If I’m United to Christ, Why Do I Still Sin?

by Sinclair Ferguson

Dr. Sinclair Ferguson explains why Christians continue to struggle with sin even after accepting Christ, offering biblical insights and relatable examples to address this common spiritual question.

If I’m united to Christ, why do I still sin? Let me come at the answer in two ways by reflecting back on the fact that this is the case for us as Christians. And maybe the easiest and best place to do that is by thinking about what Paul teaches from let’s say Romans 5:12–7:25. In Romans 5:12–21, he is saying, Christians have been brought out of their union with Adam and the flesh, and they’ve been brought into union with Christ. And then he explains that in Romans 6 by saying, one of the things this means is that you have died to the dominion of sin, and it no longer reigns over you. But then he makes clear already Romans 6, but I think very obviously in Romans 7, the fact that sin no longer reigns over you because you’re united to Christ does not mean that sin’s presence has been destroyed.

So, Christians are set free from the reign of sin, but they’re not yet set free from the influence of sin. We’re still in the same bodies; still of the same minds. We actually still have the same memories of sin, and sometimes they haunt us.

The way I try and illustrate this as somebody who is British and never became an American citizen, even though I lived here a long time, is to say, if I had become an American citizen and Great Britain had gone to war, and the queen or the present king had written to me saying, “Ferguson, you are called up to serve in my army.” I could have written back to him and said: “Sir,”—I would’ve been polite—but—“Sir, you are no longer the person who is an authority over me. I’m no longer under your dominion.” Yet at the same time, there might have been emotions in me, feelings in me, instincts in me that would’ve said part of me still seems to belong there. I still sound as though I’m from there. I still have instincts that aren’t totally American. I still eat with a knife and a fork, although I try just to do it with a fork. And maybe that’s not the greatest illustration to help everybody, but I think it’s helpful to me to see the difference between the fact that sin’s reign over me has ended, and yet sin is still present in me and it will be until I’m finally glorified. And I think that’s part of the explanation for the struggle that Paul goes on to speak about in Romans 7. So that’s one way of thinking about it. To think about it in terms of that specific section in Romans.

A much simpler way to think about it is this, that if you’re a Christian, the Lord Jesus Christ dwells in you. And if you’re a Christian, sin continues to dwell in you. And if that’s so, there is what the Westminster Confession calls “an irreconcilable war in your life,” and there will be times when the enemy seems to defeat you. There will be times when indwelling sin seems to rear its ugly head. But the great thing to remember is that the One who is in you, the Lord Jesus Christ, is far greater than any remnants of indwelling sin that remain. Because I think Satan has a very subtle way of saying to us: “Look, there’s sin there and there’s sin there. It isn’t possible that you’ve been set free from sin’s dominion,”—when the truth of the matter is the very fact that you are concerned about the presence of sin and that you fight against it, that’s only possible because you’ve been released from the dominion of sin and been brought into the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And all this, I think reminds us that the Christian life is a battle all the way to glory. Only then as [William Cowper]’s hymn, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” has this line in it: “There will come a time when all the ransom church of God will be saved to sin no more.” And that’s a day that we do not yet experience, but thankfully we’re looking forward to one day.