Human beings are like donuts. We can have all the outward things of life — things that seem tasty, pleasurable, and sweet — but there is a gaping hole in our center. Every day we are busy attending to our needs and desires, whether concerned with putting food on the table, entertaining ourselves, or even pursuing a noble philosophy. The worldly things are attractive, even satisfying in the short term, but are they enough to fill that void? At the end of a day full of these pursuits, every human being still has to turn off the lights, lay down, and face himself: “Am I satisfied? Am I happy? Who am I, truly?”
If you have gotten to this point, no matter how early or how late in life, there is an answer for you — something hopeful, something bright, something satisfying, something life-changing: you weren’t made to be filled by all these physical things. You were made to be filled with God. According to the Bible, we have an “inner man” that was made to be filled with life (Rom. 7:22, Eph. 3:16). Without it, we are nothing but an empty shell. Since the fall of man, human beings have filled themselves with many things other than God; since in Genesis man partook of something other than God’s life — that is, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — sin and death crept in (Gen 2:17; 3; 4:7). Generations after busied themselves building cities, raising cattle, playing instruments, and forging bronze and iron — in other words, they filled themselves with surviving, entertaining, and ensuring their security (Gen. 4:17-22).
If we’ve experienced the struggle of feeling unsatisfied and miserable pursuing the things of the world, today we can see just how precious — how freeing! — this life within us is. This was Paul’s process in Romans 7:14-25. Paul was a man who had the best of everything in the world but still felt “wretched.” And yet by seeing how sinful and hopeless he was, he had a way to declare, “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:25a). This revelation in Paul was his beginning to be set free in his spirit, his inner man — to cease all his struggling to be “good” in the eyes of a far-away God or in the eyes of others, and to live in an intimate relationship with the Lord according to the law of the Spirit of life. The human struggles we face do not need to be a waste; they do not need to be endless. When we get to know our inner man, we have a way to cease all of our worldly desires and to live a proper human life. We can treasure this life and live freely in it!
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 7/7/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)