My Flesh Was Crucified — So Why Do I Still Sin?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:04.000 | Well, if my sinful flesh was removed, put off in Christ, then why do I still sin?

00:00:11.000 | It's a question we get often, rightly so. It's a question that should be on our minds

00:00:15.000 | as we process the glorious truths of Colossians 2, verses 11 to 12.

00:00:19.000 | Today, the question comes in from two different listeners. Max in Tulsa, Oklahoma, writes in,

00:00:23.000 | "Hello, Pastor John. My question is this. Does the born-again Christian still have a sin nature?

00:00:29.000 | I read Romans 7 and Galatians 5, and it seems to say, 'Yes, we do.'

00:00:33.000 | But when I read Paul in Colossians 2, verses 11 to 12, he says,

00:00:37.000 | 'Our body of the flesh has been put off, cut off, and done away with completely.'

00:00:42.000 | Or so it reads to me, 'Biblically speaking, do genuine Christians have a sin nature or not? Thank you.'"

00:00:49.000 | And the same text raised the same question for a listener named Carlos, who lives in the nation of Colombia.

00:00:54.000 | "Pastor John, according to Colossians 2, verse 11, a Christian's sin nature has been cut away.

00:01:00.000 | So why am I still tempted to sin? Why do I still battle with temptation,

00:01:04.000 | if such a decisive work has been done in me, in Christ?"

00:01:08.000 | This question is so important because we can't pursue the kind of life God calls us to live

00:01:15.000 | if we don't know what has happened to us in becoming Christians.

00:01:21.000 | There's a great deal of emphasis today, it seems to me, on what has happened for us in the cross,

00:01:30.000 | namely that our sins are forgiven and that we are accepted and that we are loved and that we have eternal life.

00:01:38.000 | But there doesn't seem to me to be as much emphasis on what has happened to us in becoming Christians.

00:01:48.000 | What happened to us because of the cross, and it's precisely this, what happened to us, what changed in us,

00:01:56.000 | which Paul emphasizes as the key to how we are to pursue holiness and love and righteousness

00:02:03.000 | and all the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So it's a very important question.

00:02:09.000 | Sometimes we can get all tangled up in our terminology, and so I'm going to stay very close to Paul's terminology,

00:02:20.000 | the Apostle Paul's terminology. Max asked the question in terms of sin nature.

00:02:26.000 | Now that's not exactly Paul's language, but I think if we stay with Paul's language, we will answer Max's question.

00:02:38.000 | Paul teaches that when we become Christians through faith in Christ, we are united to Christ so that His death counts as our death,

00:02:51.000 | and that's true in two senses, not just one.

00:02:55.000 | First, it's true in that the punishment we deserve for our sin was taken by Christ so that His death on the cross was our condemnation,

00:03:09.000 | and so there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

00:03:14.000 | But the other sense in which His death counts as our death is that we really did die with Him in a profound sense.

00:03:27.000 | We really did come alive with Him in His resurrection in a profound sense,

00:03:32.000 | and so the question that we're asking is, in what sense did we die?

00:03:39.000 | What's dead? And in what sense do we have newness of life?

00:03:46.000 | So let's start with the text that Max refers to, namely Colossians 2, 11 and 12.

00:03:51.000 | "In Him," so there's the union piece, "in union with Jesus Christ, in Him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh."

00:04:04.000 | Now that's the phrase they pick up on, "put off the body of flesh,"

00:04:07.000 | "by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised Him from the dead."

00:04:19.000 | So Paul is describing what happens to a person when he becomes a Christian and symbolizes that miracle in baptism.

00:04:31.000 | Been buried under the water and having been raised up out of the water to walk in newness of life like a resurrection.

00:04:40.000 | So first, there's a union with Christ. He says, "In Him you were buried and raised."

00:04:46.000 | Second, this union is experienced through faith.

00:04:52.000 | You were raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God.

00:04:56.000 | Baptism is an expression of faith.

00:04:59.000 | Third, in union with Christ, we died.

00:05:04.000 | And in union with Christ, we were raised.

00:05:07.000 | Some aspect of our being died.

00:05:10.000 | Something new came into being by this resurrection with Christ.

00:05:16.000 | Fourth, Paul compares this death in baptism through faith to a circumcision made without hands.

00:05:26.000 | So the analogy is that just as the foreskin of the male sexual organ is cut off and thrown away, so the body of flesh is cut off and thrown away.

00:05:39.000 | And we'll come back to that in just a second. What's the body of flesh?

00:05:43.000 | So now, there are these questions.

00:05:47.000 | Who died? And who came to life when we became Christians?

00:05:54.000 | And Paul describes who died in at least four ways.

00:05:59.000 | First, he says, "I died." Galatians 2.20.

00:06:03.000 | "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live."

00:06:08.000 | So, "I died."

00:06:09.000 | Number two, he says, "Our old self died." Romans 6.6.

00:06:14.000 | We know that our old self was crucified with Him.

00:06:20.000 | Third, he says that our flesh died. Galatians 2.24.

00:06:25.000 | Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh.

00:06:29.000 | Fourth, he says, "The body of flesh."

00:06:33.000 | Now, that's a reference back to what we just saw in Colossians 2.11.

00:06:37.000 | The body of flesh.

00:06:38.000 | He says that in being buried with Christ, we have put off the body of flesh.

00:06:47.000 | Now, putting those four ways of saying it together, here's what I conclude.

00:06:54.000 | Insofar as I am identified with my flesh, and insofar as my body is the instrument of my flesh,

00:07:07.000 | I died. And my body died because my flesh died.

00:07:15.000 | Now, what does that mean?

00:07:18.000 | What is my flesh?

00:07:21.000 | And here's Paul's answer to that question in Romans 8.7.

