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Why don’t churches teach more about the flesh?
     I can’t speak for other pastors, but I can for myself: it’s hard for me to teach about the Inner Mess because I haven’t mastered the stuff I’m teaching. I’m still in God’s sanctification classroom, so my Inner Mess confronts me at every turn: “Who are you to tell people how to stop trashing their outer world? What do you know? Look at your life!” The Inner Mess itself makes the Inner Mess a very easy topic to avoid.
     Plus, the whole topic comes across as “negative” and most of us flock toward the positive. How many Christians will sit still for teaching that tells them they’re pretty messed up?
     I also have a hunch that, in our race to the practical side of Christianity, many church leaders have left the theological side in the dust. Yes, there are excellent exceptions. But the trends seem to be away from the kind of systematic, in-depth teaching it takes to do justice to a topic like the Inner Mess.
     The Inner Mess seems to be a complex, meddlesome, negative, theological, guilt-inducing, self-sabotaging topic. Fortunately, once you view your Inner Mess in the mirror of Scripture, you also discover the supernatural resources to unbury your life from the debris of a lifetime.

What key Scriptures address the Inner Mess?
     Look for Scripture passages that talk about the flesh, sin, the old nature, or the sin nature, depending on your translation. Here are some key passages:
Passages with extended discussions about the flesh: Rom. 5:12-21; 7:14-25; 8:1-13; Gal. 5:16-26.
     Passages about the “old man (person)” or our “past lifetime”: Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9; 1 Pe. 4:3.
     Passages about a generally evil or willful heart: Deut. 29:19; Jer. 7:24; 17:9; Eph. 2:2; 2 Pet. 2:10; 3:3; Jude 18.
     Passages about the mental aspects of the Inner Mess: Rom. 1:28; 8:7; Eph. 4:17; Col. 1:21; 2:18; Tit. 1:15.
     Other passages: Gal. 6:8; 1 Jn. 2:16.
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Why do you use the term Inner Mess instead of flesh or old sin nature?
     I coined the term, Inner Mess, because it conjures a picture of what I’m talking about. When I use terms like, “the flesh” or “carnal,” most people think of drugs, sex, and rock and roll. Others, like me in my younger years, think of the physical body, presumed (incorrectly) to be evil.
     However, the Scriptural concept is much deeper and more pervasive. The flesh leaves its slimy footprints on all our relationships, on our walk with God, and on a host of malfunctions within.
     The terms “old nature” and “old sin nature” are fine, except that they sometimes say too much. I want to avoid suggesting a separate entity, like a parasite or alien, lurking within. You are a complex unity.
 

What’s the alternative to the Inner Mess? Who else is riding on my bus?
     Your human spirit, not to be confused with the Holy Spirit. I call it your Noble Self. This is you at your best, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, displaying the life and character of Christ.
     The Bible calls this “the new man.” “…[P]ut on the new man [person] which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24). Every Christian is a new person with a new core. This core consists of you plus Christ; you fused to Jesus (Gal. 2:20). It’s the best “you,” the person you always dreamed of becoming. By faith, act like that person. Put on that new person.
     God didn’t obliterate your personality or turn you into a “Stepford Christian” when you received Jesus. Instead, he added the color to your personality and brought out the very best that has always been in you. You’re still you, only better.
     Plus, you’re never alone. Picture your inner characters, at a picnic, running a three-legged race, tied to Jesus. The more you practice, the less you stumble; the more in sync you become with Jesus.
     Your new nature comes pre-wired for true righteousness and holiness. Unlike your Inner Mess, your Noble Self inclines toward the WWJD lifestyle. It interfaces with the Holy Spirit who indwells you. You just need to supply a consistent stream of faith to activate it. And that depends on your level of maturity (Rom. 10:17; Heb. 4:2; Jn. 17:17).

