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1 John: Sinless and Sin Less, Part 1

This week, in the valley here, we are looking at 1 John. On-line, this is the first installment of a five part series. In person, we are actually half way through a mini-series. There are these great little tracts called the 4 points. We have been using them as a rough outline here. If you haven't seem them before you can find them on-line at the4points.com Last week Susan spoke about love. Next week, if all goes according to plan, we will speak about Jesus' death and then we will chat about following Jesus.

SIN

Today we are talking about one of everybody’s favourite topics: sin! Okay, maybe that isn’t anybody’s favourite topic but still it is what we looking at today. 1 John has a few things to say about sin and at first read it can sometimes seem a little confusing. For example:
  • 1 John 1:8 says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” AND 
  • 1 John 3:6 says, “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” 
If we claim to be without sin the truth in not in us. HOWEVER no one who lives in Christ sins; how can this be? John says that no one who knows Jesus keeps on sinning but I am guessing that most of us here have sinned; so how does this work? The word ‘saint’ in the Bible more-or-less just means ‘Christian’ in today’s vernacular.[i] We, in this room, are mostly saints and we saints aren’t supposed to sin. But those of us who claim to be without sin, John says are liars and that we don’t even have the truth in us while at the same time he says that those of us who do sin don’t know and have never known God. It can be a little confusing

Sin is one of the key things that John is writing about in his short letter so I thought that we might spend some time looking into what the Bible means when it speaks about sin.

Today I invite you to wrestle with this yourself, read the book of 1 John in its entirety, and pray for God to speak with you about this. We will chat about this topic more tomorrow and in the days to come.
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