Did Apostle Paul Ever Had Problem With Uncontrollable Lust?
Question : Was Paul Greatly Distressed About Independent Sin Life In Him? Or to simply say, Did Apostle Paul Ever Had Problem With Uncontrollable Lust?
Answer: Greetings in Jesus wonderful name! First of all this question is a very deep question, I do not want to answer it easily without going deep in to Scripture written by apostle Paul himself. Before we start with the life of Paul, we need to ask some basic question and answer it, to understand Paul's perspective in the right way he had delivered it to us.
Do we believers after we get saved, do we stop all sins or only some at a time?
I know most of the religious believers will want to express that before we are saved, we sin but after we are saved, we stop sinning. Is this right according to the Bible? Or is it just a wish of hyper religious Church going saint who are taught to say this way to others. What does the Bible say? It is clearly expressed in the Bible that, "For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin." (Eccl 7:20). This does mean that no human born with sin nature on earth can keep doing good without sinning himself in his or her personal life (Psa 51:5; 58:3). Not even the saintliest of the believer who has ever lived or who are living or who will live, can ever boast that they are sinless after salvation. In fact, if they ever come to that so called place of super spirituality of sinlessness, they are actually deceiving themselves and the truth of God that has declared all men under sin is actually not in them, as apostle John has revealed (1 John 1:8; Rom 3:23).
So what is the truth update of God about humans whether saved or unsaved? The message Bible thunders the following way, "23 Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, 24 God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ." (Rom 3:23-24).
This shows that if we can live sinless after we are saved, we do not actually need Christ to be still our Savior until the end of our lives on earth. That is why Jesus told those who have found themselves to be sin sick without cure, such people only need a doctor, for such needy people Jesus was ready to become their Savior and spiritual doctor to lead them back to spiritual health and vitality to help them to become saints from sinners and help them overcome the sickness of sin which leads to separation from God (Matt 9:12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31; Rom 6:23). As a sinner the wages of sin is death, even one sin done in thought or deed, will lead to separation from God, but the gift of grace by faith in the blood of Jesus shed for us restores us back infinite times in to fellowship with God to know Him more accurately and this is what is eternal life is (John 17:3; Heb 12:24; Gen 4:10; Heb 8:6; 9:15; Exod 24:8)!
Though we are still sinners by nature and choice just like before salvation naturally, we actually have become saints according to God, which is the way God see us in Christ Jesus after our salvation just the way He has expressed about us in His Word (1 Cor 1:2), because after salvation we have received the new nature of God within us and we have been given a choice to use the freely given grace of Christ to overcome sin in our lives (2 Cor 5:17; 1 Cor 10:13; 15:10; 2 Cor 6:1). The beauty about the grace of God is, if we do not use it, we will lose it in vain. If the old nature was completely taken out of us when we were saved, we would have become sinless until we sin by our own choice again (1 Peter 3:21). But since the old nature of sin that we inherited from our forefather Adam is still there, we will sin by the nudge of the old nature, but if we give in to the old pattern of thoughts willingly, without using the grace that Jesus provides, we have wasted the grace of God in that particular area of fight against sin. So it becomes a besetting sin to torment us in its sway. But still we have a choice to run to the Savior Jesus' throne to be cleansed by His blood by confessing our sins (1 John 1:7, 9; Heb 4:14-16), so that we can again become fit enough to serve the living God with a clear conscience (Heb 9:14).
In other words, we will sin as long as we will live in this flesh with the sin nature within us, but as we grow from being children to young men to Fathers in our spiritual lives, we will progressively learn to avoid more and more of sin to rule over it in our lives (1 John 2:12-14; Rom 6:14). So we need Jesus to forgive and cleanse us from our sins not only to get saved, but also as long as we live saved on earth (Heb 4:16). Only when we leave this earthly body through death, then we will actually be able to be free from sin forever more (2 Cor 5:8; Rom 7:5; 8:9; 1 Cor 6:19, 17; Gal 5:18, 16, 25; Gen 3:19). So the only way to break the cycle of sin and stop sinning is to accept the fact that we cannot stop sinning (1 John 2:1; Rom 7:23-24), but sincerely ask God to give grace to avoid it and then choose to avoid it by the renewed grace in our mind which comes through the Word of God (1 John 3:2; John 1:16; 1 Peter 5:5; Jam 4:4, 6, 10; 2 Peter 3:18; Rom 6:14; 1 Cor 16:23; 2 Cor 13:14).
Only when we come to the point where we come before God in humility and say to Him sincerely from our heart regarding any besetting sin of thoughts or actions, that we cannot stop sinning forever without Him giving us hundred percentage of His grace (John 15:5), until that time we cannot be able to stop any sin of any kind in our lives. We have to lose our hope of stopping any sin by our own strength, only then our debts are forgiven and then we learn to freely receive grace as a gift to enjoy in our lives (Rom 4:4).
