Sin and the Believer

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I invite you to take out your Bibles tonight and turn with me to Romans chapter 6, as this will lay the foundation of our study.
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Before we read, I want to remind you where we are and what it is we are studying.
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We are in our overview of Christian theology and doctrine.
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We are studying the doctrine of sin, hamartiology, based on the Greek word hamartia, which means to miss the mark.
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We have looked at the nature of sin, the origin and problem of sin, the consequences of sin, the extent and imputation of sin, and then for the last two weeks we looked at the bondage of the will.
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Well, tonight we are in the final portion of my teaching on hamartiology, and this is the Christian and sin.
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Several years ago, and some of you have heard this story before, so if you have heard it, please indulge me.
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I know I repeat myself sometimes, but repetition is the key to learning, and the key to learning is repetition.
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A few years ago, on a Wednesday night, Aaron Bell was here giving a lesson on Baptist history, and so I wasn't teaching.
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I was sitting in the back, and a strange man came in, and by strange I just mean someone we didn't know, and he came in and he sat next to me, and he listened to Aaron teach for about ten minutes, at which time he stood up and abruptly walked out.
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Well, since I wasn't the one teaching, I pursued him to the hallway, because I was interested in why he would come in and leave so abruptly.
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And as I went to the hallway, I stopped him, I said, Sir, I'm curious to know what brought you to us tonight, and why are you leaving? And he said, well, he kind of got a little flustered, and he just looked at me and he said, What are you about here? I've never been asked that question in that way before, and I said, We are about helping people to understand that they are sinners in need of grace, and grace through faith in Christ is the only way to be saved.
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I think that's about how I worded it.
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To which he looked at me and he said, I am not a sinner.
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Now, we spent the next ten minutes debating what I believe is patently obvious, the fact that he is a sinner, and ultimately what came to light was that he was arguing a category question of whether or not one be a saint or a sinner, and whether or not believers should be rightly identified as sinners.
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Because the Bible does identify believers as the hagiosmos, the sanctified, or the saved.
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The Bible normally does not identify believers as sinners anymore, because they are saved.
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So again, it was a bit of a tit-for-tat with this man, going back and forth, because I proved to him that he still was a sinner, even though he is qualified, if he's a believer, as a saint, yet he is a sinner indeed.
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There is a sense in which tonight's lesson will some, in one way, kind of get the cart before the horse, because we are just about to start the doctrine of salvation, which is called soteriology.
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And really, this subject of the Christian and sin really could fall under the category of soteriology, but I felt I wanted to put it here, because we've been talking about what sin is, how it affects us, and how it keeps men in bondage until Christ sets them free.
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That's been the lesson series, but I felt it was necessary to include it at this portion, to simply say, or to simply ask the question, how does the Christian and sin relate? Is there, is there, do Christians sin, and are we allowed to sin? What does that mean? Those are questions that I get asked, and questions that I myself have had to wrestle with.
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And so, to kind of begin, I want to simply say this.
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Just in case you have not studied the doctrine of salvation, I want you to understand a few very simple things that we will expound in the weeks ahead.
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One, justification is by faith alone, not works.
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So anything I say tonight about the role of the sinner's life, or rather the believer's life in sin, or not in sin, and dealing with sin, understand that I'm talking about someone who has been justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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And that is the only way anyone can and ever will be saved.
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Justification is how we are made right with God, and sanctification is how we are conformed to Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit who comes to live within us once we have come to faith in Christ.
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The Holy Spirit makes His home within us.
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In fact, it's He who gives us the ability to have the faith in the first place.
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He regenerates the heart, and then He makes His home in that heart.
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And He lives with us, and He gives us the power to walk by faith.
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Okay? So everything I'm going to talk about tonight presumes that justification has occurred, and we are now being sanctified, and we are walking by faith.
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Understand, so I understand these are categories we haven't really dealt with yet in this study, but hopefully most of you have heard me enough to talk about these things that you're able to jump right into this lesson.
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And we are going to deal with these again later, but understand that I wanted to make sure that we understand justification is a one-time declaration of God in the life of a person that He goes from being a child of wrath to a child of God.
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He is justified, adopted into the family of God, and then sanctification is a process that begins at the new birth and goes all the way to the end of His life.
