This understanding of the victorious Christian life can only be sustained by an unfortunate misreading of Paul’s description of the Christian life as it unfolds in Romans chapters 6-8. This conception of the Christian life is framed by a combination of decisional regeneration, dispensational eschatology, and Keswick, Wesleyan, or mystical versions of the Christian life, all of which involve a “higher life” or “victorious” Christian life, centering in a conscious experience of victory over indwelling sin.

The poor, struggling sinner who is erroneously told that the struggle with sin he or she is currently experiencing is a sign of defeat and that the person is not yet a Christian, or else has chosen not to take advantage of the victory offered to all those in Christ, should instead see the struggle with sin as proof that sanctification is actually taking place.

In the evangelical world in which I was raised, it was the minister’s job to ensure that everyone in his congregation was “living in victory.” What this meant was that those who were truly committed to Jesus Christ and had made him Lord over every area of their lives would not be content to remain “carnal Christians.” If you were truly committed to Jesus, you would strive with everything in you to move into the “victorious life” described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8. In that passage, the Apostle Paul supposedly speaks of victorious Christians as people who had made the determination to walk according to the Spirit and to no longer walk after the flesh (Rom. 8:1, kjv). Those hearty souls who managed to completely dedicate themselves to Christ could attain that lofty goal spoken of by Paul as “more than a conqueror” (cf. Rom. 8:37). To demonstrate that we were striving to attain victory, there were the familiar behavioral taboos. And you certainly did not want to be “left behind,” forced to endure the seven-year tribulation and risk coming face to face with the minions of the Antichrist.

While this version of the Christian life is widely accepted throughout much of American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, it is apparently now on the decline. This understanding of the victorious Christian life can only be sustained by an unfortunate misreading of Paul’s description of the Christian life as it unfolds in Romans chapters 6-8. This conception of the Christian life is framed by a combination of decisional regeneration, dispensational eschatology, and Keswick, Wesleyan, or mystical versions of the Christian life, all of which involve a “higher life” or “victorious” Christian life, centering in a conscious experience of victory over indwelling sin. In this scheme, Paul supposedly speaks of death to sin in Romans 6, and then describes his unregenerate (pre-conversion) condition in Romans 7, which is, in turn, followed by the critical passage in Romans 8:1, which, according to a textual variant that is not found in the better-supported Western and Alexandrian manuscripts, includes the exhortation to “walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

But is Paul defending this understanding of the Christian life in Romans 6-8? The critical hinge upon which this faulty understanding of the Christian life turns is Paul’s discussion of an intense struggle with sin depicted in Romans 7:14-25. In this passage, Paul speaks of a personal struggle that is so deep and intense that the person in view there describes himself as someone who is “sold under sin” (v. 14). He does not understand his own actions (v. 15). He wants to do what is right but ends up sinning anyway (vv. 15-16, 18). He speaks of sin almost as a force, living within him controlling his actions (vv. 16-17). When he does the evil he does not want to do, he feels like his members (his body and its passions) are waging war on his mind, which knows what is right even though he lacks the power to do it (vv. 22-23). So intense is this struggle with sin that the author speaks of himself as a “wretched man” in desperate need of deliverance by Jesus Christ.

Surely, such a person cannot be a Christian-or at least that is what I was told. And yet, I knew that deep down inside, Romans 7:14-25 is describing me. Whoever Paul was describing in these verses-I was told that this was either Paul’s own experience as a Jew before he was converted, or else this was a description of those Jews under the condemnation of law-he was just like me! While there is always a great danger in interpreting God’s Word through the lens of personal experience, it seemed that the more I tried to live in victory mode and leave my carnal desires behind, the more I felt like that person Paul was describing in Romans 7.

I had accepted Jesus as my personal Savior from my earliest recollection, so I knew that I was a Christian. The solution that was held out to those struggling saints like me (although I never admitted to anyone that I was struggling like this because my fellow Christians might think that I was still a “carnal Christian”) was to rededicate my life to Christ, or to ask God to give me more grace so that the desired victory might soon come. It never did. Then there was the counsel which held out that instead of trying with everything in me to be holy, I should stop trying and just “let go and let God.”
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