by Jacob Ninan
When Jesus was on earth, one of His most common confrontations was with the Pharisees. They had a name before people for their supposed godliness because they were extremely careful about how they appeared before people. But what Jesus had against them was that they did not pay attention to what was going on inside their minds. Once when the Pharisees criticised His disciples for not taking care to wash themselves religiously before taking meals, Jesus replied, "Rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: 'THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME'" (Mk.7:6).
What Jesus wants
God is holy through and through, and Jesus wants us to become like that. Jesus pointed out to the people in His Sermon on the Mount that the sin of murder originated in the heart where hatred was being nurtured, and that adultery had already taken place when someone looked at a woman with desire. As in those days, even now, many Christians are comforting themselves thinking that they are not committing murder or adultery while hatred and lust are going on in their minds. They imagine that going to church, reading the Bible and praying are marks of their godliness, while ungodly things are going on inside which nobody else notices! Jesus can even now turn to such people saying, "These people think they are godly because of external, religious practices - their hearts are far away from Me!"Spirituality is in our heart. That is something we need to focus on when we evaluate our own spirituality. On one occasion, Jesus clarified that it was not what we ate or drank that made us defiled but what we allowed our minds to be filled with and what proceeded from there (Mk.7:20-23). The Old Testament was given to the people of Israel who had just been brought out of Egypt where they hardly knew God but were more familiar with the gods of Egypt. In other words, the standard of the Old Testament was lower than what God really wanted, because they could not have reached any higher degree at their level. They were only required to take care of their external behaviour mostly. But the new covenant which Jesus came with raised the standard to the level of the heart from where the outward behaviour emerged.
Our accountability to God
God knows everything about us and nothing is hidden from Him. He knows even the thoughts and intentions of our heart which people around us cannot see (Heb.4:12,13). It is good for us to realise that it is to this God that we will have to give an account one day. At that time there would be no way by which we can justify or excuse ourselves. Knowing this, what we ought to do is to live in such a way that we pay careful attention to what all is going on in our heart and mind and not to imagine that God will look only at our external behaviour.Temptation and sin
James points out the mechanism of temptation and sin (Jas.1:14-16). Temptation is not a sin in itself, because Jesus Himself was tempted but did not sin, but it is an invitation to sin. We get tempted when we are being offered some pleasure, gain or advantage if only we will disobey God and sin. We are tempted in this way because we were born in sin and we have sinful desires inside us as a result. These are 'lusts' or strong desires that draw us beyond our normal, legitimate desires, and are also used by Satan or the world to entice us. For example, we have a desire to make money because we need it to live on this earth, but when we allow a love for money to come in in such a way that it becomes a driving force in our life, it becomes a lust. Sex is pure and natural within a marriage, but lust for sexual pleasure may draw us towards people outside our marriage.When we are tempted, there are two options available to us. If we allow ourselves to yield to the temptation, we sin, and then we will have to bear the consequences. But the other option we have is to resist the temptation or to say no to it, in order to be obedient to God. Then we will have victory over that temptation.
The flesh and the old self
Paul uses the word 'flesh' (Gk. sarx) many times to refer to the place from which sinful desires or lusts come (Gal.5:24). This is different from the Greek word (soma) used for the body. What we see in this verse is that the flesh should be crucified and it is something 'we' have to do. In other words, this is not something God will do for us. We want to keep it crucified so that it will not be able to overcome us with its desires.But there also is another entity we need to reckon with. Before we were born again, we had an old self (old man), which God has now crucified along with Christ on the cross (Rom.6:6). Now God has given us a new self (new man). This is the new heart and the new spirit which God gave us when we repented from our sins and placed our trust in Jesus as our Saviour who took the punishment for our sins when He died on the cross (Ezek.36:26). The old self was the sinful mind that agreed easily with the temptations. But this new self is from God and is opposed to sin and is on our side when we are tempted to sin. This is how God has empowered us to resist sin and overcome.
The way to victory
God has taken away the inclination of the mind that agreed with the pleasures of sin and has now given us a new mind like that of God who hates sin. As a result, when we face temptations now, our new self prompts us to overcome them and keep the flesh crucified. The Holy Spirit helps us now to take up our cross and deny our lusts when we are tempted, so that we can follow Jesus (Lk.9:23).Victory is what we experience, temptation by temptation, when we overcome the lusts of our flesh. This is an ongoing process that the Bible calls sanctification. The more we overcome, the easier it becomes to overcome. Also, the more repeatedly we overcome, we become more and more like Jesus in our character. But if we allow ourselves to become careless, we can fall. That is why Jesus tells us to watch and pray continually, because sometimes we may underestimate the power of our flesh (Matt.26:41).
As we can see, the battle is in our mind. It is about victory we can get there when we get tempted. We always have two options, to give in to the temptation and enjoy the pleasure that follows, or to resist the temptation and to enjoy spiritual victory. We must learn to avoid ignoring this battle and only making sure that we don't actually show any wrong behaviour outside. We must also avoid trying to live inside a doctrinal bubble saying that our old man and our flesh are crucified, and ignoring the reality of temptation and failure in our thoughts and attitudes.
Another point we should recognise is that crucifixion produces a slow death, and that there is a possibility to take down someone from the cross before he is dead. That is to say, after we have placed our flesh on the cross, if we yield to its appeals, that would be like taking it down from the cross and feeding it. In that way, we will be only delaying its death. On the other hand, if we happen to fail now and then against our wishes, it shows us that we need to take our hatred for sin more seriously and cry out to God for help.
"So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore sin is not to reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and your body's parts as instruments of righteousness for God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace" (Rom.6:11-14). 'Dead to sin' means that our new self hates sin and does not want to sin. Therefore, we are not to allow the sinful lusts in the flesh to reign in our life. We must stop offering our bodies as instruments of sin, and instead, start giving our body as instruments of righteousness. Then it is that sin will stop having dominion over us.
It is all about what we do with these sinful lusts in our mind. Again, it is not merely about controlling our external behaviour but about gaining victory in our mind.