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Okay? So having said that, I do believe in the greatest theological treatise of the Apostle Paul, the Book of Romans, I do believe chapter 6 is Paul's expression of teaching on the subject of sanctification.
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I believe his beginning, chapters 1 to 3, he deals primarily with sin and the sin of all men, and then the end of chapter 3 and chapter 4 and chapter 5, he deals with justification, how we are made right with God, and then in chapter 6 he asks the question, well if we're made right by faith, if we're not made right by works, but we're made right by faith, does that mean that we then can live in sin and be okay? So the question begins in chapter 6, verse 1, we're going to read verses 1 and 2.
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What shall we say then? Notice the question is predicated on everything that came before.
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Justified by faith alone.
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What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Notice the idea of continuing in sin presumes that you were in sin prior to being saved.
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You were a sinner.
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No one, even the man who came that night, would say he was never a sinner.
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Anyone who says that they've never sinned is a liar.
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The Bible says that.
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He who says he is without sin is a liar and the truth is not within him.
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Paul says, what shall we say? Are we to continue in sin? And I believe the phrase in sin is very significant because he's referring to the state of being in sin.
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Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Why would he say such a weird thing? Because just a few moments earlier, just a few lines earlier, he said that where sin abounds, grace abounds.
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And now he's asking the question, well, if that's the case, should we just continue to sin so that grace can abound all the more? By no means.
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Meganoita in the Greek, the adversative may, genoita is the word gene, which means exist.
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It literally means may it not exist.
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May this type of thinking not enter into your mind.
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How can we who died to sin still live in it? And he goes on to talk about the fact that we who have been baptized into Christ have been united with Christ, and therefore we are to walk in the glory of that and the newness of life, not in the old sinful pattern of our lost condition.
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So that is Paul's beginning, chapter 6, all the way through chapter 8, I believe, deals with the life that has been changed.
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So when it comes to sin in the life of a believer, there does seem to be some tension in the text of the Bible.
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Now, when I say there is tension in the text of the Bible, I am not saying the Bible is contradictory.
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May it never be.
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The Bible is not contradictory, but there are times where you will read something in one place and then read something in another place, such as like in James 2, where it says grace without or faith without works is dead.
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And then over here, when Paul says in Romans 4 that we are saved by faith apart from works.
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And it seems as if the two are contradicting, but they're not.
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But there is tension that we must resolve.
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And one of the great tensions that we have to resolve in regard to the subject of tonight is this.
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The Bible does seem to declare in certain places that a believer will not sin.
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And yet there are other places where we read that it is a possibility that believers will sin.
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And this is a great tension that we must address if we're going to address this issue, because it's in the scripture.
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I'll give you two verses to write down if you want to, or if you even want to follow me there.
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The first one is 1 John 5, 18.
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Listen to what it says.
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I'm going to read from the New American Standard Bible.
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It's very clear and very literal what it says here in the New American Standard Bible.
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It says this.
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We know that no one who is born of God sins, but he who was born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.
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It's a powerful thought, isn't it? That there in the text of the Bible very clearly, it says we know that no one who was born of God sins.
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You say, wow, wait a minute, I'm I'm I'm I'm I sin and I believe I'm born of God.
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So either the scripture is wrong.
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Or I'm not saved.
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You see how that can be a difficult tension for people to deal with.
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Because in the very same book in 1 John, chapter two, verse one, it says this, my little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
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And if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
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So it seems as if right in the same book, it seems as if the same writer has tension with himself, because in chapter two, one, he says, I'm writing this so that you will not sin, which in itself is assuming that you might.
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But he says, and if you do, you have an advocate with the Father, which is basically saying if you do sin, it's not you're not without hope, but Christ is standing before the Father praying for you.
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It's like the one old saint said.
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He said, if you could hear Christ praying for you in heaven as if he were in the next room, you would never fear a day in your life because he is your advocate with the Father, always an amazing reality.
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So here we have a book, 1 John 5, 18, it says we know no one born of God sins.
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And yet in chapter two of the same book, and just in case you're bad at math like me, two does come before five.
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So this was earlier in the book.
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He said, if you do sin, you have an advocate with the Father.
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And 1 John 1 also says, if you say you have no sin, you deceive yourselves and the truth is not within you.
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And even Jesus, when he taught his disciples how to pray, did he not say in the very model for prayer, teach them to pray like this.
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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins.
