Do It Yourself
Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God. – 2 Corinthians 10:5Deliverance from sin is not deliverance from human nature. There are
things in human nature, such as prejudices, which the saint has to
destroy by neglect; and other things which have to be destroyed by
violence, i.e., by the Divine strength imparted by God’s Spirit.
There are some things over which we are not to fight, but to stand
still in and see the salvation of God; but every theory or conception
which erects itself as a rampart against the knowledge of God is to
be determinedly demolished by drawing on God’s power, not by fleshly
endeavour or compromise (v. 4).It is only when God has altered our disposition and we have entered
into the experience of sanctification that the fight begins. The
warfare is not against sin; we can never fight against sin: Jesus
Christ deals with sin in Redemption. The conflict is along the line
of turning our natural life into a spiritual life, and this is never
done easily, nor does God intend it to he done easily. It is done
only by a series of moral choices. God does not make us holy in the
sense of character; He makes us holy in the sense of innocence, and
we have to turn that innocence into holy character by a series of
moral choices. These choices are continually in antagonism to the
entrenchments of our natural life, the things which erect themselves
as ramparts against the knowledge of God. We can either go back and
make ourselves of no account in the Kingdom of God, or we can
determinedly demolish these things and let Jesus bring another son to
glory.