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I'm sorry but all sins are willfull sins, or are you in the habit of blaming your sins on other people or your circumstances? And please take note, not once in any of the verses you listed does it use the word deliberately or willfully.The Holy Spirit of Truth speaking through John is speaking in context following verse eight, and then verse nine, to illustrate the cause of verse ten. Whosoever deliberately, willfully sins is of the devil; but whosoever is born of God, which is to say, they who have resurrected from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; these they are who no longer deliberately, and willfully sin, because that seed, the conscience of the heavenly Truth is their influence, and they cannot deliberately, willfully sin, because of this rebirth.
Exactly, which was the reason why I gave up and rebelled against God, and I did so for many years. Yeah I was told by people that those verses were only talking about willful and or habital sin. To be honest that only made me think even worse about it. Now they were talking about habits I had that I felt I had no control over, and that made me in effect not a child of God even though I believed in Jesus Christ as Lord without any doubt. they were telling me that I would go to hell, that I was not a child of God because of certain things I was doing. It wasn't that I totally believed them but that it seriously caused me to doubt the true character of God. And I did start seeing God as a very angry, unforgiving, unjust God. Well, I guess I did eventually believe what they were saying.Amen...
For many years I struggled with these truths.
If born again believers cannot sin... then what of my faith?
I sinned! So did most of the Christan's I knew. Oh I do not mean adultery or murder. But when I read the words of Jesus and saw that even looking on a women with lust was evidence of sin in the heart. Hating a brother was evidence of the sin of murder in the heart. The sum of it all was when Jesus said.."be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect..."
What a burden. What a weight!
NOBODY CAN DO THAT!
I struggled. I heard people try to explain these words of Jesus and 1 John 3:9 away. They would insert words like "habitually" into the text. But if that were the case, then they were essentially saying that God sins, just not habitually, and He has passed that trait on to us His children. But NO. God does not sin at all... habitually or otherwise.
Then the lord opened it up to me simply by asking me:
"When you were unregenerate, what part of you was unregenerate?"
"It was my spirit Lord, as you said in your word; the heart of man is incurably wicked."
"And when you were regenerated by the new birth, what part of you was born again?"
Well Lord... it was also my spirit..."
And then I saw it. It was not my body or soul that was born again. It was my spirit that rose up together with Jesus. I still had the same old flesh that still wants to sin. I still had the same old soul and mind that needed to be renewed and brought into subjection to the word. But it was my spirit and ONLY my spirit that was born again. So when John said I could not sin, he was talking about the spirit part of me that was born again. That is where the seed of God is. My flesh is not the seed of God, nor is my mind. For many years the devil tricked me into thinking that John was talking about the whole man here. But scriptures make it very clear that the body, soul, and spirit, are separate parts that make up the whole. So when I read 1 John 3:9, I thought he was talking about the whole man... but that was wrong. He is just talking about the part of me that was born of God, and that part is my spirit.
This simple truth clicked in so many ways. So many of my teachings and understandings of the scripture suddenly made so much more sense.
When Jesus taught the sermon on the mount... He was not teaching something new. To the contrary, He was preaching the truth and full intent of the law. The law was designed to reveal to you your fallen spiritual nature. He was showing us that if we sinned FROM THE HEART, then that was a revealing of our fallen spiritual nature. Now that we are born again, we cannot sin from the heart. This is the great accomplishment and division between the regenerate and the unregenerate.
The unregenerate cannot help but sin from the spirit. Even the good things he does are filthy and dirty before God.
Not so with the regenerate ones. If you walk in the power and love of your regenerate spirit you CANNOT sin because there is NO sin within your spirit!
I'm sorry but all sins are willfull sins, or are you in the habit of blaming your sins on other people or your circumstances? And please take note, not once in any of the verses you listed does it use the word deliberately or willfully.
No, totally correct.
We no longer have a sinful nature, don't you believe that you are a new creation in Christ Jim? If you believe you are a new creation in Christ why do you believe you still have a sinful nature? Do you believe that God will recreate you with a sinful nature?
And you're only reading Gal. 5:17 somewhat correctly, just because there is apart of us that doesn't do what we want doesn't mean that our minds are still conformed to the sinful nature we once had. Therefore our born again spirit may not want to sin but our minds do.
