After you turn from your sinful activities and trust Christ alone to forgive, justify, regenerate, and adopt you into the big family of God, you must still stay here in this world and live. And in the living out of your daily life, things will be altogether different. Some things, however, will be altogether the same.
You will still have your same address. You will probably still have your same job. Your friends from the week before will probably still be there. If you were having problems with your old car, then more than likely, you will still have those same car problems.
Your new life will be a series of confrontations and situations which will present certain alternatives to you. Those alternatives will require you to make some choices. Before your Born-again experience, you may have responded in a certain way and never even given your choice a second thought.
Now, however, you realize that you are a new creature in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit is there with you to help you see and understand that there is a new basis upon which you can make those decisions. You now have a personal relationship with God, the creator of the universe, and the personal direction of the Holy Spirit, and the Word of God.
Some of your new choices may surprise not only your friends, but even yourself. You will begin to discover that those new situations and confrontations are simply new opportunities for you to apply new-found discipline and wisdom. Your new choices will really begin to please you – because they are pleasing to Christ.
A COUPLE OF NEW TERMS:
Confrontation: the act of facing or presenting moral alternatives for consideration and choice;
Conflict: clash, fight, or struggle for moral mastery
I. INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL ADJUSTMENTS THAT ACCOMPANY THE BORN-AGAIN LIFE
You will soon discover that your new life will call for certain adjustments to be made by you. There is a sense of excitement and adventure as you apply your new-found strength and trust to your everyday confrontations and opportunities. Your new discipline and growth will cause you to thank God for allowing you to enjoy this new life.
There will be some internal adjustments and some external adjustments presented to you in your successful continuation in the Born-again life. Let’s consider a few:
Some Internal Adjustments:
Here are a few potential adjustments that will help establish you in your new daily walk:
A determination to follow Christ; “I have decided to follow Jesus – I won’t turn back; I won’t turn back.” A spirit of steadfastness will help tremendously in maintaining a victorious life.
Clearing in your own mind the integrity of God and realizing He truly is who He says He is. Reverence and Godly fear will help you pursue and understand the necessity for complete obedience to your Heavenly Father.
An attitude of a “learner’s heart” that is open and willing to accept and put into practice all that the Holy Spirit shows to you will move you quickly through many of your confrontations and opportunities.
The cultivation of your power of praise, and your growth in gratitude will reinforce your dependency upon God and his promises, and aid in your development of a thankful heart.
A spirit of forgiveness will help you to adjust internally to others around you who have wronged you in the past or are making it difficult for you in your new, Born-again life. Recall how wonderfully God has forgiven you and simply roll that forgiveness right on over to those around you. That will protect you from the pitfalls of resentment, hurt feelings, bitterness, and criticalness.
Strengthen your own faith by the sharing of your own personal spiritual experience with others around you. Tell them what God has done in your personal life. Count on the Holy Spirit helping you in your efforts. He will do the encouraging and convicting.
Be pro-active when it comes to the self-discipline in your own life, regarding the changing of old habit patterns, rearrangement of everyday priorities, ambitions, goals, and plans. This is an exciting new life!
God desires for you to grow and become strong and spiritually mature. He is eager to help you develop an attitude of confidence and positive optimism. Your very disposition will become a thing of beauty and attraction.
Some External Adjustments:
Establish a quiet, personal devotional time, alone with Jesus. Your spiritual life must be fed. Resolve to not let the day go by without your intimate communication with your personal Heavenly Father. He wants that – and you must have it!
Surrounding yourself with like-minded believers will provide a necessary environment for you to grow and mature spiritually. The “body of believers” will help encourage you and assist you in your new walk with Christ. Your new brothers and sisters will possibly make it easier for you to adjust out of some of the old unhelpful relationships of the past and cultivate new supportive relationships. Check out available “bible study” groups, and “small group” support teams. Get involved!
No doubt, you will be able to add more creative internal and external adjustment opportunities to your personal list.
