks ago

and expressed gratitude to so many of you

who did so much in such very practical ways

to help her and her family through an extremely difficult time in her life.

Many of you used very real, well developed flesh abilities -

skills and talents you have

to help her.

But you did it not to make yourself look good,

but rather to express your love for her and for your God.

Two people can stand up here when we get together and sing -

one does it because they know it helps them express their love for their Lord

and helps the rest of us do the same,

and another may seek to do it because they want you to see what a beautiful voice they have

so their flesh can feel good.

And here’s one of the amazing things -

when we do what we do for the right reasons,

even though our driving goal is not to elevate ourselves,

so often God Himself will honor us in just the right way,

not because we sought it, but because He just likes doing it.

Well, I didn’t get near as far as I’d intended today,

but at least we made a start.

And we’ll pick it up right here next week.