aw, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no
longer am I the one doing it but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in
me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the
good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the
very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.”
Did you
get this? It’s kind of complicated. Paul has a dilemma. He wants to do the right thing, but like us,
he sometimes does the wrong thing and what we’re talking about is sin. Then we have a verse,
Romans 6:12, that says this,
“Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey
its lusts.”
Please allow me to spend a moment talking about the dilemma that all believers face.
Why do we do things we wish we wouldn’t do? What is it that causes us to violate our
conscience and do things we know are wrong? The Apostle Paul allows us to see that he had the
same struggle we have. We frequently sin even though we wish we didn’t and sometimes it
appears to be two of us living inside the same body. Remember that old commercial, sometimes
996-The-Believers-Dilemma-transcript.pdf
you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t? Maybe you feel this way sometimes. There are two of
you in there, the one of you who does right and the one of you who does wrong. Listen again,
“I
am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.”
This is sin.
Listen, Paul makes no claim to be a sinless saint. I’ve met one or two of these self-righteous
saints and they can be quite annoying, I promise you. They are usually under the delusion that
since they got saved, they quit sinning. It’s kind of fun to make these individuals upset by
pointing out how absurd this is and watching them sin by getting angry and getting immediately
full of animosity. 1 John 1:8 says,
“If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and
the truth is not in us.”
I remember speaking in a school in Georgia one time many years ago
where I ran into an individual just like this who insisted that he did not sin. By the time the
conversation was over I promise you he was sinning because I frustrated him and made him
angry. Well, here’s the question, why do we still sin once we get saved? You’re saved, why do
you have to keep on sinning? In my case it only took me a day or two after I got saved before my
old desires and my old traits reappeared. Can we ever overcome these flaws in our soul? Can we
ever overcome them in the mentality of our soul? If so, exactly how do we do it? What are the
means to overcoming these flaws? Let’s start by identifying the culprit that we have to deal with,
Mr. Bad Guy, the sin nature. Romans 5:12,
“Therefore, just as through one man sin
[the sin
nature]
entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all
sinned.”
When you are born, you are born physically alive but spiritually dead and you have
Adam’s original sin imputed to you. You have a sin nature according to this passage. This is a
quote from my pastor, Robert B. Thieme Jr., “We inherit a sinful nature from Adam because
Adam took a perfect soul and by his negative volition, he revolted against divine authority and
thus doing so created the sin nature.” The mentality of the soul becomes the battlefield which the
sin nature attacks. This is where it is often tactically very successful. It’s always in your thoughts,
in your brain, in your head. The influence of the sin nature on the soul is seen in mental attitude
sins and motivations. You have a soul. Your soul has mentality. Your soul has volition. Your soul
has a conscience and even self-consciousness. It is here that the sin nature attacks the mentality
of your soul. It infects the way you think. We have to remember this. The mentality of your soul
is the battlefield where you have to be successful tactically to glorify God. The influence of the
sin nature on the soul is seen in mental attitude sins as I said, and in sinful motivations. A couple
of Greek words are used here to explain the sin nature. One of them is the flesh. In the Greek
language it’s call
sarx.
In Galatians 6:8,
“For the one who sows to his own flesh
[
sarx
]
will from
flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit
[
pneuma
]
will from the Spirit reap
eternal life.”
You have a choice as a believer. You can sow to the flesh or you can sow to the
Spirit. This means you can make a decision based on what your flesh wants to do or you can
make a decision based on what the Holy Spirit wants you to do. In Romans 8:5 we see this word
again.
“For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but
those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.”
We have a choice. Who are we
going to obey? Are we going to obey the Holy Spirit that indwells us as a believer in the Lord
996-The-Believers-Dilemma-transcript.pdf
Jesus Christ or will we obey the sin nature who is insisting on controlling our life once again like
it used to do before we got saved. Before you got saved, you didn’t have a living human spirit.
You were spiritually dead and the sin nature dictated policy to the mentality of your soul. Now
that you are saved, there is a battle going on. The battle is, who’s going to control your thinking?
Are you going to let the Holy Spirit control your thinking by using Scripture or are you going to
allow the sin nature to control your thinking based on your emotions? The Scripture also refers to
our sin nature as the old man in Ephesians 4:22,
“That, in reference to your former manner of
life, you lay aside the old self
[the old man]
, which is being corrupted in accordance with the
lusts of deceit.”
The sin nature is classified as being the old man because it originated in the
Garden of Eden and it is older than anything else. Colossians 3:9,
“Do not lie to one another,
since you laid aside the old self
[the old man]
with its evil practices.”
You are not supposed to let
the old man control what you think because if the old man controls what you think, then your
volition will do what you don’t need to do. In Romans 6:6,
“Knowing this, that our old self
[our
old man]
was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that
we would no longer be slaves to sin.”
This is our position in the royal family of God. In our
position we are sinless. In our experience we sin more. We couldn’t go to heaven if we weren’t
sinless and we are sinless because Christ paid for our sins.
