Sam Allberry: Winning the Battle of Body and Soul

I can't avoid the truth that Jesus loves being our Savior. It may be, well, I've failed Jesus again, and this is, you know, time number 374 with this particular sin. Jesus still loves being your Savior.

We will never out sin his grace. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson, and I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app.

This is Family Life Today. So when I first became a follower of Christ, and again, you know this, Ann, I hadn't really read the Bible. Didn't grow up in a Christian home, didn't really read the Bible. You went to church, but you didn't know the Bible. I fell asleep at church, so I didn't listen. So I'm starting to read the Bible as a young college-age man, and I thought, there's nothing in the Bible that I can relate to.

That's what I thought. I just thought it's this book that's, it's not real. It just doesn't talk about real life. And I'll never forget in my first month, I'm reading it on my own, and I stumble across Romans chapter seven, and I didn't know what I was reading at the time. Now I'm an astute master divinity scholar. Okay, so you're a brand new believer, and you're reading Romans seven. Yeah, and I read this, and I remember thinking to myself, that's exactly my life right now. He said, Paul wrote in Romans 7 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

He wants to do the right thing, but he's being so honest to say, but I struggle. I actually do the wrong thing. And I remember going to my mentor and saying, what is this about?

Because this is what I feel. This is my daily struggle. And it was like this body of flesh and desires that my body had compared to the spiritual life and the Holy Spirit God living in me. There was a war going on that was described in scripture that I didn't know what it meant and how to win this war. Because prior to knowing Jesus, you had given in to all of your bodily desires. Yeah, now I'm in Christ and I'm still struggling. I thought that would all go away, but it's still there.

So, I mean, you know, it brings up this topic of the body, the spirit, the flesh, the spirit. And I think we all deal with this and we need help. So we've got help in the studio with us today. We've got Sam Albury, who's with us to join us again on Family Life Today. Welcome back, Sam. Hey, it's always good to be with you. You're looking at us smiling about our little struggle here that we deal with. But obviously, I want to hear what you're thinking about that.

But let me introduce you a little bit. You've written a book called What God Has to Say About Our Bodies. And it's a fascinating theology of our bodies that I don't know if I've ever read anything else like this.

I think it's really unique, but really needed. And the subtitle is Why the Gospel is Good News for Our Physical Selves. We know that it's good news.

We know that the good news of Jesus affects our spirit, our soul, but we often don't connect the body to that. Yeah. So let's talk, Sam. You're smiling about my little struggle with my physical body. I'm guessing we all have that. Yeah. Talk about that a little bit. This body we live in and the spirit that lives in us, there is a war.

There is. And I was smiling purely in terms of recognition, because you're articulating what we all feel. You're not laughing at me. You're laughing with me. I was also laughing because you then said, you know, here's all the problems, but don't worry, we have Sam here to fix it all.

So I was wondering if I could pretend to have Wi-Fi problems. And passages like that in Romans 7, and there are other parts of the Bible where you get the same kind of real kind of this is what's going on under the hood in each of us. It's so reassuring, isn't it?

Yeah. I think we sometimes get our heads to the point where we think the Bible is kind of like an episode of the Waltons. It's, you know, and churches like this, and you've got to have your life together, and then you can come and open the Bible and sort of have all of your life together being affirmed. And you realize that the people in the Bible are a mess.

And they're a mess just in the way that we're a mess. And Romans 7 gives expression to what every single person on the planet feels in some way, which is there is something about my desires that is not entirely right. Even the most kind of cynical, far from Christ kind of person still would recognize that not every instinct and impulse within them should be indulged.

And we feel that battle profoundly. It's interesting Paul uses the language of the flesh as a kind of shorthand for our kind of sinful instincts. By doing so he's not meaning to sort of say that the body is evil and only the spirit within us is good because the body is affirmed throughout the Bible and by Paul himself. But I think it's because so much of our experience of our own worse instincts has taken place in our bodies. Our bodies have often been the vehicle for those impulses and instincts. It's been the crime scene of our sin and of other people's. And we bear in our flesh not just the scars of the sins that we have committed, but as well that the shame of sins that have been committed against us have often been committed in our bodies. So I think Paul is using the flesh for that kind of reason.

