The Saved Cannot Go On Sinning
By John Earp
Little children, let no one deceive you. The one who does righteousness is righteous, just as Christ is righteous. 8 Whoever practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was revealed, that He might destroy the works of the devil. 9 Whoever has been born of God does not practice sin, for His seed remains in him. And he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 In this the children of God and the children of the devil are revealed: Whoever does not live in righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. 1 John 3:7-10 (Modern English Version)
Whenever one encounters in the inspired words of Scripture the phrase, “Let no one deceive you,” one would of course be well advised to take heed and listen, lest they in fact succumb to the deception. Satan has been deceiving people ever since the beginning of man’s existence, tragically, but no one ever had to be deceived. The very first lie ever heard by human ear was hissed by the Serpent, “Has God said?” when he enticed Eve to question the reliability of God’s word.
In 1 John 3:7-10, the lie that one may be deceived by is equally clear, though many if not most do not want to hear it. The lie is, that a person can be righteous without practicing righteousness, that a person can be a child of God and of the Devil at the same time, that ultimately, people just can’t help but sin perpetually, due to some kind of inherited deficiency they all have somehow from birth. Adam and Eve, so they say, were not born with this ‘sinful nature,’ and yet they sinned. Angels in Heaven were not born with this ‘sinful nature,’ and yet they sinned in the very Throne Room of the Most High God. But to hear some tell it, since the fall of man, we now supposedly have a ‘sinful nature’ that causes us to sin inevitably. And yet, they will usually say, “We are still responsible.” How so, if it is truly inevitable?
If Adam and Eve didn’t need a ‘sinful nature’ to sin willfully as they did (with absolutely no good reason whatsoever to rebel against the perfectly good and loving God who had walked with them in the evenings daily, whom they had known sufficiently well to know Him as absolutely trustworthy and good), then you don’t need a ‘sinful nature’ in order to sin, either. Every chapter in the Bible which speaks of the Judgment Day that will come to each and every person some day lays out specific willful sins we knowingly have committed. Nowhere is any unintentional or accidental sin listed as the reason for anyone’s damnation.
The plain fact revealed in this passage of inspired Scripture, 1 John 3, (among others) is that righteous is as righteous does, and that if a person is truly born again and indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, they will not and indeed, CANNOT go on sinning, because the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus dwells within them. Instead of using “I’m only human” as an excuse to indulge in sin, Christian, you should use the fact that God’s Holy Spirit LIVES within you as the reason you cannot go on sinning, practicing sin, because you have been born of God and now are what the Bible calls a new creation.