Apicontent

Considering the Flesh to Be Dead

When we speak of “flesh,” it is important to understand that we are not talking about the human body.¹ Rather, the “flesh” is the part of us that is opposed to the Spirit of God—our ungodly desires and selfish motives. Thus, while the “world” is an outward spiritual enemy, the “flesh” is the spiritual enemy inside us. Our sinful nature, though dead, has a residual effect upon us in our Christian life.

We can adopt a correct view of God, revise our false beliefs, and repent of our sinful habit, but a part of us inside is going to want to commit that sin again. We all have been disappointed in ourselves when we have thought we had left a sin behind, only to sense that deep inside we really, really want to go back to that sin. That’s our flesh calling to us.

The apostle Paul assured us, “Dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation whatsoever to do what your sinful nature [flesh] urges you to do” (Romans 8:12). That’s good news indeed. But how do we avoid the effects of our flesh? Paul continued, “If through the power of the Holy Spirit you turn from it and its evil deeds, you will live” (verse 13). The phrase “turn from it,” in the Greek, more literally means “put it to death.” Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can consider the flesh, or our sinful desires, to be dead.²

In another place, Paul described it this way: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to His cross and crucified them there” (Galatians 5:24). We can crucify our flesh (sinful desires) spiritually because Christ’s flesh (His body) was crucified physically for our sake. We no longer need to obey our flesh as it seeks to govern our words, thoughts, and actions.

Of course, just because we have the power to refuse temptation, that does not mean we will necessarily use the power. We might choose to do what is comfortable and familiar. That is, we might follow the preferences of our old sin nature, even though it is dead.

Remember, the Spirit is opposed to the flesh. As we pray and follow the Holy Spirit in refusing to sin, gradually the sinful desires lose their power over us.

Resisting the Devil’s Schemes

Along with the world and the flesh, another spiritual enemy is the Devil. This is the being known as Satan, or the Adversary. We do not know everything about him, but we know clearly from the Bible that he is God’s enemy and ours. Along with his fellow evil spirits, he seeks to orchestrate events so as to harm us, spiritually and otherwise. “Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy,” warned the apostle James. “He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). “He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God” (Ephesians 2:2).

While too much human wrongdoing has been attributed to the influence of Satan (the Devil does not always make us do it), certainly evil spirits will do what they can to put us in a place where it is easy to do wrong. They do not have ultimate control over our experiences—God does. But they may seek God’s permission to tempt us. In the early chapters of the book of Job, we are given a glimpse into how this worked for one Old Testament believer.

Is it a coincidence that a person who has a problem with stealing is presented with an opportunity to make off with someone’s wallet? Perhaps not. Is it chance that someone who is trying to quit gossiping hears a juicy tidbit about an enemy? Possibly not. In such situations, Satan may be setting out bait for us.

The Devil whispers temptations, suggests evil courses of action, and tries to implant doubt. And then we allow ourselves to become aware of a temptation if we are susceptible in that area. Sometimes our susceptibilities may surprise us.

Satan sets out the bait, but it is up to us to decide whether we will nibble at it. For His part, God always leaves us an escape route from temptation.

Remember that the temptations that come into your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will keep the temptation from becoming so strong that you can’t stand up against it. When you are tempted, He will show you a way out so that you will not give in to it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

¹ That misunderstanding has led to the unfortunate belief by many that the body is bad in itself.

² In Romans 8, Paul was circling back to the same point he had made in Romans 6. We have died to sin.

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God wants us to succeed in resisting temptation, and He gives us help to do what is right. “The Lord is faithful; He will make you strong and guard you from the evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3). So the Devil, while ferocious, is not a foe we are incapable of defeating in the Lord’s power. “Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you,” we are assured (James 4:7).

