Victory Over Sin 2

This article, Victory Over Sin 2 is the second of 3 articles dealing with God’s provision for sin and is part of the series Fundamentals of the Faith.

In the first article dealing with God’s victory over sin, we discussed the 3 types of sin. These are Imputed Sin, our judicial condemnation in Adam, Inherited Sin, the sin nature genetically transferred to all men and Individual Sin, the personal sins that result from being born sinners. We discussed the details of Imputed sin and the work of Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, that defeated sin for all of us. We saw the power of God through Christ that has resolved the judicial sin problem of the human race forever and His offer of grace that can only be accepted by faith.

In this second article we will discuss Inherited Sin and God’s solution to counteract the sin nature. We will see how the Spirit provides the means for us to live free from the influence of the sin nature. The death, burial and resurrection of Christ won a complete victory over the devil, his forces and the sins that have resulted from his deceiving influence. His victory extends to every area of the believer’s life and is accessed the same way we access His grace for salvation, by faith.

Col 2:6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,

We received Christ by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-9) and in doing so, we were given victory over imputed sin. Victory over inherited sin and individual sin is given the same way, by grace through faith in the promises and provisions for the believer in time. Let’s look at inherited sin, the sin nature and God’s provisions for overcoming its corrupting influence.

Inherited Sin – The Sin Nature

Original Nature
In the creation, Adam/Eve were given a nature to love and serve their Creator. Their nature caused a desire to know God and please Him with their lives. They interacted with Him every day in the garden (Gen 3:8). He loved them and shared Himself with them on a daily basis. He created a perfect environment for them that they were free to enjoy with one exception, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Their food was provided without the struggle of thorns and thistles. They enjoyed the most perfect marriage the human race has ever seen. They were created perfect for one another, without sin, without childhood trauma, without an Old Man belief system and without anyone to compete for their affections. They had perfect souls, a perfect nature, they lived in perfect environment and enjoyed a perfect relationship with God. One day, a perfect life was not enough to satisfy Eve. She became discontent with God’s boundaries for her and opened herself to the devil’s deceptions.

Corrupted Nature
At some point, even perfection was not enough for Eve. For reasons undisclosed in the bible, she was not content with her life as the submissive servant of God and wife. She began to listen to the serpent/devil, who voiced an opinion that was contrary to God’s word. She believed his lies and ate the forbidden fruit. When she sinned, she took the fruit to her husband who chose to follow her rather than follow God. Eve was deceived and didn’t understand the significance of her choice, but Adam knew what he was doing (1Tim 2:14). When they sinned, the presence of sin caused their natures to be corrupted. In His creation of the universe, God made a law regulating the results of sin and evil (Isa 45:7). He decreed that sin would cause spiritual death (Rom 6:23). Spiritual death separates us from God and has a corrupting influence on the sinner. Sin enters us into a process of degeneration that eventuates in total destruction (Eph 4:17-19). When Adam sinned, God’s law of corruption went into effect and his nature was changed from a focus on God to a focus on self. Their new nature caused them to put themselves first before one another or God. This corruption has passed down to all of us. The sin nature causes us to love and serve self, building our beliefs on the foundation of putting ourselves first. The Old Man belief and behavior system that every human builds and uses has at its core a devotion to self. Our self-serving beliefs steer us toward individual sin as a way of managing out lives without God.

Deceptive Desires
The sin nature confuses us about how to meet our needs and find fulfillment in life. We experience our needs as longings and desires. We hunger within for love, affection, acceptance, belonging, accomplishment and recognition. All of these needs are provided perfectly in Christ by grace. Before we are saved, we are driven to find these things through relationships with people. The sin nature produces desires of the flesh and the mind. It also deceives us into believing that gratifying our desires will cause us to be happy, which is not true. Gratifying the desires produced by the sin nature, in the way the sin nature directs us, enters us into the degeneration process that takes us farther from God. Desire connected to the sin nature is called lust and when we believe that we can find happiness by gratification of lust, we are truly deceived.

God’s Provision
The Holy Spirit is the great influencer, teacher and mentor of the spiritual life. Based on the victory of Jesus in His death, burial and resurrection, the Holy Spirit has come to indwell the body of every believer. From within the believer’s body, His ministry is to reveal truth based on the word to influence the believer’s mind. What He reveals, we are responsible to believe and act upon with life decisions. When we listen to His voice, believe what He reveals from the word and act upon it, we move away from degeneration and toward God. In contrast to the sin nature, The Spirit also produces desires, the desires connected with intimacy with God. If we follow the desires of the Spirit, we will learn more about God, grow into our position in Christ and into a love relationship with God. The Holy Spirit is the counter to the destructive desire of the sin nature. He builds ideas that lead us toward God instead of away from God.

Galatians 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.

Walking in the Spirit is given as the means to avoid giving yourself over to the desire of the sin nature. The Spirit produces a counter desire that leads to intimacy with God. What is walking in the Spirit? It is simply seeing and listening to what the Spirit reveals as the will of God based on the word of God and believing it to act on it. The Spirit reveals the application of the word in the moment and brings it into conscious awareness. When we need the Spirit to show us God’s will, He does so and then we have to believe in that revealed will to act on it. The consistent choice to listen to the voice of and obey the Spirit is what is meant by walking in the Spirit. In the next article, we will discuss this in more depth. When you find yourself walking in the desires of the flesh through personal sin, remember to confess your individual sins and walk in the Spirit.