How to Crucify Our Carnal Nature

Today, I want to point you to the positive alternative made possible through the Holy Spirit. And this positive alternative to legalism is direct personal union with Christ. This is a ministry of the Holy Spirit which I consider to be perhaps His greatest single ministry, but one about which very little is said in the contemporary church.

In Romans chapter 7, verses 1 through 6, Paul paints a picture of the alternatives: union with our fleshly nature under the law, which brings death, or being delivered from our fleshly nature through the death of Jesus on the cross on our behalf and being united through the Holy Spirit with the resurrected Christ. Those are the two alternatives. The first alternative is legalism. The second is God’s purpose for every believer in Christ. It’s a personal, spiritual union with the Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

Let me read the words of Paul now and then comment on them.

“Do you not know, brethren, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives?”

Once you’re under the law, the only way out from the law is death.

“For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man” in marriage, “she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, that you might be joined in a marriage union to another, to the one who was raised from the dead,” that’s the Lord Jesus, “that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.”

It’s an amazing statement, isn’t it? “The sinful passions which were by the law.” How can that be? The answer is that when we rely on our own carnal ability to keep God’s law, we are under the power of our carnal nature, and our carnal nature is not capable of anything good. Nothing good can come out of our carnal nature. Paul says,

“I know that in me,” that is in my flesh, “dwells no good thing.”

The only problem about most of us is not that we’re different from Paul, but we don’t know what Paul knew, because he knew he couldn’t produce anything good out of his fleshly nature.

Then Paul concludes this passage in Romans 7 by saying,

“But now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.”

You understand the picture which Paul uses is a picture of marriage. Paul says, when a woman is married to a man, she has to remain that man’s wife as long as he lives. If she departs from that man while he lives, she becomes an adulteress. But he says, if the husband dies, then she is free to marry another man. She doesn’t have the stigma of being an adulteress.

And this is the way Paul explains it. Under the law, we were married to our carnal nature. We were compelled to rely on our own natural ability to do what God required. Now, there was nothing wrong with the law. The problem, as Paul points out again and again, is in our carnal nature. We can hear the law. We can give assent to it, but we lack the power to carry it out because there’s something in each of us, a rebel nature that is made even more rebellious by the law. Paul says a little further on in Romans 7,

“I didn’t know covetousness until the law said, ‘Don’t covet.’ But when the law said, ‘Don’t covet,’ it produced in me all kinds of covetousness.”

That’s the rebellious reaction of our carnal nature.

But as long as our carnal nature continues to live, we cannot be married to anybody else. We are bound to it as long as it lives. But the message of the gospel is that our carnal nature, our old man, was crucified in Christ on the cross, and we are to reckon ourselves to be dead to that carnal nature. We are to reckon that dead. Paul says,

“You have become dead to the law.”

So when we see that our carnal nature was put to death in Jesus on the cross, we are free to enter into a new marriage. If our carnal nature was still alive, and we had been married to it, if we turned away from it and sought to marry somebody else, we would have been in the position of the adulteress. But once we grasp the fact that through the death of Jesus on the cross, that carnal nature was put to death, then we are no longer bound to it. So we can be married to another. And once that carnal nature was put to death, we were released from the obligations of the law. Paul says,

“The law has jurisdiction over a man as long as he lives.”

The last thing the law can do to anybody is put you to death. Once it’s put you to death, you’re not under that law. So through the death of Jesus on our behalf, as our representative, we were put to death and released from the claims of the law. Now we are free to be married to another. To whom? To the one who rose from the dead. How can we be united in our marriage relationship to Him? Not through the law, but through the Spirit. I believe, personally, this is the greatest single contribution of the Holy Spirit to our spiritual life is to make it possible for us to be united in a kind of marriage union with the resurrected Christ.

According to whom we are married to, we will bring forth the fruit of that union. If we’re still married to the flesh, we will bring forth what Paul calls the deeds of the flesh. Now, Paul lists these in Galatians 5:19-21.

“The deeds of the flesh are evident: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousings, and things like these.”

There’s not one good thing in that list. The flesh is corrupt. Whatever it brings forth is corrupt. It is evil. It is unacceptable to God. As long as we’re married to the flesh, no matter how hard we try to do good, we’ll bring forth the fruit of that union with the flesh. But once we’re set free from that union, and once we’re married to the Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit, then we’ll bring forth the corresponding fruit of that union. And in Galatians 5:22-23, Paul speaks about this kind of fruit.

“The fruit of the Spirit,” capital S, the Holy Spirit, “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

When you’re bringing forth that kind of fruit out of your union with the resurrected Christ, you don’t need to be controlled by a law, because there is no law against the fruit of the Spirit.

Let me just give you quickly, in closing, a picture of the kind of union that the New Testament speaks about. In 1 Corinthians 6:16-17, Paul joins together two things that at first seem very surprising. He says,

“Do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot,” or a prostitute, “is one body with her? For” he says, “‘The two will become one flesh.’ But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.”

Now, that’s a very astonishing parallel that Paul uses, in the flesh and in the spirit. In the flesh, he speaks about a man being united by an immoral sexual union with a prostitute, and he says they become one flesh, one body. But in the same context, he talks about being united with the Lord Jesus and becoming one spirit. You understand? There are two kinds of union. There’s a fleshly union. There’s a spiritual union. What the Holy Spirit does is enable us to be united in spirit with the Lord Jesus. And once we’re united with Him, we will naturally, not by a matter of effort, bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. You see, the question is not our effort. The question is to whom are we united? Effort won’t do it. Union is the only answer. And I believe that this particular union with the Lord is consummated in one way, through worship.

“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

I believe the climax of our union with Jesus through the Spirit in this dispensation comes in worship, when we become totally united with the Lord in worship. Something happens within us that is going to release all the grace and the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So bear in mind those two alternatives: united with your flesh through the law, or united by the Holy Spirit to the resurrected Christ.