Furthermore, God equips us for our contest with the Devil in specific ways. Paul wrote,

Use every piece of God’s armor to resist the enemy in the time of evil, so that after the battle you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the sturdy belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News, so that you will be fully prepared. In every battle you will need faith as your shield to stop the fiery arrows aimed at you by Satan. Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray at all times and on every occasion in the power of the Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 6:13-18)

With such armor, we “will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil” (verse 11).

Let’s look at how the pieces of the armor help us in our struggle against the Devil.

• The belt of truth: The Devil likes to interfere in our perceptions of reality. God’s truth shows us the way things really are.
• The body armor of God’s righteousness: Satan accuses us about our shortcomings. But God’s righteousness, given to us through faith in Christ, protects our spiritual self-image.
• The shoes of peace: Satan tries to interrupt harmonious relationships with God and unity among believers. Peace protects the well-being and effectiveness of the body of Christ.
• The shield of faith: The tempter suggests that we will experience greater satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness if we do something forbidden by God. Faith in God and His ways protects us against these flaming arrows of temptation.
• The helmet of salvation: Satan tries to darken our minds with godless thoughts and human-centered illusions. The helmet of salvation protects us against Satan’s efforts to fill our minds with poisonous thoughts.
• The sword of the Spirit: This is the only offensive weapon Paul listed as part of our spiritual armor. If we know and understand the Bible, the Holy Spirit can guide us to use specific passages against Satan in each tempting situation that arises.
• Prayer: As we humbly kneel before the Lord and pour out our concerns and struggles to Him, we submit our will to our glorious Savior

The Devil will try to attack you through a chink in your armor. Make sure that you are wearing all the protection God gives for spiritual safety. And never fear. “The Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world” (1 John 4:4).

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God on the Throne

It is important that we see the world, the flesh, and the Devil as acting together in opposition to us. Sometime ago I (Bill) tried to explain how it all works to a young woman who came to see me.

This young woman was unattractive and overweight and her face was covered with acne. Suffering from low self-esteem because of her appearance, she was miserable and wished she had never been born. As we talked together, I explained that God loved her as much as He loved the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. It did not seem to comfort her much.

Suddenly I had an inspiration. As we continued to talk, I drew a diagram that helped her understand why she was suffering from such low self-esteem. On a piece of paper, I drew a large circle representing the Christian life. Within the large circle, I drew two smaller circles, one representing the flesh, the other representing the Holy Spirit. “The flesh is influenced by Satan, and the Spirit is directed by God,” I told the young woman.

“Now, there is a control center or throne in every life,” I continued. “If self is on the throne, the flesh is in control, and Satan influences one’s life through the flesh. But if Christ is on the throne, God is directing our lives through His Spirit.

“Galatians 5:16-17 tells us that the flesh wars against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. As long as we live, there will be this warfare. Whenever you allow your mind to think upon anything that is contrary to the Word and will of God, you know that it is all being orchestrated by Satan through the flesh, because self is in control. On the other hand, good thoughts about yourself, the things that are godly, and the things that draw you to Christ come from God through His Spirit.”

Then I asked her, “Who do you think is making you feel so negative about yourself and trying to destroy your self-esteem?”

Her face brightened as she exclaimed, “It would have to be Satan, wouldn’t it?”

I continued to explain this principle to her. “Now, let’s picture a tuner like that on a radio. If you don’t like a particular program, what do you do?”

She replied, “Well, I tune in to a different channel.”

I explained that she was getting a message from Satan telling her that she was unattractive and that nobody cared for her. Then I asked, “What do you want to do about it?”

She replied, “I want to tune in to God.” Immediately, I sensed that she was relieved. Her attitude had changed and her face was aglow with this new discovery.

Even though Satan comes against us through the world, the flesh and his demons, we can stand against His schemes. By faith we can reject the world’s value system, put our flesh to death, and resist demonic influence. In order to do these things, however, we must be consistent in praying, walking in the fullness of the Spirit, practicing spiritual breathing, and tuning out the enemy’s lies.

Defending against spiritual attacks successfully, we place ourselves in a position to at last say goodbye to our sinful habits.