“He made Him who knew no sin to be
sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”
(2 Corinthians
5:21). This is our position. It’s called positional truth. But experientially, we are still on this
earth. We still have a human body. We have a sin nature indwelling the human body. The
question is, who’s going to control your thoughts, the sin nature or the Holy Spirit? This is your
dilemma. You have to remember this. The sin nature always gets to us by attacking our thoughts
so that both sin and evil are motivated in our thinking. You might not know what evil is. You
might think evil is just doing something bad but evil is actually the genius of Satan. It is where
he takes the Word of God and twists it, counterfeits it to where it sounds right, smells right, looks
right, tastes right, but it’s a lie. This is evil. Evil is nothing but the policy of Satan. God’s policy is
known as grace. Satan’s policy is known as evil, salvation by works. God’s policy is known as
grace, salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The sin nature always gets to us
by attacking what we think. Proverbs 23:7 says we think from our heart. Did you know this? We
have a mind and we have a heart, the Bible identifies the two. We comprehend things in our
mind. Thus what we comprehend, we store in our heart’s mentality. This is where the sin nature
attacks our thoughts. Did you know this? Listen to Jeremiah 17:9,
“The heart is more deceitful
than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?”
This is where the sin nature comes
to attack. Once you learn something, comprehend it, understand it in your mind and cycle it in
your heart, it becomes part of the stream of consciousness. It becomes part of your living and this
is what the sin nature attacks. Thus, your sin nature weakness sends up temptation. Here it comes
up, “Beep, beep, beep, beep.” Since you can think logically, you realize that this thinking is not
normal, and this is where you have to make a decision because temptation is not a sin. It is not a
sin to be tempted but it’s a volitional decision to give in and follow the temptation when you
996-The-Believers-Dilemma-transcript.pdf
actually go ahead and commit the sin. Sin can come in different ways, what you think, what you
say and what you do. Mental attitude sins are some of the biggest. Sins of the tongue are
certainly big and overt sins are things that we do. Remember this, just as our bodies are different,
not all of us have the same physical abilities in other words. Some are strong. Some are weak.
Some are tall. Some are short. So too, the trends of the sin nature are not always the same. The
sin nature has a lust pattern. The sin nature has trends, an area of weakness and an area of
strength. The area of strength produces what we call human good and dead works. The area of
weakness produces sinfulness. An unbeliever has an area of strength in his soul. He can do good
works. He can give money to the poor. He can serve humanity but this is not salvation. These are
dead works. The area weakness that we have is that area that produces sin in our life. It’s our
flaw. Most of the time it’s an acquired flaw. Trends of the sin natures are derived from the
individual’s lust pattern in the soul. There are certain areas in which we lust and other areas that
we don’t lust. Some people lust for money. Some people lust for power. We have an election
going on this year. There’s a lot of power lust floating around I promise you. Some people lust
for attention. Some people lust for approbation. You might have heard me use the illustration of
the little old lady who walks down to the front of the church every Sunday morning before
church starts and puts some flowers down there. Then she sits down and the preacher gets up and
says, “God bless you Mrs. Smith. These are such wonderful flowers you put here every Sunday.”
Of course she’s nodding her head going, “Yes, yes, yes, that’s right preacher.” She wants
attention. She wants approbation, but she may be at the same time critical of the young girl who
comes in pregnant outside of marriage and wants her kicked out of the church. “Look what she’s
done. That’s not right.” These are different areas of lust. One lusts for attention. One has sex lust.
We have to understand this. The trends of the sin nature are classified in two categories. One of
them we call legalism. The other one on the other side of the coin we call lasciviousness. If you
don’t restrain legalism, if you don’t stop it, it can result in moral degeneracy. It was the legalists
who crucified our Lord Jesus Christ. It was the religious crowd that insisted that He be put to
death, the morally degenerate individuals that lied at His trial before daylight. Actually, there
were several trials that He went through. All of them were a phony farce with lies. The legalist
has this moral degeneracy. However, the lascivious person has a different lust pattern and if
unrestrained can result in immoral degeneracy. You have moral degeneracy, the legalist and you
have immoral degeneracy, the lascivious person. What is it that restrains the sin nature in our
lives? Galatians 5:16 tells us,
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire
of the flesh.”
The word walk is the Greek word
peripateo
which means the state in which you
conduct yourself or how you live your life. It means your lifestyle. It means to regulate your life.
This means if you live under the filling of the Holy Spirit, then the sin nature has a hard time
seizing control of your thoughts. The word walk is of course a verb and it’s in the present tense
meaning continuous action. The voice of the verb is an active voice and it means that you alone
produce the action of this verb. You do it, not somebody else. It is an imperative verb meaning
this is a command from God. We are to walk in the Spirit and if we do so, then we can control
996-The-Believers-Dilemma-transcript.pdf
the flesh and the lusts of the flesh. What are we talking about? If you’re not walking you’re not
moving. A believer under control of his sin nature is not advancing spiritually. Why? Because he
has quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit meaning he exercised his volition to give in to his lust
pattern be it legalism or lasciviousness. Legalism sins include such things as judging, maligning,
as well as slander and gossip. These sort of sins are most often motivated by jealousy and envy.
