Do you believe this statement? The Christian's deepest level of self, his truest self, NEVER desires to sin.  Needham explains in part how this is.  If this is true, how does this change what you do today and how does this change your perception of what goes on inside you?

This is a review of Birthright by David Needham with study questions added to turn them into lessons. These lessons are part of a wider study on Sanctification by Faith which has as its goal the fulfillment of Gal 5:16

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

I’ve set these studies in a specific order so that all may easily build on the foundation of Christ with the finest materials - gold, silver, and precious stones (1 Cor 3:10-13). God has gifted the Church with amazing evangelists, pastors, and teachers to help us in this building project (Eph 4:11-16). I invite you to study along with me. You can see an overview of the complete Sanctification by Faith study here. To go to the start of the current lesson (Birthright) click here.

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thess 5:23

3. I must be settled once and for all as to who I most deeply am and therefore where life is to be found.

This, of course, touches the heart of this book. Like scuba divers on the floor of the sea, the apostles knew they were living in an alien environment. They were not of this world any more than Jesus was (John 17:14, 16). Life for them had to come from above—from their true home. Though to the world, they may have appeared a bit strange—like sea creatures with flapping fins, masks, and wetsuits—they knew they were aliens. Because of this, they looked at life through different eyes. Their awareness of their new identity automatically produced in them a revolutionary change as to why they were alive—as to who and what it was that gave purpose and significance to their existence.

No longer was meaning or personal worth measured by prosperity or worldly acclaim. As needs arose, Christians willingly sold their lands and houses to share with those who had less. Paul must have echoed the testimony of many when he said, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have.… In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need” (Philippians 4:11, 12, cf. Acts 4:34).*

*Footnote One may assume that since Paul said “I have learned,” he was describing an extended process. Indeed, he learned through each experience over the years. Yet we dare not deny the radical transformation following Pentecost in which contentment in suffering came so quickly to so many.

In Hebrews 10:34 we find that remarkable statement, “you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you yourselves possessed something better and more lasting.” (How many of us are comfortable with that statement?) To whatever degree this awareness of life is missing today, to that degree holiness will be perverted.

For instance, if I wrongly assume that holiness comes in saying no to all of my desires in order to say yes to God (since I am primarily a sinner with sinful desires), then, on top of all the normally expected trials and disciplines and Satanic pressures, I will have to carry the added burden of my own self-pity. How radically opposite to this is Paul’s declaration when he said, “I have suffered the loss of all things…that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). In view of the positive (which was his desire) he considered the loss but rubbish. He knew that to say death to the flesh was indeed saying life not only to the glory of God but also to himself as a future partaker of that glory as a joint heir with his Lord. Christians who really know this can truly be themselves without being selfish!

Why Is This So Hard to Do?

If this truth is so biblically reasonable, and certainly wonderful, why is it that some Christians find it so difficult to believe that their greatest worth, their truest identity, is deeper than flesh (natural mortal humaness)? I believe the most common reason is they have already found their self-worth somewhere else:

in their physical attractiveness;
in their high intelligence, even their grasp of Scripture;
in their talents, abilities, giftednesses, even in their ministry successes;
in their material possessions;
in their warm fulfilling relationships with spouse, children, friends;
in their positions of power or control over others;
in their determination to fulfill their passions, even the biblically acceptable ones, and their success in doing so; in their spiritual disciplines;
and in the honor, admiration, respect, and acceptance they receive.

Why seek (or even be open to) any deeper self-worth or identity if these are working well enough?

Well then, how did this come about? In addition to the natural bent of flesh to seek worth in itself, most of us, from childhood on, have been programmed by our culture to measure our worth on a strictly flesh level. (Of course, there are many aspects of our mortal humanness that we should value.)

Because of this, it is not easy for any of us to have a wholesome respect for flesh level self-worth while at the same time rejoicing in a far deeper level. The first step is to at least admit that we have a shallow evaluation of our worth as God’s spiritual masterpieces.

