“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (John 6.63)

The last issue of Iron Sharpens Iron asked the question, “are you fleshly, or spiritual?”  We drew a distinction between these two mindsets and motivations, and highlighted a problem for even those who are already Christians: they’re still infants in Christ—still fleshly.  Of course, most of these people don’t realize it.  It’s not that they’re unaware of the need to be transformed—they became Christians, after all!  But many Philosophy 101 students become hilariously overconfident in their ability to argue logically and effectively; and as a result they end up making fools of themselves.  In the same way, many new Christians, having “tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come” (He 6.5), come to believe that they’ve experienced the fullness of the kingdom of God and its good fruits, when in fact the seed planted in their hearts has only just begun to sprout.  Will there be any depth to their roots?  Will the thorns choke out their attempts to bear fruit over the course of their life?  Will they bear fruit a hundredfold?  We don’t yet know.  To continue the comparison to Jesus’ parable of the sower, these new Christians have received the word with joy—a good start!  But they’re in only the earliest stage of this new life, and we shouldn’t expect them to be mature. 

What kinds of mistakes is the spiritual infant likely to make?  We can see, through some careful reading in 1 Corinthians, several examples.  First, let’s remember from last time that Paul has lamented the Corinthian Christians’ fleshly mindset, saying, “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh” (1Co 3.2-3a).  He’s not done with this topic though!  The very next thing he says is this:

For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? (1 Corinthians 3.3b-4)

He’d spent the first two chapters of the letter telling them to cut it out with their internal divisions, putting themselves into competing factions.  Along the way, he discussed their elevation of earthly wisdom, when they should have been seeking God’s.  Where is their focus, then?  On the pursuit of wisdom.

In itself, that’s a good thing, of course—provided it’s pursued in line with God’s instructions and revelations.  But is that what the Christians of Corinth were doing?  Let’s take a quick trip through the rest of the letter, and see.

Chapter 5 outlines a perverse sexual scandal that the church has not seen fit to address.  Chapter 6 indicates that they’ve been taking fellow Christians to court over one grievance or another.  It also implies very strongly that they’ve been visiting prostitutes.  That’s a shock to us—Christians?!—but Paul, in the course of his argument to show them why this is so terrible, gives us an indication of what made them think this was acceptable.

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. (1 Corinthians 6.12-13)

The ESV puts the key phrases in quotation marks.  Of course, those aren’t present in the Greek manuscripts—punctuation was used sparingly, if at all, during the time the New Testament books were written, and in most of the manuscripts there’s no punctuation to be found (there aren’t even spaces between words!).  But it’s a good conclusion that Paul is putting these words into their mouths, as if they support the Corinthians’ freedom—as they saw it—to sin.  Why would they believe such a thing?  Some help comes from the next chapter, where we find this:  “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: ‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman’” (1Co 7.1).  One faction at Corinth was championing celibacy; another was encouraging fornication—and both claimed to have been transformed by Christ!

This sort of thing continues through the rest of the letter, including the extended discussion of food offered to idols in chapters 8-10, and the extended discussion of supernatural spiritual gifts and their use in chapters 12-14.  What had happened?  The Christians of Corinth got wrapped up in the metaphysical musings of human philosophy, to the extent that they detached the spiritual from the physical.  For some, that meant freeing their physical bodies to do whatever they wanted, on the grounds that it had no bearing on the spirit.  For others, it meant freeing their minds from the physical through asceticism.  Neither of these is what Christ wanted!  Both extremes—the overly-permissive and the overly-restrictive—would have answered, “No!” to our question, “Does the flesh matter?”  They were both wrong.

In this very letter, what did Paul say about the flesh?  “I discipline my body and keep it under control” (1Co 9.27).  The flesh is not to be the focus, but it does matter.  The flesh is where the spiritual transformation plays out, in our actions in the physical world.  We are not to be enslaved to the flesh; rather we are to put the flesh under the control of the spirit.  What you do in the flesh matters.  What you do in the flesh answers for all the question, “are you fleshly, or spiritual?"

