I recently got this question from a subscriber…
“A question I have now is when all people are born into this world we are born with sin nature which we inherited from Adam which he inherited from Satan so everyones has Satan as a father, Jesus told the Pharisees that during his ministry that your father is the Devil, but the good news is everyone who calls on the Lord will be saved and not only that we get a new nature which is from God so now he looks on us as perfect because we are his Sons in Christ we are new creatures! As I think about these great truths a few questions have arisen in my heart as christians what part of us sins? How do you understand walking in the flesh because if the old man or old nature is dead and Paul in his epistles wrote about us being dead in Christ, what is it that causes us to sin as christians?”
– Regards John O’ Leary in Ireland
This is a GREAT question and I’m sure everyone asks it when they hear me or someone else proclaim — “You’re a saint — NOT a sinner!”
So what part of us sins if we’re actually saints, Christians?
Today, I’m going to give you the “just the fact’s ma’am” version of how we are perfect in Christ, new creations… SAINTS… and yet we still sin. What I’m going to discuss today can actually be studied very in depth as it’s quite fascinating…
Let’s start at the beginning. First off, we are humans. How were humans created? God said he made us in His image (Genesis 1:26-27). What type of being is God? A TRINITY — the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit. Three persons in one — this is the trichotomy of God.
So if we were made in the image of God, what then is the trichotomy of man? This is the best way I’ve ever heard it explained: We are spirits, that have a soul, that live in a body. Those are the three parts of man: Spirit, Soul and Body.
When Adam ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God said he would die right? But did adam die physically? No… but God is no liar… Adam died SPIRITUALLY at that very moment he disobeyed God. So, in the beginning you were born into the line of Adam’s SPIRIT. That’s why you were (spiritually) dead in your sins the moment you were born. It’s why you need Christ, because you need a new life, a new SPIRIT.
You ARE a new creation, perfect in Christ…
So when you accepted Christ, you were spiritually born again, which means you experienced it all with Christ, both his death (which was your death to sin, spiritually) and his resurrection (your new life in Christ). Now you are perfect, redeemed, set apart, sanctified, perfected, a SAINT — you are no longer a sinner! Period. End of story. You have been justified by Christ’s life inside you. (I John 3:1, Romans 6:11, I Corinthians 1:30)
That is your spiritual nature. DEEP down inside, it’s who you really are. That’s why you don’t feel good when you sin… it’s why you feel guilty when the devil hits you with those guilt trips about not “pleasing God enough” because your TRUE nature now is a part of God, a child of God, wanting to please the father.
So if this is true, why do we still sin?
As I said before, you have a new Spirit, but this new spirit has a soul, and it’s all inside your body.
Let’s define the soul: All your intellect, emotions and will are stored here. Your intelligence, your emotions, and your self-will. So how did you develop this part of yourself? It started at birth — you found ways to get your needs met. You didn’t feel loved, you cried to get attention… this grew into getting attention as an adult by playing the role of victim. Or you were always praised for how well you did in school, then high school, then college, so you became a type A personality driven by the praise of others… there are a million different versions of people’s personalities and emotional dynamics that determine both how we SEE the world and the events that unfold both around us and happen to us… and our RESPONSE to them. (A GREAT book that goes deep into how people develop this part of their flesh is the first half of Lifetime Guarantee by Bill Gillham, the whole book is good, but the first half is all about this — AMAZING read)
So it’s the soul area of your body that your “battles” are fought.
Whenever you hear Paul of any of the new testament saints talking about becoming more sanctified, or working out their salvation, they’re not actually talking about doing any work that hasn’t already been done yet. You’re already sanctified, it’s continually choosing day by day, moment by moment to surrender to your real identity in Christ — instead of the identity you’ve created for yourself, that resides in your mind (your soul).
Paul explains this whole thing pretty clearly, and laments over his personal soul struggle here in Romans 7:14-25… and then gives the answer to how we can win this struggle (The Message, emphasis and comments mine):
14-16 I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.
This is just like the guy who emailed me… “I know God SAYS I’m spiritual, but I’m obviously not, because I keep sinning… I want to do good, but then I do the opposite. It’s the confusion that comes from us trying to understand a spiritual, divine matter, with our finite intelligence (the mind, a part of our soul) compounded by the fact that all of us have a different personality and world view.
