Blessed Assuarance and the Gospel Truth

Let's get back into the Word tonight. We are in 1 John chapter 1 verses 5 through 10. The series title, if you're taking notes, is "Our Blessed Assurance, Fundamentals of the Faith in 1 John." Our Blessed Assurance. We gain great assurance from studying 1 John. And we see that the fundamentals of the faith are lived out in our life. Last week is an introductory message. We looked at Christian vital signs. What are the signs of life? A person who is deceased has no vital signs. They've got no heartbeat. They've had no respiration. And it is obvious that there is no life. But a person who is living will have certain vital signs.

Tonight we're going to look at the Blessed Assurance that comes from the Gospel Truth. This message title tonight, "Blessed Assurance, the Gospel Truth." It was spring 1998 and our plane touched down in San Francisco. We were there to do a mission trip for our college student group. Our host got us in a van from the airport and was driving through the city of San Francisco.

We were making our way downtown and I looked up and I saw a very large building and a church that was ornate and it said, "The Church of Christ Scientology." Now if you are familiar with the religious life of some celebrities, John Travolta, Tom Cruise, you'll hear Church of Christ Scientology quite a bit. But I had not. Even coming from New Orleans, I was not aware of that faith group. And so I asked our host, I said, "What is the Church of Christ Scientology?" "I'll never forget," he said, "Well, it is neither a church, neither is it Christian, nor is it science." And if you do some digging, I looked at their website.

Actually, I looked at the North American Mission Board, it has an apologetics page and they have a little bit of their core beliefs and sort of the biblical refutation. Why we as Christians would not adhere to Scientology. But this is something that I pulled from their website. Since God's essential essence is spirit or mind and only that which reflects his nature is real, then matter does not really exist. Now I'm not reading that out of the Bible. Sam just walked in and he heard me say that and he thought that I was preaching some strange doctrine.

And so the Church of Scientology continues to say on their website that spirit is immortal, truth, and matter is actually mortal error. So matter is evil. Spirit is the real and eternal, matter is the unreal or temporal. Now they specifically claim that they are not the same as Gnosticism. And not to get into an argument or we're not going to talk about Christ's Scientology doctrine, but essentially all I'm doing is I remember as a 20 year old man coming into contact with a new group, it was new to me.

And this group of professing Christians claimed to have certain understandings and really what they've done is they just redefined Christ, they've redefined spirit, they've redefined all sorts of biblical terminology. And the point that I'm bringing up in my introduction here is that we need like John to be aware when people tamper with the fundamentals of the faith. In fact, we should be so well acquainted with the fundamentals of the faith that we can understand and identify when error comes. So why do we need the gospel truth in these second group of five verses, verses five through 10?

You'll remember that last week we studied that John writes this epistle to address a group of Gnostics. Gnostics were people who claimed to have a unique insight. They were really elitist. They said that they had the special way. They had the new way. And their idea was that spirit was good and matter was evil. John states his purpose for the book. If you're taking notes, John 1, 1 John 1, 4. He's writing that the joy of his little children may be full.

In chapter 2 verse 1 he says, "I write these things that you may not sin." In chapter 5 he says, "I write these things that you may know you have eternal life." So John says there's three purposes we study at First John. Three purposes, that our joy would be full, that we not sin, and that we know we have eternal life. This life tonight I want to encourage you, we have the opportunity to look at this epistle as if we're looking over John's shoulders as he's writing it. We can have a fullness of joy by seeing the fundamentals of the faith worked out in our life.

When we read his letter and we see what should be in the life of a believer, what core beliefs should be in your life? And more specifically, how is that doctrine being worked out in your life? Not because you have done it, but because God's doing it in you. And when you see these things in your life, your joy will be full. And you will grow in assurance that you have eternal life as you see the handiwork of Jesus in your life. So what are some of these vital signs that we looked at last week? Now I'm using a different outline simply to recap what we spoke last week. But you need to have a correct Christology.