But he then kind of crescendos who can rescue me from this body of death and it can feel like that. Our impulses are so heading in the wrong direction in so many ways. So there is great comfort that that experience is expressed by an apostle in pages of scripture.

We can take some comfort from that. Every single one of us is a mess. If we're going through that Romans 7 experience ourselves, God is saying to us you are not on your own.

You are not the freak here. And the trouble is particularly when we go to church we can look around and it looks as though other people have got their lives more together than we have. That's because we're comparing their outsides with our insides, if I can put it that way.

Whereas if we could see inside of them we would see the very same struggle and battles as well. And as you come to faith you begin to realise why that's the case and how that's been the case. You're more aware of the battle now because you have more of a sensitivity to sin and more of a desire to go God's ways. But as you said we often think oh well now I'm a Christian this will all get sorted out and I'll be fixed.

Give myself a couple of weeks, you know. But basically these things will all sort themselves out and I'll kind of move forwards in a sort of happy coherent kind of way. And we realise that's not the case. We do have the gift of the Spirit, we do have new hearts.

But as I sometimes put it we have new creation software on old creation hardware. For as long as we are in these bodies we will still be wrestling with our sinful nature with all of those instincts of the flesh that Paul is talking about. Well let's talk about, you know, from your experience in biblically how do you win that battle with the flesh? You know you go to another book that Paul wrote in Galatians, you know, verse 16 chapter 5. He says, you know, but I say walk by the Spirit, capital S, Holy Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. And I can remember one of my first years in ministry, I've written about this, standing in front of a TV that had pornography on it.

This is back before there was the internet. And feeling this, I felt like overwhelming desire to look. You know, it was like, wow. I remember standing there going, I don't know if I've ever felt a desire this strong against what God wants me to do. I mean, I just thought I'm going to struggle a little bit, but in Christ the struggle won't be as strong as before. And I'm standing there going, this is a powerful urge. The flesh, the desire to do the wrong thing, to look at something I shouldn't have any reason to look at. I'm a married man, I'm a follower of Christ, was so strong it struck me that wow, this is a battle. And at the same time, I know Paul's words, you know, walk by the Spirit, you will not gratify these desires I was having. And Dave, it can be food.

It can be anything. And I'm thinking of Paul saying, and I beat my body and I make it my slave. And those words are so descriptive of the battle. So talk about that. How do you walk by the Spirit and win this battle? I'm guessing you never struggle like that, like we do. So talk about it. Yeah, well, they're just three very easy steps, which I took 20 years ago and I haven't seen ever since then.

That's what I figured, yeah. No, it's very counterintuitive. And again, it's where we need to just have the gospel on repeat in our own hearts. Because again, the flesh has its own fleshly way of dealing with the flesh.

And we think, right, okay, I need to man up. I need to do the equivalent of gulping down some spiritual protein shakes and just kind of fight harder. Out of my own strength.

And that's just not the answer. Paul shows us that in Romans 7, that the more you try to do that in your own strength, the deeper in you get. It's like trying to flail your way out of quicksand.

You end up going down more and more. So Titus 2 says, it is the grace of God that teaches us to say no to ungodliness. So the only way we can fight these very, very deep seated impulses that we find within us, is we need to keep receiving the grace of God.

How do we do that? Paul shows us because, you know, that the general shape of Paul's letters is to show us who we are in Christ and then to tell us how to start living that out. So we need to kind of receive and understand our new identities as Christian men and women. Romans 6 has a lot on this. He wants us to realise that sin is no longer who we are.

So the very first command that comes in the whole letter of Romans is Romans 6. It's either verse 13 or 18 or something like that, where he says, consider yourselves dead to sin. He doesn't say stop sinning. He says, consider yourselves dead to sin.

In other words, you need to think about yourself in a new way now because you're not that guy anymore. And what our sinful nature tells us, what the devil tells us is, you know, stop trying to be this Christian version of yourself that you're clearly not. This is who you are. This is what you do. This is how we roll.

Have at it. And Paul is trying to say, no, no, that is who you were, but that you has died now. There's a new you on the block and the new you is the real you. And so it is now not holiness that is going against the grain of who you really are. It's sin that's now going against the grain of who you really are.