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Now, a lot of people say trespasses or debts, but in the book of Luke, when Jesus is quoted in this passage, it is hamartia, it is sins.
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Forgive us of our sins as we forgive those who are indebted to us.
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How is somebody indebted to us? By sinning against us.
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Right.
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So, Jesus, in his prayer that you're supposed to pray and model your prayer life after, he tells you to ask for forgiveness basically on a daily basis.
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So the question is, is the Bible sending a mixed signal here? Is it representing to us an unreconcilable contradiction like a married bachelor? If a man told you he was a married bachelor, you know he was a liar because you can't be both.
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Is the Bible presenting us with an irreconcilable contradiction? Of course, the answer is no, the Bible is not attempting to speak in any form of double talk on the subject of sin, nor is it in contradiction with itself on the subject of sin.
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But it does present us with a multifaceted view of the subject of sin in the life of the believer.
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And we need to study all of the passages to understand what they mean in context in the life of the believer.
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So this is the three questions we're going to ask.
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If you have your handout, I have I have put together three questions that I think we need to answer on this subject.
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And I do plan to get through this tonight.
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I'm not going to spend a ton of time on each of these, but I will spend as much time as necessary because I don't this is not the lesson you want to break in half.
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We got to get through this.
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Three questions.
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Is it possible for a genuine Christian to sin? Number two, is it possible for a genuine Christian to not sin? Three, how should a genuine Christian understand the sin in his life? I think these are very practical questions and ones that we need to answer.
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So let's look first at number one.
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Is it possible for a Christian to sin? Most of you would say, yep, absolutely, because you know your own heart.
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But as we've already noted, 1 John 5, 18 says, we know that no one who is born of God sins.
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And there's another passage like at 1 John 3, 6, no one who abides in him sins.
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These passages have been known to cause very doubtful hearts.
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In fact, they have been used to justify a teaching called sinless perfectionism.
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The Wesleys, in your familiar John and Charles Wesley, they put forward the idea of sinless perfectionism, that one who is a believer could get to a point of sanctification where he would live without sin.
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Go ahead, Anne, you want to.
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You're going to you're going to outrun me.
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No, it's OK.
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I don't mind if you've heard it.
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That's good.
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No, and you're not wrong because that's what I want to show you.
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Notice I've been reading out of the New American Standard Bible.
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Both times I read it, I read no one who abides in him sins.
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That's NASB of 1 John 3, 6.
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And we know that no one who is born of God sins.
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That is the NASB of 1 John 5, 18.
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Why did I read out of it? I never read out of the NAS.
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Why did I choose the NAS? Because in the ESV, it does translate it this way.
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In the ESV, it says no one who is born of God keeps on sinning.
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And the idea is habitual, unrepentant sin.
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You say, how do you know that, Pastor? You're making that up.
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No, I'm not, because the word hamartaneh is in the present active indicative, which means it should be translated keeps on sinning.
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The word sins in the New American Standard Bible is not a wrong way to translate it, but it is a very, I would say, unhelpful way to translate it.
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Our goal in translating scripture should always be to give the sense of what is meant.
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And if the translation that is ultimately the literal translation does not truly convey what it means, then I think we're doing a disservice in our translation.
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Now, I'm not for dynamic equivalence and all those things, but literal does not always mean that it's simply a word for word taking of one to the other, because that's not how language is to be translated.
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So we talk about that another time.
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But let me get again, the present active indicative is keeps on sinning.
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This is not saying that it is impossible for a Christian to sin, but what it is saying is that it is not possible.
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And I'm going to say this and it's going to sound this is just as hard for me.
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It is saying that it is not possible that a Christian's life would be marked by habitual pattern of unrepentant sin.
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A habitual pattern of unrepentant sin is not the sign of a believer, but the sign of an unbeliever.
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How do I know that? Because that's church discipline.
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Jesus tells us if you have a person that sins and you go to that person and they won't repent, you go and take more people and you try to get them to repent and they still don't repent.
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What do you do? You take them before the church to try to get them to see the weight of the church and try to get them to repent.
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And if they still continue in unrepentance, what do you say? You treat them as a tax collector, which was a person who was excommunicated from the community of the Jewish people or a sinner, also a person who was excommunicated from the community of the Jewish people.
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Jesus is using he's in a Jewish context.
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He's speaking to tax collectors and sinners.