Not the Whole Show

But awareness of identity is scarcely the whole show. It rather enables you to go forward in your discovery of meaning. Once identity is a settled thing, your focus is no longer self, but on life right there in front of you.^[1] Though the initial focus is on identity, the lasting focus must be on life. “And this is eternal life,” Jesus said, “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). John later added that if we truly know God, our active reaching out in love toward people would be the proof that our life indeed was from God (1 John 4:7–12). Hence, authentic life is always relational, both vertically and horizontally.^[2]

Yet if all of this is to be a working reality, I must be sure I have made that jolting discovery that my flesh—especially my inborn mental programming—is an inveterate liar. In fact, I must be prepared for frontal lobe attacks by my fleshly mind, stirred up by the devil himself, that none of the above is true. Sometimes these attacks will be so disguised they may even look spiritual. I can expect to be bombarded by proud assertions that if I really worked at it on my own, I could find not only significance and love, but I could even satisfy God.

We see this vividly described by Paul in Romans 7. “There was a time,” Paul says, “when I thought I was alive—a good, decent, God-fearing Jew. Then I made that devastating discovery that righteousness involved more than performance, more than duty, it involved desire—‘Thou shalt not covet.’ I couldn’t handle that. How could I stop wanting what I wanted?” And in that moment he watched life as he knew it shrivel up and die.*

*Footnote See Rom 7:9–11. It is in light of this realization he then cries out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from the body of this death?” (7:24) This sense of hopelessness as to finding life (a sense of personal worth, significance and love) is what Paul meant by the word “death” in Rom 8:2, 6, 10, 13a. This unique use of “death” should be seen in sharp contrast with his references to life in the same verses.

Often we hear of the need of brokenness. This is what brokenness is all about. It is that painful, pride-shattering discovery that “in my flesh dwells no good thing.” Before I will welcome with joyous enthusiasm God’s entirely new perspective, I must force myself to be devastated by the lecherousness of my flesh—it “lusts against the Spirit” (Galatians 5:17).*

*Footnote “Lecherous flesh” is the same flesh (functioning independently) which must be made a slave to righteousness. When this is taking place, a believer’s flesh takes on a beautiful significance as being the means by which the life of Jesus is expressed, physically, emotionally, and verbally by the enabling of the Holy Spirit.

Happily, Paul saw the door swing wide open to authentic life as he wrote, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.… If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:2, 13). Not only had God changed his heart (reconciliation), but he also made the joyous discovery that he was now alive to an entirely new dimension of existence: life in the spirit by the Spirit (regeneration).^[3]

Another Look at an Opposing View

Since understanding the mechanics of holiness is so important, I can think of only one other way to underline what is so much on my heart, and that is to take another brief look at an opposing view that seems to be so common today.

This view appears to be built on the idea that whenever you are feeling sinful desires, you are actually encountering your fundamental nature—a sinner. In those hot, pressured times, you either follow through with those desires and do what you want, or you by God’s strength resist them and end up doing what you ought.

Whenever you end up in one of those “interior cabinet meetings” by deciding to go against what you want in order to do what you ought, you discover a variety of emotional responses. On one hand, you may feel good because you know you’ve made some points with God by obeying his urgings. But on the other hand, you may also feel a sense of loss by your decision because you know you have missed out on what you really wanted to do. (Remember the illustration of watching TV?)

Yet whether or not you obey the “oughts,” you still must reckon with the true nature of the kind of person you assume yourself to be—at heart, a sinful person. According to this view, the choice to go against oneself is called “dying to self” or “getting self off the throne.”*

*Footnote I believe Ray Stedman has done an excellent job of exposing the inadequacy of viewing a Christian as having either ego (self) on the throne or Christ on the throne. (Ray C. Stedman, Authentic Christianity [Portland, Ore.: Multnomah Press, 1984], 90–91.)

Those holding this belief would say this is what Jesus meant when he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Didn’t Paul express the same thing when he wrote of “not seeking my own advantage” and of doing “nothing from selfish ambition or conceit” (1 Corinthians 10:33, Philippians 2:3)?

