War Within

By Jared Warner

Willow Creek Friends Church

July 5, 2026

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Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili

Hebrews 12:1–3, 12-17 (ESV)

¹ Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ² looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. ³ Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

¹² Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, ¹³ and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. ¹⁴ Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. ¹⁵ See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; ¹⁶ that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. ¹⁷ For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.

Query 6

From the Faith and Practice of Evangelical Friends Church Mid America Yearly Meeting.

Romans 7:15–25 (ESV)

¹⁵ For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. ¹⁷ So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ²¹ So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³ but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

War Within

We have been speaking of righteousness, the law, sin, justification, and sanctification over the past few weeks. I do not know if you have learned anything worthwhile, but for me this has been a period of examine in my personal spiritual life. As I have read through the writings found in Paul’s letters to the churches, I have also revisited the Sermon Jesus gave while on the mount and on the plain. I have revisited what the commandments, words of wisdom, or teachings God gave to Moses when Israel was encamped at Sinai. And while I considered these things against my current experience, I have come to a great conclusion. Life is difficult.

I do not want to sound cliché or simple with those words. We as a church gained a sense of purpose or mission together when I first came to Willow Creek. I would love to say that it emerged out of good leadership, but no. It came because I as a new pastor, and us as a meeting needed to know who we are and what we needed to do to move our meeting into the future. We sat on that topic for months. We shared, considered, prayed, argued, and laughed together as we devised a simple statement that we felt explained who we are and what we want to do. That statement is: Loving God, Embracing the Holy Spirit, and Living the love of Christ with others.

I love that purpose statement. I love the depth of its simplicity. I love that it captures the teachings of Christ and the wisdom of God as taught throughout scripture from the beginning to the end. I love it because I have seen those words in the very rhythm of life that Jesus lived. I see those words in the heart-wrenching pleas that Paul writes to his friends across the Mediterranean world. It is a call to worship, prayer, and ministry.

I have contemplated those words over the past few months. And I wonder, is this still our calling, our mission? Is our point of existence as a community of faith still driven by those words, or have those words been replaced with something else?

This is one of the reasons I love the discipline of considering the Queries within our Faith and Practice. When I was younger I did not even know what these were, I learned about them when I began exploring the possibility of becoming a pastor and actually read the Faith and Practice. And when I saw that the Faith and Practice said we needed to read them every year and answer them, I thought it was one of the most ridiculous things I had heard. Why should we read a bunch of weirdly worded questions that have yes or no answers. But then I eventually became a pastor. It did not take long before I recognized that the core of our faith depends on the questions we ask, the questions we allow ourselves to ask, and the honesty we give when we try to provide an answer.

Twenty-three years ago as I became a pastor I began to fall in love with the queries. They are not God breathed scripture because they are written by people like you or I, but they facilitate contemplation. The ones we have in our faith and practice were first written shortly after the civil war in America, during a time of expansion, healing, and hope. We as a culture had just endured one of the largest struggles we had ever had to endure, a struggle that defined who we as a nation would be in the future. And when our spiritual ancestors gathered in Richmond, Indiana they too were struggling to determine who or what the Religious Society of Friends would be. Friends from around the world came to gather, and we made our Declaration of Faith. The majority of Yearly Meetings accepted this Unifying document, some opposed because they said it sounded too much like a creed and as Friends we do not make creeds.

Those that started our Yearly Meeting, held to that Unified Discipline of what was once called the Five Years Meeting, and would eventually be renamed Friends United Meeting. And one of the things that they included in that first unify document was the queries. Queries have been used since the time of Fox, and each yearly meeting has their own queries. Some have several and some have very few. The queries in our Faith and Practice have come to us from that first Unified Discipline with very few changes. I mention this is because these are the same questions that were being asked of Friends since the 19^th century. They were questions asked of Friends that had participated in the Underground Railroad and of Friends that had aligned themselves with the other side of the debate. It was asked of Friends that had fled to the West to avoid conflict and those that had endured the hardships of war along the boarders of the North and South.

