The Useful War of Flesh and Spirit

We read in the apostle that this conflict too has been placed in our members for our good: “For the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. These two are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you would.” Here too you have a contest implanted, as it were, in our bodies by the Lord’s action and arrangement. For when a thing exists in everyone universally, without the slightest exception, what else can you think of it but that it belongs to the substance of human nature, as though naturally, since the fall of the first man? And when a thing is found to be inborn in everyone and to grow as they grow, how can we help believing that it was implanted by the Lord’s will, not to injure them but to help them? He tells us that the reason for this conflict, that is, of flesh and spirit, is this: “so that you may not do what you would.” So if we were to fulfill what God arranged that we should not fulfill—that is, if we did what we liked—how can we help believing that it would be bad for us? And this conflict, implanted in us by the Creator’s arrangement, is in a way useful to us, and calls and urges us on to a higher state. If it ceased, there would most surely follow, on the other hand, a peace full of danger. [a]