I was reading a discussion on another site, to which I answered (although I wasn’t exactly invited to comment ;-p)  The biggest issue they were discussing was ‘Is a born-again Christian a sinner? Or a saint and without sin?  The reference scripture was Rom 8:10: “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life bcause of righteousness”

Well…

 The body (flesh) is dead because of the original sin of Adam and therefore our inherited sin. When you are born again, you receive a new divine nature.  The Word of God says in 2 Pet 1:4:

 ”Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

2 Cor 5:17 tells us that “… if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”  When you are born again (in Christ), you become a new creature (creation).

Gal 6:15 says “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.”  Being that new creation is the only thing that holds any weight, the only thing that can excercise any force… the only thing that will prevail (availeth ~ ischuō in Greek: From G2479; to have (or exercise) force (literally or figuratively): – be able, avail, can do ([-not]), could, be good, might, prevail, be of strength, be whole, + much work.

We now have the nature of God in us which is incorruptible (1 Pet 1:4, 23) and is housed in flesh with the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19).  Your body is what gves you the right to function here on earth, and is a gift from God.  It is a ‘temple’ but not the real you that God deals with.  You will need to differentiate between the three parts of each of us; the body, soul and spirit (1 Thess 5:23).  That ‘inner man’ (spirit) that Paul speaks about (Eph 3:16) is the one God deals with because He is Spirit (John 4:24).

To lay it all on the line, I feel the best way to show it to you is through Romans 8:1: There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Love and mighty blessing to you all…

Many people think they know what ’sin’ is.  One might answer that sin is going against the Ten Commandments, or ‘fornication’, perhaps ‘envy’… the thing is that these are examples of sin, but they don’t define what the root of sin is.   The thing is, man has a definition of what sin is, ‘religious’ folks have one and the Most High God has His.

My Pastor preached a message on this, called “The Concept of Sin”, and I would like to share with you part of the definition he gave.

Reading from Rom 14:22 (KJV) says:
22Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.
23And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

The sames verses in the CEV are:
22What you believe about these things should be kept between you and God. You are fortunate, if your actions don’t make you have doubts.
23But if you do have doubts about what you eat, you are going against your beliefs. And you know that is wrong, because anything you do against your beliefs is sin.

So anything you do, that is not of faith (which works by love ~ Gal 5:6) is sin. Sin is going against what you believe to be alright and true. That is the root of sin, from the bible. We can say that fornication is a sin, envy is a sin, etc etc, but one should understand why it is a sin.  We can read examples and analogies that describe it, but I believe this is the clearest definition.

But halelujah, there is now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus!

God bless you all mightily…