I find it difficult to have helpful and transformative discussions about sin because for so many the subject generates extreme fearfulness. We become anxious to even discuss sin once the idea has been drummed into us that our sins separate us from God, incite God’s wrath against us, and will plunge us into the eternal fires of hell. When combined with honest self-awareness that we are quite sinful, we doubt whether we can be saved from this awful state and are terrified that even one slight slip will be enough to doom us for eternity.
I believe that the truth is our sin separates us more from godliness than it does from God himself. Jesus, who is God, reveals that God has no problem being around sinners. The very religious people of Jesus’ day had more problems being around sinners than he did, and likewise sin is much more a problem for us than it is for God. God’s wrath is against the sin problem rather than those who are mired in it (Romans 1:18).Our ever-loving and always merciful Lord never abandons us because we are sinful. The separation is entirely on our part. Our sins separate us from God, but not God from us.
Rather than being separated form us, God pursues us! The good news is that Jesus was sent and came to save sinners (Luke 19:10)! Being a sinner is not a cause for despair but for hope. God has no problem forgiving sin! He absolutely revels in mercy, grace, and compassion, being so free with the riches of forgiveness that we might mistakenly think we can sin all we want (Romans 6:1-2). We must be reminded by John, after he tells us about the readiness with which God forgives (1 John 1:7-9), that he actually does not want us to sin (1 John 2:1).
Forgiveness alone, though, is not the solution to sinfulness. The grace of forgiveness does not remedy our habits of ungodly living.
No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 1 John 3:6
John states clearly that unless we know God, we will simply keep on sinning. Being forgiven means that God does not hold our sins against us, but knowing God is the way to a changed life. This is not a knowing about God, information we hold in our minds, but a more profound relational “knowing” that John equates with “abiding” in the previous verse and the one that follows.
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. 1 John 3:9
Another way John talks about what needs to happen for us to leave our sinful ways is that we must be born of God. Knowing God and being born of God are ways of describing that which leads to the deep transformation which will end the cycle of sinfulness. But what is it exactly?
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 1 John 4:7
God is known and we are born of Him through our participation in the love which comes from Him. Learning to love is the transformational experience of grace which ends our sinful habits. Because God is love, those who learn to love have come to know God through abiding in his loving nature. To love God and to love others, as God loves, is to know God and to be born of God.
“Faith is the beginning of love; the end of love is knowledge of God.” Abba Evagrius (345-399).
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