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Prayer 3: “God, forgive me.”

Once people feel the full weight of what they have done by their sin, they often move into fix-it mode. They want to do a greater amount of good than the harm they have done. Or they want to penalize themselves in some way, as if they could in that way pay for their wrongdoing. Some people would like the third prayer of repentance to be “God, watch me make up for what I have done.” But no, that will not do. All such efforts must be futile. We can only go to God in faith and plead, “Forgive me.”

God’s forgiveness is an extraordinary thing. Because of His unmatched love, it comes as a free gift to those who are prepared to humble themselves before Him. One person, indeed, did have to pay for sin (other people’s sin)—that was Christ dying on the cross. Now He has the power to forgive our sins when we turn to Him in repentance. Freely He grants this forgiveness.

The sacrificial system of the Old Testament era offered a set of rituals by which one could seek forgiveness. But as the book of Hebrews says, in Christ we have a better way. “He came once for all time, at the end of the age, to remove the power of sin forever by His sacrificial death for us” (Hebrews 9:26). The work has been done. All we have to do is ask for forgiveness, and it will be given to us. Our guilt is gone!

The prayer for forgiveness is so important that Jesus made it a part of the model prayer He gave us: “Forgive us our sins” (Matthew 6:12). As often as we need to pray this, we can pray it. And as often as we do pray it in sincerity, God will grant our request for the sake of Christ.

John expressed the free nature of Christ’s forgiveness of sin when he wrote, “If we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong” (1 John 1:9).

Prayer 4: “God, cleanse me.”

We are all sinners and none of us can remove the spiritually staining effects of our sin. We need the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit to wash us clean, spiritually, when we repent. “God, cleanse me,” we pray. And He says, “I will!” Yet some do not want to proceed to this stage of repentance.

Here is the Lord’s promise to all who sense themselves blemished by their sinful wrongs and desire to be cleansed: “No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).

King David understood the need for cleansing from sin. After his sin of adultery with Bathsheba, he composed Psalm 51 as a hymn pleading for purification on the basis of his “broken and repentant heart” (verse 17). He invited God to purify him with hyssop and wash him “whiter than snow” (verse 7). He asked God to create in him “a clean heart” and renew in him “a right spirit” (verse 10). The opening of the psalm runs like this:

Have mercy on me, O God,
because of your unfailing love.
Because of your great compassion,
blot out the stain of my sins.
Wash me clean from my guilt.
Purify me from my sin. (Psalm 51:1-2)

There is no better feeling than to know you are purified and able to stand before a pure and holy God.

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Prayer 5: “God, empower me.”

When we pray for cleansing, we are asking for the spiritual effects of our past sin to be wiped away. When we pray for empowerment, on the other hand, we are asking for God’s help to avoid a repetition of our sin in the future. This is the fifth and last prayer in the process of repentance.

As we have said, the five prayers of repentance are progressively more difficult to say and to mean. So if we successfully make it through the fifth prayer, we can know that our repentance is complete. That’s because to say “Empower me” is to admit that we need God’s help if we are to remain clean after our repentance. Humility opens us up to every grace.

Particularly for the self-reliant type of person, the temptation is strong to try to remain pure through self-control alone. And of course, an exertion of our will is important in avoiding sin; we have our part to play. But in the end it is Christ’s power, through the Spirit whom He has sent us, that will enable us to walk away from sin. The power of sin, no matter how great it may seem to us, is no match for the power of God.

The apostle Paul, suffering from a “thorn in the flesh,” prayed for deliverance. God responded by assuring the apostle, “My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness.”

Paul was then able to declare, “Now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses. … For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). Perhaps recalling this experience of strength in weakness, on another occasion Paul declared that we believers have available to us “the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19-20). This resurrection power is the mighty power that we have experienced many times—and that you can experience too.

“The power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you through Christ Jesus from the power of sin that leads to death” (Romans 8:2). Believe it!

