Victors Over Sin – Part II
Today’s Scripture: 1 John 3:4-10
Key Verse: 1 John 3:6
Anyone who continues to live in Him will not sin. But anyone who keeps on sinning does not know Him or understand who He is.
In yesterday’s devotion we studied verses that dealt with sin in a believer.
To summarize, we learned that believers can sin even though God’s strength in us can keep us from sinning. We learned from this that when we sin, the problem is with us not God. We must never excuse our sin for any reason other than our decision not to draw upon God’s resources that could have kept us from that sin.
The good news that we have learned in earlier devotions is that when we sin, we have Jesus as our advocate sitting at the right hand of the Father. When we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
Finally, in yesterday’s devotion we studied the fact that true believers do not make a practice of sinning.
Today I want to study why true believers do not make a practice of sinning. First John 3:9b makes the reason clear: “…because of God’s life in them”.
Here is the plain truth of the matter: true believers can sin, but they cannot make a practice of continual sinning because God’s Spirit lives in them.
When God saves us through our belief in Jesus, He gives us a new perspective on life. This new perspective sees sin as it really is; that is, a death sentence to many things that used to be important to us. Even though sin satisfies a craving of our flesh, our spirit rebels against it because what we want is to be a new creation in Christ.
Christ-followers let their guard down, every so often, and allow sin to satisfy their flesh. However, to make that a regular practice would fight against everything that God has put in us when He saved us by grace. True believers cannot feel comfortable making a practice of sinning… we just cannot!
John, in 1 John 3:10, summarizes the discussion well: “So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers does not belong to God”.
There are some parts of the Bible that are hard to understand, but on the topic of sin in a believer, the Bible is clear. If someone makes a practice of sinning, they are not in God’s family.
Making a practice of sinning means being comfortable with an ongoing habit of going against what Jesus taught in the New Testament. Making a practice of sinning does not make us “children of the devil”, it reveals that we are!
When true believers sin, we do not feel comfortable; we feel horrible and seek God’s forgiveness.
Father, I am so grateful for the day you drew my heart toward you. I have accepted Jesus and will abide in Him today! In Jesus’s Name I pray, amen.