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They were excommunicated.
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Why? Because they were habitual, unrepentant sinners.
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John MacArthur says this.
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He says, if no check against habitual sins exists in someone who professes to be a Christian, John's pronouncement is absolutely clear.
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Salvation never took place.
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The Believer's Bible commentary, one that I like to use, it's a one volume commentary.
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We're going to be using it in our our new class coming up.
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I know and Jackie is going to be in that class.
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We've been talking about it.
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This is what it says on that verse.
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John is not here speaking about isolated acts of sin, but rather continued habitual characteristic behavior.
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This verse does not imply that when a Christian commits an act of sin, he loses his salvation.
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Rather, it says that when a person sins habitually, it is a it is conclusive that he was never regenerated.
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I think that's John's point.
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Now, someone might ask, well, what constitutes habitual sin? Don't we all have sins that we struggle with? Does that not prove that we're all unbelievers? Well, I believe there is also an inherent sense in which there is.
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There is in John's writing and first John 3 and first John 5, I think the idea is not just that it's a habitual, but it's habitual and unrepentant because I'll answer your question just a second.
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Let me finish my thought.
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Habitual might be something that we battle with, but unrepentant means we're not battling.
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We are enjoying it, loving it, pursuing it.
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And there's a difference.
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I mean, there are things I battle with that are that are very real and very genuine and very, very ongoing.
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But I hate it and I don't want it.
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And I fight it.
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I battle it.
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And that's the difference.
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And Jesus said this.
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And this is a very important text.
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If you really think about it, he said, if your brother comes and he sins against you seven times in a day and he returns and says seven times as I repent, you were to forgive him.
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If we are called to forgive somebody who repents seven times in a day of the same sin, is not God also good to us and even better to us who would repent? You say, well, it's not real repentance if he keeps doing it.
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Jesus didn't make that a consideration because he said this guy has repented seven times in one day.
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And yet you are to forgive him.
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That should give us some peace and comfort.
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But brother, you had a question.
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Go ahead.
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I don't know if this is appropriate time to ask this question.
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Oh, well, that's a nervous story.
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And then when Sister Anne said what she did that sparked another question, I'm just going to I'm just going to read what I wrote down.
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OK, the first one says, since the true Christian knows that he is a sinner and sin is wrong, is all sin in the life of a genuine Christian willful sinning? Yes.
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And we're going to get there on the next because that's the question.
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Is it possible not to sin? We're going to talk about that.
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And I'm actually going to address that very question in the next part.
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So did you have another? Well, I just wrote down, is there a difference between habitual and willful sin? I think, well, the Bible does make a distinction, especially under the Old Covenant text.
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And I would have to look up to find the ones.
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But there was a difference between sins that were that were done purposefully and sins that were done.
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I hate to use the word accidentally, but they were things that people had mistakes and it did make a distinction.
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I can't remember the word.
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Maybe you can help me.
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It was commission and omission.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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There were sins that were done purposefully and sins that weren't necessarily done purposely.
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And it made a distinction between those those two types.
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I always thought that willful sinning in the life.
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Oh, absolutely.
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I mean, yeah, amen.
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I'll raise my hand on that.
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Amen.
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Yeah.
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Yes, I agree.
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One hundred percent.
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Very dangerous.
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So so the first question, is it possible for a genuine Christian to sin? I think the answer is yes, because that's the whole reason for church discipline.
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If you go to your brother, tell him his sin and he repents, you've won your brother, which tells us he was your brother the whole time, even when he sinned.
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He didn't stop being your brother when he when he sinned, but if he kept habitually sinning, that would show he's probably not a real brother.
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You see how that shows even in the implicitly that that person who has sinned is still a brother until he proves otherwise.
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Likewise, Hebrews 12 is a very important passage because it tells us that God disciplines those who are his.
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This is Hebrews 12, 7 to 11.
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It says God disciplines those who are his.
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And if you have not the discipline of the Lord.
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Then you are not his.
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The language of the King James is very striking because the language of the King James uses the old English word for a child without a father.
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And the ESV simply says an illegitimate child.
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And we all know what the word I'm considering there.
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It says if you are without the discipline of the Lord, if you can sin and the discipline of the Lord is not on your heart.
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Then you are an illegitimate child.
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You do not belong to him.
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And I've told you that's Hebrews 12, 7 to 11.
