BOOK SUMMARY: THE ENEMY WITHIN - PART 1: THE POWER OF SIN IN WHAT IT IS - CHAPTER 4 - IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES

Paul says that the flesh is more than God's enemy; it is the enmity, the hostility, the pure hatred itself (Romans 8:7). 

IMPOSSIBLE PEACE

A treaty between God and the flesh is impossible.  Christ crucifies the old self and thus makes peace between us and God. When Christ appears, he'll annihilate the flesh forever. This is the only way that enmity is destroyed once and for all. Paul cried out for final deliverance (Romans 7:24).

GROANING FOR HEAVEN

God has graciously shown us love through his Son, making us knew people in him and filling us with hope and expectations of a new creation with God and without sin. Sin will not accept a cease-fire, much less a peace treaty. Some people try to quiet the flesh's rage by looking for ways to gratify its desires (Romans 13:14). But we must not provide for it in any way. Sin won't quench the flesh--it will only stoke it. 

ENEMY ENOUGH

The flesh has chosen quite and enemy: God. The flesh pits its desires against the Spirit of God in us (Galatians 5:17). What the flesh hates is God, so it resists anything that savors God, especially communion with him. We feel the hostility and resistance of the flesh when we approach God for God's sake. The flesh turns loving him into work. We dig through commentaries to find nuggets of truth to impress fellow Christians instead of searching Scripture to get a glimpse of our Beloved. The flesh weights us down making us drag ourselves toward Christ.

I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU

If there were even one small thing that the flesh loved about it, we'd have a little rest now and then from this indwelling sin. But the flesh loves nothing of God. If the flesh loved God's wisdom, we'd be able to meditate on the mystery of the gospel all day.  Sin resists every attempt to know God and to commune with him. The more something enables us to find God and feast on him, the more the flesh fights.

OUR CAPTAINS CURSE

The flesh will spit at God with its last breath. But there is in us a Warrior just as committed to the flesh's destruction. The Spirit wars against the flesh (Galatians 5:17).