In the church today, the predominant and glorified narrative is that we still sin because we still want to, that we all have many evil desires that need to be rooted out of our hearts, that we're all just sinners saved by grace, that you are your own worst enemy, that nobody is perfect, etc. In light of all the scriptures that say otherwise, it is astonishing to me how much of a stronghold this narrative continues to have on God's people. We sing songs asking God to give us clean hands and pure hearts. We lament how we are prone to wander. We pray for God to fix us and change us. All of it is just proof that we are still regarding ourselves and one another according to the flesh (instead of Christ), which we are not supposed to do (see 2 Corinthians 5:16)!
The truth is that Satan has used our desire to obey and honor God against us, convincing us that it is prideful, dishonoring, and even dangerous to think of ourselves in any other way. "How dare you act like that sin came from anywhere other than your dirty, wicked heart," he whispers. "Be careful that you don't abuse God's grace" (even though this isn't possible if you understand grace). "You need to repent" (even after you already have). "You aren't doing enough" (even though it's never enough, no matter how much you do). And on and on.
All the while, God's word remains unchanging. So, let's return to it, putting to death any fear that it will lead us astray, trusting that it will cause us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling.
Willful Disobedience?
We are going to look at the latter part of Romans 7 one more time. Here, we can see that Paul describes this person in two distinct parts. There is the “I” or the "inner being" or the "mind" that delights in the will of God, and there is another part — called the “flesh” (7:14, 18, 25), “members” (7:23), and “body” (7:24), which he uses interchangeably — in which sin dwells and reigns and contradicts what the person truly wants. For example:
“I do what I do not want, but I do the very thing I hate… So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me… that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” (Romans 7:15-18)
“For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members… Who will deliver me from this body of death?… So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." (Romans 7:22-25)
These passages reveal that when a believer is struggling with sin, it is neither fair nor accurate to assume that they are in a state of willful disobedience, for one can sin without wanting to. This begs the question: When you sin, what do you think is the root of the problem?
Most Christians think that when they sin, it is because they wanted or intended to, because their hearts are still (at least somewhat) wicked. But doesn't this passage say the exact opposite? Doesn't it provide a clear precedent for us to look at our sins and say, "It was not I who sinned, but sin that dwells within me," particularly when we are grieved over our sin?
In many Christian circles, this would be considered blasphemy. But we should all be leery with that kind of theological arrogance and resistance to reason. "[T]he wisdom from above is… open to reason" (James 3:17). I honestly do not know how someone can humbly read this passage and not at least be open to the possibility of what I am presenting here. As you can see, I need not jump through any hoops to make my point, for it is the most plain and sensible reading of the text.
In short, if it were not possible for someone to sin without wanting to, then Paul would not and should not have written it this way.
Evidently, then, we have misdiagnosed the problem. Too often, when it comes to sin, we wrongly identify with it, meaning that we "own" it or associate ourselves with it. No matter how much we truly hate the sin, we would not dare have the audacity to say, “It is no longer I who do it.” Instead, we beat ourselves up. We pray God would take away our desire for sin (not realizing that this prayer itself is proof that we don't desire to sin). And we say self-deprecating things like, “If only I wanted God more…”, “If only I loved him like I should…”, “If only I wasn’t so [insert insult]… then I would obey.”
What a lie! It is not true! You are murdering the image of God in you! You do want God! You do delight in his will! His “love has been poured into our hearts" (Romans 5:5, my italics)! You "have become obedient from the heart…" (Romans 6:17, my italics)! And if not, then you just need to be born again, for these are the qualities of someone who is born of God and joined to Jesus.
Our failure to see this has led to generations of Christians living in unnecessary condemnation and slavery, waiting and praying for the day that they finally love God enough to overcome sin. Yet, for many, this day never seems to come. So, perhaps one of the first steps to experiencing the freedom we've been given is to recognize that if we have already repented and given our lives to Jesus, and if we already delight in God in our inner being, then sin is not a reflection of our genuine will. Like Paul, we need to be able to distinguish between the self and the sin and to discern that "it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within [my flesh]." As Jesus said to Peter (who would soon deny him three times), “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41; Mark 14:38).
