Putting a knife in the heart of willful sin.....

In Psalms 51:3, it is a prayer that we even pray who are under the New Covenant.

Is not Psalms 51 the penitent's prayer that David prayed as an example to everyone thereafter who would fall into sin after having lived righteously for any period of time?

1 John 3:5-9 sets forth a standard that anyone who is truly honest with themselves will admit that they have not kept; and the more honest ones will admit they cannot keep.

It sets forth the law as a standard that is our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ, in the New Testament.

If I were to live up to those verses, I would be in a state where I "cannot sin". Nevertheless I still find myself capable of sinning.

Do you find yourself to be in a place where you are incapable of sinning? If not, then the testimony of 1 John 3:5-9 is that neither you nor I measures up to the standard set forth there; and therefore we are all in desperate need of Christ's redemption which He provided for us in dying on the Cross.

Because He lived that perfect life and then applied it to my account. And therefore when God looks down from heaven, He sees me incapable of sinning in His eyes, because all my sins, past, present, and future, are covered by the blood of the Lamb. I am not even under the law as a believer in Christ (Romans 6:14). How then can I sin in God's sight (1 John 3:4 (kjv) w/ Romans 4:15; Romans 5:13)? He does not impute my sin unto me any longer (Romans 4:7-8, Romans 5:13); and therefore it is impossible that I should sin in the sight of the Lord, even though I still sin in my own sight and the third Person of the Trinity (the Holy Ghost) still calls me out on it when I do sin; for sanctification's sake.

If I am hoping to enter in on the basis of my own righteousness, then I must be born of God in the sense that I don't commit sin and cannot sin. I do not find myself in such a state; and I don't think I have ever met anyone who is in such a state other than the Lord Himself.

But if I will enter in based on His righteousness, well, I cannot sin in His sight because God in looking at me does not see my sin but the righteousness and blood of my Lord and Saviour.

Gideons300 said:

Amen to that. As I said, we can slip as we arm ourselves with our testimonies as to who we are and who we no longer are.

Think for a minute about a father who has a 16 month old who is struggling to learn how to walk. As the baby strains to get it right, and falls, does the parent sigh and believe he will never get it? Not at all. He smiles, encouraged by the child’s determination to please the dad.

If we slip, does it change anything as to the truth? Not one whit! All it means is that our faith is shaky. So, do we throw up our hands in resignation to failure? Never! We hold fast to our profession of faith, without wavering, knowing that if we will continue in His truth, and refuse to be moved away from the hope of the gospel, we KNOW that God will assuredly plant our feet in victory, for He is faithful that promised.

Blessings,

Gids

Click to expand...

Which brings it back down to one word: grace.

Even the 35-90-year-old who stumbles and falls, in God's economy, is not upraided at. James 1:5. Psalms 37:23-24. Isaiah 54:8-9.

Actually, much of my postings here in this thread has been an attempt to reach out to you my friend.

Because I have found the key in my own life to walking in greater freedom over my besetting sin; and that is to acknowledge my sin before the Lord and to also be transparent about it before man.

If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Paul in 1 Timothy 1:15 said that it is a trustworthy saying and worthy of all acceptation that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

We should own that, and declare that I personally am the chief of sinners: each one of us should say that about his own life.

Yet Paul said in context of that verse that he was formerly a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious.

It is like when an alcoholic has been clean and sober fifty years and still calls himself the worst of alcoholics; because he knows that alcohol is his weakness and that it is in acknowledging this that he has the victory over alcohol in the practical sense for as long as he has.

So then, when I say that my sin is ever before me, I am not excusing the sin that I speak of, or trying to make occasion that I might be able to commit it as though I had some sort of license.

What I am saying by it is that I know that I have weakness concerning certain things; and in acknowledging my weakness I know that I can find, and am finding, a certain amount of strength unto victory.

When I was proclaiming to everyone that I am entirely sanctified, what I found was that the response was that people would try to convince me that I am a sinner; and I would often fall down because of what I thought was the attempts of people to humble me by "affecting my faith in my ability to walk in victory."

Now that I am taking the other side of the issue, people are attempting to tell me that I must be holy; and this is the type of preaching that I need coming from other people so that I can indeed walk holy.

When I exalted myself, proclaiming my own entire sanctification to the world, I found that I was often humbled and ended up sinning from time to time in secret places and times. Now that I am truly humbling myself (Luke 18:9-14), I am finding that in the secret places God is giving me a certain degree of victory.

While it is important to me that I continue to humble myself by proclaiming myself to be a sinner who is justified by the mercy of God (Luke 18:9-14).