II AWARENESS OF A SYSTEMIC MORAL CONFLICT
A simple diagram may help at this point to illustrate the systematic continuation of the born-again life. Study the diagram and locate the steps that led up to the Holy Spirit’s work of convincing and convicting you of your life of sinful acts: Divine Initiative, Awareness of Need, Awareness of Moral Choice, and then the necessity of your on-purpose Response of repentance, turning from your sinful acts, and trusting Christ alone to save you.
You were heading in your own sinful way, and you were confronted by the Holy Spirit. Through God’s grace you were dramatically and miraculously changed! The old was past and the new was Now: Forgiven, Justified, Regenerated, and Adopted into God’s family.
In the continuation of the born-again life, you then learned of the needed adjustments that you could expect to encounter. It was emphasized that each day of this new walk, choices would need to be made, based now on your new set of values and convictions.
Sooner or later in your new-found experience, the Holy Spirit will begin making you aware of another life changing miracle that he is making available. Don’t be surprised when you find yourself involved in a situation where the kindness, and faithfulness of the Holy Spirit begins to make you aware that you are headed into a spiritual struggle or clash that will result in the very moral mastery of your life. It will be different in intensity and magnitude from the other confrontations you had met with in your new spiritual walk.
This new awareness is revelation of a promised experience that will bring you to the very threshold of your new, continued growth and excitement in your spiritual journey – or, it could result in your discouragement, disenchantment, or defeat.
This revelation of the moral conflict for the mastery of your heart will come as a kind and loving expression of the Holy Spirit who desires to help you discover your need for a total commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in your life, and a total infilling of the Holy Spirit within your very being.
The realization and designed awareness of the need will come on a very tailored basis to each individual born-again believer. You can rest assured, however, that even though the opportunity will involve a different set of circumstances for each and every believer, yet, the awareness and opportunity will definitely be presented!
SO, WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF THIS CONFLICT?
III. THE SIN NATURE OR “ORIGINAL SIN” IS THE PROBLEM
“Original sin” is the corruption of the nature of every person as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden, whereby, that person’s own nature is inclined to evil and has a propensity to choose that which is contrary to the Holy Spirit:
Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all men, because all sinned – for before the law was given, sin was in the world. . . Death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command. (Rom. 5:12-14 NIV)
The good news is, however, that Jesus Christ promises through the Holy Spirit a deliverance from that inherited defect:
If, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5:17 NIV)
It is amazing how many times this inherited, deprived nature is mentioned throughout the scriptures and holy writings:
Inbred sin indwelling sin inward pollution
Enmity against God moral corruption carnality
The old man the sin principle the law of sin
A bent toward sinning rebellion the carnal mind
Double-mindedness sinful nature infection of the moral nature
Depraved nature sinful propensity root of bitterness
Tendency to sin the old Adam the sin in believers
War against the Spirit uncleanness an impure heart
The above listed terms for original sin refer to the basis of moral conflict which remains in the heart of the born-again believer.
As was stated before, there is overwhelming agreement throughout the Christian community given to the idea that there are really two aspects to this subject of sin. There are not only the acts of sin, but there is also the sinful nature behind the acts of sin, that made you commit those accumulated sins in the first place. That sinful nature needs to be addressed. As was stated earlier; There is a realization that God cannot condone in the heart of the believer that which He condemns in the heart of the disbeliever.
Original sin is displayed through contrary choices of the perverted will. The “contrary will” chooses its own way rather than the way of God. Original sin results in your enmity against God’s sovereignty. A person’s depravity is not totally evil, without the trace of good remaining in him, but is “total” in the sense that this depravity has affected the person’s entirety. That is, it has affected the body, the soul, and the spirit. This original sin in a person is the cause of the inner conflict. The carnal nature is the virus of sin that spreads its invisible tentacles over every power and function of the individual.
It is the defacing of the original image of God on the moral nature of the person. The depravity is an egotistical, self-willed deviation from God-likeness. Your fascination and enchantment with the evil reflects your propensity or bent toward new sinful acts.
