At War with Ourselves

As soon as we are converted to Christ, our old identity receives a death sentence. But it does not die easily. Today, R.C. Sproul prepares us to face the most formidable enemy to our spiritual growth—ourselves.

The papers are filled with stories of warfare and the threats of even worse, worse. Twentieth century man lives with a nuclear sort of Damocles over his head, worrying about whether or not he's going to be able to exist for another generation. But the very things that contribute to war take place in a much smaller scale every day at the level of interpersonal relationships. How much has your life been wounded or hurt by the anger, the hostility, or the insensitivity of another person?

And God is profoundly concerned about that. The great commandment is not simply to love God, but to love each other. And as we grow in grace, we are called to grow in that direction of the establishment of human relationships that are whole, rather than fractured, that are edifying, rather than destructive. It's hard to grow spiritually when you're estranged from your husband or from your wife or from your parents.

But not only is the problem of the fall of human nature a problem for my spiritual growth because I have to live in a company of people who are hostile towards my spiritual growth, who are rooting for me to fail, who rejoice when I stumble, but the biggest enemy of my own spiritual growth is who? Me. You've heard the axiom, "You're your own worst enemy," and we should add to it "and what a formidable opponent." Who knows your weaknesses more than you do? Who knows where to attack yourself inwardly more than you do?

And so we talk about the warfare that goes on between the flesh and the spirit. That's not between the body and the soul. That's between the disposition of the heart of the old man. That's your pre-regenerate desires. When you are converted to Christ, you are not instantly cleansed of sin or healed of the desire and disposition for sin. That old man is putting up a death struggle now with the new man that has been quickened within you by the Holy Spirit. One man put it this way, that a Christian life is like a chicken with its head cut off. Have you ever seen a chicken with its head cut off or heard of what happens to the chicken with a head cut off? You chop off that chicken's head, and what does it do? Just flop over, and a couple flutters of the feathers, it's dead? No, the involuntary muscles, that chicken starts running, squawking all over the barnyard without a head. Blood everywhere. It's a mess, creating all kinds of chaos and all kinds of destruction.

Now, for all practical purposes, that chicken is dead. Everybody knows it but the chicken. And that's what happens in your regeneration. Once you become a Christian, the old man in a very real sense now comes under the death sentence. It has been put to death, but its death is not instantaneous. It dies daily. Oh, but the squawking it puts up before it succumbs ultimately! It's going to fight and resist against that newborn principle in you all of your days, and just when you think you've mastered the power of the flesh is when it manifests itself in its most destructive force. And so we have to be understanding that what we're involved in is not just a question of discipline. It's warfare.