Doing Business with God

Having identified the five prayers, we want to make sure we have not left a false impression with you.

While each of the five prayers represents a crucial part of repentance, we have to remember that repentance is not a mechanical process but rather a personal process and a spiritual process. In practice, the different aspects of repentance blend into a single spiritual turnaround. Thus each of us needs to approach repentance within the context of an honest, ongoing relationship with God.

And since this process takes place within a relationship, it is not one-sided; God has a role in our repentance too. We can be certain that if we are sorry for our sin and want to embrace God, He will embrace us in return. “The Lord your God is gracious and merciful. If you return to Him, He will not continue to turn His face from you” (2 Chronicles 30:9).

Isn’t repentance a marvelous gift of God? He knows we will do wrong, and our sin hurts Him, but He loves us so much that He provides the means to repair the relationship existing between us. Repentance becomes a decisive step in enabling us to resist the temptations that trouble us.

Still, there is one more aspect to turning from our sin that we must consider. It is the companion to repentance and the result of spiritual breathing: apologizing to others.

¹ We are not sure what the “thorn” was, though it may have been a persistent temptation.

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Saying We Are Sorry

Just as we need to make things right with God, so we need to try to make things right with those whom we have hurt by our sin. In fact, Jesus said that reconciliation is so important that it is worth interrupting worship for. “If you are standing before the altar in the Temple, offering a sacrifice to God, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there beside the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God” (Matthew 5:23-24).

Unlike in our relationship with God, we do not repent to other people when we have wronged them by our sin. But we do apologize to them. The same humble attitude is required whether we are healing our relationship with God or healing our relationships with other people.

We can take the first three prayers of repentance (“I am wrong,” “I am sorry,” “Forgive me”) and turn them into statements of contrition to use with other people. Someone who has gossiped about a friend, for example, can go to the friend and say, “I have wronged you by telling stories about you behind your back. I am sorry for that. Please forgive me.”

Of course, when we apologize like this, we do not have control over how the other person will react. For our part, we open the door to reconciliation. Perhaps the other person will slam it in our face, or perhaps he or she will step through. All we can do is be ready to embrace the other if we get permission.

And then, along with reconciliation, another part of making things right is restitution.

When a crooked tax collector named Zacchaeus put his faith in Jesus, he volunteered, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have overcharged people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!” (Luke 19:8). Perhaps Zacchaeus was inspired by provisions of the Old Testament law stipulating that thieves were to pay back two or more times what they stole (see Exodus 22:1-4).

Thievery provides a clear-cut measurement for restitution: if I have stolen a thousand dollars, I need to return the thousand dollars—if not more. With other kinds of sin, the restitution may not be so easy to measure. But that does not mean we cannot still find ways to make amends.

We can set the stage for the Holy Spirit to heal the damage our sin has done to other people and to our relationships with them. Along the way, we will also be completing our duty toward God, who cares not only about how our sin has affected Him but also about how it has affected others. In this way, making things right with others can be considered a part of our repentance to God.

Repentance is essential when we have been caught in a web of sin. It takes us one long step toward healing of the soul. But it is not the last step. We cannot relax yet, because some of the fiercest fighting may lie directly ahead.

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What Do You Believe about Others?

It stands to reason that if we cannot see ourselves as we are, there is no way that our perceptions of others can be accurate either. We look at others through lenses that have been distorted by our own mistaken beliefs. We do not see them as God sees them.

The same truths about humanity that apply to us apply equally to others: we are made in the image of God (that’s good); we have been damaged by sin (that’s bad); we are enabled by God to overcome our sin (that’s really good). And so we should look at people neither as objects we can use for our own desires nor as superior beings who have a right to dominate us. Perhaps that is in part why Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) and “Do for others as you would like them to do for you” (Luke 6:31).

We are equal with others in terms of our humanity and how much God loves us. This is the truth that can help us relate to others more wholesomely.

