Do You Have Confidence in Your Flesh?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here is this week’s question:  “Dear Search the Scriptures Daily, I am a bit confused.  The Bible says that we are to put no confidence in the flesh.  Does that mean that I am not to be confident about anything I do, or attempt to do?”

Tom:

Dave, the issue of putting confidence in the flesh—we have three elements here.  Number one, we have what the world tells us. Number two, what the church has picked up from the world, and now we have, well, more than that, we have the truth of God’s Word which says we are not to put confidence in the flesh.  But what exactly does the scripture mean by that?

Dave:

Well Tom, you know the Bible talks about man.  You are a fool if you trust in man, the Bible says, whose breath is in his nostrils.  First of all, we are very frail creatures.  I could be hit with a heart attack, you know, at any moment or you could, as much younger than I am as you are, but we are also fallible beings. And it’s not saying that every time I take a step I’ve got to be trembling for fear I might fall over.  It’s not saying that I can’t—if I am a tennis player I can’t try to be the best tennis player I can be, and have some confidence in my ability.  Or, if I am a business man or whatever, a CPA, am I, as a CPA, was I supposed to be afraid that I couldn’t make a statement; I couldn’t examine anyone’s books because I might make a mistake?  No, that’s not what it means.  It means that my ultimate confidence is not in the flesh.  We walk in the spirit, we trust God so that, for example, James says, “You who say tomorrow we will go into the city and buy and sell and get gain.  What you ought to say is if the Lord wills, we will do this or that, because you do not know what will come on the morrow.  Your life is but a vapor that appears for a little while and is gone.”  So, I can’t have confidence in tomorrow, for example.  Human beings fail us.  Now it doesn’t mean that I don’t trust them; I have relationships with people, but it means that I recognize that this is not where my ultimate hope lies, this is not where my ultimate confidence is.  And I can tell you Tom, or you, having known me all these years, you know I never talk about what I am going to do tomorrow, or what might happen tomorrow, or next week, or whatever, without saying, If the Lord wills, God willing, because I do not run this universe and I do not control my own life.  It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try to be as competent as I can be, but my hope is in the Lord.  The psalmist said, “My hope is in the Lord who made the heaven and the earth,” and he says, “He who puts his confidence in man whose breath is in his nostrils, is a fool.”

Tom:

Dave, I am looking at Philippians, which is probably the verse this person who wrote the question was considering.  It says, “For we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh.”  And then Paul goes on and he says “…if you’ve got confidence, I should have more confidence…” and then he lists all of the credentials.

Dave:

“Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;  concerning the law, blameless and so forth, but what things were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ.”

Tom:

You see, I think sometimes, if our trust, if our confidence isn’t in the Lord, then what is it in?  And that’s where it falls down because, as you said—I will just give you another analogy.  If I were a brain surgeon, here I go to medical school, I learn to be a surgeon and I have done many operations and so on but I don’t know all the variables.  I’m not God.  I can’t control anything, you know, an earthquake, whatever it might be, whatever situation I go into, I go in with the best preparation that I can possibly bring to it.  But, that’s not my confidence.  My confidence is in him who is going to guide and direct my hand no matter what happens, you know, if I were a surgeon.  So, Dave, I started this off by saying the world certainly doesn’t teach this because they don’t know Christ.  They have the opportunity, God is available to all.  But the church, this is, I think, the concern that I have, the church has picked up ideas of the world which talks about self first.  Self is preeminent and self is all the world has.  But for the church to move into that, you know we have our children learning to develop their own self-esteem and courses in self-assertion and self-confidence and all that.  It’s missing the heart of what we are talking about here.  Not just what we are talking about, what we are pointing to are the scriptures.

Dave:

Well Tom, I can’t draw a breath without the Lord.  Everything that I have is dependent upon him.  Paul said, “By the grace of God I am…”—in this passage he says by the grace of God I am what I am.  So, it is only God’s grace, it is only his mercy and I make it a point, I mean, I don’t know that it’s a rule, but if you say, somebody says to me, well, how are you feeling?  You look pretty good for 75 years old.  And I say, “By God’s grace.”  By God’s grace because I can’t draw a breath without his mercy and his grace.  So, we are in his hands and this is what Paul is talking about.  We worship God in the spirit.  We have no confidence in the flesh and other places he says we don’t even look at the things that are seen.  They are temporary and Christ himself said in John 5, “I don’t accept praise from men.”  If we are trying to get people to agree with us and build us up and praise us and so forth, we are wasting our time.  Our confidence is in God, our trust is in him, and our obedience must be to him, and to his Word.