IF WE SAY WE HAVE NO SIN, WE DECEIVE OURSELVES, AND THE TRUTH IS NOT IN US.
Author : Sakkie Parsons
Someone wrote to me:
More than one minister has been preaching that Christians cannot sin.
Can you write something about this?
Long ago, someone taught me:
"Do not waver, call sin by its name."
Therefor I want to start by saying that any statement that would pretend that a Christian could not or sometimes does not sin, is definitely a dreadful lie – which holds considerable benefit for the devil.
Let’s look what the Word says about this subject and then I will start with what the Holy Spirit directed Paul to write. Paul – according to my opinion, the greatest apostle of all times, considering the many times he is mentioned in God’s Word and keep in mind our Lord ordained him to write the largest portion of the New Testament.
He writes:
ROM 7:19-25
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Against the background of what you just read, let me share one example that probably happened in your own life and as you are reading this,
I’m sure you can still think of hundreds of other examples where you in the heat of the moment did not act as a true Christian should – and then realized that you did not act in a Godly way.
You are riding in your car and all of a sudden a taxy slide in front of you and if it wasn’t for you quick response, it could have been a terrible accident.
Your immediate reaction – you, child of God – before you can think rationally: “You…. with perhaps even draw a finger and then just as quick – you hear the Holy Spirit’s voice inside you and you feel bad and ask God for forgiveness.
If it is not sin, why do you feel guilty and ask for forgiveness?
Because the Holy Spirit of our Lord residing in you, convince you that it is a sin in the eyes of our Lord.
This is only one of legion examples that you yourself might have in your own life to support what I wrote here.
We read further in 1JOHN 1:8-10 and remember that 1JOHN was written specifically to Christians:
1JOHN 1:8-10
8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
It also means that His Word has no place in our lives.
A true Christian – I say true Christian because there are many, many people who call themselves Christians, that are only religious and one can be full of religion and yet be completely empty of our Lord’s Holy Spirit.
Look at the Pharisees, the most religious people of Jesus’ day and they were His worst enemies.
A true Christian will not commit the same sins knowingly over and over again.
Sadly however – sometimes satan catches us time and time again with the same scam but then we make sure to step quickly out of his snare and we do that with honest regret and repentance. We never more sin deliberately premeditated with a stubborn heart.
To use one example: It is completely impossible that I will sit down and plan and implement a strategy to steal from someone.
The lightest I can describe a so-called Christian who deliberately and willfully sin, is the following out of the Word:
2PE 2:20-22
20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.
21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.
22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: "The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire."
Remember now –
Because I am a fallible man and satan is a god, the god of evil, he may take me more than once with the same scam but I know it right away and I fight with everything I have in me to escape as soon as possible from the gutter where he got me to come, because the Holy Spirit, (I Praise the name of the Lord!) who lives in me, will help me to get out of there and I then next time he comes up with that same trick, to be more alert and ready not to be recaptured by it.
I’m now sharing two more passages from God’s Word to show you how we, as true followers of Jesus Christ, eventually should look at this matter:
ROM 6:1-2
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
HEB 10:26-29
26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
Then we read further:
HEB 10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
So what is the solution for my sinful nature and my sin and would there be an answer to this question?
Yes! Praise the Name of our Lord!
I have to repent and receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour so that His wonderful Holy Spirit can live inside of me:
ACTS 2:37-38
37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"
38 And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
This does not mean that you are no longer going to sin, because there is the god of evil and he is going to try his best to literally hoist you with his malice – but it means that now that your heart has changed and you have Christ's Holy Spirit indwelling in you – that you will now hate sin and always repent if you have sinned, always sincerely apologies to our Lord that you have sinned against Him.
ROM 7:24-25
24 And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian.
25 He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand.
ROM 8:12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.
ROM 8:13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Jesus is saying:
JOHN 14:16-18
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,
17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
18 "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you”.
How jubilant we can rejoice!
ACTS 2:39 For the promise(of the Holy Spirit) is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself."
Greetings,
Sakkie