What Do You Believe about How Life Works?

Beyond our mistaken convictions about ourselves and other people, we may not understand how the world really works. And so our choices about how to act may be equally as faulty.

One commonly held false conviction has to do with the purpose of human life. Are we here on earth for our own pleasure, or are we here to honor God? Let’s face it: hedonism makes for a workable philosophy of life. However, those who follow the “eat, drink, and be merry” approach to life discover at the last that they are spiritually bankrupt and that what they had pursued all their lives adds up to a heap of ash. Serving God is the harder road to take. Still, Jesus said, “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give it up for Me, you will find it” (Matthew 10:39). In the upside-down economy of God’s kingdom, the counterintuitive idea is often proved correct.

Another common falsehood about life is that we can get away with our wrongdoing. Of course, in human justice, this belief is often true. Many a criminal has escaped being caught, and many a guilty defendant has manipulated the court system to escape judgment. As a result, perhaps we have come to believe that we will find a loophole to slip through God’s justice, too. But there is no such loophole. God knows all that we do, and He will call us to account in the Last Judgment. We ought to admit with David:

I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night—
but even in darkness I cannot hide from You.
(Psalm 139:11-12)

True, Christ takes the punishment for our sins upon Himself when we trust in Him, but this does not mean that our sins are not known and will not be revealed (as pardoned sins) on Judgment Day.

A third type of false conviction about life has to do with God’s commands. To many, the biblical refrain “Thou shalt not” speaks only of restriction. They want to shout, “Hey, I can do anything I want.” But when they violate God’s commands, they find that it brings hardship along with whatever fleeting enjoyment the sin may offer. God’s commands are actually designed to keep us safe and give us a life of peace. Our suffering due to sin is a measure of how wrong we are when we behave in ways that are not consistent with the sort of people God created us to be.

God’s commands are given for our good by our heavenly Father, just as a human parent instructs a small child in what the child may or may not do.

As you endure … divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Whoever heard of a child who was never disciplined? If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children after all. Since we respect our earthly fathers who disciplined us, should we not all the more cheerfully submit to the discipline of our heavenly Father and live forever?

For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always right and good for us because it means we will share in his holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it is painful! But afterward there will be a quiet harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way. (Hebrews 12:7-11)

When it comes to our convictions about life, just as with our convictions about ourselves and others, we have to make a choice: will we believe the messages we receive from worldly sources, or will we believe that what the Bible says is true? If we will let the Bible form our ideas and feelings, we will find it easier to abandon our sinful ways. This takes us to the next step in the process of breaking a sinful habit: repentance.

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A Strategy That Works

In this life “we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror,” admitted Paul the apostle. Mirrors at the time Paul wrote were mere polished pieces of metal, and so their imperfect reflection, especially in the worst of them, well represented how the truths about life are often murky or incomplete to us. At death or when Christ returns, whichever comes first, we will “see everything with perfect clarity” (1 Corinthians 13:12). But how about until then?

On one of his missionary journeys, Paul and his companion Silas preached to a community of Jews living in a town called Berea in Greece. These people listened eagerly to the preaching, then “searched the Scriptures day after day to check up on Paul and Silas, to see if they were really teaching the truth” (Acts 17:11). They saw that the two men were in fact teaching the truth, and these Bereans believed in Christ.

This gives us our procedure. We can search the Word, not only to test what others are saying, but also to check up on what we ourselves think and feel about things. After all, we pick up ideas from many sources, and these may or may not be accurate. Some older translations of the Bible describe the Bereans as “noble.”¹ It is a noble thing to test all our convictions by biblical revelation.

The Bible lets us see into the areas where we have blind spots. The Bible “is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right” (2 Timothy 3:16). In fact, we will not know that we are mistaken in our convictions until the Scriptures reveal our error. The Bible is a great gift that God has given us for our betterment.

