Is carnal christianity biblically correct?

[Baptist Believer]

Actually I was focusing on your statement that “Solomon was in different circumstances than a person this side of Pentecost.” The fact is their circumstances are so similar to ours that we’re told repeatedly in the NT that these things were written for our examples. Your error undermines an immense source of truth that is available for you to meditate upon.

So your position is that the life and ministry of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost changed nothing? I certainly hope not.

Certainly we are to look at the example of the OT figures, but we are in a different position than they.

The way you’ve presented this before makes it sound like a “true believer” is nothing short of a robot controlled by the Spirit...

Being aided and empowered by the Spirit does not mean that will is excluded - quite the opposite. However, the heart is transformed so that our will is to do the will of God, although we tend to struggle with our will, old habits, and the pressures of the world/church. There are practical and effective methods to help train the body in righteousness that we can employ to aid our transformation. It is nothing like a robot. That's just a weird comparison.

...and can do no sin (your treatment of 1 Jn).

I said no such thing. I simply quoted the clear passages from 1 John. Apparently you don't know what to do with them and are imposing a faulty perspective on what I have said. 1 John points out that our lives will not be characterized by sin. If we had better theology and practical teaching about our role in transformation, we would see better results in the Western world. For those who want to advance in the transformation of the character, it is readily available and God will strongly support you.

The fact is we’re not robots otherwise we wouldn’t have have been given these admonitions:

Seeing you think those under the old covenant were different from us and never had the Spirit, don’t you think it odd that His people back then grieved His Spirit?

You know that God is spirit, right?

The Old Testament understanding of God is that He was one God and was Spirit. In the New Testament we see that God is indeed one God, but somehow God is present in three Persons with both distinction from each other yet unity of essence and purpose. When I am referring to the difference between OT believers and NT believers, I am pointing out that the NT believers have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (a person of the Triune God) that was not available to the OT believers in the same way.

9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.
10 But they rebelled, and grieved his holy Spirit: therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and himself fought against them. Isa 63

One does not have to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit to grieve the Holy Spirit. In fact, unbelievers can commit the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit!

Which was: ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever.’ Heb 13:8

I presented it precisely within context and properly applied it to the point I’m making which also happens to be the point made in the 1st chapter of Hebrews, that the God of the old covenant is the same God of the new and none of His attributes have changed...

I agree that the OT and NT God are the same. i have no idea why you think you need to inform me of that. That doesn't mean that God has worked the same way throughout all of the ages. The first sentence of the book of Hebrews tells us that God has spoken in many ways, but in these last days He has spoken through His Son. That sentence alone destroys the idea that nothing has changed from the beginning of time until now.

10 And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands:
11 They shall perish; but thou continuest: And they all shall wax old as doth a garment;
12 And as a mantle shalt thou roll them up, As a garment, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, And thy years shall not fail. Heb 1

It was the ‘heaven and earth of the old covenant’ that was soon to be ‘rolled up like a scroll’, shaken and removed:

Where in the world are you getting the idea that the heavens and earth are the "old covenant"?! That passage is contrasting Jesus from angels. The writer of Hebrews has not even addressed the difference between the covenants. (Please note, the writer of Hebrews spends a lot of time pointing out the DIFFERENCES between the faith of the OT and the faith of the NT.)

27 And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain.
28 Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe:
29 for our God is a consuming fire. Heb 12

You seem to be tying this latter quote directly to earlier quote from Hebrews 1 (which says nothing about shaking), while the reference is actually an allusion to Exodus 19:16-19 when God entered into covenant with the children of Israel at Mt. Sinai:

On the third day, when morning came, there was thunder and lightning, a thick cloud on the mountain, and a loud trumpet sound, so that all the people in the camp shuddered. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke because the Lord came down on it in fire. Its smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain shook violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him in the thunder.​

No confusion here. Enough could hardly be written concerning the impact that His appearance has had on the affairs of mankind. But He has not made His children to be robots.

Since I never said anything about robots or a person not having a will to exercise, you are imposing your mistaken beliefs upon me.

And behold, I send forth the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high. Lu 24:49

Have you, as a disciple, ever performed miracles like His immediate disciples did?

1.) Sounds like you are trying to change the subject.
2.) This is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
3.) Yes, but I'm not going to talk about it because it is not something that was done through my power. I did not seek to do them and one can perform works of power only within the will of God - not whenever one chooses. It is not magic, but rather the power of God working through one of His people to serve another.

