pt, positive, jaw-locked no.

There is war to the knife, and the knife clear up to the hilt, between
these two claimants for the control of our powers--self and Jesus. Paul
understood this antagonism thoroughly. It comes out repeatedly in his
writings. His name for this inner enemy, by an accidental turn in
English, is Jesus' word "self" spelled backwards with the letter "h"
added--f-l-e-s-h. His remarks in Romans, eighth chapter, verses four to
eight, and twelve to thirteen, are simply an enlargement of these words
in the sixteenth of Matthew's gospel. If one will read these verses,
substituting Jesus' word "self" for Paul's word he will be surprised to
find how strikingly Paul is expressing this very thought of Jesus. A
free translation of part of these verses would read like this: Verse
five--"They that choose to walk after self (as a slave walked after, or
behind, his master) will show their choice by obeying the desires of
self, and they that choose to walk after the Spirit will obey the
desires of the Spirit." Verse seven--"For the purposes of self are
opposed to God's purposes; for it does not hold itself subject to God's
wishes; indeed, in its very nature it cannot; and they that choose to
obey self cannot please God." Verse thirteen--"If by the Holy Spirit's
aid ye kill off the plans and doings of self, ye shall therein find real
true life, and only so."

Plainly, the deep searching experiences of Paul's great soul, and his
wide observation of others, in his ceaseless travels, confirm the
statements already made, that there is the intensest hatred, the
bitterest antagonism, between these two personalities represented by
Jesus' words, "himself" and "me." There can be no patched-up truce here.
The only way the lion and the lamb can lie down together in this case is
for the one to lie down underneath the other--conquered; or inside the
other--devoured.

In his other letters Paul sometimes uses still another name, "the old
man," and names the characteristics of this omnipresent self, which crop
out with varying degrees of prominence, in different persons, and under
different circumstances. Notice only a few of these: In Galatians, fifth
chapter, nineteenth verse: "The deeds of self are ... improper sexual
intercourse, impurity, shameless looseness...." It will, wherever
possible, debase the holiest functions of the body. In Colossians, third
chapter, fifth verse, speaking of the "old man": "And covetousness,
whi