Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to the John Ankerberg Show Classics Edition. For decades we've been privileged to host esteemed scholars discussing a wide range of topics from apologetics and science to biblical prophecy and beyond. Join us as we revisit these timeless conversations and make them accessible to you wherever you are.

Are you a Christian who has placed your faith in Jesus Christ, but still struggled privately in your personal life with many different problems? Have you been surprised at how easy it is to still fall into sin? How does the Christian life work?

Have you discovered that as a Christian you can know in your mind what God wants you to do, but your bodily desires can still lead you to give in to sin in a moment's time? Why do Christians feel such strong temptations to sin after they have believed in Christ?

Doesn't the Bible say that God will change a person who believes in Christ? When and how does God give a Christian power to live victorious over his sinful desires, habits, and circumstances? If you have despaired of ever living a victorious Christian life, we invite you to listen to today's program. Our series is entitled, "The Fight Within and the Fight Without."

God very plainly tells us in the Bible how every Christian can experience victory over the problems and sins of his or her life. He wants this for you. We invite you to stay tuned to find out how.

Welcome. You know, I remember when I was in college that a bright young fellow accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior. He'd come out of a straight pagan background, but he truly believed in Christ to forgive him of his sins and he eagerly started to live the Christian life.

Just a short time later, he came to me and said, "John, I don't understand all that's happened to me. I became a Christian and I really felt that God saved me and forgiven me of my sins. I was thrilled to know that I was going to heaven when I died."

"And I expected the Christian life to be one victory after another, but that's not happened." In fact, he said, "Everywhere I go, I seem to be tempted now more than before I became a Christian."

"What's worse, I find myself actually wanting to do some of these sins. As a result, I've committed them, only to feel guilty afterwards. How come these desires for some of my past sinful practices haven't disappeared? Am I not a Christian? Is this the normal Christian life?"

Well, I wonder if that's your question today. I believe many Christians are living defeated lives right now. They don't know the wonderful promises that God has made and how he can forgive their sins and give them victory in their lives. If that describes you, let me show you from God's word what the answer is.

To begin, I want to look at what God says our condition was before we became Christians. Second, after we believed on Christ, what changed? What did God do for us and give to us? And third, after becoming Christians, why is it that we can know what God says, but we still experience sinful desires which tempt us to sin? Why? What's going on? What provision has God made for us that we'll be able to live victoriously each day?

Well, first, what does God say our condition was before we became Christians? I think it'll be helpful for us to see this.

The Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that man is made up of spirit, soul, and body. It's through our spirit that we can communicate with God or keep him out. Jesus said in John 4:24, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth."

The Bible sometimes refers to our spiritual nature as our heart. Ephesians 3:17 says, "So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." We are told in Philippians 4:7, "The peace of God shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." So our heart, our spirit is different and separate from our mind.

Well, what was our heart, our spiritual nature like before we became Christians? Ephesians 2:1 says, "The spiritual part of us was dead to God." In the spiritually dead condition, the Bible says, "We followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air." That's Satan. "The spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient."

In other words, before we came to Christ, Satan was at work in our lives and we were following his ways and ideas. This was so even though we wouldn't have called it that or believed it. We were deceived spiritually.

Well, how do we get this sinful nature? According to the Bible, before Adam and Eve sinned, their spiritual natures were alive, open, and sensitive to God. But when they sinned, their spiritual nature died and their communication with God stopped.

Adam and Eve didn't die physically, but their spiritual nature died. That is, their spirit became dead to God. Every man born since the time of Adam has inherited a dead spiritual nature at birth. The theologian Augustine said, "Every man is born with a God-shaped vacuum that only Jesus Christ can fill."

The problem is, our God-shaped vacuum is empty. We're without God, and our dead spiritual natures have become hostile to God. We don't want to submit to God's ways. We live every day to gratify our own selfish desires and thoughts.

Some theologians call this our sin nature. Our sin nature leads us to view God as unnecessary in our life, someone to whom we refuse to submit. In short, as a result of our sin nature, we refuse to acknowledge the true God and we've made ourselves our God.

But then secondly, the Bible says man is not only made up of a spirit, but he has a soul. The soul of man includes our mind, our will, and our emotions, three things which make each of us the unique personalities that we are.

However, before we became Christians, the Bible describes how our sinful soul functioned. In Romans 8:5 it says, "Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God."

In other words, our sinful nature influences our soul, and specifically here, according to the Bible, our sinful nature inclines our mind to rebel against God.

But someone might ask, "Isn't it possible for sinful people to make up their minds to do good things?" Well, of course. But our sinful disposition controls our will so that many times the very motive for our doing good things is selfish. It's so that people will see us doing the good things. We'll be known for it.

Because we willfully decide to live the way that we want to live, our emotions fluctuate wildly, especially when we fail.

Then third, the Bible says we have a body. This body houses our soul and spirit. 2 Corinthians 5:1-8 says, "That our body is like an earthly tent." Before we were Christians, we used our bodies to gratify our own selfish desires, our selfish nature.