This is why Paul says in Romans 12:2 to no longer be conformed to the pattern of this world but to transform our minds by renewing it. This is why Paul says in Eph. 4:23 that we are to be made new in the attitude of our minds by putting on the new self.
We don't have 2 different natures, we have one nature and that is of righteousness in Christ, but we have to renew and or transform our minds to that new righteous nature because our minds have been conformed to the old sinful nature.
This is correct. I think where you error is that you may not understand that the heart is the soul of man, not the spirit. The soul consists of both the mind and heart of man as the heart is really pointing to the subconscious mind.Many Christians do NOT see the total depravity of man due to sin because they treat the symptoms of sins instead of the heart (where sin is actually located); and they aim for change that is not true sanctification.
We have already become sanctified in Christ Heb. 10:10. Jesus, nor any apostle of his, ever taught that we are to sanctify ourselves, nor do our own efforts of avoiding sin do us any good to save you or sanctify you. Jesus does the work in us, we are his workmanship Eph. 2:10.Is behavior modification more helpful than sanctification? According to Romans 8:9, the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the mark of all who are truly born again: "You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him."
Exactly, which is why it is impossible for 1 John 3:7-10 to be talking about willfull deliberate sin.We do not sin simply because of Satan or because of social deprivation, stressful situations, bad influences, or any other external cause. Those things may tempt us to sin and make sinning easier, but when we commit sin – or even intend to commit sin – it is because we decide to sin. Sin is an act of the will.
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This is correct. I think where you error is that you may not understand that the heart is the soul of man, not the spirit. The soul consists of both the mind and heart of man as the heart is really pointing to the subconscious mind.
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We have already become sanctified in Christ Heb. 10:10. Jesus, nor any apostle of his, ever taught that we are to sanctify ourselves, not does our own efforts of avoiding to sin will do us any good or is what they taught will save you or sanctify you. Jesus does the work in his, we are his workmanship Eph. 2:10.
Exactly, which is why it is impossible for 1 John 3:7-10 to be talking about willfull delibert sin.
What do you say about your "sinful" flesh since all our problems are caused by the flesh? In Galatians 5 Paul tells us that the key to Christian living is a Spirit-controlled life. Our problem is our fallen flesh, and only the Holy Spirit can harness it.
Every wrong action, reaction, word, idea, emotion, and attitude is from the flesh. The Bible says we've been changed in the inner man by salvation (Rom. 8:10). Some day we'll be changed in the outer man and will be perfect forever. When our bodies have been redeemed, the flesh will no longer be a problem.
"Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh."
That sounds gnostic but I'll digress. No, the flesh we will always have, the flesh is our soul, the question is what is it's nature? A person either has a sinful nature or a righteous nature, you can't have both. If you are born again, your old sinful nature was crucified with Christ, you still have the flesh but it is no longer of a sinful nature.The flesh is the old life, the natural life inherited from Adam, are those who still sin because their bodies are still depraved.
Here you're saying that we have 2 natures, that's impossible. What you see as the nature of the flesh is actually our minds having been conformed to the sinful nature, that's two different things. And God does not weaken the sinful nature, He does not wound it, He puts it to death.As Christians, sin is dethroned – but not destroyed! When God’s grace changes our nature, it doesn’t change the nature of the flesh. It conquers it, weakens it, mortally wounds it, so that we are no longer controlled by sin.
It's remaining in the confines of our minds, the flesh, and the only way to get rid of it is to renew our minds to the new creation we have become, the new righteous and holy nature that God created our born again spirit with.[FONT="]We are delivered from the penalty of sin and from the authoritative power of sin, but not from the continued presence and influence of sin. Sin is no longer reigning, but it is remaining.[/FONT]
The flesh is the heart and the heart is the flesh, and they both are apart of the soul.Flesh is a man's heart that is corrupted. Intelligence, reason, and choice. The evil of the human heart precedes and gives rise to many of our apparently intellectual misunderstandings of Scripture. We must not trust our heart at any time; even when it speaks most fair, we must call it liar; and when it pretends to the most good, still we must remember its nature, for it is evil, and that continuallyThe flesh is the earthly qualities about which enable us to respond to the temptation. If God is going to make those kinds of vessels out of clay (us), however, we are going to have to yield to the spiritual law of surrender. Give ourselves to God as a living sacrifice and let Him have us--all of us as in all of our minds, all of our hearts and all of our souls. As Jesus said in Matthew 22:37 " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' The Holy Spirit is within us believers, Christ dwells in our hearts, and "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27) is the burning core of the Christian faith.
