SirJamsalot
New Member
I would add one further distinction concerning why Christians continue to commit sin after being born again.
Romans 5 gives us the larger framework. Adam acted as the federal head of humanity. Through his disobedience, guilt was imputed to those whom he represented, and a corrupted nature was conveyed to his descendants. We do not become sinners only after committing our first deliberate act of sin. We commit sins because we are already fallen in Adam, possessing minds, desires, and wills corrupted by the fall.
Christ came as the second Adam to reverse what Adam brought upon us. Through Christ’s obedience, believers are justified and counted righteous. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, our corrupted nature is progressively renewed. Justification removes our guilt and condemnation immediately. Sanctification increasingly delivers us from the remaining corruption of sin. Glorification finally removes that corruption altogether.
This is why Scripture distinguishes between sin reigning and sin remaining. Paul says that sin shall no longer have dominion over the Christian (Romans 6:14). He does not say that sin has ceased to exist within the Christian.
Galatians 5:16-17 makes this especially clear:
Paul is writing to churches, to people who have received the Holy Spirit. Yet he tells these Spirit-indwelt believers that the flesh continues to oppose the Spirit. The presence of conflict does not prove the absence of regeneration. The conflict exists precisely because the Holy Spirit has created new desires that oppose the remaining corruption of the flesh.
The New Testament repeatedly speaks this way to believers:
John includes himself and writes to those he calls his “little children.” He then says:
James likewise writes:
Peter addresses Christians as “dearly beloved” and warns them to abstain from fleshly lusts “which war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11). Paul tells believers to put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit (Romans 8:13). Christ even teaches His disciples to pray continually, “Forgive us our debts.”
These statements were written to believers because repentance, confession, mortification, and dependence upon Christ continue throughout the Christian life.
The born-again Christian therefore has a changed relationship to sin. He can no longer live comfortably beneath its dominion. He hates it, fights it, confesses it, and increasingly overcomes it through the Spirit. Yet the necessity of fighting demonstrates that an enemy remains.
The gospel gives us neither permission to make peace with sin nor reason to claim that its presence has already been eradicated. In Adam we received guilt and corruption. In Christ our guilt is removed, our corruption is progressively healed, and at the resurrection we will finally be made perfectly holy.
Until then, the Christian life is one of genuine victory through genuine warfare.
In His Grip
S.J.