The word canon—often used for the body of biblical writings—means “measuring stick.” Of course, each one of us has his or her own measuring stick for what is right, but our own measuring stick is never as reliable as that of Scripture. Let’s measure our beliefs by the Bible, identifying our false convictions and correcting them according to biblical truth. As our thinking and feeling become more godly, so will our acting. By correcting our convictions about ourselves, others, and life in general, we will be well on our way to beating the sin habit.

What Do You Believe about Yourself?

There are many false ways of seeing ourselves. These perspectives are fueled by guilt, insecurity, selfishness, pride, hate, and numerous other negative emotions. The input of others can serve to establish and reinforce these beliefs. Events in our lives may also seem to validate what we believe and have been told about who we are. The list of possible convictions about ourselves is almost endless. But are these convictions biblical?

We need to develop a scripturally based view of who human beings are. On the one hand, God loves us and has fashioned us in His own image. So we have great worth. On the other hand, we are finite, created beings who have been twisted by sin. Thus we have every reason for humility.

In the case of believers in Jesus, we have been made over anew. “Those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The following verse reveals what is new about us. “All this newness of life is from God, who brought us back to Himself through what Christ did.” Due to our salvation, we have access to a whole new source of life. We are not depending on our willpower, our education, or any other personal resource to live a good life; we are depending on God. And that dependence is rewarded.

There are many reasons why we do not always live like the new creations we are. These reasons include tendencies in our personality, spiritual warfare, and the conviction that these two verses in 2 Corinthians are not really true. Nevertheless, we are new creations—we know this because God said it. And we can live as such, by God’s grace.

God said to the Hebrews, “You must be holy because I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44). Jesus echoed this sentiment when He said, “You are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). God makes it possible for us to be holy through the power of His Spirit.

This image of what it means to be human, as revealed by Scripture, is more realistic than any of our false and distorted opinions of ourselves. Furthermore, it gives us a real basis for triumphing over the sin in our lives.

Other opinions about who we are may have their allure, but the truth about ourselves is what we must seek. “Be honest in your estimate of yourselves” (Romans 12:3).

¹ See the King James Version, Acts 17:11.

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Our enemy, Satan, does not like it when we repent of sin. He wants to pull us back into sin as soon as he can, and he will use every weapon in his arsenal to that end. That is why we can never relax our vigilance once we have repented. Life happens day by day, and we have to be prepared for what comes our way.

The great Reformer Martin Luther famously categorized our spiritual enemies as “the world, the flesh, and the devil.”¹ These words may sound old-fashioned in the twenty-first century, but they represent spiritual realities that are just as active and dangerous as they have ever been. The “world” represents values that contradict the values of God. The “flesh” represents our sinful desires that continue to trouble us as Christians. And the Devil is our personal spiritual enemy, who employs schemes to entice us into doing wrong.

As we seek to break a sinful habit, we must use the resources of God to defend against spiritual attacks—the fourth of the five steps. We do this by overcoming the world, putting our flesh to death, and resisting the Devil’s schemes.

Overcoming the World

God made the world and declared it “excellent in every way” (Genesis 1:31). And even though our planetary home has been damaged by sin, we should not think of it as inherently evil. But the Bible uses the term “world” in another way, that is, to represent a system of values that is opposed to God.

We see this perspective, for example, in Jesus’s words to His disciples “I chose you to come out of the world, and so it hates you” (John 15:19). Similarly, the apostle John warned, “Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers you. … For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world” (1 John 2:15-16). The “world,” in this sense, is the enemy of Christians.

We are constantly exposed to worldly messages about what is important, and these messages can make it hard to live in a way that is consistent with our repentance. If we do not guard our affections, we will begin to place them on unworthy objects. The world is full of tangible things that can attract us. And of course, one person may place great importance on one thing, while another is interested in something else entirely. But if whatever appeals to us gets in the way of spiritual matters, as measured by our obedience (or disobedience) to biblical commands, it is a danger to us.