You will never be more truly who you are at your deepest core than when you're following Christ. I needed to know that because all of us have various besetting sins that feel like they're the big ticket sins in our lives. And I remember having a bit of a breakthrough with a particular sin in my own life when I realised I don't have to commit that sin anymore. Paul says I'm no longer under the mastery of that sin.

I'm under Christ instead. It doesn't mean I don't sin, but it does mean that every time I do sin, I didn't have to. Because sin doesn't have that authority over me anymore. So that part of it is trying to understand who we now are in Jesus and realising that actually it's that who Christ has made us to be in him that helps us then to walk in his ways. Be who you now are in Jesus. And I think the other thing is simply remembering that our righteousness is in Jesus.

This is not a matching grant thing where he'll put up most of the righteousness if we kind of add our own little bit. All of our righteousness is in Jesus. And so as I'm wrestling with certain impulses in my heart, I can think Jesus has already lived righteously in that area of life for me. This particular way I can feel my body wanting to be misused and to commit sin.

Jesus never did that. In that particular area of life, he was always righteous. He obeyed God and honoured God perfectly with his body because he knew that I couldn't.

And so there is a completion there that has already been prepared for me that I have now stepped into. So I don't need to fight this in order to be in God's good graces and to look my Heavenly Father in the eye or to look my Christian brother and sister in the eye. God has already counted me righteous in Christ. Which then actually makes it safe for me to say to God and to other Christians, this is what's going on in my heart right now. And it's safe to say that because it's not threatening my standing with God or my place in his family. And so as my friend and pastor Ray Altland, I've heard him say this a few times, we don't defeat sin by the sort of gritting our teeth and force of willpower. We confess it to death. And I've often found that it's been the articulation of, hey, this is the crazy going on in my heart right now that I'm dealing with. Just articulating that feels like it has already done something to that sin because I've been able to step outside of it and name it to show it in its true light to another Christian brother.

And that does change my relationship to that sin. Wasn't it Ray? He was just on talking about having a men's group and having teaching. Yeah.

The death of porn. Oh, yes. Yes. That was right. And then we walk in the light with one another. So we receive the teaching. We do our heavy doctrine and then we're like, OK. Yeah. Now we confess our sins to each other. And that's what he talked about. Confessing sins where guys would just confess their sins to one another and how it was setting men free. Yeah. Because as they're talking about, they're hearing the word, they're confessing to one another.

It was like, well, that was going to be my question to you, Sam. Is that what you would say to the person who has made mistakes with their body? They've sinned with their body or maybe against them and or against them. They've lost that flesh spirit battle often and they just feel defeated and they hide often. But they've sort of given up like I've tried. It doesn't work.

It's hopeless. What would you say to them? And even the parent is maybe watching their child struggle with that.

How would you counsel them? You've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson talking with Sam Albury on family life today. We're going to hear Sam's response in just a moment. But first, let me just say that we'd love to send you a copy of his brand new book, What God Has to Say About Our Bodies. We'd love to give you a copy when you make a donation of any amount this week to support the work of family life today.

You can do that in a couple of ways. One at family life today dot com. Or you can give us a call with your donation at one eight hundred three five eight six three two nine. That donation could be a one time gift or a recurring monthly gift. Again, the number is one eight hundred F as in family L as in life and then the word today. All right.

Now, let's get back to Dave and Ann's conversation with Sam Albury. I think I would say you're describing every single human being, every single Christian. I mean, that's true. We are by definition, people who've been defeated by sin. That's why we're Christians. That's what qualifies us to be Christians, because we needed the champions to come and to fight that enemy for us because we couldn't fight that enemy on our own. And the fact that Jesus has done that for us doesn't mean that we're now kind of impervious to sin.

Far from it. But it does mean that the grace we've received from Jesus, we receive afresh every single day. Every single day we can stand again in the righteousness that Christ has provided for us through his death and resurrection. And every day we can come to him in our need.

And that's what he expects. I was thinking the other day of that wonderful verse in Hebrews 12, where for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. And it made me think, you know, Jesus knew the pain.

We know that from the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew what he was stepping into in dying for us. And yet Hebrews says for the joy set before him, he could see through that pain to the far horizon on the other side.

