The Apostle John tells us that there are three great lies about life, and three great corresponding truths.
Lie #1 You’ve been a good person (or at least better than most other people) and you don’t need Jesus Christ to come into your life with forgiveness. 1 John 1:10
Lie # 2 You can be in a saving relationship with God but you can’t help continuing to do things you know grieve and offend him, i.e., willfully sinning. 1 John 1:5-6
Lie # 3 You can come to the place where you cannot sin. 1 John 1:8
Truth #1 In our pride and pretended self-sufficiency all of us have separated ourselves from God, the source of life. Believing that good behavior ought to earn God’s favor is the most egregious form of pride. The only hope for us is to accept the free gift of forgiveness made available to us through Christ’s death and resurrection. 1 John 1:9
Truth # 2 God is light and in him is no darkness at all. We can no more be in a relationship with him and keep continually offending him than we can remain in a relationship with another person and keep doing that. 1 John 1:7
Truth #3 To be a Christian is not to have received some sort of “fix” that takes away our freedom of choice. We can still choose to do what we know is wrong. The good news is that if we acknowledge (confess) that we have made an abnormal wrong choice, the blood of Jesus never loses its power . 1 John 2:1-2
Here is the sum of it all: Jesus, through the Holy Spirit can “perfect” – make complete – our love for God and others. We can come to the place where all we want is to please him. Does that guarantee perfect performance? Not while we are in these bodies! But does it mean we can be all his, without a limit and without a rival? Yes! 1 John 4:13-17
Called To Be Transformed 