It's not about words but the Spirit and power.It's not about mind-games or make-believe but about the power of God to raise the dead to life. There's no need for religious mumbo-jumbo. It's not about words but the Spirit and power.
I'd have to answer, well, of course!
Rom. 7 shows Paul saying he can't stop sinning. Is that your experience? Or was he not trusting his own words enough?
That's not exactly what he said there, though. At least not as I've read it. What I read is how he explains how sin works in our flesh, and the power we have over it. He explains how, and why it is that this power is real, effective. How we are actually dead to sin, even if, this is really important, even if it looks like we really aren't. It's a lie from the flesh, this disbelief, and will sabatoge our walk.
Sometimes God just gifts us with the faith that allows us to walk completely overcoming the flesh, or as nearly as may be, given that we aren't the one's to say. Oftentimes God simply trains us into the consistency of our faith that allows us to walk ever more consistently in the Spirit.
Having been reborn in God's Own pattern of righteousness and true holiness means that this is our own nature now. We have been moved from Adam to Christ.
But not all believe this to be true. Some believe in some overwhelming but non-specific "sin nature" that forces them to sin, or some variation on this theme. Some believe that we are working on becoming more holy and more righteous so that we can be more of both of those, or some variation of that. I've found some believe that you aren't even born again unless you've entirely stopped any sort of sin, and, of course, variations on that.
ANY other concept of believing, belief, trusting, that is not in fact Scriptural will not give you the full gift. Though in His grace and mercy, even so God gives us maturity if our hearts are truly for Him. But we can still hold to error, and still pass along error to others.
Anyone who knows me knows I hold to the plain sayings of the Scriptures, and those plain sayings are that we are baptised into Christ, and that this specifically means that we are baptised - immersed - into His death. That we are buried in death with Him through baptism, so that we can walk in newness of life, just as Jesus rose from the dead.
We're plainly told that this death is in fact our own death, and that this death has separated us from our flesh - the corrupt inheritance from Adam - which likewise separates us from our sin, and the source of it.
We're plainly told that we are to consider this to be actually true, and that we've actually been fully released from the power of sin, and of the flesh.
Reckon yourself dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. If we aren't thinking right, if we are thinking in the old way, we are to begin to think the new way, according to truth, that we are free from sin, dead to sin, dead to the flesh, alive to righteousness, alive to God.
And then go through live serving others because we genuinely care about them. With gentleness, I heard this on the radio this morning, a great definition of gentleness, With a genuine desire for someone else's happiness in what you are doing for them. I liked that. To me it means with softness.
It's not about words but the Spirit and power.
I completely agree with you here. But if we are not believing God gives us this power, we won't use it.
2 Peter 1:2-4 KJV
2) Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
3) According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
4) Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Much love!