(Reading time: Approximately four minutes.)

After I came to faith, I had a pastor who spoke often about “the new nature.” I’ve heard this terminology many times since. The idea is that a person receives a new nature upon conversion. This new nature makes life more complicated, for one also has an old nature and the two are in continual conflict.

The concept of the two natures is often supported with illustrations. So, for example, it has been said that the new nature and old nature are like dogs. Whichever one you feed will get stronger and eventually conquer the other.

These two natures are sometimes referred to as “the sinful nature,” a phrase frequently employed in the 1984 edition of the New International Version, and “the spiritual nature.” Human beings are born with a sinful nature – “in sin my mother conceived me” – but are “born again” with a spiritual nature. The sinful nature is sometimes called the “old nature,” while the spiritual nature is referred to as the “new nature.”

The language of old and new natures is not particularly helpful, especially for a person who is newly converted. For one thing, it does not follow biblical usage closely enough. The Bible speaks of “the old person” and “the new person,” not the “old nature” and the “new nature.” The Greek word that is normally translated “nature,” which appears fourteen times in the Bible, is never used biblically to describe pre and post conversion personas or temperaments.

Such talk about “natures” can be misleading. It implies that there exists a ready-made nature which one can slip into as one slips into a car – in this case an autonomous vehicle that is capable of driving itself. It makes the new Christian a passenger, rather than a driver. But “natures” do not come ready-made.

It would be more in line with biblical usage to say that the believer receives new life – even a new kind of life – and a new spirit. That new life only becomes a new nature when it becomes natural, and it only becomes natural as a person chooses it again and again. A new nature is not automatic; it results from choices a believer makes with God’s help.

Imagine kayaking along a river and coming to a fork. The main branch goes to the left and a small stream, hardly deep enough for a kayak, goes to the right. The main branch, which is deep and wide, has a strong current. The stream does not.

It is not difficult to follow the main branch of the river. In fact, if you lift your paddle out of the water, the current will carry you that way. But the river’s main branch does not lead where you want to go.

This image of a forked river illustrates what happens to people who experience Christian conversion. They receive God’s Spirit and, with the Spirit, a new kind of life which, like a river, is headed somewhere. It is drawn to God. 

In the beginning, this new life is not a powerful current in the believer’s life. It is more like a small, rocky stream. It hardly seems significant—a mere trickle compared to the broad river of the old, natural life.

After conversion, a person will come to many forks in the river. In one direction, the branch of the old life flows with a strong current. It is familiar, easy, and natural. In the other direction flows this new stream. It is unfamiliar, shallow, and with little current, yet it flows with “the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus,” as the Apostle Paul put it.

People choose this new life by trusting God and obeying his instructions. Early on, this requires what seems like constant attention, but if one continues this way, the current will grow stronger, the stream fuller. It eventually becomes easier – more natural – to follow the new course than to return to the old. To the degree this happens, we can rightly say that the person has a new nature.