 

[Yeshua1]

Yes? No? What do you say?

Depends all on how we define that term!

Can one be a real christian, and yet still have issues in dealing with their flesh and sin natures?

Yes, as even the Apostle paul had troubles with that after salvation, but the truth is that we who are saved also have the means by appropiate the power of the Holy spiriti now indwelling us to live as we ought...

on the other habd, will someone who professes Jesus has saved them, and yet refusing to alter their views on sins and lifestyles at all really be saved?

 

[Revmitchell]

I wish all those perfected Christians who are never in the flesh would start a thread and explain to us lowly dirty sinners how you have come to such perfection.

 

[Iconoclast]

Rm

I wish all those perfected Christians who are never in the flesh would start a thread and explain to us lowly dirty sinners how you have come to such perfection.

All who are born from above are perfected in Christ as we are in saving union with Him.

rom6
9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.

10 For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.


eph1
11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.

13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,

14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.



We are yet in a body that is able to sin..... we are no longer under the dominion or power of the flesh-

The Spirit of God leads the Sons of God to mortify remaining sin and corruption;
8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

12 Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.

13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God

This passage explains it very clearly as it follows the struggle Paul outlined in what we call chapter 7

someone living "after the flesh" is an unsaved person still in the realm of death.[v2. 9,12-13]

 

[Revmitchell]

Rm




All who are born from above are perfected in Christ as we are in saving union with Him.

Either you believe you never sin (work in the carnal flesh) or my point completely escaped you. Not sure which. Maybe you can clarify.

 

[Iconoclast]

Either you believe you never sin (work in the carnal flesh) or my point completely escaped you. Not sure which. Maybe you can clarify.

Positional ly we are perfect in Christ right now.

We are to understand that our old man was co-crucified with Christ. Rom 6

We are to reckon that as a completed fact and in light of it live holy lives depending on the Spirit to enable us to mortify the flesh.....deprive it of power.

The old man in this body used to seek after sin.

The new man makes no provision for the flesh.Instead he prays for power to obey all lawful commands....the law written upon our heart.

here from a Geoff Thomas sermon series;
http://www.alfredplacechurch.org.uk...ion-its-nature-as-definitive-and-progressive/

2. EVERY BELIEVER HAS DIED TO THE DOMINION OF SIN AND DEATH.

What does God do when he makes someone a Christian? What is the Christian man and woman as a result of the life of God entering his soul? Paul tells the whole congregation in Colosse, “you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Cols 3:8). Again he tells the Roman congregation, “We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?” (Roms. 6:2), and he tells them in the next verses that they have been buried with Christ, and that their old self has crucified with Christ. So “Count yourselves dead to sin” he exhorts. So what is Paul doing here? I will tell you in a phrase you have never heard before because I made it up. He is teaching them the doctrine of definitive mortification! Let me explain that to you simply.

The very first thing that is true of the Christian believer, from an experimental point of view, is that he is a person who is – according to this teaching – dead. Paul is not saying to us to be dead; he is not urging Christians to die; he is not, at this point, enforcing any obligation at all; he is not yet talking about the mortification of sin, by which we put sin to death. There is no demand here at all; it is a statement, a proposition which Paul affirms to be true of every Christian believer – “you died.” Paul is not even saying, “You are dying.” That again is a biblical truth – believers are dying to sin, they are mortifying the sin that is in their members. And although that is truth, it is not the truth which is taught here, because what is before us here is not a process of dying, it is the fact of death. The apostle is not talking about a line, he is talking about a point, a definite moment at the new birth when every Christian died! It is not that they are dying. It is that they are dead. Definitive mortification! We say that it is an event not a process. We could say that it is punctiliar, not linear.

Paul is not even simply saying to us that we are in a state of death. No! He is saying to us that in the life of every Christian there has already occurred the event of dying. There is no more breathing, and no more electrical activity in the brain, and rigor mortis has set in. There is an inner chill of death. He is saying this to us – you died! It is funda*mental to Paul’s practical application of his Christian teaching. The Christian believer is a person who has died. At a par*ticular point in his past life, there is this completed event, there is this past experience; there has been this definitive, once-for-all, irreversible actuality – the believer has died.