That's a word I didn't give you specifically last week. But one of the vital signs, one of the ways you know you're alive spiritually, and other people know you're alive spiritually, is you have a correct Christology. If you're spelling that word, it's Christ, and it's ology. Now John was refuting the Gnostics belief that Christ was not really a man. Because the Gnostics believed that spirit was good and material things were evil, they had to sort of do something with this Christ. So the Christian Gnostics, they were heretics. John says they went out from us. They were actually a part of the church that he's writing to. But they apostatized.

They began to take these philosophies of the world and tried to meld them with Christianity. And they couldn't because it doesn't work. And what they were doing is they were tampering with the doctrine of who Jesus was. They were saying, yes, we know he's God, but he was not fully man because matter is evil. You see how they did that? You have to be careful about worldly philosophies that begin to tamper with the essence of who Christ is. And what we said last week is that you cannot separate the person of Christ with the message of Christ. You have got to understand that he was fully God, he was fully man.

So last week we outlined his role in creation. John 1 tells us that he was with God in the beginning and he was God. Do some still deny that flesh is actually material? I just gave you the example of the Church of Christ and Scientology. They will not believe that Christ is fully God and fully man. They will not believe that. And so they nullify their title as Christian. And as we come into contact with any philosophy or religion in our day, we must be on the lookout for anything that would tamper with a correct view of Christ. He was fully God, he was fully man.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit all existed before the foundations of the earth. There is a unity. They weren't lonely. They did not create humanity because they needed buddies. God created humanity that we might forever be in awe of his awesomeness and his glory. More on that tonight. But we must have a correct Christology. We must have a correct Gospel. John had eyewitness testimony that Jesus was fully man. Now commentators will note that John does not outline a full systematic theology. He is actually just speaking to a small group of people to counteract a specific heresy, this Gnosticism.

But he does not deny everything he wrote in his prior Gospel, the Gospel of John. So this is written in Ephesus at the latter part of his life and he's writing to a group of people who would have been familiar with his first work, the Gospel of John. And he says in this text that he put his hands on Christ. He is the one who laid his head on Christ's shoulder or his chest. He reclined upon him. He says, "I didn't just look at him, I beheld him." He listened to Jesus intently.

And so he speaks to all of his five senses and this counteracted the Gnostic heresy that he was a phantom, that Jesus was God who appeared to be man but was not fully man. He says we've seen him with our eyes. We've looked at him. We need to have correct church history. To deny that Jesus came in the flesh is to be moved along by the antichrist. Chris and Clarissa went canoeing here some time back and the water was treacherously high. If you see a river in high flood stages, it's not uncommon to see tree stumps and large trees being picked up and moved down river. And those things are grotesque blockages. They're not supposed to be there.

A large tree trunk or a tree is not supposed to be in the river. Such is the case that heresies are picked up by an antichrist sentiment and they're picked up and moved and dislodged in the church of Christ in a place where they're not supposed to be. So as Christians are moving in the narrow path and all of a sudden would come into contact with dangerous philosophies, we should be able to avert them so that those in our company of the church are not run aground. But this is not just a doctrinal issue. This is a relational issue. We said last week that we have a relational Christ. John is writing this that you would have fellowship with us.

Last week we said that we have to see Christ correctly in order to have fellowship with our brothers. But we also need to see Christ correctly that we would have fellowship with Jesus. If we believe something wrong about Christ that will hurt our fellowship with him. And finally last week we explained that this is joy producing. First John 1.4 As we see in scripture who Christ is and we see that this is worked out in our life. This is not just intellectual. This is relational. Then we will grow in assurance. It will be a blessed assurance. So tonight as we move on from verse four into verse five.

I want us to take this just verse by verse first gospel truth that we will see tonight. We will see the gospel truth of God's nature. Look at what John says in verse five of first John 1. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Now if you notice the first section in my ESV translation it says this is the message. But the original Greek is an agelemon. Which means to say we declare. It is in conjunction with the noun angelia which is message. So quite literally what this means is this message. It literally says this then is the message.

You could also say and this is the message. And essentially what this important word is. Is it connects the first four verses with everything that will follow. This is a transition verses one through four are the preface of the book. And this phrase in fact this specific word transitions us. It basically says this is a continuation and this is literally the critical truth. So what is this message. First thing this is a caring message. We look at the gospel truth about God's nature. This is a caring message. John moves from talking about Christology to theology. Now understand if you have good Christology you will have good theology.

