Sin No More

Opening illustration: Play a video on ‘SIN’ and what people today perceive it to be …

Introduction: Jesus’ instruction to “sin no more” was a command to end her adulterous activities and adulterous relationship. Being a member of the body of Christ does not give us excuse to continue a sinful lifestyle, including the sins of sexual immorality, unless we repent (Revelation 2: 21-22) and resolve to “sin no more” (John 8: 11).

We cannot stand self-righteously and condemn the lives of others, when God is calling them tenderly to conversion. We cannot cling to the past, which may be so comfortable and even socially acceptable, when God is doing something new.

We live in a world that desperately needs something new. This wondrous newness of God will be born out of conversion, not coercion; it will spring from repentance, not reprisal. It will take shape in the councils of the world, in the boardrooms of the workplace, at the tables of families. We are all called to “sin no more.”

So … Why should we ‘SIN NO MORE?’

1. Transformation: You are a NEW CREATION (2 Corinthians 5: 16-17):

The idea evidently is, not that he ought to be a new creature, but that he is in fact; not that he ought to live as becomes a new creature - which is true enough - but that he will in fact live in that way, and manifest the characteristics of the new creation.

Here it means a new creation in a moral sense; and the phrase "new creature" is equivalent to the expression in Ephesians 4: 24: "The new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." It means, evidently, that there is a change produced in the renewed heart of man that is equivalent to the act of creation, and that bears a strong resemblance to it - a change, so to speak, as if the man was made over again, and had become new. We are not reformed, rehabilitated or reeducated – we are recreated living in vital union with Christ. At conversion we are not merely turning a new leaf but beginning a new life under a new Master. This recreation is not by hands but by the Spirit of God. This is not our work but the work of God through His Holy Spirit. The mode or manner in which it is done is not described; nor should the words be pressed, to the quick, as if the process were the same in both cases - for the words are here evidently figurative. But the phrase implies evidently the following things:

(a) That there is an exertion of Divine power in the conversion of the sinner as really as in the act of creating the world out of nothing …

(b) That a change is produced so great as to make it proper to say that he is a new man. He has new views, new motives, new principles, new objects and plans of life. He seeks new purposes, and he lives for new ends. If a drunkard becomes reformed, there is no impropriety in saying that he is a new man, so does a person speaking lies, a deceiver, uses obscenities or practices any form of sinfulness … There is no other moral change that takes place on earth so deep, and radical, and thorough, as the change at conversion. And there is no other where there is so much propriety in ascribing it to the mighty power of God.

2. Assurance: You are BORN OF GOD (1 John 3: 9; 1 John 5: 18):

The practice of sin is the evidence and confirmation that one is not born of God. Doing confirms being. Not practicing sin is the evidence and confirmation of being born again.

And the reason the new birth inevitably changes the life of sinning, John says, is that when we are born again, “God’s seed” abides in us, and we “cannot keep on sinning.” That’s how real the connection between the new birth and daily physical life is. The seed may be the Spirit of God or the Word of God or the nature of God - or all three. Whatever it is specifically, God himself is at work in the new birth so powerfully that they cannot keep on practicing sin. God’s seed cannot make peace with a pattern of sinful behavior.

The new birth alters irrevocably our view of sin and our capacity to accommodate it happily in our hearts. For this we should be profoundly grateful to the Lord. The chief reason why unbelievers do not forsake the sins which will eventually destroy them is because they do not see their sins as the evil we now know them to be and feel them to be.