THE DANGER FOUND IN SINNING

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

When people do what is right, it is because they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous. But when people keep on sinning, it shows they belong to the Devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the Devil.

No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

1 John 3:7-10

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Jesus was the only person in the history of mankind who lived a perfectly sinless life. This is the good news for every single person who chooses to place their belief in Him because it’s only by living in and through Him that someone can hope to live right and righteously.

This is the point made in the opening sentence of today’s passage as we continue to look at the third chapter of John’s first letter.

When people do what is right, it is because they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous.

Note here that when anyone is living right or righteously in the presence of God, the Maker and Master of all things who expects complete holiness in a person’s life, they are doing so not by way of their own merit but rather because of their association with Jesus. In other words, it’s their life connected to Christ that allows them to live right and righteous. The Christian believers right behaviors are caused by them deferring to doing things as Jesus did.

But what happens when a Christian chooses to live as Jesus didn’t, opting for wickedness over righteousness, sin over holiness?

Well, the answer is found when we go back to our passage to look at the remaining words, words that underscore the danger found in sin and why no legitimate Christian should go there. Let’s look again at the second sentence in that passage:

But when people keep on sinning, it shows they belong to the Devil, who has been sinning since the beginning.

Here the Word of God is making it clear that a person can only belong to one of two masters and their chosen behavior will reveal who that master is.

If a person truly is committed to Jesus, then their actions will be right and righteous, sin-free because in Him there is no sin at all.

Conversely, when a person sins persistently, then their trangressive behavior “shows they belong to the Devil, the master who has never done anything else but sin “since the beginning”.

Friends, this is the danger of sin. It leads someone into partnership with Satan who only intends to wreck and destroy, to lead a person down the destructive road to Hell and the eternal torment and suffering found there.

As we see, these two verses show us that people have only two choices to make when it comes to how they live. There is no middle road.

Either someone believes and trusts in Jesus, the One who “came to destroy the woks of the Devil”, the only One through which a person can live right and righteously, or they can opt to sin repeatedly, picking a relationship with the Devil and living in accordance with his evil will.

And so the question becomes:

What kind of life are you living?

My prayer for you is that you will devote yourself to Jesus, the perfect Son and Lamb of God (John 1:29) who allowed Himself to bear the sins of mankind and be crucified so anyone who believes in Him will never perish but gain eternal life (John 3:16).

He, Jesus, desires for you to be saved and live with Him and God in Heaven forever.

The Devil desires for you to be destroyed and abide with Him eternally under the damnation of Hell.

The danger of sinning is that you pledge your allegiance to the latter.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.