What the Bible says about Resistance to God
(From Forerunner Commentary)
The carnal mind is the nature in which a person's conduct is based until God acts to convert or transform him; it is man's deceitful heart (Jeremiah 17:9). Once an individual is called, and the Father and Son have revealed Themselves and some of Their purpose to him, this verse succinctly describes the major impediment to our submitting to Them. This resisting influence from within each of us is the major barrier to perfect deference and compliance to Them.
Of course, Satan and the world also influence us, but the major impediment to our responsibly submitting is what is already part of our characters even as we are being converted. We quickly revert to carnality when confronted with something that we do not want to do.
What element in our carnality drives our resistance? Solomon states in Ecclesiastes 1:2, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Vanity implies something that is useless and impermanent, like vapor rising from a pot of boiling water, and therefore something of little or no value toward accomplishing God's purpose for mankind. The "all" in Solomon's statement includes us.
Notice this evidence regarding mankind's unconverted state from Psalm 39:5-6, where David writes:
Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah. Surely every man walks about like a shadow; surely they busy themselves in vain; he heaps up riches, and does not know who will gather them.
In Psalm 62:9, he adds, "Surely men of low degree are a vapor, men of high degree are a lie; if they are weighed in the balances, they are altogether lighter than vapor."
These are blunt statements, showing that unless something is done to change the value of what we are in reality, what good reason does God have to work with us?
But there is more from God's Word that paints the picture of our unconverted value and the strength of our natural resistance to Him even more acutely. The aforementioned Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" "Above all things" implies all things considered evil. This by itself is a vivid comparison—and God does not lie—but He goes beyond that by adding that man's heart is not merely wicked but desperately wicked. This means our heart is without care for danger and recklessly, badly, extremely, furiously, impetuously wicked.
Jesus adds force to this word-picture by confirming in Matthew 15:17-20 that the heart is the place from which our evil resistance to God is generated. However, an irony comes into play because the heart is the same place that generates to us in our thoughts the belief that we are really something good! This is quite an effective combination in producing sin. It occurs because our hearts produce self-esteem with the result that our ideas and actions—our very lives—are focused on self-satisfaction. To meet that need, we will sin as a way of life.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Living By Faith and Human Pride
Consider that final phrase, "nor indeed can be." As long as we are in the flesh, made of physical matter, we have a carnal mind—a carnal spirit that is absolutely unable to be subject to the law of God.
We have heard this repeatedly over the years, but have we ever really stopped to consider its ultimate implications? It is no fun to meditate or dwell on our negatives, but this verse implies that, even with God's Holy Spirit working within us, we are fighting a losing battle if we choose to ignore this fact. What a sobering thought! Our human spirit was not designed to be impervious to evil, for that would have precluded our need to develop righteous character as God requires of all who are to experience eternal life with Him.
But, even with its designed limitations, our nature still was not created to be evil—in fact, just the opposite (see Ecclesiastes 7:29)! We realize that along with the remainder of creation, our human spirit was judged by our Creator to be good, even very good (Genesis 1:31). But it did not remain as it was created; it was corrupted by sin.
In Genesis 3, in the account of humanity's first transgression, the first pattern of resistance is revealed. Satan manages to convince Eve that eating of the fruit would make her as wise as God (Genesis 3:5). In verse 6, Eve succumbs to the temptation: "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of the fruit and ate." Quite simply, she was attempting to elevate herself in relation to God, and in doing so, she "achieved" the first pattern of resistance, becoming the first to fail to submit to the will of God.
Immediately afterward, she lied about that first pattern, declaring in verse 13, "The serpent deceived me," trying to blame her sin on Satan's lie. But the truth is that she was allured and charmed by the notion that by ignoring His command, she could elevate herself and become like God. Satan did not make her sin. Deceived—by Satan and herself—she chose to. How did Satan know what to do, and why was it seemingly so easy?
Jeremiah 17:9, the companion scripture to Romans 8:7, says: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" God's Word Translation catches its essence: "The human mind is the most deceitful of all things. It is incurable. No one can understand how deceitful it is." Consider together the phrase, "most deceitful of all things," and all the evil, terrible, wicked things in our world. God says that the human heart—the carnal mind—is more deceitful than any of those other things. And it cannot be cured.
Do we ever really take the time to consider that? We certainly do not bear it in mind every day, as we should. Again, even with God's Holy Spirit working within us, we are still fighting a losing battle if we fail to consider its full implications.
Eve's mind was pure when Satan first approached her in the Garden, but he knew just how to corrupt it instantaneously—with a lie it would want to hear, one her mind would want to believe. And so it did. If we are not careful, we, too, can still be deceived into believing a similar lie.
Joseph B. Baity
Patterns of Resistance (Part One)