09 June 2024
We don't hate the flesh; we use it. We just don't let it rule.
One of the biggest themes in Jesus' teaching was divine priorities. What really mattered to God? It was the question everyone would have been asking had He been a visible suzerain on the earth. His subjects would have been studying His actions and decisions, comparing notes and trying to come up with some kind of accounting for His ways and what He felt was important. That was the path of peace with any ruler.
This is precisely what God expected of Israel, and it was assumed in the whole business of revelation at Mount Sinai. It was the custom of everyone in that part of the world and not too much to ask.
The bulk of revelation can be characterized as the care and feeding of the flesh without giving it too much freedom. The flesh, like any other part of the natural world, really needed guidance and restraint for its own good. Indeed, of all creatures in this world, mankind was the most at risk due to a lack of good instinct compared to all the things God demanded.
Indeed, they were the only creatures fallen from their natural state. The rest of creation is not fallen, only humans. That naturally means that humans are alienated from their own self-knowledge. So, they require a lot of guidance from the Creator. We are beings who don't belong here, and don't belong to these fallen mortal bodies. But we are stuck with them.
We must use them in a way that meets our Lord's priorities. It's a job that's getting harder by the day. We are a very long way from Israel camping around Mount Sinai, when everyone had the same basic expectations. Rascally as they may have been, at least they all approached the questions of life the same way.
Today we live among people who are inherently hostile to all of those basic assumptions. Not only are they unsympathetic for the most part, they also tend to think alike in the this one demand that we do things their way. It's a way that is very, very far from what God revealed. Indeed, most of the time their ways are completely backwards of what God said is in our best interest. These folks around us insist on using human means to discern how to live, and that's the biggest flaw.
There's a bunch of things we simply must not let the flesh have, against a bunch of things we must embrace. In between those poles are a host of things that require caution. We give the flesh what it demands, but within certain limits.
Worse, my flesh wants me to believe that it is the real me. Yours does, too. This is easily the biggest lie of all.
Don't let go of your cross. Don't set it down for even a second, because you'll find yourself wandered off, struggling to recall where you left it.
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