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.
Why many Christians struggle to live the Christian life
57-0303A §29
Then you go back home and say, "Hallelujah, I got it." No you haven't. Then you go down to church and you say, "Oh, I believe that something's happened. I don't look at things the way I use to. Hallelujah!" And in a few days you find yourself right down the same old rut you was: doubting, reasoning, everything else. "Well now, if Pastor So-and-so said that wasn't right, I don't believe it's right. I will just take his word for it. And I tell you I'm going to do this, and do that." And you find yourself up-and-down,...
Ye must be born again
58-0619B §44
...had to bring him through sex. Then what happened? Where we make our bodies from the dust of the earth---that calcium, that lumber, the potash, that God had laying out---is still being used. One day the last bit of it will be used up; that's right. The lumber pile will go down. But God still makes man from the dust of the earth. And you come on this earth without having any reason, any way, no way at all you had of bringing yourself here. God brought you here.
To whom shall we go?
60-0604 §43
Nicodemus asked the question, "How can I be born again? I'm an old man, enter into my mother's womb the second time?" He said, "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Now that translation there is really understand. Understand the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is within you, so you couldn't actually see it unless you see it operating. But the only way you will ever be able to understand it, you've got to be born again. To be born again, you've been filled with God's Spirit, then you're i...
Questions and Answers (God being misunderstood)
61-0723E §82
And nobody knowed nothing about it. It was a strange thing that the King of the Jews was born and people hundreds of miles away knowed about it; and right here in the city where He was born, and the place He was born, amongst the people He was born to, and they knowed nothing about it. They misunderstood the Magi. They said, "There's no such a thing as the king of the Jews. We got a king up here, Herod." He was misunderstood in His birth when He was born. And Mary was to be mother before she was married to Joseph....
You must be born again
61-1231M §44
First, we reckon ourselves sinners and worthy of condemnation. And we are all born in sin and shaped in iniquity, there's not a sound parcel of us. Our minds are bad, our soul is corruptible, our constant thinking is evil, every imaginary thought of a man's mind is evil---a sinner. And also that our body is weak, our spirit is no good, and we're just full of corruption. And how could one corruptible thing bring another good thing out of a corruptible? Let me say this, that in Job, fourteenth chapter, he said, "Seei...