Fighting the Flesh
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Introduction - Christian Enemy #1
Are you familiar with the phrase “Public enemy # 1?” Most of us are. I did some research on the term and discovered that most of what I thought about it is folklore. I thought the FBI or US Marshalls had a list of the top criminals they are looking for with one being at the top. That isn’t case. The term has been used like that briefly in the past by law enforcement, but there isn’t an ongoing list of the top criminals or a Public Enemy #1.
Public Enemies - Wikepedia
I was intrigued to find out a little about the history of the term. The term “Public Enemy is a term which was widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society, though the phrase had been used for centuries to describe pirates and similar outlaws.” So I don’t have a list I can give you of our society’s current public enemy number 1.
Transition: But I can identify Christian Enemy number 1. It’s the flesh.
The Bible tells us that we have three enemies, the flesh, the world and Satan. All three enemies are bad but the flesh is the most damaging. It is our # 1 enemy. Let’s begin with a definition.
Definition of the flesh:
The flesh, also called sin, is that fallen part of our nature that produces evil desires. It came into the world as the result of the first sin and renders humanity sinners, separated from and hostile toward God.
Today we are going to see that
Bottom Line: The flesh attacks us with evil moods and desires and can only be defeated by living according to the good desires from the Spirit.
Our primary text for today is Galatians 5:16-26. Please follow along in your Bibles, on the YouVersion Bible app or look up on the screen.
16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
Verse 16 states the problem and the solution but does so in the reverse order. The problem is the desires of the flesh. The solution is to walk by the Spirit. Sounds simple but we all know that isn’t the case. Fortunately Paul unpacks this for us. He gives us lots of information about our common problem. That is that
1 The flesh produces evil moods and desires.
Look with me at verse 24.
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Last week we looked at the steps to sin.
STEPS TO SIN VISUAL
The first step in the path to sin is desire. James didn’t tells us where the desires come from. Each of our three enemies create evil desires. In this passage Paul tells us the flesh produces both passions or moods and desires.
Both of these words are morally neutral terms. One dictionary refers to these as colorless terms. A couple of synonyms for mood are “disposition or propensity,” M-M. What do you have a propensity to feel? We can have good moods, bad moods, cheerful moods and sad moods.
The word desire is different, it means a strong urge. It is a more powerful feeling than a mood or passion. We can have desires to do things, possess things and even desires to feel things.
A The flesh attacks us with sinful moods and desires.
There are lots of verses that talk about the desires of the flesh.
For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death.
The word “passion” in the verse is the word desire. The NIV translators weren’t consistent in drawing a distinction between moods and desires, which are different Greek terms. In this verse Paul tells us that desires of the flesh work in us so that we bear fruit for death. That’s no a good thing. Peter describes the struggle we have with the desires of the flesh well.
11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.
The struggle we have with the desires of the flesh are like a war. It’s a battle. It seems that we are continually fighting the flesh. If you feel that way, you’re normal.
Paul gives us a detailed description of the attacking desires of the flesh. Before we look at them I want to remind you what we learned last week.
It is not sin to experience a sinful mood and desire. It is what we do when we experience them that is sin or not. Sin requires choice and intentionality.
We learned this in James 1 with the steps to sin.
e.g. Let’s say you are walking down the street and look into the window of someone’s house and see porn on their TV. Did you just sin? No. It’s what you do next that determines if you sin. That image is like an attacking desire. You have a choice to make it your own or turn away from it. We aren’t sinning when we have an evil desire. We just don’t want to give into it. That’s so important it’s the first thing Paul tells us in this section.
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Do not gratify. The word gratify is the verb τελέω “bring to an end,” “finish,” “complete”; and so “carry out,” “perform,” “accomplish”).
That may seem easier to say than to do. We’ll get to how to walk by the Spirit after we see what Paul says about the desires of the flesh. He says,
B The flesh’s sinful desires are obvious.
We read this in verses 19-21.
19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Even if you don’t have this list you know when you experience an evil desire. Unfortunately the words in these verses are easy to understand but not so easy to define. The paraphrase The Message does a great job of putting these terms into common vernacular.
19 It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; 20 trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; 21 the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.
How many of you find this paraphrase helpful in understanding what Paul is talking about? (Raise hand) I do.
