Flesh and Indwelling Sin

I was first taught the truths of our identity in Christ and the New Covenant a few years ago. Hearing that glorious message was like a breath of fresh air after being in bondage to legalism for so long. I devoured every book on the subject that I could get my hands on. Since that time, God has been faithful to ingrain these truths into my mind and has been teaching me more and more how to live in this glorious New Covenant economy.

To me, one of the most revolutionary concepts connected with our new identity is that God now calls us saints (‘holy ones’), not sinners. In fact, there are over fifty references to believers as saints in the New Testament. We are called holy ones by God, not because of anything we have done, but because we now have Christ in us (Col. 1:27) Thus, seeing ourselves as merely forgiven sinners is unbiblical, not to mention the fact that sin is what is most likely to be produced in our lives if we think of ourselves that way (see Proverbs 23:7)! If we allow God to renew our minds (Rom. 12:2) with the truths of His grace and the New Covenant, then He will be faithful to produce the fruit of the Spirit in our lives as we learn to trust Him by faith.

It is also amazing to consider the fact that our old sinful nature has been ‘crucified with Christ’ (Gal. 2:20) and that we are in fact ‘new creations’ (2 Cor. 5:21) in our spirits. While we still have to deal with the reality of the flesh in our daily lives, understanding that our spirits have undergone such a radical transformation truly enables us to present ourselves to God ‘as those alive from the dead’ (Rom. 6:19). We can do this, not on the basis of wishful thinking… but because we ARE alive! We no longer have to grit our teeth and try to become something we are not; rather, as we ‘branches’ simply abide in Christ the true vine and allow Him to express His life through us (John 15:5), we will certainly live as He intended us to.

So, taking all of this into account... how is it that we as new creations in Christ still find ourselves, often times, caught up in our old sinful ways? We find some important insight into this issue in the seventh chapter of Romans. I believe that a careful study of Romans 7:14-25 shows us that the Apostle Paul’s spiritual condition here is that of a regenerate believer in Christ, who recognizes that he still has sinful flesh. He makes several statements in this passage that would be very difficult (if not impossible) to attribute to an unbeliever. For instance, in verse 15 Paul states that “I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate”. This is the consistent theme that runs throughout verses 14-25 – that Paul has a sincere, God-given desire to do the will of God, but is frustrated by the sin produced by his flesh. This is summed up best in verse 18: “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.” (emphasis mine). As a believer, Paul’s mind was continually being renewed to better understand the will of God (Rom, 12:2, 1 Cor. 2:16), thus his desire to do what is right. However, like all of us, there are times when sin would reign in Paul’s body (Rom. 6:12) and he would find himself doing exactly the opposite of what he wanted.

Scripture does indeed make a distinction between the flesh and the power of indwelling sin. Needham’s excellent definition of ‘flesh’ is as follows: “Flesh, according to John 3:6 (and enlarged upon in the epistles) is everything that humanness is apart from the new birth.” (1.) Also, Hall tells us that flesh “is not an entity but a condition or way of living learned before salvation and taught by the world.” (2.) Romans 7:18 shows us clearly that the flesh is the location of the sinful actions produced in our lives. We then see what it is that actually carries out the sinful actions in verses 17 and 20 – the power of indwelling sin. Paul tells us twice that when he sins, it is in fact not him (his true self/identity, which is in his spirit), but rather it is the sin principle, which verse 23 tell us is in our members (flesh). Thus, we see that our flesh contains the patterns of ungodly living, while indwelling sin provides the power that carries them out. However, as we know... the victory is ours, if we would but claim it by being intimately dependent on Christ in us, on a moment-by-moment basis! "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Rom. 7:24-25a)
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(1.) Needham, David, Birthright: Christian, Do You Know Who You Are? (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 1999), 99.
(2.) Hall, Richard F., Foundations of Exchanged Life Counseling (Aurora, CO: Cross Life Expressions, 1998), 68.