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And that's a passage I have actually I've given this analogy.
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I've said, you know what? I discipline my kids, but I don't discipline other people's kids.
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You know, when other people's kids come over to my house and play with my kids, if they're acting up, I leave it to their parents to discipline them.
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But my kids know that they're going to get my discipline.
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And that's in a sense, that's what Hebrews is talking about with God.
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It's saying God disciplines those who are his.
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So if you are without discipline, it means you're not his.
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But why would you need discipline if you were perfect? See, that's the point in implicit in the discipline is you're not yet perfected.
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So the answer of is it possible for a Christian to say, yes, the answer, I believe, I think, based on explicit and implicit texts, I think the answer is yes.
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But the next question is even more difficult, and that is, is it possible for a genuine Christian not to sin? I think this is a hard question.
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Some people that are smarter than me and maybe a little bit more spiritually attuned might just answer quickly.
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But I don't like to give a quick answer.
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I like to think through things.
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And I've thought through this a lot because hypothetically, it would seem at least possible that a believer could refrain from saying I'm not saying anyone ever has.
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But hear me out, because what I'm saying is that in First Corinthians, it tells us that with every temptation, God gives a way of escape.
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And yet we don't choose to take that way of escape every time.
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Sometimes we engage in the temptation and we engage with it and we and we pursue it.
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But it seems as if it's saying God would give us a way out if we would take it.
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And this kind of goes with Andy's, you know, we've got Andy isms now.
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We used to have a lot of Keith isms.
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Now we've got Andy isms and that's the end of being a mess.
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Right.
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We're all a mess.
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What makes us a mess? It's the sin that still abides that we're still dealing with.
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Right.
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That's the mess.
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Other than the fact that we're physically breaking down and all those things, we we deal with sin.
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But I think that the question is, is it possible for a genuine Christian not to sin? I think the answer is no, only because of the fact that we're still in the flesh.
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But hypothetically, it seems as if we should be able to because we have the spirit within us.
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But I don't think anyone ever has and I don't think anyone ever will as long as they're in the flesh.
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So again, if you want to if you want to if you want to jockey hypotheticals and play a little hypothetical hockey with your brain, that's fine.
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But I don't think it's ever been.
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I know that some of the greatest Christians in history have said the more they have progressed in sanctification, the more their sins were obvious to them and the more they realized how much they were still sinners.
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One I can think of specifically is Paul Washer, tremendous preacher of the gospel, tremendous, wonderful, modern missionary evangelist.
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And he will tell you the more he is conformed to the image of Christ, the more he realizes how much of a sinner he still is.
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And how much of a failure in the flesh that he is.
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Now, there are two passages I do want to give to you on this subject.
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And that first one is a very debated passage.
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I do not want to debate with you tonight, so please don't come to me afterwards and debate me on this.
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Romans 7, 14 to 20 is that is Paul says essentially that he is bound in sin, bound in the flesh, and he doesn't do what he wants to do.
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His spirit wants to do right, but his body wants to do wrong.
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And so there's this ongoing battle between the right and the wrong.
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There are two vastly different ways to interpret that passage.
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And I know that even among our elders, there are some differences of opinion here.
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So I want to simply give you the two ways of looking at it.
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Some believe that Paul is referring to himself prior to salvation when he was a Pharisee.
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He tried to keep the law, but he couldn't because he was a sinner.
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And so he's referring to himself in the past tense, even though it's present tense verbs.
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He's thinking back on himself when he was unable to, even though he wanted to do the law, because that's what Pharisees want to do.
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He couldn't do it.
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So it's not talking about believers.
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It's talking about prior to faith.
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Paul wanted to do that.
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You say, well, why would they say that? Because there are certain things that he says that does seem like it's unbeliever.
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He talks about the fact that he can't do any good.
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And the Bible says we have the Holy Spirit.
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We can do good.
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So so it does seem to be prior to salvation.
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Now, the other side of it would say, no, it is talking about a saved person.
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And you say, well, why would somebody think he's talking about a saved person? Well, at one point he says, I want to do good, but the sin is in my flesh.
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But it's not me who's doing it's the sin that's in my flesh.
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And so he seems to make a distinction between himself and his flesh.
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And that's something that a believer does.
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A believer makes a distinction between the spirit and the flesh.
