God Without Religion_ Can It Really Be This Simple_ - Andrew Farley [40]
Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (Gal. 3:3 NASB)
Perfectionist flesh seeks to grow us and improve us. Like the religious flavor of flesh, perfectionist flesh wants to make us look good, not bad.
Although religious or perfectionist flesh may look and feel right, God isn’t asking us to fix or improve ourselves. Instead, we’re to continue just as we started in Jesus, growing with “a growth which is from God” (Col. 2:19 NASB). This is different from the strategies employed by self-improvement flesh. One way leads to pride, stress, and burnout. The other way leads to life and peace (Rom. 8:6). If we find ourselves burned out on church activities and good behavior, we haven’t understood the difference between religious or perfectionist flesh and walking in the freedom of God’s Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17).
Not all of us struggle with self-improvement flavors of flesh. There are other manifestations of fleshly thinking that seek temporal pleasure at a shallow level. The flesh gravitates toward self-focused thoughts, attention-getting strategies, and carnal desires. Here’s a snapshot of some ugly flavors of flesh: immorality, jealousy, outbursts of anger, envying, and disputes or divisions (Gal. 5:19–21).
No matter what the flavor of flesh, its desires are against what God is doing in our life. The flesh hinders us from seeing who we really are in Christ and from doing what we truly please:
For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. (Gal. 5:17 NASB)
The Third Way
So how do we stop the flesh? Thank God we’re not to spend our days examining the flesh, trying to rid ourselves of it. No, the flesh and its way of thinking won’t disappear until heaven. So rather than having an obsession with inspecting the flesh, we’re to have one simple focus:
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. (Gal. 5:16 NASB)
Does this mean we “let go and let God” and “we get out of the way” so that “it’s all of him and none of us”? This might sound right at first. But do you hear what I hear? Those who say this think they’re incompatible with God’s purposes. They must rid themselves of themselves so God can act in their lives. All of God and none of us? What about the truth that we’ve been re-created? As new creations, we’ve been united with Jesus Christ. Are we really supposed to get out of God’s way?
No, we’re supposed to be in the midst of it all. God wants to embrace us, not replace us. After all, if we’re in Christ, he already replaced us at salvation! We are new, righteous, holy saints, entirely compatible with God’s Spirit. He embraces our personalities, our senses of humor, even our hobbies and interests. He expresses his life through these unique aspects of our personhood.
Because of the timeless heart surgery of the cross, God is now shouting from the rooftops, “You are one hundred percent acceptable to me!” When we hold on tightly to the idea that God is right about our new identity, we walk according to truth. When we set our minds on the truth about ourselves and our true desires, we automatically avoid walking by the flesh.
Religion prods the flesh to either try harder with perfectionist flesh or give up and resort to immorality. It’s only when we see our union with Jesus Christ that we understand there is a third way to live. It’s not by trying harder, and it’s not by giving in to immorality. It’s a life motivated by the freedom of grace that releases God’s Spirit to be all we need in every moment.
18
About six months after we moved into our new home in South Bend, Indiana, the phone bill arrived as it usually did. This month, though, we were in for a surprise.
“Nearly a thousand dollars? In calls to a psychic hotline? My wife has lost her mind.” That was my first guess when I saw the phone bill. It turned out Katharine