And he knew that that would be a place of joy. I can't avoid the truth that Jesus loves being our saviour. And to our defeated friends listening to this, and it may be, well, I've failed Jesus again. And this is, you know, time number 374 with this particular sin. Jesus still loves being your saviour. We will never out sin his grace. You may feel as though your sin is going to be the one that actually crosses that red line and is going to be just too much for Jesus to deal with.

But in the nicest possible way, you're not that special. Because Romans 5, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. There's always more grace in Jesus than sin in us. He's bigger than our sin. And his Spirit's within us.

So we don't have to deal with this on our own now. We can talk to him about it. It's okay to come before him with the worst things in our lives. And to do that with his people is healing to do that.

It just, like as you're talking, it just brings tears to my eyes. I think so often we think of Jesus as a God of judgment. And we know that he hates our sin, but I think we often think he hates us when we sin. He hates the enemy.

Yes, he hates the enemy. That's a good way to say it, because I think if we're not in God's Word, if we're not with God's people, we're confessing we're in a healthy place. People are reminding us of the great love of the Father and the Son. We can get lost.

And I think a lot of us want to just give up because we keep getting defeated. The gospel that you're presenting is so attractional that it makes me want to run to Jesus. And that's what Jesus does.

He's saying, come, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Yeah. And there's not a limited number of runs that we're allowed to have.

So that's not a one and done thing. That's every day with fresh weariness, there is fresh grace and rest available to us in Christ. You know, I think the thing that I didn't realize that day standing in front of the TV with the struggle with my flesh, that I learned and I hopefully am never going to stop learning, is I was standing there, as I said, and thought, wow, the power of this desire to do wrong is beyond powerful.

I didn't realize it would be that strong. I did not know the other side, which is the power of God in me that resides literally in this temple. This body is more powerful than my power, my struggle to sin. And I, you know, I became one of my life versus Ephesians 3 20, where Paul says now to him who is able, right, to do immeasurably more than what we even imagine or think according to the power that is within us. He's talking about the Holy Spirit, the power of God. And again, it's not this perfect thing that I'll never sin again, but there is a power of God in us that can enable us to win over the flesh. And all the things we talk about are part of that winning, having community, confessing. We can never underestimate the literal power of the Holy Spirit of God in us is a powerful victory that we can access and live out in our struggle against our body. And I think for our listeners to realize, like, he loves you.

He's longing to be with you. And so for us to be with him, to be in the Word, it brings us life. It brings us hope.

It brings us help. You've been listening to Family Life Today. If you know of anyone who could benefit from today's conversation with Sam Albury, and I'm sure you know someone, why don't you go ahead and tell them about this station? Or you could share today's episode from wherever you get your podcasts.

And while you're there, it'd really help us out if you'd rate and review us. And I've got with me today the president of Family Life, David Robbins. David, how great is it that we can have guests like Sam Albury on to discuss such important topics that are relevant to all of us? You know, I really appreciate when we can have conversations like we've had today at Family Life. Because one of the things at Family Life we are most about is helping families experience time together around timeless truth. It's one thing to hear truth like Sam did so beautifully today about what God has to say about our bodies, but it's another thing for a parent and a kid to have time looking each other in the eye and processing it together and what it means in our everyday lives. It's why one of the resources Family Life is most known for is Passport to Purity. Meg and I have used it with our three oldest kids. It's a phenomenal resource that allows you to get a weekend away and talk about with your kids, their changing body, this formative time in their lives. So I would encourage you, if you are a parent, whether it's picking up Sam's resource about what God has to say about our bodies, or Passport to Purity is another resource available to you, take time and not just read, but process it together with your kids.

Yeah, it's all about intentionality. And again, we believe in this book so much that with a donation of any amount, we'll send you a copy of Sam Albury's What God Has to Say About Our Bodies. Now I'm a runner, and I remember when my coach would say to me, what do you do when you see the finish line? And the answer was always, you speed up. That's good workout advice, of course, and it could also be good life advice.

Robert Walgamuth wrote a book called Gun Lap. He'll join Dave and Anne tomorrow to talk about running well and finishing well. That's tomorrow. We hope you can join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.