If we keep trying to stop sin by keeping the law or a new year resolution to ourselves, saying I will not sin anymore from this time on, we will never stop sinning because we are setting aside the grace of God and are suffering without faith in vain (Ga 2:21; 3:4). This is the power of independent sin life that apostle Paul spoke about in his very own life and bemoaning about it to the believers, "21 It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love to do God's will so far as my new nature is concerned; 23 but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God's willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin. So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I'm in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? Thank God! It has been done by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free." (Rom 7:21-23, Living Bible).
Seeing what Paul has expressed we see that Paul was greatly distressed about a independent sin life within him, that created all kinds of lustful desires when he wanted to overcome it by the law saying I will not do it again, but we see that once He again realizes that it has been overcome by Jesus on the Cross on behalf of him in which "on account of sin, He condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom 8:3), Paul realized that now by faith in what Jesus has already done, we can choose to walk in the grace of God in which we will rest and not work to create any more debt towards God (Rom 4:4; 6:23; 4:10). If we really have come to receive grace that empowers us to overcome sin by faith (Tit 2:11-14; 1 John 5:4), then sin shall no more have upper hand of dominion in our lives (Rom 6:14). If a besetting sin overcomes us, that means, we should accept the truth that we are still trying to live up to the law which gives us no power to overcome sin, but it only condemns us to death which is the wage of sin and the righteous result for us not paying our debts to God.
Did Apostle Paul Ever Had Problem With Uncontrollable Lust?
Yes He was very concerned about it, I know it was in the area of thoughts and it was not in the area of external action he failed, because Paul in the right context says, "7 Well then, am I suggesting that these laws of God are evil? Of course not! No, the law is not sinful, but it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known the sin in my heart--the evil desires that are hidden there—if the law had not said, "You must not have evil desires in your heart." 8 But sin used this law against evil desires by reminding me that such desires are wrong, and arousing all kinds of forbidden desires within me! Only if there were no laws to break would there be no sinning." (Rom 7:7-8). In fact Paul boasts that right from his childhood itself Paul had kept the external nine commandments perfectly, that he considered himself blameless according to the righteousness which is in the law (Php 3:6). So Paul was fighting with the sin in his heart and it was not external sin of action but rather internal. Jesus said that if we see a woman and lust after her in our heart, we have already committed adultery with her in our heart (Matt 5:28). In other words, most people keep themselves perfectly without breaking all the 9 commandments which are external sin against God and men, and are then deceived at some point to think self-righteously that they have kept the law perfectly without breaking (Matt 19:20). The only thing that is lacking in their lives is, the 10th commandment they will not be able to keep without breaking even one time because it is the internal sin of the heart. So a person who thinks that he has made himself righteous before God through keeping the commandments is already deceived through self-deception (Prov 20:9), not seeing the sin of the heart within him (Mark 7:20-23, LB).
Only those who really wants to please God desperately will come to know the failure of their lives in the area of the sin of the heart which is actually a revelation from God, that turns a desperate saint to realize himself as a unworthy sinner in himself to push himself higher in to the grace of God to live perfectly in that higher realm of faith in Him (1 Cor 15:9; Eph 3:8; 1 Tim 1:15). So the internal rest of overcoming the desire of sin in thoughts which gets us to sin in our heart when we give in to those lustful thoughts willingly, is something that only the grace of God can give victory in our lives as long as we live on earth.
So the internal fight that Paul had in his heart to overcome lustful desires, was answered by God through Him giving his special grace for Paul to overcome through faith which made Paul to stop working and keep believing, and thus enjoy the rest of heaven on earth within his heart (Heb 4:9-10). Overcoming sin of the heart is not a one time event to achieve victory and rest in the laurels for a lifetime, but rather it is a lifetime of race of faith against sin nature that needs a daily victory day by day over a period of time, till the end of our lives where the race ends and crown waits for the overcomer (1 John 5:4). God has rested on the 7th day after 6 days of work, so the man who rests 1 day truly in God will avoid through faith the next 6 days of striving after that to please God with works which is impossible and instead stay with that internal rest of faith (Heb 11:6). Did Paul overcome lust in his life, yes of course, until the end of his life, and shouted victoriously at the end of his life boasting in the Lord of how he has finished perfectly his race of faith that was set by God before him (2 Tim 4:7). Paul carefully ran for the eternal prize of God which God promised to all the overcomers by faith, Paul the apostle was himself very careful to practice the things he preached to others, lest preaching to others that he himself should not get disqualified without the prize (1 Cor 9:24-27). We are in other words, competing against ourselves and our own sin nature within us to get the prize of God if we master over it in our lives. So every believer has a rest of faith in which we should learn to live perpetually as overcomer over all types and kinds of sin for the Glory of God and for the reward of God to be received in our future lives.
