Todd's Road Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Todd
Nybert. We're located at 4137 Todd's
Road, two miles outside Manowar Boulevard. Sunday services are
at 10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Bible study is at
9.45 a.m. Wednesday services are at 7 p.m.
Nursery is provided for all services. For more information, visit our
website at toddroadgracechurch.com. Now here's our pastor, Todd Nybert. I'm reading from Ephesians chapter
3, and before I read my text, I want to announce the title
of this message, The Two Natures of the Believer. Beginning in
verse 14 of Ephesians chapter 3, we read, For this cause I
bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. of
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would
grant you, according to the riches of His grace, to be strengthened
with might by His Spirit in the inner man. Now, what is this
inner man Paul is speaking of? Not everyone has an inner man. Only the believer has an inner
man. Now, This is important for any
believer to understand. A believer has two separate natures. The one he was born with and
the one he has when he's born again, or born from above. That's the old man, the man he
was born with, and the new man, the man he has when he is born
again. Now this is what the Bible teaches. I know some people will say that
doesn't make sense, and that's okay. What is important is does
the Bible actually teach this? That's all I'm concerned about.
Does the Bible actually teach this? And I hope you'll see that
it does by the time this message is finished. Now, the inner man. This is actually difficult to
grasp because both of these two natures operate through one consciousness. Now, let me repeat that. There's
not really a time when you can say, well, this is the new man
and this is the old man, because both of these two natures operate
through one consciousness. An illustration would be a water
faucet, having hot water and cold water running through the
same spigot. Different, hot, cold, but when
they come through the same spigot, It is that one consciousness. Another example would be if you
would mix yellow and orange paint together, or yellow and red paint,
you would have orange. Now it wouldn't change the molecular
structure of the red paint or the yellow paint, but when they're
mixed together, all you see is orange. So when I'm talking about
these two natures, and like I said, it's what the Bible teaches,
it's important also to realize that these two natures that a
believer possesses comes through one consciousness. Now, we read
in the scripture of the new man, the inner man, the inward man,
the hidden man of the heart, the new creature, The new creation,
one that was not there before, and we also read of the old man,
the flesh, the carnal mind, the sin that dwelleth in me. the wretched man of Romans chapter
7, the body of this death. Now both of these old and new
men come through this one consciousness. Now this is what the Bible teaches. I realize some people would say
this is It's dualistic. It sounds like spiritual schizophrenia. But hang on with me and listen,
and we're going to see that the Bible actually teaches this. And if it's what the Bible teaches,
I'm going to preach it, whether it can be abused or not, because
men can always take some aspect of the truth and abuse it, but
because of that, it doesn't mean we're not going to preach it.
I realize people could take this and abuse it, but that's not
my problem. I'm to preach the truth, God's
truth, and let the chips fall where they will. Now, somebody
may be thinking, why make an issue of this? Is
it really important what you believe about this? Well, let
me read a scripture that teaches this. There are so many scriptures.
But Paul said in Romans 7, I delight in the law of God after the inner
man. That's talking about the new
nature. I delight in the law of God after
the inner man. But I see another law. warring
in my members, and bringing me into captivity to the law of
sin which is in my members, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me from the body of this death?" Now, it's very clear that Paul
is speaking of two separate men, the inner man and the old man. Now, again, somebody says, does
it really matter what you believe about this? Is this an issue?
Well, you can say that about any truth that God has revealed
in His Word. You can say, do you need to believe
it? Well, if God teaches it, if God says it in His Word, yes,
you need to believe it. And yes, it does matter. I have
heard people say they see that the Bible teaches election, that
God chose who would be saved before time began, but I've seen
those same people say, it doesn't really matter what you believe
about this. Well, yes, it does. If it doesn't matter about salvation
being by grace, then it doesn't matter whether you believe in
election. If it doesn't matter that God gets all the glory,
it doesn't matter if you believe in election, but it does matter.
Everything God reveals is of critical importance, and it's
very important that you and I understand this thing of the two natures
of the believer. Now, I want to give you, before
I show what the Scripture teaches, I want to give you six issues
that are at stake in this thing of the believer having two natures. Now, the first issue at stake
is if you don't believe that the believer has two natures,
you don't really believe what took place in the fall, in the
Garden of Eden. You see, when Adam fell, he became
completely dead in trespasses and sins, totally depraved. Every aspect of his character
was affected by the fall, the understanding, the affections,
the will. and completely unable to do anything to save himself.
