All week I’ve been hitting the point that we are physical and God is spiritual and this is the main reason why His wisdom is higher than ours, His take on life is so foreign to us.
Mainly I’ve covered this in relation to seeking physical things for our physical needs, but I dare say our desire to solve every problem with a physical solution creeps into our spiritual pursuits as well.
Sin is a spiritual problem that must be cured. It comes from our diseased heart and results from our fleshly lusts. Our flesh, dying body is selfish, wants its life preserved. It craves sustenance and wants what it wants. Lust breeds sin.
Sin is the result of seeking the physical not the spiritual (God’s way). How do we overcome sin?
There are many sinners who want to defeat sin. Sin costs a lot, embarrasses you when you get caught, hurts you and others. There are many physical reasons why some want to defeat sin. Sometimes that physical pain is enough to get people to stop.
There is no spiritual power needed to stop a sin. All you need is a greater physical payoff to stop it than to continue in it.
Enter legalism!
Odds are, all you’ve done is replace one sin with another–this is why legalists are so proud and arrogant with their self-righteousness. Some might be better served to go back to their original sin than be overbearingly proud and self-righteous. They’d certainly make better company.
The true battle is not against A sin; the true battle is against Sin in all its forms. There is no physical way to stop sin as a whole. The Law is the best weapon and the Bible concludes it won’t work.
The Law can tell you what right and wrong are, but it can’t make you stop sinning. In order to stop sinning and walk in righteousness you have to cease being alive to the flesh. The answer is for the physical to be made spiritual. You must be born again.
Legislating morality will succeed to a certain extent–if the punishment hurts the flesh more than the reward pleases it. But to defeat sin in totality, laws won’t work, nothing external will work. There is no flesh, physical thing that will give you victory over sin.
anti-itch meditation 