Can you go more into the theology of the Inner Mess?
     Over 230 years ago, Augustus Toplady penned a hymn, perfectly capturing the twin malfunctions that constitute the Inner Mess. In “Rock of Ages” the hymnwriter sings to Jesus and asks him to:
     Be of sin the double cure,
     Save from wrath and make me pure.
     Why a “double cure”? Toplady knew that the flesh squats at the intersection of two sin-induced maladies: guilt and depravity. Hence the double cure, “save from wrath [guilt] and make me pure [depravity].” For background, let’s rewind to the dawn of creation.
     For his own sovereign reasons, God chose to judge the human race, not based on our individual performance, but on the performance of our representative. Adam stood as our first representative. We were, in effect, in Adam’s loins when he made his tragic choice.
     Paul affirms that when Adam sinned, we all sinned (Rom. 5:12-17). Don’t worry about the fairness of it—it’s actually God’s way of treating us better than we deserve.
     On the day Adam sinned, he suffered two immediate consequences. His status before God became guilty, and his personal being became corrupted. That corruption of his being affected his mind, will, emotions, body, soul, and spirit. It distorted every aspect of his life and triggered the processes of decay and death.
Both maladies cry out for a cure.
     Every descendent of Adam is born with the same moral profile as fallen Adam. The combination is deadly. Meet Original Sin. No wonder Paul warned, “For as in Adam all die…” (1Co 15:22).
     Your flesh, your Inner Mess, is the shrapnel that flew when your imputed guilt collided with your inherited corruption. It tore apart your soul and polluted your virtue. It all goes back to Adam, and like him, you need the Rock of Age’s double cure. The wounded, bleeding, dying, rising Jesus provided it in full.
     First, by his sacrificial, substitutionary death, he saved you from the guilt of sin. He changed your status from condemned to justified. When you received him as Savior, Jesus became your new representative. You no longer fit fallen Adam’s profile; you now fit the profile of Jesus Christ. That means that God will evaluate you according to Christ’s righteousness, not your own. Your deliverance from the guilt of sin is a past-tense, once for all accomplishment, and is the first part of Jesus’ cure.
     The second part addresses your corruption. By rising from the dead and coming to live inside you, Jesus immediately transforms your core identity; he puts new license plates on your bus, and climbs on board. Then he works to continually deliver you from sin’s corruption. He makes you pure—over time. He brings tough-love onto your bus, and repairs your malfunctioning body, soul, spirit, mind, will, and emotions. This part of the cure is an ongoing, present tense reality. And it depends on Jesus just as much as the first part.
     That’s why the Bible calls him “the Last Adam” who became, for us, “a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45).

Why doesn’t God just erase the Inner Mess when we receive Jesus?
     Can I get back to you on that? We don’t really know why, because the Bible has not told us. We do know, however, that when we meet Jesus, he will instantaneously complete that job, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor. 15:52,53).

How can you say that we should “grace” our Inner Mess? Doesn’t the Bible tell us to “die to self?”
     The alternative to gracing your Inner Mess is judging it, and I’ve spent enough of my life doing that to know it only makes things worse. Imagine a tribunal on the back of your bus, handing down guilty verdicts and prison sentences. Then what? How will you incarcerate your passengers? How will you execute a death sentence? What exactly are the steps in “mortifying the flesh” and “dying to self”?
     But, you argue, "Scripture commands it: “Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). “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” (Rom. 8:13). Aren’t you contradicting these verses?"
     Not at all. These verses command you to put to death certain behaviors, not your “self” or parts of your self. Your old self—you plus zero—has already been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20; 5:24). There’s no part of your identity left to crucify. There are, however, many behaviors that need the axe.
     Grace is an attitude of kindness toward the sinner. You have to love the sinner (you), though you hate the sin. But grace also becomes the power to transform the sinner. Dying to self means dying to any pretension that you can achieve God’s holy standards by your own effort. It means giving up and casting your confidence on Christ.
     That’s what I mean by gracing the Inner Mess. Be hard on sin, soft on the sinner. Draw on God’s power to subdue your Inner Mess passions. And have the muscular, yielded, maturing faith to keep reckoning yourself dead to sin but alive to God.

How does salvation affect my relationship with the Inner Mess?
     Before salvation: you are “in the flesh” (Rom. 8:9). This means that your Inner Mess formed the nucleus of your identity.
     After salvation: you are “in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:17). This means that your new connection with Jesus now forms the nucleus of your identity. But the flesh is still in you.
     Salvation deposes your tyrannical Inner Mess, but doesn’t eliminate it. It changes your identity from flesh-dominated to Christ-centered. When God saved you, he freed you from sin’s authority. As he sanctifies you, God frees you from sin’s power.

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What’s wrong with will power?
     Go buy a platter of the most fattening, delicious dessert you can imagine, lock yourself in a private room, and repeat the question. If you don’t have a sweet tooth, change the illustration to your area of weakness—pornography, judgmentalism, alcohol, or a pile of someone else’s money.
     Sheer human will power, unaided by the power of God, can never accomplish that which pleases God. “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).
 

What will it feel like when God’s power flows through me?
     Whatever you’re feeling like right now. When the power of God flows through you, you can feel brave or scared, strong or weak, glad or sad, happy or depressed, tender or angry. There is no official feeling of the power of God. This is what makes faith so important.
     There’s an apparent paradox. When Paul describes his missionary work in Colosse, he says that he labored—he put forth effort, he broke the sweat, he got tired, he did the striving—but it was by “God’s working which worked in [him] mightly” (Col. 1:29). In other words, even though Paul felt the weight of the work, he still affirms that God did the work through him.
     Your Inner Mess longs for fireworks. God delights in faith.
     To the Christians in Corinth, Paul asserts that he out-labored all the other missionaries, “yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor. 15:10). He was like an empty glove; God was the hand that filled him.
     When you use the Power Script, go forth boldly to do whatever must be done, and say whatever must be said, trusting that God will work through you. Yes, you’ll get tired. You’ll feel depleted. You’ll experience every human emotion. But at the end of the day, you will give thanks to God, who “work[s] in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen” (Heb. 13:21).

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