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The reason I say this is because repeatedly the Bible refers to the Law as something that is good, that reflects God's character and that there is something inside of us that seems designed to want to align ourselves with it. I believe that is the remnants of our original design and function still in place that is no longer usable in the way it was before the fall of humans into sin. But the very existence of an innate desire to want to be in harmony with the Law and with God was certainly part of humanities original natural design.
What I have wondered for a long time is, “How did the 'flesh' function before sin hijacked it?” I know from this side of the fall that the flesh will not be salvageable, though I also believe that we will get a replacement body for our literal fleshly bodies at the Second Coming of Jesus that is far superior than what we now have. But is that new body going to be just like the one Adam started out with or will it be a step up from that, an improved version?
I don't think it is a safe assumption to believe that Adam's pre-sin body was just the same as ours. There is strong evidence that his original body was clothed with light and he very well may have had powers and functionality that we would now consider supernatural. But on the other hand, maybe his body was version 1.01 of the potential that it could have become if he had remained true and loyal to God instead of swallowing the fatal lies from the serpent. I use the word “body” somewhat loosely because I mean all his mental and spiritual faculties as included.
I went back and listened to a talk by Jim Wilder yesterday about the “sarx” because I remembered that he had some very helpful insights on this and I had not listened to it for a long time. I was nearly overwhelmed by the time I finished listening to it because it was so directly relevant to where my study is right now. In fact, near the end of his talk he read all of the verses I am now studying using language that shed a great deal of light on this issue. He spent the whole study explaining the “sarx”, which is the Greek word translated into the word flesh in this passage and he showed how we received it in the first place. He gives it the descriptive name of “picker” to help understand its misfunction in our lives. I would highly recommend listening to it, even several times, or purchasing a copy of it online. He also has other talks on this subject that are extremely helpful as well in his Kingdom Munchies Series.
I cannot recall anyone ever talking about what possibly the legitimate function of our flesh might have been before the fall. But it seems that it has possibly exploited something in our original wiring that was used to keep us in harmony with the Law/character of our Creator. Something in connection with our will and our safeguarding, virus protection software that we were created with must have in some way relied on a connection to the Law to keep us in perfect synchronization with God and His perfect will.
As I thought about this this morning the idea came to me that everything in God's creation is designed to operate on the circuit principle. The very essence of love, which is the most complete description of God, is other-centeredness, selflessness and service for the good and benefit of others. All of creation was designed using this template and as long as we are in synchronization with that we thrive and experience peace and joy and satisfaction and fulfillment.
Sin has altered and attempted to reverse the circuit model and inserts a virus into our soul that causes us to believe that satisfaction and happiness will be found in selfishness, sucking life from others to nurture ourselves, making our primary focus our own needs and cravings, and helping others only as a means of getting something in return. It demands that life for ourselves can only be found by hoarding it, extracting it from wherever we can find it, and focusing first on our own satisfaction and happiness.
Maybe this gives me another clue as to how the Law originally fit into our design. If inverted religion causes a person to try to be good and righteous by directly focusing on the Law and attempting to keep it perfectly in order to impress and influence God to “save” them, they are attempting to operate the circuit of life in reverse. That might imply that before the fall the Law was used in an opposite function from what it is in dysfunctional religion today.
In my simplistic thinking I try to picture the mind/body/spirit setup as various compartments or functions with unique relationships to each other. Some time ago I posted a picture diagram of the soul that attempted to illustrate this. What I am now thinking is how the direction of flow in that circuit must have been affected by the entrance of sin which introduced the “selfishness factor” and caused the whole system to seriously malfunction in all sorts of unexpected ways. But where was the Law in the original design? Since it is good and is not dispensed with or set aside in salvation, how are we to relate to it in returning to our original schematic?
The flesh, or sarx, seems to have usurped the function of the Law from our original design. Or maybe it was inserted into our system between our mind, or heart, and the Law that caused a permanent distortion effect. However it happened, part of the problem is found in the various descriptions found all through Romans of those who are trying to serve God by a direct and primary focus on keeping the Law. But because of the presence of the sarx functioning in our life, that is not possible for anyone after the fall. But what I wonder is, was it even possible before the fall? Or is at least part of the problem the reversal of the direction of flow in the circuit?
I believe there was obviously an important function for the Law in our circuit before the fall. But it fit in so seamlessly that it was hardly recognizable. In a properly functioning circuit with the direction of flow in the proper orientation, the Law, it seems, would act more as a subconscious resource for the rest of our system. Or maybe it was accessed externally somehow through an internal portal or connection point so it could be used as sort of a data bank for our virus software to rely upon. In this original setup the Law was not the object of our primary attention but was a subconscious resource that supplied us the protection we needed to stay in synchronization with God's heart and character.
This concept seems to make a lot of sense since the whole process of salvation is God's working to restore us to our original design and function. And one of the most important procedures in the plan of salvation is where God writes His Law into our hearts. Evidently He is in the process of getting the pieces back into proper relationship inside of us, though that may not be all that is involved. In addition, the direction of the circuit must also be returned to its correct orientation or the circuit will still malfunction.