But theology is your belief about God. And so he is transitioning here to the message that he has preached. He literally is saying this. And this then is the message we heard from Jesus. That we previously declare to you and continue proclaiming. You may not be able to see that just from the verse. But studying a little bit deeper you can see that this is transitioning from Christology to theology back to Christ. He is saying this is the message you received from me. And I received it from Jesus. I beheld him. I looked at him with my eyes. I leaned my head upon his chest. I heard him speak the parables.

We were even with him when he walked on water. We saw that. When he fed the five thousand. He tasted that food. I even saw Thomas put his hand in the nail scarred hands of Christ. He would have mentioned all of that. In fact he was the only eye witness alive too at this time. So theologians suspect that he was the only living apostle. He was the only person who would have walked with Jesus and lived with Jesus alive. He was called the son of thunder. And now he is a loving tender pastor. He calls his reader little children. In addition to leading a tender flock, godly pastors are spiritual under shepherds.

And they must warn the flock about false teachers and doctrinal errors they spread. From John McCauther. Listen to the words that Paul decades later speaks to the elders at the Ephesian church. So I want you to get the picture here. John is living in Ephesus. He's about ninety years old. He's a latter part of his life. Days earlier in his missionary journeys Paul gathers up the elders of the Ephesian church. So these would have been people that John would have known but much younger. And this is what Paul tells them. Pay careful attention to yourself and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.

Therefore the church of God which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure Paul's dying he says, "Fierce wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock and from among you your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert. Remember that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears." So now John somewhere could be as many as thirty years after this is saying the heresies have come. The ferocious wolves rose up among you.

If you read Acts 2028 he's talking to elders and he's saying these ferocious wolves are going to come from among you. We were talking in our men's small group about the hidden reefs in Jude. These were apostates and even after they're outside of the church they're pulling people and we will see ships run aground because the reefs are under the surface. And these are the same types of people and John is giving the same message. In fact he's going back and he's saying these people are anti-Christs because they deny these things which you my beloved little children you accept.

And at Grace Live Church Brookhaven we ought to be students of Christology. Who is Christ? Who was he? He was fully God, he was fully man. The theological phrase we unpacked last week is the hypostatic union. Now we can't understand how Jesus was fully God and fully man but we believe it. And you see both of those things outlined in scripture. To protect the flock under his care John is speaking contrary to the Christian Gnostics that denied Christ. And in so doing they denied the gospel message. The gospel message is not set aside for the elite. The gospel is for the whole world.

This was not only a caring message, this was a consistent message. This was the message in John, the gospel of John chapter 1 and 1 through 4. That Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. You remember in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. Some other scriptural passages if you want to do some more study. Titus 2.13. Hebrews 1.8. First John 5.20. John 4.26. As well as John 8.24. 8.28. And John 8.58. Throughout John he is unyielding in his assertion that Jesus is God. And he has to circle back and he has to say he was man too. And he does that in First John. This was a caring message. It was a consistent message.

You know man knows nothing of God except what God has revealed. Think about that for a second. Man can know nothing about God except that which has been revealed. And when we look in the scripture we have a complete record of what God has revealed about himself. There is no extra revelation. This was a caring message, a consistent message. It was a theological message. If you look back at your scripture, First John 1.5. That God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. Did you know that John was the world's leading theologian at the time he wrote First John? Now that might go without saying he was the only living apostle.

He was the person who could speak against the Gnostic heresies. They were saying Jesus was not fully man. And so he went to the senses as we've outlined. It could be that God allowed him to live. He wrote John and First John and Second and Third John all about the same time. And he penned the revelation even later than that. But he was later in his years. Why does he lead with this? God is light. Why doesn't he lead with God as love? That's the characteristic of God that we most like to talk about. Eternal Christian radio you'll hear a lot more about God being loving than you will hear God about being light.

The theologians say that when he says God is light he is actually giving an opus on theology that is unheralded. John begins by laying down the nature of the God who is the God and Father of Jesus Christ and whom all Christians worship. He leads with God as light because that characteristic is most necessary to understand this book. To say that God is light is to say that God is in splendor and glory, William Barclay says. During the Exodus God appeared to the Israelites in the form of light as a pillar of fire by day and a cloud, a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day.

