Are healthy relationships developed with selfish, self-centered people? So can we have Godly relationships when we live in our flesh? The answer is obvious, NO. We must change. But how?
One psychological test asks what animal would you like to be? Or what animal do you admire the most? After identifying with that animal the question is asked, “What traits do you admire the most?” This indicates either what you want to be, or what you already are. Here are the animals that I see most humans acting like. There is the pig that loves to roll around in the mud, wallow or “wallor” as we call it down south. Nothing suits this animal better than to become filthy. The thicker the mud and the muck the better the pig likes it. Or how about the catfish? It is a bottom dwelling fish. Again it enjoys the mud as well. It finds its food at the bottom of the lake. Let’s just say it isn’t the healthiest of foods. Neither of these animals wants life to be any better. They are satisfied with their “good life”. Humans are like that because we love to live fleshly lives. Lives that stay in the mud. Lives that wallor deeper and deeper into sin. If it feels good, then do it! You probably can see faces of people that you know as I am talking right now. I challenge you to first see your own. Yes, you are one of those animals, and so am I.
However, God has called and challenged us to become an eagle! To soar to mighty heights! When a storm approaches, an eagle uses the wind currents to rise even higher. As an eagle soars it’s vision improves. So how does a pig or a catfish turn into an eagle? If you will remember, last week we discovered the first key to Godly relationships. Obviously to have a Godly relationship you must start with God! This manifests itself by obedience to Christ! Therefore the first key is obedience. The second key is overcoming our flesh. How does a pig or a catfish become an eagle? They can’t! We must discover that we cannot change ourselves! However, “All things are possible with God.” Tell your neighbor, “all things!” “Christ, who has begun a good work in you will complete it!” Tell your neighbor, “Christ will complete me.” To become an eagle is a grace thing. We must depend on God to overcoming our flesh. We cannot do it, however, “we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.” Let’s discover how Christ has EMPOWERED us to overcome our flesh and live in His Spirit!
To overcome our flesh we must have a:
I. Set our minds on Christ. (vs. 1-2) 1If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.
The first step of this process is identifying with Christ. You cannot skip the first step. You must know Christ as your Savior. The words, “If you were raised” is asking a question that for all of us who can hear this could answer, “I am still alive.” Yes but to those who have been saved and baptized, this is what baptism symbolizes! Do you remember the saying with baptism, “Buried with Christ, risen…..”?????? If you have accepted Christ as your Savior, then you have died to self. You have identified yourself with Christ. That means that God sees Christ, His Son, in you.
This enables you to overcome your flesh by setting your mind on Christ. It all starts with your mind. How you think. Where you place your thoughts! That is why we need to filter what we allow to enter into our minds: Music, TV, language, gossip, lust, etc. Instead we should fill it with the word of God. In doing this we are not conformed to the world but are transformed by the “renewing of our minds”.
That is why we are commanded to “seek those things which are above… set your mind on things above, not on earth.” We are so easily deceived. When we focus on earthly things, we believe what we see. We must come to the realization that we are blind, and what we see is an apparition. What I mean by that is that what we see is real, but not necessarily true. Have you seen movies of people lost in a desert? What happens? They become thirsty, so thirsty that they imagine an Oasis. The Oasis is real to them, however, because of their circumstances they have bought a lie. Folks, that is your neighbor, or maybe you. People become so spiritual thirsty, that all Satan has to do is offer an appearance of something and we buy into it!
Satan is divisive. He wants to divide, to split, confuse. 33For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. (1Cor. 14:33) God on the other hand wants unity, of one-mind and spirit. 1I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, 2with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, 3endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. (Eph. 4:1-6) When we are one with God we have His peace! Our problem is we are easily divided which makes us easily distracted. We need focus, concentration. Spiritual Ritalin or Concerta would help the majority of us. And God, who provides all, provide just that. 3For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 6who gave Himself a ransom for all, (1 Tim. 2:3-4) The answer is Jesus! We must know Him as Savior, and then we must set our heart and mind on Him and Him alone. So after being saved, the next step to overcoming the flesh is how you think. We must choose to believe God, not what we see, hear, or feel, and other people’s version of reality. When we rebuke all of that, and say in our hearts that we believe God. He does something! Something only He can do! For He can only respond to faith. To overcome the flesh we must set our minds on Him. We also need the….
II. Surety of Christ. 3For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
At this point, others around us are not necessarily seeing what God is doing from the inside out. However, you are well aware of it. Now you are becoming confident in you salvation. You are discovering the surety of Christ. You are experiencing His power personally in your life. And now you realize that you truly have died. Your life truly is hidden with Christ. And ultimately you will appear with Him in glory! Your thoughts are now impacting your beliefs. God is in the process of changing you. He is sanctifying you, setting you apart. He is cleansing you as you have never been cleansed before! God is working in you from the inside out!
