Day 4

The Two Selves

Today's Scripture: Romans 7:18–19 (NLT)

If you have ever wondered why you can sincerely love God in the morning and behave like a stranger to Him by the afternoon — why you can be moved to tears in worship on Sunday and snap at a family member on Tuesday — why the will to do good and the actual doing of good seem to live in two different houses inside you — then you are not crazy, and you are not uniquely defective. You are simply experiencing what every honest believer in the history of the church has experienced. You are encountering the war between the two selves.

Paul, the great apostle, gives us the unflinching diagnosis in Romans 7. He does not pretend it is otherwise. He does not gloss it. He does not pose for the spiritual photograph that so many modern testimonies seem to require, where the convert never struggles and the mature believer no longer feels temptation. Paul tells the truth. "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." Read that sentence again. That is the inspired apostle writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit. And if his honesty is the floor of Christian experience, our pretense is the ceiling that keeps us from growing.

There are two selves in every believer. The old self — what Paul calls the flesh, the sarx, the part of us that was forged in fallen humanity, that learned its patterns long before we knew Christ, that still carries the muscle memory of self-rule. And the new self — what Paul calls the inner man, the part of us born of the Spirit, alive to God, hungry for righteousness, the deepest truth about who we are in Christ. These two selves are not equal partners. They do not have parallel authority. But they are both present, and they make their demands on you every single day.

This is critical to understand as we walk through June, because death to self is meaningless if you do not know which self is meant to die. Some people, in their zeal, try to crucify the inner man. They mistake the holy hungers of the new self for selfishness. They suppress every legitimate longing, every God-given desire, every honest emotion, in the name of dying to self — and they end up not crucified but suffocated. The new self, which God Himself placed within them at the new birth, becomes the casualty of a misdirected sword.

Others go the opposite direction. They make peace with the flesh. They name its demands as part of who they are, build their lives around its preferences, and treat any attempt to put it to death as a violation of authenticity. They mistake the dying old self for their true self, and so they spend their lives feeding what God has called them to kill.

The mature believer learns to tell the difference. The mature believer learns to listen to the deep hunger of the inner man and to refuse the loud demands of the old man. The mature believer learns that the voice that says, "Hold on tighter, protect yourself, get even, demand your rights, prove your worth, indulge this comfort" — that voice, no matter how natural it feels, is the voice of the old self. And the voice that says, "Trust the Father, forgive again, lay it down, walk in love, surrender this fear" — that voice, no matter how costly it feels, is the voice of the inner man, the new self, the deepest you, the you that was born when you came to Christ.

Paul does not leave us in Romans 7. He moves us into Romans 8. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8:1). The war between the two selves is real, but the outcome has been decided. The Spirit empowers the new self. The cross sentences the old self. And the daily Christian life is the slow, deliberate aligning of our choices with the self that is being raised, against the self that is being put to death.

So as you begin to walk deeper into this month, do not be discouraged when you find both selves still alive in you. The presence of conflict is not the absence of salvation — it is the proof of it. A dead man does not feel the war. A man indwelt by two natures does. The very fact that you grieve when the old self acts up is the fingerprint of the new self that grieves it.

Today, learn to name the voices. Old self. New self. Flesh. Spirit. Death. Life. The clearer you can name them, the more clearly you can choose between them.

Prayer

Father, give me discernment to know which self is speaking in me at any given moment. Help me to feed the new man and starve the old man. Where I have confused them, untangle me. Where I have indulged what should die, give me the grace to refuse it. Where I have crucified what You meant to live, restore me. By Your Spirit, teach me the daily war, and grant me the daily victory in Christ. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Throughout this day, when you feel pulled in two directions, pause and ask: "Which self is asking for this?" Speak the answer honestly to yourself. Then, by the Spirit, feed the new and refuse the old, one small choice at a time.

"The war within you is not a sign you are lost; 

it is the sign that Someone greater is rising within."