So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.
17-20 But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
I like the fact that Paul once again makes the point that, YES, this struggle is here… and yes, we keep failing because we’re humans after all. But is the answer religion? Is the answer to have MORE of God’s commands to keep us on track… NO — Paul says, “I need something MORE”. Then he goes on to define the soul struggle more, and give the answer — the only thing that can keep us from sin.
21-23It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
Here’s the struggle defined clearly again. I, my soul, who I REALLY am delights in God’s commands. Delights in pleasing God, my relationship with Him… but it’s pretty obvious not ALL of me joins in that delight. I still have this flesh, this personality, this soul, that keeps rebelling against my true desire…
24I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?
This is great. This is what writers have called, “the end of self”, “brokenness”, I called it “hitting rock bottom” in my book CHRIST THROUGH ME… The years of trying to be “a better Christian”… As Steve McVey says, the “motivation, condemnation, rededication cycle” that eventually leads to burn out and brokenness…
25The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
And that’s the answer. Not our flesh, not our intelligence, not our “self-effort” or will, not our gritting of teeth… not our “buckling down and doing something for God”… none of that works. The Apostle Paul couldn’t make it work, and neither can we. Only Christ can win that soul battle.
So we’ve seen we are made in the image of God, three parts, Spirit, Soul and Body. Our Spirit is righteous… our soul is our personality, mind, will and emotions which battles our true nature of righteousness… and our Body is mortal. And we’ve seen the reason why we sin is because of this battle between the soul (called “Self” or “flesh”) and the spirit, who we really are.
This is the answer to, “If all Christians are Saints, why do we still sin?”
Also, you’ve seen that the answer to overcoming sin and actually living out who we REALLY are, is the person of Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul continues in Romans, to tell how to do this… it’s by basically IGNORING our self-effort, and focusing instead on Christ, follow along here in Romans 8:5-14 (the message emphasis mine)…
5-8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.
9-11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
12-14 So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
So the good news: your only job is NOT to live a righteous life, but to surrender to the life of Christ inside you to live it for you, through you, “co-laborers in Christ”.
The bad news: I think Christ is the only person who ever did this… let the Holy Spirit live through Him… moment-by-moment each day without ever slipping up.
All of us were born into sin… spent some time developing a set of habits, a personality that got our flesh needs met APART from God… before we received Christ’s life. So we still have those old “patterns” laying around. In my humble opinion, Christ had a unique connection to God from the very beginning so he always instinctively knew how to live out of the Spirit (I’m just guessing at this because of Bible stories like how He was hanging out in synagogues asking deep questions and whatnot at such a young age). Though that’s not to say He wasn’t fully human and didn’t suffer through the same temptations we did. He most certainly did. He just always chose correctly to live out of His spirit and not give in to those temptations.
I think I explained this well enough for a “just the facts ma’am”… any questions, comments, etc are welcome… just post em’ in the comments section.
080134
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Ajit Rai 03.28.09 at 9:38 pm
Dear Sir,
What are your views with regards to Rewards in heaven being in proportion to how we lived our lives here on Earth. Will there be hierarchy in heaven in terms of those who lived as ‘good, obedient’ Christians over those who just ‘coasted’ along in life and went to heaven anyway?
regards
Ajit
James 05.16.09 at 7:06 pm
So the good news: your only job is NOT to live a righteous life, but to surrender to the life of Christ inside you to live it for you, through you, “co-laborers in Christ”.
