Day 3522 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:5 NIV

“In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.”

Perhaps proving now rather ironic in that those who fail to learn from the past will indeed succeed in repeating it.

Yeah, such is the clarity seen when one humbly agrees to read the Word! In fact, while studying throughout Judges here lately, I’ve noticed that same message shared above strewn throughout the Scripture in what seems an invasive tie which binds the entirety of the book’s basis together with the fact that we’re still even today but a continuation of the calamity designed inside such a unanimous dishevelment as that of the leadership vacuum created when everyone does as they see fit.

Indeed, despite the fact that that very inclination is what eventually came to all but destroy Israel as a nation, yet it’s a pattern so repeated that we’ve not saw fit to repeal it even these centuries advanced from the common failures to undertake a lone reverence left to the Lord alone.

For even now, everyone does as they see fit. And this finds for us still a way of life in which our eyes are set upon the flesh as it’s still from the flesh that we seek to reap the substance of things assumed by the flesh of whom we were created to be overseers but instead have become but slaves. Indeed, we’re told plain within Scripture that the flesh is but a jar of clay created to house the holiness of which we were created in the image of He who is such perfected. We are vessels carrying a spirit throughout a wasteland in which it cannot find rest as here there is no peace.

And simply put, our conscience as created in the awareness of God cannot so easily abide by let alone reside within all this death that we’ve designed trying to force a life to unfold in accord with our way as opposed to His will.

Yes, in accord with, according to, in accordance with. We see those derivatives and variations of the word accord presented within this passage of Romans 8 speaking to the agreement between one thing and another for that is what an accord is. An accord as defined within its noun formation as “an official agreement or treaty” whereas when used in its verb context it’s defined as either the “giving or granting of something to someone or something” or rather as more of a conceptualization as considered inside the alternative verb format as defined by something or someone being “harmonious or consistent with” someone or something else.

And thus we see the simplicity of the danger of our walking in accordance with or according to an accord so fixated upon what the Word defines as death.

For that is what we read of the flesh, which is the particular enemy highlighted within today’s verse of Romans 8:5. It’s the same enemy we read of in the likes of Galatians 5:17, one confronted numerous times inside Romans chapter 7, one warned against in such readings as found in Christ’s teachings such as Matthew 15:19, even Philippians 3:19 seems to contend in the same direction of contention against a clearly contentious flesh.

Indeed, the latter says, “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.” That verse in Philippians is spoken with regard to what’s classified in the verse just prior as those who “live as enemies of the cross of Christ.” Which is right where Galatians 5:17 really comes in hard with the brutal honesty shown inside the fact that, “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.”

And that verse finishes by pointing out that, “They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.”

An obvious problem when everyone does as they see fit.

For as we talked about yesterday, “the world and its desires will pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” And yet again we see yet another tie binding yesterday’s verse of 1 John 2:17 with that of today’s from Romans 8 in that both refer to the differing desires as delighted in by either the flesh or the Spirit as they desire eternal opposites. Same message as Galatians 5:17. Same message as Romans 7:18. Basically the same underlying realization pointed out way back in Genesis 6:5 in that the Lord has now been forced to look upon a people who again live still as if they have no king and thus can do always only as they see fit.

“The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” And because of this, as we read of God’s having had enough of our sinful ways as spoken clearly just a couple verses just before this in Genesis 6:3 in which He says that, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

Because we are in contention against Him. Friendship with the world is enmity against God. Enmity, enemy, they sound and seem so similar because they are! Indeed, of this we read a little further in Romans just after today’s verse. Romans 8:7-8 tells us that, “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”

We are hostile to God! We cannot please God! We cannot submit to God! And thus we find that we are the very antithesis of yesterday’s hopeful opportunity found in that “whoever does the will of God lives forever.” And that is why we die, because we’ve lived in sin and sin is death as it was not designed to be a part of our life but came only when we chose to turn away from His will as seen inside that very first failure in regard to faith as proven in the Garden from which Eve took the forbidden and Adam didn’t think twice.

How often have we found ourselves thinking twice before giving into our lesser desires? How often have we relented from seeking or consuming what we found to be pleasing to the flesh? How often have we turned our eyes from the things we’ve learned to lust for? How often have we endured temptation to the point of suffering? How many days have we taken up our crosses in order to follow the Christ the only way such is done? How many times have we ourselves chosen the grave in which to shed our selfishness so that we might not succumb to its wicked appetites?

No, rather have we not tended to act first knowing we could ask to be forgiven later?

Indeed, still we do as we see fit, allowing the flesh to be the god of us. Again, Philippians 3:19 thus proving us the counter to His command as breathed through Paul in Colossians 3:2 which asks that we set our minds on things above and not on earthly things. Rather, we’ve leaned almost exclusively into the Philippians 3:19 which defines us as but a continuation of those who lived in such a way, so clearly against God that, “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.”

Earthly things being the god in our stomach that is a bottomless glutton for everything from glory to gold, and no matter how much of here we hold inside our hands or our hearts, it’s never enough is it? And despite the majority telling us openly that such emptiness means only that we need more of what is worldly, no, perhaps that inability to not feel empty when filled with all that’s worldly is there because there is no end to death just as much as there was at first intended to be no end to life. Again, that wasn’t God’s intended intention for this creation He’d invented.

He created us in His image, His image being one unlimited by time, space, matter.

But then He saw that once we left the Garden all that was allowed to matter to us was the material and the monstrous. And our having become what we’ve come to crave, He then declared that He would not contend with man forever as He wanted not to see His creation so desecrate itself upon delight in deceit and decay designed inside depravity. And who can blame Him? I’ve never been a parent but I cannot imagine watching your child just ruin themselves upon everything wrong they could come to crave.