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And so there really is two vastly different opinions on this.
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And I am not going to tell you what to believe because it is such a difficult passage.
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I will tell you that in regard to this passage, I don't think it's the one that you need to go to to make the argument.
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That's what I'm basically all I was saying tonight is I would not use this passage to make the argument because there's too much question on both sides.
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But I will tell you this in Galatians five, there is no doubt that Paul is talking about himself as a believer.
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And I want to I want you to read.
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I want you to hear what Galatians 517 says.
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Galatians 517, notwithstanding what he says in Romans seven, Galatians five says this for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.
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For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
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There is no question among scholars that Paul is talking about himself as a believer there.
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And therefore, here is the interpretation that I will give.
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Paul says we as spiritual people live in a fleshly body.
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The flesh wants sin.
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The spirit wants righteousness.
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The flesh is trying to keep you from doing what you know is right and what you want to do.
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And the reason you want to do it is because you have been saved by grace.
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And the picture that I give is the picture of a fish that is dead in a stream that is going with the stream.
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The water is carrying it downstream with all the rest of the dead fish.
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God makes you alive.
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And that imagine the fish comes alive and he turns around.
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Now he's swimming upstream against the current, getting hit in the face with other dead fish, getting hit in the face with branches and limbs.
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But he's swimming against the current because he has been made alive.
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So the question is not, is it possible for us to not sin? I really don't think that we are not going to sin.
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But the question is, are we fighting sin? Yes, we must be fighting sin.
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If you will be killing sin or sin will be killing you, as the old writer so aptly said.
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So again, I don't need Romans 7 to make my argument because I have first I have Galatians 5 17.
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Galatians 5 17 clearly says that the flesh and the spirit are battling one another.
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Lastly and thirdly, how should a genuine Christian understand the sin in his life? Well, I have never known a believer who didn't struggle with sin.
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And as I said earlier, the most mature and greatest sanctified saints that I know are the ones who lament their sin the most.
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You know, I'm going to tell you this story.
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He's passed on now.
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I don't think his family would mind me telling this story at all.
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Irv Hillard was a dear friend.
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He was one of the most he was one of the most encouraging men I've ever met in my life.
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He was a Barnabas.
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He was just lived to to encourage and especially me as a pastor.
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And every time I would go to see him, he would say it's my best friend.
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My pastor is here to see me as my best friend.
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And as he got close to his passing, it became harder and harder for him to really enjoy life at all because his body was breaking down so much to the point where he moved into a assisted facility.
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And I would go and visit him there.
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But I would ask him, I would say, brother, how are you doing spiritually? And I'll never forget, I told this story at his funeral.
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He said, I just wish I had more time to repent.
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And what a thought.
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He said he knew his sin, a man who lived for Christ, who had led worship in God's house, who had been a faithful stalwart elder in the church.
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And he said, I just I know my sin.
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He trusted his savior.
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And I have no doubt of his where he is.
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But he he knew the weight of his sin, even at at his older age.
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And so I think anyone who claims sinless perfection has two various serious flaws.
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Here's the flaws of the doctrine of sinless perfection.
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Number one, they have too high a view of self and two, they have too low a view of sin.
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They have too high a view of self and too low a view of sin because sin is missing the mark.
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And we all miss the most important mark of all.
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And that is this.
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We do not love God perfectly.
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None of us have ever loved the Lord our God perfectly.
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In fact, that's what I got the guy to admit that night who was here.
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He said to me, I am not a sinner.
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I said, you're telling me you don't sin? Yes, I don't sin.
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I said, so you have loved the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind without fail from the moment you got up this morning to this very second.
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And he said, I didn't say I was perfect.
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Yeah, I said you have too low of a view of sin and too high a view of yourself.
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If you think that you are without sin, you have too low a view of what sin is.
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So I leave you with this passage, a passage I think is important to consider when thinking about sin, the life of the believer.
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Again, I read it earlier, but I want to read it again.
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First, John two, one.
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My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
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But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
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He is righteous and he is our righteousness.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for this time to study.
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I pray that this has been fruitful for your people, helpful and encouraging them.
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Lord, that though we battle sin, we should never give in and lay down our arms, but that we should continue with the the the armor of God to fight against the wiles of the devil and that we should stand for truth and seek to live for you.
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We pray it all in Christ's name.
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Amen.