In the Flesh

 In the Flesh

Sunday, October 10, 2021

There’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a long time: “I saw him in the flesh.” Perhaps it is someone you haven’t seen for a long time, or that you didn’t expect to see. Maybe it was someone famous. The phrase means the you physically saw the person.

But the Bible talks about flesh in another way. It is an (un)spiritual principle of living independently from God. It’s the idea “I’ll do it my way,” and it started with Eve and has continued on through the generations. Now our physical flesh in the Bible is described as being weak and temporary. (Un)spiritual flesh, on the other hand, seeks to prove this wrong. It is anxious to assert itself, and to live as though there are no consequences.

So let’s describe this flesh-principle that we live with, even as we seek to learn to walk according to the Spirit. As I said, flesh wants to assert itself. It wants to accumulate for itself. This is the lust-function of flesh. You have what you have, but you want more. You see what your neighbor has, and you want his. This flesh takes over your desires and makes them to be bad things. Remember, the Spirit leads us to love, not lust. It leads us to give, not take. There is a radical difference.

Flesh over-compensates. Flesh leads the person who is insecure to over-compensate by being loud and arrogant. He is compelled to present himself as bigger and better than he actually is. Whereas the Spirit would produce humility and meekness, these are not found in the one who acts “according to the flesh.”

Flesh makes excuses and blames. It is never your fault. There is always a good reason for your failings; someone else’s screw-up. Even Flip’s old phrase, “the devil made me do it” can be used by this person. But it is the flesh excusing the flesh. In this sense, you can see how the flesh is self-justifying. And that’s a real problem. Because if the only true justification is by grace through faith in the Person and Work of Jesus, then the person “according to the flesh” remains unjustified before God, and dead-set against confession and repentance. 

The flesh lies and lies again. It lies to others. It lies to one’s own self. It can’t face the truth, that it is weak and temporary, and that its only hope is to be “crucified with Christ” so that Christ’s Spirit can now “guide you into all truth.”