One of the things you get used to when you share the gospel is people who think you’re not a loving person because you inform them of some harsh Bible realities.

I’ve had unsaved people go on at length with me about their deep relationship with God, but the Bible says the spirit of an unsaved person is alienated from the life of God, cut off with absolutely no way to get in touch with God. Their soul is simply chained to their body and they are in captivity to their flesh.

“God is a spirit and the part of you that gets in contact with God is your spirit,” explains my pastor, Richard Jordan, in a study I have on tape. “When you trust Christ as your Saviour, a number of things happen. First of all, your dead, dark spirit becomes alive and the spirit of Christ comes in and takes up residence in you. And now you have a new nature.”

Every human has a sin nature inherited from Adam. God won’t accept anything a sinful person does on their own to try and win His friendship or favor. Paul says it’s all “dung.”

“The old sin nature has a bent to it; it has a part that tries to do good and a part that tries evil,” says Jordan. “There’s a tendency toward aestheticism and a tendency toward lasciviousness, and your upbringing, your social situation—all those kind of things—will tend to have something to do with which one of these bents your old sin nature manifests itself in.

“Some people go out into the evil things of the world and dissipate themselves, and let that side of the old sin nature reign and never seek to restrain it. At the same time, they never seek to enlighten the other side.

“Then there are other people who see the dissipation and the dilatory results, and they seek enlightenment. They say, ‘Education is the answer.’ So they go and begin to produce human good. And they produce these good works in their religion, in their philanthropy, their United Fund. . .And they do wonderful, uplifting and bettering things. They seek to better others and themselves.

“But all of it—good or bad—is all activity the flesh produces and they both produce pride.

“Paul says in Romans 7 that when he tries to do good works in the energy of that flesh, God won’t take it. God says all of our own righteousness is like ‘filthy rags.’ The moral law of God keeps pointing out that there isn’t any ability in this flesh to stop sin or to produce works God will accept.

“When you get saved, you’re spiritually circumcised and your soul and your body are cut loose and you’re set free. Now your soul’s no longer the slave of sin. You’re crucified with Christ and your body is reckoned dead.”

In Gal. 5:16-18, Paul advises Believers, “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

“For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

“But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.”

Two other great verses addressing this same issue are I Cor. 15:56 (“The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law”) and Romans 7:25 (“So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin”).

Jordan says, “Where does the sin get its strength? It’s the law that gives sin its strength—trying to perform good works to try and get God’s approval. Trying to stop sin by keeping the law.”

In Gal. 3:3, Paul argues, “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

“Nobody thinks they’re going to be perfected by doing evil things, but the flesh can do some good things that give a person the idea they’re going to be perfected by the good things they do,” explains Jordan. “You know what Paul said about his religion and all the good things he could produce walking in the flesh, keeping himself under the law? He said it’s just dung—horse manure. You see, he lost all his confidence in what he could do on his own.

“Walking in the flesh has to do with a motivating factor that says you do good things in order that you can please God on your own and that’s the law principle: ‘I’m going to do this and I’m going to gain God’s approval because I’m doing this good work.’

“The motivating factor when you walk in the spirit is recognition of your position in Christ and wanting to walk consistent with that position, and that’s grace. You walk under the grace principle. It’s about getting in line with what God’s doing today in the world and in your life, not in what you’re trying to do.”

As Paul puts it in Rom. 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

Jordan says, “Victory is obtained by objectively being occupied with what God’s made you in Christ. ‘With the mind, I shall walk with God.’ My mind is occupied with what God has made me in Christ as I walk in the spirit. The victory is in realizing, ‘I’m going to walk consistently with who I am in Christ and I’m not going to let somebody come along and put me back under the flesh to do good or to be bad.’ ”