Why do we still sin after salvation?

To rejoice in the God of his salvation might seem to the believer to be the very climax of divine blessing. If he is now so full of joy, what more can he contain or require? But the young believer soon finds his joy in God interrupted. He experiences something within him that does not respond to the abounding grace of God. He fails to appreciate the possessions of faith. He looks back to the country from which he came out, to the present age from which he was redeemed. He finds evil thoughts and desires arising, increasing in intensity, and multiplying till he is sorely distressed and bewildered by the unexpected anomaly. He clings to the belief that Christ suffered and died for his sins, yet he still has a disposition to commit sin, and he discovers that the wrong act is not distasteful to him while doing it. Afterwards he is sorry; he regrets what he has done; he resolves that it shall not occur again, but it does! Why is he so powerless to prevent the recurrence? Is there no remedy for the proneness of a believer to sin against God? This Epistle answers such questions.

Although you have been born again and have a new nature, you still have your old sinful nature. That accounts for all your conflicts. The new nature hates sin, the old nature loves it. Besides, your conscience disapproves of sin and the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you to convict you of your sin and to make you unhappy with it. You saw your sins and felt them and then began to question yourself: "If I am saved, why do I do these things?" The very fact that you asked yourself such a question shows that you are looking to your experience to know whether you are saved instead of looking to what Christ has done for you.

Although you have been born again and have a new nature, you still have your old sinful nature. That accounts for all your conflicts. The new nature hates sin, the old nature loves it. Besides, your conscience disapproves of sin and the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you to convict you of your sin and to make you unhappy with it. You saw your sins and felt them and then began to question yourself: "If I am saved, why do I do these things?" The very fact that you asked yourself such a question shows that you are looking to your experience to know whether you are saved instead of looking to what Christ has done for you.

Yet it is possible that this forgiveness may be known, with its accompanying genuine faith and thanksgiving to God, and still the believer finds deep distress and perplexity in realizing that within him is that hateful sinful nature. It springs into activity on the slightest occasion, influenced greatly by temptation, so that too often the believer gives way and finds himself defeated and miserable. Romans 6 and 7 deal specifically with this matter. God knows well what our souls go through and has made perfect provision to meet it. Let us then honestly desire to know His answer and learn it well from His Word. We note here a few outstanding points for serious consideration:

The outward sin, which too commonly we judge to be all, is ever and only the out-cropping of a state of soul which was there before, and is the root of it. No force whatever of temptation would suffice to upset or draw away a soul which was finding its strength in God Himself. "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able," is ever true here. So that a man is actually "tempted" — that is, temptation succeeds with him — when he "is drawn away of his own lust and enticed." That which exposes him to the evil is in himself, and not in his surroundings. A soul th it in the thorough consciousness of impotence rests in God for help is impregnable to assault. "When I am weak, then am I strong." Self-confidence, therefore, in some form. is the secret of all failure — the root of all actual commission of sin.

Take Peter's case in the Gospels. It was no sin that he should be put to the proof, whether he would in the face of shame confess his Master. The Lord had already warned him of his weakness; but the too confident apostle heeded not the word, slept when he should have been praying against the temptation, and consequently, when it came, he fell — fell miserably, repeatedly. It was quite right, therefore, for the disciples, conscious of their own powerlessness, to ask that they might not be led into circumstances so sorely trying. Knowing their liability to fail under its pressure, they ought humbly and earnestly to deprecate such a sifting. No such prayer is or could be in the Bible as, Lead us not into sin; for this would be to impute moral evil to God. The temptation here was the putting a person thoroughly to the proof, and the consequence of it would be that, if there were unjudged evil in the heart, it would come out to his humiliation. The undetected mischief working within would be brought to the surface and the light. The Lord Jesus Himself passed through every kind of temptation, first in the wilderness, and again, at the close, in the garden of Gethsemane, when the power of darkness assailed Him to the uttermost. But He had nothing in Him that could be touched by Satan, as He said, "The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me." In us there is something that is brought out by the temptation, and then, if we do not lean very simply on the Lord, we break down in sin against Him.

Now the error of Peter, and of all of us, is to take for granted that we know our hearts as well as the Lord knows them. We act on our own estimate of our intentions, instead of the Lord's warning. We watch not — we pray not for special keeping, where not only the Lord, but our own experience also has shown us our weakness. We trust to the integrity of our intentions and we "enter into temptation," unaware that we are brought into the place where the strength of our resolutions or the integrity of our intentions is to be tested.

321 Also when it is simply the confidence and heady reliance on self, and the gift of the Lord has not been the occasion of stumbling, then Satan, naturally desirous of sifting the servants of the Lord, and dishonouring Christ's Name in them, presents an occasion of stumbling, and the Lord for the good of His creature does not hinder this, and His servant falls, i.e., the weakness of what he thought strong is made manifest to his conscience, and he acquires a painful but lastingly profitable experience. Had he heeded the Lord's counsel, it had not been necessary, but if they do not learn of Him they must learn what they are so as to be made distrustful of themselves, and feel the need of learning of and leaning upon Him. Yet, in the yet more patient exercise of His love, for even when His admonitions are despised, as here, He who knows the danger prays for His foolish disciple, and restores him to the consciousness of a love which he had been ashamed to own, but which therefore surpassed his thoughts, and to which he returned with immensely increased sentiment of its force, tenderness and constancy, and with fruitful shame of reliance on so base a self. Here Satan was not a rod, as in the other case, but as a tempter his work allowed for good. Thus by this deep, and deep-wrought, for it was terrible knowledge of self, and by consequence of our sole resource in God, he who stumbled thus and who knew the weakness and worthlessness of the flesh best, and the grace of God best, was capable by weakness felt and grace, best to strengthen his brethren. Thus the position of the flesh in the conflict with Satan, and Christ withal meanwhile interceding, was brought to light, not here noticing the Holy Ghost, because this did not change the nature of things, but was strength superinduced.

The Church is a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men, to show them and to make them know the power of God, the power of the Holy Ghost prevailing over the power of evil, and that even in the weakness of man. But if we abandon the support of the Spirit, the flesh re-appears, regains its strength, leads us into temptation, and does not shelter us from the effects of this last. This was what happened to Peter; the strength of the flesh suffices to lead him into temptation, but not to draw him out of it. Jesus in this way allowed Peter to be sifted, and to make experience of the weakness of the flesh, in order that he should, by this knowledge, be fitted to strengthen his brethren. The Lord says, "Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations" (v. 28), and yet often they had neither understood Him nor followed Him faithfully.

The Church is a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men, to show them and to make them know the power of God, the power of the Holy Ghost prevailing over the power of evil, and that even in the weakness of man. But if we abandon the support of the Spirit, the flesh re-appears, regains its strength, leads us into temptation, and does not shelter us from the effects of this last. This was what happened to Peter; the strength of the flesh suffices to lead him into temptation, but not to draw him out of it. Jesus in this way allowed Peter to be sifted, and to make experience of the weakness of the flesh, in order that he should, by this knowledge, be fitted to strengthen his brethren. The Lord says, "Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations" (v. 28), and yet often they had neither understood Him nor followed Him faithfully.