How Much Can a Christian Sin? | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we take on the question, how much can a Christian sin? Or to frame it another way, how badly and for how long can a Christian sin and not necessarily be proving him or herself to be an unbeliever?

If you listen to the conversations in the evangelical world, you get the idea that if someone in the church sins really badly, then he or she is definitely not a Christian. Or if he or she continues in that pattern of sin for a long time, he or she is definitely not a Christian.

We wrestle with those questions. And then over in the members podcast area, we talk about preaching and the tone and tenor of it in particular in light of these realities. And we also consider church discipline.

We hope that this conversation is helpful to you. Stay tuned.

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The Frailty of Life, Natural Disaster, and Human Mortality

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

John, how are you doing today, man?

I'm doing good. Unfortunately, I woke up to a lot of notifications on my phone this morning. This podcast, we record multiple weeks in advance, so this is gonna be old news by now, but it's fresh to me.

This morning, Nashville got hit by a pretty bad tornado. And as of, what is it, eight o 'clock this morning, already eight people have been reported dead and a lot of damage. So yeah, I've already been texting with my deacons and just trying to figure out if there's anybody in our church that needs help and just checking on some people that I know that live up there.

But yeah, it's always hard anytime that you deal with disasters. You see them in the news, and then when it's in your own hometown, it's always a little bit harder. So yeah, I'm always reminded, you get busy with life and then you just, you stop thinking about the frailty of life and then you realize just how, I mean, I know, Justin, you dealt with this last week, just how frail and how quick life can be over, so.

Yeah, the things like natural disasters, in this case, a tornado, they're very sobering realities and they do remind us of a few things. One is how small and powerless we are. Even in this modern era and advanced technology and everything that we have, we still have zero control over the weather.

And then when real inclement weather strikes, even all of our technology and engineering and everything else is really powerless against the forces of nature, which is a humbling, sobering reality in and of itself.

And then, yeah, the other thing is the frailty, like you just said, John, the frailty of life and the fact that we really are like grass. We're here today and we're gone tomorrow. We are mindful of that and natural disasters, and also, as you alluded to, even just sickness and disease and how quickly our lives can be snatched from us.

It's not bad for us as believers to contemplate our mortality because it forces us to consider eternal realities. So, yeah, I'm mindful. Whatever natural disasters strike, I'm mindful of Jesus in Luke 13 when he begins to talk about a couple of scenarios.

One, he asks his audience, a Jewish audience, about, he said, you know those Galileans who were slaughtered by Pilate? You know, their bodies were mixed with the sacrifices being offered to pagan gods.

Do you think they were any worse than you? And he says they were not. You know, unless you repent, you will likewise perish. Or what about those 18 people on whom the tower in Siloam fell and it killed them?

Were they any worse than you? He says, truly, I say to you, they weren't. You know, unless you repent, you will likewise perish. So I think a quick word from Theocast on natural disaster. A lot of times people in the American church, when a natural disaster strikes or hits, immediately we're like, oh, well, this is obviously God's judgment on this group of people or on this country or on this city.

Like, well, Jesus says otherwise. And I'm even thinking about John 9 when you have a man who was born blind and the disciples immediately asked Jesus, well, whose sin? Was it his parents or was it this man that he was born blind?

And Jesus says, well, actually neither one. Letter C, none of the above. You know, it's that the works of God might be displayed through him. So the world has fallen, the creation is cursed, it's groaning, Romans 8, to be liberated from the curse that God has put it under and the creation awaits the revealing of the sons of God.

And so that's why natural disasters are happening right now.

Security in Christ Amid Suffering and Death

Yeah.

Yeah, life is not as neat and in order as we want it. A couple of weeks ago, I was preaching through John 17 and in John 17, Jesus makes a very interesting request, which I think goes against everything the prosperity gospel tries to present to us.

