It is no longer I.

The early Church Father named Augustine was born, in 354 AD, to a Christian mother and a pagan father, in North Africa. However, he turned his back on the faith of his mother and by the time he was eighteen years of age, he was already keeping a mistress. He had an excellent education and at only sixteen years of age, became a teacher of rhetoric (the skill, or art, of using language effectively) in the university of Carthage. He later taught in both Rome and Milan, and it was in the latter city that he began to search for "truth".

His mother also moved to Milan (his father had already died), and she prayed for him, and shared the Gospel message with him. The bishop of Milan at that time, was Aurelius Ambrose, a prominent and well-known theologian. Augustine had an  intellectual interest in Ambrose's sermons, and would later adapt much of this teaching into his own thinking. After the sermon, he would usually sit on a bench outside the church building, and wait for his mother. One day he heard what he thought was a child playing a sing-song game, "Take up and read." When he did not see anyone, he realised that what he had heard had a supernatural origin. He found a copy of the New Testament and opened it to Paul's letter to the Romans. Reading this changed his life, and he became a Christian - a follower of the Christ.

Augustine went on to become a bishop, and was to become influential in both the Roman and the Reformed traditions. He wrote an autobiography- his "Confessions" - and his other "magnum opus" was "The City of God against the pagans". This was his response to those who blamed the followers of the Christ, for the sack of Rome by the Goths, led by Alaric I.

However, soon after his profession of faith in the Lord Jesus, he was walking along a street in Milan. As he did so, he was accosted by a prostitute whom he had known intimately. She called out to him, but he ignored her, and kept on walking.

"Augustine!," she shouted, "it is I."

He replied: "Yes, but it is no longer I!"

Paul wrote: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Gal.2:20; emphasis added). I wonder, had those words come to Augustine's mind at that moment?

We can never satisfy our sinful nature. Indeed, trying to do so may even cause us to travel further and further away from the Saviour. But when we put on the Lord Jesus, the Christ, and walk in the power of His Spirit, so that it is no longer "I" who lives, but the Christ Who lives in me, then we may overcome that sinful nature that constantly pulls us down. When the tempter comes, may we have the strength to ignore him, and to keep walking in the way of the Lord. Let us "... walk by the Spirit, and ... not gratify the desires of the flesh." (Gal.5:16). That's the way that leads to heaven.