Jeremy Nettles

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2.14-16)

This incredibly uplifting passage is found nestled between two sections of the letter in which Paul tears into the Christians at Corinth for a long list of sins, failures, and bad attitudes.  In fact, knowing that broader context makes it harder to receive and appreciate the encouragement in what Paul is saying.  He’s about to follow up these gently comforting words by saying,

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. (1 Corinthians 3.1-3a)

Reading these two passages gives us an experience of mental whiplash, because Paul deliberately contrasts the way things should be, and the way they actually are.  The line has been plainly drawn—on one side those who are spiritual, and on the other, those who are, as Paul says, “natural.”  Many is the person who finds consolation for his faults, by reminding himself that it’s only natural to feel or behave that way.  We live in an age of excuses and blame-passing, and for many years it’s been common to explain away vile behavior, finding a way to assign fault to anyone but the person who actually did the deed—in this case, the scapegoat is nature.  As usual, the lie begins with a kernel of truth—that the person who tempts someone else is partially responsible for the other person’s sin, and should bear a portion of the consequences.  Jesus warned against becoming stumbling blocks, for example saying,

“whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18.6)

But all too often, we go beyond this, and instead of allotting a portion of the blame to the tempter and the bulk of it to the sinner, we refuse to accept blame for ourselves or the people we love, and instead cast it all on the nearest convenient scapegoat.

Diverting blame, judgment, and especially punishment, regardless of the truth, is itself a natural behavior—little kids do it by instinct, and even animals do it.  But natural does not mean good, or right.  We shouldn’t console ourselves, or defend ourselves, on the basis that we’ve done something natural!  And that’s getting pretty close to the point Paul is making in 1 Corinthians—the natural person, that is, the person looking at the world from the perspective of the flesh or of the physical, cannot comprehend spiritual things.  They do not make sense to him.  In fact, we could describe “the things of the Spirit of God” as unnatural, although perhaps it would sound better to call them supernatural.  Can what is unnatural be good?

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5.22-23)

Of course it can be good!  Paul points out that even our law recognizes that such qualities as these are good, and never prohibits them.  But that’s not how the fleshly person behaves.  The fleshly person is motivated by fleshly desires to do fleshly things.  Paul provides us an admittedly incomplete list of these behaviors just a couple verses prior in Galatians:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. (Galatians 5.19-21a)

When we read this, we tend to imagine a single person engaging in all of these evil, soul-crushing behaviors at once, and so it’s easy to compare ourselves to that depraved caricature and reassure ourselves we’re doing ok.  But that’s not what Paul said.  Perhaps you’re not a drunk, a sorcerer, or a craven fornicator; but do you indulge your jealousy?  How often do you lash out with angry words?  Are you divisive, rather than a peacemaker?  All of these are works of the flesh.  None of them leads to the kingdom of God.  In fact, each one of these fleshly behaviors, even in the absence of all the others, is an obstruction between you and God, keeping you from the fullness of his love and care, keeping you from his presence.

When you become a Christian, you are reborn according to the Spirit, but that doesn’t mean the temptation to live according to the flesh will go away entirely.  Nor will it go away overnight—Paul told Christians at Corinth that they were still people of the flesh.  Salvation is fundamentally a very simple thing, focused on a complete change of mind, attitude, and behavior in a single moment—an act of submissive faith in surrendering through baptism.  But while we rejoice at the birth of a beautiful new baby, we don’t expect that the work is finished!  That child needs to be fed, nurtured, protected, and taught, and his life could still turn out to be a great tragedy.  It’s the same with the “infants in Christ” Paul addressed in his letter.  The new birth was cause to rejoice, but it’s time to grow up.  Growing up in Christ entails seeing the world as it really is—both the physical, and the spiritual.  Are you a spiritual person?  Or, are you only fleshly?