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai his face glowed with the reflection of God's light. Psalms 104, 1, the psalmist says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a cloak." Second Corinthians 4, 4 through 6, God is not only light in his very essence, he is the source of every Christian's life. That's a paraphrase in speaking of that verse. John 8, 12, Jesus said this, "I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Psalms 119, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

Psalms excuse me, Philippians 3 verse 7, there is no darkness in God. You can read about Philippians 3, 7 through 16 and you'll see that there is no darkness in God. William Barclay says that light tells us about the purity and holiness of God. John did not lead with God as love because the most defining characteristics of God is his holiness. He is love, but God is light and that speaks to the glory and splendor and the holiness of God. Light tells us of the guidance of God. Light tells us of the revealing quality in the presence of God. Light is the great revealer.

And so when you look at 1 John chapter 1 verse 5, this is the message, God is light. This is a theological book. And we must see the truth about God's nature. We must also see the gospel truth about sin and our survival. The gospel truth, so Roman numeral number 2 would be the gospel truth about our sin and survival. Look at verse 6, if we say we have fellowship with him, while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth. This is the fundamental of the faith that is critical. We need to correctly understand who God is and who Jesus is and that God is light.

And anyone who says that they know Jesus, yet they walk in the darkness, they lie. You know what heresy does? Heresy will first attack the character of God. Then it will attack the character of Jesus. And then it will attack the sinfulness of sin. So if the devil would want to sow seeds to ruin a church, he would first inject deceitful ideas about who God is. Then he would attack Christology and then he would attack the sinfulness of sin. William Barclay says, "A man's own character will necessarily be determined by the character of the God whom he worships." Now let me say that again. I want you to pay attention to that.

A man's own character will necessarily be determined by the character of the God whom he worships. What that means is you are the God that you worship. You will become like the God. Your beliefs about God will dictate your actions. Let's look at these people of darkness. In God there is no darkness at all. Darkness stands for the very opposite of the Christian life. As I said earlier, I can remember my life of darkness. It was enthralled with religious activity. But I did not walk with God nor obey his scripture. Darkness stands for all that Christian life is not.

First John 2.8, "The darkness is past and the true light shines." Darkness refers to how you were before you met Jesus. Friend, believer, can you remember the way your life was before you met Jesus? Can you remember being darkened in your understanding? That's what the scripture refers to. Being darkened in your understanding. Ephesians 5.8. Paul writes to his friends in Ephesus. And he says that once they were in darkness but now they are light in the Lord. First Thessalonians 5.4. Christians are not in darkness because they are children of the day. Children of the light. Can that be used to describe your life? Are you a child of the light?

John 8.12. Christians will not walk in darkness but they will live and have the light of life. First Peter 2.9. God has called Christians out of darkness into his marvelous light. John 1.5. Darkness is hostile to the light. Can you remember living in such a way that was even hostile to Christ? Your sin was. Darkness stands for the immorality of the Christless life. Romans 13.12. Here Paul appeals to men that they should cast off the work of darkness. Darkness is also associated with lovelessness that in 1 John we will see that those who don't have love yet claim to follow Jesus are not walking in the light.

John says how can you love God whom you've never seen and hate your brother who you see every day? And so if we're evaluating our life we look at the gospel that is unchanging that speaks to the God man Christ who was the propitiation he took on your sin. He was punished for your sin and he appeased the wrath of the God of light who must punish all wrongdoing. And that produced a new change, a new life that you walk in the light. If we look at this verse in chapter 1 verse 6 that those who walk in darkness deceive themselves. This Greek word catharsian it's similar to the word catharsis. If you know that word catharsis.

Catharsis used in sort of when people are talking and they kind of have this breakthrough and they sometimes they weep because they've realized something in their life. And it's the Greek word that means to cleanse. There is no fellowship without truth, Barclay says. And when we're not walking in truth we're walking in darkness and we're walking in deception. And there's no joy. If you go back to your life before Christ, did you live a life that was filled with the joy of knowing the truth and knowing the God of truth and having a relationship with that God? Those who claim fellowship with Christ yet walk in darkness are lying.

