The Flesh is Dead, The Spirit is Alive

2005-08-11

Once on a retreat for three days I heard a former pastor lead several sessions on spiritual living. Here along with other various times throughout my spiritual journey, I have heard it said that the Christian life is based on “being,” not “doing.” I have meditated on what this means countless times since coming to Christ. I know that I have done absolutely nothing to be saved from the wrath of God. I figured I was saved by God’s grace, but after that I had to revert to works to become more like Christ. This, however, is a lie. The whole salvation process is not based on our deeds ever. It is entirely engineered by God.

Trusting Christ alone restored me to a relationship with God. Deepening that relationship is everything: confessing sin, seeking His face, communing with His people, the things which allow God to look into our hearts and draw us closer to Him. This pastor who led the retreat sessions I spoke of above related that the flesh is dead, but God speaks to our spirits, which have been made alive through Jesus’ death (see Romans 8:10). It was illustrated this way at the retreat:

I believe this is a pretty good picture of Biblical anthropology, though this is a simplified model, and some important categories are missing. The body is the world-conscious part of us, the soul is the self-conscious part, and the spirit is the God-conscious part. The spirit part of us was dead before we knew Jesus, but our spirits came to life when Jesus found us, and His Spirit came upon us. At that time the flesh was put to death. We are dead, but His Spirit lives in us. Yet the dead flesh still rivals our relationship with God, as Paul related from his own experience in Romans 7:7-25. Now exactly how we convert from dead-flesh living to alive-spirit living is a life long process. It is a journey that continues daily for me and it should continue daily for everyone. What would it look like for me to walk with God? How can I choose to live by the power of God’s Spirit and not by my own strength? As the only creatures that are both physical and spiritual, we must choose to want to find out the answers to these questions.