COV LIFE BLOG

John 3:1-10 – Christians Don’t Walk In Continual Sin

Even an unregenerate man, a non-Christian, if he wants to for one reason or another, can set his will against doing something that is harmful or wrong or evil, and can stop it. Certainly he can. But he will not have any particular joy in doing so. He will be acting from a grim, dismal determination to walk in this way, with no compensating light or gladness. But the difference for a Christian is that when he so acts, Christ is there. We obey him, and thus we abide in his love. Every act of renunciation against these forces that would destroy us results in an accompanying sense of glorification, of joy, causing us to rejoice in God’s grace.

If you have him, you can do these things. If you cannot do them, it is because you do not have him. That is why John goes on to add here, “no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” That is, so strong is our link with him, and so powerful are the cleansing tides of his life in us, that if we say we have Christ in us and do not show some evidence of it, in increasing degree, then we have been deceiving ourselves. We do not have him at all. We have never seen him or known him. If you can live content with evil, without a struggle, deliberately doing what the Word of God declares is not right; if you can go on thus, and it does not particularly bother you, you have no struggle with it, then you have no right to name yourself a Christian. That is what John is saying. You have not seen him, you have not known him. Jesus Christ came into the world, and into your life, to destroy lawlessness. That is his goal. That is the revolution he is set on bringing to pass. If this is not happening, then you do not have him, for he will not change his purpose. He is moving to this end. This is what he came for, and this is what he will do.

Ray Stedman

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SCRIPTURES FOR THIS SUNDAY
Read 1 John 3:1-10. John says that the Christian cannot continue a lifestyle of sin. Is your life marked by a continual and joyful repentance of sin? If not, then what do you think it is that prevents this?

SONG FOR THIS WEEK
His Mercy Is More by Matt Papa