We are a new creation. The flesh remains depraved. That's what it means when it says, therefore it is no longer I that sin, but the sin that lives in me.
Much love!
Oh Mark, Mark, Mark. What am I going to do with you. You are quoting Romans 7!!! Take out the chapter break and read the conclusion and the resolution to the matter of
SIN that dwelt in me. Romans 7:20 is ancient history in a Christian.
20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 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. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 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.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me
free from the law of sin and death.
1 John 3:5 Jesus came to take away our sin and in Him there is no sin.
Mark, the brain is flesh and part of our decaying body, but the mind in the brain is spirit, and that is where our nature is. We must be born again with a new nature. It is the mind that controls the flesh, and we have the mind of Christ as long as we abide in Him, and He in us.
2 Peter 1:
2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, 3 as His divine power has given to us all things that
pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, 4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having
escaped the corruption
that is in the world through lust.