Our Lord said, No man can come to me except the Father which
has sent me draw him. Now, if I deny that a believer
has two natures, I'm saying that grace takes that old man and
does something with it. And the Bible denies that. Flesh
is flesh. It can never rise above that.
It's completely evil. That's the way every man is born
into this world. And to deny this says man is
improved by grace. And that's just not what the
scripture teaches. You see the nature. Here's the
second thing I'd like to say. If you don't believe in two separate
natures, you don't have any understanding of the nature of the new birth.
Now there is such a thing as being born again. And the Lord
made this statement, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. It can never rise above that.
And that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. There's nothing fleshly about
it. It's a new nature. The Lord said in John 1, 12,
and 13, as many as received him, to them gave he the power to
become the sons of God, even to them which believe on his
name, which were born. not of blood, not because of
any fleshly connection, not of the will of the flesh, not because
of an act of man's free will. You didn't decide to be born
in your first birth, and you don't decide to be born in your
second birth. not of the will of man, not because
a lot of men got together and said, we're going to pray until
this man is saved, and we're going to do...no. This birth
is of God. It's purely spiritual. It's something
that's there that was not there before. A new heart will I give
you. He doesn't take the old heart
and improve it. He gives a brand new heart. And
here's the third statement I'd like to make. Listen very carefully.
Salvation is not a changed life. Salvation is a new creation. Salvation is not a changed life.
There are a lot of people who change their lives, who have
bad habits and terrible habits that affect their health and
affect their family and bring problems in society, and they
stop those things. And I'm thankful for that. I'm
thankful for that. But you can do that without being
saved. Some people just get sick and
tired of being sick and tired, and they're going to change their
lives. This is not salvation. Salvation is a new creation,
a new creature. If any man be in Christ, he's
a new creation. We're said to be created in righteousness
and true holiness. We're His workmanship created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them. It's not an improved heart and
changed life, but a new creation, something that was not there
before. And to deny to natures is to
deny that the new birth is a new creation, a creative act of God. Here's my fourth issue at stake. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4,
verses 6 and 7, For God, who commanded the light to shine
out of the darkness, has shined in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in
earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and
not of us." We have this treasure, the gospel, this new nature,
this salvation. We house this treasure in these
bodies of clay, these sinful bodies, that the excellency of
the power may be of God and not of us. Now, here he tells us
that to deny that is to say the excellency of the power partly
belongs to the creature, and that shall never be. And not
understanding this thing of two separate men creates such sadness
in a believer's life. They'll think things like, if
I thought this, Or if I did that, maybe I'm not saved. I keep coming
and committing the same sin over and over again. Maybe I'm not
saved. Maybe God's never done a work of grace in my heart.
Now, sin's never okay to a believer, but I understand why I sin. I've
got a sinful nature, an old nature. And anyway, the real me is not
the man who sins. The real me is the new man in
Christ Jesus. That old man is gonna be put
away. Now, the doctrine stated is that all men are dead in sins,
and it is the spirit that quickeneth, giveth life. The flesh profits
nothing. Your natural flesh does not enter
into this thing of being born again or being a Christian or
a new creature in Christ Jesus. Now, I can give several illustrations
of this from Scripture, but the first illustration I'd like to
give is found in Genesis 25. Beginning in verse 19, and these
are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son, Abraham begat
Isaac. And Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah to his
wife, the daughter of Bethuel, the Syrian of Paddan Aram, the
sister to Laban, the Syrian. And Isaac entreated the Lord
for his wife because she was barren. She had no life in her
womb. And the Lord was entreated of
him, and Rebekah, his wife, conceived. There's now life in her womb. And this is talking about the
conception of the two twins, Jacob and Esau. And you'll remember
from the scriptures, God said, Jacob, have a love. and Esau
have I hated." Those are God's words. Now before you get too
shocked about that, God's hatred is not like our hatred. His hatred
is a righteous hatred. Esau didn't care a thing about
God. He didn't think he was worth a bowl of soup, and he sold his
birthright for a bowl of soup. That's how much he cared about
God. But listen to this, and the children-verse 22-and the
children struggled together within her. Oh, there was a struggle
going on, and she didn't understand this. You see, there was no struggle
before there was life. But now that there's life, there's
a struggle. And she said, If it be so, why
am I thus? And she went to inquire of the
Lord. And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb,
and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels,
and the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the
elder shall serve the younger. Now that gives an illustration
of what it is to have two manner of men in you struggling with
one another. And that's what Paul is referring
to when he says in Galatians 5, verse 17, the flesh lusts
against the spirit, and the spirit lusts against the flesh. Those
are the two men, the two natures that every believer possesses.