I cannot imagine the heartbreak of seeing your children run away from you after a world of false gods and empty replacements. I can’t imagine the horror of hearing them scream in anger against you for not giving them the death of sin in which they’ve come to crave the grave whilst living in fear of the same. No, I cannot imagine them still decide to decline the Name that came to save them from the grave and the death we’ve all so richly come to deserve.

I can’t imagine anyone actively choosing death over life, until that is I open my eyes and see us all doing it time and again, again clearly against God.

And anymore it seems these thoughts I think constantly. You think 2-3,000 words it a lot! For me it doesn’t shut off!

In fact I was thinking about this after I finished sharing yesterday’s post and it just hit me in one of those moments in which all of the Scripture I’ve read and studied and sought my best to share as best I can just came together and left me with a realization as to the problem we’re in due to the path that we’ve chosen which has only led out of the Garden and into the grave without the courage to admit that we can’t do what Jesus did, and that thus if we go to the grave without Him, then too we will stay there without Him as He’s already left our death behind.

Which makes me wonder, why haven’t we?

Allow me to share what hit me yesterday in what I pray is able to bring a little clarity to our common and continued confusion of doing only as we see fit as if we have no king, no King, no God, thus no hope. I realized that if the Lord's will is that all come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9), which is defined as the turning away from sin which is death toward life as won by He who overcame death by becoming sin upon the cross, the victory thus of He who is the Son, well then we cannot live in such a way that His Word says is contrary to His will.

Let me hit that again.

For if His will for us is to live life, a fact evidenced in His creating us in His image as the only One who the I Am, an evidence offered yet again the accomplishment of Calvary ending in an empty tomb as again overcome by what Christ did on that cross as accepted only within the evidence of our turning away from sin which is death the likes of which He died, then we cannot continue to walk in the way of the flesh for here we see that the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit.

And thus we see that if the Spirit desires our life, then the flesh desires our death. And this leads me to yet again another question apparently too hard for us to consider, for judging by our patterns we haven’t, and yet it’s honestly one so easy it’s all but rhetorical. And that is why would we keep allowing the flesh, or those many living in service thereof, to inspire us as to how to live our lives when the flesh wants only our death?

For such seems quite counterintuitive for those who've long lived afraid of death.

Indeed, we read elsewhere that because of the Son and the sin He came to become on our behalf, that within that gift of His grace that chose that grave to save us of the death we've desired on account of such being what the flesh craves, that the death we fear has lost its sting.

Another question we apparently don’t take time to consider: Why give it back?

Why live as if it hasn't lost its sting? Just because the world refuses to let it go? Well friends, if you didn’t already know, please allow me to enlighten you to the fact that this world's dumb!

I mean, how else can we define the idea that's it's wise to decline life as such allows us to please the flesh and instead consider foolish the faith that gives life to a flesh already dead in sin? Again, counterintuitive, and at this point entirely counterproductive. Because we listen to a world that peddles death masquerading as life when we could, just as easily, in fact a choice easier altogether, listen to the Son who brought us the promise of everlasting life.

Indeed, why listen to death and those living in fear of it only so they can please the flesh that desires what they fear? It's madness when you think about it! And so why go along with it any longer?

No, and though I fail still more often than I should, I find that there’s an unrest in my heart, in my soul, in my life whenever I’ve given way to the flesh. For as I’ve found, the pleasure sought by the flesh lasts only a moment while the misery which always follows lasts months, years in some regards. Yes, I still feel the sting of guilt for things I did 20+ years ago, and I don’t know but that I can’t seem to forget them stands to me as evidence of their being things that I cannot allow again if I’m ever to live beyond them.

For we have to know both what we’re fighting against as well as who we’re fighting for if we’re to ever find the dedication needed to endure the battle that life’s become thanks to sin and our having lived so long in accordance with it according to the pleasure our flesh has found within it. I’m tired of being a slave to myself and my selfishness and the desires designed inside such a singular focus aimed only into the grave without a care as to how, once there, to walk out back into life.

My friends, Christ did that for us because He knew we couldn’t accomplish the same for ourselves having given our lives to pleasing the flesh which has come to live both in accord with the desires of the flesh and thus in enmity against the God who created the flesh to serve the Spirit rather than this other way around that we’ve come around to being unable to let go and leave behind.

But perhaps today we can begin again this battle for life against the death our flesh has come to both desire and thus deserve.

Not because it’s easy to embrace such a change nor undertake such a charge against the one looking back in the mirror. But friends, if that one looking back isn’t who we want to see, then what makes us think that God would welcome them either? No, we should be living lives that seek to honor our Father, not our fall nor the fallen who refuse to get up and brush themselves off and fight like life depends on it.

Because in the end it does. Not because we can achieve what Christ already has, but that we can certainly listen to a world that continues to inspire us all to simply not care about what He’s done as defined now by what we should be doing in light of such a gift.

We’ve all listened long enough to a flesh that clearly just loves death. What if we turned our ears to the sound of life as screamed quietly inside the still small voice which asks us to come back to where we belong and stop living then as if we belong where death reigns instead?

For nothing has changed the fact that none can serve two masters. Who then are we here for and what end does that lead toward? Because the only options are life and death. And we simply cannot live seeking the death in which sin deserves and assume that somehow we can find the opposite when this is all over and the rest of forever begins.

It doesn’t work that way. It works His way. And so if our lives are lived in accord with His will, it will go His way which is life. If we don’t, well then it won’t.

Simple as that.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold