WINNING THE WAR WITHIN

We are all too aware of the conflict that rages within us, a war between our lower and higher natures. The problem is how to handle such a war, how to win out over all that is working against us deep down inside. No one is more sensitive to this problem than was the apostle Paul himself. One can feel his agony as he writes: “I do not even acknowledge my own actions as mine, for what I do is not what I want to do, but what I detest.” Most of us have lived long enough to be able to identify with such distress without difficulty. The good news is that Paul not only describes so well the nagging conflicts within us, but he points the way to victory.

He goes on in Rom. 7 to write about this warfare as a law or principle: “I discover this principle, then: that when I want to do the right, only the wrong is within my reach. In my inmost self I delight in the law of God, but I perceive that there is in my bodily members a different law, fighting against the law that my reason approves and making me a prisoner under the law that is in my members, the law of sin.”

By calling this a principle the apostle must mean that this is simply the way man is. We speak of gravity as a principle or law because the earth has behaved this way for so long. And so human nature has had certain general characteristics for so long that we can speak of them as laws. The implication is that it can be no other way: a law is at work within us and that’s that. No one escapes. We can all say at one time or another: “I do not even acknowledge my own actions as mine.” The intensity may vary from one to another, but we are all at war to some degree within ourselves.

The nature of this conflict within man has been a subject of concern to philosophers since the time of Plato, who described man’s nature as being like two mighty steeds before a chariot, who might dart off in different directions at any moment if they are not properly controlled. The controlling force is man’s reason, typified by the charioteer standing strong with reins in hand. But Plato learned, as did the Stoics who taught his doctrine of self-discipline, that the war within man is not so simply quieted as that. Aristotle and the Epicureans who came after him turned to “the happiness theory,” with stress on intellectual delights, as the answer to man’s dilemma. If he can find “the golden mean,” the life of moderation and contentment, then there will be inner harmony. But they too discovered that the war within man is indeed a law, as Paul was later to describe it, and that it could not be made inviolable by human ingenuity.

After a few centuries man’s effort to resolve the conflict went under ground, so to speak, in that the attempt to resolve it was by indirection. Monasticism was a form of asceticism, which is an effort to control the forces within by either denying, ignoring, or destroying them. This is sometimes done through such extreme measures as flagellation, by sleeping on sharp objects, wearing inadequate clothing in inclement weather, and subsisting on bread and water. Luther was going through all this when he rebelled against such futility and found inspiration in that great passage “The just shall live by faith:’ He saw it as “faith only,” and within the context of his experience he was right, for justification is by faith only, apart from any such works as man may devise.

So Monasticism, with all its attainments in scholarship and the disciplines of the soul, was like a broken tooth as a solution to the war within. The more the monks punished themselves the more apparent it became that such efforts only intensify the problem.

Modern philosophers are content to accept man’s condition as they find it. They join the psychologists in trying to describe it, but there are few who venture any kind of solution. They use such language as “What a chimera is man! what a confused chaos! what a subject of contradiction!” (Pascal) and “Man is a fallen god” (de Lamartine), but there is no real answer to the problem. The existentialists see it all as absurd and tragic, but offer no solution other than that man must learn to accept his fate.

Studdert Kennedy’s lines are appropriate:

I’m a man and a man’s mixture

Right down from his very birth;

For part of him comes from heaven,

And part of him comes from earth.

Rhinhold Niebhur is thinking this way when he sees man as a strange mixture of both good and evil, while Nels Ferre, another of our contemporaries, describes man as having “the drag of evil upon him” despite all his noble impulses. It is the answer itself that nobody comes up with. That we are a strange specie, filled with all sorts of contradictions, is apparent enough. What to do about it is something else.

But the apostle Paul had an answer, that’s for sure, and there is no indication that it came easily. “Miserable creature that I am, who is there to rescue me out of this body doomed to death?,” he cries out in his despair. His answer: “God alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Thanks be to God!” He goes on to assure us that there is victory through God’s Spirit: “If by the Spirit you put to death all the base pursuits of the body, then you will live.” Paul learned that man cannot win the war within alone, but if we are led by the Spirit there will be victory.

This is the force of Gal. 5:16-17, where the war within is set forth as a crucial struggle between flesh and Spirit. “If you are guided by the Spirit you will not fulfill the desires of your lower nature. That nature sets its desires against the Spirit, while the Spirit fights against it. They are in conflict with one another, so that what you will to do you cannot do.”

There can be no question but what there is an evil force within us. Whether Calvin was right in identifying this as inherent sin is questionable. It is enough to recognize it as the pull of our lower nature. Calvin could hardly have been right about his notion of “total hereditary depravity,” for there is also evident within us, at least within the Christian, the pull of the Spirit. Thus the warfare with antagonizing forces pulling against each other. Paul is employing a military metaphor in that he has the opposing forces entrenched, as if they are settled down for a long struggle.

Our task is to somehow suppress the demands of the lower nature and follow the promptings of God’s Spirit. We surely have something to do with the results of the conflict, for we cannot simply turn it over to the Spirit. The point is that the Spirit helps us, encouraging us and providing the necessary resources of strength. It is like a tug of war with the Spirit coming to pull on our side.

Victory really becomes a matter of will. What do we really want? If one really desires righteousness, he shall be filled. The Lord promises this. If we want a victorious Christian life, God will make it so. If we want to follow, the Spirit will lead. The crux of it all is whether we love our sins so well that we do not want to turn loose. And the basis of all our sin, remember, is our own vanity and pride.

The problem of dealing with our lower nature is illustrated in the story from Greek mythology. There is the tale of the sirens, beautiful but evil women, who lived on a rocky island. They sang beautiful songs that were irresistible to passing sailors, who were lured to their death upon the rocks. Only two ships ever managed to escape the trap of the sirens as they sang. One was Ulysses, who stopped up the ears of his men with wax so that they could not hear the beautiful and mysterious singing, and who had his men to bind him to the mast of the ship so that he would not be tempted to go. As Ulysses passed the island he was almost beside himself in his desire to go to the women, but he was bound and his sailors could not hear his cries as they could not hear the women. His ship passed on in safety.

The other was Orpheus, who was a great musician. As his ship approached the sirens he gave instructions that his men should listen to him play upon the flute rather than to the women. But the men found to their astonishment that they did not care to listen to the sirens when Orpheus played so elegantly, and they sailed on in contentment.

Many of us are like Ulysses. It is a teeth-gritting exercise to refrain from the desires of our carnal self. Despite our mad desire we sometimes manage to sweat it out and abstain. It is different in the case of Orpheus, for the men found a new affection in the music of their captain and had no desire for whatever the sirens had to offer. This illustrates the impulsive power of a new affection. Once we really love Jesus and hunger for his righteousness, the allurements of the vain world grow dim in their attraction.—the Editor