1 John 1:10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
The bottom line is that we must acknowledge our debt of sin. Denial of sin is the worst disease. Why? This is a disease that eventually leads to death. As God told Adam and Eve in the Garden: when they eat of the forbidden fruit, thus sin, death would come. Like them, when we eat of what is forbidden, we experience death and decay within us. At first, we may not see the consequences. Death eats away at us, like rust, until it collapses something in our lives. It is like a rusty floorboard. You know its is there. You put weight on it all the time and nothing happens. It continues to rust away until one day, it collapses when we are least expecting it.
There are two consequences to saying that we have not sinned. First is that we make God a liar. This can be experienced by ignoring the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will tell us when we do wrong. We can suppress this feeling and awareness, essentially telling the Spirit that He is wrong. God is a liar about our condition. We are in the right because we have the “right” to do as we want.
The second consequence is that the word of God is not in us. It is difficult to determine to what “word” John is referring here. Minimally it incorporates God’s communication through the Spirit of the message of grace. This is contained primarily in the gospel of Jesus (direct, special revelation) but can be seen in other forms of grace (indirect, general revelation). General revelation leads to special revelation with the proclamation of the gospel. The outcome of God’s word should be new life in response to God’s grace. By rejecting God’s word, we also reject life.
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