1 John 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

I said yesterday that we no longer have that sin nature, so how is it we still sin? Excellent question, I am glad you asked. It is not by our new nature that we sin. What it boils down to now is a mindset. Our flesh is still flesh, it does not stop being hungry just because we tell it not to be hungry.

This issue of salvation is fourfold and our awareness of salvation does not alter the conditions of salvation. At new birth we are no long enslaved in sin. We have been freed from the power of sin. In most aspects we have been freed from the pleasure of sin. More and more things that pleased us while we were enslaved to sin no long are attractive. The flesh however remembers what sin felt like and those memories do linger.

Self-control is a fruit of the spirit, but like all fruit it takes time for a fruit to grow and mature. We will battle against temptation while we await that fruit to ripen. Even after it does, sin is still present in our lives. Sin is in the world and while we are not of the world, we are still in the world. Sin remains until we are resurrected into our incorruptible eternal bodies. Until then our bodies will suffer corruption of the body and our minds. All flesh decays, even before our earthly death.

Romans 7:22-23 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

Mindset, as I stated at first, is the battle ground and the enemy is ever on the attack. While he is a defeated foe, he cannot be removed at this time from the field of battle. He is an eternal creation.

John 10:10a The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy:

Acts 5;28 Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.

As we left off yesterday realizing there is nothing that we did to deserve this sin nature we were born into, we are left with a bewilderment as to what can be done about it. The apostles were trying their best to remedy that condition by the doctrine of Christ’s blood. Now the pure cure is to be covered by the blood of Jesus and not guilty of the blood of Jesus. The doctrine of blood is the cure for the condition but it does not explain what happens in that specific moment.

John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

What is implied here by Jesus is a cure for the condition of being born with a sin nature. One must be born again WITHOUT the sin nature. It seemed impossible to Nicodemus to enter into his mother’s womb, and rightly so. It seems impossible for us to be born again without a sin nature and rightly so.

Luke 18:27 And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.

All three of the synoptic gospels agree on this point. Man’s salvation is the purview of God and God alone. There is absolutely nothing man can do to make it happen. Yet it is God’s will, purpose and power to do so, in accordance with His righteous demands of this New Covenant contract in which we are able to be engage in Christ. Please note the wording carefully, not engage to Christ but engage in Christ.

Romans 6:3-4 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Being born again into the life of Christ we now have a new nature, a new life, one that is no longer powerless over sin. Our sin nature died with the old man, is buried and gone.