Text – 1John 3:9 – “Those who have been born into God's family do not make a practice of sinning, because God's life is in them. So they can't keep on sinning, because they are children of God.”
Yesterday, we were able to establish the fact a genuine believer does not willfully commit sin, but then how about when he makes a sincere mistake and yields to the flesh, what happens? Will he lose his salvation?
John the beloved wrote in I John 2:1, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”.
He also said in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”.
The two verses above point to the fact that that if a believer falls into sin, he is expected to repent immediately without hesitation, and continue in fellowship with God. Truly, we cannot downplay the fact that sin compromises your fellowship with God. You must disallow the devil from using self-condemnation to drive you away from God.
Whenever you sin, you grieve the Holy Spirit, because you have yielded to your flesh, rather than to the Holy Spirit. However, when the Holy Spirit convicts you of your sin, you are expected to repent immediately and ask for forgiveness.
When conviction is not immediately followed by repentance, then you become a backslidden Christian. So then, a backslidden Christian is the one who either goes to sin willfully, or refuses to immediately repent when the Holy Spirit convicts him of a sin he has unwillfully committed.
However, beyond just asking for forgiveness, genuine repentance also implies that a believer who makes a mistake must make a resolute determination to please the Lord when next he is tempted to sin.
I’ll round off with this quote I saw somewhere,
“If you think that Christianity is easy; that faith is uncomplicated; that truth is not odd; that the Sermon on the Mount is not demanding, then you can be sure you're not doing it right. Christianity isn’t only ‘not easy’, it is quite impossible. That’s why God gave us His enabling grace (through Christ) and His enabling presence (the Holy Spirit)”
PRAYER
Lord, please grant me the grace to be humble enough to accept when I make a mistake, and to run to you in repentance, not away from you in rebellion in Jesus Name.
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