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Are Christians Still Sinners, But Saved By Grace? Part 3
(Rev. Barry Johnson and Rev. Rodney Johnson)
Opening Prayer & Introduction
In our first lesson of this series, we shared with you that the statement, “I’m a sinner saved by grace!”, while popular in the Church today, biblically is not true. A more biblically accurate description of a Christian is, “I was a sinner saved by grace! Now I’m a righteous, blameless, holy child of God!”
In the second lesson, we spent some time examining Romans 3:23, a verse used to teach that everyone is a sinner, including Christians. The verse reads as follows: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) To help us understand the verse, we asked one question: “Who is the “all” that Paul refers to in the verse?” We highlighted verses 9 through 12 and 19 through 22 in Romans 3 and saw that, initially, Paul was talking to both the Jews and the Greeks (Gentiles) about their common spiritual condition – “they are all under sin.” (Romans 3:9) Why were they all under sin, or sinners? They were not born again. So, the point Paul is making in Romans 3:23, when the verse is kept in context, is that anyone who has not accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior is a sinner. If you have not heard Part 2, we encourage you to do so before proceeding with this lesson.
The focus of the second lesson was to look at who we are because we have the life of Jesus living on the inside of us. The most important thing we learned in Part 2 that separates us from a person who is a sinner was this: God is with us just like He was with Jesus. And because of this, (1) He can partner with us, just like He did with Jesus, to carry out His will (John 3:2), (2) He can anoint us with the Holy Spirit and with power to carry out His will (Acts 10:38), (3) we have the ability to live our lives and not commit sin (Romans 6:10-12, 14), and (4) we can renew our minds to agree with God and His Word (Romans 12:11-2). We ended the lesson looking at several promises we have because Jesus lives inside of us, and what’s available to us through grace. Again, if you have not listened to Part 2, we highly encourage you to do so.
We Are Triune Beings
In this lesson we are going to take a closer look at who we are and how we exist on this earth. By knowing who we are and how we exist on this earth, we will have a better understanding of what is captured in Scripture pertaining to the state of man and what is happening within us, especially as it relates to sin. With this is mind, one of the things we must understand, which is very important for us as Christians, is that we are individuals who are comprised of three parts or members: a spirit, a soul, and a body. This is critical to understanding why Christians may occasionally commit sin. Now notice we said, “may occasionally commit sin.” It is a distinction that we have made repeatedly in the first two lessons of this series. A person who lives a life of habitually committing sin is not a Christian, and we see this in First John 3:8-9, which we read from the Amplified Bible because it brings out additional understanding of the Greek that we don’t always see in the New King James. It says, “(8) [But] he who commits sin [who practices evildoing] is of the devil [takes his character from the evil one], for the devil has sinned (violated the divine law) from the beginning. The reason the Son of God was made manifest (visible) was to undo (destroy, loosen, and dissolve) the works the devil [has done]. (9) No one born (begotten) of God [deliberately, knowingly, and habitually] practices sin, for God’s nature abides in him [His principle of life, the divine sperm, remains permanently within him]; and he cannot practice sinning because he is born (begotten) of God.” (First John 3:8-9)
One of the problems we see in the Body of Christ is that many do not fully understand who they are: a spirit with a soul housed in a body. In First Thessalonians chapter five, we see a reference to this in Paul’s prayer for the church at Thessalonica. “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (First Thessalonians 5:23) The order in which Paul presents who we are, not only as Christians, but as humans in general, is important. And to help us see this, we are going to examine some references from both the Old and New Testaments. We are going to begin with the spirit.
No Life Without The Spirit
First, we are going to look at Genesis 2:7. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” This verse is stunning in its detail. Let’s read it from the Amplified Bible. It says, “Then the LORD God formed [that is, created the body of] man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being [an individual complete in body and spirit]. (Genesis 2:7 Amp) Notice that the first thing God did was form man (humanity, his body) from the dust of the ground, something He didn’t do this with any other creature. In the first chapter of Genesis, God simply “spoke” and things came into existence. For example, He spoke and the seas were filled with creatures (Genesis 1:20-21) and He spoke again and the earth was filled with creatures (Genesis 1:24-25). But, when it came to humanity, God got His hands “dirty” to make us! He was personally involved with bringing us to life! Do you see how special we are? Our bodies, for lack of a better word, are simply the “containers” we live in that allow us to be present here on earth.