Much Blessings.....
Answer: Greetings in Jesus wonderful name! First of all this question is a very deep question, I do not want to answer it easily without going deep in to Scripture written by apostle Paul himself. Before we start with the life of Paul, we need to ask some basic question and answer it, to understand Paul's perspective in the right way he had delivered it to us.
Do we believers after we get saved, do we stop all sins or only some at a time?
I know most of the religious believers will want to express that before we are saved, we sin but after we are saved, we stop sinning. Is this right according to the Bible? Or is it just a wish of hyper religious Church going saint who are taught to say this way to others. What does the Bible say? It is clearly expressed in the Bible that, "For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin." (Eccl 7:20). This does mean that no human born with sin nature on earth can keep doing good without sinning himself in his or her personal life (Psa 51:5; 58:3). Not even the saintliest of the believer who has ever lived or who are living or who will live, can ever boast that they are sinless after salvation. In fact, if they ever come to that so called place of super spirituality of sinlessness, they are actually deceiving themselves and the truth of God that has declared all men under sin is actually not in them, as apostle John has revealed (1 John 1:8; Rom 3:23).
So what is the truth update of God about humans whether saved or unsaved? The message Bible thunders the following way, "23 Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, 24 God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ." (Rom 3:23-24).
This shows that if we can live sinless after we are saved, we do not actually need Christ to be still our Savior until the end of our lives on earth. That is why Jesus told those who have found themselves to be sin sick without cure, such people only need a doctor, for such needy people Jesus was ready to become their Savior and spiritual doctor to lead them back to spiritual health and vitality to help them to become saints from sinners and help them overcome the sickness of sin which leads to separation from God (Matt 9:12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31; Rom 6:23). As a sinner the wages of sin is death, even one sin done in thought or deed, will lead to separation from God, but the gift of grace by faith in the blood of Jesus shed for us restores us back infinite times in to fellowship with God to know Him more accurately and this is what is eternal life is (John 17:3; Heb 12:24; Gen 4:10; Heb 8:6; 9:15; Exod 24:8)!
Though we are still sinners by nature and choice just like before salvation naturally, we actually have become saints according to God, which is the way God see us in Christ Jesus after our salvation just the way He has expressed about us in His Word (1 Cor 1:2), because after salvation we have received the new nature of God within us and we have been given a choice to use the freely given grace of Christ to overcome sin in our lives (2 Cor 5:17; 1 Cor 10:13; 15:10; 2 Cor 6:1). The beauty about the grace of God is, if we do not use it, we will lose it in vain. If the old nature was completely taken out of us when we were saved, we would have become sinless until we sin by our own choice again (1 Peter 3:21). But since the old nature of sin that we inherited from our forefather Adam is still there, we will sin by the nudge of the old nature, but if we give in to the old pattern of thoughts willingly, without using the grace that Jesus provides, we have wasted the grace of God in that particular area of fight against sin. So it becomes a besetting sin to torment us in its sway. But still we have a choice to run to the Savior Jesus' throne to be cleansed by His blood by confessing our sins (1 John 1:7, 9; Heb 4:14-16), so that we can again become fit enough to serve the living God with a clear conscience (Heb 9:14).
In other words, we will sin as long as we will live in this flesh with the sin nature within us, but as we grow from being children to young men to Fathers in our spiritual lives, we will progressively learn to avoid more and more of sin to rule over it in our lives (1 John 2:12-14; Rom 6:14). So we need Jesus to forgive and cleanse us from our sins not only to get saved, but also as long as we live saved on earth (Heb 4:16). Only when we leave this earthly body through death, then we will actually be able to be free from sin forever more (2 Cor 5:8; Rom 7:5; 8:9; 1 Cor 6:19, 17; Gal 5:18, 16, 25; Gen 3:19). So the only way to break the cycle of sin and stop sinning is to accept the fact that we cannot stop sinning (1 John 2:1; Rom 7:23-24), but sincerely ask God to give grace to avoid it and then choose to avoid it by the renewed grace in our mind which comes through the Word of God (1 John 3:2; John 1:16; 1 Peter 5:5; Jam 4:4, 6, 10; 2 Peter 3:18; Rom 6:14; 1 Cor 16:23; 2 Cor 13:14).
Only when we come to the point where we come before God in humility and say to Him sincerely from our heart regarding any besetting sin of thoughts or actions, that we cannot stop sinning forever without Him giving us hundred percentage of His grace (John 15:5), until that time we cannot be able to stop any sin of any kind in our lives. We have to lose our hope of stopping any sin by our own strength, only then our debts are forgiven and then we learn to freely receive grace as a gift to enjoy in our lives (Rom 4:4).