00:07:25.000 | "The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.

00:07:31.000 | Indeed, it cannot.

00:07:32.000 | Those who are in the flesh, that is, in the control and sway of this thing called flesh, cannot please God."

00:07:40.000 | So, the flesh is not synonymous with the body.

00:07:46.000 | The flesh is my old self in its hostility to God, its insubordination to God,

00:07:53.000 | its inability to submit to God and please God.

00:07:56.000 | That's my flesh.

00:07:58.000 | That's what died when I became a Christian.

00:08:03.000 | God killed my hostility to God.

00:08:07.000 | God killed my insubordination to God.

00:08:11.000 | God killed my inability to submit to God and my inability to please God.

00:08:18.000 | He killed me in that sense.

00:08:21.000 | And in the place of that old self of hostility and insubordination and inability,

00:08:27.000 | God created a new self.

00:08:32.000 | He calls it a new creation.

00:08:34.000 | In 2 Corinthians 5 and Ephesians 2.10,

00:08:38.000 | and what are the traits of this new creation, this new self that came into being

00:08:43.000 | when I was united to Christ and died and rose with Him?

00:08:47.000 | And Galatians 2.19 and 20 give a beautiful answer.

00:08:51.000 | It says, "I died to the law so that I might live to God.

00:08:59.000 | I have been crucified with Christ.

00:09:01.000 | It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me."

00:09:04.000 | And here comes the key phrase, I think, "The life I now live,

00:09:10.000 | I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me."

00:09:18.000 | So three ways Paul describes his new self as a Christian.

00:09:24.000 | First, he's alive to God.

00:09:28.000 | God is real to him, precious, beautiful, desirable.

00:09:33.000 | He isn't hostile to God anymore.

00:09:35.000 | He admires God. He loves God. He trusts God.

00:09:38.000 | He's alive to God.

00:09:40.000 | Second, his new self lives by faith in the Son of God.

00:09:46.000 | So he's no longer insubordinate and self-sufficient and self-exalting.

00:09:51.000 | He trusts the Son of God like a little child.

00:09:54.000 | He submits and depends upon the mercy of God in Christ.

00:09:59.000 | He's a believer. That's what came alive. A believer came alive.

00:10:04.000 | And third, another way to say it is that Christ Himself lives in us.

00:10:12.000 | "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I but Christ who lives in me."

00:10:17.000 | The new self of the Christian is the God-loving, Son of God-trusting, Christ-inhabited self.

00:10:28.000 | That's the new creation that came into being when I rose with Christ.

00:10:34.000 | Now, Max is asking how this reality, not possibility, reality, these things really happen to us.

00:10:43.000 | We don't make them happen. They really happen to us.

00:10:47.000 | How that relates, he says, to my battle with sin.

00:10:52.000 | And the answer is that this way of understanding ourselves is the way we do battle with sin.

00:11:00.000 | Paul didn't say, "Oh, since this glorious death and resurrection has happened to you, there's no more battle with sin."

00:11:09.000 | He said this new reality of life from the dead and this old reality which has died with Christ is precisely the way we fight sin in our lives.

00:11:24.000 | For example, Colossians 2.20, he says,

00:11:27.000 | "If with Christ you died to the legalistic elemental principles of dos and don'ts, do not taste, do not touch, do not handle."

00:11:39.000 | And he's explaining the false religion that he's describing there.

00:11:43.000 | He says, "If you died to those, why are you submitting to such regulations? You're dead to those. Don't submit to them. Be who you are."

00:11:55.000 | Then later in chapter 3, he said, "You have died, so put to death what is earthly in you, immorality, impurity, passion."

00:12:07.000 | So Paul did not say, "Because you have died, there's no battle."

00:12:13.000 | He said, "Because you have died, reckon yourselves dead."

00:12:17.000 | Romans 6.11, "Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."

00:12:23.000 | In other words, be what you are.

00:12:26.000 | It may sound paradoxical, but it is a profound and glorious truth.

00:12:33.000 | God has made us what we are.

00:12:37.000 | In Christ, we are new creatures.

00:12:40.000 | We don't make ourselves new creatures.

00:12:42.000 | We are new creatures.

00:12:44.000 | We act the miracle that he performed.

00:12:48.000 | He performed the miracle.

00:12:50.000 | We acted out.

00:12:51.000 | Listen to 1 Corinthians 5.7, "Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump of dough as you really are unleavened."

00:13:07.000 | I love it.

00:13:08.000 | It just captures everything right in one verse.

00:13:12.000 | 1 Corinthians 5.7, "You are unleavened, so get the leaven out."

00:13:17.000 | I love it.

00:13:19.000 | So, I say to Max and to all of us, don't let your death with Christ in your new life in Christ cause you to shrink back from making war on your sin as though that conflict should not be happening.

00:13:38.000 | Rather, let your death with Christ and your newness in Christ be the happy, confident ground where you take your stand and put to death the sin that remains.

00:13:54.000 | Yeah, acting the miracle.

00:13:55.000 | So glorious.

00:13:56.000 | Thank you, Pastor John and Max and Tulsa and Carlos in Columbia.

00:13:59.000 | Thank you for the great questions, and thank you for joining us today.

00:14:02.000 | You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast, all at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:14:12.000 | Speaking of the sin that remains in us, if all of our sins were canceled at the cross, does that mean we no longer need to repent over and over?

00:14:20.000 | It's a question from a former Roman Catholic who is processing this because she was raised in a culture of confession and ongoing repentance.

00:14:28.000 | Is that right or not, that ongoing repentance?

00:14:31.000 | That's up next time on the podcast.

00:14:33.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reiki, and we will see you back here on Monday.

00:14:37.000 | Have a great weekend.

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My Flesh Was Crucified — So Why Do I Still Sin?

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