FLESH AND SPIRIT
By
D. M. PANTON, B.A.
There
can hardly be a Christian anywhere in the world who has not, at some time or
another, uttered Paul’s cry:- "0 wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" (ROM.
7: 24). For what is the analysis
of a believer? A wild man, if imprisoned
in a cage, so long as he is alone, is gentle, tractable, quiet, and appears
quite civilized and reasonable; alone in the cage, he follows his own will, and
has his own way, and is at peace. But
unlock the door, and push a civilized man into the cage; and watch. The wild man’s countenance changes; an angry
scowl darkens his face; and in another moment he hurls himself on the intruder,
and the two are locked in deadly conflict. So the old man in us, and
the new, are at death-grips, and the distressing thing is that I
am both. It is of all
wars the worst - civil war; and it is so peculiarly painful because I myself
am responsible for it.
FOUR CLASSES
Let
us take for a moment a world view. All mankind
fall into four classes. Class one - no struggle, no warring natures,* for there
is no life: the flesh reigns -
it is the unbeliever. Class two -
a practical deadlock; a life largely
stationary under forces that cancel out; not lost, but not delivered - the
carnal Christian. Class three - the Spirit triumphant, though still thwarted,
and sometimes blocked - the spiritual Christian. Class four - no struggle, because no sin - Heaven.
[*
The struggle in the severe moralist or Hindu ascetic is no conflict between the
flesh on the one hand and the Holy Spirit and the regenerate nature on the
other, but the attempt of conscience to establish self-righteousness by putting
a curb on sin. So the man of the world’s self-control is merely a restraint of
passions which might prove physically suicidal or effect business bankruptcy.]
THE WAR
So
we see our exact position, and its consequent peril. "The flesh"
- not the sinews, muscles, etc., for our sinless resurrection body will have
flesh and bones as the risen body of our Lord has (Luke
24: 39); but the principle of evil lodged in us all
by the Fall, and made most obvious through the flesh - "lusteth against the Spirit" - the Holy Ghost in the
believer, and the reborn nature which He creates - "and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the
one to the other" - for ever prompting opposite desires and
actions: "that" - so that, as an
inevitable consequence, - "ye may not do the
things that ye would" (Gal. 5: 17)
- we are in danger, always, of a stultified life: if I wish to do good, I am
thwarted; and if I wish to do evil, I am thwarted. A boat simultaneously propelled by two oars
forward, and two oars backward, is apt to be stationary. What a photograph of countless Christians! The life is little more than a stalemate.
REASONS
Let
us now turn aside for a moment to ponder the very searching question why God
has ordained so extraordinary an arrangement. The reasons are profound and precious. (1) In
no other way could we learn, deeply and forever, the loathsomeness, the
malignity, the fearful power of sin. lf God made us, instantly, at conversion, automata of
goodness, helpless to do anything but good, our value of goodness and our
horror of sin would be incomparably less than it now will be. We now know sin
from prolonged and bitter experience. (2)
God summons us to co-operate with Him in the attainment of our own perfection. He has given us a ready-made justification,
but He never gives a ready-made sanctification: we have it in our power to
become a servant of passion, or luxury, or self - or to master evil as God
masters it, by the sovereign choice of a holy will. (3) An enemy always at the gates, nay, an
enemy within the citadel itself, ought to create, and is meant to create, a
constant watchfulness, and the incessant wrestling which alone makes the mighty
athlete. The whole possibility of reward
would be swept out of existence if the Church were instantaneously made
perfect. (4) It makes everything good so
much more practically precious, for it is so much more actually costly. It endears the Saviour to us, for it drives us
to Him as our own perfection never would; it enhances our sense of the value
and efficacy of Divine grace; it calls into constant exercise the
counterworking activities of the Spirit; and it gives us a close, personal
knowledge of the Holy Ghost we could never have otherwise had. (5) It makes us humbler souls. Perhaps nothing is so humiliating, and
therefore calculated to humble, as to discover that it is we ourselves,
something that is still ‘us’ which wishes to sin. It teaches us forever what awful beings we
once were.*
[*
It is just here, in the one passage of all Scripture where we should expect to
find it, that not only is there no statement of any possible sinlessness in a believer,
but the whole argument transparently assumes a lifelong conflict between flesh
and spirit. We are
composite, and therefore remain so until embodied afresh. The only cure of the flesh is the coffin. Reckoning the flesh to be
dead (Rom. 6: 11), and acting on the
reckoning, is a profoundly different thing from saying that it is dead, and
assuming consequent sinlessness.]
