If your flesh had its full swing
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"For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that you may not do the things that you desire."Galatians 5:17
At times, we can hardly tell how we are kept from evil. There is in those who fear God, a spiritual principle which holds them up, and keeps them back from the ways of sin and death in which the flesh would walk. This inner principle of grace and godly fear has, in thousands of instances, preserved the feet of the saints, and kept them from doing things that would have ruined their reputation, blighted their character, brought reproach upon the cause of God, and the greatest grief and distress into their own conscience!
They cannot do the EVIL things that they would do. The flesh is always lusting towards evil, but grace is a counteracting principle to repress and subdue it. Grace does not wholly overcome the evil lusting's of the flesh, but it can prevent those lusting's from being carried out into open action. For the Spirit fights against the flesh, and will not let it altogether reign and rule, nor have its own will and way unchecked. What a mercy lies couched here!
For what would you be, if your flesh had its full swing? What evil is there which you would not do? What crime which you would not commit?
What slip which you would not make? What open and horrid fall which you would not be guilty of—unless you were upheld by Almighty power—and the flesh curbed and checked from running its destructive course? We can never praise God sufficiently for His restraining grace—for what would we be without it? "Hold me up, and I shall be safe!" Psalm 119:117