10 May 2023
This is not some Platonic Gnostic heresy. Just because we recognize that our fleshly natures are not our real selves, it does not absolve us from our Covenant duties. Once you kneel before the Cross, you are obliged to compel your flesh to obey the Covenant.
Nor is this legalism; this is the supremacy of the heart over the head.
The challenge you face for the rest of your fleshly existence is distinguishing between the impulses of the flesh and the imperatives of your convictions. It is highly unlikely you'll jump into this fully mature. You are expected to fail a good bit on the way to learning how it works. But at some point, you should start to become more consistent.
The whole point is God's glory. We have no other reason to live. You must be a good steward of the human life your God has granted you. So, obviously you need to obey His will, and that will has been recorded in the Covenant teachings. You should develop a strong sense of what the Covenant requires. One of the Radix Fidem projects currently ongoing is a review of the New Testament with an assumption of strong continuity between the Old and New Covenants. Once the chronology is laid out, there will be a survey of what constitutes the code portion of the Covenant of Christ.
This study is serialized on our forum and at Radix Fidem blog every Saturday afternoon.
For example, one of the major issues in Paul's letters was how the Corinthian church ignored Leviticus 18, whereas Paul clearly believes it is still binding on Christians. He condemns the Corinthian church member who married his stepmother (presumably Dad's trophy babe), although we don't know if Dad died or simply divorced this woman. The Covenant of Moses made it a point that two men in the same extended-family household cannot have sex with the same woman. In the quaint language of the Hebrew Old Testament ("uncover their nakedness"), it's tantamount to the men having sex with each other.
The penalty is exiling them from the covenant community. That's what Paul told the Corinthians to do if the man did not divorce this woman.
Obviously Paul's advice to Timothy to examine the Bible at the that time (the Old Testament) to discern ("rightly dividing") what parts apply to Christians and what parts do not (2 Timothy 2:15). A significant part of what Paul and the other Apostles advocate in their letters is right out of the Old Testament, which is mostly what Jesus taught. Jesus pointed out how to get to the heart of the matter when wading through Moses.
So the other half of learning that your fleshly nature is not your real self is to stop coddling that flesh. Let me assure you that the flesh knows -- it's wired for it -- how to be subject to the heart of conviction; it just doesn't want to obey. And human flesh is like any other living creature, in that it is subject to conditioning. If your flesh can adapt to fitness training, it can also adapt to moral training. Your brain can get used to how the heart has its own logic. It knows how to bow the knee to the Holy Spirit, but it must be compelled by your will to do so.
You could complain that obeying the code is just "the law", but I counter that Jesus is the Living Law of God. Obey Him.
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