Take 3.
Our flesh is corrupt.
Our spirit has been credited the righteousness of God.
There is sin leading to death and sin not leading to death because we are twofold... kinda weird.
We are redeemed, born again, made-pure-by-Christ-spirits stuck in wretched bodies-O-death.
Has the scripture about being a new creation ever bugged you? It has driven me crazy. How can I be a new creation and sin all the time? Why can't I just reflect what God is telling me I am?
2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJ
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new."
If we cling to Romans 7... flesh in yellow, spirit in green...
Romans 7:16-25 NKJ
"If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me."
"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find."
"For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me."
"I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man."
"But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."
"O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"
"I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin."
... I can believe I am a new creation.
1 John 3:5 & 6 NKJ
"And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin."
I hope the colors aren't making you dizzy...
Flesh cannot abide in Him. It is carnal and passing away. Our spirits are born again and abide in Him where there is no sin.
1 John 3:9 NKJ
"Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God."
Makes sense, right? He gives us righteousness as a gift... how could we have His righteousness and sin? (The New International Version is super confusing here, because it states it so loosely that it, consequentially, becomes contradictory with the rest of the verses that talk about sin in 1 John and the entire Bible. Beware of the NIV... it exchanges the word "keep" with "obey" all over the New Testament. Check out the original languages and you'll find a huge difference between the two.)
1 John 4:15 NKJ
"Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. "
I think the "him" right there should be yellow, but I'm not certain, yet.
1 John 5:18 NJK
"We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him."
1 John 5:11-13 NKJ
"And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God."
Here's how I understand it... since sin is lawlessness, and part of me is under law & part of me isn't, part of me sins continually and part of me doesn't.
With sin out of the way, guilt is out of the way... since we continue to sin in our flesh, Satan is constantly trying to guilt us out of faith. If we believe God, guilt dissapates and with our clean conscience we approach the Lord as our heavenly Father with the confidence He has given us in His wonderful gift of righteousness.
I believe this is the teaching about righteousness Hebrews 5:13 mentions.
Let's be green.
If you agree or disagree please comment and let's discover together...
ReplyDeleteDave, good stuff here, I really liked how you used the color to bring focus to these verses. Initially I thought you were leading me down a road where Christians don't sin after they come to God, particularly the verses in 1 John. I went back and read them in the ESV and it uses the word 'keep on sinning' which also reminded me of the passage in Heb 10:26 "if they deliberately keep on sinning..." The part of the post that I found most interesting was near the end where you said that "part of me sins continually and part of me doesn't". As I reflected on that I thought of a couple of other verses in Romans, Romans 6:1-2 "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" Also v6-7, "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin." How do you see these passages fitting in with the others related to our sin nature?
ReplyDeleteDrew,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment! Your question is right on, and I like the verses you've referenced as I feel they are right in line with the passages in 1 John. This will be a long response, to answer adequately, but I will try to be concise here and we can discuss further later... My experience with the "continue to sin" or "keep on sinning" verbiage/doctrine (as NIV & ESV put it in 1 John & Hebrews 10:26) is this... I found these interpretations to be the only ones that made sense and so I tried to apply them. Here is what I discovered... I continued to sin. I kept on sinning. There was obviously some amount of time that past in between these "like" sins, but nevertheless, they were persistent. I found myself battling my flesh to control it and stop the sin. But our battle isn't against the flesh... I can't stop my sin- I can temporarily displace it, but evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 1 John says some strong things about this dilemma, and I find contradictions in scripture if I were to hold my previous stance on the NIV & ESV translations. (example 1 John 1:8 & 10, 3:6 & 9) Check out 1 John 5:18 (NIV, ESV) If I keep on sinning or continue to sin, I am not born of God. If I ask myself sincerely, "Have I continued to sin?", my honest answer would have to be yes. I don't mean to be an extremist, but the reality is I won't stop sinning in the flesh until I'm dead. 1 John 1:8 & 10 affirm this. So, looking for hope in light of these difficult standards has brought me to search these points out as if my life depended on it. I found the the interpreters of the NIV and some other versions took great liberty in making these translations "easier" to understand. Here's my problem... the original languages state it short and simple... "does not sin". There is no "keep on" or "continue to". These additional words actually cloud our freedom in Christ. Not freedom to indulge, but freedom to rest in Him, our righteousness, our Rock. So, where I said, "part of me sins continually and part of me does not", what I'm saying is, my flesh will always sin, and my spirit cannot sin anymore... there is no sin in Him, so how can I be in Him, and bring sin with me? The law has been fulfilled (all law written against me, O.T. & N.T.) so there is nothing left to sin against, sin ceases to exist for those in Him... it is literally, "dead". Where Romans 6:1-2 states that we died to sin, it is like what Paul states later in Romans 6:7, "For he who has died has been freed from sin", just like how when our bodies die, we will be done sinning... when we are born anew, we died/were crucified with Christ, and are born again and are sinless through faith- we cannot sin anymore, because sin is lawlessness and the law is fulfilled/done. Christ didn't free me from sin so I could do a better job of getting rid of or stopping my sin (Mormon doctrine). Galatians 1:1 encourages me to stand fast in liberty... I've tasted it and now I understand why Paul wanted the dissenters of the Gospel to emasculate themselves. So, I do believe that those in Christ don't sin anymore... they can't, because there is nothing to sin against. But it is temporarily tricky, because we do sin in this flesh... however, God encourages us concerning this particular (and continual) sin in Romans 7:17 & 20... "it is no longer I who do it". Praise God!!!!
thoughts?
I just re-read my comment here, and I realized it may come across as if I give up too easily and look for theological loopholes to justify myself or as if I view sin flippantly. I assure you that I have given up my life to stop sinning. There was a period of about a year or two where I became so frustrated with my sin and my hatred for it that I would drive away at night and cry out to God to help me stop. I would sometimes scream, "What do you want from me!!!" and pound my dashboard because I tried desperately to be righteous but always failed at some point, even if my flesh may have been doing right, but my motives were wrong. I hate sin. I've discovered, through God's commands, that my deep motives are rarely pure. I am in desperate need of a Savior.
ReplyDeleteWhat may look like theological loopholes or justifying myself is really me realizing that Jesus Christ credited justification to me as a free gift. The theological stuff is God's powerful Word dividing what is of the flesh from what is of the spiritual and shedding new light on so many scriptures.