An exchange of value systems is possible. We are promised, “Every child of God defeats this evil world by trusting Christ to give the victory” (1 John 5:4). This means we go to Christ again and again for help to understand what He wants us to do and then to do it. We build our lives on the solid rock of His teaching, not the shifting sands of worldly wants. In prayer, we ask the help of His Holy Spirit to purify our value system so that over time we come to desire what God desires.

The apostle Paul told the Romans, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think” (Romans 12:2). If we have bought into the values of the world system, God can override worldly influences and supplant our unworthy values with His values. And as He does so, we become holy nonconformists.

¹ Martin Luther, Works of Martin Luther, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: Holman, 1915-32), 3:279.

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Both of your authors know what it is like to be ill. I (Bill) have been diagnosed with a progressive lung disease, while I (Henry) have suffered from Parkinson’s disease for years. For each of us, it was crucial to get an accurate diagnosis in order to begin the appropriate form of treatment for our ailment.

Equally, we both know what it is like to suffer from sin sickness—a more serious matter. And we know how important it is to get an accurate diagnosis for this kind of sickness as well. Sometimes the symptoms can be misleading. When it comes to sin, we often have to keep probing beyond the obvious explanation, because it may turn out that we have multiple cases of habitual sin at one time.

If you are reading Soul Prescription, chances are that you have one particular sin in mind that you want to deal with. Before you start trying to treat your troublesome sin, do a careful self-diagnosis. Consider whether there may be other sins in your life that you are overlooking or downplaying. Ask God to show you all that is wrong with your behavior. While we may have one dominant sin, rarely if ever do we have just one sin acting in our life at a time. We have many.

Sins often interact and feed on each other. It is best to treat them all, not just one of them. Otherwise, while one symptom may improve, others will likely grow more grave, and you could be worse off than when you started.

We cannot afford to take a simplistic a view of our sin problem. “The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Only God knows. With His help, we can keep testing and examining our lives to expose ever more thoroughly the wickedness that is lodged there.

The Bible as a Mirror

The sins in our lives are not like the stars in a constellation, with the number never varying and their positions remaining fixed. Instead, our sins are more like a flock of birds on a fence rail, with some birds joining their fellows, others flapping away, and the whole flock milling about. In other words, sins may disappear from our lives and then reappear, perhaps joined by others, recombining in a somewhat different form every time. There is, in fact, an infinite number of formations that sin may assume.

Because our sin diagnosis keeps changing, we need to constantly remain on the alert. First we need to be alert to what we are doing and thinking. Then we need to be alert to how our actions and thoughts line up with the Bible’s teaching.

We glance at ourselves in a mirror several times a day to see how we are looking. In the same way, Scripture is like a mirror that shows us who we really are. And we need to keep turning back to it to remind ourselves of how human beings are capable of going wrong.

The laws and commands of Scripture tell us what kinds of behaviors make God frown. The stories contained in Scripture show us the ways that real (that is, sinful) people like us have interacted with a holy God. In other words, both the Bible’s “prescriptions” and its “descriptions” help us understand our condition better.

Not only do we need to listen to what Scripture tells us; we also have to obey it. That was the apostle James’s point. “If you just listen and don’t obey, it is like looking at your face in a mirror but doing nothing to improve your appearance. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you keep looking steadily into God’s perfect law—the law that sets you free—and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it” (James 1:23-25).

The broad diversity of human sin appears in Scripture. These include sins of action, thought, and feeling. They also include sins of commission and sins of omission—that is, doing things that we should not and not doing things that we should do. “Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it” (James 4:17).

Identifying all our sins in a biblical way, then, is a prerequisite to successful healing of the soul. We have to know what sins to go after in our lives if we want to defeat them. What symptoms of a sin-sick soul have cropped up in your spiritual system?

One tool that may help you identify your sins is reflection on your own personality and how that predisposes you more to some sins than to others.

Select the right arrow (below) to continue reading Chapter 8. You Sin Diagnosis.

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