From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

A continual and irreconcilable war rages within every true believer in Christ. The Spirit wars against the flesh, and the flesh against the Spirit.

Our Position in Christ

At conversion, the believer is fully and completely justified in Christ before God, clothed with the robe of His righteousness (Isaiah 61:10). The Holy Spirit takes up residence within us. But we are still sinners. We are still "in the flesh." Martin Luther used the illustration of the farmers' dunghills in the fields of Germany. In the wintertime, the snow completely covered the dunghills - but underneath the beautiful white snow, they were still dunghills!

So it is with each of us - we wear the robe of Christ's perfect righteousness, so that we are really, perfectly, positionally righteous in the sight of God. Our sin problem has been dealt with, once for all. But underneath that garment, until we go to be with the Lord, we are still sinners in bodies of flesh living in a world under the curse.

Doing What We Hate

Because the Holy Spirit has taken up residence within us, there is an inevitable and irreconcilable warfare between flesh and Spirit. We might compare it to the body trying to reject a heart transplant. The transplanted organ is beneficial and life-saving to the body, but the body's natural defenses go to work to try to reject it as a foreign body. In the same way, the Spirit is a "foreign body" to the flesh, and the flesh constantly tries to "reject" this "foreign body." As the Apostle Paul writes, "the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish" (Galatians 5:17).

The association of sin with the flesh is so complete that Paul in Colossians calls the sins of "fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness" our "members which are upon the earth" (3:5). As Paul under inspiration so eloquently puts it in Romans chapter 7, we do the very things that we now hate, because of the presence of the Spirit within us.

Present Comfort, Ultimate Victory

Yet Scripture makes it clear that we can take great comfort in this irreconcilable warfare, because it is a sign of two things: First, the Holy Spirit in fact does live within us as the guarantee or down payment against the day of our ultimate redemption from these bodies of sin (Ephesians chapter 2). Second, the presence of this warfare in our lives demonstrates that the Holy Spirit is indeed at work conforming us more and more to the image of Christ (Romans 12:1-2; 2 Corinthians 3:18).

Through the grace of sanctification, the Holy Spirit will have the ultimate victory over the flesh. Those whom God justifies, He inexorably sanctifies, and ultimately glorifies. The "golden chain" of Romans 8:30 cannot and will not be broken. Our sanctification is not complete in this life, but we have the assurance that God will "deliver us from the body of this death.through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:24-25).

Our Duty in the Warfare

God calls upon us to submit to the work of the Spirit in sanctifying us:

But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

Therefore, brethren, we are debtors-not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs - heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. (Romans 8:9-17)

Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.

But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. (Colossians 3:5-11)

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