Tuesday 20 May 2008

Crucified the flesh


And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. - Galatians 5v24

I have never understood man’s fascination with dead bodies. For decades Lenin’s dead body lay in a glass coffin and millions would stop to see it. (It may still be there, I am not sure) There us a human head displayed in a church in Drogheda here in Ireland and someone is always there praying before it. We once a group in charge of some saints body parts ring and offer to bring them to our church as a special blessing. I just don’t get it.

And yet, the word of God points out that we have the same problem. Our flesh is crucified, the old man is dead. Sin, the flesh, the old man, whatever you want to call it has no power over us. Yet somehow we are still drawn to this stench of death. It, to use a phrase from another context, “being dead yet speaketh.”

Just previous to this we read the marvellous works of the Spirit. What keeps us from walking that way? It is our morbid fascination with the stinking dead flesh. Our only real freedom will come when we united with our Saviour, but in the mean time our job is to remember that it is dead, and not allow ourselves to be tricked and deceived by that which is already dead.

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