Why Do I Still Struggle After Being Born Again?
1) Direct Answer
You still struggle because the new life is in you, but your body and human spirit have not been redeemed yet. The Holy Spirit in your inner man wars against the flesh. That conflict is a sign of life, not a sign that you were not born again. God allows the fight to train you, prove you, and make you an overcomer.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- The Bible says, “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh” (Galatians 5:17). That’s the battle you feel.
- Paul said he delighted in God’s law “after the inward man,” yet felt another law in his members (Romans 7:22-25). Then he declares, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1-2).
- We “groan within ourselves, waiting for…the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23). The soul is reborn now; the body’s redemption is future.
- Those sealed “with that Holy Spirit of promise” are “sealed unto the day of redemption” (Ephesians 1:13; 4:30). God keeps what He births.
- “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him” (1 John 3:9). The Seed in the soul cannot deny the Word. When a believer stumbles, he is grieved and confesses (1 John 1:9), and has “an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).
- God chastens sons (Hebrews 12:6-8). Correction is proof of sonship, not rejection.
- “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). “God…will…make a way to escape” for every temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13).
- Put on the whole armor of God and use the Sword of the Spirit, the Word (Ephesians 6:10-18).
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- New birth changes your nature. You love the Word and hate sin. The struggle remains because you’re still in the same body with old habits pressing from the outside. The Seed inside cannot disbelieve the Word, but the flesh must be crucified daily. Feed the inner man with the Word and prayer, and starve the flesh by refusing its avenues (eyes, ears, thoughts, companions, places).
- Condemnation is the enemy’s voice; conviction is the Spirit drawing you to confess and walk on. If you can sin without grief, that’s danger; but if it pains you and drives you to Christ, that’s life.
4) Short Reinforcing Counsel
- Stay in the Word daily; speak it back to temptation.
- Pray and watch; avoid the doorways of the old life.
- Confess quickly; don’t hide. The Blood answers the accuser.
- Fellowship with the faithful; put on the armor.
- Remember: the battle means you’re alive. God started the work, and He will finish it.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
You must be born again
61-1231M §103
You know, I was reading the life of John the Baptist the other day, what he said, what did he call them? "You generation of vipers!" Why? He was raised in the wilderness. He knowed what they was. Stomp your foot and they take for cover. "You generation of vipers." Also, "The axe is laid to the root of the tree." Tree, vipers, axes, he talked on what he knowed. That's the way you learn God, by what you know. You see a pig and a lamb, there's nothing at all. You might wash that little old pig up and do everything you...
Birth Pains
65-0124 §27
We know the old seed must, before the new seed can come out of the old seed, it must rot. Absolutely. Not die only, but rot after it's dead. We know that to be true. That's the same thing in new birth. We never go back, but we go forward, when you're born again. And that's why I think today we have so many ... not so many, rather, genuine new births, is because the seed is... Maybe it'll sympathize with the Word or the person, but they don't want to rot away from the old system that they were in. They don't want to...
You must be born again
61-1231M §116
Now look, if we see how it turns out here, and you can't change after death... Now you watch these people that come in, gets all these sensations and things, run out, and tomorrow they're this way. Have you seen it? Hundreds of them, see. And you see what happens. And now what if them people died in that state? Death doesn't change it. So, oh, Christians, in closing these words let me say this. Let us turn to Him and His Word, with all sincerity. Come humbly, like Christians, and be born again of His Spirit. And wh...
Hebrews, Chapter 6, part 2
57-0908E §34
I could run out and be gone all the time, just gadding about over the country, and let her half starve or anything, let the children go without something to eat, we're still married! If she even divorces me, I'm still married as long as there's life in my body; I took that vow: "Till death we separate." That's right, we're still married. But, yet, I make a poor excuse of a husband. She'd make a poor excuse as a wife. So if we love one another, we stick together and pull the load together. That's the way God and His...
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever
58-0312 §4
We preach the Gospel. We believe first that a man must be born again. "Ye must be born again." And then, if he's not born again, then he can not understand the kingdom of God. Jesus told Nicodemus that. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom." The word see there is the English translation, which really means "cannot understand the kingdom of God," until he's born again.