And the request that Jesus makes is he asks the Father to protect them from the evil one. And if you go throughout the entirety of Jesus' teaching and prayer, you don't ever have Jesus guaranteeing or asking the Father for the physical protection from harm or from danger or from cancer or even from death, because death is part of life.

Like you will die.

That's right.

There are very few people in the world, you know, we know of two of them in the Bible that have not died, they ascended to heaven. And so what encourages me is this, and I told my congregation this, I said, you can be as wealthy as Kobe Bryant or you could be as poor as a person that lives on the street and neither of them have a greater amount of security because life is that fragile.

It's that frail, but what is not fragile and what is not frail is your security to the Father. And Jesus makes sure that we have full confidence that we don't know when we die and how we're gonna die and if we die in pain, but we will never be abandoned.

I mean, what can separate us from the love of God? And Paul gives us a list just to make sure if anybody said, well, what about this? Or what about that? Paul covers every possible scenario, categorically speaking and saying, there's nothing.

And Jesus confirms that when he says, Father, the only thing that can trip these poor people up is Satan, who is deceitful and powerful. And Lord, I'm gonna ask you to protect them from that so it won't happen.

And a little bit of what we're gonna talk about today actually is the frailty of humanity and sin and our safety and security as it relates to sin. So JP, why don't you kind of, I know this is a tough transition and it's probably a heavy podcast.

We apologize for that. It just was on my heart and my mind. It's what I've been thinking about for the last three hours.

Can a Christian Sin Really Badly for a Long Time?

Yeah, sure. I mean, one other thought on this, John, and before I tee up our topic for today, and this is related. I'm thinking about Hebrews chapter 11, where we're told about a number of different people.

And then we're even told about groups of people in general who all had faith in the Lord and in his promises through Christ. Some of them were delivered from trial and tribulation and from execution and danger and persecution.

But then we also read that some of them were sawn in two and some of them perished. And so we are not guaranteed simply through faith in Christ to your point that you were just making from John 17. We are never promised security and ease of life now.

We're not promised that we'll be delivered from every kind of trial, every kind of persecution, every kind of malady, but we are promised eternal security, that God will work all things for our eternal good.

And that's an eternal promise and that will never be lost and that we will be eternally safe. And as you've already alluded to life, this side of heaven is complicated.

It's hard.

It is wrought with trial and this side of the resurrection, our corruption in the flesh remains. And because of all of those things, all of those realities, people in the church, and by that we mean the redeemed, saints, those who are trusting in Christ, sometimes and even oftentimes find themselves caught and mired in sin.

And so one of the questions that we get here at Theocast a decent amount, and John, I know that you deal with this in your own local church context, so do I, is something like this. For how long and how badly can a Christian sin and not be lost and not demonstrate him or herself to be unregenerate, or let me frame it again.

So can Christians sin really badly for a long time and still be in Christ Jesus? This is something that we wrestle with in our experience because we've all seen people in our own local churches perhaps who have sinned maybe heinously.

They remain in a posture of sinning for an extended season of time, or maybe even we ourselves have gone through seasons like that in our lives or are in one presently. And we think, man, if you only knew what was going on in my life, in my mind, in my heart, or if you knew how long this has been a problem, you would question my salvation because I know myself and I'm certainly questioning whether or not I'm a Christian.

So that's the question is, can somebody sin so badly that it means they are necessarily not a Christian or can somebody remain in sin for so long that it means that they are necessarily not a Christian?

That's what we're gonna talk about.

That's right.

Yeah.

Repentance, Confession, and the Reality of Remaining Corruption

Yeah, this is a good conversation. It falls into the whole theme of theocast which is resting in Christ and helping people find assurance and joy.

Peace and assurance, yeah.

So a lot of times when someone is asking me this question, it's not because someone wants to stay in sin. It's not because they're justifying their sin. We are talking not about unbelievers.

And that's important to make that distinction. To be clear.

We're talking about people who are actually struggling with their sin. Like they don't want to sin and they are sinning or they have done something in the past and they don't know, you know, can God forgive me for this?