What does Paul mean? He tells us in Romans 6 that the believer is a person who has died to sin. He is not a person who has died to the influence of sin. He is not a person who is without sin, but he is a person who has died to the dominion of sin. Sin still rages within the Christian believer, but sin does not reign in any single Christian believer, and Paul’s exhortation is not simply, ‘Don’t let sin reign,’ it goes beyond that to the categorical assertion, sin shall not reign. It is absolutely impossible that sin shall reign in any Christian believer. It is not to sin that we are slaves. When sin orders us, “Don’t trust in Jesus Christ! Pour contempt on Calvary! Stop going to church. Stop praying. Don’t give God a single thought,” now that we are born again we refuse to obey. We cannot obey. Once we used to obey sin, just like the whole world. We said “Yes sir,” as we cowered before sin and we did what sin told us to do, ignoring Jesus Christ and his salvation. We were prisoners to sin. The great biblical indictment is there in Galatians 3:22 “the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin.” Sin exercises its tyranny over the life of the world so that there was nothing in the lives of men and women, as there was nothing in our lives, but sin. An unbeliever, as a prisoner of sin, is incapable of saying to God, “I do this for your sake, because I love you and love my neighbour as myself. I do it to your glory.” He cannot give that obedience to God at all for “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11. 6). That man who is joined to Christ he alone is capable of a real obedience, but even he is unable yet to offer to God perfect obedience.

So Paul here is speaking of a definitive moment when the Christian died to sin, when he, by the grace of God, shook off and ended the tyranny of sin. The apostle is saying to us, “Will you please try and appreciate the tremendous change that has taken place in your lives and characters, so that you who were previously totally averse to all that was godly and opposed to all that was spiritual, you are now capable of the real obedience of Christian faith and Christian repentance.”

The killing work of God in our lives at salvation means this, as Paul says to the Colossians 3, we “have put off the old man.” We are not simply dying, we have died, and we have died in this sense, that we have done with the old man once and for all. Now Paul did not mean that we have finished with indwelling sin. He recognized that the power of sin continued in his own present Christian life. The good that he would he did not do and the evil that he would not do he found himself doing and he cried out, “Oh wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But Paul knew something else too, some thing that was very wonderful to him and enormously inspirational to us too, that the unregenerate man that he once was, the persecutor of the church and the blasphemer of Christ has now ceased to be. All the other Jesus-hating Pharisees would go searching for Saul of Tarsus in their conventions and gatherings and they would never find him in those places because he had gone! That Christ despiser is no more to be found.

Now one can go on and expound and expatiate upon all the sin of which we are conscious in ourselves, how weak and inconsistent and hypocritical we are, but whatever the failings of every believer, and whatever power sin may exercise still in our lives as Christians, we are not the men or women that we used to be. There is not a Christian here who has the right to deem himself the man that he had once been, and what is more he doesn’t have the right to live like the man that he once was. The un*regenerate man, dead in sins, has ceased to be; the carnal mind that was enmity against God, that has ceased to be. The human being who was totally incapable of receiving the things of the Spirit of God; that has ceased to be. The man who was dead in trespasses and sins is no more. The believer is not an unregenerate and a regenerate man. He is not a man with a new heart and an old heart. He is, and he is only, a regenerate man. He has, and he has only, a new heart. He has only the one nature, the one human nature, transformed by the grace of Almighty God. The man dead in sins, the carnal man, the unregenerate man – that man has absolutely ceased to be. He is dead and gone. That is our past; that is definitive mortification. Our regeneration and our union with Jesus Christ represent a break, and it is a decisive break, with what we used to be. So every Christian has died to the dominion of sin. That is the second biblical proposition; the Christian has died to the domination and tyranny of sin over him.

 

[Darrell C]

I wish all those perfected Christians who are never in the flesh would start a thread and explain to us lowly dirty sinners how you have come to such perfection.

"Perfection" is primarily a teaching derived from the Book of Hebrews which deals, not in a perfection that means what we, in our modern use of the word think of when we hear it, but has instead a meaning of completion. In particular the Writer emphasizes completion in regards to remission of sins.

Under the Law, the "comer thereunto," or worshipper, or one in relationship with God through the Law...had to continually offer up the same sacrifices for sin, because as the Writer makes clear...


Hebrews 10:1-4

King James Version (KJV)

1 For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.

2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.