WORKS AND FRUIT
So
now the Apostle presents to us, not merely the tendencies of flesh and Spirit,
but their actual outcome, their concrete results in a believer’s life, with
their consequences. "The works of the flesh" - not its lusts, which
are in us all, but the actual flowering out of the flesh into facts - "are these" : (1) sensual sins -
"fornication, uncleanness", every
kind of impurity; "lasciviousness,"
wantonness, shamelessness; (2) religious sins - "idolatry, sorcery," every kind of evil spiritism (3) social sins - "enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, envyings";
(4) church sins - "factions,
divisions, parties"*; (5) gross sins - "drunkenness, revellings,"
carousings; "and
(6) such like" - an uncatalogued expansion. On the other hand, the
‘fruit’ of the Spirit - not the sap, but the outward visible growth, the
organic development from a living root (Ellicott) "is LOVE, JOY, PEACE, LONGSUFFERING, KINDNESS, GOODNESS,
FAITHFULNESS, MEEKNESS, TEMPERANCE." As these activities of the flesh,
unrestrained, can thus be in a believer, Paul adds a warning; not the Lake of
Fire, as the Apocalypse does for identical sins in the unsaved (Rev. 21: 8), but a tremendous loss:- "I forewarn you"
- ‘forewarn’ you, for the loss has not come yet, since it is not a loss of the present
Kingdom of Grace, but of the coming Kingdom of Glory - "even as I did
forewarn you, that they which practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." The truth is so momentous that it is well to
repeat it in other words. It is
impossible of denial that by this double nature Paul means the
regenerate, and the regenerate only: constant experience confirms that
these sins, as a matter of fact, sometimes appear in the regenerate: therefore
it is a certainty that the threatened penalty - exclusion from the [Millennial] Kingdom
- will fall on true believers, men indwelt of the Spirit, who alone are
named throughout the whole chapter.** The fruit of the Spirit, therefore, is
as a sure passport into the glorious coming Kingdom of Messiah.
[*
“By the name of sects Paul meaneth
here, not those divisions or contentions which arise sometimes in the
government of households or of commonwealths, for worldly and earthly matters;
but those which rise in the Church,
about doctrine, faith, and works" (Luther)]
** We may add a word confirming the obvious. Someone in the passage is certainly warned,
and only [regenerate]
believers are addressed in the passage: to warn one set of people of the
consequences of sins which they do not commit, because of the penalty which
will fall on another set of people who do commit them, would be absurd:
therefore it is believers who are warned, and it is believers who will suffer. It is exceedingly impressive that Paul himself
asserts of the bulk of the Corinthian disciples, - "Ye are yet carnal, and WALK AS MEN"
(1 Cor. 3: 3):
whereas our command is - "Walk worthily of
God, who calleth you" -
His voice sounds from the Kingdom already on high - "into his own KINGDOM and GLORY" (1 Thess. 2: 12).]
CRUCIFIXION
The
symbol chosen to picture our struggle is extraordinarily illuminating. "They that are of Christ Jesus" - they that are
Christ’s - "have crucified" -
at conversion: it is the one universal repudiation of sin by Christians that
makes them such - "the flesh with the passions and
the lusts thereof." If it
were a stab through the heart, or (in modern language) a bullet, or the sudden
drop on a gallows, or beheadal by an axe, it would
have meant instant perfection for us all: on the contrary, no known death
penalty is so prolonged as crucifixion - a man has been known to survive on a
cross nine days - till death comes through hunger and thirst, haemorrhage, and
gradual paralysis. The flesh has been
executed, but it is not dead; and the world calls to us, exactly as it did to
Christ on
[*An
exceedingly serious consequence of assuming that the flesh can be made extinct
by faith - either through eradication or through death - is that all the
personality is then assumed to be sinless; and therefore any doctrine or
practice, to the evil of which that believer’s eyes have not been opened such a
‘work of the flesh’, for example, as ‘strife’ or ‘sects’ is accepted as part of
the sinlessness, and so is continued.]
So,
finally, we learn the sole and supreme lesson of the triumphant life which we
all so sorely need: the climax is reached in the means whereby our flesh can be
kept crucified. "If we live by the
Spirit" - if His
regeneration has planted life in US
- "BY THE SPIRIT ALSO LET US WALK" -
let us keep step with the Spirit. Another precious revelation, in the believer’s
battle for a higher life, is contained in a singularly categoric, challenging
assertion. "WALK BY THE
SPIRIT, and ye shall not" - a double negative: in no wise
(Lightfoot) - "fulfil the lust of the flesh"
(Gal. 5: 16). The value of the revelation lies in that it is the assertion of a law: do the one,
and the other follows: walk by the Spirit, and, automatically, the lust of the
flesh will not be fulfilled. To
carry into full effect (such is the significance of the Greek) any desire of
the flesh is, for one walking by the Spirit, and so long as he walks by the
Spirit, impossible. He may feel
the desire, nay, he must; but to carry it out into
accomplishment is a thing that, for him, will not happen. But the whole responsibility is placed on
us - "walk" while the sole channel
of victory is Another - "the Spirit." "The
Apostle places us upon a fearful battlefield, he opens to our view a frightful
abyss, and he leads us into a heavenly orchard" (Reiger). There is no
believer so holy that he does not have conflict with his flesh, and there is
none so weak that he cannot get the victory. The impulses are not eradicated, but overcome
"ye shall not fulfil" - ye may feel
but not fulfil - "the lusts"; and the more habitually and powerfully this is
done, the weaker and the fewer - as in a crucified man - will the impulses
themselves become. Fill all thought
and emotion and conduct with good, and it automatically excludes the evil:
plant the whole bed with strawberries, and here is no room left for weeds. And this divine "walk" closes in the Reign of Christ on earth: co-sanctity in the walk produces
co-heirship in the Glory. "He that overcometh,
I will give to him to sit down with
me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my
Father in his throne" (Rev. 3: 21).
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