Grace, the Forbidden Gospel - Online Christian Library

Law Grace
Walking After the Flesh (Unrenewed Mind)
Previously we concluded a two part series on why Christians still sometimes struggle with the works that the
law labels as “sin”. Under the New Covenant however, all the sins (past present and future) of a believer
have been forgiven:
I write to you little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake. (1 John 2:12
NKJV)
…then He adds, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. (Heb 10:17 NKJV)
We concluded previously that Christians sometimes still make mistakes mainly because of two reasons,
namely because of an unrenewed mind and also because of external temptations. Our body will simply yield
itself as an instrument to whichever part we give control to:
1) To our 100% righteous born again spirit man, or
2) to the unrenewed part of our mind. If the mind is unrenewed, it will be at enmity (war) with our spirit. The
body will follow like a slave to whichever one of these two we yield control to.
If our mind has been renewed by the washing of the Word of God, we will use our body as an instrument of
righteousness. But if a person walks after the lusts of their unrenewed mind (flesh), their body will be a slave
to sin and reap the carnal (earthly) consequences of that sin. Yes earthly consequences, because all the
eternal punishment was dealt with at the cross.
Buckle up because here’s a radical statement: because New Covenant believers are no longer the law, they
can’t essentially break the law and therefore can technically speaking no longer commit “sin”, certainly no sin
that they can be judged or condemned for.
...for where there is no law, there is no transgression. (Rom 4:15b NKJV)
Actually they are not committing sins, but rather “works of the flesh”.
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,
idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions,
heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries… (Gal 5:19-21 NKJV)
When believers and unbelievers mess up, we class their actions differently. Indulgence in immorality by
these two different groups can be described like this:
Believers: Works of the flesh (flesh = unrenewed part of the believer’s mind)
Unbelievers: Sins
This is not just word play, because an incorrect understanding about why a Christian still slips up from time to
time serves to contribute towards the misconception of believers seeing themselves being caught up in the
unbreakable grip of sin, whereas they have actually been set free from it through grace:
For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. (Rom 6:14 NKJV)
We can clearly see from the listed “works of the flesh” in Galatians 5 (above) that if a person were to practice
such things on a regular basis, they will very quickly not only estrange themselves from the people who love
them, but also ought to find themselves in jail when the local authorities and law systems catch up with them
for things like theft, murder, etc. (It’s interesting that the Bible lists hatred and jealousy up there with murder).
When someone is punished like this by their local law system or scorned by the people around them for
misconduct, these are the earthly consequences for their actions which include the anger, condemnation and
resentment of the people they have harmed because unlike God, people have not yet forgiven us for all our
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