Stewart Hamblin begins his hymn, It Is No Secret,
with the words, “The chimes of time ring out the news; Another day is through. Someone slipped and fell. Was that someone you?”
Well, it was me.
Sometimes it seems like, despite my best intentions, it is hard to keep
from sinning. Whether it’s a curse
uttered in aggravation, a hateful thought about someone, or watching a violent
and “soft-core” pornographic program on television, the old sinful nature seems
to bubble up … and sin happens.
and the truth is not in us.
(1John 1:8 NASB)*
(Romans 3:23 NASB)*
I could never hope to live as righteously as the Apostle
Paul did, and he also suffered a great deal for the Lord. He met opposition almost everywhere he
went. Many times, he was in danger of
losing his life. He describes his
experiences as follows:
… but in everything commending ourselves as servants of
God,
in much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in
distresses,
in beatings, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors,
in sleeplessness, in hunger, in purity, in knowledge,
in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine
love,
in the word of truth, in the power of God;
by the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the
left,
by glory and dishonor, by evil report and good report;
regarded as deceivers and yet true; as unknown yet
well-known,
as dying yet behold, we live; as punished yet not put to
death,
as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many
rich,
as having nothing
yet possessing all things.
(2Corinthians 6: 4-10 NASB)*
(Philippians 3: 4-8 NASB)*
Yet,
even the Apostle Paul acknowledged that he, too, was a sinner:
(1Timothy 1:15 NASB)*
My old sinful nature,too, lives on in me, and the desire to
please my sinful human nature is in conflict with my new nature in Christ,
which desires to please God. Paul
described it this way:
(Romans 7:22-25 NASB)*
Christians sin, and when they do they fall out of
fellowship with God:
(1John 1:6-7 NASB)*
Sin interferes with the Christian’s relationship (not union)
with God. The Holy Spirit within us
grieves when we fall short. (Ephesians 4:30)
When a person is saved, they become a part of the body of
Christ. The Holy Spirit lives in us, and
Jesus is in us. Jesus taught that He is
in the Father, and the Father is in Him, and He is in us. (John 14:20) We have
a blessed union with God, if we are truly saved, that God will not allow sin to
destroy. (John 10:29)
When
I sin, I find that I long for the intimate relationship with God, which has
been interfered with. My fellowship with
other believers becomes inauthentic as well.
Therefore, I become motivated to put things right. I am prompted by the Holy Spirit to turn away
(repent) from my sin and give it up.
Repentance is the first step toward restoration, and it is one of the
first things Jesus taught when he came back from wandering in the desert. (Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15)
If I then confess my sin with a contrite heart, God has promised
His forgiveness, and I have faith that I am forgiven:
and the truth is not in us.
(1John 1:8-9
NASB)*
I am, then, only obligated to
go forward in the faith that I have been restored to fellowship with God. If I sin in ignorance, or if I forget to
confess something, I have the assurance that Christ died once for all sin, and
that I am forgiven. (1 Peter 3:18)
I will close with an admonition. I am not advocating “cheap grace.” A true Christian does not willfully disobey
God, or willfully continue in sin. We live under a commandment:
This is His
commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ …
(1John 3:23
NASB)*
“Believe in the
Lord Jesus, and you will be saved …”
(Acts 16:31
NASB)*
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall
not perish, but have eternal life.”
(John 3:16 NASB)*
If we stop believing in
Jesus, we commit apostacy. Willfully
continuing in sin hardens the heart, which is a high road to apostacy. John the
Apostle said that, for the Christian, there is sin that does not lead to death
(that is that can be forgiven), but there is a sin that leads to death
(forsaking the Lord). (1John 5:16) You must believe in Jesus to be saved.
In Hebrews we find:
It is impossible for those who have once
been enlightened,
who
have tasted the heavenly gift,
who
have shared in the Holy Spirit,
who have tasted the goodness of the word of
God
and
the powers of the coming age
and who have fallen away,
to be brought back to repentance.
To
their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over
again
and subjecting him to public disgrace.
Land that drinks in the rain often falling
on it
and
that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed
receives the blessing of God.
But land that produces thorns and thistles
is
worthless and is in danger of being cursed.
In
the end it will be burned.
(Hebrews 6: 4-8 NASB)*
Peter said the same thing about false teachers:
If they have escaped
the corruption of the world
by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
and are again entangled in it and are
overcome,
they are worse off at the end than they were
at the beginning.
It would have been
better for them
not to have known the way of righteousness,
than to have known it
and then to turn their backs on the sacred
command
that was passed on to them.
Of them the proverbs
are true:
“A dog returns to its vomit,” and,
“A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing
in the mud.”
(2 Peter 2:20-22 NASB)*
John declares such folk to be antichrists who never were
true Christians in the first place. (1 John 2:18-19) John also says that true
Christians obey His commands and walk as Jesus did. (1 John 2:3-6)
Okay then, I am not perfect, but I am forgiven. I can’t go on sinning willfully just because
forgiveness is available to me. If I do, such willful sinning will ultimately end in death by causing
me to become apostate. I know this to be true because it almost happened to me. I am a work in
progress until I go to be with the Lord.
Praise be to God, who has delivered me!
Please believe in Jesus and spend eternity with us in His presence.
