Amen! Those who believe they live a sinless, without fault or defect, flawless, absolute perfect life 100% of the time (exactly as Jesus lived) are suffering from a terminal case of self righteousness (1 John 1:8-10).
What does living a life in Christ; thus, living life as Jesus lived it, have anything to do with the passage you render as proof, no one can live in the Liberty, God, thru Jesus Christ on a Cross, affords us to be able to live letting patience finish His workmanship in us ?
In this passage: (1 John 1:8-10) John describes and condemns two further mistaken ways of thought.
1). There is the man who says that he has no sin. That may mean either of two things.
It may describe the man who says that he has no responsibility for his sin. It is easy enough to find defenses behind which to seek to hide. We may blame our sins on our heredity, on our environment, on our temperament, on our physical condition. We may claim that someone misled us and that we were led astray. It is characteristic of us all that we seek to shuffle out of the responsibility for sin.
Or it may describe the man who claims that he can sin
and take no harm.
It is John's insistence that, when a man has sinned, excuses and self-justifications are irrelevant. The only thing which will meet the situation is humble and penitent confession to God and, if need be, to men.
Then John says a surprising thing. He says that we can depend on God
in his righteousness to forgive us if we confess our sins. On the face of it, we might well have thought that God in his righteousness would have been much more likely to condemn than to forgive. But the point is that God, because he is righteous, never breaks his word; and Scripture is full of the promise of mercy to the man who comes to him with a regretful heart. God has promised that he will never despise the contrite heart and he will not break his word. If we humbly and sorrowfully confess our sins, he will forgive. The very fact of making excuses and seeking for self-justification debars us from forgiveness, because it debars us from the action of feeling and showing sorrow and regret for having done wrong; the very fact of humble confession opens the door to forgiveness, for the man with the penitent heart can claim the promises of God.
2). There is the man who says that he has not in fact sinned. That attitude is not nearly so uncommon as we might think. Any number of people do not really believe that they have sinned and rather resent being called sinners. Their mistake is that they think of sin as the kind of thing which gets into the newspapers. They forget that sin is hamartia (in the Greek) which literally means a missing of the target. To fail to be as good a father, mother, wife, husband, son, daughter, workman, person as we might be is to sin; and that includes us all.
In any event the man who says that he has not sinned is in effect doing nothing less than calling God a liar, for God has said that all have sinned.
So John
condemns the man who claims that he is so far advanced in knowledge and in the spiritual life that sin for him has ceased to matter; he condemns the man who
evades the responsibility for his sin or who holds that sin has no effect upon him; he condemns the man who has
never even realized that he is a sinner.
The essence of the Christian life is first to realize our sin; but then also to go to God for that forgiveness which can wipe out the past and for that cleansing which
can make the future new. Of course we have the power to cast out sins, what in the world are you talking about? Or should I say, what world are you talking about? It is this world Our God, whom is the source of moral authority,
is talking about!