All of us as Christians would have to admit that on many levels of our daily life we sometimes know to do right, but we don’t do right, and we also know not to do wrong, but sometimes we do wrong. This failure reveals the conflict between the two natures in us. Thus there is a struggle in every believer’s experience.

This conflict originates from within our tri-part being of spirit, soul and body. Our spirit is where “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” dwells (cf. Col 1:21; Cor. 6:17), and in our flesh body dwells the Sin nature (cf. Rom 8:3). Thus Paul describes this conflict at its core.

“For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary (Gk. antikeimai, as opposites) the one to the other: so that ye cannot (Gk. hina me, lest you) do the things that ye would.” (Galatians 5:17 (KJV)

These lessons that follows are a biblical guide as to how we are to understand and have victory over the Sin-nature still resident within the flesh of all men’s bodies until they die... the saved and the unsaved.

 “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:” (Romans 8:3 (KJV)

The believer who would be truly spiritual must recognize that within him there are now two natures. In addition to the fallen Sin-nature of Adam that came to us by physical birth, there’s also now in every believer the perfect sinless nature of Christ, this was begotten in us when we were “born of God.”

So real is the presence of both natures in every child of God, that in Paul’s references to the believer’s experience, his personal pronouns refer sometimes to the one and sometimes to the other. A good example of this is found in Romans 7 where “the Apostle to the Gentiles,” Paul, says of his own experience;

on the one hand “I am carnal, sold under sin” (v14) and on the other, “I serve the law of God” (v25).

Then again he says;

on the one hand: “In me…dwelleth no good thing” (v18) and on the other: “I delight in the law of God” in Rom. 7:22, referring on the one hand to the old Sin nature, and on the other to the new righteous nature of Christ in his spirit.

So the “I” who delights “in the law of God” (Rom. 7:22) … is not the same “I” who is “carnal, sold under sin” in verse 14.

In both cases the apostle Paul uses the first person pronoun. So the “I” associates both conditions within himself. It’s clear that the apostle Paul here refers to two very different natures… within one person.

On the one hand Paul says: “In me [that is in my flesh] dwelleth no good thing” (v18) while on the other, he says: “I delight in the law of God AFTER THE INWARD (soul) MAN” (v22). The “me” in v18 refers to the old Sin nature… while the “I” in verse 22 refers to the new man in union with Christ. In the former “dwells no good thing,” while the latter “delights in the law of God.”

The Bible addresses the conflict within every believer. It speaks of the two natures in this way.

Paul writes to the believers at Galatia:

“Among these we as well as you once lived and conducted ourselves in the passions of our flesh [our behavior governed by our corrupt and sensual nature], obeying the impulses of the flesh and the thoughts of the mind [our cravings dictated by our senses and our dark imaginings]. We were then by nature children of [God's] wrath and heirs of [His] indignation, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:3 (AMP)

Peter writes of the new nature in believers:

“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 Peter 1:4 (KJV)

Next, we will go on to see both natures in more detail in the coming installments.