The just shall live by faith. The just do not live by the flesh.
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.” Gal. 5:19-21.
The flesh can’t do anything good. Its works are only sin.
Even when it tries to do something good, as it often does, the result is the same. The flesh is joined to sin, and there is no way in which the two can be separated. When the one is manifested, the other is manifested also. In life or death, the two must go together.
The flesh works whenever faith is absent. “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Rom. 14:23. When faith is present, God works; when faith is absent, the flesh works. The flesh cannot do the works that God does. The Savior declared this when the Jews asked Him what they should do in order to work the works of God. “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.” John 6:29. By faith, we receive Christ, and then the works that are done are done by Him. Consequently they are the works of God.
The great mistake which you make is in thinking that your flesh can do the works of God. Your natural mind is so ignorant of what those works areyour ways and thoughts are so far below the ways and thoughts of God— that you naturally have no conception of what righteousness is. Consequently you go about, like the Jews of old, to establish your own righteousness; and in so doing you miss the righteousness of God. You may get something that looks like righteousness to you, but if you depend on that, in the Judgment day you will find yourself terribly mistaken.
The Flesh in Bondage
When your flesh tries to do the works of God, there is manifested only bondage. Your flesh is in bondage to the law of God, for it is “not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” There can be no harmony between them. The Spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh against the Spirit (Gal. 5:17), so that “ye cannot do the things that ye would.” And this is what reveals the bondage of your flesh the inability to do the things that it tries to do, and that God has commanded to be done. Your flesh lusts against the commands of God and is utterly unable to come into harmony with them.
When your flesh stops trying to do the works of the law, you get a sense of freedom, not because the bondage is gone, but because you don’t feel it anymore. When you were struggling to walk at liberty you had a keen sense of the chains that bound you; but when you relinquished your efforts and sat down passively, the power of the chains was not felt. And if you are blind to spiritual things, you might easily imagine that you are no longer in bondage.
Your flesh is chained to sin; and whenever it tries to go in a direction contrary to sin the chains hold it back, and you realize a sense of bondage. But if you stop trying to go contrary to sin, you no longer feel the pulling of the chains. You may then, in your blindness, imagine yourself at liberty, and rejoice because you think you have gotten out of bondage into freedom. But you have no real freedom. You only have the freedom that Satan gives. For Satan holds your chains, and leads you captive at his will. So long as you move where Satan wants you to go, you don’t feel the restraining force of his bonds. The devil will give you enough rope so that you will not be unpleasantly conscious of your captivity. But the moment you try to leave the path of sin and walk in the paths of God, you find yourself in bondage, and try as hard as you may, you cannot set yourself free. You find yourself joined to sin, so that you can only go where sin goes also.
By the law is the knowledge of sin. Without the law, sin is dead. Rom. 3:20; 7:8. You are now conscious of your inability to work the works of God. But when the commandment comes, sin revives. Rom. 7:9. The bondage of sin makes itself felt. To the flesh, “the law worketh wrath.” It “gendereth to bondage.” Gal.4:24. It brings forth bondage, so that you feel it and realize it.
“The woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth … So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress.” Rom. 7:2, 3. When you are in the flesh, if you take the name of Christ, you become guilty of adultery, which is the first thing mentioned of the works of the flesh. Since the flesh is the “old man,” the first husband of the “woman,” then this husband must be dead before she can be lawfully joined to another. Thus when your flesh tries to work the works of God it becomes only an effort to commit adultery. Whatever your flesh does or tries to do, is of course but a work of the flesh; and if you do the works of the flesh you will not “inherit the kingdom of God.” Gal. 5:21.
Some Illustrations
Abraham tried at one time to work the works of God through the flesh. God had promised him that he would be the father of many nations, and of course Abraham was anxious that the promise should be fulfilled. But as Sarah his wife was barren, he had no son. So Abraham and Sarah set about working out the fulfillment of the promise. The result was Ishmael, the child “born after the flesh,” the “son of the bondwoman.” Gal. 4:29, 30. In this Abraham and Sarah showed a lack of faith, for faith would have believed that God could do what He had promised, even under conditions which seemed to make it impossible. And since faith was absent, what they did was a work of the flesh, and the result was a son born after the flesh. The flesh, attempting to accomplish the work of God, simply brought bondage.
Jacob and Rebekah tried to work out God’s promise for Him, when they deceived Isaac, and induced him to bestow the blessing intended for the firstborn, on Jacob. The result was a lifelong separation, with much suffering and deep repentance on the part of Jacob before he was restored to the tranquility of his early years.
Moses tried to work out the promise of deliverance for the captive Israelites by his own might, when he “slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand;” but that was not God’s way, and he was obliged to flee into the desert to save his own life. The fulfillment of the promise was delayed forty years.
This is the result of every attempt of the flesh to work out the purposes of God. It falls as far short of what God intends and requires as the human mind falls short of the mind of God. The promise is never fulfilled, the work never accomplished, until it comes through faith.
Deliverance Through Death
God has given you “exceeding great and precious promises;” but you can never know their fulfillment through the works of your flesh. “To Abraham and his seed were the promises made;” and only when you have faith are you the seed of Abraham. In the flesh, you are bound to the “old man,” the carnal nature, which is not, and cannot be, subject to the law of God; and therefore you cannot be Christ’s. But you can become Christ’s by being crucified with Him. You may meet Him and become united with Him at the cross. Gal. 2:20. At the cross your “old man,” your first husband, is crucified and put to death, and then you can be “married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.” Rom. 7:4.
Your flesh cannot be separated from sin; and therefore, in order that sin may cease, it must die. You are then delivered from the “law of sin and death,” the law which bound you to sin while you were in the flesh. “For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead [the law of sin] wherein we were held [because the flesh is dead]; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.” Rom.7:5, 6.
This is the wonderful change that is worked in you at the cross. The law does not die, but your flesh dies, the law of sin and death is abolished. The enmity between you and the law dies; the bondage ceases, and you become joined to Christ in faith, and the law becomes to you “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” Then the works of your flesh cease, and you work the works of faith, which bring forth the fruits of the Spirit, and you are an heir with Abraham of the promises made to him and to his seed.
Living By Faith- E.J.Waggoner, and A.T.Jones
Maranatha