If we keep trying to stop sin by keeping the law or a new year resolution to ourselves, saying I will not sin anymore from this time on, we will never stop sinning because we are setting aside the grace of God and are suffering without faith in vain (Ga 2:21; 3:4). This is the power of independent sin life that apostle Paul spoke about in his very own life and bemoaning about it to the believers, "21 It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love to do God's will so far as my new nature is concerned; 23 but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God's willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin. So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I'm in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? Thank God! It has been done by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free." (Rom 7:21-23, Living Bible).
Seeing what Paul has expressed we see that Paul was greatly distressed about a independent sin life within him, that created all kinds of lustful desires when he wanted to overcome it by the law saying I will not do it again, but we see that once He again realizes that it has been overcome by Jesus on the Cross on behalf of him in which "on account of sin, He condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom 8:3), Paul realized that now by faith in what Jesus has already done, we can choose to walk in the grace of God in which we will rest and not work to create any more debt towards God (Rom 4:4; 6:23; 4:10). If we really have come to receive grace that empowers us to overcome sin by faith (Tit 2:11-14; 1 John 5:4), then sin shall no more have upper hand of dominion in our lives (Rom 6:14). If a besetting sin overcomes us, that means, we should accept the truth that we are still trying to live up to the law which gives us no power to overcome sin, but it only condemns us to death which is the wage of sin and the righteous result for us not paying our debts to God.
Did Apostle Paul Ever Had Problem With Uncontrollable Lust?
Yes He was very concerned about it, I know it was in the area of thoughts and it was not in the area of external action he failed, because Paul in the right context says, "7 Well then, am I suggesting that these laws of God are evil? Of course not! No, the law is not sinful, but it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known the sin in my heart--the evil desires that are hidden there—if the law had not said, "You must not have evil desires in your heart." 8 But sin used this law against evil desires by reminding me that such desires are wrong, and arousing all kinds of forbidden desires within me! Only if there were no laws to break would there be no sinning." (Rom 7:7-8). In fact Paul boasts that right from his childhood itself Paul had kept the external nine commandments perfectly, that he considered himself blameless according to the righteousness which is in the law (Php 3:6). So Paul was fighting with the sin in his heart and it was not external sin of action but rather internal. Jesus said that if we see a woman and lust after her in our heart, we have already committed adultery with her in our heart (Matt 5:28). In other words, most people keep themselves perfectly without breaking all the 9 commandments which are external sin against God and men, and are then deceived at some point to think self-righteously that they have kept the law perfectly without breaking (Matt 19:20). The only thing that is lacking in their lives is, the 10th commandment they will not be able to keep without breaking even one time because it is the internal sin of the heart. So a person who thinks that he has made himself righteous before God through keeping the commandments is already deceived through self-deception (Prov 20:9), not seeing the sin of the heart within him (Mark 7:20-23, LB).
Only those who really wants to please God desperately will come to know the failure of their lives in the area of the sin of the heart which is actually a revelation from God, that turns a desperate saint to realize himself as a unworthy sinner in himself to push himself higher in to the grace of God to live perfectly in that higher realm of faith in Him (1 Cor 15:9; Eph 3:8; 1 Tim 1:15). So the internal rest of overcoming the desire of sin in thoughts which gets us to sin in our heart when we give in to those lustful thoughts willingly, is something that only the grace of God can give victory in our lives as long as we live on earth.
So the internal fight that Paul had in his heart to overcome lustful desires, was answered by God through Him giving his special grace for Paul to overcome through faith which made Paul to stop working and keep believing, and thus enjoy the rest of heaven on earth within his heart (Heb 4:9-10). Overcoming sin of the heart is not a one time event to achieve victory and rest in the laurels for a lifetime, but rather it is a lifetime of race of faith against sin nature that needs a daily victory day by day over a period of time, till the end of our lives where the race ends and crown waits for the overcomer (1 John 5:4). God has rested on the 7th day after 6 days of work, so the man who rests 1 day truly in God will avoid through faith the next 6 days of striving after that to please God with works which is impossible and instead stay with that internal rest of faith (Heb 11:6). Did Paul overcome lust in his life, yes of course, until the end of his life, and shouted victoriously at the end of his life boasting in the Lord of how he has finished perfectly his race of faith that was set by God before him (2 Tim 4:7). Paul carefully ran for the eternal prize of God which God promised to all the overcomers by faith, Paul the apostle was himself very careful to practice the things he preached to others, lest preaching to others that he himself should not get disqualified without the prize (1 Cor 9:24-27). We are in other words, competing against ourselves and our own sin nature within us to get the prize of God if we master over it in our lives. So every believer has a rest of faith in which we should learn to live perpetually as overcomer over all types and kinds of sin for the Glory of God and for the reward of God to be received in our future lives.
Much Blessings.....
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