It is not completely clear in my mind yet, but it seems that the correct orientation and direction of flow might be something along this line.
Our primary attention – where we focus our headlight so to speak – is on the spirit part of our makeup with particular attention to listening to and synchronizing with the Spirit of God that keeps us in tune with His heart and feelings and passion.
This becomes our primary source of power that we depend on to satisfy all of our emptiness, cravings and needs for strength.
This primarily engages our right brain which is the control center of our whole being. However at the same time our left brain must not be ignored or sidelined completely, though it should be reset to remain in proper relationship with our right brain (which I believe is also referred to as our heart).
This sets up a condition or orientation in us where we can begin to really live from our hearts instead of relying on our head knowledge to be the control center for our daily life. With our heart in constant communication with the Spirit of God and being empowered with the selfless love of God flowing through our spirit, we can then begin to operate our circuit in the correct direction of flow and in harmony with the Law as it was originally designed to function.
In this arrangement, our left brain acts more as an advisor and counselor to the right brain instead of as a dictator or an abusive spouse. I think that maybe God designed two very differently operating sides in our brains to work with each other as an illustration of how a marriage between two very different kinds of people can operate when they are in proper relationship and keep a rich atmosphere of love in their lives.
So where does the Law fit into this salvaged system? I believe that it is in a sense saturated all through the system as well as accessible from an objective source. The intellectual mind can fill its library full of instructions and information about God's Law. Remember, God's Law is simply an external description of the principles that govern reality, not just a list of 10 terse commands. All of the true principles found in science and physics are also included in God's Law. The Law is simply a description of reality and the principles on which it functions. The descriptions of these principles can be stored in the libraries of the left brain for access by use of the right brain as needed. The more stocked that library is with truthful information the more freely the Spirit of God can access it for use by our spirit whenever the information is needed for use in times of decisions or crisis.
Those times of need are often very emotionally charged times. Maturity is the process whereby our right brain learns to quiet itself during times of intense emotion so that it does not cut off access to the resources of the left brain when they are most needed. The more mature a person is the easier it is for them to “act like themselves” during any intense emotions. Acting like ourself in this context means to act under stressful emotions the very same way we would act if we were not experiencing those emotions. That is one of the important reasons for maturity.
What Paul is describing in Romans 8 is what a circuit would look like while it is being restored to its original design. Because we still are saddled with the dysfunctional sarx that is constantly trying to advise our hearts and control our desires and choices, we have to always put up with its insistent and convincing clamorings while learning to always ignore them in favor of keeping tuned to the Spirit of God.
We have to have our focus changed from a focus on “keeping the Law” in order to be right with God to living “in Christ” Who is already right with God and has made us right with God “in Him”.
In the born-again life we still have a responsibility to keep our focus on listening to the Spirit with our hearts while ignoring the constant suggestions and logical ideas of our sarx. Our sarx will always suggest ideas that sound very logical, good and right. It represents itself as the good inside of us and its suggestions are always for our benefit and highest good. It purports to be a reliable source of counsel for living a good Christian life and its constant suggestions always sound very plausible and correct. But because it has a hidden distortion factor built permanently into it, whenever we follow its suggestions the results are always less than healthy and worse than that, someone's heart, those around us or own own, always receives a blow of death.
This helps explain the last verse in Romans 7. I often wondered why Paul would say he served the Law of God with his mind while at the same time he was serving the law of sin. But that is a description of the function of the sarx, especially a religiously oriented sarx. It focuses the left brain on the Law of God while the heart is kept in second place and its emotions also manipulated by the sarx. That of course causes our heart to get a very bad reputation and so we justify our dominant left brain's control of our soul by pointing to the fact that whenever we follow our heart we always get into trouble.
What we don't realize is that, in fact, our left brain is also being controlled by the sarx, only in a far more subtle way. By believing that, given enough information and right training, we can learn to make right decisions we are actually living the life most like the directions received from the sarx.
The sarx causes us to believe that we are capable, at least sometimes, of making right decisions on our own. This is most prominent in left brain dominant religion where we rely on our extensive knowledge about God and truth to make our decisions. But this is really living in the flesh, being manipulated by the sarx while fully believing that we are serving God and obeying Him. It is the problem of the religiously active people Jesus described who are so surprised at not being allowed into the kingdom and it is the problem that Paul has taken the whole book of Romans up to this point to uncover and address.
The sarx that we received at the fall has usurped the place of the Law written in our heart. It demands to be the relied on as the data source for our virus software. It sounds so right that we almost always fall for its suggestions because it feels and looks like the right thing to do, whether we are religious or not. It will always be present and active in us until the Second Coming at the earliest, so we have to learn how to live in a vital, dependent connection with the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus while still putting up with the clamoring of the sarx inside of our head. But it is only the principle or law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus that will truly set us free from the principle or law of sin and death under which the sarx operates.
