Does a Christian have two natures?

When you were born, you were born with a nature that wants to please itself more than it wants to please God or anyone else; it is selfish. Now when you were saved, this old nature, which you were born with, was not removed. But when you believed and were saved, God gave you a new nature that wants to please Him and others rather than yourself. So in every Christian there are two natures, the old and the new. The old is condemned, and it only opposes God (Rom. 6; Rom. 8:3, 7, 8). The new is holy, and it delights in God (Rom. 7:22; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10).

Now observe here that to be born again is not, as people call it, "a change of heart," or an alteration of a bad nature into a better one; but a new birth, a new creation; made partaker of a new life, a new nature. A believer therefore is a compound of two natures. Hence our Lord said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." And in various parts of the apostles' writings, these two natures in the believer are recognized. In Galatians we have, "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things which ye would;" or, as it is more correctly rendered, "And these things are opposed one to the other, that ye should not do these things which ye desire." The believer is never told to crucify the old man; for God has already crucified it with Christ; but he is told, on account of that, to "reckon himself to have died indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in our Lord Jesus Christ;" to "put off the old man, and put on the new," etc. And while he is not told to mortify the flesh, because God has already judged it in the cross of His Son, yet he is told to mortify, or put to death, through the Spirit, the actings of the flesh, the deeds of the body, and our members which are upon the earth, uncleanness, lust, etc.; that is, while recognizing the evil nature still in us, we are to put it off, and to deny its actings by the Spirit's power which dwells in us.

The Scriptures teach that every regenerate person is the possessor of two natures: one, received by natural birth, which is wholly and hopelessly bad; and a new nature, received through the new birth, which is the nature of God Himself, and therefore wholly good. The following Scriptures will sufficiently manifest what God thinks of the old, or Adam nature: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Ps. 51:5). "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9) "There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10-12). God does not say that none of the unregenerate are refined, or cultured, or able, or sweet-tempered, or generous, or charitable, or even religious. But He does say that none are righteous, none understand God, or seek after Him. It is one of the sorest of faith's trials to accept the divine estimate of human nature, to realize that our genial and moral friends, who, not infrequently, are scrupulous in the discharge of every duty, filled with sympathy for the woes and the aspirations of humanity, and strenuous in the assertion of human rights, are yet utter despisers of God's rights and untouched by the sacrifice of His Son, whose divinity they with unspeakable insolence deny and whose word they contemptuously reject. A refined and gentle lady who would shrink with horror from the coarseness of giving a fellow creature the lie, will yet make God a liar every day! (See 1 John 1:10; 5:10). And this difficulty is vastly increased for thousands by the current praise of humanity from the pulpit. How startling the contrast between appearances and realities in the time before the flood. "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown" (Gen. 6:4). And so it appeared that the world was growing better, in men's eyes; a continual improvement they probably would trace, and the apparent result of the unholy intermarriage of the godly with the worldly was the lifting up of human nature to still grander heights. But "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gen. 6:5). "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile man" (Mark 7:21-23). "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Cor. 2:14). "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:7-8). "Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath" (Eph. 2:3). By these it appears that the unconverted man has a three-fold incapacity. He may be gifted, or cultured, or amiable, or generous, or religious. He may pay his honest debts, be truthful, industrious, a good husband and father-or all these together-but he can neither obey God, please God, nor understand God. The believer, on the contrary, while still having his old nature, unchanged and unchangeable, has received a new nature which "after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." The following Scriptures will show the origin and character of the new man. It will be seen that regeneration is a creation, not a mere transformation-the bringing in a new thing, not the change of an old. As we received human nature by natural generation, so do we receive the divine nature by regeneration. "Verily, verily, I say unto thee [Nicodemus, a moral, religious man], Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13). "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26). It will be observed what bearing these Scriptures have upon that specious and plausible, but utterly unscriptural phrase so popular in our day, "the universal fatherhood of God, and the universal brotherhood of man -- an expression all the more dangerous for the half-truth of the last clause.

This grand and glorious fact is true also of every believer. When as a sinner we received Christ by faith, we received in Him a new life, or nature, which is entirely distinct from the old self life, or nature, that we have by natural birth. The believer has two natures, one the old nature, the old I or self, the other the divine life, or nature, of which Christ is the source and power.

This is an immense relief to the heart that has struggled for years in the hopeless business of trying to improve nature. It is an immense relief, moreover, to the conscience which has been seeking a foundation for its peace in the gradual improvement of a totally unimprovable thing. Finally, it is an immense relief to any soul that may, for years, have been earnestly breathing after holiness, but has looked upon holiness as consisting in the improvement of that which hates holiness and loves sin. To each and all of such it is infinitely precious and important to understand the real nature of regeneration. No one who has not experienced it can conceive the intensity of anguish and the bitterness of the disappointment which a soul feels, who, vainly expecting some improvement in nature, finds, after years of struggling, that nature is nature still. And just in proportion to the anguish and disappointment will be the joy of discovering that God is not looking for any improvement in nature — that He sees it as dead, and us as alive in Christ — one with Him, and accepted in Him for ever. To be led into a clear and full apprehension of this, is divine emancipation to the conscience, and true elevation for the whole moral being.

