Foundations of Faith
THE BELIEVER’S TWO NATURES
In preparation for a discussion of getting the victory over sin, it would be well to consider the teaching of the Bible concerning the two natures that exist together in each believer in Christ.
“Nature” refers to the innate (that is, what we are born with) or essential qualities and tendencies of a person or thing. Since we who are believers in Christ have had a second birth, that is, have been born again (John 3:3,7), we therefore have two natures or two sets of moral qualities. We have one nature as born of Adam, and the other as born of God.
The first thing we need to point out is that the expression “the old nature” is not found in Scripture. The Scripture terms are “flesh” and “sin,” as in the following verses:
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3:6).
“It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Rom. 7:17).
“I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells no good thing” (Rom. 7:18).
“With the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin” (Rom. 7:25).
“Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16).
“[Christ] was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin” (1 John 3:5).
The old nature is the sinful nature that Adam received when he disobeyed God’s commandment in the Garden of Eden, and which he passed down to the entire human race:”Adam … begat a son in his own likeness, after his image” (Gen. 5:3). “By one man [that is, Adam] sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). So we received our old, sinful nature at the time of our natural birth, or perhaps even earlier. (See Assignment 14)
When we talk about the “old nature,” we are referring to “sin” (singular), not “sins.” The old nature or sin or flesh is the root that produces the fruit of sins or sinful actions. Some of the fruits (or works) of the old nature (or flesh) are:”adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like” (Gal. 5:19-21).
Again, this exact expression is not found in Scripture. The closest to it is “the divine nature,” and it is also called “the inward man” and “God’s seed”:
“Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).
“I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Rom. 7:22).
“Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16).
“Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remains in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (1 John 3:9; see Aug94 for application to the inability of Christ to sin).
Our new, divine, Christ-like nature was received at new birth or when we were born again:”That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). (In other words, we who were once “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1) are now spiritually alive by virtue of the new nature we have received. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). In addition to the fact that this new nature “cannot sin” (1 John 3:9), the Holy Spirit acts upon this Christ-like nature to produce in us “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22,23).
The “old man” (Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:21; Col. 3:9) seems to refer to the unsaved person who possesses only the old nature. The “new man” (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10) would be the saved person who, while still possessing the old nature, is characterized by the new nature and its deeds. “Lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created him” (Col. 3:9,10).
As noted above, all of mankind inherited from Adam a sinful nature, and therefore death has come upon the whole human race. “But that’s not fair!” some will say (and have said). “Why should we have to suffer because of one man’s sin 6,000 years ago?” The Bible (Rom. 5:12-21) suggests that Adam, as the first man and head of the human race, was selected by God as a perfect representative of all mankind. God could have tested every descendant of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, all with the same sad results (Rom. 3:23). But instead of focusing on the results of Adam’s disobedience, we are invited to focus rather on the results of another Man’s perfect obedience. “As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). Would it not be more appropriate to ask why the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross applies to people who had absolutely no part in that work? At least we can identify with Adam because we all are proven sinners. There is nothing in us, naturally speaking, that comes close to identifying with Christ’s holy, sinless life, His obedience unto death, or His perfect love and grace. And yet “the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, has abounded unto many” (Rom. 5:15).
So this passage (Rom. 5:12-21) teaches us that just as the whole human race is identified with its head, Adam, by physical birth, so by new birth, and by receiving a new nature (the sinless nature that is in the Man Christ Jesus), every believer is identified with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of a new race, the “new creation.”
“The good that I would, I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do” (Rom. 7:14-25). Most, if not all, true Christians will experience the struggle between the old and new natures described in this passage. We shall consider this struggle-and its solution-in the next issue of GROWING.
Running the Race
Assignment 14: Write out a verse in Psalm 51 that tells when we received our old nature.