Which bids the very practical question: ‘Why might I not be bearing fruit?’ Here is one reason Jesus gives in the Parable of the Sower: ‘As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful’ (St. Matthew 13:22). What is the part of us that responds to ‘the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches?’ What is the part of us that desires to ‘choke the word?’ Why it’s the flesh of course—the ‘old man’ as St. Paul also refers to it. This same apostle tells us that we must ‘crucify the flesh with its passions and desires’ (Galatians 5:24). He is telling us that we must pitilessly destroy that thing we falsely believe will save us or make us happy; we must brutally execute this thing we think we need and love, or it will kill us. As the Anglican priest and theologian John Stott puts it, ‘We must not only take up our cross and walk with it, but actually see that the execution takes place.’ We must nail our old man to the cross as he screams at us and begs us for life. Can we do that? Can we stomach seeing the thing we falsely love more than God die on a cross? We must if we want to be truly free; we must if we want to live in the blessed Christian liberty which makes us no man or demon or desire’s slave. May the Spirit be with us as we walk with our cross, and may He give strength to our hands as we crucify the flesh and begin to live in the perfect freedom of the new world to come.