Do you consistently practice Jesus’ spirit and teaching of love and goodwill to all people?

Do you support every Christian movement to do away with war and preparation for war?

Do you endeavor to make clear to all whom you can influence and especially our own youth, that war is utterly un-Christian and cannot be reconciled with the spirit of Christ?

I include this query today, because I do think we need to re-examine things of faith. We need to ask ourselves if the faith we claim is the faith we live. But I think it speaks to something deeper. It speaks about the war within each of us.

“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So no it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.”

Paul looks at himself, he sees within himself that there is a war waging. He yearns to be righteous, he longs to do right in the eyes of God or to be justified in his own efforts. But he finds himself failing every time he turns around. This passage although it is one of the most difficult to read for me because it is almost a tongue twister, is one that I often find myself thinking about. And it has been one that has been on repeat for several weeks.

I want to do this. I want to do that. I want, but why do I want? Are my desires being driven by faith? Are my desires filled with ideologies? Do I want this because of some selfish desire? Am I just wanting to justify my own sin?

Paul says, “Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.” This is one of those places where it seems like Paul cannot decide if he like the law or not. This is why I have made such an effort to explain that the commandments of God are not merely the do’s and don’ts of faith, but they are the teachings, or the wisdom of God. They are lessons and conversation starters. Paul has noticed that he wants to do one thing, but seems to do the thing that he does not want to do instead. The teachings of God in scripture do not necessarily provide all the answers to every problem we will ever face, but it does give us a framework of how to think, and directs us to asking better questions.

I want to please my wife, I want to give her everything her heart desires. But somewhere in the course of our conversations I thought I heard that she did not care what we ate, so I purchased McDonald’s. Then I purchased it again because in my mind I know where McDonald’s is located in this city I do not know. Then I do it again. She keeps saying she does not care yet each meal it seems like she does. I know I am not pleasing her and now after twenty-three years, she still thinks the only thing I want to eat is McDonald’s when the truth is I did not know where any other restaurants were in Winnipeg. Scripture does not tell us exactly what to do in this situation, yet it does tell us other things, things like “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4).

Was I being vain, or conceited? No, but I was not taking into account that my desires and those of my spouse might be different. I grew up on a dirt farm in the middle of nowhere, you ate what you ate and you were grateful, where she grew up in Kansas City where there are options available. We came from different cultures, different experiences, different understandings. And the first few days of our marriage, we were caught in a dilemma.

This early marital spat may not seem similar to the geopolitical crises we face, but every relationship is similar. What do we do when resolving a conflict with a spouse, and how do we resolve a conflict with someone outside? If we treat those closest to us with violence, eventually when pushed too far we will respond to others with violence. Our families and the local meeting or church is a training ground for geopolitics.

Paul tells us when we begin to pursue our desires, but the results of this are not what we imagined we need to take a step back and re-examine what we are doing, and why. We need to ask different questions, see where we might have made an erroneous assumption. Go back to the teachings of God, study the scriptures and let them speak to you.

Paul continues to say after this, “So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” This is the picture of a person that is in that process of sanctification, or theosis. The desire is to do good, yet there are aspects within us that have not been fully entrusted to God. So often we as disciples and friends of Christ seek to follow him, but we have spiritual boarder-line disorder. We want to do something great, but we sabotage ourselves.

Some might say that Paul is excusing sin in this statement. That he is proposing a dualistic philosophy like the teachings of Plato. This is not what he is saying. There is a dualistic aspect, sure, but he does not excuse our actions. We are responsible for what we do in our flesh, because that is who we. We are flesh as well as spirit, they are not separate, but they are a combined whole. Just as Jesus is fully God and fully man, we are spirit and flesh, but our spirit is disconnected from God our life giver. We have no spiritual nourishment because our sin dams the flow, leaving our souls stagnate toxic swamps.

