STUDY OF THE ‘SIN NATURE’ AND THE CHRISTIAN: Joe Swartz 2.11.13 What causes a person to be predisposed to sinning? What power has sway over a person that compels them to sin ? The answer, our ‘sin nature’. Paul wrote to the Romans… “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with [him], that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”- (6:6) The “old man”, the ‘sin nature’, has been put to death so that the power of sin could be broken. Sin’s power has been broken. We have a new master. Paul says … “But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”- Romans 6:17-18 The idea that “the sin nature is alive and well” is not supported by Scripture. I’d call it a direct refutation of Scripture. This is serious ground to be treading on by declaring with such conviction that which the NT does not support. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”- Romans 6:11 We are not to reckon as truth that which is not. God would not ask us to do that. We reckon that sin has no more mastery over us, that the “old man”/’sin nature’ is dead, because it does not, and is. We don’t reckon ourselves dead to sin as some mind trick, we do it because it’s true. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” –Galatians 2:20 When Paul says “I am crucified with Christ” who is he talking about ? It was not his physical body, it was still alive, it was not his mind, it still worked, his emotions hadn’t been crucified. So what was left ? His Adamic state. His natural sinful self. Unless you believe that the same God who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity:–Habakkuk 1:13a can reside within a human being right along side the sin nature. Paul told the Corinthians … “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and [that] the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which [temple] ye are.” –(3:16-17) Now is it not reasonable to say that our physical body is not a ‘holy place’ as long as the sin nature resides active within it ? Did anything which was unclean reside within the ancient Jewish temple ? No. I would certainly think that the ‘sin nature’ would be an ‘unclean thing’, if you will, within the new temples of flesh.This is Biblical logic. (We are to use our minds to come to Biblical conclusions. I would submit from personal experience and being a pretty keen observer of the church in general that the American church grossly lacks the ability to reason out the Scriptures, we regurgitate what others taught us.) We simply cannot reckon ourselves as “freed from sin” if there is a power within us that compels us to sin. Period. This is very basic. “For he that is dead is freed from sin.”-Romans 6:7 Who is dead ? Our ‘Adamic man’, our ‘fallen man’, our ‘sin nature’. Again, our bodies, wills, emotions, minds, ALL survive our conversion experience so what died ? What else could it be other than our Adamic-man /sin nature ? There is nothing left I can think of other than that. Paul wrote this to the Ephesian Christians… “And you [hath he quickened], who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” –Ephesians 2:1-3 Pre-conversion we “WERE” by nature (sin nature) the children of wrath”. Past tense. We are therefore ‘not any longer by nature the children of wrath’ because our “old man” was crucified with Christ. Our “nature” is what made us “children of wrath”, therefore, and quite logically, if we are no longer “children of wrath” then that which made us so, this “nature” Paul speaks of, must have been dealt with. It was. Again, Paul’s words in 6:11 are key. We must reckon our old nature dead and it’s power thereby broken so we can walk in victory knowing that there is no influence we don’t allow or invite that can force us to become slaves again to sin. The victory is in the realization that the old master, the ‘sin nature’, our Adamic-man, is dead ! Romans 6:12 may be even more powerful ! If we still have a sin nature, which by understanding means it is beyond restraint in human beings / over which we have no power, then how can Paul tells us post-conversion to “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body” ? Paul is declaring that we DO now have the ability to defeat sin ! Remember, “sin” is not ‘the sin nature’. Adam and Eve both sinned before they had ‘sin natures’. This is scary to those who have been instructed in a Christianity that is sin-oriented, to whom NT freedom looks like abuse. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Guzik says it well … “. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him: The death of the old man is an established fact. It happened spiritually when we were identified with Jesus’ death at our salvation. i. The old man is the self patterned after Adam, that part of us deeply ingrained with a desire to rebel against God and His commands. The system of law is unable to deal with the old man, because it can only tell the old man what the righteous standard of God is. The law tries to reform the old man, to get him to “turn over a new leaf.” But the system of grace understands that the old man can never be reformed. He must be put to death, and for the believer the old man dies with Jesus on the cross. ii. The crucifixion of the old man is something that God did in us. None of us nailed the old man to the cross. Jesus did it, and we are told to account it as being done. “In us there was nothing even to sicken and to weaken our old man, much less to murder him by crucifixion; God had to do this.” (Lenski) iii. In place of the old man, God gives the believer a new man - a self that is instinctively obedient and pleasing to God; this aspect of our person is that which was raised with Christ in His resurrection. The New Testament describes the new man for us. The new man, which was created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness. (Ephesians 4:24) The new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him. (Colossians 3:10) d. God uses our death to the old man, the sin nature, to liberate us from sin. A dead man can no longer have authority over us, so we are to remember and account the old man as crucified with Him. i. The two other places in the New Testament which mention the old man remind us to consider him done away with, telling us to put off the old man as something dead and gone (Ephesians 4:22 and Colossians 3:9). Strictly speaking, we don’t battle the old man. We simply reckon him as dead. ii. “Evil enters us now as an interloper and a stranger, and works sad havoc, but it does not abide in us upon the throne; it is an alien, and despised, and no more honored and delighted in. We are dead to the reigning power of sin.” (Spurgeon) e. If the old man is dead, why do I feel a pull to sin inside? It comes from the flesh, which is distinct from the old man. It’s hard to precisely describe the flesh; some have called it “the screen on which the inner man is displayed.” Our inner being has desires and impulses and passions; these are played out in our mind, in our will, and in our emotions. The flesh is what acts out the inner man. i. The flesh is a problem in the battle against sin because it has been expertly trained in sinful habits by three sources. First, the old man, before he was crucified with Christ, trained and “imprinted” himself on the flesh. Second, the world system, in its spirit of rebellion against God, can have an continuing influence on the flesh. Finally, the devil seeks to tempt and influence the flesh towards sin. ii. With the old man dead, what do we do with the flesh? God calls us, in participation with Him, to do actively day by day with the flesh just what He has already done with the old man - crucify it, make it dead to sin. (Galatians 5:24) But when we allow the flesh to be continually influenced by the old man’s habits of the past, the world, and the devil, the flesh will exert a powerful pull towards sin. If we let the new man within us influence the mind, the will, and the emotions, then we will find the battle less intense.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 21:36:19 +0000