If I am the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, then how is it that I still sin?
If I have become a new creation and old things have passed away and new things have come (2 Cor 5:17), then how is it that I still sin?
Let’s talk this summer about the great theological truths of Romans 6 and 7. These two chapters help us to understand our identity in Christ, as well as why it is we still sin.
I remember being a knuckle-headed boy after only 2 years of Bible College. Back home in Wichita Falls one day I decided to go eat at “Bob’s Club.” This was the unofficial name of a good-natured bunch of men who went to Grace Church, and led by Bob. They enjoyed lunch once a week to jostle and jest with each other over doctrine and theology. I’d known these older men since I was a kid. The day I wandered in Tom initiated the discussion with a question, and I opened my mouth and spouted out what I now know today to be pure hogwash! Suitable for a theology degree from Hogwarts, perhaps, but not from the Bible College.
Tom’s question was, “Is there a difference in Paul’s epistles between the words sin and sins? And, yes, I’m too embarrassed to tell you what my response was. So, let’s move on to the truth I learned a few years later from Watchman Nee in his book, The Normal Christian Life. If you have never read this book, put it at the top of your list for summer reading.
Watchman Nee was a Chinese preacher.[1] His first name was the translation of a Chinese nick-name he took later in life, which is translated more literally “Bell-Ringer.” And that he was. He rang a bell of clarity in this book, and was the first one to clearly identify for me the difference between sin and sins in the book of Romans.
Sins are the things we do; our behaviors; our attitudes; our words and deeds. Sins are the “things” that Christ bore upon Himself on the cross, and carried as far as the east is from the west.
Sin, however, is the power behind the sins. Sin is a principle or a law in Romans 7:23, and The Law of Sin & Death in Rom 8:2. It is personified in Romans 6:12-13. It is the “evil that is present in us, the ones who wish to obey God” (Rom 7:21). It is the source of power for my flesh; when I walk according to the flesh, I am serving the Law of Sin (Rom 7:25). Sin is a power that overtakes us and causes us to do what is contrary to who we are (Rom 7:20).
We are the righteousness of God IN OUR SPIRIT, and our spirit is ONE WITH CHRIST (2 Cor 5:21 and Col 3:4). Our spirit has been born-again with the righteous, holy life of the Lord Jesus, but our soul and body were not! Therefore, we are no longer sinners in our spirits, and our spirits are no longer under the control of the Law of Sin & Death. But our soul and our body can still be yielded to that Law. Notice Paul’s description of his battle with sin in Romans 7:15-17.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do,
but I do the thing I hate. And if I do what I do not want to do,
. . . it is no longer I myself who do it,
but it is sin living in me.
Notice that Paul places the blame on something that was NOT him. His sins were empowered and animated from a secondary source called Sin. Sin lived in Paul, but sin was not Paul. The Law of Sin is in our bodies, but we are not bodies. We are spirit-beings, and our spirits are righteous in Christ.
Here’s the point this week, as Andrew Farley writes[2]:
What if Christians today recognized that their bodies house a nagging force
that acts in them and may even feel like them but is not them?
What would it mean for you to understand your struggle in this way?
-Carter
[1] If you go online you will see that the self-appointed theology police will have criticisms of Watchman Nee. I have only read three or four of his books, and found them very helpful. It is possible that I would not agree with everything in every book. But so what? If I read everything I have written in life I would probably disagree with much of what I taught before 1992! But you can trust Nee in The Normal Christian Life.
[2] Andrew Farley, The Naked Gospel. Zondervan, p. 118.