You are trying to believe two conflicting POVs.
Either He gave us everything we need to remain faithful, or He didn't.
The only "law" Christians are under is this...Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength: and love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Thank God we can be reborn of His seed after the old man is destroyed at its "immersion" into Christ and His death.
We are dead to the Law !
I certainly received the gift of righteousness and God's precious Holy Spirit, but alas, I, like the apostle Paul, still find that in me (that is, in my fleshly nature), dwells no good thing. One question for you though...
Does your wife (if you have one) think that your sinful nature is eradicated?
I am actually pleased to see that you are obviously someone who takes your Christian faith seriously and want to know and walk in the truth.
As you believe that crucifixion means eradication, do you not find it strange that the Bible says:
‘Our old man was crucified with Him’ (
Rom 6:6) YET we are still told to ‘put off… the old man, which
IS corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.’
(
Eph 4:22) If the old man is eradicated and doesn’t exist, why are believers told to put him off? And why does it say that the
old man IS corrupt (present tense) if he doesn’t exist anymore in Christians?
‘And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.’ (
Gal 5:24) YET in the same chapter we are told that there is a daily battle going on within the believer where ‘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.’ (
Gal 5:16)
If the flesh has been crucified (which in your understanding would mean that it is eradicated and doesn’t exist) then why is there still this on going battle with the Spirit against that which has been crucified and eradicated?
Clearly co-crucifixion does not mean eradication!
Now although we have already spent long on this matter, there is a further thing that may help to make it clearer to YOU.
The Scriptures declare that we are “dead indeed”, but nowhere do they say that we are dead in ourselves. We shall look in vain to find death within; that is just the place where it is not to be found. We are dead not in ourselves but in Christ.
We were crucified with Him because we were in Him… As we stand steadfastly on the ground of what Christ is, we find that all that is true of Him is becoming experimentally true in us.
If instead we come onto the ground of what we are in ourselves we will find that all that is true of the old nature remains true of us. If we get there in faith we have everything; if we return back here we find nothing.
So often we go to the wrong place to find the death of self. It is in Christ. We have only to look within to find we are very much alive to sin; but when we look over there to the Lord, God sees to it that death works here but that “newness of life” is ours also. We are “alive unto God” (
Rom. 6:4,11).
In another book Paul writes about the error of believing that the sinful nature has been eradicated stating in Romans 6.........
Let us note carefully that though the flesh may be so put to death that it becomes "ineffective" (the real meaning of "destroy" in
Rom. 6.6), it endures nonetheless.
It is a great error to consider the flesh eradicated from us and to conclude that the nature of sin is completely annihilated. Such false teaching leads people astray as it has done to YOU. Regenerated life does not alter the flesh; co-crucifixion does not extinguish the flesh; the indwelling Holy Spirit does not render it impossible to walk by the flesh. The flesh with its fleshly nature abides perpetually in the believer.
Whenever opportunity is provided for its operation, it at once will spring into action. Until such time as we are freed physically from this body we shall not be able to be so delivered from the flesh that no more possibility of its activity exists.
Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh. There is absolutely no eradication of it until this body corrupted from Adam is transformed. Our body is not yet redeemed (Rom. 8.23); it waits for redemption at the return of the Lord Jesus (
I Cor. 15.22,
23,
42-44,
51-56;
1 Thess. 4.14-18;
Phil. 3.20-21). As long as we are in the body, therefore, we must be alert daily lest the flesh break forth with its wicked deeds.
In like manner, Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, writes from
1 John 1:8-10 in his book ‘He that is spiritual’ about the error of believing that the sinful nature is eradicated –
“In
1 John 1:8,
10 we have clear warning against any presumption concerning sin. First, Christians are warned against saying that they have no sin nature:
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." This is distinctly concerning the sin nature of the Christian and has no application whatever to the unsaved. It is addressed to believers, and to all believers. It will not do to suppose that reference is made in the passage to some unfortunate, unenlightened, or unsanctified class of Christians. There is no class distinction here. It is the testimony of the Spirit of God with reference to every born-again person.
For any such to say that he has no sin nature means that the person is self-deceived and the truth is not in him. This passage is evidently intended for "correction" to those Christians who are claiming to be free from the sin nature and who may have made themselves believe that they are free. A self-satisfied mind is not necessarily the mind of God . . . . The source of sin is, then, the sin nature rather than the new divine nature…”.
‘Our old man is crucified… that the body of sin might be destroyed’ (
Rom 6:6) YET Paul, speaking as a Christian could also say that
‘sin…dwelleth in me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.’ (
Rom 7:16)
Why would Paul say that sin (not acts but the nature there of) dwells in him, and in him dwelleth no good thing if he thought that the sinful nature was eradicated?
Would you, like Paul, agree that in you dwelleth no good thing?
To my way of thinking, you have confused that which is true of us ‘in Christ’ and that which is true in and of ourselves. The fact that God has placed us ‘in Christ’ and has crucified our old man in Him doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist anymore in us. Death, as you yourself said, means separation. When we die physically it is a separation of our soul/spirit from our body.
The 2nd death mentioned in Revelation is eternal separation from God. The truth of Romans 6 is that we have been separated from the power of the sinful nature because of our union with Christ in His death and resurrection. As we reckon upon this spiritual fact, God makes it true in our experience through His life that indwells us. But we have to abide in Christ for we are separated from the power of the sinful nature in Him – not in us! In us, as Paul found out and expressed in Romans 7, that same nature still dwells. Watchman Nee, wrote a book on the truths of Romans 6-8 called ‘The Normal Christian life’. I’m sure you have heard of it as it is highly regarded and seen as a classic on the subject of our crucifixion with Christ.’ Yet he was very clear in the book however that the old man, the sinful nature, is not dead in ourselves!
