In the Christian who has learned the full secret of victory these
natural desires are lifted to a new plane. His desires now do not
center in the old self-life. They center in Christ. To him to live is
Christ. His whole desire is Christ. He still desires to enjoy things,
but only in a way that shall glorify God. He desires to get things, but
to get them for God, not for self. His desire to accomplish things is
to do things for God.
This does not mean that the victorious Christian will not be open
to fierce temptations, just as our Lord was,――real temptations that
require a real conquest. But as he abides in Christ, accepting by
faith the victory that Christ already has won, instead of striving to
struggle against these assaults of the enemy, the temptations remain
merely _temptations_, and do not pass into the _sins_ of lust or
covetousness or pride.
These three channels of temptation appear to correspond in a remarkable
way with the three-fold nature of man――body, soul and spirit. And for
the man in victory all these are Christ’s. Here is the human body with
all the natural appetites intact. But the Christian who is reckoning
the old self-life to be dead knows that this body now, with all its
natural desires, is “for the Lord; and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor.
6:13), for “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit
that is in you, that ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye
were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body” (1 Cor.
6:19, 20).