The Ways of the Heart
Chapter 6: The Ways of Sin vs. The Ways of Love
Page 1: "The Nature of a Christian"
by Frank Allnutt

"If I’m the ‘righteousness of Christ,’ a ‘partaker of His divine nature,’ and have ‘died to sin,’ then why do I continue to sin?”

It’s a baffling question for many believers.

For most of us, when we became Christians, it was our heart’s desire and determination to repent of all sin in our lives. Good intention, but most of us failed because the spiritually immature and fleshly souls of our divided hearts were conditioned up to that time by the motivational principle of sin to commit sins.

We had learned through life’s experiences that some actual sins feel good and can even help us meet our needs and desires. And this fueled our motivation to sin all the more. Eventually, however, we learned about the consequences of sinfulness. Like the drug addict getting a fresh fix, it makes him feel good temporarily, but oh, those horrible consequences that follow.

The spiritually immature, fleshly or Half-Hearted Christian walks in conditional darkness, according to the flesh and sin, and experiences either conflict, frustration, confusion, and depression, on one hand, or a sense of circumstantial well-being on the other.

Does the Christian have a “sin-nature”?
Some people are taught that believers have two natures: the old sinful nature inherited from Adam and the new divine nature imparted with Christ’s life at the time of salvation.
However, when “nature” is understood to be the ethical or moral quality, attribute, or essence of one’s life, and since the believer’s old life in Adam was exchanged for new life in Christ, the indisputable conclusion is that the believer has but one life and therefore can have but one life-nature.

So what some people regard as the “sinful nature” of a believer is not ontological nature but functional and behavioral nature that is fleshly or flesh-like in appearance.

Opposing motivational principles
Since the believer has but one ontological nature—the divine nature—why and how does he act “out of character,” according to the flesh? Why doesn’t he function and behave in ways that are indicative of his new nature?

Something motivates a believer to walk according to the flesh, and this functionally divides his heart, and something else motivates him to walk in the Spirit, and this unites his heart. And when a believer vacillates between the two, he functions double-mindedly, double-heartedly, or halfheartedly.

So what are those “things” that motivate contrasting ethical functioning and behavior, and thus the condition or mode of the heart?

The Bible speaks of two opposing principles of moral or ethical human nature, motivation and behavior: sin and love. This diametric duality is a major theme of the New Testament, as are darkness and light, death and life, flesh and Spirit. Just as darkness can be described as the absence of light, death can be described as the absence of life, and flesh can be described as the absence of the Spirit, so too can sin be described as the absence of love.

The diametric duality of sin and love is clearly seen in their respective relationships with God’s law: “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4) and “love fulfills the law” (Romans 13:8-10). Various other biblical examples of sin show the absence of love for God: unbelief (1 John 5:10), rebellion against God (1 Samuel 15:23) and unrighteousness (1 John 5:17). Those are but a sampling.

Did God create sin?
The Bible tells us that all “things” are created by God, and that He looked upon all He created and pronounced it “good.” But sin is not a created “thing,” and it certainly is not “good.” God’s holy nature dictates that all He creates is good; to create anything evil would be a sin on His part, and God cannot sin.

Paul writes that, “Apart from the law sin is dead” (Romans 7:8). Does this mean God’s law gives “life” or existence to sin? Not at all. For God’s law is a reflection of His holy nature and will, which negates any possibility that sin came into existence through His law. However, His law did bring the definition of sin into existence by citing it as lawlessness and therefore lovelessness. Furthermore, all sin is an affront to God and is ultimately directed at Him. Paul wrote that “the mind set on the flesh is hostility toward God” (Romans 8:7); and David wrote, “Against Thee, Thee only, I have sinned, and have done what is evil in Thy sight” (Psalm 51:4). In those verses we see but one more reason why God could not have created sin: To do so would have created a situation in which He would have been at enmity with Himself. And that is an absurdity.

How sin came into “existence”
Since God did not create sin, then what is it and how did it “come into existence”?
According to the Bible, sin “came into existence” in the heavenly realm through Lucifer’s free choice to rebel against God. Sin again “came into existence” in the temporal realm, in Eden, through Adam’s free choice to disobey God, and Adam’s descendants continue to sin because of their inherited sin nature:

“How you [Satan] have fallen from heaven; O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You who have weakened the nations. But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:12-14).

“Therefore, just as through one man Adam] sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

“But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death” (James 1:14, 15).

Free choice necessitated God’s law
God created angels and man with free will so that they could discern and choose between good and evil, right and wrong.

By choice Lucifer disobeyed God, and by choice one-third of heaven’s angels followed him in rebellion against God. By choice Adam disobeyed God. And by choice we Christians are enabled to obey or disobey God.

God established His law to manage free-willed sinners, but also to lead His chosen ones to salvation by faith and through grace in Christ Jesus.

The many meanings of “sin”
The English word “sin” is most frequently used in translating a number of biblical terms. In Hebrew the most common terms are hatta (in several forms of the same root), awon, pesa, and ra; and, in the Greek, hamartia, hamartema, parabasis, paraptoms, poneria, anomia, and adikia. While some of those terms share similar meanings, each has its own technical meaning. Even so, all of them indicate attitude or behavior that is ultimately directed against God.

