Behind Enemy Lines: The Christmas Story

“The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters (The New Testament epistles) is that to us it is primarily a performance; to them it was a real experience. We are apt to reduce the Christian religion to a code, or at best a rule of heart and life. To these men it is quite plainly the invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether. They do not hesitate describing this as Christ “living in” them. These early Christians were on fire with the conviction that they had become, through Christ, literal sons of God; they were pioneers of a new humanity, founders of a new Kingdom. They still speak to us across the centuries. Perhaps if we believed what they believed, we might achieve what they achieved.”
J.B. Phillips
Letters To Young Churches

“Do not forget the meaning of the Incarnation. It was the invasion of human history by One who snatched the scepter from the usurper. It was the intrusion of forces into human history which dissolved the consistency of the works of the devil and caused them to break and fail. Incarnation was the coming of the Stronger than the strong man armed to destroy the works of the devil…”
G. Campbell Morgan

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed…”
(Jesus, 1^st Century)

“The Kingdom is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened…”
(Ibid.)

In the fourteenth century King Edward III of England encroached upon France and took the throne he claimed he had a right to, and took back the territory lost to his realm. The year was 1337 and thus began the “100 Year War”…

If the incarnation tells us anything, it says that we have and serve a Universal King, the rightful King, who has come to earth to destroy the works and dominion of the devil and to place His rule in the hearts of all who will submit to His reign. His coming and subsequent victory at the Cross and Tomb put an end in the heavenlies to the four thousand year war that had been waged in the Garden of Genesis.

But we’ve emasculated the Christmas Story! We’ve come to think of it solely in terms of cattle gently lowing, donkeys braying contentedly, sheep dozing peacefully beside a halo-shrouded crib, shepherds hushed and admiring, a sleepy little village, twinkling lights, sugarplums and gingerbread houses—a veritable homespun, down-home, Smoky Mountain snow globe scene!

Don’t think me heartless. I love the Frank Capra, Walton Mountain, Bing Crosby and Frosty side of Christmas as much as the next guy and possibly more, but that stuff is best kept separated from what Advent represents. Let’s not hear the Christmas Story and think of it in trite sayings like “God come to earth” or a Child born in Bethlehem or a Baby lying in a manger, as if that were all there was to it.

Think of it as an invasion.

An INCARNATION, yes, but also an INVASION most certainly! Heaven’s Darling has come to an earth that lies in the power of the evil one and has been accompanied by a host of the angelic army; He has come behind enemy lines to take His rightful place in hearts and to free those enslaved in darkness.

Can you imagine the devilish glee at the incarnation? Can you just hear the deep-throated mirth of the wicked one as he looks upon an outcast Baby born to humble parentage, laid in straw and draped in rags, as he says with side-splitting laughter toward the heavens, “Is that the best You can do?” He must have thought smugly to himself, “This is going to be even easier than I thought!”

But the scene in that feeding-trough is not one of dismay, embarrasment or backing down to the challenge. The scene in Bethlehem may as well have been a meeting of the Top Brass, the Joint Chiefs, in the Situation Room plotting strategy for the sure destruction of the enemy once and for all. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are all present with the mighty hosts of Heaven—an angelic army of superheroes mustering overhead—but the latter are only for show. In fact, they come to sing, not make war! The devil will be felled by a Baby!

As the camera pans on the Divine Visitation we find a curious development. Amid the circle of the Godhead are a handful of humble patrons. They are each witnesses of the Glory because the Lord has found an “amen” in their hearts. People like Joseph. And Mary. The unlikely shepherd-evangelists. These are the special forces God has inserted into enemy territory, and any day now, the supply caravan will be arriving with more than enough to commence the aggression.

“Sweet Little Jesus Boy”??? Hardly. That sentiment does no justice to the Advent of the Christ-King. To the enemy there was nothing sweet about it. It was nothing short of the Godhead taking off their gloves and slapping the devil on his cheek, challenging him to a duel to the death!

1 John 3:8 says—

“The Son of God appeared for this purpose: to destroy the works of the devil.”

John Piper spoke to this truth:

“The only people who understand Christmas and embrace Christmas for what it is are people who feel sick and who desperately want their sickness destroyed. Unless you welcome Jesus as a Destroyer in your life, you can’t have Him as a Savior. Christmas is God’s invasion of enemy territory to rescue a people from the devil and destroy the sin in their lives.”