Keep in mind that when our body dies, the Bible says our spirit will continue to exist. It doesn't stop. It'll exist either with God in heaven or be separated from God in hell.

Well, what's the good news? Well, that's point number two. One day we believed on Jesus Christ and asked him to be our Savior. What happened at that moment? What did God do for us? What changed? How did God's salvation affect our spirit, our soul, and our body?

Well, first, it's always good to remember that the Bible teaches that God's gift of salvation is provided for us not by something that we do, not by some work that we do to attain.

Titus 3:5-6 says, "God saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior."

In other words, when we believed on Christ, we were spiritually born again. We were reborn. God gave us a new spirit. God did for us what he had prophesied in the Old Testament he would do for people in the future. You remember Ezekiel 36:26 where God promised, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."

So when we believed on Christ, God gave us a new heart, that is, a new spiritual nature. In addition, he gave us the Holy Spirit, who takes up residence and lives in our life. This new spiritual nature begins to influence our soul. Our mind now begins to understand God's truth. Our will and our emotions begin to rest on the basis of God's truth.

For example, our emotions are relieved that God will not punish us for our sins, and he now promises to be our friend. We are excited and happy to know that he will someday take us to be with him in heaven when we die.

Third, what about our body? At conversion, our body, following our mind, will, and emotions, starts to become an instrument that Jesus lives in and through. He begins to use our body in ways that witness to the world that he exists.

Well, if God does all of this for us when we believe in Christ, then why do Christians still have problems? Do you think you do have a problem?

C.S. Lewis tells a neat story about himself that shows the problem we have. He said one day he was trying to prepare for a speech. So he told his secretary, "Please, don't disturb me."

She went out of the room, closed the door. He got down to his books and started to read. As he was writing his speech, all of a sudden his secretary burst through the door and interrupted him and said, "Hey, there's a special person that wants to talk to you." And he got angry.

He started to say, "Please, I told you not to interrupt me. Get out of here." She left, and when she closed the door, he picked up his pen to write, but now he felt bad. He had just lost his temper. He had just said some angry words to his secretary.

And he started reasoning in his mind, "Well, I told her. But I shouldn't have reacted that way. I'm a Christian."

He says, "Well, if she had let me know that she was coming in, I could have prepared myself, calmed myself, and I wouldn't have acted that way, and I wouldn't have said those words."

But then he thought some more about it. Yeah, it was a kind of a surprise attack. He didn't know that was going to happen, and what came out of him when he wasn't expecting anything, showed what he really was. And he didn't like that. How do we change what we really are when we don't like what we see? Only Jesus Christ has the answer to that, and we're going to look at his answer when we come right back.

All right, we're talking about, if Christians have a new heart because they put their faith in Christ, and they've been given a new spiritual nature which desires to obey God. If the Holy Spirit lives in us, then why do we still experience such strong temptations to sin? Why do we still experience sinful desires? Are we weird? Are we different from all other Christians?

The answer is, we're not weird, we're just ignorant. We don't know all God has said on this topic, nor do we know his answer of how we can experience victory.

How do I know that true Christians struggle with this problem of sin even after they become Christians? How do I know that there's a victorious solution to this problem? Well, it's because the Apostle Paul struggled with this very same problem and wrote all about it in Romans chapter 6 and 7.

If you read Romans chapter 6:1-19, you will see that Paul talks about his sinful nature, his sinful disposition, and he personifies it. That is, he calls his sinful nature sin in verses 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 17, and 18, and personifies it by saying that it's a slave master who ruthlessly controls him and keeps him doing things he doesn't want to do.

Before Paul became a Christian, his sinful nature, like a slave master, taught him how to live selfishly and to gratify his flesh. The sinful nature kept leading him in sinful ways.

But then when Paul became a Christian, he came to understand what God through sending Christ to die for him on the cross had done for him. In Romans 6:6 Paul writes, "For we know that our old self was crucified with him," that's Jesus, "so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin."

In other words, God took his old self, that is his old unregenerate man, with all of its sinful deeds and crucified it with Christ. The reason God did this was so that our body of sin, our sinful track record, might be done away with. But God also did something else, so that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

Paul learned that when he believed in Christ, he was somehow united by God with Christ in Christ's death. Through Christ's blood, our sins were paid for, but it was through Christ's body in which he lived a perfect life. Christ broke the hold that our slave master sin had had on all human beings who believe.

Christ legally freed us from our slave master's authority. How do I know this? Romans 8:1 says, "Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ." What does that word condemnation mean?

It means that the believer is not condemned to a life of servitude to the sinful disposition once he believes in Christ. In Romans 6:18, Paul says point blank, "We have been freed from sin." But in what sense does Paul think he's been freed from sin?

Is he saying that he is completely freed from sin's temptations and desires? The answer is obviously no. Why? In Romans 7, Paul says he is still struggling with his old master sin.

Paul is teaching here that Christ freed him in the legal sense, that is, his sinful nature has no official authority or right, no legal right to control him anymore because of Christ's death.

Because of Christ, legally he has set us free and we are not obligated anymore to serve sin. Paul advises, "Do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin."

