A Thought For The Week Of September 14, 2015

"Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation - but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it." (Romans 8:12) Let's face it - the flesh leads us to temptation.I think that's what Paul meant when he wrote that we are not under the obligation to live according to the flesh.The flesh demands its own satisfaction and pleasure. There's no need to go through a litany of sins that the flesh might tempt us to commit. The first thing that would come to mind would be sexual sin, but that's probably just because for whatever reason Christians have a tendency to be over-obsessed with sexual sin at the expense of everything and anything else. I think that to live according to the flesh refers to sin in its broadest sense: it's a reference to living only in order to satisfy our own desires; it is to live selfishly. To live according to the flesh is to set as our goal only the satisfaction of our own wants. It is to lose sight of the needs of the other. This is at the heart of all sin. If we are concerned only with satisfying our own desires then we cannot live for our neighbours, which means that we must not live for God, who through Jesus tells us to live for the other. Here is what it means for Paul to say that we have no obligation to the flesh. It means that our priority does not have to be self-satisfaction, but should rather be - in some way at least - self-sacrifice. We have to meet our needs, of course. If our own needs of our dreams aren't met then we can't accomplish anything. And I would say that it is all right to fulfill some  and to acquire some of what we want, but if that becomes the focus of our lives and if we set ourselves to doing that in a way that harms others (or in a way that prevents us from helping others) rather than allowing us to support others then we have fallen into the trap of being under obligation to the flesh. As children of God we are to be led by the Spirit, with our primary focus on serving God and on others rather than on satisfying our own desires.