THE DESIGN OF FLESH
Greetings!

Flesh is designed to misdirect!

We were “were baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3). We “have been united with him like this in his death” (Romans 6:5). The key is His death. Jesus has already died the death and we are united with Him in His death. In every instance, dying to flesh is clearing the way to life — real life, abundant life.

“The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God” (Romans 6:10). Since we are united with Him in His death, we, too, die to Flesh is designed to misdirect. Flesh will work hard to direct your gaze somewhere other than the Cross. Failing that, flesh will attempt to distort your view of the Cross. Make it seem ugly and harsh instead of life-giving and redemptive and tender.

I have something of a hobby, I guess you would call it, of reading books and articles and blogs by people who grew up in strong Christian homes, but as adults rejected their belief in Jesus. Their stories seem to have several common themes, but central to most is the theme of always trying to please a God who could not be pleased. They felt burdened and ashamed — always trying to measure up. They fell for a misdirection.

You know how a magician’s tricks work. He depends on the fact that our minds can only focus on one thing at a time. He uses his skills to draw the focus of his audience where he wants it, so that he can do something else where his audience is not looking. The end result is that a lie appears to be the truth. He appears to have accomplished something by magic that was really done by trickery. It is very convincing.

This is what our flesh will try to induce in us. A misdirected focus. If flesh can keep you focused on your sin instead of His grace, then the myth of a rigid, angry god seems absolutely true. If your flesh can misdirect your focus away from the reality of the Cross, and keep your attention your best effort, then the perception of a demanding, harsh god appears grounded in reality.

Our flesh operates by misdirection. Flesh never changes its ways. In us, it is always trying to pull our attention away from the beautiful Cross, where our freedom is to be found. It is always trying to keep us focused on our own failings, or our own fleeting successes, redefining the Cross as vindictive and vengeful and fearsome.

The Cross is a living power working in our lives to irradiate the flesh that holds us captive and stunts our growth. It has nothing to do with our ability to follow rules.

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision (i.e., outward adherence) means anything; what counts is a new creation” (Galatians 6:14–15). If the Cross is working on the inside, then the evidence will show up on the outside. If, however, the flesh is working hard at conforming the outside, it will wear you out and discourage you. Flesh-produced outward changes that started out looking shiny and beautiful will fail the test of perseverance. It won’t be lasting change. What counts is a new creation, transformed from the inside out. Not a spiffed up old creation. The only way to live is to live altar’d.

Have you ever fallen for flesh’s misdirection?

Out with the Old, in with the New

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22–24).

“He told them this parable: ‘No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, “The old is better.”’” (Luke 5:36–39).

The key to getting rid of the old is letting in the new. I think we will have to state it this way: In with the new, out with the old. The power of living in an altar’d state comes from the indwelling life that flows forcefully, dislodging ingrown stubborn flesh and flushing flesh away in its wake. Until the new has come, the old is right at home. Nothing challenges its mastery or disturbs its environment. Flesh is king until it is dethroned and overthrown by the King.

We come, then to the mainspring that sets the whole crucifixion/resurrection process in motion and keeps it moving: the indwelling, present life of Jesus.
In the beginning, God created the human being from the dust of the ground. Made him out of earth. He shaped and molded all the body parts until the human had everything he needed to operate in earth’s environment. He had all the body parts and organs necessary for navigating earth. But he was not a finished product. He had the potential to live, but he had no life force. He was inanimate, no more alive than the dust and clay of which he was formed. An empty container. A vessel ready to be filled.

Then the Creator breathed His own breath into the human’s nostrils, and the human was filled with life. The life breath of the Creator gave life to the created. The vessel now had an identity: he was a life container.

What defines a vessel is whatever the vessel holds. Man became a living being — a vessel defined by the indwelling life of the Creator. He derived his life directly from the breath of God. Here stood God’s pattern for perfection: a human with a body fitted for traversing earth, but filled with the life of heaven.
Then the famous fall. The only life force the human had ever experienced was withdrawn and where life had been, death took its place.

The human was now powered by death. They who had been life containers were now death containers. Death began to work its work in them. Sin as an operating power had a new home. The power of sin began to produce the presence of sin in man’s behavior.

When death and sin found their way into the human’s soul, they produced the “old man” that Paul talks about. Decaying, dying, rotten — old.

When the first humans reproduced, they reproduced after their own kind. Death ruled and “old men” were born into the line of Adam.

In Romans 5:12 we read that “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” Imagine that from my father I had inherited a genetic disorder that would mean my certain death. I might say, “Death came into my world through one man.” Then imagine that I had passed that same fatal disorder on to my children, who passed it on to their children. Generations down the line, my descendants would still be saying, “Death came to me through one man.”

Jennifer Kennedy Dean

Author Feedback: Click Here (Include the name of the article)
Jennifer Kennedy Dean 2019 ©