On the other hand, lascivious sins include immoral activities such as adultery, fornication, theft
and things like these. Often a believer might even surprise himself by committing one of these
sins, not thinking they were capable of doing such things. This is where the enemy likes to put
doubt in your mind when you begin to think, “If I were truly saved, I wouldn’t do that.” This type
of thinking leads to self-pity and eventually discouragement. When I played football in college, I
got knocked down but I didn’t stay down. I got up, went back to the huddle and did better next
time. When you fail, when you fall, when you wind up on your back because you sin, you can
stay there, feel sorry for yourself and have a little pity party. Satan loves it. He’s gonna clap,
applaud and say, “Go sit in the corner and feel sorry for yourself.” But God’s not through with
you. He’s made a way for you to be cleansed from the failure through the rebound technique,
problem-solving device #1. Do you remember that the disciple Peter never thought he would
deny the Lord? The night Jesus was arrested he did it. He did it three times just like the Lord
predicted he would do in Luke 22:34. Why do we allow the sin nature to take control of our
thoughts? Usually it’s because we are in a frantic search for happiness. Unfortunately, the
believer who follows the trends of their sin nature always wind up in operation boomerang. The
aborigines have a boomerang in Australia. They throw it at a rabbit and miss, the boomerang
comes back, they pick it up and throw it again. It’s kind of like a bullet you shot at something
and it returns to the gun. Operation boomerang is you trying to find happiness in the flesh and
you wind up being more miserable than you were to start with. This means that your unhappiness
just intensifies. You are unhappy and your flesh says, “If you do this you will be happy.” You do
it and you’re still not happy. You’re even more unhappy than you were to start with. Your
unhappiness intensifies and eventually you go completely negative to God’s Word. You go
completely negative to God’s direction, to God’s plan and if you stay in this negative condition
long enough, you will eventually black out your soul by the accumulation of scar tissue. This
means you won’t have any guilt. You won’t have any shame. You just totally soul sellout.
Christians do this sort of thing everyday I promise you. There is an instant recovery process
when we commit sin. It’s to use rebound. This technique is found in 1 John 1:9. We talk to you
about it all the time.
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
By using this divine provision, you allow the Holy Spirit
to regain control of your mentality and encourage you, as well as comfort you. This does not
mean you won’t sin again but it does put you back into fellowship with God where you can begin
to recover your momentum spiritually. Here’s the principle you need to understand. The
lascivious believer absolutely knows when he’s committed some immoral sin and he usually can
recover quickly if he has a desire to admit his sin. Unfortunately, the legalistic believer often fails
996-The-Believers-Dilemma-transcript.pdf
to recognize his sins since he compares himself with the immoral believer. Thus his self-
righteousness is perpetuated as he seeks attention and he seeks notoriety in his sphere of
influence. His good deeds are actually an accumulation of wood, hay and straw that will be
burned up at the Judgment Seat of Christ and I must say, much to his surprise. We wrap this up
with with Paul’s mandate in Ephesians 5:18,
“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is
dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.”
This is a divine mandate from God through the Apostle
Paul that you must be filled with the Holy Spirit. You cannot operate in the Christian life without
the filling of the Holy Spirit and you cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit with unconfessed sin in
your life because you have quenched and grieved the Holy Spirit. This is why rebound is so
important. This is why it is the #1 problem-solving device we have. How do I solve the problem
my sin? So you’ve committed the same sin more than one time. Do you think God is through
with you? Are you dead? No, you’re not a pile of dust yet, so God is not through with you. God
is still using you. You can rebound. You can get up off the floor. You can get up off your bed. You
can get up off your back and move forward once you’ve rebounded, and don’t look back. Paul
wrote in Philippians 3:13,
“Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies
ahead.”
Do you understand now why he said, “I don’t understand myself at all. I want to do
what’s right, but I wind up doing what’s wrong?” This is us. We try not to do those things but we
do them anyhow. We cannot worship God in the flesh. We cannot glorify God in the flesh. We
cannot produce divine good in the flesh. In Romans 7:18,
“For I know that nothing good dwells
in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.”
You
have heard today the clearly revealed message about how to stay in fellowship with God. It is my
prayer that you will heed what you’ve heard and put it into use in your life. All of these messages
can be played again through our website. You can go there and listen to them again or you can
get onto a podcast venue such as Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Podbean and look for The FLOT
Line. If you put this in the search engine it will bring up our shows and 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, anywhere in the world you can listen to The FLOT Line. I hope you’ll take
advantage of this. I hope you will help us get up to that 2 million downloads that we’ve been
looking for. We are closing in on 1,000 Sundays that we’ve been on the air. This show today is
#996. Pray for us as we move on. It’s been my great honor to give you these messages. I pray that
the Holy Spirit will encourage you and use these things in your life and that you will take
advantage of the things we offer you through our website. Until next week, this is your host Rick
Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line