Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Bible Study Community!
There are all kinds of people in the Body of Christ at many different levels of spiritual development, which is to be expected. A lot of that variety though has a particular thing in common: almost NONE of us puts in enough time studying the Word of God. Consequently, a lot of self-identified Christians are relying on handed-down religious tradition and weekly pastoral sermons for their Word-knowledge to the neglect of their own personal study and some related personal-time with the Master Teacher, Holy Spirit.
Thank God for the remnant of true believers which is the true Body of Christ, believers who pursue knowledge and understanding aggressively, hungry for the Word with a heartfelt desire to know God and who they are in Christ. Some of them detect error when they hear it and start looking “violently” for the Truth (see Matthew 11:12). They are the ones who will find it and grow spiritually bringing in much fruit for the Kingdom of God. Consequently, the job of ministries like Prosperous Life Newsletter is to provide you with helpful insights that you can take to the Holy Spirit and discover Truth for yourself. Some of us call ourselves “teachers” which is fine as long as our “students” understand that the Holy Spirit is THE actual Teacher and that true understanding comes from Him, and Him only.
Understanding Predisposition
With this in mind, the purpose of this article is, among other things, to examine the inaccurate tradition that says Christians are in possession of two natures: the sin (aka Adamic) nature we bring with us when we are born and a divine nature we acquire when we are born again (John 3:3). Scripture does confirm that we are born with a sin nature we inherited from Adam and that we do acquire a divine nature when we are born again. However, we do not wind up possessing the both of them at the same time. It’s important to set aside the tradition of possessing simultaneous dual natures so that we can understand with accuracy who we actually have become in Christ and what that means in our confrontation with sin.
A fundamental thing to understand at the outset is that the word “nature” is defined as an inherent disposition or capacity that determines our conduct and character. Through the sin of Adam, we were born with an inherited disposition toward sin (Romans 5:12, 15, 17-18). In fact, the Bible says that sin ruled us (Colossians 1:13) meaning that sin ordered our steps instead of God and there was no way we could stop sinning. Furthermore, since we were born with a sin nature, it means that we were not born in the image of God like another tradition says. What the Bible actually says is that man was originally CREATED in the image of God (Genesis 5:1) at the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), but because of sin in the Garden, mankind originally created in the image of God came to be born later in the image of Adam (Genesis 5:3). It takes nothing less than being born again (John 3:3) to restore us back to the image of God as we were originally created.
Another tradition to deal with is that according to what your Bible actually says, all of us, including sweet little innocent babies, were born with this predisposition to sin, a sin nature in the image of Adam. That doesn’t mean that babies commit sins. In fact, they aren’t able to commit sins because a true act of sin requires a sense of rebellion against the will of God. Therefore, babies can’t sin until they’re old enough to know what God’s will is but we are ALL born with a sin nature that will eventually lead to the commission of sins.
The Bible says that when we are born again, our old nature is crucified with Christ (Romans 6:6). We become a new creature/creation and the old things pass away (2 Corinthians 5:17). The new creature requires a new nature described in Scripture as a DIVINE nature (2 Peter 1:4) which is the nature of Christ. If the old nature was crucified then it’s dead and gone. It’s finished! It didn’t resurrect when you were born again. It’s dead once and for all time. You made a decision to do away with it and to replace it with a better nature that is disposed to righteousness.
But of course, we still commit sins hopefully a decreasing number of them as time goes on. Nevertheless, we commit sins even when we don’t want to. If the old nature is dead, how come we continue to sin? The answer is that the soulish part of us where our mind resides was previously programmed to sin by our old sin nature. So now it’s your mind causing the problem and that’s the main part of you that needs to undergo transformation (Romans 12:1-2) back to the image of Christ as you were at the foundation of the world. Transformation is carried out by your study of the Word of God. If you neglect your study, your transformation is slower that it could be. Even so, there has occurred a huge change: before you were born again you were in bondage to sin but after being born again, you have options and are no longer ruled by sin.
Tradition says that you have two natures after you are born again. The Bible actually teaches that the old nature has been crucified and is now dead leaving you with one divine nature that is disposed to righteousness. And that brings up another tradition: if the old nature has been crucified why do we say that we have to crucify our flesh daily? Your flesh doesn’t equate to your nature. Your flesh is the carnal part of you that is going through transformation and is limited to the five natural senses: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. It operates in the part of you that as of yet isn’t submitted to God: the parts of your soul that have not yet been transformed plus your physical body that will have to be replaced someday because it can’t be redeemed in its present form. As you go through life, you are either operating after the flesh according to the five natural senses or after the Spirit according to faith.
Even though you are born again, the flesh is still with you. But don’t confuse it with you former sin nature which has already been crucified. The Bible goes on to say that if your mind is led by your natural senses, it will result in failure (death); but if it is led by the Spirit, the result will be life and success (Romans 8:6). Since you aren’t ruled by sin anymore, you are capable now of being Spirit led (Romans 8:14) and you do not have to be flesh-led if you don’t want to be.
In closing, you are not spiritually schizophrenic. You do not have two natures. You can’t be in bondage to the former nature and at the same time be living freed from sin by the new nature:
Romans 6:7 = For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
Your old nature is DEAD, crucified with Jesus and you have been raised in the likeness of Christ with a new nature disposed to righteousness. The formerly dead spirit part of you has been brought back to life by the seed of the Word (1 Peter 1:23) and it is that part of you that has become ONE with Christ.
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