Jeremy Nettles

Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God accept you.” But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. And David built there an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. (2 Samuel 24.22-25)

The background of this little episode has to do with an unauthorized census and a plague sent by God as punishment for David’s lack of faith.  The idea was that, whether the census was for taxes, military conscription, or both, David’s help came from God, so why was he now assessing his own strength for the first time?  But the particular sin isn’t really what’s important right now.  Consider David’s response to judgment.  God had told him the pestilence would last three days (v13), but his sorrow led him to to the point of offering up a sacrifice anyway.  The owner of the land didn’t feel right profiting from David’s problem, and offered his own property as a gift, both to David and to God.  David’s response, “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing,” is a lesson lost on far too many people today.

Consider an illustration from current events: Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, after years of moving in this direction, finally unleashed an invasion of Ukraine, under the dubious justification of having been asked for help by the totally-legitimate and totally-not-funded-by-Russia-in-the-first-place separatist forces in the eastern corner of the country, and never mind that the invasion extended over pretty much all of Ukraine from the very first day.  He also said his invasion represented the “de-Nazification of Ukraine,” which was morbidly amusing, considering that Ukraine’s current president is Jewish, but let’s move on.  There has been discussion among political leaders around the world, as well as the usual risk-less opinion spouting by pundits across the spectrum, but at least as of this writing, no one outside Ukraine has actually seen fit to lift a finger in its defense. 

It’s not the goal here to answer the question, whether anyone should step in to help.  But it’s revealing how relatively united the western world has been in condemning Putin and shouting that something must be done—and yet what measures are actually under consideration?  No one wants to send soldiers to die on the other side of the globe, but everyone wants to spout off about how evil Putin is.  Everyone wants to threaten economic sanctions on Russia, but there’s less support for actually imposing them.  When there are finally sanctions, there are massive exceptions—rather than a complete embargo, Europe is happy to keep selling high-value goods to Russia, as well as buying gas and oil from them, which is the industry that keeps Russia’s economy afloat almost on its own.  Why?  Well, we wouldn’t want to hurt our own industries, would we?  Nor would we want the cost of energy to increase.  So the consensus seems to be that Putin is a very bad man doing very evil things, and someone should put a stop to it; but not me!  Perhaps you can see how Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others in the 20^th century graduated to greater and greater depths of evil, while the world looked on and shrugged.

It’s so easy to profess righteousness, then refuse to act in keeping with the profession.  But in the end, if we’re not willing to take a hit in the name of righteousness, it’s just a hollow shell.  Satan doesn’t mind us saying godly things, so long as, when the chips are down, we do his will, instead.  The invasion of Ukraine is in sharp focus right now for 40 million Ukrainians, but for the average person on the other side of the world, it’s just a lucid illustration of the struggle we face every day, which was with us long before the invasion started and will remain long after it's over.  We all face the temptation to say one thing, but do another.  Jesus took the Pharisees to task for this very thing, saying that

“they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others.” (Matthew 23.3-5)

They didn’t really care about pleasing God.  When they thought no one was looking, they made no effort.  But it wasn’t just a problem among those who rejected Jesus—Christians in the early church faced the same struggle!

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? (James 2.15-16)

We justify inaction by saying we don't have time, can’t afford it, or have other duties to fulfill.  These are common excuses precisely because they may be legitimate!  Whether we’re sincere in any one case is a judgment call, and we dare each other to make that judgment.  Look from the other side—rather than judgment, who receives praise?  When Christians in Judea suffered financial need, Paul says of the churches in Macedonia,

their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints…” (2 Corinthians 8.2-4)

It’s supposed to hurt.  It has to hurt.  When they knew it was going to hurt, these Christians gave anyway.  Go, and do likewise.

