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| "Followme" by Brent Nelson |
The “flesh” is one of those words that the New Testament uses (this is especially true of the Apostle Paul) that needs some explanation. The Old Covenant sign of circumcision was in reality a cutting away of a portion of a male child’s flesh. The Lord had given this sign to Abraham. It was the sign of the special relationship or covenant that the descendants of Abraham had with Jehovah. It marked them as his special covenant people. Yet it in itself was never intended to become the source of their confidence of acceptability with God. It was to be a reminder of the fact that as God’s chosen people they were to live out this relationship with the appropriate heart-response. Moses reminded them of this in Deuteronomy 10:15-16. 15 “The LORD delighted only in your fathers, to love them; and He chose their descendants after them, you above all peoples, as it is this day. Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer.”
God’s election of Israel was not due to anything within them. The Lord’s delight in them was for the sake of loving them. Such love called for a response. They were to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts and be stiff-necked no longer. Later in Deuteronomy 30:6 Moses says that the Lord will circumcise their hearts so that they will love the Lord their God with all their heart and soul that they might live (see also Jeremiah 4:4). What happened over the course of time is that many of Abraham’s descendants began to depend upon their circumcision (and hence their ancestry and the very fact that God had given them the Law of Moses) as a mark of superiority to others and acceptance with God. They in essence began to place confidence in the flesh i.e. in their circumcision. Rather than see how far their hearts really were from what circumcision meant and cry out to God for a greater kind of circumcision that only God could give, they began to pride themselves on what they had and did. The phrase “the flesh” in Paul’s writings became a way of describing human prowess and strength set over against God’s prowess and strength, which sinful and fallen people truly needed. This prowess and strength of God is His grace given to sinful, weak, proud and self-centered people through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Since this wrong understanding of circumcision promoted human pride it reflected a sinful and twisted self-focus. So Paul uses the idea of the flesh to underscore our self-centeredness over against what we should be and that is God-centered. The flesh not only was to be seen in what we wrongly placed our confidence but also in what we wrongly desired and wanted. So the New Testament speaks of the desires or lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:6; 2 Peter 2:10; 1 John 2:16). The flesh therefore describes all human pride and passion that is self-focused and hence cut off from where our proper focus is to be and that is in God. This is where we find ourselves. We are dependent upon, in pursuit of, holding to and coddling the flesh. This is first and foremost offensive to God. He sets Himself in all his holiness and glory against our self-centeredness. This is an offense to His glory. He alone is worthy of such a focus from us his creatures. Secondly, our love affair with self – the flesh - brings only death. The greatest judgment in this life that we can experience is when God allows the flesh to work for us. It is a severe judgment when He allows our broken cisterns to leak slowly rather than rapidly (see Jeremiah 2:12-13). It is a terrible but just judgment when he gives us over to what our flesh wants. Yet to remain self-focused will bring one to eternal loss before the judgment seat of Christ. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “that whoever seeks to save his life will lose it. For what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and is himself lost?” (See Matthew 16:20-28; Mark 8:30-9:1 and Luke 9:21-27)
Paul tells us here that there was a time in his life that he too had confidence in the flesh. He saw his race, family, social status, attainment and accomplishment as what made him find approval in the eyes of others and what he thought also secured him God’s approval. These things were not in themselves bad or necessarily wrong. Rather it was how Paul viewed them in his heart and mind that was wrong for it promoted his pride and fostered his self-centeredness. It offended God (although he thought just the opposite). Yet Paul’s heart needed to be circumcised if his love affair with the flesh was to end. It was the esteem and value Paul placed on the flesh that had to change. He saw these issues as gain for his ego and he was not going to give them up for something he saw to be of less or even equal value.
The truth that we need grace to see is that God is the only reality that is inherently valuable. Due to our intrinsic self-centeredness we are blind to this glorious truth. We fail to see that God as the fountain of living waters is infinitely more precious than any number of our broken cisterns. We are fools devoted to our feeble self-centered and autonomous focus! The Gospel’s message is that God graciously offers Himself to undeserving broken cistern drinkers in the Person of His Son the Lord Jesus Christ. What is even more astounding is that for God to do this and remain true to His holiness and glory His Son took upon himself human flesh to die in the place of sinners fulfilling God’s law that all who sin must die. How wonderfully valuable and rich is God’s offer to us in Christ. Yet to embrace this offer we must see it to be infinitely more valuable than our self-centered treasures. We must see that all that we think is gain apart from Christ is really worthless. Our attachment, dependence upon, desire for this earthly existence must be seen as utterly worthless. Yet the only way this will happen is if we begin to see that knowing Christ far exceeds all the fleshly trinkets, baubles, badges and tin cups that we have amassed and secured in the treasure chest of our hearts.
In order to gain Christ you must repudiate the flesh. This is not hard to do if you see that knowing Christ is gain and that holding on to the flesh and its allies is in fact worthless refuse or dung. To be justified before God a person must come to see that all that he has depended upon and desired that reinforced his self-centeredness has to be considered loss for the sake of gaining and knowing Christ. Saving faith sees the superior and inherent worth of having a relationship with Jesus Christ. Yet such faith continues to see this and continues to hold Christ as valuable and precious in contrast to all things that would tempt us to embrace them and once again secure a sinful self-focus and preoccupation. As followers of Jesus Christ we need to continue to esteem the wonderful reality of our knowing Him so that we might continue to honor Him and in so doing overcome the pull and tug of the flesh. The Apostle John describes this self-centered focus as our twisted love affair with this world and life that consists of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and pride in what earthly stuff we possess. May we repudiate all of this to gain all of Christ!
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