3 But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.

4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.


However, of the Sacrifice of Christ he writes...


Hebrews 10:10-14

King James Version (KJV)

10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins:

12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

13 From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.

14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.


The contrast drawn between the two Covenants is a consistent theme, and here we see that in regards to remission of sins...it is a done deal, we are made complete, or, perfected forever through the offering of Christ (His death on the Cross).

So I, as well as you, can say with all assurance "I am perfect in Christ," as as long as I make sure people do not think I mean that I am sinless, or never do any wrong in saying that, and can properly explain this to people...all is well.

I would add that Paul uses the term "perfection" in a more temporal sense which speaks about our daily conversation, but that should never be confused with the teaching in Hebrews.


God bless.

 

[Revmitchell]

"Perfection" is primarily a teaching derived from the Book of Hebrews which deals, not in a perfection that means what we, in our modern use of the word think of when we hear it, but has instead a meaning of completion. In particular the Writer emphasizes completion in regards to remission of sins.



Under the Law, the "comer thereunto," or worshipper, or one in relationship with God through the Law...had to continually offer up the same sacrifices for sin, because as the Writer makes clear...





Hebrews 10:1-4



King James Version (KJV)



1 For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.



2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.



3 But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.



4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.





However, of the Sacrifice of Christ he writes...





Hebrews 10:10-14



King James Version (KJV)



10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.



11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins:



12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;



13 From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.



14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.





The contrast drawn between the two Covenants is a consistent theme, and here we see that in regards to remission of sins...it is a done deal, we are made complete, or, perfected forever through the offering of Christ (His death on the Cross).



So I, as well as you, can say with all assurance "I am perfect in Christ," as as long as I make sure people do not think I mean that I am sinless, or never do any wrong in saying that, and can properly explain this to people...all is well.



I would add that Paul uses the term "perfection" in a more temporal sense which speaks about our daily conversation, but that should never be confused with the teaching in Hebrews.





God bless.

Which has nothing to do with what I said



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[DHK]

here from a Geoff Thomas sermon series;
http://www.alfredplacechurch.org.uk...ion-its-nature-as-definitive-and-progressive/

Our regeneration and our union with Jesus Christ represent a break, and it is a decisive break, with what we used to be. So every Christian has died to the dominion of sin. That is the second biblical proposition; the Christian has died to the domination and tyranny of sin over him.

But Geoff Thomas is wrong.
We are only under the Dominion of God and His Spirit so long as we submit and yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit.

We put ourselves under the Dominion of sin as soon as we sin. There is no doubt about that. Thus the admonition of John:
Speaking to believers about our fellowship he said:

1Jn 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

And then a couple of verses later he said:
1Jn 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
--Realize that it is the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses the believer from the sin that the believer commits in this life.
--Realize that daily we must come to Christ and confess and repent of the sins we commit in order to restore our fellowship with God. The believer's fellowship is broken by sin.

Psa 66:18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:

 

[SovereignGrace]

Carnal faith....

Carnal christianity...

I am sensing a pattern here...

 

[Iconoclast]

But Geoff Thomas is wrong.
We are only under the Dominion of God and His Spirit so long as we submit and yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit.

We put ourselves under the Dominion of sin as soon as we sin. There is no doubt about that. Thus the admonition of John:
Speaking to believers about our fellowship he said:

1Jn 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

And then a couple of verses later he said:
1Jn 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
--Realize that it is the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses the believer from the sin that the believer commits in this life.
--Realize that daily we must come to Christ and confess and repent of the sins we commit in order to restore our fellowship with God. The believer's fellowship is broken by sin.

Psa 66:18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:

Geoff Thomas is 100% correct in his teaching and in his quote concerning Rom 6 and our saving union with Christ.
Sins reign, sins dominion is broken in the life of all true Christians.
That is the only thing there is no doubt about.....the first 10 verses in Rome are all speaking of a completed event......when I get to a keyboard I can pull out exactly where he offers true teaching here that no one is going to refute on this topic.....he covers all the main points.

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

Carnal faith....

Carnal christianity...

I am sensing a pattern here...

"CARNAL CHURCHES" ....and I'm serious!:BangHead:

 

[Iconoclast]

DHK

But Geoff Thomas is wrong.
We are only under the Dominion of God and His Spirit so long as we submit and yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit.