Each time one of these feelings comes into your consciousness it is an attack from the flesh. Perhaps the biggest problem we have is that we are so used to having these desires that we think we don’t have a choice. We accept them, follow them and end up in sin. But we don’t have to do that. We can stop the process but we can’t do it on our own. We need help and fortunately we have it from the Holy Spirit.
2 The Spirit produces desires.
Here’s how Paul puts it.
For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
This verse says that
A The Spirit produces desires that oppose the flesh.
That is cool! We have help. Do you realize you have help? I know you know this, but do you really know it? Do you know it so well you can access this help to defeat the desires of the flesh? One reason we can defeat the flesh with these desires is that
B The Spirit’s desires are godly.
We see this in verses 22-23.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
We’ve all heard this verse many times, many of us have it memorized. Let’s look at it in a fresh way. Here’s how The Message paraphrase puts these verses.
22 But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, 23 not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way.
I like that.
So how do we use these when we are in a battle with the flesh?
3 We defeat the flesh by choosing Spirit’s desires.
Galatians 5:16 puts it this way.
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
To walk by the Spirit means to order our life around the principles of the Spirit. We can’t do this unless we know and believe we are free from the power of the flesh over us.
We read this verse a moment ago.
24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
A We choose to crucify the flesh.
This seems like an odd thing to do. It isn’t something we do in our daily life. “Hey Ward what’s new? Oh, not much, I’ve just be crucifying the flesh. Yeah, sounds good.”
We crucify when we live in our identity as a Christian. We act like one who is identifying with Jesus in His death, burial and resurrection. Here’s how Paul puts it in Romans 6.
The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
Let me give you an example of how this works. The principle is one that we have all followed at some point in our lives.
Have you ever changed jobs? Most of us have. When you left your job did you have anything on your “To do List”? Probably. I know I have. What would you do if your previous boss called you up after you left and said, “Hey you have work you didn’t finish here. You have to come back and finish it.”? I’m not talking about calling you with questions. I’m talking about harassing you, demanding you keep doing work for him. You’d say, sorry, I don’t work there anymore. Even if the boss called you every day you would say the same thing.
The flesh is our old boss. The flesh harasses us continually. But we don’t work for it any more. You can say “No” to the flesh. You have died to it.
But that’s just the first part. You have to do one more thing. You have to accept the good desires of our new boss, the Spirit. We do this when
B We choose to order our life with the Spirit’s desires.
In this passage Paul uses four different terms to describe this new kind of life.
We walk by the Spirit v 16 a
We are led by the Spirit v 18
We live by the Spirit v 25 a
We keep step with the Spirit v 25 b
Let’s walk through a couple of situations to show how this can work.
Let’s say you’re at work and you get a harsh email that’s very critical of you. The flesh kicks in! It has lots of different options! First you’re attacked with anger. How dare this person criticize you. You’re the hardest worker in the office. but it doesn’t stop there. It floods your mind with the desire to strike out, attack the person. Get even.
Are you going to go down that path? Most of us have at some point but you don’t have to do that.
Instead, when those evil desires hit you need to stop. You need to think about what you’re thinking. Think about that. In fact, right now, think about what you’re thinking. Are you thinking about what I’m saying? Did my illustration lead you to think about a real situation you’ve had at work and what happened to you and what you did? That’s good. We need to learn to do that every time we’re attacked with an evil desire.
You stop and think, “Hmm, I’m starting to get angry and it’s not godly anger. This is an evil desire from the flesh. I don’t have to follow the flesh.”
So far so good. But now we have to tap into the Spirit’s power. We think and pray, “Father, I know I’m dead to the flesh and alive to You. Instead of being angry I need to have self-control and gentleness. Help me to respond to this person gently. Help me to see this person as You do and treat this person with respect.”
You continue to pray, talk with the Father and order your life, your thoughts, your action, your response, your perspective by using the desires of the Spirit. You choose gentleness then you think, “Okay, Spirit of God, what is a gentle way to respond?”
This works. It works if you stop the desire immediately. It’s harder if you let the desire become a temptation but you can still stop it then.
You have to re-learn how to react when the flesh attacks. Remember that in verses 19-21 we have a list of a lot of the ways the flesh attacks. There is a corresponding godly desire from the Spirit that will defeat the flesh.
4 Summary
First, acknowledge you’re being attacked desire.
Second, assert that you’re free from it’s power.
Third, appropriate the power of the Spirit.