And there’s another detail in this verse that is important, but often overlooked. The body already had a soul (used in the KJV for “being”) when God breathed His life into it. Many in the Church believe the “soul” and the “spirit” are the same. God formed the body as a place to house the soul and later the spirit. But the soul is not the spirit, even though they are closely tied to one another. In the Hebrew, soul means “breath, the inner being with thoughts and emotions.” Everything that breathes has a soul, including animals. However, it is the soul, the breath that is in a person that makes one person unique from another person. It contains the person’s personality and quirks. More so than the physical body, it is the soul of a person that truly defines who they are – that truly makes them unique. Remember, identical twins might be identical in how they look, but their individual souls are unique to them and therefore are not identical.
Now although we don’t see the word “spirit” in Genesis 2:7, it is referenced in the phrase “breath of life.” Man did not exist until God breathed His life into him. God is a spirit (John 4:24) and did not actually breathe oxygen into the nostrils of man. When the text says God breathed life into man, it’s a figure of speech that points to the miracle of God sharing Himself – His life and nature – and animating the dust with His life. Genesis 2:7 is the culmination of God’s plan for humanity as we read in the first part of Genesis 1:26 – “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to our likeness …’” God made man to be exactly like Him in this world. In this first reference, we see that without God’s breath of life, man was simply a lifeless soul housed by a body.
Now, let’s look at the New Testament reference in James 2:26. The verse says, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” The word spirit in the Greek is pneuma, the Hebrew equivalent of “breath of life” (Genesis 2:7). The spirit is that part of us that can live independently of the body and we see an example of this in Acts 7:59. “And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’” And in Ecclesiastes 12:7 it says, “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” Now there is an important distinction that needs to made. The breath that God breathed into man was His life and nature, not oxygen as we noted earlier. But in Genesis 3, man (Adam and Eve) rebelled against God by eating of the forbidden tree and forfeited the “life” spirit that God had given to them. They were left with a spirit that was full of sin and without life. So, the spirit that returns to God is our born again spirits that we received from Him when we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, not the sinful spirit we received from Adam in our first birth. And this is something we need to understand as some believe that everyone who dies return to God. Someone who dies and is not saved does not return to God – they are eternally separated from Him. Paul wrote, “These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.” (Second Thessalonians 1:9)
Now, as with the reference from Genesis 2:7, we see in James 2:26 that our bodies and souls cannot exist without a spirit. Even though Adam and Eve no longer had God’s spiritual life, they still had a spiritual life, but it was dead with sin. That’s why God commanded Adam in Genesis 2:16-17 – “(16) And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you thou may freely eat; (17) but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” In the Hebrew, the phrase “you shall surely die” literally means, “dying, you shall die.” Adam died spiritually the moment he ate of the tree, but it took 930 years for the spiritual death to manifest as physical death in his body. To close out this discussion about the spirit: it is the spirit, whether it contains God’s life or whether it contains sin, that gives the body life. When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we receive a new spirit with a new nature and the old spirit with the sin nature is destroyed. But until a person makes the decision to accept Jesus’ offer of salvation, the person still has a sin nature. So let’s now talk about the soul.
What Is The Soul? (Rodney & Barry)
One of the biggest sources of confusion in the Church seems to be its understanding of the word soul. As we saw in First Thessalonians 5:23, the soul is not the same as the spirit or the body. But, as we mentioned earlier, the soul and the spirit are closely tied together as a matter of function or operation. Soul in the Greek is psuche. In scripture, it is “the seat of the senses, desires, affections, appetites, and passions.” How the soul functions is usually expressed by the word mind (nous), as we can see with the various descriptors for psuche.
We are going to look at a few verses to help us see this. Matthew 22:37 says, “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all of your mind.’” To love Jesus with all the heart means we fix all of our affections squarely on him, more strongly than on anything else, and are willing to give up all that we hold dear for Him. To love Jesus with all our soul, all of our life or breath means we are willing to give up our life to Him, to devote it to His service, to live for Him, and to be willing to die for Him. And finally, to love Jesus with all our minds, we submit our intellects to His will and love His law and gospel more than we do the decisions of our own minds. We must be willing to submit to His teachings and guidance. This one verse brings together how the soul and mind work in concert.