And this is a, to jump into the deep water right away, I apologize if this is maybe a little too much.

I mean, why not, John?

Yeah, but I've had to deal with ladies who before they were a believer, before they came to Christ, they, you know, they had an abortion and it just horrified them when they realized, you know, what they had done and why they did it.

And they just thought, man, I don't know, can God forgive me for taking a life as how they saw it? And it was, you know, one, not a simple conversation, not an easy conversation. And so this is where, you know, when we think Christianity is so A-B-C, one, two, three, it's clean cut railroad tracks.

There's no debris or problem. And then a tornado comes as ripping through your life and now your life is not what you thought it was going to be. So there's a couple of places. One, I'm going to go to, I know that you JP are going to do this as well, but I'm going to read to us real quick, the confession, Lenten Baptist confession, which is also taken from the Westminster Confession.

And it says in chapter 15 .4, says repentance must continue throughout our lives because the body of death and its activities, so it is everyone's duty to repent each specific known sin specifically, meaning that, hey, listen, Scripture makes it very clear.

We know this from 1 John, we know this from 1 Timothy 1, 13 and 15, that we are going to struggle with sin. We'll get into this a little bit later with Paul and Romans, but then the next point I think is so helpful here.

It says this, so 15 .5, God has made full provision through Christ in the covenant of grace to preserve believers in their salvation. So to preserve them. Thus, although there is no sin so small that is undeserving of damnation, which is true, any sin against God is as if you make yourself equal with God.

That's why Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden. It wasn't because they ate an apple, it was they attempted to make themselves equal with God. Every sin is that attempt. Yet there is no sin so great.

That's right, cosmic treason. Yet there is no sin so great that it won't bring, that it will bring, sorry, let me say this again. Yet there is no sin so great that it will bring damnation on those who repent.

This makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary. Of course, this is Romans 6 .23 and other passages that we could quote. So I think that the point of it here and the confession makes it very clear that if someone acknowledges what they have done is a violation against God and they are willing to confess that sin, I agree with the confession because I think it aligns with scripture that there is no sin so great that it cannot be forgiven.

So I'll just kind of throw that out there, JP, and see how do you respond to that?

Received, first of all, received. You threw it, I've caught it, I receive it. Couple of thoughts. One, whenever people are battling sin or struggling with sin, I think the implication, just even in the words that we use, the verbs we use, is that there is an actual fight going on and there is an actual struggle being undertaken.

And the question that I ask people, I know you've asked this question to people too, John, and we've even talked about this on Theocast before. The question that I ask, and I ask this often from the pulpit, is not, are you sinning?

Because the answer to that question for every redeemed person from all time is yes. The question is, does your sin bother you? And the answer to that question for all the redeemed of all time is yes. So that's the reality that we live in.

It's not that we're not sinning. It's the difference between a believer and a non-believer, a saint and a person who is not trusting Christ, is that for the saint, their sin, his or her sin, bothers him or her.

And so that's a great diagnostic question. It doesn't mean that it bothers you as much as it should, because none of our sin ever bothers us as much as it should. But are you okay with it? Are you just kind of like, hey, I'm going to go on and do this, and I don't care what God says, like you've acknowledged already, even in your reading of chapter 15 from the 1689.

Repentance is a big piece of this conversation, because repentance means a change of mind. A change of mind about what? Well, God and about salvation and God's ways with us, but it also means a change of mind about sin.

Whereas in our natural state, we love sin and embrace it in the Lord. I mean, having the spirit of God in us, that change of mind has happened where we acknowledge that our sin is wrong. And that's really where we are.

So if our sin is bothering us and we're acknowledging that it's wrong, there is, and we are turning to Christ in faith, looking to his merits, not ours, looking to his righteousness, not ours, looking to his atoning work to pay for, atone for, bear the wrath of God for, satisfy for our sin.