We have a desire to do good, to be righteous, yet without the flowing waters of the Spirit we are stuck in the mud. Paul says, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” I am stuck. I can only go so far. I am throwing my weight forward and back but instead of proceeding, I am sinking deeper. I get off balance and fall. My shoes are pulled off and now I am covered from head to toe in the muck. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

I want to stop here for a moment. Some will say that Paul is saying that you cannot be moral without Christ. This is not the case. We can be good people socially and culturally. I can be faithful to my spouse, not kill anyone, and pay for everything I want and need just fine with or without Christ. We can be seen as good. But our self morality will only go so far. Remember the story of the Rich Young Ruler that came to Jesus asking what he must do to enter the kingdom. Jesus told him to keep the commandments, and the man responded that he had done this since childhood. Jesus then told him that there was one more thing, he must sell all that he had, give it to the poor, and follow him. That man walked away.

He was moral. He was good. He had done everything right in the eyes of his society. But he was missing one thing. He was doing all of those things for himself. He was working for his justification, but we do not hold the power to declare righteousness. Only those outside of ourselves have that power, the one with whom we have a relationship.

I can stand here and say I am a good father, and a good husband. I can claim to be a good pastor, or a good employee. But who can actually declare those things? My sons are the only ones that can declare me a good parent. My wife is the only one that can declare me a good husband. My supervisor is the one that declares my effectiveness on the job. And the church is the one that can declare my value as a minister. I cannot do this on my own, I cannot do this because I only see my own self. If I am doing everything according to my self-interest I will somewhere along the line cause harm to someone. I will cause harm because I am incapable to consider every aspect.

Our nation celebrated its 250^th anniversary this year. Many of us look at those founding patriots as giants, they were the mighty men of old, that stood against tyranny. These men of old forged a new nation claiming these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and have certain unalienable rights endowed by our creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I love my country. I read those words and when I hear those words it still fans the flame of patriotism in my heart. We look at those men we see them as great, but they were not perfect. The men that held the self-evident truths of equality, enslaved others they denied the unalienable rights of fellow humans by denying them their own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. These men were moral in their historical context, but the context has changed.

They failed just as we fail. They, like Paul, and like us cry out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” We cry out, because we want to do good, but evil emerges. We want to live at peace with our families, our friends, our communities yet somewhere along the way we will do something that is focused on our own self-interest that will cause harm in some manner to someone else.

We cannot live a completely moral life, because our flesh gets in the way. We can justify our actions and remain in good standing socially, yet we know or someone knows, we have the capacity to be wretched.

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

I want to do good. I want to be righteous. I want to be someone consistently practicing Jesus’ spirit and teaching of love and goodwill to all people. Yet, sometimes people are really annoying. I want to support every Christian movement to do away with war and the preparation for war, yet there are people that do not agree with me. I want to tell everyone that the use of violence is un-Christian and cannot be reconciled, yet there is part of me that knows that I am very capable of justifying violence because I cannot think of a way around it. But my human justifications do not change the truth.

Every human life is sacred, because every human life is created in the image of God. And God so loved every human within the world that he gave his one unique son to die for us, that who soever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. We are loved. We are loved by God the creator of all things visible and invisible. We were created in the Image of God, meaning we have the capacity of physical and spiritual life. But do we recognize it. Do we recognize it in ourselves and do we recognize it in the person we currently see as an enemy?

There is much more that I want to say. Things I feel like I need to say. But I want us to again consider our query. And look at the things we are doing. Examine them in prayer, and in humility. Are we as a community recognizing the sin we have caused against others that might cause them to act in violence against us? Are we seeing the life situations that people around us are living in that might lead them to believe that there is no other way except violence? Are we actively pursuing the things that will alleviate tension, or are we throwing fuel on a fire? “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Let us renew our purpose and vision as a community to become a people Loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit and Living the love of Christ with others.

Previous Messages:

Do We Stand with Him?

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