Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Romans

[Ordered]

What does freedom from sin mean? Are you free from sin?

Romans 6:18 : And, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

Do you still sin? Is this claim not just a pipe dream?

[jimwalton]

It doesn't mean we don't still sin, but rather that we've been unchained from our sin nature. When we come to Christ, we receive a new nature—the nature of Christ. We're new creations (2 Cor. 5.17). Before coming to Christ, we have no choice but to serve the sin nature. After Christ, we now have a choice. We've been liberated and can choose the non-sin option.

[Ordered]

Wait are you saying your free will was tampered with before you became free to actually utilise it? That you didn't have a choice to not sin before?

Also if you have a christ nature and still sin, does it not mean that its a lie? How can you sin in direct opposition to this nature you supposedly have?

[jimwalton]

> Wait are you saying your free will was tampered with before you became free to actually utilise it?

No, that's not what I'm saying. It was a status, not a choice. Maybe think of it this way: suppose your parents were the citizens of a country, let's say, Germany, before you were born. Let's say your parents didn't like the life there, renounced their citizenship, and chose to move to, uh, France. So you were born a French citizen. Your free will was not "tampered with before you became free to actually use it." This doesn't pertain to free will but rather to where your citizenship lies, and that's the result of some decisions your forebears made. You're born French rather than German. But when it comes right down to it, you are free any time to return to Germany and become a citizen there. There's nothing stopping you. You have a free will choice to do that anytime you want.

As far as the relation of this analogy to Romans 6, you are born separated from God, a citizen of this world, so to speak, because of the decisions of your forebears. It's not an interference with your free will, but a status of fact. But when it comes right down to it, you are free to come to God and become a citizen of His kingdom anytime you want. There's nothing stopping you. You have a free will choice to do that anytime you want.

It's not that you didn't have a choice to not sin before. "Being born with a sin nature" means that you are born separated from God, a citizen of Earth. It doesn't mean you're born wicked, bad, or evil. Although anyone who has raised children knows that in them is a very natural propensity for self-centeredness ("MINE!"), anger, and rebellion ("NO!"). These things aren't *evil*, per se, but they are sin.

> Also if you have a christ nature and still sin, does it not mean that its a lie?

No, to be set free from sin means that your citizenship has been transferred, not that you're suddenly a perfect person. Now you belong to God and His kingdom. The work of teaching you how to avoid sinning (now that you're out from under its government) is just beginning.

> How can you sin in direct opposition to this nature you supposedly have?

We can behave contrary to our nature. Our nature is just who we are. There are non-Christians who are very good people, wonderful people; there are Christians who are jerks. But the non-christians are still separated from God, and the Christians are redeemed (if they are truly Christians, which some Christian jerks most certainly are NOT). When a person chooses to become a Christian, there are many inner, spiritual transformations that happen instantaneously. And sometimes (often) there are even instantaneous behavioral changes. But most behavioral change is a slow process of what Christians call "sanctification": The Holy Spirit gradually, little by little, making us holy. It's a life-long process.

[Ordered]

From what I understand from you, sin is like a country or identity that you have. So how can you be free from such a concept? Why would the terminology be "freedom from" instead of "change of identity"?

If you still sin as a Christian what then is difference between you and someone who isn't a Christian?

[jimwalton]

> From what I understand from you, sin is like a country or identity that you have. So how can you be free from such a concept?

Because we can change our status (in the case of my analogy, one can change his/her citizenship, and suddenly you can be a Frenchman or a German, by one's own choice for affiliation.

> Why would the terminology be "freedom from" instead of "change of identity"?

Because sin is likened to slavery in the Bible. It not only "owns" us, but we are chained and shackled and ultimately doomed by it. But all sorts of things are happening at the moment of salvation: we are freed from our slavery to sin, our sins of commission are forgiven, our sin nature is taken away from us, we are made new creations and given a new nature (the nature of Christ), and the Holy Spirit comes to live with us.

> If you still sin as a Christian what then is difference between you and someone who isn't a Christian?

Our sin is forgiven. But this is never meant as a license to go out and do what we want (Romans 6.1) because we know we get forgiveness. That concept is anathema to Christianity. The other part of it is that we are supposed to be working in cooperation with the Holy Spirit to NOT continue in those sins, which is now a possibility.

[Ordered]

On the free will part, you said in your 1st post, "Before coming to Christ, we have no choice but to serve the sin nature. After Christ, we now have a choice."

I don't see how this is not about your will being tampered with. At first you had no choice, now you do.

If I had free will all along then there was no need to grant me any freedom again was there?

[jimwalton]

I certainly didn't mean that our free will is ineffective. What I mean by it is that it's part of our nature. Suppose I challenged you to fly, travel through time, or disappear (if you could choose one superpower, what would it be?). Well, you know as well as I that those things are not a choice for you. It has nothing to do with your free will, but with your nature as a human being. That's what I meant. Sin is part of your nature, just like walking (and not flying) is part of your humanity. You not being able to fly doesn't gyp you of free will. That's what I mean. Thanks for asking.

[Vesture El]

> A greater question is for you: since you have heard about God and Jesus, you are accountable for what you do with the knowledge you have and what you decide to do with it. God invites you into relationship with Himself, where you can be forgiven and free.

See but nothing I've heard about god or jesus has warrented me believing they exist so as far as I'm aware there's no god to send such an invitation.

[jimwalton]

Well, then, that's what we should talk about.

Nature is a fantastic wonder: beautiful, functional, orderly, regular, predictable (parts of it), balance, finely-tuned, fabulously diverse, even personal, massively huge beyond comprehension, immensely tiny beyond comprehension. We know that things don't just pop into existence all by themselves. We also know that the universe had a beginning. We have to assume that the universe had a powerful, timeless, personal, intelligent, purposeful cause.

If God doesn't exist, his existence is logically impossible. But if he does exist, his existence is necessary. Therefore God is either impossible or necessary. We know he's not impossible.

We humans don't know of anything that shows evidence of being purposefully designed that wasn't purposefully designed, whether a washer, a car, or a window. There are many parts of the universe that exhibit purpose. It's logical to look for an intelligent designer.

These and many other reasonable facts lead us to the very plausible conclusion that just maybe there's a God. Many atheists don’t find the arguments convincing because there are small loopholes in each one. Yet the strength of the arguments is in their sufficiency and in their cumulative effect, not because they are irrefutable. A kind of parallel example from mathematics is Goldbach’s Conjecture. It is an unprovable theorem, but no one has proved that it is unprovable. It’s too large to pursue absolutely. In the same way, the existence of God is philosophically and logically unprovable, but no one is able to prove that it is unprovable. The weight of evidence would demand, as with Goldbach’s Conjecture, that believing in the existence of God makes a lot of sense and is possibly the simplest explanation (Occam’s Razor) for the phenomena we see.

And when we consider the arguments against there being a God (like the existence of evil), well, those arguments are far weaker by comparison. The weight of evidence is greatly in favor of theism, and worthy of great thought and study.

As far as Jesus is concerned, we know he existed in history. We have to be responsible enough to give thought to the idea that we also know that his simple life changed the world, that thousands of people in the capital city of another religion changed religions overnight, and eventually spread by weight of truth (not by military conquest like Islam) around the globe to be the world's greatest religion. Obviously 2.2 billion people living right now have found warrant to believe. Doesn't that make you wonder if you missed something?