You can’t be a disciple of Jesus and willfully continue to live in sin. Sin will repulse a regenerated heart. The apostle John had much to say about this in his first epistle. He defined sin as practicing lawlessness (1 John 3:4). Another way to say this might be that we sin whenever we rebel against God’s laws. Continuing on a few verses later, John makes it clear if we are born again (born of God), we will not make a practice of sinning (1 John 3:9).
We can’t do that because God abides in us and sin is abhorrent to Him. As human beings, we will sin. We’re not perfect. But as followers of Jesus, we won’t make a habit of sinning. When we sin, we will immediately be horrified by our failure and repent of it.
God’s law is perfect, and when we rebel against it, we sin. If we love God, we will love His law. The psalmist asked the Lord to help Him understand God’s law so he could obey it and follow it with all his heart (Psalm 119:34). He said the law of the Lord was his delight (Psalm 119:77). Delighting in the laws of God is the opposite of sinning. In the same psalm, the author states how much he loves God’s law, so much so that he meditates on it all day (Psalm 119:97). When we despise God’s laws, we sin. When we make a habit of it, we must question whether we have truly surrendered to Jesus Christ as our Lord.
Everyone sins. To state otherwise makes us both a fool and a liar. John makes this clear when he rebuked those who said they didn’t have any sin (1 John 1:8, 1 John 1:10). In these verses, John states the one who says they don’t sin is deceiving themselves, and if we believe we have no sin, then God’s Word, God’s truth, is not in us. So if we think we don’t sin, we are calling God a liar. Therefore, God does not abide in us. The bottom line is we all sin. We all fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23).
Praise God that when we do sin, we have an advocate before the Father (1 John 2:1). Jesus Himself stands between us and the Father and declares our innocence because of the blood He shed (1 John 2:2). Jesus has paid the price for our sin. We all sin and that separates us from God. If we love Him, we want nothing to stand between us.
Every follower of Christ desires to be perfect (sinless), just as God is perfect (1 Peter 1:14-16). We should hate sin and keep away from it at all costs. We hate sin because God hates sin. If Jesus is our Lord, we will delight in God’s laws and not indulge in the practice of sinning. We will fail, and when we do, Jesus is faithful to forgive us of our sins when we confess them to Him and repent (1 John 1:9). Delight in the laws of God. Allow sin to repulse you, as you know it is antithetical to our fellowship with the Lord. And never go on sinning (Romans 6:1-4). We are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). Sin no longer has a hold on us (Romans 6:10-14). When we’ve experienced the healing of Jesus, we will endeavor to “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:10-11).