Two Minds

The mind of the Spirit is life and peace, but the mind of the flesh is death.

These two forces oppose each other. The flesh asserts itself and wants its will to be carried out, whereas the Spirit makes intercession for us according to the will of God with groanings that cannot be uttered.

Now, just as our Lord and Master, we need to suffer death in our flesh and be made alive in our spirit. While this is going on, people who are carnally minded come up with amazing ways to escape this process.

Instead of casting out the bondwoman and her son, people begin, once again, to make themselves slaves of the law. The flesh would rather live in bondage than die as an accursed thing on the cross. That is why people organize their own churches that correspond to an ideal, which they believe—according to their carnal mind—is the Spirit’s form of godliness. However, what we find there is an outward form, not godliness itself. The Spirit does create a form, but when people who are in the flesh try to adopt this form without the Spirit, then the form is nothing, because it only contains death. God desires spirit and truth, not dead forms.

Why would people rather remain in bondage to the deadness of the letter than walk on the way—just as it has been made? It is because they are enemies of the cross of Christ, the cross that brings death over the flesh. The word of the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, but to those who believe, it is the power of God.

The Spirit strives against the flesh and wants to put it in its rightful place—on the cross. Only then can people receive life and peace. Then bondage also ceases. Suffering in the flesh replaces bondage. The Galatians had begun to follow this way of the law, and people down through time have always been prone to do the same.

The flesh has yet another method of saving its life. People declare an unlimited freedom and promise freedom to others, even while they remain slaves of corruption. They strike out at these “slaves of the law” and point the finger at all those who are not brazen enough to give themselves over to freedom, which seems so desirable. However, the end result of this is death, because it is nothing other than the mind of the flesh. Hatred of the cross is once again at work.

Today, these two understandings are prevalent. Some choose to be “slaves”; others choose a “lawless freedom.” Both avoid the cross.

And yet God has opened a new and living way for us through the veil, that is, His flesh. On this way, we must suffer death according to our flesh, but in return we are made alive according to our spirit. Unfortunately, there are only a few who find this narrow way that leads to life.

The most important sign that someone possesses this grace is that they have no desire to be anything on this earth. And there is nothing that we fear more by nature than being nothing. Just stop and ask yourself, what is more prevalent in you—your nature or grace?