Jeremy Nettles

“Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst.” (Zechariah 2.4-5)

When Zechariah prophesied, the people of Judah had already endured a 70-year period of enforced exile from their homeland, due to the Babylonian conquest beginning in the late 7^th century BC.  Those exiled due to the Assyrian conquest of Israel, nearly a century and a half before, had been away far longer.  When Cyrus conquered the empire in 539 BC, he allowed them all to return home, but this promise came more than 20 years later, in “the second year of Darius” (Zec 1.1), 520 BC.  It was a risky and expensive trip, and it meant leaving behind homes, businesses, friends and family, and the relatively comfortable and stable lives they’d built for themselves over time.  Most of them didn’t go back to take up the task of rebuilding a nation from scratch, including Jerusalem and the Temple.  The Babylonians had destroyed the city’s walls, and it would be the greater part of another century before Nehemiah would come along and speed up the process of rebuilding them. This large city clearly needed to be fortified against raiding and plundering, and yet for that work to be done, people would have to move there and build.  But they didn’t want to move to Jerusalem, because it had no walls!  This Catch-22 scenario meant that the work on both the walls and the Temple dragged to a halt, and the great City of David remained a depressing collection of mostly empty ruins.

When God gave them this promise, he was deliberately invoking well-known events from Israel’s history.  God appeared in a “pillar of fire and of cloud” (Ex 14.24) that stood “between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel” (v20) while the waters of the Red Sea parted before them to provide their escape.  Later, the psalmist described God’s relationship with this city:

As the mountains surround Jerusalem,

        so the Lord surrounds his people,

        from this time forth and forevermore. (Psalm 125.2)

What about God’s glory in Israel’s midst?  There are several options for this one, but the most appropriate comparison would be the dedication of Solomon’s Temple, when

a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. (1 Kings 8.10-11)

But this last one introduces a bit of a problem to our interpretation.  It’s not that we’ve been reading it wrong; God did, in fact, bless and protect the Jews and Jerusalem.  He thus enabled them to build a majestic Temple complete with implements of immense value in gold—in a city with no wall to protect its inhabitants!  Even after the walls were rebuilt by Nehemiah much later, the city continued to expand in size, just as God said it would do, to the point that it overflowed its walls repeatedly.  At various times over the next few centuries, most of its inhabitants were outside of them, and might as well have been living in “villages without walls” until another wall could eventually be built to protect a larger and larger area.  The nation did indeed re-establish itself and regain some degree of respect from its neighbors. 

But it was never like the good old days, when David was king and no other power could challenge his might.  But the greatest discrepancy comes when we consider the last in this string of promises—that God’s glory would again be seen in Jerusalem.  In the metaphorical sense, perhaps we could say that Jerusalem recaptured its former glory, but that’s really not what God promised.  The primary audience for Zechariah’s prophecy expected the cloud of the Presence to reside in the Temple again.  And that never happened.

Did God fail to keep his promise, then?  No.  It’s not that we’ve been reading it wrong, but the fulfillment, at least in Jerusalem’s growth and renewed prosperity, was a bit underwhelming, considering the way God presented it.  That’s because what God really meant was bigger and better than they could have imagined.  This promise involves us.  A few verses later, we find this:

And many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people. And I will dwell in your midst, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. (Zechariah 2.11)

Who’s the “me” of this verse?  The prophet Zechariah?  Zechariah will dwell in their midst?  Whoop-tee-doo.  Is it, instead, the angel who was introduced earlier in the chapter?  We’re closer here, and can understand why the Jews of the late 6th century BC might interpreting it this way, but one would hope they at least furrowed their brow when they said it.  In fact, it’s ultimately about Christ.  The whole thing was about Christ.  His kingdom grows constantly, starting at Jerusalem.  It has no borders to confine it.  He is himself her protector, and an ever-expanding wall about her, guarding her against predators with a fiery fury.  And not only did he walk the streets of Jerusalem and in that city die and rise again, but now, in the New Jerusalem—the church—he dwells in our midst. 

The promises meant something to the returned exiles and their near future, but in the greatest sense it was always about Christ.  The exile is the world; Jerusalem is his kingdom, tasked with building his house and glorifying him.  What are we to do about all of this?  Zechariah tells us: “Up! Escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon” (Zec 2.7).