We put ourselves under the Dominion of sin as soon as we sin. There is no doubt about that. Thus the admonition of John:
Speaking to believers about our fellowship he said:

Nonsense...you did not read with understanding this quote which you cannot begin to touch. Paul wrote about mortification in romans6-8 and col 3.

That is what is being discussed here....not John or anything else.

You cannot understand or refute this quote alone much less the other 4 sermons-

2. EVERY BELIEVER HAS DIED TO THE DOMINION OF SIN AND DEATH.

What does God do when he makes someone a Christian? What is the Christian man and woman as a result of the life of God entering his soul?

Paul tells the whole congregation in Colosse, “you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Cols 3:8).

Again he tells the Roman congregation, “We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?” (Roms. 6:2), and he tells them in the next verses that they have been buried with Christ, and that their old self has crucified with Christ.

So “Count yourselves dead to sin” he exhorts. So what is Paul doing here?

I will tell you in a phrase you have never heard before because I made it up. He is teaching them the doctrine of definitive mortification! Let me explain that to you simply.

The very first thing that is true of the Christian believer, from an experimental point of view, is that he is a person who is – according to this teaching – dead.


Paul is not saying to us to be dead; he is not urging Christians to die; he is not, at this point, enforcing any obligation at all; he is not yet talking about the mortification of sin, by which we put sin to death. There is no demand here at all; it is a statement, a proposition which Paul affirms to be true of every Christian believer – “you died.”





That again is a biblical truth – believers are dying to sin, they are mortifying the sin that is in their members. And although that is truth, it is not the truth which is taught here, because what is before us here is not a process of dying, it is the fact of death.

The apostle is not talking about a line, he is talking about a point, a definite moment at the new birth when every Christian died! It is not that they are dying. It is that they are dead. Definitive mortification! We say that it is an event not a process. We could say that it is punctiliar, not linear.

Paul is not even simply saying to us that we are in a state of death. No! He is saying to us that in the life of every Christian there has already occurred the event of dying. There is no more breathing, and no more electrical activity in the brain, and rigor mortis has set in. There is an inner chill of death. He is saying this to us – you died! It is funda*mental to Paul’s practical application of his Christian teaching. The Christian believer is a person who has died. At a par*ticular point in his past life, there is this completed event, there is this past experience; there has been this definitive, once-for-all, irreversible actuality – the believer has died.

What does Paul mean? He tells us in Romans 6 that the believer is a person who has died to sin. He is not a person who has died to the influence of sin. He is not a person who is without sin, but he is a person who has died to the dominion of sin. Sin still rages within the Christian believer, but sin does not reign in any single Christian believer, and Paul’s exhortation is not simply, ‘Don’t let sin reign,’ it goes beyond that to the categorical assertion, sin shall not reign.

It is absolutely impossible that sin shall reign in any Christian believer. It is not to sin that we are slaves. When sin orders us, “Don’t trust in Jesus Christ! Pour contempt on Calvary! Stop going to church. Stop praying. Don’t give God a single thought,” now that we are born again we refuse to obey. We cannot obey. Once we used to obey sin, just like the whole world. We said “Yes sir,” as we cowered before sin and we did what sin told us to do, ignoring Jesus Christ and his salvation. We were prisoners to sin. The great biblical indictment is there in Galatians 3:22 “the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin.” Sin exercises its tyranny over the life of the world so that there was nothing in the lives of men and women, as there was nothing in our lives, but sin. An unbeliever, as a prisoner of sin, is incapable of saying to God, “I do this for your sake, because I love you and love my neighbour as myself. I do it to your glory.” He cannot give that obedience to God at all for “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11. 6). That man who is joined to Christ he alone is capable of a real obedience, but even he is unable yet to offer to God perfect obedience.

So Paul here is speaking of a definitive moment when the Christian died to sin, when he, by the grace of God, shook off and ended the tyranny of sin. The apostle is saying to us, “Will you please try and appreciate the tremendous change that has taken place in your lives and characters, so that you who were previously totally averse to all that was godly and opposed to all that was spiritual, you are now capable of the real obedience of Christian faith and Christian repentance.”

The killing work of God in our lives at salvation means this, as Paul says to the Colossians 3, we “have put off the old man.”

We are not simply dying, we have died, and we have died in this sense, that we have done with the old man once and for all.