We cannot have Him as Savior all the while rejecting Him as Lord and Conqueror. The angels’ announcement to those gritty shepherds abiding in the fields watching over the flocks earmarked for Passover sacrifice was one of a King’s Visitation. A King unlike any other:

“This day, in the City of David, a Savior has been born for you who is Christ the Lord.”
(Luke 2:11)

That’s the only time in the New Testament this title is used exactly this way. For Jews, to pronounce The Name (”YHWH”) was against their Law, so when public reading of the Jewish Scriptures took place, whenever the speaker came to the sacred name of God, he would substitute another word, Adonai, and continue on. The word found here in the Greek is ‘kurios’ which is the same as the Hebrew ‘adonai’. Do you see what the angels were declaring? They were giving this Baby the title, “Messiah-Yaweh”! This was not just an important person or another King, but the King of all kings and Lord of all lords.

When Christ came to earth, He brought His Kingdom with Him, then made Himself the Ransom by which to purchase it. He is the nobleman of Luke 19:12 who goes off to a far country to procure a Kingdom for Himself and tells His servants to “occupy ’til I come.”

After an invasion comes an occupation! When the shepherds were given the “rhema” of the Incarnation (translated “thing” in Luke 2:15), they went everywhere telling the news, spreading the occupation. After the Magi saw Him, they returned to Arabia and Persia, extending the occupation. Mary and Joseph brought God’s Treasure to Jerusalem eight days later to be presented in the Temple as their Firstborn and touched off the beginnings of a Divine occupation in the capital city.

Fast forward just a bit and follow the Advent family as they travel to Egypt flexing the borders of Christ’s realm even further. When they returned to their homeland, ‘rhema’ put them in Nazareth, so the ripples of His reign continued to expand. Thereafter, the chosen couple took the Christ Child to Jerusalem every year for the High Feast Day which gives the vivid illustration of the penetration of the Kingdom, much like the ramming of a door until it falls off its hinges.

A chapter later (Luke 3), Yeshua’s cousin John is seen in this otherworldly occupation as he preaches out in the wilderness to crowds of settlers, soldiers and tax collectors, setting forth the terms of occupation: repentance and faith. Thus the realm is spreading everywhere, in every hamlet, the subject of every dinner conversation, in the palace of Herod, the Roman armories and among the teeming throngs in the commercial districts…

ALL THIS WAS DONE BEHIND ENEMY LINES. Right under the devil’s nose. In his own backyard. And there was nothing he could do to stop it! At Golgotha, the Man Jesus walked right into the devil’s living room, through the front door (the gates of hell), overpowered the strongman, and took his booty—those bound in darkness—and led them out of their imprisonment (see Matthew 12:29-ff).

Luke’s narrative of Advent begins with the most powerful man on earth–Caesar–and ends with a humble couple spending the night in a barn, not to mention vile, ignorant, earthy shepherds looking on in wonderment as witnesses of the Divine Visitation. Men whose character was so suspect they would not have been allowed to testify in court, yet God chose them as His witnesses!

What are the odds this thing could ever by pulled off? I’d say pretty good, considering it was a Baby who was the enemy’s undoing! A baby, by the way, who launched His invasion by toddling right into the enemy’s camp.

“Glory to God in the highest! And on earth, peace among (Greek, “in”) men with whom God is pleased.”
(Luke 2:14)

Merry Christmas!

Peace to you in Christ!

Jingles And Carols

Ever since the night sky over Jerusalem served as the grandstands for a fantastical choir of angels two thousand years ago, music has been the grandest harbinger of the Advent season. Peace on earth, good will to all men and a host of heavenly jingles besides!

The music of the season has a special interest for me. I knew that I loved a beautiful college coed named Sandy Summerford while our college’s combined choirs were practicing for the annual presentation of Handel’s Messiah in December of 1982. Loved her enough, that is, to cut bait with another beautiful coed I had been dating: her roommate, no less, but that’s another story for another time (and if Sandy lets me tell it). Sometime between “hallelujahs” I discovered that she was the one for me and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I got the girl, as they say, and we are still going strong twenty-three years later.

