No it was not my point. I believe that when someone becomes a Christian they carry with them sin, That type of thinking negates what Christ did on the Cross, which tell us that when we are Born again, Born of God, ALL THINGS BECOME NEW and our sin is washed away. often deep rooted from their past life. Excuse me? "Past lives" are NOT Biblical. Whereas some sin will I am sure immediately be stopped others need more time. We cannot wave a magic wand and all of our sins immediately disappear on conversion.According to scirpture, they DO dissappear. Of course that does not mean that a person won't sin again. But IF they are truly Born of God, they will not CHOOSE to sin. BEcause to CHOOSE to sin is to bow to and OBEY that sin and the demon behind its promotion and that it idolatry. I didn't find that and I douty many others have. What you are referring to is the "working out our salvation with fear and trembling." Choosing to sin is MUCH different than a sin of ignorance. See Leviticus chapters 4,5,6.
I would suggest is because it is our job to trust in Jesus that he will deal with the sin still in our lives that we cannot deal with and rejoice in our salvation. Such an approach would I am sure make Paul feel such a question should be asked It is not for usa to try and rid ourselves of sin such as this.On the contrary! We are told to RESIST the enemy (temptation) and he will flee from us. Christ's work is already FINISHED. It is OUR JOB to APPROPRIATE what He has done to and in our lives.
In other words if he tries to deal with the sin himself and base his Christianity according to his sin, he will fail in his attempts to rid himself of it. WE cannot 'rid' ourselves of it because it is the BLOOD of Christ that does the WASHING to the purity of snow. simply proving he is a lawbreaker. After all we only know what sin is according to God's good laws.
And Paul continually stressed we are not under law but faith in Christ.
I don't believe the new Christian should be led to believe that they are just sinning by choice.Why not? It is the truth! Once we know something is sin and we choose to partake of it, it IS a CHOICE. Teaching a new believer anything else is heresy. If we could all immediately be rid of all oure sin upon conversion it would be wonderful, but in reality this does not happen. What Bible are you reading?? YES, it Does happen. Our slates are CLEAN!! It them becomes our responsibility to KEEP them clean, taking EVERY thought captive to the word of God and taking every committed sin to the cross and leaving it there. Our job is to trust in Jesus and he will give us victory. He has ALREADY given us the victory, by what He did on the Cross. Did He say, "I WILL GIVE you the victory?" NO! He said, "It is FINISHED"....DONE! The WAR is WON. It is the individual battle that each of us must learn to APPLY what Christ has done for us to that battle.
Paul himself struggled against sin. He said he dide what he did not want to do, therefore sin still had him in its grasp. But Christ set him free. But it did not happen in a minute otherwise there would have been no struggle. Show in scripture where Paul became free of his struggles? We are told in Scripture that he had a thorn in his flesh...A MESSENGER FROM SATAN, that came to buffet him for the purpose of keeping him humble. While scripture does not give specifics, isn't a messenger from satan the same as the temptation by a demon? Paul struggled against sin, just like the rest of us, but both he and we are to overcome it.
There is a huge difference between the sin carried over to our Christian life from our past life and the wilfull, deliberate sin of someone once they have been set free of certain sins.Right...because the sins of our past cease to exist when we come to Christ. But in the case of the initial post, I am sure it is the former case. If we give someone the impression as a young Christian that they can simply choose by choice not to commit sin, I believe that all too often they give up with God. If they do, they were never committed to Christ in the first place. God knows the heart. He KNOWS if a person is sinning because they want to DO the deed or if they are simply ignorant that what they are doing is sin. I believe it is scripturally correct to encourage them to look to Jesus and trust him to deal with the sin No, it is not. If that were the case, we could sin and sin and sin and just say "Ok, Jesus, I know you've got me covered." and that isn't the way it works.
Romans 6 1What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
2May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
Maggie