In this episode, I am concluding the series entitled “Walking in Grace and True Identity”.
In the previous episode, I talked about how a more biblically correct way of describing followers of Jesus is “saints who sin” rather than “sinners saved by grace.” I left you with this thought: Since I still sin, are there two natures at war within me: my old nature and my new nature?
The answer is this: There are not two natures at war within us: our old nature and our new nature. The truth is that my old nature is dead, crucified with Christ. Let’s look again at this important verse:
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. [not some things have become new, but all things]
(Application: When we are born again, we become a new creation. God’s spirit does not merely take up residence beside our spirit. Our spirit is transformed into a “new creation.” The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. Salvation is not addition. It is transformation.)
What is your nature? For a Christian, he/she has a disposition (a nature) that hungers to glorify God. Now, to be clear, the pleasure of sinning doesn’t immediately disappear when a person trusts Christ. But after the short-lived pleasure is gone, sin leaves a Christian feeling empty and unfulfilled. Have you found that to be true when you sin? It isn’t your nature now to live a lifestyle of sin.
In fact, Neil Anderson says, “The fact that sin bothers a believer is evidence of their salvation. If we are children of God, we are not going to live comfortably with sin.”
Think of your pre-salvation self as the “old you” and your post-salvation self as the “new you.” The “new you” has Jesus as your source of life. The “old you” was dead in sin. Before you were saved, you had one nature. It was the sin nature. Some people call it the unregenerate nature, the Adamic nature, the natural man, or your old self. The essence of your existence at that point was that you lived in Adam. You were totally dead to God.
However, since you became a Christian, you still have only one nature, but it is no longer grounded in Adam. In fact, you are now dead to Adam. You are in Christ and your nature is the disposition of Jesus Himself! In 2 Peter 1:4, we read that we have become “partakers of the divine nature.” That is the only nature the Christian possesses:
(Galatians 2:20a) I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his book “Romans: The New Man,” says the following:
The whole trouble with us, says the New Testament, is that we do not realize what we are, that we still go on thinking we are the old man, and go on trying to do things to the old man. [But] the old man was crucified with Christ. He is non-existent, he is no longer there. If you are a Christian, the man that you were in Adam has gone out of existence; he has no reality at all; you are in Christ.“
(Romans 6:2-3,6-8) How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? … Our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.
You may not feel that your sin nature is dead, but God says that it is. So, why do we continue to sin? In episode 41, I shared that the Bible uses a specific Greek word sarx to refer to “our flesh” as the source of our sin as a believer. Our flesh is that part of our mind that was programmed before our salvation with ungodly, independent ways of thinking and living. And it must be reprogrammed (what the Bible calls transformed) through the process of “renewing the mind:”
Romans 12:2a NIV Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
And why is knowing that we have one transformed nature important?
This has been a game-changer for me! In the past, because of my dual-nature misunderstanding, when I experienced temptations, I would struggle with deciding which nature would be dominant and win. If I sinned, I would find myself excusing the sin because I would unconsciously reason that the sinful behavior was consistent with my old nature that was still present within me. I would lose hope, because I would feel that my old nature was always there (and would always be there) -- lurking in the shadows, waiting to raise its ugly head.
But with this new, biblically accurate perspective (that I have one nature and it is righteous because of Christ), I am finding it easier to resist temptation. Why?
When tempted, my growing awareness of my true identity in Christ makes it progressively easier for me to say, “That behavior (or that thought pattern) is not consistent with who I am in Christ,” and then to reject the temptation. If we see ourselves as a child of God who is spiritually alive in Christ, we will begin to live accordingly -- in the truth that our old nature was indeed crucified in Christ.
Today, I encourage you to “Reflect on This.”