Ah, Spring in the South, What a wonderful time of year! All the plants and flowers are blooming…the dogwoods, forsythia, jonquils and azaleas. Our yards are alive with a riot of colors. Of course, here in the south, there is also a downside. We do have Spring Snow, a.k.a. pollen, It’s the time of year when we burst into song!
“Springtime and the breathin’ ain’t easy;
Everything’s yellow and the weeds have grown high.”
You know, pollen is a necessary for trees and plants to germinate, some of us may suffer, but pollen results in the beauty that is the South. But weeds…that’s a different story! Did you ever stop to think… we don’t have to cultivate the weeds in our yard. They just keep coming back year after year. We don’t water or fertilize them, they just grow… “like weeds”. We diligently try to pull them up but, inevitably, they break off right at the ground, only to sprout again. We spray and spray and here they come again. I am amazed at their resilience. It seems our yards have a “weed nature”! I am at war with the “weed nature in my yard!”
Likewise, in our own case, as Paul says In Romans 7, we are at war with the sin nature in us that competes with our spiritual nature: Not only do we commit sin, but it is our nature to do so. It seems to me that to let our sin nature take over, we really don’t have to do anything, much like leaving a yard untended. The weeds of sin will take over. Left to our own devices, we will choose selfish desires over what God would have us do most of the time. Proof of the sin nature abounds. No one has to teach a child to lie or be selfish; rather, we go to great lengths to teach children to tell the truth and put others first. Sinful behavior comes naturally.
I can personally relate to what Paul says in Romans Seven:
15 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do. 16 And if I do what I do not desire, I admit that the Law is good. 17 In that case, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh (my human nature); for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I do not want to do. 20 And if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin (nature) living in me that does it. 21 So this is the principle I have discovered: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s Law. 23 But I see another law at work in my body, warring against the law of my mind and holding me captive to the law of sin that dwells within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
But here’s the good news:
25 “Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
Romans 8:1:
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”
Romans 8:5
Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
So, how do we go about battling the sin nature in us?
Romans 12:2 (NIV)
2 “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. “
So what does this look like in the yard analogy? Well, it seems we will all have the old sin nature in us, just like yards will always have a weed nature but we can fight this just as we do with the weeds. Romans 12:2. talks about renewing the mind. What does that look like? Entering into some of the spiritual disciplines of prayer, quiet times of reading and meditating on God’s word, meeting together with other believers and sharing the hope within us in Christ Jesus to those who are without hope are just some of spiritual “RoundUp” methods of combating our sin nature.
It’s true, on God’s green Earth, we will be in a war, but one day, when we come face-to-face with Jesus, we will walk in yards that look like the fairways and greens of Augusta National, having finished the battle and won the war!
Praise God From Whom All Blessing Flow!
Phillipians 1:3