For what the law could not, in that it was weak through flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of the sinful flesh, and for sin, condemn sin in the flesh. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:3-4.
The divine sentence and condemnation of the flesh.
Note: not until we see and start to put the flesh where it belongs, we can never have power for victory and liberty promised and given by Christ against it. The flesh and its works (sin) should never be justified in opposition to the divine verdict of judgment against it – sin is condemned, not condole in the flesh, lest by the folly of sin, we should nullify the effect of the cross of Christ who died, so that our old man, – the flesh, should also be crucified with him, that the body of sin – the flesh, might be destroyed, that henceforth, we should not serve sin again. Romans 6:6.
There are two major particular things the enemy always draws man’s attention and appeal into before he gains access to lay any claim over their soul, namely, the flesh and the world. As for the flesh, the bible says it fleshly lusts wages war against your soul to destroys you in hell. 1 Peter 2:11. Note: worldliness and carnality in any believer’s life is the rebellious act to reverse the verdict of God against the flesh and the world in the church today, even as the enemy once used the same tactic to seduce the first parents in the garden: likewise are the false preachers and teachers are propagating error, teaching to comply to the demands of the corrupt nature (2 Peter 2:18-20), but the true ministers of Christ put men upon self-denial, and the mortifying of those lusts that others gratify and pleases – make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof. Romans 13:14.
On the other hand, you should see the flesh as the number one enemy that goes with you wherever you go. And above all, you should be in a readiness to your responsibility in the constant application of the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus over the law of sin and death which gives power to the flesh to lord it over you as a master over his servant (John 8:34), that you might be able to bring the flesh under subjection (1 Cor.9:27), lest that which you ought to overcome should overcome and destroys you – to be carnally minded and lifestyle is death – second death in hell. Romans 8:6-10.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:40-43), thus far is the damage done by the Devil to weaken and corrupt the flesh to fight against you since the time of Adam’s fall. Romans 7:19. This is the reason why you are helpless in the fight against the flesh, against sin and Satan than to yield yourself to do the what is against your conscience, that which you are unwilling to do until Christ – the new man – the inner man is come into your life to empower you to fight back, and to have your freedom back from the flesh, and against Satan who has weakened and corrupted it.
This is the reason why God has given you a new spiritual life –being born again through the incorruptible seed of his word (1 Peter 1:23) so as to empower you to live an incorruptible life in the corruptible body of sin through his divine power, that you might be partaker of the divine nature (life of purity and holiness without sin – blessed are the undefiled in the way…they also do no iniquity: they walk in his ways. Psalms 119: 1-3), having escaped the corruption that is in the world thorough lusts. 2 Peter 1:3-4.
The bible says that you must have the same determination like Jesus once had on earth, giving it whatever it takes to avoid sin in the flesh, which Christ did. 1 Peter 4:1. You must suffer the flesh to deny its influences and control over you, lest you be a servant of sin, or a child of the devil (1 John 3:8): you must overcome it by not living the rest of your time on earth to the lusts of men, but for the will of God. 1 Peter 4:2.
But if you don’t dominate the flesh, sin will dominate you: for sin, says the scripture, shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. Romans 6:14. The flesh profits nothing than its painful harvest of corruption- eternal loss and death for sowing or walking in the flesh, reproducing and manifesting its works, – but they that do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:16-21.
God’s provision and promise of cleansing and forgiveness of sin whenever we sin, and if we confess our sins (1 John 1:9), is to make room and allowances for us to know how to overcome what makes us to fall – the sin in the flesh. Revelation 2:5. The promise was not given to make us like a washed pig, going back and rolls in the mud (2 Peter 2:22), neither to see any sin as unconquerable, for we are called to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present evil world. Titus 2:12.
The scripture text which says, where sin increases, grace did much more increases is the attestation to God’s patience (Romans 5:20), while he’s waiting for you to start cleansing yourselves from all the filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. 2 Corinthians 7:1.
I gave her space of time to repent (Revelation 2:21), meaning, get serious with your striving, wrestling and subduing the flesh and the sin in it, for in your fight against sin, you have not yet had to stand against it with your blood. Hebrews 12:4. The devil works by, or make his appeal to the flesh, trying to get to us through the flesh: this is the reason you should see yourself crucified with Christ, and to pronounce personal condemnation on the works of the flesh just as God condemned sin in the flesh by sending Jesus Christ to die, so that you should no longer continue to live like the unredeemed men of this world, who have their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life – holiness of God, through the darkness that is in them, because of the blindness of their minds. Ephesians 4:18.
Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? This was the Apostle fear and experience before his new birth in Christ Jesus, the agony of a religious man who is serving the law of God with his mind, but with the flesh, the law of sin. Romans7:24 -25. But the new birth put a new demand on you with power or divine ability, not only to be spiritually minded, but to sanctify and glorify God in your body (flesh) and spirit which are God’s (1 Corinthians 6:20): so that, not only should you serve God’s law in the mind, but also with your body – the flesh, which is now the temple of God: now, you are now washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Cor. 6:9-11.
If we say we have no sin (to hide our sin like Adam. Job 31:33) we deceive ourselves. The text doesn’t mean that we should go on sinning because we can’t overcome the sin in the flesh, or we are to sin. 1 John 1:8.
The text from 2 John 1 b: and if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous…implies that not everyone in the kingdom is walking in the darkness or in the flesh to sin, – all have not failed to mortify the deeds of the flesh through the indwelling spirit of God (Rom.8:13), but many are failing by going through the wide gate and the broad way to their illusory heaven (Matthew 7:13), – many have not put aside or altogether neglected their responsibility to crucify the flesh with its affection and lusts in Christ Jesus (Galatians 5:24), – not all the children of God are making themselves like dogs going back over and over again to its vomit, – not all, but many are laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works (Heb.6.1 b), while some are moving and growing daily into conformity unto Christ death, dying daily to the flesh. Philippians.3:10 d.
Failure to live up to your spiritual expectation and responsibility as a debtor, not to continue to live after the flesh (Rom 8:12), will put you in the class or group of the carnal workers of iniquity because you are falling in bringing into captivity every thoughts in you into the obedience of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5. If you can believe God for grace to pardon, why won’t you believe him for grace to serve him acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire? Hebrews 12:29. The latter grace will help you to make heaven, while the former will presents you as one of those who are despising the spirit of grace. To despise the spirit of grace is to abuse the use of grace which the disobedient children in the kingdom sports themselves with even as fools play with sin – fools plays with sin. Proverbs 14:9.
If you can’t see the flesh as the enemy, how can you prepare to fight, subdue and overcome it? How can you prioritize your walk and life in the spirit above your walk and life in the flesh? How will you see yourself as God sees you that you are no more in the flesh, but in the spirit, because the Spirit of God now lives in you (Romans 8:9), that your life shall be judged according to men in the flesh (what you do with your body and in the body), but live according to God in the spirit? 1 Peter 4:6.
How can you overcome the world and Satan if you cannot overcome the flesh – your flesh? You cannot resist the devil victoriously, if you have not first subdued the flesh. The subjection of the flesh is the proof of your submission to God which gives you the spiritual legal right and power to effectively resist Satan to obey you: but if his things – works of the flesh are in you while you are trying to resist him, this could provoked greater attacks and oppression – the prince of this world comes, but has found nothing in me. John 14:30.
The flesh profits nothing, but the spirit gives life, but if you are not ready to fight and resist the flesh, how can you start to sow into the spirit, instead of repeatedly sowing into the flesh, in the hope of the future harvest of eternal life of incorruptible body? For, if you keep sowing into the flesh, you will reap corruption – God is not mocked. Galatians 6:7-8.
Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither does corruption inherit incorruption. Whatever the voice of bleating in your flesh, it should not be spared, all iniquity in the flesh must stop its mouth (Psalms 107:42), and there shouldn’t be heard the voice of any bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the cattle from anyone in the kingdom as we seek for total brokenness of the flesh before the Lord. As you die daily to the flesh, you will likewise be receiving the increase of his divine fullness from grace to grace, even from God who has made your body his habitation through the Spirit. John 1:16.
The continuous repetition of the same sin and its confession before God is like forcing him to understand that the sin should be justified and not be condemned in the flesh to reverse his verdict and condemnation against the sin in the flesh. The actions of an ungodly moral behavior will not make us as Christ’s friends, but an enemy of the cross, who glory in their shame, whose god is their belly (the flesh) who mind earthly things…but God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goes on still in his trespasses. Psalms 68:21.
Whosoever conquers his flesh has overcome the devil because he will come, but he will not found anything in you, nothing to use against you so as to tempt you (let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts he any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. James 1:13-15), and nothing to accuse you of before God – for all that is in the world, the lusts of the eyes, the lusts of the flesh, and the pride of life, they are not of God, but of the world (for the devil, the god of this world): the world passes away, and the lusts in it, but he that do the will of God, abides forever. 1 John 2:15-17.
The power, victory and liberty of Christ over the flesh.
The devil sins from the beginning. He was the first sinner. Sin was not in Adam and Eve until the devil persuaded them, and until he prevailed in his argument against the word of God that they should go after the lusts of the eyes, the lusts of the flesh, and the pride of life.
The first parents were baited because they will not walk in the light of the word of God: but if we, as new creatures should walk in the light, we will not stumble: but if we walk not in the light, then we sin and the truth is not in us. If and when we confess our sin, we have chosen to come back and to start afresh to walk in the light, which is the word of God, – as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts (fleshly-sinful and carnal lifestyle) in your ignorance. If we walk in the light of God’s word, there is no sin to be confessed unto because we are born of God, and his seed is in us as we keep yielding ourselves – members of our body as instruments of righteousness and holiness unto eternal life by the power of the Spirit within us through prayer and periodic fasts.
Why should God plant a good seed in us in order to save us by the incorruptible seed of his word (for you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God1 Peter 1:23), if we are expected to keep living corruptible life in the flesh, if we are expected to keep sowing to the flesh, instead of the Spirit, being defeated and unable to escape the corruption that is in the world through the lusts of the flesh and other lusts? Where then should the scripture to give yourselves rather unto godliness be found? 1Timothy: 4:7. Why then is it written that those that were clean (from the filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit), escaped from them that live in error? 2 Peter 2:18.
Godliness is the nature of the new man, and not of the old –the corrupt flesh, the nature we inherited from Adam, for he lost the divine nature in the fall which made that we were born into the world as sons and daughters of wrath, even as others, before our salvation in Christ Jesus.
Why are some, though they are not born of the flesh, or of the will of man, nor of blood, but born of God’s Spirit – born again, should still be thinking that sin will be justified and excused forever in the flesh as long they keep confessing it by laying claim on the cleansing blood over and over again? Is this not to treat the blood as a cheap thing, the blood of God’s covenant which purified them from sin, despising the Spirit of grace? Hebrews 10:29. Having them also read that whosoever forsakes his sin, after confessing them, shall obtain mercy of the Lord? Proverbs 28:13.
Christ not only die for our sins and was raised for our justification, but he was raised back to life to give us dominion power through his resurrection power to quicken (give life to, and empower our mortal body) the weak and corruptible flesh for the will and purposes of God, that though the outer man perishes (flesh losing his power and grip in us), yet, the inward man is renewed day by day.
To awake to righteousness, and sin not, is to have the knowledge and experience of the impact of the risen Christ in the life – physical body of a believer (1 Corinthians 15:34), – and to forsake sin is to overcome the flesh while we live in the flesh, or while we live in the world. Christ overcame the flesh in the days of his flesh, being tempted in all points, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15. We must also subdue and overcome the flesh in Christ Jesus during the time of our sojourning here on earth, for the flesh wages war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11), lest we are overcome and cast away by that we ought to overcome to gain heaven. 1 Corinthians 9:27.
We must persistently go to Christ for power and victory over the flesh like the poor helpless widow will not leave the unjust king in peace until she got justice against her adversary. The flesh is an adversary, the greatest adversary, and we must earnestly plead before Christ, the faithful high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infinities, for grace to subdue and overcome the flesh while we live. Hebrews 4:15-16.
In Christ Jesus, we are made a new creature, why should we not then change the clothes inside our spiritual wardrobe to start putting on the new clothes for the new life? The course of the new life is not the course of the old life – their ways and manners are not the same. The course of Christ, his ways and manners, are not the same with the course of Satan, his ways and manners. To gaze your focus on the course – manners and ways of this world, you are still under the influence of the prince of the power of the air whom you are called to resist, but because your eye is double, you obliged yourself to walk in the flesh, even though you are born again, supposedly living in the Spirit.
You cannot have power, victory and liberty from Christ over the flesh because (a) you will not take his yoke upon you to learn of him, that you might find rest for your soul over and against the lust of the flesh, which is waging war against your soul. The carnal –fleshly mind wrestle with the word of God, how then can he be made free and sanctify in the body, soul and spirit by the same word?: (b) if you are still attached and conformed to the world of which you have being saved from, and called to come away out of it, and be separated, this indicate that you are still rule by the flesh because the flesh is part of the world –is enmity against God. 2 Cor. 6:17: (c) hardened by the deceitfulness of sin that you are not willing to let go – how can you have power and victory over the flesh? Hebrews 3:13.