“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Peter 1:3, ESV)
“Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:6)
“And do not offer any parts of it (our bodies) to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness.” (Romans 6:13)
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
I have a big problem, a huge problem, with Pastors and individual Christians saying we have a “sin nature” after we’ve come to Jesus. Why?
Because it’s not the truth.
God says that when we experience the new birth through the New Covenant, “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:31-33).
God is holy, and only holy things may touch His presence. The Day of Atonement ritual requires a very involved “setting apart” or “holy-fication” process so the High Priest can come close to God’s presence. “Tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die. For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. But in this way Aaron shall come into the Holy Place…” (Leviticus 16:2-3). The High Priest’s spiritual cleansing process is crucial so that He doesn’t die when he comes presence to presence with God in the Most Holy Place.
The Lord tells us in Leviticus that unholiness, defilement, and uncleanness can be transferred by touch. (Leviticus 11:31-40) This is especially true when a person touches a dead body. (Numbers 5:2, 9:7, 19:11) When a person is in an unholy state, they are tamei (unclean), which means they absolutely may not approach a holy, clean (tahor) God. Otherwise, judgment falls, usually death.
Being unclean/tamei means a person may not approach God until the uncleanness is removed from that person through a sacrifice or immersion in water, depending on what caused the uncleanness.
Why is this important to the discussion of the sin nature? Since our sin nature is the core of our fallen, unholy, impure, defiled, made unclean by sin, spiritually dead state (“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,” Ephesian 2:1), there is no way the Lord would take up residence via His Holy Spirit in an unregenerated, spiritually unclean human being with a sin nature.
Would you want to live in a septic tank?
And how can God write His holy teaching (Hebrew – Torah) on the heart of a person with an inherent and active sin nature that would continually resist and turn from those God-breathed instructions? It won’t happen unless that sin nature has been eliminated and replaced by a new, holy, clean, righteous nature.
Holy apples to holy apples, folks.
Our Heavenly Father expands further on what happens under the New Covenant. “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 11:19-20), and “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances” (Ezekiel 38:26-27, italics author).
Did you catch that? Initially, we get a new spirit. That’s the regeneration process that only God’s power can make happen. That’s when our sin nature is eliminated, and our new nature is created. The Holy Spirit comes to live in us as a holy vessel (meaning spiritually clean and set apart to the Lord). That ain’t gonna happen if we have a sin nature.
A new spirit with a new heart is that new nature that frees us to choose to follow God’s ways and not our own sinful ones that oppose Him.
The old nature guarantees that we WILL sin. That old nature compels us to do so. The new nature gives us the ability NOT to sin and resist the compulsion to disobey the Lord, although we still have the freedom to disobey if we want to.
However, the counterargument is usually, “But I still sin. I must have a sin nature that drives that.” Wrong. We sin because we are lured and enticed by our own desires (James 1:14). Despite our new nature, we often surrender to our desires even though we have the freedom and power to master them. That’s on us.
The core of this issue is Christians mistakenly use their behavior to define who they are. By believing the lie that they have a sin nature, every sin becomes a defeat and a lying reminder of how hopelessly trapped in sin they are. They live a defeated life by placing their behavior above God’s truth. “Woe is me. I can’t stop sinning. I’m miserable and constantly defeated. There’s no way out of this.” Such Christians act as if they’re stuck in the septic tank rather than walking above it, clean and stench-free.
Didn’t Jesus die to set you free from sin and death? “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.” (Romans 6:22) How dare we buy into the lie that denies what our All-Powerful, Loving, Forgiving, Restoring, and Gracious Heavenly Father has done for us through Jesus’ intense, unimaginable self-sacrifice?
The article below says beautifully, “God uses your birth, not your behavior, to define who you are.” In other words, you are not a sinner with a sin nature because you sin after being reborn. You are a saved, brand-new person who sometimes sins despite your new nature. BIG difference!
Unsaved = no new birth (not transformed by God) = sin nature.
Saved = spiritual rebirth (transformed by God) = new nature, infused with God’s life.
I like the way gotquestions.org puts it. “The new creation is described in 2 Corinthians 5:17: ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!’ The word ‘therefore’ refers us back to verses 14-16 where Paul tells us that all believers have died with Christ and no longer live for themselves. Our lives are no longer worldly; they are now spiritual. Our ‘death’ is that of the old sin nature which was nailed to the cross with Christ. It was buried with Him, and just as He was raised up by the Father, so are we raised up to ‘walk in newness of life.’ (Romans 6:4) That new person that was raised up is what Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 5:17 as the ‘new creation’” (gotquestions.org).
So, there it is. Reborn, regenerated Christians do not have a sin nature. We have a new nature, born of God. A new nature means we have the power to walk God’s way and sin less and less and less. That’s the process of sanctification, being changed into Jesus’ likeness in word and deed with the Spirit’s help.
What a sneaky, underhanded tactic our spiritual enemy uses to falsely condemn born-again children of God that they’re not really part of God’s family every time they disobey. No, I’m not diminishing the severity of sin. I’m addressing the defeatist attitude that undercuts God’s truth and weakens the Body of Christ.
Let Jesus’ truth destroy Satan’s lie. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Remember, “God uses your birth, not your behavior, to define who you are.”
Live the truth. Be free to live free!
Sources:
Do Christians Have a Sinful Nature? gracelifeinternational.com/freebies/christians-sinful-nature
What does it mean that a Christian is a new creation [2 Corinthians 5:17]? gotquestions.org/new-creation.html
Shining the Light of God’s Truth on the Road Ahead
Pastor Jay Christianson
The Truth Barista, Frothy Thoughts