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TRUE SAINTS ARE ALWAYS AT WAR WITH THEIR FLESHWe must acknowledge that God could have removed from us, even on the occasion of our salvation, every trace of sin. He could have wholly sanctified us then and there if that were his desire. He did very much for us at that time didn’t He, above all that we asked or even thought? He freely gave each one of us all things with Christ, didn’t He? Before we knew what we needed from Him He gave us such privileges as total forgiveness for all our sins, past sins, present sins, and future sins. He imputed to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ, all the loveliness of our Lord, and his obedience even to the death of the cross laid to our account. God then gave us a new heart; he put a new spirit within us; he gave us saving trust in Him. He then gave us a new Master and ended the tyranny of sin over us. He then gave us the privilege of adoption into his family. He then gave us a glorious inheritance, making us co-heirs with Jesus the Son of God. He then joined us to Christ-like a vine is in a branch so that the life of Christ could flow into us. He then gave us the baptism of the Holy Spirit so that by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. He then gave us the Holy Spirit as a seal sealing us until the day of Christ. He then sat us down in the heavenlies in Jesus as our eternal status. He promised that from that moment on He would supply all our needs richly and He would ensure that all things would work together for our good. He would allow nothing whatsoever to separate us from His love. All this He gave us, long before we had any inkling that we had to have all those blessings and resources and that status. He blessed us exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or even think.Our life in Christ has been simply one discovery after another of the truth that having Christ we have also got everything else. God didn’t explain to us as the years went by what we needed, and then wait and make us agonize and intercede until finally He grudgingly gave us that blessing and then another blessing. No! He blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. He dealt with us in grace not according to our understanding.He omitted nothing, but one thing He did not do at our regeneration, and that was to make us perfect in holiness, even though He could have. He reserved Christ-likeness until the moment we shall meet the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. Then, when we see Him, we shall be like Him, but not before.So it is made perfectly clear to us in Scripture that we have to live our entire lives as Christians confronting the remnants of sin within us. What is the consequence of that? The consequence is strife; there is an ongoing war between us, renewed and indwelt by the Holy Spirit and remaining sin. That conflict is what we meet in the Bible isn’t it? We see it in Galatians 5:16-17; “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want.” Our flesh is fed up with its union alongside our renewed spiritual nature, but the two cannot be parted. I as to my flesh and I as to my spirit are chained together. There is no possibility of a separation and no possibility of a truce. There is ongoing war; the flesh is always trying to prevent our obedience, trying to trip us up, turning down the thermostat of our hearts so that they grow cold, putting stumbling blocks in front of us each day, encouraging resentful critical thoughts of others, making us bitter and justifying our weak discipleship. There is an ongoing conflict, and so we find that we cannot obey God absolutely perfectly as we would.Again you find the conflict described in Romans chapter 7; “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” Rom. 7:15. Again he says, “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing” Rom. 7:18-19 He says again, “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members” Rom. 7:21-23. James describes our defeats in this fight like this, “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is drawn away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” James 1:14-15.So here is a battle we are engaged in that will never end until we see the Saviour. Face up to this reality. Know your enemy. That is half the victory, knowing who is attacking you. Don’t be surprised by him. The acorns of every sin are in the lives of us all. The sins that brought down Adam and Eve and Abraham and Lot and Jacob and Gideon and Manasseh and Jonah and Peter are all in our lives too. The sins that disgust you the most are in seed form in your life. The actions evil men perform that makes you draw in your breath and say to your best friend, “How could anyone do a thing like that?” I am warning you that the seed of that sin is in your life and that in the right environment it would begin to grow.It is because of this conflict that the Lord and his servants exhort us, “Watch and pray! Put on all the armor of God! Awake! Don’t sleep like others! Stand in an evil day and having done all stand! Yield not to temptation!” He exhorts his disciples because of the enemy within. There have been religious movements that have promised an end to the fighting between the Spirit and the flesh. A hundred years ago an American speaker and writer named Charles Trumbull wrote a book called The Life that Wins. He wrote in that book, “I have learned that as I trust Christ for surrender, there need be no fighting against sin, but complete freedom from the power, and even the desire of sin.” What an error! There is no secret that any preacher in all the world possesses by which any one of us can learn to escape from the activity of sin within us. I prefer roaring, spitting, shouting, angry sin to quiet sin. Sin is never so dangerous as when it is quiet. Sin is never less quiet than when it is most quiet. When sin is quiet we are to be most on our guard.The greatest battles I fight now are the same battles I fought when a young Christian.” The fight never ends; even on our deathbeds, we are fighting it.So we must sympathize with a new Christian who says to you one day, “Before I was a Christian, in some ways, things seemed easier. Now I find I’ve got new problems: I find myself at war with myself.” You know your response, “Praise the Lord!” You’re glad to hear that because that is how it should be. That is the mark of the activity of the Holy Spirit in your life challenging the corrupt and compromising patterns of your life which have gone on and on unchallenged until you were born of the Spirit. Of course, it had to be psychologically easier before your conversion. There was no indwelling Spirit. You could sing, “I did it my way.” There was no pressure being brought to bear on you by God the Holy Spirit to change your sinful attitudes and ways. Once you are born from above immediately your flesh is no longer having its own way and it lashes out and it kicks against you. New problems, for sure, an internal war, expect.