This topic has never been quite clear. I’ve thought about and studied it for many years, and as close as I sometimes think I am to getting it nailed down it eludes me. That said, I’ma take another stab at it!
So we have the concept of sin. Now, to begin with, I believe that people (especially the church) have such a small view of what sin truly is. Most people believe that sin means you go out and do something that’s a sin, such as hating your neighbor, promiscuous sex, or even murder. Those are bad things to be sure, but I would call those symptoms of sin, not the sin itself. Sin, in the true sense is a big, holistic, “this is the direction of my entire life” type thing. It has to do with the general direction your life is headed. It’s the holistic decision of your life to denounce God as Lord and set yourself up as Lord of your own life. It might take detours and turn around for a bit, but overall it’s headed one direction. Much like I-4 is an east-west highway, but through Orlando it runs north-south. That is to say that individual decisions might go against the overall direction of your life.
Now, there are sort of two part to us: our body and our soul. CS Lewis said “I don’t have a soul. I am a soul, I have a body”. LOVE it! Good man you were Lewis. With this understanding we have two things that are deciding our actions in this world. If someone sins (and everybody does), in other-words, chooses to go the way of sin (again not simply one act, but the direction of the life), then they are headed to death, because only in God is life found. When the soul makes a decision to turn away from God, then the physical act is carried out by the corresponding body and we see a symptom of sin; what people generally call sin. This then sets the body on course to die as well. And this will go on until they reach their physical death. Their soul is sinful, their body is sinful, therefore the general of their life will be sinful (or away from God).
An aside: Would our physical bodies die if our soul never chose to sin? I dunno, but I heard of a program on Discovery channel one time that there is no gene for aging. There are processes in our bodies that describe how we are to be formed and grow up, but there is nothing that describes how we age, or how we go through the process of degenerating. It’s as if we weren’t meant to show sings of age, says the scientists on this program (interesting, and they don’t claim to be Christians).
Now, when someone, who has been a slave to sin, chooses Jesus as their savior, their soul is then reborn; it is no longer of the sinful nature. Now we have a conflict within the person, a war, two conflicting interests. Paul describes the struggle in him best in Romans 7:14-25.
Generally, the value sets look something like this. With a sinful nature our priorities are first to ourselves, so we get priorities something like: 1) Care about myself 2) care about things I like 3) care about people I like. With a righteous (or regenerated) nature we get priorities something like: 1) Care about God 2) Care about the people God likes (everyone) 3) Care about myself. And sometimes those priorities can be the same thing. So it’s a shift from being self-focused to being God-focused. Sometimes as a person of the sinful nature, there might come a time when you care about someone (not in your priority list) selflessly. Usually, that happens when there’s not a conflict with your priorities (ie: you don’t have to give up buying a 60″ plasma TV to go to another country to build a well). But again, sometimes you have that stretch of I-4 that goes through Orlando, and go against your nature.
With the person with the regenerated nature the problem comes when the soul wants to do something but the body disagrees. Paul said it this way:
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
That’s why the Christian keeps on sinning even though they are of a righteous nature.