There is no sin that is not covered, that is not dealt with in full. A thought here, I'm going to go ahead and read a little bit more from the 1689. This is from chapter 13 on sanctification. I'm going to touch on a little bit from paragraphs two and three.

This speaks to the reality of sin happening in a Christian's life, where it comes from, and the fact that it could endure for a season. So this is chapter 13, paragraph two on sanctification. Reads this way, this sanctification extends throughout the whole person, though it is never completed in this life.

Some corruption remains in every part. From this arises a continual and irreconcilable war with the desires of the flesh against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And obviously they're referencing Romans 7 and Galatians 5, 17 there, which we're going to talk about more in a minute.

They go on in paragraph three to say this. In this war, the remaining corruption may greatly prevail for a time. I'm just going to read that sentence again. In this war, the spirit against the flesh, the internal war that every Christian fights, the remaining corruption, that is our flesh, may greatly prevail for a time.

Greatly prevail for a time. Yet through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying spirit of Christ, the regenerate part overcomes, eventually, right? So the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear or reverence of God.

They pursue a heavenly life in gospel obedience to all the commands that Christ as head and king has given them in his word. That will be the end result. But for a season of time, which could be a long time, corruption, the flesh, may prevail.

I mean, it's very clear. That is the experience of believers from all time.

The Foremost of Sinners and Christ's Mercy

Yeah, well, and I'll even read one more to comment, and then I'll comment on it. Chapter 5 .5, which is under divine providence. It says, the perfectly wise, righteous, gracious God often allows his children for a time to experience a variety of temptations and the sinfulness of their own hearts.

He does this to chastise them for their former sins or to make them aware of the hidden strength of the corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts so that they may be humbled. And Romans 8 .28 talks about this in the providence of it.

So the point of it is that yes, God is very aware of our frailty, and at times he uses it for our own benefit of seeing that we must not depend upon our flesh, but depend upon something outside of us, which we talk about all the time.

Our faith has to be in a work that's outside of us because the moment you trust in your own sinful flesh, Colossians 3 warns us, Colossians 2 says, it's of no value stopping the indulgence of the flesh, these rules and regulations that we make.

So a couple of thoughts to add to this is that we often think of the big sins, and I'm not gonna make a list, but there's the sexual sins or crimes that can be committed. And let me tell you this, those are big, and when someone commits those, they receive the same amount of blood washed over them as the small sins.

They're both violations against God. And the problem is is that people just assume themselves to be better than they are. And here's the confusion, and this is something we should talk to, Justin, is that, well, if we have the Holy Spirit, how is it that someone who has the Spirit can perform such horrible acts of sin?

And then not only that, but repetitive acts. And I'm gonna just put this out there for someone who's listening and maybe even struggling and even judging us at the moment. What's interesting to me is that someone who is very quick, and there's several camps out there that are very quick to judge people who basically don't overcome sin quickly.

Let me point out your acceptable sins, the sins that it doesn't bother you that you sin repetitively over and over and over again. These are the acceptable sins, the sins of judgmentalism, the sins of laziness, the sins of lack of faith would be one, or the sin of gossip.

Can I keep going? These are the sins that we, yeah, come on, jump on in. We are excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called Faith Versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rust.

And we, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry. And you can do that by going to our website, theocast .org.

We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

We've commented on this before. I've said something about this before, I think in the members area, and I'm gonna go ahead and say it now for all to hear. One of the respectable sins that everybody commits, that everybody is pretty happy to admit they struggle with, is pride.

And if you ask somebody, hey, tell me what you're struggling with, to a man, almost every person is gonna say, well, pride. And it's very interesting to me that in the circles that you're pointing out where we're very quick to tell somebody, like the guy that says, I've been struggling in a battle against sexual sin, like in the form of pornography for 15 years.

Well, the response of most people in that scenario is gonna be, you've been battling against pornography for 15 years and you don't have victory over that yet. Are you sure that you're even a Christian?