There is a tendency to give the collective meanings of those sin terms to the English word “sin.” Indeed, dictionaries generally define “sin” as failure, error, iniquity, transgression, trespass, lawlessness, unrighteousness, and so on. The error comes in assuming that the definition of “sin” applies in every instance in which “sin” appears in English Bibles, and this can significantly exaggerate the meanings of the individual Hebrew and Greek terms.

Another problem arises over the personification of sin in Scripture. And when the personification of sin is coupled with the exaggeration of terms translated as “sin,” as discussed above, there is an inclination to perceive sin as something much greater than it actually is. Some go so far as to perceive sin as an intelligent force (such as the “dark side of the Force” in “Star Wars”) that can tempt and in other ways manipulate and even empower people.

Sin is not an intelligent force, however; it is not even an entity. Let’s look at the collective biblical meanings of “sin” from the six biblical perspectives:

1. Positionally, “sin” is synonymous with “darkness,” which is the realm of all beings and all things that are apart from God.
   
   
2. Relationally, non-Christians are enslaved to sin; i.e., sin is their spiritual master.
   
   
3. Ontologically, sin is the fallen and separated state of existence.
   
   
4. Conditionally, sinful thoughts, feelings, desires, and intentions can fill the soul, thus functionally dividing it from the spirit.
   
   
5. Functionally, sin is a motivational principle, as opposed to the motivational principle of love.
   
   
6. Behaviorally, sin is "actual sin," whether by commission or by omission.

The Christian has Died to Sin
Paul writes that Christians “died to sin” when they were crucified with Christ: “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?... Our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died to sin is freed from sin.... Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.... For sin shall not be master over you” (Romans 6:6, 7, 11, 14).

Either sin or love is the moral attribute of a person’s spiritual nature. The old man possessed Adamic life and that life’s sin-nature or evil-principled human nature. David, like all of us, was born in a sin state of being and existence. “Behold,” he wrote, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). Before we came to know Christ as our Savior and Lord, each of us was an old man in Adam, with his unregenerate heart, Adamic life, and sin-nature. We were a “slave to sin” (Romans 6:6), and a “prisoner of sin” (Romans 7:23). At salvation, each of us was made a new-hearted, new creature in Christ, and was given His eternal life and His love nature. We were taken out of our old relationship with sin and placed into a new relationship with God and His love. We were no longer a “slave to sin,” or a “prisoner of sin.” We were made “prisoners” of Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:1), and therefore prisoners of His love. As new-man species of human being, we are “rooted and grounded in love” (Ephesians 3:17).

As Adam-hearted people we were predisposed to sin because we had a sinful nature, which was devoid of godly love. With our salvation came a new spiritual heart and a new disposition of love—a “new spirit,” as promised by God in Ezekiel 36:26, and fulfilled under the New Covenant (2 Timothy 1:7). Because our life is Christ’s life, we are partakers of His divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), of which love is the chief moral attribute. John writes that “God is love” (1 John 4:7, 8). And since we are partakers of the divine nature, our nature is love. Because we are children of God, we are children of love.

What “parts” of us died to sin?
The ontologically natural body and spiritual heart are incapable of functioning in godly love. And it is for this reason that God gives His children new hearts and pours His love into their new hearts (Romans 5:5). God also sanctifies believers’ bodies at the time of salvation, for the Holy Spirit will not take residence in a sinful vessel. As new temples of the Holy Spirit, we are holy in heart and body, and therefore acceptable for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

The old man positionally, relationally, and ontologically existed in Adam’s family and possessed his fallen human nature or flesh, which Paul defines as the evil principle in natural man (Romans 7:18). Flesh, in this sense, is practically synonymous with “our body of sin” (Romans 6:6—the only place this phrase appears in Scripture).

The Greek word for “body” is soma. While Paul sometimes uses this term in reference to the physical body, he also uses it in reference to the whole person and a person’s interaction with his spiritual and temporal environments. In Romans 6:6, Paul uses soma in reference to the whole person of Adamic man. The “body of sin” that was “done away with” obviously does not mean a done-away-with physical body; rather, it refers to our old self’s natural inclination to interact with the things of the old age. By contrast, the believer’s new self has been fashioned by God for the age of the New Covenant.

The new man in Christ is “not in the flesh but in the Spirit” (Romans 8:9a). “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh” (Galatians 5:24), whether or not they were aware of this at the time, through their choice by faith to become Christians. Part of our salvation experience was to die to the flesh and to be resurrected with Christ as new creatures in Christ. In this sense we relationally became alive to the Spirit. Paul writes, “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Romans 8:9). If any part of you were sinful, it could not be in the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit could not, because of His holy nature, indwell anything that is sinful.

“Slave of sin”
Now, let’s examine Romans 6:6 again, but apply another biblical definition of the term, soma. Strong’s states that soma can also mean “slave.” Though this definition is rarely used in Scripture, it has relevance to Romans 6:6. Translating the phrase, then, as “slave of sin,” it further characterizes the old man in his bondage to sin, as a “prisoner of sin” (Romans 7:23).