A New Heart With New Desires
As I've already said, there are many ways to describe what God has done to us, and there are various components to it. But among them, I have found one to be exceptionally helpful. It is the fact that God has given us a new heart that loves him, delights in him, and desires to do his will, not to sin.
Admittedly, given that we still feel the desire to sin, this can be quite difficult to see and believe since most of us were taught that the heart is the seat/source of all our desires. But first, let us realize that, in the New Testament letters (which were written, of course, to born-again believers), sinful desires are almost always attributed to the flesh, and the flesh is not the heart. I will expound upon that in another chapter, but for now, it is enough to recognize that we should not be so quick to assume that every desire we feel is what we desire at the deepest level.
According to the scriptures, our hearts have been “circumcised” by the Spirit of God himself! (see Romans 2:29; cf. 2 Corinthians 3:3; Acts 7:51; Deuteronomy 10:16, 30:6).
What exactly does it mean that our hearts have been circumcised? Well, just as circumcision in the Old Covenant referred to the removal of a tiny bit of flesh (the foreskin), circumcision in the New Covenant refers to the removal of the whole body of flesh (that is, Christ's body — more on that in Chapter 11), which was completed in our baptism (see Colossians 2:11-14 and Galatians 5:24). We are born of God, citizens of his heavenly kingdom, and as such, we are no longer from/of this earth. Concerning our hearts — wherein lie our true intentions — this means that we no longer intend to serve or fulfill the desires of the flesh, for all the flesh's desires pertain to things on earth. Since we are now of a different nature and realm, the desires of our heart naturally pertain to the things in that realm, which are spiritual and eternal.
The following is an iconic Old Testament prophecy about what God would do to us in the New Covenant:
"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
Here, we see that God promised to remove the lousy heart, give us a new one, and fill it with his Spirit. It would be right to inquire, then: Why do so many Christians insist that our hearts are still wicked and sinful? Do we think that the new heart he gave us is not good enough? One verse they often quote is, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). But don't you see? This was the problem. The heart of man was always the problem. This verse isn't proof that our hearts are still wicked; it is proof that our wicked hearts were the problem that needed to be fixed, which the law could never do. But grace could and did. All that a person needs to do is read further into the same book (Jeremiah) to find how God planned to solve the problem. There, we find another New Covenant promise about our hearts:
"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD; I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts." (Jeremiah 31:33)
Many people don't understand what it means for God to put his law within us and write it on our hearts, but it is very simple. The law can be summed up in one word — love. Therefore, God has put his love in our hearts (see Romans 5:5), meaning that we love him and everything he loves.
Because of this, we do not need the law to keep us in check (see Galatians 5:23), just as God doesn't need the law to keep him in check. As long as we have no delusions about who we are and what we truly desire— just as God has no delusions about who he is and what he desires — then we will naturally behave in accordance with the law, since the law is just a description of who we are. That is what it means to have the law written on our hearts.
No Longer I, But Christ
The following verse is one of my favorite verses that describes our transformation, as well as one of the three verses that provided the name for this book (the other two being Romans 7:17 and 7:20):
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." (Galatians 2:20, my italics)
I used to think that Paul was speaking here of some heightened spiritual state that he had achieved through many years of hard work and devotion to the Lord so that after dying to himself over and over again, he could finally claim that he had completely died and embodied Christ. For me, this meant that I had much more “dying” to do before I could make the same claim. But this is not what Paul is saying.
In the broader context of the passage, you can see that Paul was writing about justification, which occurs the moment a person believes in Jesus. He is not describing his state of spiritual maturity but the state of being a Christian. He is not boasting of his progress in the faith but teaching the whole Church what they, too, are to believe about themselves. Read it for yourself, in light of all his other teachings that correlate with it, and you will see it is a plain matter of fact.
There is one prerequisite for this renewal — faith. If you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you can say it now with confidence: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me!” It is not the same old you plus Christ. It is just Christ. It is not your sin plus his righteousness. It is just his righteousness. He defines you now, and you will only find out who you truly are by putting him on completely. Let nothing else but this define your life on earth.
