“…go and sin no more.”
– John 8:11
The life of the Christian is a life of victory, not defeat. Yet we struggle daily in a constant battle with the presence of sin. In the believer’s heart, sin no longer has dominion; it has been replaced by grace through faith in Jesus the Christ. In His statement here, Jesus does not set us up for failure with an impossible command; He points us to His grace. Right standing with God comes through the grace of Jesus alone.
A seventeenth-century saint once wrote a prayer of reliance on Christ. He rightly prayed, “My Father, When though are angry towards me for my wrongs I try to pacify thee by abstaining from future sin; but teach me that I cannot satisfy thy law, that this effort is resting in my righteousness, that only Christ’s righteousness, ready-made, already finished, is fit for that purpose.” What great reliance on the only One able to save!
Jesus does not go easy on sin. Nor does the Lord, in His gracious forgiveness, excuse sin. After all, He gave His life so we can be saved from it. We are not sinners because we sin, but rather because we are sinners. Yet that cannot be viewed as an excuse to continue in it anymore (Romans 6:1-2). And any born-again Christian will reflect this change through their conduct.
There are sins in the Bible that are clearly defined. When avoided, there is a sense of right standing with God. Yet there may not be an exhaustive list of “do’s and don’ts.” If one existed, we may attempt to rest in our righteousness. A futile attempt to keep ourselves in His grace. Sin has been rightly described as a “lack of conformity to the law of God in act, habit, attitude, outlook, disposition, motivation, and mode of existence.” We will always lack these tenets if our hearts are never made right with God through Jesus as Lord and personal Savior. Salvation is not based on works. It is a matter of the heart. When that is surrendered to Christ, no list is necessary. In our new nature, we will not attempt to follow a checklist. We will desire only to walk with Jesus (Psalm 42:1). He is the only One that will keep us in right standing.
“So deeply planted are the roots of human corruption, that even after we are born again, renewed, washed, sanctified, justified, and made living members of Christ, these roots remain alive in the bottom of our hearts, and, like the leprosy in the walls of the house, we never get rid of them until the earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved.”
– J. C. Ryle
surrendered devotions 