Greetings!
Do you have pretty flesh?
This seems to be my refrain: Flesh gets you nowhere. It never, ever accomplishes what you thought it would. Yet, there it is. Flesh, flesh, and more flesh. And your flesh has tried to tame your flesh for years. What to do?
It’s time to see what remedy the Scripture gives to the flesh problem. Today I want to give you the big picture, then we will drill down and look at the details and let the Spirit apply it to the minutia of your life, because that is where flesh has its hold. Life is made up of millions and millions of moments, punctuated by a few big upheavals. When we deal with our flesh in the dailyness of living life, then we’ll be ready to head into life’s few big moments in an altar’d state. Flesh out of the way; Spirit’s power unfurled.
To Know Him in the Power of His Resurrection
The flesh problem has only one remedy. It has to be surrendered to crucifixion. It can’t be dressed up or cleaned up. It has to die a messy, bloody, merciless crucifixion death.
“For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin — because anyone who has died has been freed from sin” (Romans 6:6–7).
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
“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” (Galatians 6:14). “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).
The good news is this: a crucifixion is the prelude to a resurrection.
Resurrection power
— the power of Christ who overcame the last enemy, death — is the endgame. The path to resurrection passes through crucifixion. Like Paul, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10–11). To experience the power of His resurrection here and now. To be lifted out of the state of death my flesh lives in.
As we go on, we will examine in detail how to surrender flesh to crucifixion. We’ll get to the nitty-gritty particulars and not leave it as a heady theory. Right now, I want to outline it in broad strokes and make sure we understand the concept before we put it under the microscope.
We need to see the whole picture before we zoom in and isolate the pixels. So, stick with me as we keep working through the overall concept. It will give us the foundation on which to ground the specifics.
The Scriptures you just looked at that clearly state the principle of crucifixion of the flesh also indicate that it is a finished work. Christ’s crucifixion is your flesh’s crucifixion. I have been crucified with Christ. Our old self was crucified with Him. All done. Past tense.
For clarity, let me emphasize
that it is not your personality that died with Christ. He is not trying to obliterate the you He so carefully designed. He is targeting the power and rule of flesh over your personality. He wants you to be free to be the beautiful, free, exuberant person He created you to be. As we move forward in talking about crucifixion of flesh, understand that He is not trying to turn you into some kind of automaton. He is working to free you of the dead weight of your flesh so your God-designed personality can flourish.
Your flesh
— not your personality — has been crucified with Christ. How can that be? After pondering this for many years, here is the explanation that I find satisfying. Perhaps it will communicate it to you too.
- God does not see in the context of linear time, but instead knows and sees everything at once. He knows the end from the beginning. He sees every step along the way. Past, present, future are all the same to Him.
- God prepared our salvation before the first sin was ever committed and had the answer ready before the need arose. John, in his revelation of heaven, saw “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).
- God has always seen that you would come to faith in Christ and be a beneficiary of His death, resurrection, and indwelling life, “Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalms 139:16).
- At the moment in linear time when Jesus died on the cross, God saw you in Him. He knew that you would accept Christ’s death that paid for your sins, and His indwelling life that cleanses you of unrighteousness. He knew that your flesh, little by little, would experience its crucifixion. He can see as finished what we can see as in process.
- What God sees is the reality. What I perceive in my limited way of seeing is partial and out of focus and is not the best way of judging reality. If God calls it finished, then I need to embrace that reality and consider it finished.
So, when my flesh asserts itself,
it is really already crucified. It doesn’t have any life of its own. Then why is it active? As I see it, it’s because I have it on automatic life support.
Years ago there was a movie called Weekend at Bernie’s. In the movie, two young executives were invited to their boss’s beach house. Before they arrived, their boss was murdered by a mobster. The two young men pretend Bernie, their boss, is still alive. They move him around and get behind him to animate him so that he seems to be living. The whole movie is taken up with their deceit and the mobster’s frustration trying to kill Bernie, who, of course, is already dead. This silly movie plot reminds me of how we try to animate our flesh, even though it is dead. What hard work! Dragging around a body of death!
Jennifer Kennedy Dean
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Jennifer Kennedy Dean 2019
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