Battling the Flesh

Hope in Jesus

Paul describes the conflict that lives within most, if not all believers. In verse 14 Paul describes being fleshly and sold into slavery. What does Paul mean by this? When we do not believe we are not concerned with our sinful flesh; because we believe we have seen an image of salvation. We want this salvation but we still struggle or now begin to struggle with the flesh.

Believers want to be Holy and righteous so we try to be the image of holiness. Paul says that he does not understand why he does what he knows is wrong. Paul says he hates what he does. You see unbelievers do not have conflict with the flesh; they let flesh have its way. Paul goes so far as to claim it is not him who does these things, but the sin that lives within him.  But now I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that lives in me.  For I know that good does not live in me, that is, in my flesh. For the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

W. Hall Harris III et al., eds., The Lexham English Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Ro 7:17–18.

Paul makes a distinction between the flesh and the spiritual and in this he claims that because he is a child of God; saved by his belief in Jesus Christ; he is no longer identifying himself as a man of flesh but a man struggling with the sin within.

So, why does God not remove all sin from us in the instance we believe?

Romans: Dust to Destiny Sinful but Not Condemned

This passage in fact adds an all-important corrective to the portrait of Christian spirituality which is emerging. Sinfulness is not a characteristic of unbelievers, which dies when we turn to Christ. It continues for the whole of our life. Believers die in Christ and so too dies the power of sin to alienate them from God, and the power of law to condemn and destroy them. However, the whole point of this extraordinary transaction is that the believer remains alive. A great spiritual change takes place through the activity of the Holy Spirit (we will see more of that in chapter 8), but it does not immediately take away our sinful nature. Perhaps this sinful nature (which Paul calls ‘the flesh’) is so entwined around what we are, that to remove it all at once would not leave much behind! For the term of our natural lives, Christians live with sin as an active power. Understandably, since the Spirit of God is also at work within us, this will be a source of anguish and turmoil

Romans: Dust to Destiny Sinful but Not Condemned

Even if sinfulness has spread right through me like an inoperable cancer—so entwined about all the organs of my personality that it can barely be distinguished from me—even so, says Paul, it is not me. The very fact that I have taken a stand against my sinfulness, turned to God for deliverance, presented my members to serve his righteousness, and pleaded with him to forgive and take away my sin is proof enough that the real me is not this lingering weakness.

The Lexham English Bible (Chapter 7)

Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself with my mind am enslaved to the law of God, but with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.

Romans: Dust to Destiny Sinful but Not Condemned

Even if sinfulness has spread right through me like an inoperable cancer—so entwined about all the organs of my personality that it can barely be distinguished from me—even so, says Paul, it is not me. The very fact that I have taken a stand against my sinfulness, turned to God for deliverance, presented my members to serve his righteousness, and pleaded with him to forgive and take away my sin is proof enough that the real me is not this lingering weakness.

Romans: Dust to Destiny (Sinful but Not Condemned)

Manacled to a steel ball for the term of our natural life we may be, but that is not all there is to our life.

We will be rescued from the weakness and sinfulness associated with our present bodily existence, and this rescue will come from the same person who initiated our freedom by cutting us loose from guilt, condemnation and eternal death.

It will come with the transformation Paul describes in the words:

‘Lo, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet’ (1 Corinthians 15:51–52).

Take homes for the week:

Do you feel conflicted by your sinful nature?

Do you feel better knowing that sinful nature takes time to overcome?

The Good News lives in you and so have hope in the fact that you are a work in progress and not a finished product.

Let us pray!