“My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one.” (1 John 2:1, CSB)
Followers of Christ live with an inconvenient truth. While ugly, it leads to a glorious revelation. The ugly truth is that after accepting Christ into our lives and receiving forgiveness for our past sins, we continue to sin.
In most cases, our current sins are not as dark as our past sins. We exchange lust for pride, falsehood for backbiting, self-centeredness for people-pleasing, etc. But in God’s eyes, sin is sin. There are also times when we fall back into our old sin habits and addictions. That is the ugly part.
The glorious part is this. God forgives. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9, CSB) That’s the difference between joining a club and becoming a part of the family.
We’ve seen it play out a thousand times in recent history: Say something critical about the prevailing culture, and they respond by canceling and silencing. You are welcome in their club so long as you follow their rules. No grace, no forgiveness. But God does forgive. He doesn’t give up on us but continues to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We are His family.
This doesn’t give us liberty to sin. In the key verse, John points that out. Our desire should be to avoid sin. Our sins should bother us, driving us to seek confession and forgiveness from God daily. Sin desires to separate us from God. We conquer sin by acknowledging our sins before God and receiving His love-fueled Christ-bought forgiveness.
Other verses for this promise (Compiled by David Wilkerson)
- 1 John 2:1
- 1 John 2:12
- 1 John 1:9
- John 17:17
- 1 Thessalonians 5:23
- Colossians 1:21-22
- 1 Corinthians 6:11
- Titus 2:14
- Isaiah 1:25
- Acts 10:43
- 2 Corinthians 5:21
- Acts 13:39
- Psalm 103:10-11
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