December 20 / I John 3:1-9

I John 3:1-9

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. (v. 9) We (I) often speak of being “born again”. We make that claim because we have accepted Jesus as our (Lord and) Savior; He has forgiven us our sins and brought us to eternal life. But we cannot be “born again” if we continue a “practice of sinning”. So what does John mean by a “practice of sinning”? We commonly accept that we sin every day, countless times every day. We engage in judgment and condemnation instead of acceptance and forgiveness, pride and arrogance instead of humility and gentleness. We maintain our “self-control”, unwilling to surrender our will over to the One who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves. So have we continued a “practice of sinning”?

I went online to try to get a handle on this. Basically the authors that I read pointed to the ubiquity of sin and our constant need for confession, for true repentance. One author writes:

Pride is among the most obvious, daily habit of sin seen in our lives. It’s where we say, “I don’t need you God, I’ve got this on my own …” With such great daily sin, daily confession is necessary. It is by our daily confession that we demonstrate to the world that we abide in Jesus.

https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/practice-sinning/

So it’s probably not wrong for us to claim that we are “born again”. But let’s not get smug about it. I don’t imagine that we’ll lose our salvation, but we could be living life more fully!

Slava Bohu!