Accurately put!
Maybe we have a misunderstanding, the favor of God is always with the believer himself in the new nature, not the old, because though the sinful nature is in the believer, the believer is not in the sinful nature (Rom 8:9 - "flesh," not the physical body but "the old man,"; flesh in the NT nearly always refers to the sinful nature and not the physical body, which you may already know ).
Love To You
I understand that the Spirit is against what is "in" the flesh, which is the sin nature. Not technically speaking, the flesh, but often described that way.
What I do point to is that the Spirit is both against and contrary to that which IS in our flesh. Gal. 5:17. Whether what is in the flesh is 'externalized' or not is somewhat irrelevant, other than when it is externalized it provides ever deeper forms of slaveship. But this does not mean that the working wasn't prior, internal OR that if not externalized, isn't still there, because it is still therein. Someone who may have never externalized a sin could be just as much the internal sinner as that working being externalized.
In this way we do have
a Divine Savior/Divine Foe relationship. This is what I might term "scriptural balance."
Paul describes this as knowing the "terror" of the Lord.
2 Corinthians 5:11
Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.
This condition is also manifested in such scriptures as these:
Acts 14:22
Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and
that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
Hebrews 12:8
But
if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Romans 7:24
O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me from
the body of this death?
Beneath this issue are deeper matters. Some eventually come to understand that the source of this conflict is spiritual (in the adverse sense of the term, disobedient spirit), specifically because we do engage adverse (disobedient) spirits in the flesh. Paul adroitly dissects this condition for himself, as exemplified by 2 Cor. 12:7, showing and proving
that we do have an adverse (disobedient) spirit component in our own flesh that was not him nor is it us as believers, which is the source, the dark wellwater of indwelling sin (sin which is not forensic) and evil present with us.
And therein lies the adversarial component between the flesh/Spirit. When we "see" this aspect of this adversarial state, which IS internal, we can also see how Paul derived that he was the chief of sinners after salvation. 1 Tim. 1:15. Because Paul was not just looking at himself, but the adversary in the flesh. God in Christ IS OUR DIVINE ALLY. But He is also The Divine Enemy of our enemies.
