“I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired hands’” (Luke 15:18-19).
“Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: ‘Before the rooster crows, you will disown Me three times.’ And he went outside and wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:75).
Back in the ‘90s, I pastored a church on the Texas coast. We were a small church in a small town, with only two churches in the town. One day, I was out mowing the grass when a gentleman stopped by to chat with the pastor. I hadn’t been there long, but I had never seen this man before. He introduced himself and welcomed me to the community. He told me he was a Christian, but he didn’t worship in our town. I respected that and we continued the talk. He was a nice guy and I enjoyed speaking with him.
I don’t remember if it was this talk or a subsequent one, but he raised the issue of, “I’m not perfect, just forgiven.” He said those outside the church found that statement really annoying. I began explaining that it’s the acknowledgement of the Christian that, though we have a relationship with God through Christ, we are still very capable of sinning and falling short. We are not perfect, only forgiven.
He said he understood that and he appreciated the statement. But he said those outside the church see the statement as an excuse. They see it as a way out to do as we please without regard to God’s will or expectations.
I admit I had never seen it in that light, and I left our discussion trying to consider why there is such a difference in viewing the same statement. It didn’t surprise me—people are always viewing statements from very different points of view—but up until that discussion, I had had no reason to assume or believe that anyone would interpret differently, certainly not as that gentleman told me others interpreted it.
And it’s a valid point. Many times, people who profess to be Christians seem to act in a Christ-like way while at church, but their daily lives are anything but. Yes, we rely on God’s promise of forgiveness, but do we take it for granted? Do we assume that we’re covered, so we’re free to sin?
For the vast majority, though, the followers of Christ take sin seriously and strive to live a life consistent with God’s overall will. We recognize that we cannot help but sin, and when we do, we find comfort and assurance that God’s forgiveness is within our reach. Not as an escape but as a promise.
Is It Inevitable We Will Sin?
God has always known that we would sin. When He gave the Law to Moses, God was very clear that He expected the people of Israel to obey all the laws. In so doing, they would be an example to the rest of the world about what it means to be God’s people. The other people would be drawn to God through their testimony.
Yet, in the giving of the Law, God also included instructions for the Day of Atonement. On this day, the people are to come together to confess their sins, repent of them and seek God’s forgiveness. As the High Priest enters the Holy of Holies, he intercedes on behalf of the people, asking God to overlook the sins of the people. A goat is sacrificed, his blood spread on a second goat which is sent into the desert, symbolically taking the sins of Israel away from them (hence, the “scapegoat”). God knew His people would fall short, but He always had the idea of forgiveness in His mind.
One of my favorite people from the Bible is the apostle John. I really enjoy reading his gospel account and his three letters. (Revelation baffles me, I confess, but it’s still a good read.) John addresses the issue of sin in the life of the Christian.
In 1 John, the Bible teaches us an important lesson about sin.
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:8-10).
In this letter, John offers up a series of tests to demonstrate the mark of a true believer in Christ as opposed to those who profess Christ but are not genuine believers. In 1:5-10, John gives a quick rundown of some things to look for to see where we are in our relationship with Christ. The verses above speak to the issue of sin.
There are many who deny they are “sinners,” since they live decent lives and are moral people. But the reality is that we all sin (Romans 3:23), and John’s statement is that the failure to recognize sin in our own lives is to deny the validity of God’s Word and God Himself. If we acknowledge our sin and confess, God is faithful and just and will forgive us.
John continues this idea of sin in the lives of Christians in the next few verses of the next chapter.
“My dear children, I write this so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have One who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John2:1-2). Here, John acknowledges that the goal of each believer is to walk free of sin, but he also recognizes that, as long as we are in this world, sin is inevitably to be a part of our lives. When we do sin, we find the assurance of Christ interceding with the Father on our behalf.
Paul describes the frustration of living life and sinning in this way:
“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin” (Romans 7:18-25).
The point the Bible is making is that when a person places their faith in Christ, it doesn’t mean that the sinful nature immediately leaves us. Far from it. The sinful nature is still present; it’s the way we dealt with the world for all the years prior to knowing Christ. And as Jesus referred to our conversion as being born again (cf. John 3:1-22), so we must grow in Christ. It takes time to move from the infancy of the Gospel to the deeper, “adult” truths and understandings.
Paul also teaches us that the converted person is someone who dies to sin and are no longer under its sway as we once were (Romans 6; Galatians 2:17-21). Nonetheless, it takes a while to unlearn the sinful ways and to learn the spiritual way. The sinful nature wars in our bodies, and the only victory comes when we turn from the sinful to the spiritual.
We need to remember that temptation is always with us, just as it was with Jesus. When Jesus was tempted in the desert, Luke writes, “When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left Him until a more opportune time” (Luke 4:13). Even we when resist Satan, it doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of him. Satan can let us be lulled into a sense of relaxation and overconfidence before he comes after us again. But he will come after us again, with all his lies and suggestions and “plausible” outcomes if we just listen to him.
The point is that is it inevitable that we will sin, even strong Christians. Because the sinful nature is always with us until that time of glorification when Christ returns or we go to be with the Lord.
So How Does God Deal with the Believer Who Sins?
“The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will He harbor His anger forever; He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:8-12).
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14).
The psalmist understood God’s great compassion and His willingness to forgive the repentant sinner, and Jesus portrays a vivid picture of two very different people—one who doesn’t see the need to confess his sins, and the other who is overcome with regret and sorrow that he is barely able to say more than to ask for forgiveness.
The point of these two passages is that God is quick to forgive our sins, and when He forgives our sins, He doesn’t hold them over us (as we are often wont to do). Instead, He removes our sins from us and He sees them no more. The relationship is restored and we move on, hopefully having learned from our ways and turned more to Him.
(c) 2018 Glynn Beaty