Extracted from Wild at Heart by John Eldridge
“To
put it bluntly, your flesh is a weasel, a poser, and a selfish pig. And your
flesh is not you. Did you know that? Your flesh is not the real you.
When Paul gives us his famous passage on what it’s like to struggle with sin
(Rom. 7), he tells a story we are all too familiar with:
I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not
to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t
result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better
of me every time. It happens so regularly that its predictable. The moment I
decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s
commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight.
Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
(The message)
Okay,
we’ve all been there many times. But what Paul concludes is just astounding: “I
am not really the one doing it; the sin within me is doing it” (Rom. 7:20 NLT).
Did you notice the distinction he makes? Paul says, “Hey, I know I struggle
with sin. But I also know my sin is not me – this is not my true heart.”
You are not your sin; sin is no longer the truest thing about the man who has come into union
with Jesus. Your heart is good. “I will give you a new heart and put a new
spirit in you…” (Ezek. 36.26). The big lie in the church today is that you are
nothing more than “a sinner saved by grace.” You are a lot more than that. You
are a new creation in Christ. The new testament calls you a saint, a holy one,
a son of God. In the core of your being you are a good man. Yes, there is a
war within us, but it is a civil war. The battle is not between us and God, no;
there is a traitor within who wars against our true heart fighting alongside
the spirit of God in us:
A new power is in operation. The spirit of life in Christ. Like a
strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated
lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death…Anyone, of course, who
has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ,
won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he
dwells…if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into
your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus…When God lives
and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are
delivered from that dead life. (Rom. 8:2-3, 9-11 The message)”
