For quite a
while our home church has been exploring the contrast between two life-styles.
The first is the life of the Sark (flesh), and the second is the life of the
Spirit. The Greek word “sark” is what God chose to communicate that sin has
cursed us with a part of ourselves that wants to do its own thing, enjoy the
pleasures of sin, live independent of God, and decide for ourselves what to do.
The apostle
Paul gives a very clear description of the sark-life in Romans 7 and 8 where
the English word “flesh” translates the Greek word “sark”. He contrasts this to
life in the Spirit. Before the Spirit of life sets us free from the law of sin
and death[1],
we are bound to live in our sarks. Now that the Holy Spirit has set us free
from sin and death, we are able to live in step with the Spirit[2].
This past week
our focus has been on the contrast between the way the sark wants to pick
through options and decide what to do, and the way the Spirit wants us to
follow him wherever he leads. When our sark is trying to do the right thing we
will be wrong no matter how much we have thought it through. When the Spirit of
the living God is leading us, walking in his will is always right even when the
world around us believes we are wrong.
God has given
his children a new nature in Christ Jesus that is created to be like God in
true righteousness and holiness.[3] This
seems to be the fulfillment of what God promised when he told Ezekiel, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new
spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”[4]
Jesus’
brothers now have the option of listening to their sark, or living in this new
heart by the Holy Spirit. Paul expressed concern about this in writing the
Corinthians: “But I, brothers, could not
address you as spiritual people,
but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.”[5]
Much of the problems Paul had to address with the Corinthian believers was
simply that they were living as “people
of the flesh”, or sarky-people, instead of living in their new hearts by
the power and help of the Holy Spirit.
One thing that
is becoming clear to us is that handling things in the sark, or handling things
with our new hearts, leads us down two very separate roads. So, we have been
spending considerable time seeking to understand how to stay in our new hearts
in facing everything that comes against us. This has led us to three basic
dimensions of heart-freedom.
First of all,
when we are speaking to God about what people have done to us, how they have
affected us, and what we have done to others, we can only act as witnesses of
those things. We do not have the knowledge or wisdom to judge others, nor to
accuse them. We can only present to God our testimony of what we have
witnessed.
Secondly,
everything we bring to God we leave with God. We give witness to what has
happened, including confessing our own sins. We then leave it to God to judge
the situation, and apply his will however he pleases. He does not need our
advice, opinion, reminders or suggestions. He is greater than we are, so we
only need to testify and then trust.
Third, we walk with God however he leads us. We put off trying to
figure out what to do, and seek him to know what he is doing. If he chooses to
work on our healing, we heal; if he leads us into forgiving people who are
coming to us in repentance, we forgive; if he reminds us of sins on our part of
a problem, we repent; if he brings specific people into our lives who need
specific ministry from our part of the body of Christ, we minster to those
people as God leads us.
Our freedom to
live in our new hearts in the Spirit requires that we submit to God’s place as
Lord and judge over everything and everyone. It also requires that we surrender
to our place as dependent children of the living God.
This was
already made very clear in this Scripture: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all
your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”[6]
We could
paraphrase this something like, “Trust in the LORD with all of your new heart,
and do not lean on the understanding of your sark, your flesh. In all the
things you are going through live in constant acknowledgement of God’s presence
with you, and the Holy Spirit will lead you according to God’s will.”
As I said,
exploring these things has brought us to a lot of discussion and prayer about
how to stay away from our sarky-side, and stay in our new hearts where we are
living by the Spirit. I welcome any sharing about your journey in this. For the
moment, this Scripture seems to summarize the calling set before us: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep
in step with the Spirit.” [7]
From my heart,
Monte
PS: Many people fail at the Leave-it-to-God part of heart-freedom
because they haven’t yet witnessed to God about what is inside them.
© 2013 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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