At this very point, your confidence in Christ grows deeper and deeper. It is a daily growth. Allow God to take all the time He needs here. This is a vital stage of development. This is the foundation on which you will stand when tribulation occurs.
How will you endure tribulation? Let me tell you what skills you have developed by now. You have learned not to trust your sight, but to trust and have faith in God! Officially you have died. This means that you have become like Christ, and like Paul in Gal. 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” What a powerful promise to know that you no longer live, but Christ lives in you. The life which you now live in the flesh is an act of faith toward the One who died for you! What victory, yet no one else really knows about it. Until…
III. Sophistication of Christ. 5Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, 7in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. 8But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him,
To overcome the flesh we need to set our minds on Christ, this gives us the surety of Christ. And now we experience the sophistication of Christ. We have experienced His internal victory. Now God is calling us to experience His external Victory! God has now called us to put to death, to mortify our members. You can take that literal! God wants us to stop, kill the evil that is in us. Turn to Romans 8:5-14. 5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. 10And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
12Therefore, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
This is a process that starts with your mind, and ends in action. The change manifests itself now in how you live. It started with how you thought. Your thoughts became you beliefs. Your beliefs have now filtered down into your actions!
You have heard the story about the man walking over Niagara Falls on a high wire. In front of a huge crowd he walked across the thin wire pushing a wheel barrel. When he got to the other side, he asked, “Do you believe that I can walk back?” Of course the crowd jeered, “Yes.” Then he asked for volunteers to get into the wheel barrel. Of course there were no takers.
It’s easy to know how to do something. At some point it is easy to say that we believe. It is easy to become satisfied with the knowledge of how to do something and yet never implement the skills into our lives. One major problem with Christians today is that they have the head knowledge, but not the heart knowledge! Too many of us never do what we have been taught, and have taught! This is where the rubber meets the road. It is time to get into Christ’s wheel barrel. This is the difficult part. Yet Christ has promised us that He will do it through us. We need only to be faithful!
The sophistication of Christ is simply this; to live as He lived. We long to live like a King. We love to be told about the promises of heaven! To be as Christ starts with the here and now. Jesus walked His talk! He loved the unlovable! He extended His hand of mercy to the merciless! How was He able to do such things? He lived in the power of the spirit of God! He calls us to do no less. If we want to be resurrected with Christ, shouldn’t we also want to be like Jesus now? We should live as He lived!
To overcome our flesh we need to; set our minds on Christ, have the surety of Christ, and the sophistication of Christ. Then we will experience the…
IV. The sovereignty of Christ. 11where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
When Christ overcomes our flesh, we can now impact our society, our community. We live unbiased, unprejudiced lives. We see everyone as God sees them. We see everything as God sees it. And we choose to live in love, God’s love. Let me explain with a story I heard on the radio. There was a lady, I can’t remember her name, but she speaks all over the U.S. She and another highly known Christian were called to debate Christianity against two other women who were atheists. The day of the debate came. When she arrived at the set, her partner had called and canceled. So she planned to take on the two by herself. Which as she acknowledged, was a task. She later discovered that the opponents had grown from two to five. So now it was five against one!
She said that she went back to her dressing room and started praying, “God, I can’t do this. There is no way. I will fail!” She said that God gave her time to finish and then said, “Just trust Me.” So she put her faith in the Faithful, and took the challenge. She noticed that every time that they spoke the crowd was quiet, but after she would speak the crowd would applaud. Due to the lights she couldn’t see who was out there, and after a while she became acutely aware of what was happening and it intrigued her. After the show, no one went to the highly known five, but several came to her. She finally asked who they were. They said, “When we heard that you were coming, and what you were doing, we packed this place with a bunch of our youth groups from different surrounding churches! God knows what we don’t! He has a plan. Let’s trust in His sovereignty!
Where there is NEITHER Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
Are you hungry for the sovereignty of Christ? Are you thirsty, but can’t find anything to quench your thirst? Are you ready to make changes, to quit living in the flesh and to live in the spirit? Have you become tired of giving into what you know is wrong? Folks, we can’t overcome our own flesh. That is why drug addicts go back to drugs. That is why liars still tell lies. That is why gossipers still gossip. That is why abusers still abuse. It’s fleshly. You cannot change yourself, BUT GOD CAN CHANGE YOU! And He will, if you will let Him.
