{"id":12988,"date":"2024-05-13T12:31:15","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theclarion.org\/?p=12988"},"modified":"2024-05-13T12:31:15","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:31:15","slug":"thoughts-from-the-bible-165","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/?p=12988","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts from The Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"

To remove sins<\/strong>
\nby Sarah Wootten Corinth Missionary Baptist Church<\/em><\/p>\n

The stones were practically in their hands. The Pharisees and the scribes brought a woman who had been caught in adultery to Jesus. They reminded Jesus that the law of Moses demanded her death as a punishment. Jesus stayed silent for a few moments, but eventually said that whoever has no sin of his own should be the first person to throw a stone at her. One by one, each of the accusers went away until no one was left. Jesus asked her if anyone condemned her. She said no. Then Jesus replied with these words, \u201cNeither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more,\u201d (John 8:11, ESV).
\nWe ended last week with the thought that Jesus came to remove sins. We often think of this in terms of Jesus removing the guilt we deserve for our sins, which is absolutely right. Jesus came to forgive sins, but Jesus\u2019 removal of sins doesn\u2019t end there. For the Christian, coming to know Christ changes the whole of his life from rebellion to righteousness.
\nIf you were to read through 1 John 3:4-10, you would find that the apostle tells us in about eight different ways that God\u2019s children obey His word, and those who are of the devil make a practice of sinning. Those who continue in sin don\u2019t know Him. Those who practice righteousness do know Him. The meaning is clear, but this leads me to a question. If John said it plainly eight times in these few verses, then why do we so often disregard these statements?<\/p>\n

I think the reason is that it\u2019s hard to swallow these truths. We\u2019re scared for our friends who say they trust in Jesus, but their lives do not reflect the righteousness of Christ. We\u2019re scared for our own souls because we know that we often fall into sin, and it just doesn\u2019t seem like we\u2019re as godly as we should be at this point in our Christian lives. For others, it\u2019s scary because they know that they are the ones who have made a practice of sinning.<\/p>\n

So to a certain extent, these verses should cause a tremble inside of us. Faith in God demands trust in His word, which in turn requires obedience to it. Jesus didn\u2019t tell the woman caught in adultery, \u201cIt\u2019s okay. Your sins are forgiven. You\u2019re loved, accepted, and you can go do what you want to do.\u201d No, Jesus told her to go and stop sinning. \u201cNo one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God\u2019s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God,\u201d (1 John 3:9, ESV). We can be sure that if this woman trusted in Jesus for forgiveness, then her life was radically different than it was before. If you think I\u2019m teaching that Christians are perfect, I\u2019m not. But there is a world of a difference between a believer who walks in humble repentance before God and is doing work to put to death the sin in his life versus someone who is indifferent to their sin and just walks in it.<\/p>\n

The life of the believer should be markedly different from the life of the unbeliever. We\u2019ll dive into some of those differences in the following weeks. But for now, I want to leave you with a few notes of encouragement. Jesus came to remove sins, but when He ascended, He didn\u2019t leave us to fight the battle by ourselves. When you came to faith in Christ, you were given a new life that is no longer enslaved to sin. You are different than you were before, no longer carrying the guilt of your sin before a holy God. You\u2019re entirely made new. Jesus also sent the Spirit to help you walk in His way. In our local churches, we are given brothers and sisters in Christ who can provide encouragement for us in our battle with sin. We even have His word to guide our steps in the right path. Yes, we have the responsibility to resist temptation and to pray for God\u2019s help. But thankfully, Jesus has removed our sins (1 John 3:5), defeated works of the devil (3:8), and fully equipped His people to do battle with their sin. We must be humble and obey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To remove sins by Sarah Wootten Corinth Missionary Baptist Church The stones were practically in their hands. The Pharisees and the scribes brought a woman who had been caught in adultery to Jesus. They reminded Jesus that the law of Moses demanded her death as a punishment. Jesus stayed silent for a few moments, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tho"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12989,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12988\/revisions\/12989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}