Again, my salvation does not lie in how well I walk as a Christian (and this so key that if you don't understand it well, you may not even be saved); but my salvation lies in the fact of Christ having lived a perfect life and then having died in my place; so that His perfect life is applied to my account while my sinful, imperfect life was applied to His account as He died on the Cross in my place, taking the penalty for my sin.

My acceptance before God is secured by the latter thing and not in the former thing. I am accepted before God on the basis of what He did for me; not on the basis of what I can do to try and save myself.

As one who has been forgiven much I find that I also love Him much (Luke 7:36-50, 1 John 4:19). I do not love Him in order to be forgiven; I love Him because I am forgiven.

And because I love Him, I desire to please Him, which has to do with eschewing evil and not committing the former sins.

However I will still continue to call myself a justified sinner. Why? Because I know that I have sin, and the fact that I have sin dwelling within me is what makes me a sinner. I don't have to live according to the sin that is possessed by me. In acknowledging that I possess it however, I find a certain amount of strength against it; because I am not hiding from myself the fact that I am beset by it in such a heavy fashion. (And therefore my enemy does not have the advantage of being a covert enemy). Even after I have had the victory for twenty years, I very likely will continue to speak of it like this because this is where I find the strength to overcome (see 1 John 1:7).

...

And I want to help you get a better read on me.

I have said to you that I was a proponent of the doctrine of entire sanctification for many years; but I was not being honest with myself: I was unwittingly telling people that I myself was not a sinner in that I was declaring the doctrine of entire sanctification to them and was not also telling them that I had not attained to it myself.

I was preaching it in the hopes that I would save myself and them (1 Timothy 4:16) by preaching entire sanctification as the way to be saved.

What I didn't realize, but see so clearly now, is that I was preaching to them the righteousness of the law as salvation and in doing so I was totally missing the righteousness of Christ as the way to salvation. In seeking to establish my own righteousness, I was not submitting to the righteousness of God.

I was stumbling at that stumblingstone. I somehow thought that if I could set myself free from the practice of sinning, that I would be saved thereby. But I was missing out on the free gift offered to me by Jesus Christ. In seeking to obtain salvation through "overcoming sin" I was unwittingly thinking that my keeping of the law could save me; since we know that the law defines sin and to overcome sin would therefore be to begin to keep the law perfectly.

I found that true salvation is not found in turning over a new leaf or in redoubling my efforts to live a holy life, but in the free forgiveness that Jesus offers to us through the substitutionary atonement of the Cross of Calvary.

This is not flippantly saying, "Put it on Jesus' tab."

It is believing that He paid the penalty for my sin; and that He took this penalty of His own free accord and will.

Anyone who is forgiven thus will not be flippant in their relationship to the Lord. Whoever is forgiven much, loves much (Luke 7:36-50, 1 John 4:19).

Loving the Lord means that I love what He loves and hate what He hates, the more that I grow up in Him and am being conformed to the image of His Son.

I am being sanctified, you can count on that. Repentance, for me, is in the works.

The fact that I continue to call myself a justified sinner in no way changes that. As a matter of fact, it is true humility according to Luke 18:9-14.

As one who prayed the prayer of penitence found in Psalms 51 given to us by King David through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, I would be a fool to go back on that prayer and begin to say that my sin is not ever before me when the thing about that prayer that brought me salvation was to admit that my sin is ever before me: and that in understanding this I found the answer; that I should stop striving to do it myself and simply trust that I am forgiven of all iniquity through the blood of the Lamb; and that if God chooses to make me more holy as a result of this salvation, it is up to Him. I can't strive to save myself any longer. I choose to rest in the forgiveness that Christ has wrought for me in dying on the Cross; and if He wants to change my character and behaviour because I am resting in that forgiveness, I know that He is well able to do so.

I can also see your point of view, believe me. I was in your shoes for many years. It bugged me that people were sinning against the Lord and just saying about it that they were forgiven and that therefore it didn't matter.

Willful sin has to do with an attitude not necessarily a one-time act. If you begin to have an attitude wherein you become contentious and think that grace is indeed a license for sinning and that you can just have an attitude wherein you can go haywire in sinning without any consequences, then that is one thing. I would say that such a person does not love Jesus much, which would indicate they have not been forgiven much.

On the other side of the spectrum is the person who thinks that by "overcoming sin" they will save themselves and that by preaching that one must "overcome sin" they will save themselves and others. That was me. I was hoping that one day the Lord would save me by making me perfect so that I would be worthy of heaven. However, that is the way that seems right to a man (Proverbs 14:12). It is stumbling at that stumblingstone (Romans 9:30-33, Romans 10:1-4).

The only way to salvation is forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord; and He will lift you up.