Before His crucifixion, Jesus told the disciples that He was going to die and, according to John 12:27, He was not looking forward to what He would have to endure. “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this hour.” (John 12:27) The word troubled is “figuratively used of the mind [and means] to stir, trouble, disturb with various emotions such as fear, or put in trepidation.” As we saw in the previous verse, the soul and mind are typically viewed as one in scripture.
There are two verses in the book of Hebrews that communicate how interwoven scripture sees the soul and the mind. In Hebrews chapter six, let’s read verses 18 and 19. “(18) That by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. (19) This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil.” (Hebrews 6:18-19) The hope that it is impossible for God to lie is an anchor of our souls, of our lives because we have faith that it is true because our minds believe it to be so.
Now turn to First Peter 2:11. It says, “Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.” This verse is an example of how the soul is used to communicate the struggle our minds can have with fleshly lusts or works of the flesh, which are identified in Galatians 5:19-21. “(19) Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, (20) idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentious, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, (21) envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like: of the which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:19-21)
In these passages, we have seen how the word soul is used to communicate what happens in the mind or what is happening in the mind. And that’s why the scriptures often use soul and mind to communicate the same concept – the emotions that arise from our thoughts. To wrap up this discussion about the soul, we want to make a very, very important point: the soul and mind were not impacted by our salvation. Let me say that again, the soul and mind were not impacted by our salvation! They were not changed. Remember what we read in Genesis 2:7? God had formed the body and placed within it the soul then He breathed His life (spirit) into the body. God’s spirit gave the body and soul “life” – it gave them the ability to function. The body and soul must yield to the born again life if we are going to receive everything God has promised to us now that we have Jesus living on the inside of us. This is why Paul wrote “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:2) We must make the decision to “renew” our minds after we are saved. This is the only way we can begin to think the way Christ wants us to think. It won’t happen on its on as the minds loves being just the way it is – we have to force the change. Now let’s talk about the body.
The Body Is Our Flesh.
We have examined what the Bible says about the spirit and the soul, and that just as the soul is connected to the mind through emotions and desires, the soul is also connected to the spirit through its obedience or lack of obedience to the spirit. We also see this in Galatians 5, this time in verses 22 through 24. “(22) But the fruit of the spirit (the fruit of our born again spirit) is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, (23) gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. (24) And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Galatians 5:22-24) Now these verses also point out something else – the role that the body plays in our lives. The body “drives” our emotions, our passions, our desires through what it sees, hears, and feels.
There is a constant battle being waged against our born again spirits (new nature) by the body and the soul (with the mind). When the body and soul work together and win a battle against the new nature, then a Christian will commit sin. However, when the body and soul are constantly winning battles, then it is possible that the person is no longer born again and we know this possibility exists as we see in Hebrews 6:4-6. “(4) For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, (5) and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, (6) if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.” (Hebrews 6:4-6) In the Greek, if they fall away is “having fallen away.” Because of what the person has chosen to do in verses 4 and 5, they have purposefully and deliberately fallen away – turned their backs on Jesus. And that’s one of the reasons Paul says the following in Romans chapter 8, verses 12 through 14. “(12) Therefore, brethren, we are debtors – not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. (13) For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (14) For as many as are led by the spirit of God (the born again nature), these are the sons of God.” (Romans 8:12-14)
Summary & Closing Prayer
We are a spirit with a soul housed in a body. We exist on this earth with three separate parts that can work in unison together or separately when the soul and flesh are warring against our spirit after we are saved. But God knew that this would happen, which is why He has made provisions for us to be able to walk with Him faithfully after we are saved. But we must make the choice to do so and when that happens we have a guarantee of spending eternity with Him. Paul wrote the following to the Christians in Corinth, “(1) For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2) For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, (3) if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. (4) For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. (5) Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. (6) So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. (7) For we walk by faith, not by sight. (Second Corinthians 5:1-7)
God told Adam if he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil he would die. He died spiritually immediately when he ate and his flesh died some 930 years later. When we were born into this world, we were born with a spirit that was already dead with flesh that was already destined for death. But, when we accepted Christ two things happened. First our spirits were reborn – we no longer had a spirit that was dead. And then we were promised a new body in heaven. Remember, nothing could stop this physical body from dying and decaying – it will return to dust. But, because we have accepted Christ as our personal Savior, we have a much better body waiting for us in heaving. Hallelujah!!!
Let’s pray.