Because if you had the Holy Spirit in you, you would see victory over pornography by this point 15 years in.

Okay.

I would want to turn the table on that.

Man or woman, I mean, here's the thing. The reality is that's not gender anymore.

No, no, no, I agree. I was just illustrating.

No, I agree.

Yeah, it could easily be a female, not a male. I would turn the tables right then in that moment, the person that is saying, how do you know you're a Christian if you're still struggling with porn after 15 years?

I would say, well, okay, how long have you been a believer? Let's just say, I've been a believer for 20 years. And you told me just a minute ago that you still struggle with pride. Well, yeah, I do. Okay, well, you've been a Christian for 20 years and you don't have victory over pride yet.

Are you sure that you're even a believer? And if you're in ministry, it gets even worse. Like if you're a pastor and you're like, yeah, I've been in the ministry for 30 years and I'm still struggling with pride.

My response there is, okay, you've been battling pride for 30 years and you're not victorious over it yet. Maybe you should question your salvation. Two, you're in the ministry. Maybe you should resign because God says that humility is a prerequisite.

I mean, like for real, if we want to really nail this stuff to the wall, that's how we would talk. And of course we don't talk that way about respectable sins. You know, Jerry Bridges talks about respectable sins.

We don't talk that way about respectable sins, but the heinous ones, of course we do. The sexual sins and stuff that's very demonstrable in public and nature. Like, well, you should be looking differently than you are if you're going to still continue to claim Jesus.

All the while battling pride, gossip, malicious talk, all those things. Go John.

Right.

Or even anxiety. You know, someone who, you've been a Christian for how many years and you're still anxious. You still suffer anxiety.

And you still worry about everything?

Yeah, or anger.

Jesus said, don't worry.

That's right.

You know?

Be happy. Or anger or bitterness. You know what's interesting? So the point of it is, is that, and look, I'm going to be the first to admit that there are greater consequences for someone who is sexually immoral than for someone who struggles from fear.

No doubt.

We are not saying that. But the point of it is, one is acceptable to struggle with and one is not. And that is not what scripture tells us. And I'm just going to, listen, go to Galatians chapter two. And Paul, for all of eternity, because we know that scripture will be bound up for all of eternity.

Paul, for all of eternity recorded. And then this is a comment I made to Justin. So let me back up. This is a comment I made to Justin before we got started. We'll make references to believers who have said, done horrible things in the Old Testament.

Abraham.

Sure.

I mean, Homie was a hoodlum. I don't mind standing shoulder to shoulder with Abraham because, you know, I don't feel judged by him and I'm not going to judge him. Same thing with David. The thing is, the guy murdered someone, took someone's wife and then lied about it for a long time until he got called out on it.

And here's the comment I get, typically from the Calvangelical world. Yeah, but John, they didn't have the Holy Spirit like we have the Holy Spirit. So they basically, that's not, you know, shocking that they lived that way.

Well, first of all, have you ever read Galatians chapter two? Peter, who opposedly, the church, the rock, you know, the one that Jesus decided to build the church on is confronted by Paul in Galatians two for like denying the gospel, the treating Gentiles in a way that he shouldn't have treated them.

And he had to get called out for it. And then Paul himself admits the things that he doesn't want to do, he keeps doing them. Well, then that would mean that he's not a very faithful pastor. And who knows what that list was that Paul had.

And, you know, Paul never tells us what the list is, but obviously it was more than one thing that bothered his conscience.

Well, and the spirit of Romans seven makes it seem like it was substantial in its nature when it leads him at the end of it all to cry out, you know, wretched man that I am. He's acknowledging, as you've already said, I don't do the things that I want to do.

And the bad things that I don't want to do, I still find myself doing. Talks about his corruption that remains. In Galatians 5, 17, he uses the language quite explicitly about the spirit, meaning the Holy Spirit being at war with the flesh.

And this results in you not doing what you want to do.

That's right.

