Sin Getting You Down?

This is a lot of scripture to dump on you at once, so if you want to get to what I've got to say about it, feel free to jump down below and then scroll up here for reference as to where I'm getting some of these thoughts. Also look at Kris Vallotton's last sermon; it took me this long to get it, and it just so happens that it gets to the heart of some of my more recent struggles, so I think it merits reiteration, even if for no one's sake but my own. [Edit: Vallotton's opinion and mine do diverge at a certain point, gotta say that so as not to mis-represent him here.]

I had to do a little de-King-James-ification to work this one out, so here it is through my ESV and even so, they use the word "law" so much that it baked a dang tuna-noodle casserole in my head (don't ask where the tuna came from). So here's Romans 7:18-23, 8:1-6 (ESV)

18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is,
in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right,
but not the ability to carry it out.
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not
want is what I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who
do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right,
evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war
against the law of my mind and making me captive to the
law of sin that dwells in my members.
[....]
8:1 There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ
Jesus from the law of sin and death.
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh,
could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law
might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the
flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their
minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live
according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of
the Spirit.
6 To set the mind on flesh is death, but to set the mind on
the Spirit is life and peace.

Here's how I'm seeing it:
Flesh = operates according to the law of sin and death
Mind = knows the law of God (we know The Rules)
Spirit = life and peace in Christ
Oneself = the "inner being" (Rom. 7:22), which can focus the mind on different things.


Our simple human time continuum naturally divides itself into three parts:

1) Before the law: people just acted according to their own, innate moral compasses; sin as such was undefined.
2) With the law (Old Testament): people now knew what sin was, so their minds fought with their flesh over what actions they would do, the good or the evil.
3) Now, with Christ: we walk in the Spirit, which transcends the whole mind-flesh, law-sin conundrum altogether.

This doesn't mean that the mind-flesh, law-sin war stops altogether; the law is still good and the flesh still wants all this sinning, so the battles rage on, but if you walk in the Spirit, that whole deal just gets a lot less central.

Imagine being able to concentrate on an infinite number of things at once (being the ULTIMATE multi-tasker): some of those things would be sinful things, from the flesh, just by virtue of our being human (and we're never going to stop wanting them; that's just the nature of the flesh).

But instead, we can only focus on a certain number of things at once -- there's a blessing in disguise (sometimes a very good disguise) -- which means that if I'm focusing all my mind on walking in the Spirit, there won't be any part of me LEFT to get into the sinful things that the flesh wants!

When you're not fixating on the mind-flesh conflict, it fades away, becoming less a giant field of land mines you have to get through and more of just a constant, annoying bickering somewhere in the background.

But if you get stuck in the whole sin-shame-guilt thing, go on back to that incredible fragment of Matthew 6:33 (ESV) --

seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness

and start walking in the Spirit again, and there you'll dwell with the Father and the Father in you, as Christ dwells within you, and the Holy Spirit dwells within you [cant find reference; argh!]. When that's all set up and equilibrated, actions falling out of that equation generally don't end up coming out as sinful.

Seek first that kingdom and a whole lot of the rest just takes care of itself.


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