Neither Sandy or I are much for carols of the season prior to, say, Thanksgiving, but once the dishes are cleared and the belts are loosened a notch (or two), it’s ‘katy-bar-the-door’ and let the music break forth in all its beauteous delight! Bring on the God Rest Ye’s and the Run Over Grandmas, the Silent Nights and Rudy, the Red-Nosed Reindeers (if you prefer Dean Martin’s rendition). Growing up, the “Muppet Christmas Carol” was a personal favorite, along with Glen Campbell’s “Little Toy Trains, Little Toy Tracks…”

Seems everybody has a Christmas album these days. Sandy and I even heard an interesting ‘carol’ by someone called the “Smashing Pumpkins” just yesterday (can you say, ‘mental anguish’?). Right about now, the Mitchells have the music of the season streaming from the Holiday channel on our Dish TV and piping in from ‘W-Whatever’ on our car stereos. Sandy’s been contentedly humming carols as she festoons our home with holiday mirth and we’re digging out our collection of CDs and loading the carousel in the entertainment system with even more hits of the holidays. Guess you can say the wife and I are suckers for glee and yuletide vocalizations.

All this talk of music makes one wonder about some of our most cherished carols and how they came to be. I am moved, for instance, by the story of what happened in a little house on Brook Street in London circa 1740. George Frederic Handel was a composer who had miserably failed. Swimming in debt, he set to writing what he thought would be his swan song. It quickly turned into an epic musical of God’s redemptive purposes known as “The Messiah.” For three weeks, Handel shut himself inside his room and would not partake in any food and very little sleep. After 24 days, he had written the last note on a 260-page manuscript and when his steward checked on him, found him sobbing in his room, face aglow. He said to the startled visitor, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself!” He later told a friend about his three-week experience, “Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I know not.”

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is not just a cute little song with silly lines. It was actually the “catechism in code” to teach children Bible truths when such things were banned in England while despots reigned there. The “partridge in a pear tree” is in reality, Jesus on the Cross. “Two turtledoves” were the Old and New Testaments and “four calling birds” were the gospels. “Five Golden rings” was the Pentateuch, “six geese a-laying” were the six days of creation, and so on.

And who can sing “Silent Night” without taking that plaintive walk with Pastor Josef Mohr in 1818? His church organ was broken and would not be fixed in time for the Christmas Eve service, so he took a walk to the top of a hill overlooking his sleepy Austrian village to take his burden to the Lord. As he viewed the snow-laden town below in its glorious silence, the Lord met with him and gave him the words to one of the most beloved hymns of the Advent season. The next day, an excited Mohr took his poem to his church organist, Franz Gruber, and asked him to come up with a melody that could be easily strummed on a guitar. The organist had only a few hours to fashion a singable melody, but by that night’s Christmas Eve service the matter was resolved, and the tiny congregation at The Church of St. Nicholas were the first of many to hear and love this peaceful and emotive carol.

There are many other stories but I leave that to you to uncover them. In the meantime, may God bless you and your family in this Advent season and may the music of these most holy days build a fire of warmth and peace at the hearth of your home.

Out Of Silence...The Word

“May our God come and not keep silence; fire devours before Him, and it is very tempestuous around Him.”
(Psalm 50:3)

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of
A neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.
–”Sound of Silence”
by Simon and Garfunkel

In 1970, Michael Viner, a wide-eyed thirty year old entrepreneur, was desperate to make his splash in the music recording industry. He had no backing, no contracts or agent, so he spent his life savings to press several thousand copies of an album he titled, “The Best of Marcel Marceau.”

(some of you caught that)

It was a 35-minute recording of absolute silence interrupted by occasional applause. Newsweek and Billboard magazines picked up the bizarre story and soon mail orders poured in. In the end, Viner’s new-found capital allowed him to seriously pursue the music career he so desired.

In a Baby’s cry, two thousand years earlier, the Word spoke out of silence and the angels applauded. The world in all its silent stillness lay on that very Silent Night, Holy Night as a baby’s coos, giggles and cries hung on the the frosty night air on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

It didn’t just happen; it was planned. Right down to the very town and time as well as the players involved, including a very shy and innocent virgin. Intricate details, like where this Child would grow up, even where and how He would die. What’s more, it had been planned and scripted for hundreds, yea thousands of years! 332 clues and prophecies to all of these and more are found perfectly preserved in the living pages of the Old Testament.

The gospeler Matthew tells us about His Life through the formulaic saying, “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying…” He used this phrase twelve times in his gospel (1:22; 2:15,17,23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 26:56 and 27:9 and 35). Twelve. The number of government.

“And the government will rest upon His His shoulders…”
(Isaiah 9:6)

There was more build-up, more family planning to this Baby, the Child Jesus, than any other human that has ever lived. Not for Muhammed. Nor can it be said of Zoroaster or Guatama Buddha. The Savior’s prenatal wasn’t nine months. It was thousands of years! The baby announcements were sent out as far back as in the Garden, when God walked the earth among Adam and Eve.