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That sounds gnostic but I'll digress. No, the flesh we will always have, the flesh is our soul, the question is what is it's nature? A person either has a sinful nature or a righteous nature, you can't have both. If you are born again, your old sinful nature was crucified with Christ, you still have the flesh but it is no longer of a sinful nature.
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Here you're saying that we have 2 natures, that's impossible. What you see as the nature of the flesh is actually our minds having been conformed to the sinful nature of the flesh, that's two different things. And God does not weaken the sinful nature, He does not wound it, He puts it to death.
It's remaining in the confines of our minds, the flesh, and the only way to get rid of it is to renew our minds to the new creation we have become, the new righteous and holy nature that God created our born again spirit with.
The flesh is the heart and the heart is the flesh, and they both are apart of the soul.
This is still good, I placed this in the debate forum for a reason, and this was the reason. I'm enjoying this.Sorry Neph. You had a real good thread going here.
Ok, now now, don't be judgeing me like that, you are not understanding me correctly. I have never said or implied that I don't struggle with sin. Struggle with sin and the sinful nature are not one in the same, nor does struggling with sin mean you still have a sinful nature. What I have been saying all along here is that we no longer have a sinful nature, that it was crucified with Jesus Christ, but that does not in anyway shape or form mean that our minds are not condition to that sinful nature we once had. In fact our minds are very much conformed to that old sinful nature, but that is what the problem is, not that we still have a sinful nature but our minds are still conformed to it.If you don't have any struggles with sin, then you have one nature. Sinless. You must be one of the few.
And that is why Paul says we now must renew our minds to the new self, the new nature that we have. Let me ask you this, when paul says in Romans 6:6 that we have been crucified with Christ what is Paul refering to that has been crucified? And please keep in mind that crucified means death, not a weakening, not a change, not a wounding, but death.If you do struggle, you have natures.The Christian life is a war, and the fiercest battles are those that rage within the heart of every believer. The new birth radically and permanently changes a person’s sinful nature, but it does not immediately liberate that nature for all of the remnants of sin.
I totally disagree, we are no longer sinners, we are now the righteousness of God in Christ 2 Cor. 5:21, or has not Jesus Christ died for our sins yet? Is that what we are celebrating this weekend? And aren't we new creations in Christ? Does Paul say in 2 Cor. 5:17 that the old has gone, and the new has come?Birth is followed by growth, and that growth involves warfare. We are not simply sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners which is why we are to repent daily.
Ok, now now, don't be judgeing me like that, you are not understanding me correctly. I have never said or implied that I don't struggle with sin. Struggle with sin and the sinful nature are not one in the same, nor does struggling with sin mean you still have a sinful nature. What I have been saying all along here is that we no longer have a sinful nature, that it was crucified with Jesus Christ, but that does not in anyway shape or form mean that our minds are not condition to that sinful nature we once had. In fact our minds are very much conformed to that old sinful nature, but that is what the problem is, not that we still have a sinful nature but our minds are still conformed to it.
And that is why Paul says we now must renew our minds to the new self, the new nature that we have. Let me ask you this, when paul says in Romans 6:6 that we have been crucified with Christ what is Paul refering to that has been crucified? And please keep in mind that crucified means death, not a weakening, not a change, not a wounding, but death.
I totally disagree, we are no longer sinners, we are now the righteousness of God in Christ 2 Cor. 5:21, or has not Jesus Christ died for our sins yet? Is that what we are celebrating this weekend? And aren't we new creations in Christ? Does Paul say in 2 Cor. 5:17 that the old has gone, and the new has come?
This is not a denial of sin, nor is it a claim of perfection throughout. It is simply acknowdging the truth of how God sees His children, and God does not see his born again children as sinners but saints. Paul even goes so far as to tell us that we are no longer to consider ourselves as to what we once were but to what we have become.If we are no longer sinners, why are we still sinning?
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