But self-denial may be understood either as denying selfishness and self-centeredness, or denying one’s essential personhood (because of its supposed evil bent). Before we choose the latter, we need to face the fact that Jesus, too, knew “self-denial.” He not only denied the desires of his flesh for food when he was tempted, but we may assume there were many other similar flesh desires he rejected because they interfered with his deepest desire to do his Father’s will.*

*Footnote The one Scripture section around which there is a special mystery is the record of Christ’s struggle in Gethsemane. There it would appear that he expressed a wish contrary to the will of his Father. “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not what I want, but what you want” (Matt. 26:39; cf. Mark 14:36, Luke 22:42). Some have suggested this was simply an expression of his human will that naturally would draw back from the cross. I suggest an alternate view. Could the repulsion he felt rather be the expression of his essential will as a person of absolute righteousness and spotless purity who most properly would react not so much against the impending suffering as against the impending reality of being “made sin” (2 Cor. 5:21)? The “will” of holiness would rightly stand against personal contamination. How could it ever properly be the will of a holy person to become unholy? Only the overriding purpose of his Father—which encompassed not only holiness but love, grace, and the necessary satisfaction of his own righteousness—would be adequate for the Savior to say, “Your will be done.”

Certainly for him there was no “sinful self” to take “off the throne.”

Fulfilling the Self We Most Deeply Are

Whether or not we realize it, the desire of our inmost self is the same as Paul’s—“for me to live is Christ!” It is correct to speak of Christian self-denial within the limits of a sense of selfishness or self-centeredness, both of which are enemies of dependence. But it is also fully biblical to say that I as a Christian—a self, a person—am to do the exact opposite of denial.*

*Footnote Concerning self-denial, 2 Cor. 5:15 needs to be evaluated. It is important to see that the statement “those who live might live no longer for themselves,” comes right in the middle of an important progression of thought. Paul begins the chapter by making a clear distinction between one’s deepest self and his mortal house. This follows with a contrast between those who take pride in appearance, who recognize people according to the flesh, over against the fundamental fact that a Christian is God’s new creation, God’s ambassador. To make the “oneself” concept of 5:15 a reference to one’s deepest self would be to go against the entire flow of thought. Paul would say “sad are the Christians who live as though they were still out to fulfill life as if they had not died with Christ, as if they were not ‘a new creation’.” Paul is saying essentially the same thing as Gal. 2:20. This distinction is most important. The Bible repeatedly asserts as sinful anything that is selfish, anything that manifests one’s concern or interest in oneself without regard for others. Thus Paul stated, “for Christ’s love urges us on” so that “those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.” Jesus expressed words quite similar when He spoke not only of the proper self-denial of his followers, but also of his own self-denial (see Mark 8:34; Mark 10:45; John 8:28).

I am to fulfill the self I most deeply am, even as our Lord Jesus fulfilled the self he was and is. Galatians 2:20 very pointedly underlines these distinctions.*

*Footnote In Gal. 2:20 Paul was not declaring that he had lost his own distinct selfhood; he pointedly stated, “I live.” But the “self” he was now was alive because it was inseparably linked to the will and life of Christ. The “self” that he once was—the “old self” of Rom 6—that “self” had been “crucified with Christ.” Nevertheless for very practical reasons, this risen, New Covenant life which now was his, was being lived “in the flesh.”

How very important it is for Christians to be taught quickly that when they were saved, not only were they justified, but God also performed those interior miracles that changed the focus of their selfhood from flesh to spirit.^[4]

Their deepest level of self, their truest self, never desires to sin. That self is always in perfect agreement with the “oughts” of God’s moral law.

Tragically, if in their early Christian years “justification by faith” was all they knew, they may struggle for years before discovering that the “oughts,” which so often seemed opposed to their “wants,” were not some nagging warnings of their conscience or God, but rather the longing cry of their own reconciled, regenerated selves. I fear the voices of well-meaning teachers have drowned out the voice of the Spirit who “bears witness with our spirit that we are children [born ones] of God” (Romans 8:16). (This might be a good time to turn back and reread chapter 4.)

Questions & Notes

1. Once identity is a settled thing, your focus is no longer self, but on _________. ↑

2. Authentic life is always _________. ↑

3. Not only had God changed his heart (_________), but he also made the joyous discovery that he was now alive to an entirely new dimension of existence: life in the spirit by the Spirit (_________). ↑

4. How very important it is for Christians to be taught quickly that when they were saved, not only were they justified, but God also performed those interior miracles that changed the _________ of their selfhood from flesh to spirit. ↑

Click on the "Birthright" tag below to see all the posts in this series. To go to the start of this series click here.