First John 2, 2, "He who denies Jesus is the Christ is a liar." And first John 4, 20, "The man who says that he loves God and who at the same time hates his brother is a liar." But if you look at our second teaching point, the gospel truth about sin and our survival, let's read the second half of this. So let's read first John chapter 1 verses 6 and 7. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin.

What is your survival now that Christ brought you from death to life? Now that he has purchased you from the kingdom of light, what is your survival? Your survival is not walking in darkness or deception as in verse 6. Your survival is dwelling in the fullness of joy. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. You can look to scripture, it says, "Therefore if you confess your sins to one another and pray for one another," this is in James, "the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." This is your survival as a Christian. You are forgiven of your sin.

Now how do you walk in the light? We have a men's small group that we meet. Sometimes we're transparent and we share things that we struggle with. I know the women are in a small group as well and they are transparent. And as a fellowship of Christ believers, we can be honest about our failings. And scripture says that there is a fullness of joy that comes in this transparency. As we confess our sins one to another, this is not for forgiveness. We confess our sins to Jesus in salvation. But there is blood that is applied and you are forgiven for all of your sins, prior conversion and following conversion.

But we still bring our sins to Jesus as we commit them. And if there is a sin issue in your life, you communicate to your fellow brothers in Christ and you have accountability. And there is a freedom that comes in that your brother or sister in Christ is now carrying your burden with you. You can have another level of accountability and joy that you have someone who is in your corner praying for you. Albert Barnes says this, "Enlightened by the Spirit of God, we develop a true sense of sin.

To know Christ is to walk as a child of the light." Barnes continues and says, "We have fellowship with one another, not just with the saints, not with the apostles, not with other Christians, first and foremost with God. We have mutual communion with Jesus." You know scripture says we have a great high priest. Jesus has ascended, He always prays for you. Now let that sink in. You have an advocate. We are going to learn next week that he is a per clitos, per clit. That's not a per clitos as I explained to my son. That means he is a helper. He comes alongside. He is praying for you.

He was tempted in every way you were tempted, yet without sin. See we gain blessed assurance as we see the gospel truth about God and the gospel truth about sin and our survival. And we gain a fullness of joy that comes from confessing our sins. But we also see the gospel truth about the cross. Look at verse 7 of 1 John chapter 1, the second half of this verse, "And the blood of Jesus, His Son cleanses us from all sin." Barnes says as we live lives of holiness we are a light in this dark world. Scripture says that you shine like stars in the universe. Think about it.

You go about your life at your work around your family that does not know Jesus, around your neighbors who don't know Christ. They're walking in darkness. It could very well be that they do not even know that they are lost, that their sin is grotesque in the eyes of God. I made reference when I preached Sunday morning about Pilgrim's Progress. It was a great book and I recommend it highly. And in the beginning of that book, Pilgrim has a burden on his back. This represents sin. And no one else in the city is concerned about his burden of sin. And they're not concerned with their own burden.

And he goes about trying to find relief for this great burden as it is weighing him down. Someone tells him he needs to leave the city of destruction where he lives. And he's running out of the city and he finds what is called a slew of despond. In our language it would be the swamp of depression, despondency. And he finds himself in this slew of despond and he has this burden as weighing him down. And this represents worldly sorrow.

You know, sometimes sinners become, who are unconverted to Christ, they become very depressed, could be about their alcoholism or could be about their marriage problems or about their temper or they find something in their life and it starts to worry them. But it is not a sorrow that produces repentance. It's a worldly sorrow. As children of the light, we see that the Christ sets us free from our sin. If you follow Pilgrim's story, evangelist tells him to go to the narrow gate or the wicked gate in old English language. And he goes through that narrow gate and he runs to the cross and the burden of his sin falls off.

And the rest of the book is about his journey on a narrow, difficult path to the celestial city. As we as Christians live lives of holiness, we are a light in this dark world and we are walking in the truth. We will have a clear view of truth and we will walk in joy. Albert Barnes in his commentary on 1 John just says, "This is the mark of a Christian who is walking in the light." Yes they sin, Christian sin, we sin. But our relationship to sin is different than when we were unconverted and we were burdened with our sin and we tried in our own efforts through religion to get rid of that sin burden. That leaves us to the fourth gospel truth.

