Flesh, Mortifying

The half-time show of the recent Superbowl exemplifies the lust of the flesh and the eyes, and the pride of life. Each choice we make changes our brains.

Our outward works show what we believe, what we worship, and what we aspire to become. Apart from God, all human works activities are potentially destructive.

A key to overcoming our sins is learning when to deny ourselves. Christ plainly declares that those who desire to follow Him must deny themselves.

All the medieval 'seven deadly sins' could be categorized as a facet of lust. God designed us to have proper desires, just as His desires are always proper.

Christ warns that we must do everything possible to annihilate sin - surgically going right to the heart or mind: the level of thought and imagination.

John Ritenbaugh, reminding us that God does not do things uselessly, and certainly does not need our physical goods, examines the role of the offering and sacrifice rehearsed at each Holy Day. The nouns offering and sacrifice derive from two separate Greek. . .

Richard Ritenbaugh, reflecting on an article in The Telegraph (UK), describes a cultural phenomenon known as "adolescent geriatrics"—when a senior citizen, ignoring the ravages of time, continues youthful styles, desires, and goals. Many 60. . .

Our pilgrimage to the Kingdom will not be easy; we will suffer fatigue from difficult battles with serious consequences. We fight the world, Satan, and our flesh.

Beyond the fact that our Savior Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross of some sort, He used its imagery to instruct His followers: He bids us to take us our cross and follow Him. David Grabbe analyzes what Jesus' command would have meant to those who heard. . .

How many of us go through life with our noses to the grindstone? Real life comes as a result of giving our own.

The most formidable foe in our spiritual battle is the flesh. We must mortify, slay, and crucify the flesh, enduring suffering as Jesus Christ exemplified.

Protestantism unthinkingly presents grace as "free." However, Scripture shows that God expects a great deal of effort from us once we receive it—it is costly.

True Christianity is no cakewalk into eternal life, but a life and death struggle against our flesh, the world, and a most formidable spirit adversary.

David Grabbe, claiming that the command to take up the cross has been sullied, tainted, and moreover smeared by Protestant heretical syrup, insists that the venerating of the cross (explicitly violating the Second Commandment) pre-dated Christianity by sev. . .

We are in a perpetual state of war on three fronts: (1) against Satan the Devil, (2) Against the world, and (3) against our own flesh. The most dangerous battle at hand is against our own flesh where we least expect treachery and where we have become the m. . .

John Ritenbaugh reminds us that we do not have immortality as a birthright (the lie which Satan told Eve), but that God is the sole source, making our relationship with God and God's judgment the most important focus of our life. One common denominator in . . .

Only by using God's Spirit can we gain the self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control to put to death the carnal pulls, giving us freedom from sin.

Mark Schindler, entering after a stirring song from Lancelot from Camelot compares Lancelot's boldness and vanity with Satan's self-adulation and self-worship in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. God has not set up us for failure, but if we can't control our inord. . .

We must don the whole armor of God, using His spiritual weapons to bring every thought into obedience to Christ, destroying the enemy's footholds.

Like the marriage covenant, counting the cost is the most serious part of the baptismal agreement, not something to be taken lightly.