Paul is saying, "Don't present your body to this slave master sin when he tempts you. Rather, present yourself to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God."

Because of Christ's life and death for us, God's word promises, "For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace."

We need to know this and believe it. But if this is true, then what's the problem? If we've been freed from sin by the grace of God to serve the Lord, if he has given us a new heart, a new spiritual nature, if he's given us the Holy Spirit to take up residence in our life, if we've been legally freed from our old sin nature officially ruling over us, then why do we still have problems?

Well, in the very next chapter, the Apostle Paul tells us why. He teaches that although we are legally free not to follow our sinful nature, it still exists and it tries to illegally control us.

Even with our new spiritual nature that God has given us, if we try in our own strength, our own efforts to live according to our new desires and to fight against our old sinful nature, we will fail miserably.

Paul tells us, he himself failed in trying to live the Christian life by his own self-effort. He teaches us that the only way to live victoriously is to look to and depend upon the Holy Spirit, who lives right in our life, to give us the power that we need to conquer our old sinful nature.

Let's look at Paul's account of his personal struggle in this area after he became a Christian. It's recorded in Romans 7:14-24.

Now, remember, he is writing as one who has become a Christian and one who has a new heart from the Lord. But he tells us up front, "For that which I am doing, I do not understand. For I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate."

Here Paul is saying, "God gave me a new heart, as he promised. And so now I desire to serve and obey God's law. But in spite of my new heart, I still find myself doing just the opposite and committing sins."

He says in verse 19, "For the good that I wish, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not wish."

Paul says here, he's still practicing doing evil. He sins. Why? It's because even though he is a Christian with a new spiritual nature, his old sinful nature is still trying to illegally control him.

And apparently, his old nature is no match for Paul's good intentions. It can still trap and conquer him. He writes, "If I am doing the very thing that I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me."

Now, Paul is not saying that he is not responsible for giving in to these sinful desires, but what he's saying is that the origination of these desires is coming from his old sinful nature, which now that he is a new creation in Christ, is not really his true self.

He continues, "I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good, for I joyfully concur with the law of God," only a Christian can say that.

"I concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind." Then he cries out, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death?"

Here, Paul admits that even though he is a Christian and has a new heart that desires to serve and obey the Lord, he has discovered, "Evil is still present in me."

"This evil present in him," he says, "wages war against the law of his mind," that which he knows he wants to do for the Lord. "It makes him a prisoner of the law of sin."

This can be none other than Paul's old sinful disposition that is still present within him, even though God has said, "It has no legal claim over him."

So what's the bottom line? Are Paul and all Christians everywhere condemned to being constantly defeated by their powerful old natures, even though they are Christians? The answer is no.

Paul indicates why he failed in his struggle with his old nature as a Christian. 23 times in 11 verses of Romans chapter 7, Paul uses the word, "I."

But in chapter 8, 17 times in just 16 verses, Paul uses the word "spirit" or "Spirit of God." The point Paul is making is that when he depended on his own strength and power to live the Christian life, he failed.

But when he depended on God the Holy Spirit to give him the power he needed, he had victory. So when we become Christians, God can forgive our sins, give us a new spiritual nature, but that new spiritual nature which desires to serve the Lord does not have the power in itself to actually give us victory over our old nature.

That's why God also gave us his Holy Spirit to live within us. It's only when we look to and depend on the power of the Holy Spirit that we'll be able to follow the desires of our new heart and will be able to conquer those things which we face from within and without.

Every believer who has this new spiritual nature that God has given him, but who tries to live for God in his own self-effort, in his own self-generated power, will miserably fail. Is that you right now?

In Romans 8:11, Paul promises, "If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you," and he does, "He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead," that's God, "He will also give life to your mortal bodies," how? "Through his spirit who indwells you."

"So then, brethren, we are under obligation not to the flesh," that's our old nature, "to live according to the flesh, but if by the spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body," all of these sinful desires that come up that tempt you, "you will live."

You know, at home I have an electric power saw, a drill, and a grinder. Like my mind, will, and emotions, these tools all serve different functions. Yet all three of these tools plug into the same power source, electricity. Electricity is their life.

Without that life, without that power, all of my tools are nothing but big paperweights. My mind, will, and emotions also must be plugged into the power of the Holy Spirit so that God's spiritual life can flow through me and give me victory over sinful desires and habits.

If you have failed God, if you are disturbed by all of these sinful desires that you have, why not right now ask him to forgive you and then tell him, from this moment on, you are going to be asking the Holy Spirit to help you, to empower you to live for him.

Now, we're just getting into these things that we as Christians fight within and those things that we fight without. Next week, we're going to turn to look at those problems that come from without. One of the big ones is our family.

What is God's provision for those who have grown up in troubled families and learned bad habits and destructive patterns of living? How does God tenderly, wonderfully go about helping rebuild our lives if we have grown up in such a home? I hope that you'll join me next week.

Now, stay tuned as we revisit these timeless discussions and join us in celebrating the wealth of knowledge that continues to encourage and educate. To learn more, please visit jashow.org. That's jashow.org. Or subscribe to us on YouTube.