This is the gospel truth about our sin. Walking in the light means that we see the truth about our sinfulness. Brother Jeff Noblet often speaks about a church filled with gospel humbled people. See what does it mean to have a body of believers who are walking in the light, who have been humbled by the gospel? You know a body of believers that is saturated with gospel humility means there's a group of people who know they need the word because the gospel has humbled them. Look at what scripture says in verse 8 of 1 John chapter 1. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

See we come to church Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday nights because we know we need the word of God. We know we need the word of God divided rightly. We know we need the Holy Spirit of God to take that word and apply it to the areas of our lives where we're sinning. We know as gospel humbled people walking in the light that in a small group when I'm just honest and transparent maybe about how I'm struggling here to obey scripture maybe in my family, someone else has victory in that area of their life. And they will say not that I've arrived, no.

The gospel showed me I was a sinner in this part of my life and that only by the grace of Jesus and the Holy Spirit working in me can I have victory. And nobody in that small group would say I don't have sin. You know sinners can go about their life not troubled about their sin. Now guilty conscience, sure, but consciences can be seared like a hot iron. And this is different than the Holy Spirit's conviction of a believer who is walking in the light. Gospel humbled people know who they are and they know they need the word and they need fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to hold them accountable.

The last gospel truth tonight, the gospel truth about our Savior in verses 9 and 10 of verse 1, if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Again if we say we've not sinned we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. Whittier says as quoted by Barclay, "Our thoughts lie open to the sight and naked to the glance. Our secret sins are in the open before a holy God." Are there secret sins here tonight? If you have brought secret sins here they are not secret. A secret sin just means that you're not telling anybody about it and you think that you're hiding it from your family.

But in reality God's light is searching. That is why John leads off with this attribute of God. God is light. This is the message about Jesus that I've always preached, he's saying. It's the same message that I wrote to you in the gospel of John, now in this epistle of 1 John. This is the message that Jesus who is fully God, fully man, God is light and no one who says they know Jesus walk in darkness. But if we confess our sins, this is the gospel humble believer. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. To walk in the darkness is to walk in emptiness and misery.

Christian, have you been walking with unconfessed sin that is weighing you down? Do you know what it feels like to walk with a conviction of the Holy Spirit upon you and is heavy upon your chest? And you need to get this sin off of your shoulders and you bring it to the Lord. Has the Lord ever brought a scripture like this to your mind and challenged you to get accountability? We confess our sins one to another not to get forgiveness but to get accountability. That's why. James tells us that the fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

What that means is when we confess sin one to another it's because we've already confessed it to Christ. But we're asking for a brother or sister in Christ who is not a gossip, who is not a slander, who has a prayer life to simply take this issue with them to the Lord on your behalf. Many of you are doing this. Many of you are bearing the burdens of other brothers. You're praying for other brothers and sisters that you come into contact with certain sin or struggle. Sometimes it's a family dynamic that you're in and you don't know how to handle it any better than you're handling it.

You've brought it before the Lord and you're pleading with the Lord. Sometimes the Lord will just bring somebody to your heart. And God will sometimes bring you to a point of victory not so you can boast but to a point where you can then go to that accountability partner and encourage them. You can encourage the weaker brother or sister. Listen to what John Gill says. Christians see their sin, and I will paraphrase, by their complaints concerning it. So they see their sin and they are praying about it. They even groan under it. And there is a continual war in them between the flesh and the spirit.

To battle sin is totally different than to be defeated and to be dead in sin. To have a person who is praying over a sin propensity, a sin tendency, or even a sinful personality trait. Now let me ask you this. Sometimes people will use all sorts of things to excuse their sin. They'll use things that happened to me when I was young. My parents were sinful in how they raised me and so therefore maybe my parents had a temper and now my temper now I'm a parent. Is that the parents issue or is that your sin issue? We may look to our parents or we may look to psychological conditions.