Let us, then, see clearly what regeneration is. It is a new birth — the imparting of a new life — the implantation of a new nature — the formation of a new man. The old nature remains in all its distinctness; and the new nature is introduced in all its distinctness. This new nature has its own habits, its own desires, its own tendencies, its own affections. All these are spiritual, heavenly, divine. Its aspirations are all upward. It is ever breathing after the heavenly source from which it has emanated. As in nature, water always finds its own level; so in grace, the new, the divine nature always tends towards its own proper source. Thus regeneration is to the soul what the birth of Isaac was to the household of Abraham. (Gen. 21) Ishmael remained the same Ishmael; but Isaac was introduced. So the old nature remains the same, but the new is introduced. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." It partakes of the nature of its source. A child partakes of the nature of its parents; and the believer is made "a partaker of the divine nature." (2 Peter 1:4) "Of His own will begat he us." (James 1)

Yet, in another way, we may surely say as to the Christian, that the man that was and the man that is are total opposites. I was a sinner in my sins, freely following the evil that I loved: I am a child of God, with a new nature, new affections, and a new object. Between these two persons there is a wide interval indeed. The first is what Scripture calls "the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts" (Eph. 4: 22); the second is styled "the new man, which after God is - created in righteousness and true holiness" (v. 24), and "renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him who created him, where Christ is all and in all" (Col. 3:10.11). The first it speaks of as being "crucified with Christ," as it does of our "having put off the old man with his deeds" (Rom. 2: 6; Col. 3: 9). The second, similarly, it speaks of our "having put on". What we were we are not, and never can be again. But while this is happily true of us, it is also true that the "flesh" - the old nature - we have in us still, and shall have, till the body of humiliation is either dropped, or changed into the glorified likeness of the Lord's own body. The old man is gone forever, but the flesh abides: in those who are possessors of the Spirit, still "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;" and the exhortation is, not to destroy the flesh, as if that were possible, but "walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16.17). A poor conclusion this, to many in our day! but to those who know themselves, how great a relief to find thus an explanation of what experience testifies to! It may be, and is, a mystery how we can have at the same time in us two natures, total opposites of each other, - how Christ can dwell in us, and yet sin dwell too; but Scripture affirms it, and experience also. If it is God's mind to allow us to know thus for a while what evil is, not by yielding to it surely, but as realizing its opposition, can He not make this experience even both to serve us and glorify Him?

Thus we distinguish, and it is important that we should, between person and nature. The Christian possesses two natures, the one, the old man — the other, the new man. By birth he has received both. By natural generation he partakes of the evil nature, by being born of water and of the Holy Ghost he receives the new nature. The character and actings of each nature are unchangeable. Of the incorrigibility of the flesh we are taught, when we read, that it is "enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Romans 8:7). The undeviating course in which the new nature runs is as clearly traced out, as we hear John declaring, that "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world" (1 John 5:4); for the world, we learn (1 John 2:15-16), is in direct opposition to the Father, and all that is not of the Father is of the world. And again, "Whosoever is born of God sinneth not" (1 John 5:18). Man, then, acts as his nature inclines him. Man, in the flesh, cannot please God. But the Christian, having a new nature, Christ being his life, and being indwelt by the Holy Ghost, is responsible to act in accordance with the dictates of that nature. For responsibility attaches to the person, though the acts are the natural outcoming of the nature within. But, as a nature can only act in accordance with what it is, John, when viewing the Christian abstractedly, declares that "Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God" (1 John 3:9). On the other hand, viewing him, not abstractedly, but as a person possessed of two opposite natures, either of which may at any given moment, if he allow it, dominate over him, he writes, he tells us, to believers, in order that they should not sin. Thus the absolute impeccability of the new nature is affirmed, and the Christian's ability now through grace to keep from sin is declared; yet his liability to fall into it, and therefore his constant need of watchfulness against it, are ever kept before him.

But though the believer is not in the flesh, he sorrowfully finds that the flesh is in him. He learns through humbling experiences to say, "In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." He does not say, "In me dwells no good," because he has a new life, and the Holy Ghost in him; but he says, "In me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing;" for, though delivered from the Adam standing, he still has the Adam nature — the flesh, with its passions and lusts — that evil principle which is ready to serve the law of sin. He has, in fact, two natures: the old nature, "that which is born of the flesh, which is flesh;" and the new life, or new nature, "that which is born of the Spirit, which is spirit." The new nature which is born of the Spirit is strengthened by the Holy Ghost which indwells us; so that, while the flesh lusts against the Spirit, the Spirit is against the flesh in such antagonistic power, that we cannot do the things which we otherwise would. The delivered soul knows that he is the subject of the actings of these two opposing natures, and his conclusion is, "so then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." (Rom. 7:25.)

The christian has two natures; his own fallen nature, and the divinely given nature. He is like those creatures whose early existence is beneath the water in the mud of a river, which, after a while, receive a new force, that draws them up to the surface of the stream. This enables them to shake off their old coil and rise into the air beautiful and bright-winged, to delight in the sunshine and atmosphere above the water. Henceforth the air is their home, and their former element would be to them destruction. But with the christian, alas, there is always the tendency to return to the mud of the stream. It is only as we bear in our minds Christ's death, His going down beneath the deep waters of judgment in order to bring us up into resurrection-life and blessing, that we have the practical enjoyment of the place which is ours in Christ.

It is however requisite, more particularly to enumerate and consider the enemies, whom the Christian soldier is called to encounter, if we would fully understand the important subject. The apostle, having said, “The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would;” proceeds to show what are the works of the flesh, and the fruits of the spirit; from which enumeration it is evident, that the flesh signifies our old nature as born of Adam’s fallen race, with all its propensities animal and intellectual, as they are contrary to the spiritual commands of God; and that the spirit as striving against it, signifies the new principle infused and supported by the Holy Spirit, renewing our souls to holiness, and so teaching, disposing, and enabling us to love and serve God: For “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”.