Flesh

Flesh... the old man... sin... Who is this?

Spirit... the new man... righteousness... Who is this?

What are we?

I have always had this assumption that I am evil. After all, I inherited sin, right? Am I not born condemned? Am I not a vile creature in the presents of a great God?

Let me tell you something:                     YOU are NOT your FLESH. YOU are not the old man, YOU are not sin. YOU are the IMAGE, the PICTURE, and the REPRESENTATION, of GOD.

Fear of evil and change is something that many of us have. We are afraid to change ourselves. We think that sin is part of us, and subconsciously we imagine ourselves like an amputee with out it. In reality though, this idea that we are made of our sin is from the enemy.

First, let’s establish who we actually are, and I am a debater... and its time for Cross examination.

• Do you agree that you are made in God's image?
• Is God in any way blemished?
• Is he the perfect creator?
• Does He have every skill, or is he imperfect, and did he mess up on you?
• Would He create you in a way that did not accurately represent a part of Him?
• Thank you... No further questions at this time.

You see, God made you in His image, and in His likeness. You are a perfect creation. We are made in the image of a perfect God, so how are we sinners? That is just it we are sinners not actual sin.

At creation we were made like an easel, a frame to display a picture. As humans, were created to where garments, clothing. At creation God filled us, or clothed us in his perfect righteousness, yet in the fall we rejected that. We forsook our perfect garments and traded them for imperfect sin. After the fall man realized that he was naked; he was suddenly aware that without the perfect raiment of God he must be clothed with other garments.

Man was meant to wear things, to be clothed. We were many different things, but our clothes are not us. Unfortunately though, it is by what we clothe ourselves with, that we often measure our worth. We often measure by the garments worn… and I say that in both a physical sense and a spiritual sense.

God, on the other hand, sees us for who we are to become, the person we were meant to be. We are each unique frames, each of us is a unique person. We are each meant to display a peace of art, whose art we display is how we will be seen judged. We are that frame, but differing from the one hanging on my wall now, we were given something very great. We were given free will. This is perhaps the only thing given us. FREE WILL: The ability to act as wished and to reap the consequences. Using this “free will” we often let the enemy start to draw on our canvas.

When we are stained by the enemy’s pencils we look at ourselves in horror and grief. That is when God comes in to the picture. We are the frame and the canvas, the enemy has only pencils, but God has the great eraser and paints. God has the power to remove those blemishes into little bits of eraser crumple on the floor, and create a master piece of his own.

This is very easy to write and read about, isn’t it? But some how we have such a hard time in real life. Why? This is where Flesh starts vying for canvas control. The flesh promises temporary pleasures and delights. We are promised the temporary emotional high, an appeal to our fleshly desires. Emotions are perhaps the most likely to fall to the prey of the flesh. Emotional desires are temporarily rewarding when satisfied, and we learn to love the reward.

You and I are spirit. We are not this fleshly body that will die and decay. We are meant to be worn by a body, and that body is meant to be worn by clothing. We have free will over our raiment, or our image, for good or evil. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7 

 

So what is the point of this? Well, a few months ago I was struggling with my own out look on myself. All that I could see was how dreadfully wicked, sinful and horrible that I was. I was personally convinced that I could never be made right, that I was stuck, that I was so horrible that I couldn't be fixed. I was distraught over who I thought myself to be. That is when God told me where I was mixed up.

“You are not your sin. You are a beautiful child, created in My image. Right now you have many evil pencil marks from the enemy, but come to Me. I have the Great Eraser. I will remove your sins as far as the East is from the West. Then I will paint over you such a beautiful picture. You may only think them to be little strokes now, but in eternity you will see that they fit into my great mosaic. Let me make you a gem. You are not your sin. You have dominion over your actions. You CAN change. Never forget that. You, by My name, have conquered every sin. You are not trapped. For I have not given you a spirit of fear, but of power over sin and of love and of a sound mind.”