“He will crush your head and you will strike His heel.”
(Genesis 3:15)

The Lord spoke these words to Lucifer, the one-time cherub, whose name meant ’star of the morning’. While he served as the guardian of the Throne of God, he was a walking kaleidoscope of color, a prism of light reflecting off the One whom he served. After his fall, however, his name meant far less the light of morning as it did the darkness that surrounds the morning star, reflecting his transformed nature and character. This curse was to assure the anti-God that he may have led Adam and all humanity into sin but he had sealed his own doom as the enemy of God and would incur His wrath forever.

You recall that Jesus was also called the Morning Star but the name given Him speaks of dawn, resurrection and life. Lucifer, the ruler of darkness, faded when the Son rose to greet the new Day!

The Genesis prophecy led a string of over 60 major prophecies with regard to the First Advent of Christ along with those aforementioned 332 minor prophecies that gave details of His life and death. Little details like His vocation. His style of teaching. That gifts would be brought to Him. His hometown. His rejection immediately after he rides into the City on a donkey, welcomed as a Messiah. That He would be betrayed and sold for thirty pieces of silver. Pierced. Crucified. Buried in a rich man’s sarcophagus.

And then, nothing. Silence. It’s like He was the featured front-page article, the headliner, the lead story, then the story gets buried. For 400 years! All was silent. When the Old Testament record closes, nothing more is heard by way of revelation or prophetic voice for four centuries. Heaven’s print shop and messengering service had shut down.

But…

…The Father was waiting. The Son waited. The Holy Spirit waited. All Heaven held its collective breath, knowing the story was not finished. Anticipating. Tuning their harps and lyres. Angelic choirs getting their pipes ready to break forth in beauteous song!

And then…

…A Baby wails and the Word, voluntarily held back, announces He is here and He is the ‘logos’ in FULL VOICE! All the prophecies and all those announcements by the Angel Gabriel to Mary, to Joseph, to the shepherds—these were like the sounds of one clearing one’s throat to get the earth’s attention, to demand that we listen up.

I love the narrative in John 9 which takes place sometime between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Festival of Lights (Hannukah), our Christmastime. The main character is a young fellow born blind but he also suffers from deafness. Oh, I know you won’t find that in the text because it wasn’t physical deafness. His was spiritual. After Jesus restores his sight, the young man is found in the Temple where Jesus again encounters him. With eyes healed, the Son of God now wants to focus on the boy’s heart—by way of his ears.

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asks him.

“Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in (Greek eis, meaning ‘into’) Him?”

Now notice our Lord’s wonderful, glorious response:

“You have both seen Him, and He is the One talking to you!”

I love that! The Word made flesh was communicating to a single person in a moment when the boy would be hearing Him. Why do I believe that if I were the only lost person on earth that needed saving, that Jesus would STILL have come for me? Because of verse 35:

“Jesus…finding him…said…”

The verb ‘finding him’ is an aorist participle meaning that our Lord, the ‘logos’ of God, labored much in looking for this young man. He had something to TELL him: the good news! And the Savior went to great lengths to make sure He was heard. Give thanks this season that the Word made flesh, crucified, risen and ascended to glory has spoken to you!

Jesus said, “the One who is talking to you is He.” That’s the coolest thing He could have said in that seminal moment. Just think:

• the same One who spoke forth His creation
• the same One who commanded the sun, moon and stars to shine
• the same One who called to Abraham and made from him a chosen people
• the same One who spoke to Job from the whirlwind
• the same One who warned Pharaoh
• the same One who sang over David
• the same One who cried, “It is finished!”

He is the One who has communicated His love to you! And since He is the Word, He is still talking and will go on talking forever. A word for those of you to whom God seems silent: never fear, there is a word forming on the lips of God for you. He who is the Word will not be silent for long.

And a word for you, devil of hell: He who had the First Word also has the Final Word. You, who tried to silence the Baby’s cry, will have the judgment of Almighty God echoing in your ears for all eternity.

We have heard You, Lord, and give thanks for the Word of Life.

“The shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard…”
(Luke 2:20)

Desperate For God?