We may say I have an anger management issue or maybe it's an issue with anxiety or depression. Maybe it's a sinful personality. We can use all sorts of things and many of them now are going to be validated by a physician. We can even medicalize sin and say it's not sin, it's a personality disorder. It's not sin, it is an effective disorder or an anxiety disorder. We can even medicalize disobedience in children and call it oppositional defiant disorder. So we have to be careful that we're not minimizing sin with a label. Now sin is something that we can wrestle with. Back to my question.

Can we hide under a personality trait and say it's just my personality? We can but the God of life will search us out. Christian, I want to challenge you to first bring this sin propensity. Bring this personality trait. Bring this emotional problem that you seem to have. Bring this anger. Bring this resentment. Bring this anxiety or fear. Bring it before the Lord first and ask the blood of Jesus to wash you clean. And as a Christian all of these things do not go away immediately. In some cases the Lord will allow a personality sin.

We call them, Brother Chris and I refer to them as character logical sin, the word character and the, character logical, kind of logical at the end of it. And a character logical sin is a personality trait which a psychologist might call personality disorder. And it manifests itself in any number of ways and it could be unique. In fact your sin is probably entirely unique to you. Manifesting itself in your life in a very unique way. In a lost world just lives and rolls. But a Christian is awakened to the ways in which they sin, even in their own personality. We have to be careful not to let our kids off the hook.

Well that's just their personality. They're spirited. Or they're, you know how they are, they're just, they're just high octane. We come up with all kinds of ways of watering down sin. And personalities can be ingrained with flesh and sin. And as a born again believer you are awakened to the sinfulness in every fiber of your life. But this is the difference. You are heartbroken about it. You weep over it. You will even fast over it. You will get accountability for it. And some of these sin tendencies, sin propensities, we feel like we're constantly beating them back. Constantly fighting them.

If you do not make war with your sin, your sin will crush you. And this is not a works based sanctification. This is a spiritual process. The Lord will show you how to wage war against the sin within your own life. First of all we rejoice that it is covered in the blood. We rejoice that we have the perclitos, we have the helper of the Holy Spirit living within us. Christ's very nature living within us. And Paul in Romans 7 says that he's warring with the spirit and the flesh. That the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. And he says the things I don't want to do I do. What that just means is he feels the tug of his flesh as a Christian.

And that's okay. And we look up and we see the lost world unrestrained violence. You know what is a Karen? You guys know what is a Karen? It's the internet world to describe oftentimes a woman who goes out in public and she's filmed and she just starts being rude and ugly and hateful. Well we're calling that a Karen now. We're calling that an internet meme. You know that that is a person with unrestrained tongue. Right? That's a person with a vile sinful disposition that needs to be addressed. You can't be a Karen and be a Christian.

You do not have liberty just to go out in public to strangers and to level them with your vitriol and with your aggression and with your anger. That's just one example. Christians will become aware of this in their life. John Gill goes on to say they will have frequent slips and falls even backsliding. And though their sins are all pardoned, they are all justified from all things by the righteousness of Christ. Yet they are not without sin. So they are freed from the guilt of sin and are under no obligation to punishment on account of it. What does this mean?

This means if you're living in the light, you can't continue on in this path as a practice of your life and be okay with it. You can't. You will be convicted by the Spirit. You will be hounded by the Holy Spirit in your life. Now this Bible study is meant to take any issue that you have in your life that's frustrating you as a Christian. God, I don't have enough victory over this. There's scripture memory. There is confession to accountability partners. There is seeking pastoral guidance and pastoral care. And there is prayer and prayer and prayer. And I would just say a good place to start is confession.

After I got saved, I asked the Lord to help me. And I made a list of people that I need to make things right with. And I simply went to them. Some people had to track down. Some people had to call even in other states. And I had to ask them to forgive me. And the Lord led me through this process. Many times as we seek to be right with the Lord and right with others, it is not a quick and easy process. But as children of the light, we have joy in that the Lord is calling us to a path of holiness for His name's sake.

And when you get a church full of sinners saved by grace, striving for holiness, helping each other in their path with holiness, it is the fullness of joy. Our joy is complete as John is saying. We will see this fighting against sin, this mortification of sin. And we will find victory by God's grace. Let's pray together.