Do We Maintain Our Sin Nature After Conversion?
“I am a failure, a fraud even. How can I say ‘I love the Lord’ in one breath and in, almost, the next breath, do something so opposite of His will?”
I cannot tell you how many times I have had these very thoughts in my mind after saying or doing something against God’s will. Almost immediately a dark cloud forms over me and the storms of shame, guilt, doubt, failure, and fear begin to rage around me. In those moments it feels like nothing could alleviate this violent storm that I have become all too familiar with.
It’s comforting to know that the Apostle Paul dealt with the same nagging issue:
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Romans 7:15-20, 24
You have probably endured the same storm. And so it makes total sense that this question comes to us through the blog: Do we still maintain our sin nature after conversion? In short, yes we do.
One person, two natures
I find the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith’s definition on how the sin nature and new nature exist simultaneously in a believer helpful:
When God converts sinners and transforms them into the state of grace, he frees them from their natural bondage to sin and by his grace alone enables them to will and to do freely what is spiritually good. Yet because of their remaining corruption, they do not perfectly nor exclusively will what is good but also will what is evil (Rom 7:15-23).”
1689 LBCF Article 9.4
Though we have been freed from the dominion of our old man, we still live in these mortal bodies, affected by the sin nature. Yet God, by His grace, makes us alive with Christ, so that we may now go to battle against the old man and grow up in the new man, that is into a mature follower of Jesus Christ.
Living for Christ, despite the flesh
And so now we must ask some follow up questions: What is the way forward? How are we, as Christians–sinners saved by God’s grace, supposed to reconcile this with our new identity as “new creations” in Christ (2 Cor 5:17)?
As with all things in life, the Bible is really helpful for us as we seek answers to these questions and learn to process our struggle with sin.
1. Recall your new nature
“How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would not longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Romans 6:2b-11
In other words, brother or sister, you are dead to sin’s dominion over your life and are now freed, by your baptism into Christ, to live your life for Christ (Galatians 2:20). Paul is talking about your Spiritual baptism, the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). In that baptism you became a brand new creation in Christ.
Recall your new nature frequently. Remind Satan of your status in Christ. Tell him, as Christ did, “Be gone, Satan! (Matthew 4:10) For it is written, that I am a new creation in Christ Jesus, baptized into His death and raised to life with Him. You no longer have dominion over me. I am His and He is mine.”
2. Commit your body to God
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” Romans 6:12-14
It is here that we feel the tension between what God has already done (saved us from the dominion of sin by making us alive with Christ Jesus) and the responsibility we have to follow Him in obedience. We feel the tension because we are still tempted, we still give ourselves to sin, on a daily basis.
So Paul says, don’t let those desires overtake you, commit your body and its members to God to be used as instruments of righteousness. We ought to consider every member of our bodies—our eyes, our tongue, our mind, our hands, our feet, our heart’s desires, etc.—and commit them daily to the Lord’s service. Ask the Lord, as David does in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
And the beauty of Romans 6 is that we get to do that in light of verse 14: “Sin will have no dominion over you.” What a wonderful promise from the Lord during our struggles with temptation and sin—a promise that the thing that so strongly embattles us in that moment will not have dominion over us. Though it may put us to shame, though it may come with consequences, it will not swallow us up. We are living for Christ, under His care and protection, and sin will not destroy us. Better yet! Christ will take that shame, those consequences, and use them for our good and His glory (Romans 8:28)—He will use it to make us more and more like Him, by His grace (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
Brothers and sisters, fight the good fight against temptation and sin, your old man, by recalling your new nature and committing your body to God, and do it with the promise, from your great Advocate and Helper, that sin will have no dominion over you.