Sin And The Effect That It Has On Our Lives?

Sin and the effect that it has on our lives?

Sunday February 25, 2001

I want to use as a text this morning 1st John 3:6

1 John 3:6

6 Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.

Now I want to read that same verse in the New Living Translation.

1 John 3:6

6 So if we continue to live in him, we won’t sin either. But those who keep on sinning have never known him or understood who he is.

So now we need to ask the question, can a saved person commit sin?

The answer of course being yes, but the good news is that you can be forgiven.

There are people out there that seem to think that if they are born again and commit sin they will be automatically forgiven if they commit sin.

Then on the other hand there are people out there that feel that if they are born again and commit a sin they are doomed forever.

What I would like to look at this morning is both of these problems.

There are some religions that lead people to believe that once they are born again, they now have a license to sin!

This could not be further from the truth!

Sin is sin whether you have been born again or not there is not one place in the bible where you can find that it tells you if you are born again you can go out and commit sin!

When you sin you are no longer saved!

There is a difference between making a mistake and outright committing sin or doing something that you know that you shouldn’t do!

But never the less we still need to confess our sins not only to God but to others and ask for forgiveness!

Now I know that people are going to make mistakes because like David said in, Psalm 139:23-24

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

You can see by those verses that there are going to be times that we will commit sin.

But we need to know that we need to ask God for forgiveness and to help us not to do it again, that’s what David is talking about here!

Now don’t go to feeling all uptight and being sad and thinking that God no longer loves you because that is not true either.

Just like you and I love our children when they make mistakes God still loves us!

Even though God still loves us it still upsets Him when He sees us do something that we shouldn’t.

It should also upset us when we see that we have done something that we shouldn’t.

And just like we correct our children when they do something that we don’t like.

God is going to be there to correct us as well.

God will appear silent in our lives until we tell Him that we are sorry and ask for forgiveness and ask Him to help us that we don’t do that again.

When we are born again we are fully adopted into the family of God.

When we sin God does not disinherit His children.

Now, we are not immune to chastisement, discipline, or correction.

On the contrary, the Spirit will correct the Father’s children whenever necessary to help us stay in line with God’s best for us!

But we are not subject to abandonment either.

Let’s read what Paul wrote in, Romans 8:35-39

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Knowing that you can never be separated from the love of Christ, however, is no license to sin!

It should be rather a thing that will spur us forward to live a more righteous life.

We should more than ever take the words of this scripture and want to go forward giving furthurence to God’s Kingdom here on earth!

If you are looking for an out to justify your sin perhaps you should question whether you have ever really received Christ into your life in the first place!