As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
There is no shortage of passages exhorting Christians not to sin.1 So it is no surprise that John also acknowledges in his first letter that Christians can sin.2 It might be surprising, then to discover that John says that “All those who are born of God sin they do not do.”3 John adds that they do not, “because His seed abides in him.”4
“Christians can be guilty of making pithy statements of a theological nature that require a lot of explanation for the phrase to be accurate. If an explanation is not offered, we are sometimes demanding a lot of the reader to put all the pieces together.” - Ref21
Posted previously in 2010.
Men and women, young and old, rich and poor—they all gathered at the square by the water gate. They wanted to hear the Book of the Law read. Ezra was more than willing and read from dawn to noon while everyone stood with rapt attention. Teachers helped translate and explain words grown unfamiliar after decades of neglect.
“the prophets of Ozempic are afflicted with a kind of myopia that requires its partisans to ignore subjective experiences of desire. They imply that we must dismiss any notion that our desires or their consequences can be managed by the will, intellect, or a ‘higher power’ ” - Law & Liberty
“With this theme of sloth as ‘love defective,’ Dante comes close to a biblical definition of sloth. Sloth isn’t just laziness. There is a deeper inner motivation to sin that, at its core, is a defective love.” - Ligonier
There are a lot of sins in the Bible. We don’t feel the same way about all of them, though, do we? Some sins trigger strong righteous indignation or an intense “ick” response. Others we barely notice.
We’re not entirely wrong to feel that way. Though there are not really any small sins, some are bigger than others. (See Bob Gonzales’ excellent study on that topic: The Greater Sin: Are There Degrees of Sin?).
But this range of reactions to different sins should prompt us to ask some questions.
“There are Christians who live in mortal fear that they might at some point commit that sin that would cause them to lose their salvation and to lose the hope of heaven.” - RC Sproul
“We can do away with slavery, segregation, and red-lining, but prejudice (not just based on skin color but because of class, wealth, religion, how tall or short people are, or how obese or skinny–all kinds of things) is going to be with us until the Lord returns.” - Juicy Ecumenism
“It is a peculiarity of Catholicism and the issue of last rites that consigns suicide to the category of the unforgivable sin…. it is surprising how deep-seated that view of suicide is among Christians.” - Ligonier
“there is another damaging variety of focus on the extraordinary, one that minimizes most sin by emphasizing some. One way this happens is when some forms of behavior are routinely singled out for censure.” - Ken Brown
Discussion