Now Paul did not mean that we have finished with indwelling sin. He recognized that the power of sin continued in his own present Christian life. The good that he would he did not do and the evil that he would not do he found himself doing and he cried out, “Oh wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But Paul knew something else too, some thing that was very wonderful to him and enormously inspirational to us too, that the unregenerate man that he once was, the persecutor of the church and the blasphemer of Christ has now ceased to be. All the other Jesus-hating Pharisees would go searching for Saul of Tarsus in their conventions and gatherings and they would never find him in those places because he had gone! That Christ despiser is no more to be found.

Now one can go on and expound and expatiate upon all the sin of which we are conscious in ourselves, how weak and inconsistent and hypocritical we are, but whatever the failings of every believer, and whatever power sin may exercise still in our lives as Christians, we are not the men or women that we used to be. There is not a Christian here who has the right to deem himself the man that he had once been, and what is more he doesn’t have the right to live like the man that he once was. The un*regenerate man, dead in sins, has ceased to be; the carnal mind that was enmity against God, that has ceased to be. The human being who was totally incapable of receiving the things of the Spirit of God; that has ceased to be. The man who was dead in trespasses and sins is no more. The believer is not an unregenerate and a regenerate man. He is not a man with a new heart and an old heart. He is, and he is only, a regenerate man.

He has, and he has only, a new heart. He has only the one nature, the one human nature, transformed by the grace of Almighty God.

The man dead in sins, the carnal man, the unregenerate man – that man has absolutely ceased to be. He is dead and gone.

That is our past; that is definitive mortification. Our regeneration and our union with Jesus Christ represent a break, and it is a decisive break, with what we used to be. So every Christian has died to the dominion of sin. That is the second biblical proposition; the Christian has died to the domination and tyranny of sin over him.[/QUOTE]

 

[DHK]

The man dead in sins, the carnal man, the unregenerate man – that man has absolutely ceased to be. He is dead and gone.

That is our past; that is definitive mortification. Our regeneration and our union with Jesus Christ represent a break, and it is a decisive break, with what we used to be. So every Christian has died to the dominion of sin. That is the second biblical proposition; the Christian has died to the domination and tyranny of sin over him.[/QUOTE]

First, carnal does not equal "unregenerate." That is error.
1Co 3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
--Paul called these Christians both "brethren" and "carnal" at the same time, and thus the were "carnal believers." To deny this truth is to deny the plain teaching of scriptures in these first five verses.

Second, this carnal, or "old nature" is within every believer. Paul describes the struggle that we all have in Romans chapter 7.
There is a war that each of us face continually:
Rom 7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
--It is the flesh (carnal) vs. the Spirit. The flesh is still very much alive. It is not dead.

Third, you referenced Romans 6:11 which says:
Rom 6:11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
--To reckon, to count, to consider. The ESV says:

(ESV) So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
--That doesn't mean you already are dead. It is something that must be done every day.
James MacDonald of Believer's Bible Commentary describes the meaning of this verse well:

6:11 Paul has described what is true of us positionally. Now he turns to the practical outworking of this truth in our lives. We are to RECKON ourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
To reckon here means to accept what God says about us as true and to live in the light of it. Ruth Paxson writes:
[It means] believing what God says in Rom_6:6 and knowing it as a fact in one's own personal salvation. This demands a definite act of faith, which results in a fixed attitude toward “the old man.” We will see him where God sees him—on the Cross, put to death with Christ. Faith will operate continuously to keep him where grace placed him. This involves us very deeply, for it means that our hearty consent has been given to God's condemnation of and judgment upon that old “I” as altogether unworthy to live and as wholly stripped of any further claims upon us. The first step in a walk of practical holiness is this reckoning upon the crucifixion of “the old man.”
We reckon ourselves dead to sin when we respond to temptation as a dead man would. One day Augustine was accosted by a woman who had been his mistress before his conversion. When he turned and walked away quickly, she called after him, “Augustine, it's me! it's me!” Quickening his pace, he called back over his shoulder, “Yes, I know, but it's no longer me!” What he meant was that he was dead to sin and alive to God. A dead man has nothing to do with immorality, lying, cheating, gossiping, or any other sin.

One is not automatically "dead to sin."
In 1Cor.15:31, Paul said, "I die daily." Every day he put the old man, that carnal flesh to death.

 

[Iconoclast]

First, carnal does not equal "unregenerate." That is error.
1Co 3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
--Paul called these Christians both "brethren" and "carnal" at the same time, and thus the were "carnal believers." To deny this truth is to deny the plain teaching of scriptures in these first five verses.

Second, this carnal, or "old nature" is within every believer. Paul describes the struggle that we all have in Romans chapter 7.
There is a war that each of us face continually:
Rom 7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
--It is the flesh (carnal) vs. the Spirit. The flesh is still very much alive. It is not dead.

Third, you referenced Romans 6:11 which says:
Rom 6:11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
--To reckon, to count, to consider. The ESV says:

(ESV) So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
--That doesn't mean you already are dead. It is something that must be done every day.
James MacDonald of Believer's Bible Commentary describes the meaning of this verse well:

One is not automatically "dead to sin."
In 1Cor.15:31, Paul said, "I die daily." Every day he put the old man, that carnal flesh to death.

As I said....you completely ignore the truth taught by the passage.
That is okay you can resist if you want to. The text us clear, Paul is clear. ..you cannot welcome the truth....your quote does not help
you or address what us written in these sermons...the readers will see the difference however.

Romans 8:6 says to be carnally minded is DEATH.

 

[DHK]

As I said....you completely ignore the truth taught by the passage.
That is okay you can resist if you want to. The text us clear, Paul is clear. ..you cannot welcome the truth....your quote does not help
you or address what us written in these sermons...the readers will see the difference however.

Romans 8:6 says to be carnally minded is DEATH.

I don't ignore what is taught by the Bible. Everyone still has a carnal nature.

Rom 7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

Paul had to make a choice which nature he would choose to serve. He tells us how in this verse.
The person who denies he has a carnal nature, says that he is always "dead to sin," in that he doesn't sin, is in danger of denying Christ.

1Jn 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1Jn 1:10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

 

[percho]

Because Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected from the dead, and received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit can now be given to us.

God calls one and God gives his Holy Spirit to that one who was called.

That one to whom God has given his Holy Spirit was carnal before receiving the Holy Spirit and is still carnal after having received the Holy Spirit.

The law is holy, just and good, spiritual.

Before being given the Holy Spirit he was carnal (subject to death), sold under sin.

After having been given the Holy Spirit he is carnal (subject to death), yet redeemed in Christ from death.

The Holy Spirit seals us and is our earnest until the redemption of the purchased possession. Eph 1:13,14 The redemption of the body. Rom 8:23 The Holy Spirit is our earnest by which we are confident that we will be given a house not made with hands, an incorruptible house, by which we will ever be with the Lord. Compare 2 Cor 5:1-8 with 1 Thes 4:14-17. 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. By what has just taken place resurrected and or changed from corruptible to incorruptible to inherit the kingdom of God and ever be with the Lord.

We are raised / changed from our carnality.

2 Cor 4:10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus,
11 are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake

We are dead Col 3 so that we can be made alive, glorified at his return.

 

[agedman]

There is that which is dead, and that which must be killed off.

Perhaps Icon is stating what is dead and DHK that which must be killed off.

They are not the same either in position or in condition.

Position-ally I am complete in the new nature before God.

However, in this flesh and as long as I remain in this worldly realm that vexes my righteous soul every minute, I am having to continually die daily to the stench of the old nature.

I consider both Icon and DHK correct in their statements.

 

[Iconoclast]

DHK

First, carnal does not equal "unregenerate." That is error.

sure it does
6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God

1Co 3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
--Paul called these Christians both "brethren" and "carnal" at the same time, and thus the were "carnal believers." To deny this truth is to deny the plain teaching of scriptures in these first five verses.

That you do not understand Paul in 1 cor 3...does not mean anyone denies scripture. It means we understand it as it was intended.

It also means you resist the truth over and over.

You ignored the teaching offered even though you cannot refute it.

Second, this carnal, or "old nature" is within every believer.

from the first sermon on the mortification thread;

The killing work of God in our lives at salvation means this, as Paul says to the Colossians 3, we “have put off the old man.” We are not simply dying, we have died, and we have died in this sense, that we have done with the old man once and for all. Now Paul did not mean that we have finished with indwelling sin. He recognized that the power of sin continued in his own present Christian life.