Respectfully, I think it is important for your readers to know that prior to the turn of this century the view you espouse of the Christian life was not the orthodox teaching of the Church. This view began in the teachings of C. I. Scofield and Lewis Sperry Chafer and was a radical departure at that time from orthodoxy. The teaching that we must yield or surrender to the Spirit so God can work through us was the error of the “two nature” theory (i.e., the teaching that says the “I” [our sin nature] must get out of the way so that God can work through us [the spirit or new man], leaving us, as it were, unchanged.) What then is being conformed to the image of God? (2 Cor. 3:18) Paul says, “Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” (2 Cor. 4:16). 1 John 3:3 says, “and everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, [not yields himself] just as He is pure.” “for it is God who works in you, [not through you] both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). The believer practices righteousness because His seed remains in him (1 John 3:9, 10), not because His seed is working through him. The fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of His work in us. It is not that which the Spirit does through us, but rather that which we ourselves bear as a result of His gracious work within us. Therefore, although we are bearing the fruit, it is God alone who receives the glory. In 1 John 3:22 it states, “And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight”. This verse does not suggest that it is God keeping the commandments through us but rather it is us keeping the commandments through Him (i.e., by His grace). God does not save us and then wait for us to someday yield to Him so He can work through us, using us like robots, but rather He is constantly working in us, renewing us, sanctifying us, and conforming us to the glorious image of His dear Son. One of the great promises and incentives of the Christian life is that we are truly being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
I am not aware of one verse in Scripture that states that God performs acts of righteousness through us, or that Christ lives the Christian life for us, but rather it is always us working through Him. Indeed, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13-14).
When the Apostle John makes the statement, “he who is born of God does not sin,” he leaves no room for options. The truth of this statement is not dependent on what one does, but what one is. The Christian is a born one of God and therefore he does not practice sin. “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9). John says that if one is born of God then it cannot be possible that he continue to live a life in the practice of sin. He does not say that certain requirements must first be met. He does not say that the born one of God will not practice sin unless he refuses to “yield” to, or “walk in the Spirit,” or neglects the reading and hearing of the Word. Nor does John say that this is true unless one refuses the lordship of Christ and does not follow after Him as His disciple. However, all these means must be appropriated for this statement of John’s to be true. So then, we would find that it is the Seed that so effectually works in the heart of the believer that these means will indeed be appropriated, thus being the cause of the born one of God’s obedience. It is by grace. The Word of God is the means used by the Spirit, and the Word being mixed with faith, being living and powerful, has such an effect on the believer that obedience to the Word becomes his way of life. It is the Christian life. If the Word of God lacks such power in the heart, and such a heart is able to blatantly disregard the exhortations of the Word, it is certain that the Seed does not remain in that heart. God says in Ezekiel 36:26-27, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” I will cause you to hunger and thirst for My Word, I will cause you to take up all the appropriate means whereby the practice of righteousness is realized. Most certainly this statement in 1 John 3:9 can only be true of one who walks in the Spirit, abiding in Christ and His Word as His disciple, and just as certainly it is a statement that is true of every believer without exception, for John does not say, “some who are born of God” but rather “he who is born of God.” This is the regeneration of the new covenant that results in progressivesanctification.
God says in Deut. 30:6 “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul that you may live…and you will again obey the voice of the Lord and do all His commandments which I command you today”.
This circumcision of the heart by which we love God, obey His voice and do all His commandments, is the grace we find in the New Testament. We find in Phil. 3:3, “For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit” and in Rom. 2:29, “But he is a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter,” and in Col. 2:11, “In Him you were circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.” To be circumcised in heart is to be born of the Spirit. What is the result of this circumcision? Love for God and obedience to His word. If this circumcision is by grace, so then is obedience. If the uncircumcised in heart are not saved, then neither are those who do not love the Lord and obey His voice in the keeping of His commandments.
You stated that “This is what writers have called, ‘the end of self’, ‘brokenness’, I called it ‘hitting rock bottom.’” I believe the Scriptures call it salvation. When the Spirit convicts a man of his sin he hits rock bottom, and in his brokenness he cries out to God in desperation, “beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner! (Luke 18:13). He doesn’t simply repeat the “sinner’s prayer” but cries out in agony over his sinful condition seeking to be restored to a right relationship to God and to be set free from his slavery to sin.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin… So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34-37).
“But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin,[past tense] you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness” (Rom. 6:17-1. 8).