An unbeliever doesn't have this because he's not been born again.
But in a believer, you have the flesh lusting against the spirit,
the spirit lusting against the flesh. These two are contrary
one to another so that you cannot do the things that you would.
You would. If you're a believer, you would
never sin again. You would be perfectly holy,
but you've got something called the flesh that prevents that. And your flesh would commit every
sin known to man, but there's someone who won't let that happen,
the new man within you. Now, two manner of men are in
every believer, the flesh and the spirit. And the Lord gives
us a parable. You remember the parable where
the Lord says, you will not, you don't take new wine, and
pour it into old wineskins. Now, this is talking about leather
skins. The old skins would be dried.
They wouldn't be able to stretch out. If you took that new wine
and poured it into the old wineskin, through the process of fermentation,
that would just burst that wineskin and you'd lose everything. You
put new wine in new limeskins. God doesn't pour His grace and
His Spirit into the old man and into that old heart. He gives
a new heart. This is the pure heart spoken
of in the Beatitudes, blessed are the pure in heart. This is
the new heart that God gives. It's the new heart that believes
the gospel. Now, the new heart, the new man
owns the sins of the old man, but the new man is pure. It's perfect. It is the heart
that God gives. A new heart also will I give
you. So the Lord tells us in that
parable that He does not pour the wine of His grace in the
old man. He gives a new heart that can receive His Spirit,
His Son, His Gospel. It's being birthed by God and
having something that was not there before. Now, when the Lord
came to His disciples asleep in the garden, He said, couldn't
you watch with me one hour? And then He made this statement,
the Spirit indeed is willing. flesh is weak." Now, he's not
talking about a separation between the soul and body. You've got
the fleshly appetites, and then you've got the soul. That's not
what he's talking about at all. He's talking about the Spirit,
the new Spirit, the new man is willing. Paul said, to will is
present with me. But how to perform that which
is good, I find not," he said in the next breath. But the willingness
of the spirit to be perfectly conformed to the image of Christ,
that's the new man. The Lord says, the spirit indeed
is willing, but the flesh is weak, powerless, impotent is
the word. It has no spiritual ability at
all. Peter spoke in I Peter 3, verse
4, of the hidden man of the heart, which is not corruptible. It's
not even subject to corruption. It cannot do wrong. The hidden man of the heart,
which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet
spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. Paul spoke in Ephesians 4 of
putting on the new man, which is created in righteousness and
true holiness. I'd like to read this passage
of Scripture to you from 1 John 3, because this is what is being
taught here. In 1 John 3, John says, Whosoever abideth in him
sinneth not. Whosoever sinneth hath not seen
him, neither known him. Now a lot of people say, well,
that means you don't practice sin. Doesn't mean you can't sin. Nobody's perfect. That means
you don't practice sin. It's not the habit and bent and
tenor of your life. That's not what it says. Let's
go on reading. Little children, let no man deceive you. He that
doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that
committeth sin is of the devil. For the devil sinneth from the
beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that
he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born
of God doth not commit sin. For his seed, the seed of God,
remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he's born of God. Do you know, somebody says, God
can do anything. We can't sin. He can't sin. He can't lie. He can't do evil. That's against His nature. He
has a holy nature. And every believer has a nature
that does not commit sin. The new man does not sin. In 1 John 5, verse 18, we read,
For we know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not. Somebody
says, well, that means he doesn't practice sin. That's not what
it says. And somebody that says that is
being dishonest with the language of the Scripture. That person
does not commit sin. But he that's begotten of God
keepeth himself, and the wicked one toucheth him not. Now, do
you remember when Satan came to try to tempt the Lord to sin? And the Lord said, He found nothing
in me. He found nothing He could work
with. You know, the Lord didn't even have the potential to sin.