Paul describes the struggle that we all have in Romans chapter 7.
There is a war that each of us face continually:
Rom 7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

--It is the flesh (carnal) vs. the Spirit. The flesh is still very much alive. It is not dead.

We are still in a physical body. You add the word "carnal"....however believers are spiritual. The old man has been put off already.....we learn in Col.3........we are however to mortify the deeds of the body.

Third, you referenced Romans 6:11 which says:
Rom 6:11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
--To reckon, to count, to consider. The ESV says:

It is a fact that we are to live in light of.

(ESV) So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

This does not mean.....make believe it is true....it means it is true behave accordingly.

--That doesn't mean you already are dead

.

Yes it does...vs1-10 teach that exact truth.

It is something that must be done every day.

The only thing to be done everyday is mortification.

 

[Iconoclast]

agedman

There is that which is dead, and that which must be killed off.

Hello agedman.......in the general theology section I posted a link to 5 sermons dealing with this topic.....it is worth the time to go through and see a full explanation of what has died....THE OLD MAN.....and what we mortify the deeds of the body.....

Perhaps Icon is stating what is dead and DHK that which must be killed off.

No....we see this completely differently.

Position-ally I am complete in the new nature before God.

However, in this flesh and as long as I remain in this worldly realm that vexes my righteous soul every minute, I am having to continually die daily to the stench of the old nature.

No...the old man is dead. We are to deprive of power the deeds of the body, the flesh lusts against the Spirit.

We have one new nature now that is able to resist the sinful impulses of the flesh.

Here is from the sermons:

The killing work of God in our lives at salvation means this, as Paul says to the Colossians 3, we “have put off the old man.” We are not simply dying, we have died, and we have died in this sense, that we have done with the old man once and for all. Now Paul did not mean that we have finished with indwelling sin. He recognized that the power of sin continued in his own present Christian life.

The very first thing that is true of the Christian believer, from an experimental point of view, is that he is a person who is – according to this teaching – dead. Paul is not saying to us to be dead; he is not urging Christians to die; he is not, at this point, enforcing any obligation at all; he is not yet talking about the mortification of sin, by which we put sin to death. There is no demand here at all; it is a statement, a proposition which Paul affirms to be true of every Christian believer – “you died.” Paul is not even saying, “You are dying.” That again is a biblical truth – believers are dying to sin, they are mortifying the sin that is in their members. And although that is truth, it is not the truth which is taught here, because what is before us here is not a process of dying, it is the fact of death. The apostle is not talking about a line, he is talking about a point, a definite moment at the new birth when every Christian died! It is not that they are dying. It is that they are dead. Definitive mortification! We say that it is an event not a process. We could say that it is punctiliar, not linear.

Paul is not even simply saying to us that we are in a state of death. No! He is saying to us that in the life of every Christian there has already occurred the event of dying. There is no more breathing, and no more electrical activity in the brain, and rigor mortis has set in. There is an inner chill of death. He is saying this to us – you died! It is funda*mental to Paul’s practical application of his Christian teaching. The Christian believer is a person who has died. At a par*ticular point in his past life, there is this completed event, there is this past experience; there has been this definitive, once-for-all, irreversible actuality – the believer has died.

What does Paul mean? He tells us in Romans 6 that the believer is a person who has died to sin. He is not a person who has died to the influence of sin. He is not a person who is without sin, but he is a person who has died to the dominion of sin. Sin still rages within the Christian believer, but sin does not reign in any single Christian believer, and Paul’s exhortation is not simply, ‘Don’t let sin reign,’ it goes beyond that to the categorical assertion, sin shall not reign. It is absolutely impossible that sin shall reign in any Christian believer. It is not to sin that we are slaves

and again;
[QUOTE The man who was dead in trespasses and sins is no more. The believer is not an unregenerate and a regenerate man. He is not a man with a new heart and an old heart. He is, and he is only, a regenerate man.

He has, and he has only, a new heart. He has only the one nature, the one human nature, transformed by the grace of Almighty God.

The man dead in sins, the carnal man, the unregenerate man – that man has absolutely ceased to be. He is dead and gone.

That is our past; that is definitive mortification. Our regeneration and our union with Jesus Christ represent a break, and it is a decisive break, with what we used to be. So every Christian has died to the dominion of sin. That is the second biblical proposition; the Christian has died to the domination and tyranny of sin over him.[/QUOTE] ][/QUOTE]