At the time of your salvation, you died to the old man or old humanity—positionally, relationally, and ontologically. Your “body [or slave] of sin” refers to the way you, as an old man, lived “in the flesh”—in bondage to the evil principle of your Adamic human nature, the old age of darkness, and old spiritual masters. That state of existence was “done away with” when you were resurrected as a new man in Christ. You were placed “in the Spirit: and into a new state of freedom in Christ.

As an old man in Adam you could only relate with your environment out of your old-man fleshly state of being or “body of sin.” As a new man in Christ you are enabled to relate with your environment out of your new-man spiritual state of being. Before, you were in positional, relational, and ontological bondage in Adam; now, you are in positional, relational, and ontological freedom in Christ.

Let’s look again at the key points of this passage in Romans 6, this time with my paraphrase: “Our old humanity was crucified with Him, that our fleshly, enslaved existence might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died to sin is freed from sin.... Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.... For sin shall not be master over you” (Romans 6:6, 7, 11, 14, paraphrased).

You died to death
When you were crucified with Christ to sin, you were also crucified to its outcome, which is death. You were released from Adamic life which had separated you from God. Your “heart of stone” was exchanged for a new “heart of flesh”—a heart that is spiritually alive and capable of spiritual growth (see Ezekiel 36:26, 27). Since you have a heart that is vitalized by Christ’s eternal life, death no longer has authority over you.

Paul writes that, “Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death is no longer master over Him” (Romans 6:9). Since you participated in Christ’s victorious resurrection from death unto eternal life through spiritual baptism, death is no longer a master over you. A life that is eternal is impervious to death!

You will physically died someday, which is to say that you will experience the separation of your spiritual heart from your physical body (unless you are alive when Christ returns). This is “death” in the believer only in the sense of that temporary separation; neither your spiritual heart nor the material elements of your body will cease to exist (though the physical elements of your body will eventually return to their natural state). Your spiritual heart, upon separation from your body, will immediately be in the presence of Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:8). Though your evacuated body will decay and return to the dust of the earth, it will be resurrected in glory and united with your spiritual heart at the time of Christ’s parousia or coming (1 Corinthians 15:51-57; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17). Paul assures us that “this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:54-57).

Sin’s persona
It appears in Romans 7 that Paul speaks of sin as if it were an intelligent being. However, he is actually giving sin persona. This is a literary technique, and Paul employs it here in teaching about sin; he is not giving us a literal definition of sin.

Personification is a common literary technique found in both biblical and secular writing. There are several examples of this in Scripture, and I’ll mention a couple of them. The first is wisdom. It is portrayed as a virtuous woman in the book of Proverbs. Wisdom is not a woman, of course, and neither is sin an intelligent being. The second example is the end-time world empire called “Mystery Babylon the Great.” In Revelation 17 it is personified as a prostitute, and in Revelation 18 as a prideful queen who is in rebellion against God. But Babylon is not a personal entity, and neither is sin.

Satan is considered by some to be the personification of sin, in that he is unmitigated evil in nature and conduct. Certainly, he exists in the sin state of being and possesses an evil-principled nature of life that is separated from God and His eternal life. But sin, a nonentity, and Satan, a spirit-being, are not one and the same.

Sin is a master of many faces (pardon my personification of the principle). Its dynamic expression in and through people is known by a number of names, among them: “strongholds,” “bondages,” “addictions,” “flesh patterns,” “dependencies,” “dysfunctions,” “obsessive compulsiveness,” and simply “bad habits.” Paul specifically names some of those in his abbreviated list of actual sins or “deeds of the flesh”: “immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these” (Galatians 5:19-21).

The struggle within
Now, let’s turn for a moment to Paul’s moral struggle in Romans 7: “For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very things I hate” (Romans 7:14, 15).

Every Christian has found himself caught in a similar moral tug of war between the motivational principles of sin and love. Nonbelievers experience a similar struggle, but more in terms of right and wrong, good and evil, because they neither possess agape love nor the spiritual discernment to comprehend it.

Now, notice in Romans 7:23 that Paul refers to himself as “flesh sold into bondage to sin” (v. 14). Further on, in verse 23, he refers to himself as a “prisoner of sin.” He is not writing about himself as a Christian, but as when he was a legalistic though unregenerate Jew. What makes this confusing to some people is that Paul uses a not uncommon literary technique of writing in the first person, present tense about his pre-conversion self. Elsewhere in the chapter he reflects on his life from the time of his salvation.

The Christian is “not in the flesh but in the Spirit” (Romans 8:9), and is not a “prisoner of the law of sin” (Romans 6:6, 7, 11, 14)—the latter description applies only to the nonbeliever. Therefore, we must rule out that Paul is writing here of his own experience as a Christian. Rather, he is recalling his former experiences and perceptions as an unsaved though devoutly religious Jew who was “flesh” and a “prisoner of sin.” In verse 24 Paul writes from his Christian perspective that Jesus set him free from his old “body of death,” which was separated from God and enslaved to sin, and that his new Christlike mind enabled him, as never before, to finally serve the “law of God” (v. 25).

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