We keep coming back over and over again to these passages, Romans seven, Galatians five, and the like, because they're so important for us to understand every Christian's reality. The internal war is real.

It produces a struggle that lasts the entirety of our days until we die or Christ returns. And because of the remaining power and corruption of the flesh, we will find ourselves ensnared in sin. And we will find ourselves doing things that grieve our spirit.

And that's normal. It's not okay. So I want to be very clear. We are not justifying sin. We're not condoning sin. We're not giving sin a pass. We are simply acknowledging the reality that even though sin is never okay, sadly, it is normal for those of us who are still in the flesh and trust in Christ.

We are at the same time, saint and sinner. And so we will find ourselves doing these things. One other passage really quickly, John, if I may.

Yeah, man.

In 1 Timothy 1 .15, it's a verse that many people cite regularly, myself included. And I was looking at it recently and I was referencing it in a sermon that I preached at CBC not long ago. And I was struck by something.

So this is 1 Timothy 1 .15. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost. I was just struck by the fact that Paul says, of whom I am the foremost.

He doesn't say of whom I was the foremost as though that was something that used to be true of me.

Present tense.

And now it's not anymore, but it's of whom I am the foremost. And then he goes on to say, but I received mercy for this reason that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

So in other words, me, Paul, being the foremost of sinners, Jesus has been merciful and patient with me. And the reason that he has saved me as the foremost of sinners is so that the other saints will look at Christ's mercy and patience shown to me and they will be comforted.

That's a wonderful word. And so, right, consider the apostle Paul who says that he is the foremost of sinners and that Christ has been merciful and patient with him. And his word to the church is, if he's been patient and merciful with me, he will be patient and merciful with you because that's who Christ is and that's how he deals with us.

Praise be to his name. And it's a great message of comfort, man. I've got one other piece from the 1689 that I'll go to in a minute, but I'm happy to kick it over to you.

Corporate Repentance, Joy, and the Need for Ongoing Confession

Yeah, I just wanted to say something and this may change the direction. So, you know, we can deal with it however, but at the end of, yeah, 15 .5, I had quoted this earlier and it says, yet there is no sin so great that it will bring damnation to those who repent.

This makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary. And I will say, this is what we started in our church. Every week, we have a call to worship. I welcome, and then we read scripture. And then right after the reading of scripture, we corporately, all of us read a prayer of confession where we pointedly at times, read specifically how we can acknowledge ways that we have sinned against our God.

And we are openly, corporately, all of us praying a confession. Lord, we confess that we are guilty of these things. And it's at those moments that we then receive grace. And we sing then to the Father songs and we then give offering as a response out of the grace received.

So I completely agree with the confession that if a believer gets to a point where they don't, or they're not reminded, you need to repent. And that doesn't mean, you know, I'm not standing up there berating them.

The congregation shows up and goes, yeah, I'm ready. I know I have failed. I know I am vile. I know I stand with Paul. I'm the greatest sinner I know in the room right now. And so I want to receive forgiveness.

Amen, brother. We're basically, like you said, agreeing with Paul. We're all saying in that moment, wretched men, wretched women that we are. Who will deliver us from these bodies of death? Thanks be to God.

You know, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. That's what we do. I know it's what you do and it's what we do at CBC every Sunday when we get together.

I mean, we start from the welcome, man. I mean, whoever's leading the service welcomes people and we're very clear. I mean, we acknowledge right out of the gate our wretchedness and our vileness and our desperate need for Christ.

And like, that's why we're here and we trust that's why you're here. Welcome to church, you know? And so you set that tone from the very beginning and it's what permeates the entire service. So repentance, it's funny because there are many people in the evangelical world who are maybe of the fundamentalist stream or in that, I guess that's, there's fundamentalism, but then there's a fundamentalist stream of evangelicalism, you know what I mean?

And then there are those who are in the Calvingelical world as well who will talk about repentance in a very threatening way all the time, you know, even towards the believer. And this is where, this is what we're sort of driving at.