In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his followers to be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect (see Matthew 5:48). And in the Christian Science textbook, Mary Baker Eddy offers this deeper explanation: “God requires perfection, but not until the battle between Spirit and flesh is fought and the victory won” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 254). What is this battle? Where is it fought, and how do we equip ourselves to win it?
Jesus’ teachings require a dramatically different way of seeing and thinking about the material world we seem to live in. He didn’t come to maintain the status quo or to promote a way of thinking that would please everyone. He challenged the world to do battle with matter-based thinking and dogma in order to experience God’s reign of spiritual harmony—the supremacy of Spirit over the flesh. In other words, this battle takes place in individual consciousness.
As the Apostle Paul put it, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers . . .” (Ephesians 6:12). Principality in the Greek can mean first place, origin, or power (Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, Greek-English Lexicon). This suggests we are wrestling with a false sense of man’s origin as material and mortal, making him inclined to sin, with the free will to choose whether or not to obey God.