The forgiven, but unclean, moral nature of a person is the cause of the conflict experienced in the continuation of the born-again life of the believer. The battle of the ages that is waged on the battleground of your heart. You can see the potential of becoming all that God wants you to become – yet, “you find another law warring in your members.”
Our goal here, is to try to put the beliefs we hold into the common vernacular. I think the Apostle Paul, in the 7th chapter of the book of Romans describes this ordeal of inner conflict with the old original sin nature about as clearly as possible:
“I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to – what I hate. I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience proves that I agree with these laws I am breaking. But I can’t help myself, because I’m no longer doing it. It is sin inside me that is stronger than I am that makes me do these evil things.
I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn I can’t make myself do right. I want to but I can’t. When I want to do good, I don’t; and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. Now if I am doing what I don’t want to, it is plain where the trouble is: sin still has me in its evil grasp.
It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God’s willing servant but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin.
So, you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I’m in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature?
Thank God! It has been done by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free.
So, there is now no condemnation awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus. For the power of the life-giving Spirit – and this power is mine through Christ Jesus – has freed me from the vicious circle of sin and death. (Romans 7:15 – 8:2 TLB)
The two-fold aspects of sin require a two-fold remedy from God. The born-again life takes care of one of the aspects of the two-fold problem of sin, i.e., the accumulated acts of sin which need to be forgiven and justified. It takes a subsequent work of the Holy Spirit, however, to deal with the problem of original sin. The conflict in the continuation of the born-again life is the love and faithfulness of the Holy Spirit’s way of helping you become aware and letting you know that there is a deeper problem that needs to be met by the cleansing and infilling power of the Holy Spirit.
A SIMPLE STORY:
My old Dad, “Pop Jackson” used to tell the story about Mrs. Smith’s barrel of apples, that illustrates very well a person’s problem with the inner corruption of the moral nature:
Mrs. Smith had a problem with pesky little flying bugs called gnats. They were invading her kitchen every morning. When she got up and went into her kitchen to fix breakfast, the room would already be alive with the swarming, attacking, gnats! She would open all the doors and windows and drive them out with a broom and a dish towel. But it happened over and over again until one day she went down the rickety stairs into the cellar.
There, she discovered a barrel of rotten apples as the source from which the obnoxious gnats were coming. The solution was simple. When she got rid of the barrel of rotten apples from the cellar, the problem of the gnats in the kitchen was solved!
So, it is with the Christian experience . . . until the source of the defilement is removed, you can expect attitudinal and observable behavior which is contrary to the Will of God.
IV, SOME ADDITIONAL HELPFUL DIAGRAMS:
Years ago, when writing on this subject, I tried to use the illustration of three different hearts; each one depicting a different spiritual condition as regarding: (1) the sinner, (2) the born-again, and (3) the spirit-filled heart:
(I stopped using those descriptive diagrams -- because some of my friends thought the speckled heart looked too much like a fresh strawberry – and thought they would like some of it! Far be it from me to lead my friends astray.)
But now, please study the following diagrams that better depict (1) the heart of the sinner, (2) the heart of the Born-Again individual, and (3) the heart of the cleansed and Spirit-Filled individual:
(1) The Sinner:
The self-centered heart illustrates the sinner with self crowned as King, and whose life is controlled by original sin and is plagued by accumulated acts of sin. God is left outside the heart.
(2) The Born-Again heart:
The conflicted heart, where God has come into the heart and has forgiven the accumulated acts of sin, has justified, regenerated, and adopted the individual; however, the original sin nature, with it’s bent toward sinning, is still present – that coexistence results in conflict.
(3) The Spirit-Filled Life:
The fully cleansed and consecrated heart where God is crowned King of Life and the Holy Spirit of Christ reigns supremely and is in control through the indwelling presence of Almighty God.
Next Week: The Spirit-Filled Life: Part 1: The Experience begins with a Response