Dear brothers and sisters, I want to read to you today from John chapter 8, verse 34:
Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the Son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
I wanted to share that with you today to speak to you about this disobedience, this practice of sin that some labeled Christians, or some even serious Christians, want to defend.
Dear friends, the Lord Jesus is holy. He is the Holy Lamb of God, and He sacrificed His blood to save us from the filth of sin. That is what it took to be able to provide a way back because of disobedience. This is how serious disobedience is. When the price to pay in order to save us from that disobedience is the blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord, then this should wake us up to how serious sin is.
But dear friends, the devil is very crafty, and he uses even doctrine in order to sneak back his works inside the life of Christians. He hides disobedience, rebellion, and hypocrisy under doctrine.
There is no escaping the holiness of God, dear friends. If we are not truly obedient Christians—committed, dedicated Christians—people who truly love Christ and want to follow Him, at least in deep desire, then we will not make it, dear friends. This God does not accept filth in His kingdom. There is no darkness in Him.
But today, dear friends, we have a lot of different doctrines. All these doctrines have one objective: to bring back disobedience into our lives. They don't want to accept that it's possible to be freed from the dominion of sin. As Jesus Himself said in the verse that I just read, "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." But people don't want to accept that Jesus can truly make them free.
A lot of distortions exist. They will say, "Well, He's not talking about making us free from sin." They will say, "Because of imputed righteousness, Jesus Christ basically covers our filth."
Now, the thing is, if I start speaking like that, it will give the impression that I'm saying to the other person that I'm better, that I'm perfect, that I don't ever fall. And that is not true. My performance shouldn't even be the subject.
I am not pretending to be perfect, and I am not saying that in this life we can completely be perfect. I don't believe that personally. Some Christians say that, but I don't personally believe it. I believe only Jesus is perfect, and I believe that as long as we live, we will sometimes fail.
As long as we don't deliberately live in sin, as long as we are not dominated or mastered by sin—because if we're mastered by sin, dear friends, then we haven't been freed—but if we sometimes err, fail, or something happens, Jesus will cover us.
But don't try to hide willful disobedience under doctrine, because this God, dear friends, is not a fool. He sees, He knows what we're trying to do when we try to escape with disobedience, and He will not tolerate it.
Dear friends, I am so tired of talking to people about this issue. It's very saddening to see that some, even Christians—serious ones who want to follow Jesus—yet swallow these demonic doctrines. Dear friends, they are demonic because they come from the kingdom of darkness.
Dear friends, there is seriousness in sin. To be disobedient and rebellious against God is to basically say to our God, our Holy God, that He is our enemy. We are siding with the devil against our God because the father of sin is the devil.
No amount of doctrine will hide that fact. If we deliberately submit ourselves to sin, then we are siding with the devil because we are doing the works of the father of lies, the father of sin.
I pray, dear friends, that this message may put some doubt into your mind about what it means when we willfully disobey God, when we willfully engage in sin, when we turn our backs on Jesus, when we say to Jesus that His blood is not worth it.
Because this is what we do every time we decide to rebel against God, to sin against Him—we insult the grace of Jesus Christ, the one who died for our sins and shed His blood.
And may God bless you.
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