“As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so pantheth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God…”
Psalm 42:1,2 (KJV)

“I will not let You go unless You bless me!”
Jacob, Genesis 32:26

“I pray You, show me Your glory!”
Moses, Exodus 33:18

It has rightly been assessed that the life of a true follower of Christ is a journey of subtraction. The mission statement of John the Baptizer was, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30) Paul declared that “we do not promote ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord” (2 Corinthians 4:5) and were it not a real story, the narrative of Yaweh’s whittling down of Gideon’s army would almost seem humorous. And what can we make of that which transpired in the Valley of Elah during Israel’s first monarchy? Saul, head and shoulders above all the fighting men of Judah was too giant of a man to face Goliath. So we take the stepladder down man by man through Eliab, Abinadab and Shammah. Nope, nope and nope. Joab? Nah. Abner? Guess again. What about brave Jonathan? Close, but no cigar. Israel’s greatest enemy was felled not by a Samsonian brute but a diminutive shepherd boy not yet out of his teens.

Show me a reduced man and I will show you a glorious result.

Jacob, the trickster and usurper, met God on a wrestling mat. A man of exhausted resources and no way out cried aloud for Divine intervention and got more than he bargained for. All night long he wrestled with Yaweh saying “I will not let you go!” This is a desperate man. He was at the end of his rope and knew he would not live to see another sunrise if all he had were old tricks and sleight of hand. He wasn’t using legwhips and sleeper holds on the Lord of Creation but was hanging on to Him for dear life lest the Lord leave him to himself. Don’t think Jacob made a good go of things for the scripture says that the Lord “touched” him and disabled him for life. The picture is of the Holy One pinning Jacob and grinding him into the dust from whence came man and recreating him into a new, serving, holy and set apart man. When Yaweh focused on the pillar of man’s strength—his thighbone—and it fell free from the socket, the Lord of Hosts demonstrated that the weakness of man is the glory of God. Jacob could only be said to ‘prevail’ or ‘overcome’ after he was weakened and conquered by the Lord Christ.

The hollow of his thigh socket brings to mind another ‘hollow’. Moses, moved by desperation to move in the presence and power of Jehovah, cried aloud, “Show me Thy glory!” and the Lord put Moses inside a hollow in the mountainside and let ALL His goodness and virtue pass by him while shielded in the cleft of the rock. Moses, once the prince of Egypt and tutored in the courts of Pharaoh, next reduced and numbered among the Hebrew slaves, now becomes the permanent bondslave of the Almighty. And when he came down from the mountain, the mark of ownership upon Moses was a face glowing with the glory of the Presence who is a Jealous God (Exodus 34:14,30).

See a pattern here?

We will not cry out for God in desperation until we come to the end of ourselves and leave done with all that hinders and seduces us on our journey. The glory will not come to those who want Jesus AND their trinkets, Jesus AND their comforts, Jesus AND their treasure-laden hands. No, it is with empty hands, hanging on to the last thread of the rope will we enter into His fullness.

God needed Hannah to be barren before He could fill her womb with the one who would rest near Yaweh at Shiloh and hear His Voice then subsequently anoint the shepherd boy who would slay the Giant, become the model king and bring forth from his line the Messiah. Lest we forget, God bypassed all the well-pedigreed women of Jerusalem save one poor virgin girl from the country to be the holy habitation of the long awaited and Expected One. And to shore up His eternal mission, the Lord made it so that lowly, dirty, blue-collar watchers of the pascal lambs would announce His arrival to earth.

It is for us to remember: God wants us to come thirsty, depleted of self-strength and desperate for the Living Waters before He will fill us. He wants us barren, limping, blinded by Light, stinking of sheep and not perfumed with unguents of Egypt. He wants the odds stacked against us. He wants us to become earthen vessels—common peanut butter jars—so the treasure of Heaven may abide within.

I say again: show me a reduced man or woman and I will show you a glorious result.

(More Dying)

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep so that he may gain what he will never lose.”
—Journals of Jim Elliott

Dying is easier when you’re already dead.

Laying down your life is the price of friendship (1 John 3:16) and Jesus, who should know, told His disciples there is no greater measuring stick of love than this (John 15:13). Our churches do not need more good deeds but her congregants need better dying. Watchman Nee saw this as the crying need of his day: “What is lacking today is not a better living but a better dying! We need to die a good death, a thorough death.”

There are two people the Lord has put in my life who die for me every day. Without complaining, without delaying, they minister to my needs, my very private physical needs, each and every day they walk this earth. I am blessed with a son who does things for his father no son should ever be asked to do and a wife who regularly counts her life as nothing for my own personal comfort.

Why would they inconvenience their own lives for me? Duty? Not hardly. They do it for Love. When it comes to my needs they unquestioningly and repeatedly crucify their own. No greater love…

What would make a pastor with death threats on his head, stay in his country where the danger is great even though he has been given a way of escape? What would make him say, “I cannot leave my people. I will stay and suffer martyrdom, if that is what Christ calls me to.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer was, in fact, executed even though he was already dead.

