Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Happy Reformation Day when "my flesh seems to be on a warpath"

Martin Luther by Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel 1884
HAPPY REFORMATION DAY!

As you celebrate today, enjoy these encouraging words from Martin Luther in his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, written around 1538.

When meditating on Galatians 2:20,
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Luther contemplated the depth of his sin and the beauty of the gospel,
Paul declares that Christ began and not we. He loved me, and gave Himself for me. He found in me no right mind and no good will. But the good Lord had mercy upon me. Out of pure kindness He loved me, loved me so that He gave Himself for me, that I should be free from the Law, from sin, devil, and death.
The wickedness, error, darkness, ignorance in my mind and my will were so great, that it was quite impossible for me to be saved by any other means than by the inestimable price of Christ’s death.1

Then, in response to Galatians 5:16,
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Luther rejoiced in the hope that we have because of the Holy Spirit living in us,
When sin rages in our body and we through the Spirit wrestle against it, then we have cause for hope. The lust of the flesh is not altogether extinct in us. It rises up again and again and wrestles with the Spirit. No man is to despair of salvation just because he is aware of the lust of the flesh. Let him be aware of it so long as he does not yield to it. The passion of lust, wrath, and other vices may shake him, but they are not to get him down. Sin may assail him, but he is not to welcome it. Yes, the better Christian a man is, the more he will experience the heat of the conflict. It happens at times that anger, hatred, impatience, carnal desire, fear, sorrow, or some other lust of the flesh so overwhelms a man that he cannot shake them off, though he try ever so hard. What should he do? Should he despair? God forbid. Let him say to himself: “My flesh seems to be on a warpath against the Spirit again. Go to it, flesh, and rage all you want to. But you are not going to have your way. I follow the leading of the Spirit.” When the flesh begins to cut up the only remedy is to take the sword of the Spirit, the word of salvation, and fight against the flesh.2


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