To say that He could sin would be to say that He could change,
and that would be a denial of His immutability. He's holy,
nothing but holy, and He didn't even have the potential to sin.
And somebody says, well, where is there virtue in that? Well,
there's plenty of virtue in that. There are all virtues in that.
But if He couldn't be tempted, what was the big deal about Him
not giving in to temptation? That's foolishness. Christ could
not sin. The devil could find nothing
that he could get hold of with Christ, and he finds nothing
in the new nature. The new nature, the wicked one
toucheth him not. Let me read a passage of Scripture
in Colossians 3 that tells us something about what this new
man believes. And you can tell if you have
a new man by this. In Colossians 3, beginning in
verse 9, Paul said, Lie not one to another, seeing that you've
put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new
man, the new man. There it is. There's the old
man and the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the
image of him that created him. This new man is the creative
act, work of God. where there is neither Greek
nor Jew, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian,
Scythian, bond or free, but Christ is all in all." Now here is what
the new man believes. This is the knowledge that he
has been given, that Christ is all." He's all that God is. He's all
that the Scripture has to say. Every Scripture testifies of
Him. He is all in salvation, and all that God requires of
me, He looks to His Son for. And all God requires of me, I
look to His Son for. Christ is all Now, that's quite simply what
the new man believes. He doesn't believe in salvation
by works. He doesn't believe Christ gets 99% of the credit. He believes Christ is all. He
believes that what the Bible teaches is that Christ is all.
And if you believe that Christ is all in your salvation, you
reject any form of salvation by works, and you know Christ
is all in salvation. It's because he's given you a
new heart that believes that. Question. There are saints in
heaven right now worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ, crying out,
worthy is the Lamb that was slain. And there are saints here on
earth. What is the difference between
the saints in heaven and the saints on earth? The saints in
heaven have only one nature. That old man has died and has
been put away, and now all they have is that holy man, created
in the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, that does not sin. Now, the saints here on earth,
they have all that's needed to bring them into heaven, present
tense, right now. I'm not going to be more holy
in heaven than I am right now, but I'm not going to have this
sinful nature that causes so much trouble. But right now,
every believer does, in fact, have two natures. But the ones
in heaven only have one nature. They put down the old man. He
is gone. And I love this promise. The
new man is stronger than the old man. Greater is he that's
in you than he that is in the world. Now, do you remember how
God said to Rebekah, the elder shall serve the younger? Now,
my older nature, that sinful nature, it is a servant to the
new nature. Now, how can that be? I mean,
if the old nature is as bad as you say it is, if it's nothing
but sin, if it does nothing but sin and it's evil, how can you
say that that nature is serving the new nature? Well, my old
nature, my sin, and it's the new nature that owns it. The
old man, a natural man doesn't even really understand sin, but
my sin. makes me look to Christ only. He is all I have for salvation. The only hope of my salvation
is Christ only. I don't plead anything that I
do or, no, Christ only is all I have because I see at all times
that I'm so sinful. Now, in that sense, God brings
good out of evil. He does what only He can do.
He brings good out of evil, because even my sin drives me to the
Lord Jesus Christ, and it makes me look nowhere else. It's a part of what Paul says.
All things work together for good to them that love God, to
them who are the called according to His purpose. God does what
only God can do. He brings good out of evil, and
that old man is serving the young man. Now, two natures. I know
it's what the Scripture teaches. Read Romans chapter 7, and you
can't deny it. It's what the Scripture teaches.
But it'll give you some understanding of the nature of the new birth
and the nature of salvation really being all of grace. I look forward
to no longer having two natures, only having one that worships
Christ. Now, we have this message on
DVD and CD. If you call the church, write
or email, we'll send you a copy. This is Todd Nybert praying that
God will be pleased to make Himself known to you. Amen. To receive
a copy of the sermon you have just heard, send your request
to todd.nybert at gmail.com, or you may write or call the
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