Dead to self. Dead to sin. Dead to praise. Dead to criticism. Dead to the world. Dead.

Why would a Colombian pastor, seized by Marxist guerrillas and bound with ropes, pray for his captors and love them? With neck garroted by a coarse rope and tied to wrists behind his back, the slightest movements would be met with searing pain from sharp sticks intertwined in the rope, tearing at his wrists, arms and neck. Still, this remarkable man could lay on the cold ground in this condition and say to his guards, “God is desperately in love with you.” What, pray tell, would make a man do that?

Quite simply, the man was already dead. It’s not that his life, comfort, condition and convenience were not important, it’s that they didn’t exist! Christ is this man’s life and he is showing by such love that he is abandoned wholly to the desires of his Master.

Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission in the 1800s said in later years, “I never made a sacrifice.” If you read his biography, you wonder how he could say such a thing! He never asked for money, chose to live poor among the poor for the sake of the gospel of the kingdom, was persecuted, shunned and mocked by those who chose not to understand such a life and still gave up his last dollar to others when he himself had no hope of a next meal. It is clear from his words that he learned to live in such a realm where spiritual blessings were so real and lasting that GIVING UP really means RECEIVING. Where dying really means resurrection life.

Sacrifice? Not to him. Not hardly. He saw it as investment in an eternal bull market where the return endlessly outweighs the initial commitment.

Why would an American woman, captured and terrorized by the Taliban in Afghanistan, return to the mission field after her release and risk her life again by building and strengthening churches in another hot zone of persecution for “infidels”? Heather Mercer is a dead woman walking. Dead, perhaps, but very much alive to Christ.

When you take inventory of all that we give our lives to and what we sacrifice them for, even many of our exploits being for good, when it comes down to the brazen facts, we see that there is not much life in our living after all.

The aged apostle wrote to the church at Colosse, “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as DEAD…” (Col. 3:5, NASB), or more literally, “put to death!” In writing, Paul used a telling tense of the verb to illustrate how necessary this act is for the believer in Christ. The command comes as an aorist active imperative.

• Aorist: DO IT DEFINITELY (with result as your aim)
• Active: DO IT DECISIVELY (as an act of your will)
• Imperative: DO IT DELIBERATELY (without hesitation)

There is only one solution for our flesh: death. It cannot be tamed, reformed, supressed or controlled. When my exterminator comes, I don’t want him to simply drive the little bugs into an unused part of the house or to the basement where they won’t crawl on me! No, I want the little buggers to DIE!

We cannot make the flesh (our lusts and passions) our prisoner of war. Take no prisoners! Get rid of Agag! Slay the bleating sheep! The only solution for the flesh is to kill it, to slay it utterly, to “make no provision” for it (Romans 13:14)!

“If you minimize the seriousness of sin in the life of a Christian, you don’t know what conversion to Christ means. Conversion means death—not just decision FOR Jesus, but death WITH Jesus.”
–John Piper

We’ve heard of the “lust” of the flesh, but what other disguises can the flesh wear?

• the “will” of the flesh (John 1:13) which is an inner drive to promote self
• the “mind” of the flesh (Colossians 2:8) speaks of self-revelation and self-confidence
• the “wisdom” of the flesh (2 Cor. 1:12) is the boasting of knowledge but not in a truth lived out; much pontification but no transformation
• the “worship” of the flesh (Col. 2:23); the NASB calls it ’self-made religion’ and is literally ‘will-worship’, the creation of our own standard of devotion and the ‘working up’ of our own passion

The Holy Spirit dwells in us to make war against the flesh, not to improve it. We must give the Spirit permission to take each attitude, temperament and work of the flesh to the Cross and be done with it. No playing around.

Flesh can be self-righteous or unrighteous in nature. When either comes up in us, we are to say, “Holy Spirit, I know my flesh has been crucified with Christ (Col. 3:3) and I agree with that declaration and I now ask that you apply the death of Christ to this matter, that my experience will show that I, too, have been crucified with Christ!”

We don’t need better living, folks. We need better dying. And the Holy Spirit is constantly warring against the flesh in us as He points out to us our failings in walking in resurrection life. This is called conviction, not condemnation, and the Spirit is constantly taking us to the Cross as the only remedy for self.

“You have been crucified,” He says. “Leave this work of the flesh there. It belongs there. It has already been put there by Christ. Walk from here in victory!”