Jeremy Nettles

One of the most surprising turns in the story of the kings of Judah involves the king often considered to be the worse of the bunch: Manasseh.

And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah… And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem will I put my name.” And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. (2 Kings 21.2-6)

This guy is just the worst.  Yet his father, Hezekiah, was among the rather few kings in Judah’s history to be considered righteous, comparing favorably to the beloved King David—“And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done” (2Ki 18.3).  Of course, since Hezekiah’s life gets a fair amount of text, we learn about his mistakes, too.  For example, he displayed his immense wealth to visiting diplomats from Babylon.  Babylon wasn’t the sort of nation that inspired fear, at the time, but God told him what would be the consequence of his pride: “all that is in your house…shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord” (2Ki 20.17).

That’s a major consequence, and we clearly see the mistake that caused it.  But we’re left to speculate about what caused another consequence—why did this righteous king’s son stray so far from the pattern his father established?  We have all sorts of expressions, like “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” which we put to use when someone does something reminiscent of his father’s behavior; but they don’t seem to get as much use in regard to scenarios like Manasseh’s.  As his father, Hezekiah had some kind of influence on his son, but we can’t say whether Manasseh’s list of sins reflects a mistake in Hezekiah’s parenting technique or a stubborn rebellion on the part of the son (or, more likely, some combination of the two).

We’re ready to trot out the phrase, “chip off the old block,” when it comes to Manasseh’s son, though!

[Amon] did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as Manasseh his father had done. He walked in all the way in which his father walked and served the idols that his father served and worshiped them. He abandoned the Lord, the God of his fathers, and did not walk in the way of the Lord. (2 Kings 21.20-22)

When we read that Amon’s own servants got together and killed him, we’re almost ready to cheer them on—almost disappointed that “the people of the land struck down all those who had conspired against King Amon” (2Ki 21.24), as if the bad guys won.  He was a jerk, and we’re glad that he only reigned two years before being assassinated, meaning he didn’t have very much time to wreak havoc.  But what kind of king will replace him?  Well, Amon’s son, Josiah,

did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left. (2Kings 22.2)

How did this happen?  When we consider that Josiah was only eight years old at the start of his reign, we can surmise that he got a lot of help from advisors, and this explains a lot.  But there’s more to it.  Manasseh, after reaping some of the consequences of his sins, “humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers” and repented of his evil deeds (2Ch 33.12).  He did his best to clean up the messes he’d made in his younger days.  While his son and heir, Amon, was a real piece of work as we saw, it’s worth noting that Josiah was six years old when Manasseh died—Amon having become his father at age 16.  It’s clear that Amon wasn't a godly man, repeating his father’s many sins.  But as Manasseh drew near his death, he had the opportunity to be a better influence on his young grandson, who was in line for the throne, than he had been on his own son. 

As with Manasseh himself, we can’t credit all, or even most of Josiah’s righteousness to this hypothetical godly influence from the family patriarch.  The four generations between Hezekiah and Josiah demonstrate that sons do not always turn out like their fathers—they make their own choices whether to submit to God’s will, or exalt their own.  But we also see that influence—good or bad—can make a difference, and echo through the generations.  Is that any less true today?  Your relationship with God comes down to an intensely individual responsibility, regardless of external circumstances or influence, to live out an obedient faith in Jesus.  At the same time, Jesus tells us that “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Mt 18.6).  Paul tells us to bring up our children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ep 6.4).  The present generation will have a substantial effect on whether the next generations love the Lord and walk in his ways, or rebel and follow the road that leads to hell.  Use your influence wisely.  Start by seeking adoption into God’s household, through the intercession of his only true Son.  Then, imitate the Son and be conformed to his image, living as he lived, righteous and selfless.  Finally, work to bring others into God’s house—family, friends, and the little children, before the door is shut.

Jeremy Nettles