Battle with the Flesh

Of the three obstacles to pleasing God that Martin Luther mentioned—the world, the flesh, and the devil—our battle against the flesh may be the most vexing. There are times when we can escape the world’s demands for conformity, and Satan, not being omnipresent, cannot personally tempt and accuse us all of the time. But the flesh is always with us, engaging us in battle at the most unexpected moments. How can we overcome it?

Like the word world, the word flesh is used in various ways in Scripture. Though the Bible sometimes uses it to refer to the human body, when it speaks of our battle against the flesh it is referring to our fallen nature, the inclination to sin in our natural fallen humanity that struggles against the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Man in his fallen condition has no desire at all to please God. When God makes a person spiritually alive so that he comes to Christ in faith, the Holy Spirit begins to work in that person’s life, giving him a new set of desires: to please God by growing in righteousness, to worship Him, to know Him through Scripture reading and prayer, to fellowship with other believers and love them, and so on. But the old desires remain, too. Thus, a war is launched, a struggle between conflicting desires. This war is the process of sanctification, by which we work with the Spirit to fulfill our God-given desires to obey and please Him, and resist the desires of the flesh to disobey and reject God.

This titanic struggle lasts until we draw our last breath, but by God’s grace progress is possible—we can actually put to death the desires of the flesh so that they trouble us no more, while the desires for God can be made more habitual. In fact, anyone who is truly born again will experience progress. We sometimes hear talk of “carnal Christians,” believers mired in sinful ways from which they cannot break away. This is an impossibility. Anyone who has been redeemed has been given the Spirit as an ally to help him grow more righteous. He gives us new desires and convicts us when we submit to our old desires. Progress may be slow, but it will be definite, for “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). As in our battle against the world, we must look to our powerful ally, God Himself, for assistance against the flesh.