Christian Tract Outreach

It never ceases to amaze me just how many of us Christians never seem to have come to realise the power, the importance or the significance of that scripture in our everyday lives. I constantly hear such statements as, “We can’t help sinning all the time.” “It’s impossible for us not to sin every day,” plus many other such statements.

So often the cast for these beliefs seems to build on what is written in 1John 1:8 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” And again in 1John 1:10 “If we say we have not sinned we make God a liar and his word is not in us.” We grab hold of these texts because, sadly, they uphold our personal experience of powerless against the passions of our flesh.

But we really must begin to balance who those scriptures say with what the Spirit is saying in the next verse, 1John 2:1 “I am writing this THAT YOU MAY NOT SIN, BUT IF ANYONE DOES SIN, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” There is absolutely no suggestion here, or anywhere else in the scriptures that for those reborn of God it is inevitable that we will continue to sin, and that we are unable to stop.

In 1John 3: we read, “No one who abides in Christ continues to sin, no one who continues to sin has either seen him or know him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Those who do right are righteous.  Anyone who continues to sin is of the devil; for
the devil sinned from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.  No one born of God continues to sin, for God’s nature abides in him and he cannot continue to sin because he is reborn of God. By this it may be seen who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil; whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother.”