Don’t be deceived. We have to fight sin, through the power of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ. We don’t get any kind of “freedom to sin” license when we join His team—why should we?
Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another Friday End Times post.
If you’ve read many of my End Times post, you’ve heard me urge you to REPENT more than a few times. The warning that we need to REPENT is one of the topics that often appears in my blog.
But once we REPENT, are we all good? If we sin again after we REPENT, are we covered?
There’s a popular deception about this point, one that has many Christians entrapped. It’s an old deception, one that has been around since Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. And it’s this deception about sin and forgiveness that I’m going to write about today.
But First, about Forgiveness
But first, let’s be clear that Christ’s forgiveness is very real. As Christians we all know that we’ve received forgiveness for our sins and a clean slate. Jesus doesn’t hold our past against us when we turn to Him (Romans 8:1).
(1) So now there isn’t any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Romans 8:1 (CEB)
And we know that if we turn to Jesus with Faith, and confess our sins to Him, He will forgive us. This is 1 John 1:9 of course, a passage I’ve quoted on my blog many times.
(8) If we claim, “We don’t have any sin,” we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. (9) But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from everything we’ve done wrong. (10) If we claim, “We have never sinned,” we make him a liar and his word is not in us.
1 John 1:8-10 (CEB)
The passage needs the added context of verses 8 and 10 to be complete. We need to be honest, admit that we sin, and confess all our sins if we want forgiveness. It’s not that Jesus can’t forgive our sins if we don’t confess them—He can do anything. It’s that He won’t forgive the sins we don’t confess, the sins we don’t admit to. The main reason is that if we don’t admit the sin, we don’t think we’re doing anything wrong.
Not thinking we’re doing anything wrong is a spiritually fatal deception to be under. If we stay under that deception to the grave, it could very well cost us our salvation. But this deception isn’t the one I want to write about today.
There’s another dangerous self-deception out there, and it has Christians entrapped today like it did when Paul wrote Romans.
“It’s Under the Blood,” and other non-Excuses
Do any of these statements, or the message they express, sound familiar to you?
“It’s OK if I’m drinking. It’s under the blood.“
“So what if I got into a fight last night? It’s covered by the cross.“
“So I fooled around with another woman. What of it? I’ll just ask for forgiveness later.”
You may have heard one or more of these. And I’m sure you haven’t heard these exactly word for word, but you probably recognize the idea and have heard it before. Well, let’s be very clear about this. The above statements, and the idea behind them, are ….
Wrong, Wrong, WRONG!!
So because we’ve been given the gift of forgiveness, we should go ahead and sin now? Or, because Christ is faithful and will forgive us our sins, we should willingly sin now and ask forgiveness later?
In other words, if we pick apart the logic of those statements, are Christians a special group of people with a license to sin??
No! Of course not!! We have forgiveness, yes, but that does not in any way mean we now have a license to sin after becoming Christians. We should be trying our best to live better and sin less after being forgiven! That’s how we can honor Jesus’s sacrifice for us. Because we can never repay it, but we can honor it.
This reasoning comes up in a popular secular mockery of Jesus that you may have heard before: “If you don’t sin, Jesus died for nothing.” Now don’t get mad about this mockery if you’re a Christian who uses the “it’s under the blood” non-excuse. If you use that non-excuse you’re practicing the message of this secular mockery. There’s no real difference between your “it’s under the blood” and the secular world’s “if you don’t sin….”
But if you’re a misguided “it’s under the blood” Christian, I’m not going to be too hard on you today. Because it’s clear from Romans 6:1-2 that Christians have been falling under this deception since at least the first century. Yes, Paul addressed this exact issue as early as when he wrote his Epistle to the Romans. Well if Christians were falling under this deception about sin and forgiveness since the earliest days of the church, the Christians under this deception today aren’t the first and they won’t be the last.
In Romans 6:1-2 Paul destroys the “it’s under the blood” non-excuse and all others like it. This also destroys the “if you don’t sin Jesus died for nothing” argument for any Christians who might be deceived by that (of course the secular world always has and always will continue mocking Jesus, so I’ll leave them to it and won’t address them).
(1) So what are we going to say? Should we continue sinning so grace will multiply? (2) Absolutely not! All of us died to sin. How can we still live in it?
Romans 6:1-2 (CEB)
There we have it. That’s about as clear an answer to a specific question as we can ever get from the Bible. Should we continue sinning? Absolutely not!
So much for that argument then. The “it’s under the blood” non-excuse is unBiblical, dishonest, and spiritually dangerous. You’ll cost yourself your salvation if you keep that up—turn away from it now! REPENT of your sins and walk away from them! Christians do not get any sort of license to sin when we become Christian.
