No matter how that is placed before us, we still have a sin nature. We are simply not yet in our perfected bodies. As long as we live in the earth suit, we still have a struggle with sin.
No doubt, you will consider the apostle Paul to be one of the greatest men that ever lived, but he said this:
1 Timothy 1
15 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
He places this in present tense with the use of the word “am”.
Also, he goes into great depth of his own sin problem in Romans 7 & 8.
Romans 7
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[d] a slave to the law of sin.
Not a one of us lives perfectly, and we need to manage ourselves properly. One problem in the church is that we take this idea of “grace” and use it as an excuse to live how we want to live, and merely lay it out to God as a weakness of the flesh. I am willing to make that statement for myself, even no one else will.
We wander around thinking of ourselves as “good”, but that is simply not true. Yes, according to Galatians 5:22 (I think) we can walk in goodness, which is one of the fruit of the Spirit. We must not see it as our goodness, but actually the goodness of God, thorugh His Spririt, as he works within us.
Consider the words of Jesus here:
Mark 10
18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.
Those words came from the mouth of Jesus, who died for our sins. By His own words, He was not good. That says a lot about the attitude we as Christians should hold. With that, I have no good in me, aside from the goodness given to me by the Spirit of God. I also struggle with sin, and need to be in continual prayer and repentance. Otherwise, I am sure that my ego will get the best of me.
There is a such thing as judgment, but it must start inside my own skin. I know I am forgiven, but the attitude i show towards the unsaved can show a sense of “self-righteousness”, even though I do not intend it.
We do not have a sin nature, we have sin residing in the flesh. The word “sin nature” is not even in the Bible. If you’re going to use it, use the term the Bible uses.
Everything that we were in Adam, the “old man,” or “old self” as the Bible calls it, is dead. We died to sin when our old man died, the day we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we are in Christ. We were given a new heart and a new spirit under the New Covenant. Israel as a nation will be given the same as Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesy, when Jesus comes back to rule on this earth.
We are to walk—that is live our lives—in the power of the Holy Spirit in us. We have a new walk, a new lifestyle. If there’s no change, there’s no salvation. Do we still sin? Yes, unfortunately we fail to control the lusts of the flesh. Sometimes it is a struggle. But there is power in the Word of God, if we will study it and believe it, and there is power in the Holy Spirit who indwells us, and there is the victory that was won over sin on the cross.
BUT—we do NOT continue the way we were, as the Scriptures I gave plainly say in Ephesians 2—we have everything we need for life and Godliness.
We aren’t called saints for nothing.
All true believers are on the road to maturity, or being perfected in Christ. He promises to finish what He has begun in us. We are being conformed into the image of Christ and will be in our glorified bodies, perfect or complete, when we see Him either in the air or when we are raised.
Excuse me, I mean if you’re going to use the term “sin nature,” you should define what you mean. The Bible uses the word “old self” or “old man” for what a person is born in and the term “flesh” and “sin in the flesh” for what we war against, since we are a new man in Christ with His Holy Spirit in us.