Greetings!
The flesh is all about trying!
Flesh is all about trying. Spirit is all about dying. Flesh says, “Try a little harder! You can do it!” Spirit says, “Die a little deeper. I can't do it.” Flesh lives by this motto: Believe in yourself! Spirit lives by this motto: Die to yourself.
Flesh receives input through the senses
and from the factory preinstalled thought patterns passed down through generations of flesh. We’re all born flesh. Flesh as in flesh-and-blood body, but also flesh as in our sinning nature at the controls. We come already wounded, because flesh’s DNA has sin it. Our flesh has a bent toward following the inclinations of the flesh and so expressing that flesh through sinful acts and attitudes.
As the Scripture talks about flesh, there is no need to single out one person’s flesh from another’s. Flesh is flesh. It always acts like itself. In any generation, in any culture, in any situation flesh acts and thinks the same. I repeat: We come with flesh as our preloaded operating system running preloaded flesh programs.
We are wired to try harder.
We resonate with calls to try harder. Why do you think that is? I think because our flesh is also programmed with need to feel in control. See this on display in the story of Naaman found in 2 Kings 5:1–14.
Resurrection from Crucifixion
Naaman. The very name had come to mean courage and strength to the people of Aram. Naaman was a national hero, a valiant warrior. Naaman had it all. But Naaman was a leper.
“Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy” (2 Kings 5:1).
Naaman was living under a death sentence
. His flesh was full of death. A prophet in Samaria — a man named Elisha — an obscure, uncelebrated man of God might — just might — hold the key that would bring life out of Naaman’s death.
Naaman surrounded himself with the trappings that announced his high position and set off for the humble dwelling place of the man of God. Met at Elisha’s door, not by the humble prophet himself, but by the humble prophet’s servant, Naaman hears the prescription for his ailment:
“Go dip yourself in the Jordan River seven times.”
Outraged, insulted, incredulous!
Naaman refused to do such a degrading thing as to dip himself in the Jordan River seven times. There were better rivers back home! Where’s the hand-waving and the shouting and the drama? something to validate what an important man Naaman was!
“But Naaman went away angry and said, ‘I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?’ So he turned and went off in a rage”
(2 Kings 5:11–12).
His servants knew him well.
They had seen him perform feats in battle that had cemented his reputation for mettle and prowess. They knew how he viewed himself — a master and a winner. So, they knew how to appeal to him. “Naaman’s servants went to him and said, ‘My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, “
Wash and be cleansed”!’”
(2 Kings 5:13).
If only the God of Israel had required something daring. Something bold. Something only the great and mighty Naaman could do. That would have been easy.
Naaman had lived a life marked by uncommon courage.
He has put his life at risk on the battlefield time and time again. But the hardest thing Naaman ever did was to dip himself in the Jordan River seven times. It was the death sentence for his pride, but it was the only way for Naaman to have life. The choice was his — life or death.
When Naaman emerged from the Jordan River the seventh time, he had the skin of a little child. You might say he’d been born again. He had passed from death to life. You might say his crucifixion had yielded a resurrection.
Jennifer Kennedy Dean
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Jennifer Kennedy Dean 2019
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