We all know the reality of the heart of mankind.  It is desperately wicked.  Jeremiah 17:9 describes the fallen heart of man as follows: “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”  That is absolutely the fact of our old man, the sinful nature which is not born again of God.  Yet Psalm 24:3-5 says, “Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD?  And who may stand in His holy place?  He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood And has not sworn deceitfully.  He shall receive a blessing from the LORD And righteousness from the God of his salvation."  The only way to reconcile these two passages is to realize that the person spoken of in the Psalms is redeemed.  It says that the person with a pure heart who is not deceitful in any way is also the person who is saved.  In other words, salvation brings with it a new heart capable of love and the purifying work of the Spirit.  According to the psalm, the heart of the Christian is not deceitful.  Of course it can be deceived and it can deceive, but it does not have to.  It is not its nature and the default mechanism any longer.  We get confused as believers because we know how we stumble in our Christian lives.  We erroneously conclude that our hearts must be desperately wicked because we sin.  This is not true. 

2 Corinthians 5:17 makes some things very clear when it says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”  The old sinful self is dead and gone.  We are dead to sin and alive to God.  The old man was buried with Christ, and the new Christian was raised to walk in the newness of life (Romans 6:4).  Romans 6:6 says, “Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.”  Before we were saved, we were slaves to sin.  Now we are slaves of righteousness (Romans 6:18).  The body of sin is done away with.  It is terminated, finished, gone, and out of commission.  The old self is crucified, and we know that crucifixion leads to death.  We can take heart, for our sin nature is dead.  The old self that was in bondage to sin and controlled by sin is dead and gone. 

Too many Christians think they are walking in their old man at least in part, a deception of Satan.  The Scripture repeatedly talks of reckoning ourselves dead to sin.  2 Corinthians 5:14 says, “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died.”  Believers are dead to sin.  The old sinful self which was prone to do wrong and had a corrupted heart is dead.  Sin has no power anymore over us.  It does not indwell us.  We are indwelt by Christ and the Holy Spirit of God.  The only thing that has control over us is the love of Christ.  Does that sound like a person who will be more likely to sin or to love God?  Do we reckon ourselves as being those who are controlled by the love of Christ?  Yes, we are encased in a shell of humanness which is weak and yet undergoing the process of sanctification, and there are still things we choose to hang onto in our hearts.  But we do not have to do this.  Never can our humanness be used as an excuse for continuing to choose to sin.  We are God’s children, born again, new creations in Christ.  We are not split personalities or two headed monsters of the old man and new man. 

Romans 8:12-13 says, “So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-- for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”  That we are not under obligation to the flesh ought to be shouted from the rooftops.  As Christians, we are not under obligation to sin, to a sinful nature, to the flesh, or to Satan himself.  We are free and victorious in Christ.  The battle is won and decided.  We are more than conquerors.  Christ leads us in triumph.  We are victors and as such we can live and walk in victory.  Galatians 5:24-25 says, “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”  Are you a Christian?  Do you belong to Jesus Christ?  If so, you have (past tense) crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  The unsaved person is fleshly, full of sinful passions and desires.  That is their identity.  They are sinful by nature and nothing else.  That body of sin was done away with for the believers.  It is dead and crucified with Christ.  The old man is dead and does not live anymore.  The new self in Christ is alive to righteousness.  Since we are alive by the Spirit, we ought also to by faith in that fact walk according to the Spirit. 

The great lie holding Christians down today is that we think that we are subservient to the flesh.  We think that we are prone to do wrong as if we are more likely to sin than not sin.  Humility is misinterpreted to mean that we are honest about how messed up we are rather than trusting in God to free us from the lust of the flesh.  So when we do sin, we think, “Well, who can help it because that is who we are by nature.”  If we are still part old nature, how can we ever live the life of Christ?  We are helpless to walk in victory.  Of course we still sin, but it ought to be less and less.  We ought to have stories of God’s victories in our lives to share, rather than a steady grocery list of sins. 

1 Peter 4:1-2 says, “Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.”  What!?  He says that we are supposed to live the rest of our time in the flesh for the will of God and not in lust and sin.  Can we even conceive of the idea?  We think about having indwelling sin and continuing in sin when Christ tells us to live apart from sin.  It seems to indicate that if we had such faith to trust God for His promise to resist temptation and find a way out that we could indeed walk in consistent and persistent victory over sin.  Why don’t we lean into this paradigm of living rather than our defeatist mentality? 

We still have flesh as Christians.  It is not the old man who was helpless because of the sin which indwelt him.  We have a treasure encased in a jar of clay.  The jar, which represents our fleshly humanness, is weak, has faults, and needs sanctification.  But it does not control our behavior.  This is why Romans 13:14 can say, “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.”  We are enticed and led away by our own desires when Satan appeals to our flesh.  We must remember that our flesh has no power over us.  In that moment of battle and temptation, we must remember that it is Satan who is our enemy and that it is Christ who is our victory.  The flesh has no power over us, and Christ has promised to give us the victory. 

We have a changed heart that is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who indwells us.  He couldn’t live in a heart that is desperately wicked.  There are still things that will need to be remodeled and adjusted until the sanctification process is completed when we go to be with Christ in heaven, but He will help us to do just that.  He will continue to transform our thought and behavior patterns as we put our trust in Him, believing that we can indeed resist sin and walk uprightly.  We will stumble in many ways over the course of our Christian lives (James 3:2), but we will do far better over the long haul if we understand that resisting sin through Christ's power and resources is indeed available to us.  We have been changed from the inside out, and this life is a process of better and better living out Christ's will as opposed to that which the old self used to be and know. 

Christians do not have to live helpless, hopeless, defeatist lives because Christ gives us the victory in the moment of temptation if only we will trust and believe.  He is our only hope of change, and we must rest in His power and strength.