Your Man of Sin (carnal nature) is a part of your mortal body.  He is not Satan or demonic possession.  He is a result of the curse that the Earth received when Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Because of Adam's disobedience, sin entered the world and spread to all men. 


Isaiah 54:16 tells us that God "created the waster to destroy."  We also know that He created light and dark, good and evil.  Everything was created by Him and for His purposes. 

The curse of Adam's transgression was mortality.  Because of it our flesh dies.  The fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is that we get to walk with a carnal nature (man of sin) along with our spirit (divine nature).  The resulting conflict is to teach us the difference between the two and to become conformed to the image of Christ by walking in spirit (pneuma), not our soulish desires.

When The Bible refers to the flesh or the adamic nature or the sin nature or the law of sin in your body, it is referring to this carnal nature that we inherited from Adam.  Because of our understanding of 2 Thessalonians 2, we call this Adamic, carnal, fleshly nature the Man of Sin, and you will have to contend with him until you die.
 

Remember, scriptures may have both an individual as well as a corporate interpretation.  This verse is often used to teach about the end times and the anti-christ, but it also has a personal application:


As a born-again child of God, you are spirit and soul and live in a body of flesh. Even though at salvation, you received eternal life and a perfect, sinless spirit, you are still living in a body of flesh that is subject to the whims of its Man of Sin. He desires to be the god of your temple.   It is this Man of Sin who is defiling your temple.  He continually lies to you about who you are in Christ, attempts to steal your ability to walk in the Truth and to kill your relationship with God.  It is only by the Structured Plan of your Father that he is held in check.
 

The day you were born again, you changed from being a soul man and became a spirit man.  The battle with your enemy is internal.  Romans tells us that the  battlefield is in your mind between your spirit and your man of sin for the control of your soul.  Adam was given authority over the Earth and the soul was given authority over the mind and the body.

You have been hearing the voice of your man of sin all your life.  You are so used to hearing his voice, that you think he is you but he is not.  He is that voice in your mind that continually presses on your mind to do something that you know you shouldn't and tells you that you can't be what God says you are.



Your man of sin is called an accuser of the brethren and loves to set one against another. 

He is skilled at distorting what you hear so that he can color your thoughts with his.  He fills your mind with words of worry, doubt and fear, lies and half-truths.

His words of desires blind you.  His words activate you body's feel good desires.  If he can't stop you through negative intimidation, he will push you into what feels good.  He will do whatever it takes to keep you in infatuated with his desires.

Deception is his best tool and most people don’t even realize that he is talking to them.  He is so subtle that unless the Holy Spirit points him out, you believe that you are the one thinking those thoughts.


Your man of sin desires to control your mind thereby controlling your body.  When you obey his voice, he takes you go where you don't want to go and causes you to stay longer than you want to stay.

BUT you have an advocate living inside of you.  At Salvation you were given a christ spirit (an anointed spirit from The Father) for the purpose of helping your soul to mature.  The more you mature, the better your soul gets at resisting the enemy of your soul.

We are called to be overcomers.   So what do we overcome except the enemy of our soul and all of his lies and deceptions and traps of trickery.

Satan is an enemy of your soul.  He is your man of sin's master.  He continually presses your man of sin to “put out that light!”  What light?  “The glorious light of the Christ in you.” 

The Apostle Paul was confounded by his own Man of Sin

In the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul wrote about his own conflict with his man of sin.  Most Christians who hear about the man of sin inside of them have a hard time believing because they don't know anything about him.  This is one of the purposes of this website.

Romans 7:14-25  For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.
 
If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me, for I know that in me (that is, in my flesh/Man of Sin) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.
 

Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.

But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. (NKJV)

Paul recognized that this battle with the man of sin is an ongoing battle.  Sometimes you recognize him and win and other times he walks you into sin before you even realize he is pushing you.  But Paul also realized that although the man of sin seemed to be a part of him, he really isn't.

Rom 8:1  There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 

If the Apostle Paul struggled to overcome his Man of Sin, then "IT" is something that you have to fight too.

You must constantly stand in a position of awareness over who is speaking to your mind - your soul man, your spirit man or the Man of Sin? 

Rom 12:1-3  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.