Purify Your Mind Series (Part 3) by Joe KirbyNäide

Reality Check

"Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God." (1 John 3:9)

In the Bible, there is a tension. God is abundant in grace to sinners and has a longsuffering nature toward us, even though we fail Him many times. But on the flip side, there is His call to holiness—everyone of us has a responsibility to repent and turn from our sins.

Here, in one of the most terrifying verses in the Bible, John sternly warns that no one born of God makes a practice of sinning. The Bible does not teach that if we mess up or backslide, we will be eternally separated from God. But I do believe it does teach that if you make a craft of sinning, if it’s a lifestyle, if, like the pig, you settle yourself into the mud and are content to practice sin, you have not been born of God. To practice sin is to do it continually with no change in direction. Of course, every believer falls, and if we say we have no sin, we are saying God is a liar (1 John 1:10)! So I pray that the fear of the Lord would keep us from habitual sin.

Those who refuse to repent and have spent every day indulging the lusts of the flesh should not be surprised at where they wake up when their time on earth is up.