WWUTT 422 No One Who Abides In Him Keeps Sinning?

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Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, but whoever practices righteousness is of God, because he is righteous and has given his righteousness to all his children when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.

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For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We continue our study of 1 John 3 verses 4 -10.

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The apostle writing to the churches in Asia Minor says, Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness.

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Sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin.

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No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen

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Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous.

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Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

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The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.

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By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

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Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

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Again, we come back to verse 5 here where it says, You know that He appeared, that Christ appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin.

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Christ died for sins. He died for our sins, so that He would become the atoning sacrifice, the pure, spotless

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Lamb of God, as He is described in the Scriptures. John the Baptist said that of Jesus. When He came walking by, behold the

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Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is the reason why

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Jesus came into the world, to take away sins. Therefore, if we claim that Christ is our

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Savior, if we claim that we follow Him, if we believe in this sacrifice on the cross, if you believe that, then you won't sin anymore.

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Because you know that Jesus died to take away our sin, if you keep living in sin, then you don't actually believe that He died to take away sin.

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The evidence of faith in our lives is obedience. If you truly believe, then you will obey.

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You will do what Jesus told you to do. Matthew 28, I quoted on Friday, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,

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Jesus said. Therefore, go, and teach them to obey all that I have commanded you,

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Jesus saying to His disciples, If you love me, you will obey what I command. So if you love

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God, if you love Christ, if you know that you have the love of God and you are His child, this belief that you have in God, through Jesus Christ our

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Lord, will be manifest in your obedience. You will show that you believe, that you have faith in God when you obey what

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He has said. If you know that He has taken away your sins, you won't have them anymore.

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God has taken that away from you, so it doesn't exist in you anymore.

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If you continue in sin, then you have not actually had those sins taken away.

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Now again, I clarify something that I stated yesterday, we're not talking about transgression.

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That's what Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

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These are occasions that we break the law, and we are still going to do that because we are fighting against the old man, the

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Adam, the old Adam that is still in us. Not the new Adam who is Christ, the last Adam, but the old

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Adam who everybody is descendant from and has received

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Adam's sin nature. That nature still exists with us even though we are in this flesh, but when

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Christ comes into our life and we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, the old Adam is suppressed, but he's still there, and he's still fighting to get out.

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And so we're still going to have those occasions of pride, of coveting, of anger, unjust anger toward things in our lives, frustration, not being content with what it is that the

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Lord has given us, ungrateful, unthankful. Some of these different things that we will still encounter in our lives, in our bodies, in this flesh that we inhabit, stuff that we have to fight against every single day.

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But we will not continue in sin, in lawlessness. What do I mean by that? Well, were you sexually promiscuous before you came to Christ?

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You won't be doing that anymore as a Christian. Were you a drunk before you came to know Christ? You will detest the alcohol in that bottle and will want to have nothing to do with it.

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Now, that's not going to happen immediately. You may still long for the things of the flesh, but it will disgust you.

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You won't want to have anything to do with it anymore. You will beg and cry out to God to be delivered from that sin and that transgression because that's true repentance.

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You won't want to engage in it anymore. Were you a very malicious person before you came to Christ?

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Now what you exhibit is the joy of the Lord, not the anger and the cynicism that you were constantly walking in before you came to know

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Christ. You hate that feeling, the chemicals that your brain releases whenever you feel that anger.

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It used to be therapeutic for you, at least that's what you said, but now it's a detestable feeling for you and you know it is not of God and you don't want to experience that anymore.

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These are ways in which when we come to Christ, we hate the old man and do not want to practice it anymore.

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Instead, we are walking in the righteousness of Christ. If we are in Christ, we will practice righteousness.

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Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil.

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So let us not keep in practice in the old sins that we were in before we came to Christ.

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And again, I want to say something that I mentioned yesterday, too. I don't want to be too light on you about this.

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I don't want to have somebody email me and go, Brother Gabe, I've heard you preaching from 1

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John 3 this week and I've been doing this sin and I'm convicted about it.

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Is it the sin that you're talking about? Or is this the transgression, it's the trespass?

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It's not really that serious. All sin is serious. Whether you're talking about a transgression, a trespass, a sin, it's all serious.

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You should not want to do any of it. But most specifically, we're talking about those sins we should no longer be practicing as we are in Christ.

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If you feel a conviction in your heart, you need to listen to it. Praise God for that conviction. Thank you that the

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Holy Spirit is still communicating to you that there is something that's wrong. Beware those teachers out there who are telling you that, no, if something is accusing you, that's the devil.

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That's the devil that's accusing you. So you need to not pay attention to the devil. You just need to rejoice in God. It might be the

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Holy Spirit telling you that you're doing something wrong and you need to truly listen to that. How do you know?

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How do you know whether you're listening to the accusations of the devil or the true conviction of the Holy Spirit?

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I don't know your situation or your circumstance specifically, so I can't tell you, but you need to talk to your pastor.

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You need to talk to someone else in the body of Christ. One of our elders,

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Chris Solano, was teaching during Holy Week. We had evening services all through, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, and it was the

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Saturday night service right before Easter where he said that no sin is truly confessed until you tell somebody about it.

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We don't have secret sins. You need to confess those sins, not just to God, but tell a brother or sister in Christ that you may be healed.

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That's in James 5, the prayer of a righteous person, as great power as it is working.

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So confess your sins to one another that you may be healed, that we may encourage and admonish one another in the

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Lord, the instruction that Paul gives in Colossians 3. We read this in Romans 6, verse 1.

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What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

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By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

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Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?

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We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

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Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Not walking in the old ways, but in the new righteousness of Christ, that path that has been illuminated to us by his word and the

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Holy Spirit of God. Let us not keep practicing sin, but let us instead practice righteousness and let none of us make the excuse.

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Well, God will forgive me anyway. You know, the old cliche, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.

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Well, if you continue walking in sin, you've never even received grace in the first place. You're still walking in sin and not in the grace of God.

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So turn from your sins, purify yourself as he is pure.

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Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous because we've received the righteousness of God.

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So therefore, demonstrate that in your life. Dear God, as we bring to a conclusion the things that we have studied today,

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I pray for that conviction of the Holy Spirit that our sins would be revealed to us, that we would know what we are doing is against what

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God has asked of us, what he expects of his children and desiring to be worthy sons and daughters.

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Lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake.

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For all who are in Christ Jesus, wear his name. Let us therefore walk in righteousness as he did.

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And we pray this in the name of Christ, Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.