Sinning Is Going Backwards
Not only do we not get a free license to sin when we sign up, we’re supposed to be trying our best to do better! Pay special attention to the second part of Romans 6:2.
(2) Absolutely not! All of us died to sin. How can we still live in it?
Romans 6:2
When we’re born again in Jesus Christ, we died to sin. Who wants to go back to sin, then? Who wants to go backwards, back to where we were before? I don’t know about you, but my life of sin got me nowhere and almost killed me. It damn-near did. I died in sin. We all die, in sin. So why want to go back to that?
Many people find Jesus after they’ve screwed up bad and hit rock bottom. That’s nothing to be ashamed about—not at all. The Faith we find at rock bottom is often the strongest of all. Faith that isn’t tested and forged in adversity can be weaker and less genuine. Less real.
But the point is, if you’re like me, then you learned that a life of sin, a life of doing whatever we want, leads to rock bottom in the end, and that without Jesus we can do nothing. Without Jesus we screw it all up, could be sooner could be later, but we do in the end.
So that’s the old us. When we’re born again in Jesus Christ, the old person dies. We die, and we’re born anew. The person I am today is completely different from who I was one year ago, who was also completely different from who I was one year before that. We keep growing, we keep getting better. We keep being made anew. We become new people in Christ Jesus.
And this growth means giving up our sins. Rejecting and turning away from sin so we can follow Christ and be more like Him. If we stick to this path, we will become as much like Him as is humanly possible for us within our lifetimes. We can never equal Him, but we can become the best version of ourselves possible before we physically die.
Sin is what the old me and you used to do. Sin is what we died to. We don’t want to go back that way! We need to walk a new path now, after being born again. We need to reject sin and walk with Christ. That’s where the growth is. That’s what will make us into new, better people. The best version of ourselves we can possibly become in this life.
Don’t go backwards—go upwards! Don’t willingly walk in sin after receiving forgiveness. After we REPENT, we need to work with Jesus to overcome the sins in our life. It’s not easy, in fact it’s one of the hardest things we will ever do. And we will fail, especially at first. But we should be doing better and better as time goes on and we grow in Christ.
Besides which, it’s our attitude and sincerity toward defeating our sins that Jesus is looking at. If we have an attitude of tolerating sin because our sin is “under the blood,” then not only are we not being sincere about defeating sin, and not only are we abusing and disrespecting the gift of Christ’s forgiveness, but we’re also completely ignoring and refusing to start the painful personal growth that comes with fighting sin.
And that only hurts us.
Don’t Be Deceived
Have you, or any Christians you know, fallen under the “it’s under the blood” deception? Do you, or Christians you know have unBiblical ideas toward forgiveness and sin?
Do you have “soft” doctrine that removes the need to grow and mature as a new person in Christ Jesus? A doctrine that ignores the need to kill off our old selves and be born again in Jesus Christ? Are you ignoring the need to fight sin and become better?
If you answered yes to any of these things, you’re under a spiritually dangerous deception that will cost you your salvation.
First off, we don’t have a special license to sin because we’re Christian. We can’t willingly sin and try to downplay it with “it’s under the blood” or any nonsense like that. Refer to Romans 6:1-2. The fact that we’re forgiven does not give us a reason to go sin even more! No, it’s the opposite—we need to be trying our best to do better now.
If we tolerate sin in our lives without trying to fight it, not only are we leaving an open door through sin for demons to get in us, we’re ignoring a major part of the Christian walk. That major part being when we walk with our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ as He kills off our old selves and makes us grow. This growth means turning away from our old life, our old sins. It means turning to Him and trying to do better. If we ignore this, we ignore the growth. Fighting sin isn’t easy, you see, but that’s why it makes us stronger.
Don’t be daunted by the fact that we can’t achieve perfection, and we all sin (Romans 3:23). As we grow, and as we keep striving, we should be sinning less and less as time goes on. If not, we can get with Jesus in prayer and see what’s wrong.
No one’s perfect, but we need to at least have the right attitude toward sin and forgiveness. “It’s under the blood” and other non-excuses are unBiblical, dishonest, and spiritually dangerous. We fool ourselves with that deception, and it will only lead us to death. It also removes the need for us to take that journey of growth with Christ as we fight to break free of our sins and turn away from them.
Don’t be deceived. We have to fight sin, through the power of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ. We don’t get any kind of “freedom to sin” license when we join His team—why should we? So don’t fool yourselves! We need to be fight sin, and not tolerate it in our own lives.
Because if we do, it means nothing if we REPENT. These misinformed deceptions only hurt us.
Well that’s all for this week. If you enjoyed today’s post, please be sure to Subscribe using the link below. And please consider Supporting My Blog using the Tip Jar. Any amount is much appreciated!
Until next time, be strong and do good!
Your new best friend in Christ,
99:9
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