By Prophet of Grace PAULYB

I think one of the biggest reasons so many Christians are tired, burned out, frustrated, and stuck in an up-and-down relationship with God is because they still believe the number one lie of religion. The lie is this: that you still have a sinful nature. Now for some people, that may not sound like a big deal. But this lie sits underneath almost everything religion teaches. It’s why so many believers spend their whole lives trying to fix themselves, clean themselves up, improve themselves, kill off the “old man,” and fight this constant inner war they think is living inside them. And because of that, Christianity becomes exhausting.

One day you read your Bible and prayed for an hour, so you feel like God is happy with you. The next day you mess up, lose your temper, skip prayer, and suddenly you feel far away from Him again. Up and down. Up and down. One day you feel holy. The next day you feel dirty. One day you feel close to God. The next day you feel rejected. That is not rest. That is slavery. Religion keeps people trapped in this emotional rollercoaster because it quietly teaches that your relationship with God rises and falls based on your performance. But the gospel says something completely different. Jesus already applied His perfect performance to you. That changes everything.

See, some people try to motivate Christians by saying things like, “Don’t disappoint God.” But listen carefully. God is not disappointed in you because He was never trusting in your performance to begin with. That shocks religious thinking. People say, “Well, Jesus did His part, but now I’ve got to do my part.” No. Jesus is your part. That’s the gospel. He is not only the God you trust in. He is also the perfect human response to the Father on your behalf. He fulfilled both sides of the relationship between God and man. That’s why Christianity is not about you trying to become accepted through effort. Christianity starts with acceptance because of Christ.

Now I know this starts hitting sacred cows really fast. Some people have built entire ministries around fixing Christians up. Some people have spent twenty years trying to clean up an old self that God says already died. But honestly, better twenty years than twenty-one. One day going in the right direction is better than twenty years going in the wrong one. So let’s go straight to the backbone of religion and deal with the number one lie. You do not still possess a sinful nature.

Romans 6 destroys this idea completely. Paul says, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” Notice Paul does not say you were inspired by His death. He says you were included in it. You died with Him. Buried with Him. Raised with Him. Now most Christians think baptism is mainly about their decision for Christ. But Paul’s talking about something much deeper. He’s talking about humanity being included in Jesus. His death was your death. That old twisted, broken, sinful identity met its end in the body of Jesus Christ. Paul says your old self was crucified with Him. Not slowly dying. Not being improved. Not getting cleaned up over forty years. Crucified. Dead. Buried. Gone.

Now this is where religion panics because people immediately say, “Well, if I don’t have a sinful nature anymore, then why do I still sin?” That’s actually a really good question. But maybe the bigger question is this: What if you’ve been believing the wrong thing about yourself the whole time? See, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. If you constantly believe you are dirty, broken, sinful at your core, and separated from God, what are you going to manifest? But what if you started believing what Scripture actually says about you? That you are the righteousness of God in Christ. That you are holy. That you are blameless before Him in love. That as He is, so are we in this world. What would happen if you actually believed holiness was your real identity?

Religion teaches that holiness is hard and sin is natural. The gospel teaches the opposite. Sin is unnatural to who you really are in Christ. Holiness is your true design. Think about it like this. You don’t wake up every morning reminding yourself not to become somebody else. You don’t wake up saying, “Don’t be Mongolian today. Don’t be Argentine today.” Why? Because you already know who you are. It takes no effort to be who you believe you are. That’s why holiness becomes natural when identity becomes clear. The problem is not that Christians need more self-hatred. The problem is they’ve forgotten who they are. Paul never told believers to spend their lives trying to kill off the old man. He told them the old man already died. But religion keeps dragging the old dead guy back into church every Sunday trying to fix him up again. We clean him up. Put makeup on him. Send him through another inner healing program. Another deliverance class. Another self-improvement conference. Another twelve-step spiritual system. But maybe the thing you’re trying to fix is already dead. That’s what Paul is saying. You have died with Christ.

Now some people hear this and think, “Well, what about dying daily?” That verse gets ripped out of context constantly. Paul was talking about facing physical danger daily because of persecution. He was not teaching Christians to spend their lives trying to spiritually commit suicide. The old self is already dead. That’s why the cross matters so much. And honestly, most Christians have never really been taught the cross. We think Jesus was over there dying for us while we stood far away watching. But Paul says something much deeper. You were in Christ on that cross. His death was your death. Jesus did not just die for you. He died as you. That’s why the cross is not depressing news. It’s the pleasure center of the universe. It’s where God put away everything separating you from Him forever.

And if you died with Him, then you were also raised with Him. You are not trying to slowly become united with God after years of striving, fasting, suffering, and trying harder. You were united with Him 2,000 years ago in Christ. That’s why Scripture says you are the Body of Christ. Think about that. How could you get any closer to someone than being their body? You are not separated from Him. You are not far away from Him. He is closer than your breath. Closer than your own skin. Now hear me carefully. I’m not saying you are God. There is unity with distinction. But union is real. And this changes everything because the Christian life stops becoming self-improvement and starts becoming identity awakening.

The old sinful self was never the real you anyway. It was a false identity. A lie. A forgetting. The real you is the one revealed in Christ. That’s why Paul says if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Not partially fixed. Not spiritually patched together. New. Religion says God added a new nature onto your old sinful one. The gospel says He replaced the old with the new. And honestly, this changes the whole Christian life. You stop waking up every day trying not to sin. You stop obsessing over darkness. You stop trying to earn closeness with God. You stop trying to become what Christ already made you. And instead, you begin enjoying what He finished. That’s why the gospel is good news. Not because it’s difficult. Because it’s so unbelievably good that religion struggles to accept it. Jesus finished the job. You are not half-clean. You are not spiritually unfinished. You are not a dirty sinner trying to become loved. You are a new creation in Christ. And maybe the biggest freedom comes when you finally stop trying to fix a dead man and start learning to live as the person Jesus already says you are.

If identity is the battle you’ve been fighting, that is why I wrote GOD’S VOICE. It will help you hear who God says you are and live from the new creation He already made you: Get GOD’S VOICE (book + audio) here.

If you want to go deeper in this, come into the Inner Circle. It is where we stop trying to fix the dead man and learn to live as new creations together: Go deeper in the Inner Circle.