Excellent write-up on this ‘sin is dead’ doctrine by Paulchrisen Okey Okereke below:
False Assertions About Sin. Part 5.
*False Assertions Addressed By John.
(2.) “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8
This is the second false assertion about sin, John the apostle dealt with.
Today, this assertion will sell very well as an assurance of salvation, and a profession/declaration of faith; “I have no sin in me”!
However, the greatest of all deceptions, which is SELF Deception, is bound up with this assertion. Those who speak this way deliberately deceive themselves, for they know within themselves the struggles they have with besetting sins in their vile/mortal flesh.
The modern day version of this false assertion is: “Sin is dead! Sin no longer Exists”.
I know you must have heard some professing christians making such claims lately, and you probably felt it’s a new discovery or doctrine they stumbled on.
No! It’s not new, it’s just a modernised version of an ancient heresy, which christians in the early church were assailed with.
A posterity and lineage of error which lies parallel to the truth, running through/spanning the centuries of the church dispensation; readily accepted/embraced by many, who in their struggle with sin, need to hear something that will relieve and absolve them of the responsibility to lay aside the sin that easily besets, and to run with patience the race set before them.
Many a pilgrim and wayfarer, who in weariness, lay by the wayside to rest a while from striving against sin and fleshly lusts; have eaten and drank of the bread and wine ? offered by this delusion. In soothing words of false comfort and assurance that we no longer have sin in our flesh to contend with; that sin is dead and no longer exists, that the storm is over, the battle is over, we have eternal life now in us, there’s no more fight of faith to fight and lay hold on eternal life.
Every sense and consciouness of the enmity which sin brings in the relationship with God, and it’s hostility against the soul of the pious, now lost in the arms of the hospitality and magnanimity of this delusion. Her words so sweet and delicious to the weary soul: “O! why struggle and strive against sin ignorantly, sin is dead and has lost it’s potency to separate you from God; stop being sin conscious, there’s no more enmity between God and the adulterer who is in Christ, God can no longer be angry with you, God only sees you in Christ, so when you sin it doesn’t count before God. Cheer up! Sin is no longer an issue with God.” All these she says to the weary soul and to perfectly hide her true identity as iniquity, she sums it up by saying “this is however, not a licence to sin”.
Much more than giving you a licence to function, it has established and settled you in a fellowship and friendship with her; you’re now at home with things you were not comfortable with before. Every enmity and hostility is gone, and she has succeeded in reconciling the irreconcilable paths of righteousness and iniquity for you. You’re infallible in grace, and forever settled/seated in a Christ who no longer loves righteousness and hates iniquity; whether you sin or not, it makes no difference. It is finished. You’re forever saved.
This is another gospel, this is another Jesus, this is the assurance of delusion/destruction and not salvation.
Friends! If it is not the Jesus that saves from sin that you have been espoused to/brought into fellowship with, then you have received another Jesus. If it is not the Jesus that loves righteousness and hates iniquity, you have been deceived and have received another gospel which is not another but a perversion of the true.
None of the apostles ever preached this gospel of once saved, forever saved.
Even Paul, the apostle who understood and preached the grace in Christ much more than any other apostle, knew the wretchedness and infirmities of the man he was in himself, and how so unlike Christ he was in himself and his sinful mortal body. He knew the difference between the man he had been recreated to be in Christ and the man he was in himself, thus in 2 Corinthians 12:2-5 when he talked about knowing a man in Christ, he quickly said: “Of such a one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities”.
Paul in his epistles, severally acknowledged that sin dwells in our mortal/physical bodies; that in the days of our flesh we’re assailed with the temptation to sin, within and without; thus he admonished the saints not to let sin reign in their mortal bodies, and not to yield their bodies as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Romans 6:12-13; 7:20-25.
In Hebrews 12:1-5, scriptures admonish us thus: “wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.”
Note: The writer by the inspiration of the HolySpirit says: “let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us”. This is not an injunction to sinners or new converts; it is a message to those who had been in the faith, a people who had a rich history of walk with God having endured great fights of afflictions; being made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and were also companions of them that were so used. The writer himself acknowledged how they even had compassion of him in his bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing in themselves that they have in heaven, a better/enduring substance. Hebrews 10:32-34.
A people with such a long, rich history of enduring faith and love in Christ, are yet being told to lay aside every weight and the sin that easily besets; and the apostle who wrote this does not exclude himself, for the injunction is: “let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us”.
The struggle against the contradiction of sin in ourselves – which seeks to thwart us in the race set before us – is so real that the apostolic encouragement against fainting and becoming weary, is the presentation of the fact that they had not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
They lived in a day and time when fervent christians would rather die/be martyred than to compromise and sin. Something more than the opposite is the case today, when many professing christians would readily compromise to sin, even without any threat of death.
Enmity and apathy to sin is all too rare in the souls of many professing faith in Christ today, and for this, we have to pause from every religious activity and ask ourselves if we have really met and received Christ.
SOCIAL
Visual Verse of the Day
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corin 4:8-9"
