The question

DEVOTION 1 JOHN THE QUESTION 1 John 3:4-6 4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. NIV IS there any question that if you break one itsy bitsy point of the law we have broken the whole of the law? Is there also any question that there has never been nor will there ever be a human being that is capable of keeping every bit of the whole in all perfection? That is the express purpose for God sending his Son to die on the cross for us, to take away our sins. Now we do have to come to terms with this keep in sinning thing which is discussed here for our benefit as a child of God. Surely when we come to God through Jesus Christ, accepting what he did for us on the cross, that God reconciled himself with us, that he forgave our sins, and wiped them away, we change the pattern of our life. We stopped living in a manner of total self-indulgence, self-absorption and in ignorance of what God desires for our lives. We begin a journey discovering his plan for our lives. Sure at first we are going to make mistakes, maybe a lot of them, maybe even falling back into old patterns, but as we continue on this journey with him we gain more and more insight, especially after experiencing the infilling of the Holy Spirit as those disciples did on the day of Pentecost. We begin to understand more and gain more power over the temptation to sin, but that does not mean we are completely free from sin. It is a fact that we no longer continue to live a sinful life, but if we ever did reach perfection, with the total lack of any sin in our lives, than Jesus would not have had to die on that cross. Even though we should not make excuses because we are human, we are human; we are not divine like him who has no sin. That is why we must remain in him. Yes, we have turned from our old ways of living, yes we have turned toward God and we seek his truth and desire to live pleasing him. Yes we try our utmost to find out what pleases him, and do our level best to accomplish everything he desires for us, utilizing that power he have given us in the Holy Spirit. But unfortunately we still fall short at times and make some mistakes, getting trapped by our own desires. We say or do something which is not pleasing to him. We might judge or gossip, or respond inappropriately, or we might, we might think we are better than another for a moment, or think we can plan for the security of our own future. There is a whole host of attitudes and behaviors that we might allow to creep into our lives, but still we are determined to live in a manner that is pleasing to him. We have not turned our back on him and simple returned to the old pattern of sinning. It is a fine line, to see the truth in this teaching. The question we have to ask ourselves, is have we gained any progress in being more like him, than like our old self? Do we spend more time thinking about God than about ourselves? We need to ask that question.