Paul says we were slaves to sin but we are now slaves of righteousness. Not because of anything that we have done by our efforts, not by yielding or surrendering, not by works, but rather by something done to us and in us by the power of grace. Titus 3:3-7 sums it up perfectly, For we also once were” [past tense] foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” In other words we once lived a sinful way of life but because of the gracious work of the Spirit in our hearts we walk in this way no longer. Do we still struggle with sin? Yes. Do we walk in sin? No. According to Scripture it is no longer that which characterizes our lives. It is not because of a so-called “second blessing,” “a Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” or “a submitting to His Lordship sometime down the road” but it is the narrow way of the relatively few, the Christian life, as opposed to the broad way of the many that leads to destruction (Matt. 7:13-14) We never read in Scripture of two kinds of Christians (although we will find Christians at varying stages of its maturity) but we read often of those who “profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him” (Titus 1:16, 1 John 2:4, Matt. 7:21-27, Matt. 15:8, Gal. 5:19, Gal. 6:7, 1 Cor. 6:9-10, ) It seems to me that those who say otherwise are “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (2 Tim. 3:5)
Clint 06.23.09 at 6:51 pm
I appreciate your answer to this question. But it raises yet another question, one I find even more perplexing and frustrating than the one you answered. You said the answer to our sin nature is surrender rather than self-effort. My question is, how are surrender and self effort any different? In order to surrender, I have to exercise my will to stop struggling and let God help me. But the decision to surrender is an arbitrary one and in some ways more difficult to make than simply turning away from a temptation. There is a pattern of sin in my life that I have spent years trying to overcome with no real success. It is a compulsion. I’ve stopped trying to get it out of my life on my own steam because I keep hearing God doesn’t really want us to deal with sin in that way. He wants us to depend on him. I pray that will happen, that I can be dependent on him, but nothing has changed. I fail at the point of surrender and letting go of it. But I thought God would give me what I need to surrender and be victorious. It feels like the burden of defeating this habit is back on me. I don’t have what it takes to surrender. It’s as much an act of the will as gritting my teeth and forcing myself to do good. God has to give me the will to surrender; I don’t have it enough on my own. I want God to see me struggling with this because in some weird way I equate struggling with being faithful. It makes me nervous to think I need to quit struggling and watch sin take it’s course all the while waiting on God to work in me the nature of Christ. If I don’t struggle, I’m afraid I’ll simply be passive and I’ll cop out by saying I can’t stop until God does something first. But when I do struggle, I feel helpless to stop what I know I shouldn’t be doing. Cloud and Townsend have stated that people with compulsive behaviors are not able to stop on their own. The solution to the problem is elsewhere. When I first read that, I have to confess I felt more at ease to continue the behavior because it gave me a “legitimate” excuse. I can’t help it. But that seems like a cop out and an abuse of God’s grace. I want to stop but I can’t or won’t. Is God waiting on me to do something or not do something for this to be defeated once and for all?
Paul 08.10.09 at 8:36 pm
I am a christian for almost 30 years but cannot leave porn and masterbation it keeps cumming back .Help
calebo 09.08.09 at 3:15 pm
@ Clint: this is a hard one to answer … but … trusting by faith is usually the way to go.
Heck, maybe the “struggle” you’re having with sin isn’t really even a “sin” at all … which leads me to:
@ Paul: “cumming” funny
But seriously, what’s wrong with Porn or masturbation?
In Love,
Caleb
calebo 09.08.09 at 3:41 pm
@ James: Interesting observation … I appreciate your input James.
However, I believe it’s entirely possible for Christians to understand with “head knowledge” their salvation in Christ, and yet never experience it spiritually … while they are still saved … they’ve been blinded by the legalism and pseudo-Christianity of today’s churches to really walk in that life.
Love,
Caleb
calebo 09.08.09 at 3:45 pm
@ Ajit: good question, but hard to answer in a small space … simply put … not in the way you’ve been told by most church’s “you’ll get a million crowns and a mansion in heaven if you’re a better Christian!”
Doug Gibson 09.30.09 at 4:55 am
The question was ‘why do Christians sin if they are not sinners’. After a very lengthy answer that covers everything from gnosticism to modern psychology, the author had no answer. The TRUE answer is because Christians give in to temptation! Simple as that. The author goes on about different ‘natures’ but he never once even mentioned ‘temptation’ and what our response is supposed to be towards it. He gives no practical advice on what to do when tempted, whatsoever. Nobody who teaches ‘two natures’ talks much if at all about TEMPTATION. Much less do they give instruction on how to deal with it. If we resist temptation, the author screams ‘works! works and striving in the flesh!!!!’ Isn’t that the truth? Whoever sins is a servant of sin. ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch…..
dvanilla 06.07.10 at 4:10 pm
I thank God and you for this message something I was trying to break down this morning to someone who is saved. The church need to preach the truth so we all can be on one accord.