Hopefully you see by now that "putting on" Christ isn't a matter of merely trying to emulate him. It means that you "wear" him, you "clothe yourself" in him, you see yourself in him, such that when you look in the mirror, he is all you see. Putting on Christ has to do with putting on a new identity, actively choosing to think differently about who you are, according to grace and the word of God.
You say, “This is hard to believe! Can it really be true? It does not appear to be so.” Let me invite you, again, into the real thing called faith. There is nothing more for you to do but trust him in everything. They asked, “‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’“ (John 6:28-29) Try for even half a day to believe such a magnificent thing, and you will see how “faith in Jesus” means a lot more than you may have thought.
For practical purposes, there is no longer any reason to wonder who we are or what we desire. What we see or feel in a given moment matters not one bit. Sight and feelings are things of the flesh. We are not saved by seeing, nor are we sanctified by feelings. If something is sinful or contrary to the character of God, then it is not Christ, so it cannot be you. No matter how strongly you feel the desire, it is not actually you desiring it, but your flesh desiring it, which the Enemy wants you to confuse with yourself. No matter how obvious it may seem that you are the sinner, that sinner is not actually you but an old, dead version of you, which you are to put off (i.e., not to associate or identify with).
“For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” (Galatians 5:17, my italics).
This verse makes it easy to understand. Please read it again, and pay attention to the last phrase: "the things you want to do." There are only two ways to interpret this:
You want to obey God, but the flesh is trying to keep you from doing so. In this case, the "desires of the Spirit" are your true desires.
You want to sin, but the Spirit is trying to keep you from doing so. In this case, the "desires of the flesh" are your true desires.
Contextually, the first option is the only real possibility. For if it is true that "[i]t is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (a passage from the same letter to the same church), then how could I desire to sin, for Christ does not desire to sin? If it is true that "those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Galatians 5:24), and I belong to Christ Jesus, then how could my truest desires still be aligned with the flesh to which I was crucified?
So, for those who love God, whenever we disobey, it is not because we want to. It is because (due to unbelief) the flesh keeps us from doing what we want. Our true desires are in alignment with the Spirit of God within us.
Satan wants you to believe that your anger, pride, lust, apathy, greed, gluttony, cowardice, fear, and resentment — and all the works that come from such things as these — were birthed from your dirty, rotten, good-for-nothing soul. This is how he keeps you tied to them — by making you believe that they are still a reflection of you. But by definition of who you are, sin cannot be a reflection of your soul/spirit, for you have become one with the Spirit of Christ in you. If you want to know yourself, the question is always, Who is Christ? and What does he desire? If you fall into sin, it is because you are deceived into sin, forgetting who you are (see James 1:22-24).
How many times in the New Testament letters are the people of God referred to as “sinners”? Once (James 4:8). How many times does it refer to them all as “saints”? Over sixty. This is not an accident. It is a tragedy that we cannot speak to one another this way in the Church today. We save the label of “saint” for the few who appear to deserve it. And then we ignorantly trumpet, “I’m just a sinner saved by grace,” with not the slightest clue of what that grace actually entails — a new creation. We have an identity crisis, and it is because we do not know the gospel.
Sinners, take your false humility and throw it out the window. It should not be allowed in our Church. Believers are saints. That is what the Bible says.
My, oh my, how Satan is shaking in his snakeskin boots! His job has been easy up to this point, but it is about to get much harder. Now, we are literally the continuance of the incarnation. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own…” (1 Corinthians 6:19). And here is why it matters. What Christ accomplished in his flesh, he will do again in yours as you learn to walk by faith and identify with him alone. “[W]alk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).
What was it, I ask you, that made Christ so unshakable in the midst of suffering and temptation? Perhaps it was that he knew who he was. With razor-sharp clarity of his identity in God, the flesh could make him suffer, but it could not deceive him into sin nor keep him from boldly drawing near to God. Every manifestation of its corruption was only a reminder of who he was not and, therefore, what he came to do. Truth was his anchor, and now it is ours, too.
If you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you no longer want to sin. You no longer desire the things of this world. Your spirit is clean by the Word you have received. It is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you.
My new heart is the most powerful truth that helped me so much!