We Must Strive to Eliminate All Sins in Our Lives BECAUSE They Have Been Forgiven

There is a lie that sounds like good news. It says the cross settled the sin question so thoroughly that fighting sin is now optional, maybe even unspiritual. Jesus paid it all, the lie continues, so stop obsessing. Relax. You are covered. The more you fail, the brighter grace looks.

That is not the gospel. That is a counterfeit wearing the gospel’s coat.

Bible-believing Christians are right about the first half. We are evil continually. The imagination of the heart has been bent that way since Adam took the fruit. Nobody in this room, or in any pew, can meet the standard God set. If righteousness were a ladder, we would not be one rung short. We would be on the ground, arguing about who built the ladder. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is the only reason any of us is not appointed to wrath. Forgiveness is real. Imputed righteousness is real. Hell is what we earned, and mercy is what we received.

None of that is a hall pass.

Scripture tells forgiven people to chase a cleanness they will not finish this side of the grave. The striving is not a second way to get saved. It is what salvation does to a man once he has been saved. We fight hardest precisely because the debt is already paid. A man who treats the blood of Christ as permission to keep the old life has not understood the blood at all.

What Adam Broke and What Christ Bought

Start where the rot started. One man disobeyed, and the race came apart with him.

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

That is Romans 5:12. Genesis had already rendered the verdict in harder language. God saw that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually. Not mostly evil. Not evil on weekends. Only evil, continually. The fall was not a stumble we can walk off. It was a change in kind. We do not sin because we lack information. We sin because we inherited a nature that wants the wrong thing and then baptizes the want.

Which is why the law cannot save anybody. It can expose, accuse, and shut every mouth. It cannot produce the life it demands. Paul rebuked everyone in Romans 3:23. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Short is the polite word. We are wrecked.

Then the same apostle says the thing antinomians love to quote and hate to finish. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. They stop there and build a theology of indulgence. Paul does not stop there. The next breath is a recoil.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

Matthew Henry heard the hiss in that question and treated it the way Christ treated the devil in the wilderness. Get thee hence. Opinions that open a door to practical immorality, however nicely they dress themselves as a defense of free grace, are to be rejected with abhorrence. The truth as it is in Jesus is a truth according to godliness. Henry’s point is not that grace is small. It is that grace and filth do not share a house.

Matthew Poole put the same line in a picture anybody can understand. Believers may fall into sin. They cannot live and lie in it. Falling into the water is not what drowns a man. Lying in it does.

The Apostle Recoils for a Reason

Romans 6 is not a mood. It is an argument. If you were baptized into Christ, you were baptized into his death. The old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and so that you would no longer serve sin. Reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body. Do not yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness. Yield them to God.

Then the hammer.

For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.

Read that until the trick dies. Not being under the law is the reason sin will not rule you. Grace is not the softer regime. Grace is the regime in which the old master loses the title to your hands, your eyes, your mouth, and your bed. Being under grace is precisely why continuing in sin is unthinkable. The man who hears “not under the law” and hears “do what you want” has inverted the sentence.

Charles Spurgeon, preaching on grace abounding, saw the same inversion coming and named it. He that turns God’s mercy into a reason for sin has something worse than a heart of stone. His conscience is seared with a hot iron. Spurgeon called that inference the mark of the reprobate, and he did not apologize for the heat. A pardon that makes you love the crime is not a pardon you have received. It is a story you are telling yourself.

Jude said it without poetry. Certain men crept in, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness. The Greek idea is license. They took the freest gift God ever gave and used it as a cover for lust. The church has never been short of that species. It has only changed the vocabulary. Today it sounds like “God knows my heart,” or “I’m not under religion,” or “conviction is toxic.” The creed is old. The cologne is new.

Forgiven People Fight Harder

Here is the part modern Christianity keeps trying to sand down. We strive to put away all sin especially because it has been forgiven. Not instead of forgiveness. Because of it.

John Calvin would not let anyone tear Christ in half. In the Institutes he wrote that Christ justifies no one whom he does not at the same time sanctify. Righteousness and sanctification are perceived together in him, and they are inseparable. God does not receive a man into favor and leave him in the nature he came with. The Spirit of adoption remakes him. If your doctrine of the cross has a justified man and an untouched life, you have a Christ of your own invention.

Love is the engine. Jesus did not say, if you are afraid of me, keep my commandments. He said, if ye love me, keep my commandments. A bought slave may obey to avoid the whip. A son obeys because the Father’s name is on him. The cross does not lower the standard. It changes the reason you care about the standard. Before mercy, the law was a creditor. After mercy, the law is the household rule of a Father who already paid the debt you could not pay.

Titus 2 will not let grace sit in a corner and look pretty.

For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

Grace teaches. That is the verb. It does not lull. It teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. Christ gave himself to redeem us from all iniquity, not to finance it. A peculiar people, zealous of good works, is the point of the purchase. If the zeal is missing, do not blame the culture first. Ask whether the grace you claim is the grace that appeared.

Peter puts the same demand in the language of family resemblance.

But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

All manner of conversation means the whole pattern of life, not the Sunday slice. Holy as he is holy is an impossible sentence if you think you are the one supplying the holiness. It is a reasonable sentence if the Holy One has taken residence and means to have the house.

A Brief Analogy

A clumsy but understandable analogy is in the difference between being the renter of a house and an owner. Under the law as renters, man must keep the house tidy, reducing damage as well as wear and tear because the rules of the landlord demanded it. We do so and continue to pay for it knowing that we will never have enough to buy it but if we trash it we’re going to end up paying more.

But Jesus bought the house for us with His blood. Once saved, we are living in a house that has been given to us as a gift we did not deserve. Does that mean we should trash it knowing there will be no repercussions from the landlord we no longer have? Of course not! In fact, because it was such a tremendous gift, we should honor it by keeping our house as tidy and well-maintained as possible.

Knowing We Cannot Finish Is Not an Excuse to Quit

Now the other ditch, because Christians are gifted at falling into ditches. Some hear “strive” and build a treadmill. They measure the week in avoided sins and call the tally righteousness. That is not this argument. Scripture is ruthless about our remaining filth.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

First John 1:8 is the end of every perfectionism that claims a sinless month. The same letter then says whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, because his seed remaineth in him. Both lines are true, and only a shallow reader needs them to fight. The born-again man still finds sin in himself. He does not make peace with it. He does not practice it as a trade. He falls, he hates the fall, he confesses, he gets up, and he goes back to war. Poole’s water again. Falling in is not the same as living there.

Paul, the apostle of grace, described the war from the inside in Romans 7. In his flesh dwelt no good thing. The good he would, he did not. The evil he would not, that he did. He called himself a wretched man and asked who would deliver him. Then he answered. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The groan is not unbelief. The groan is what faith sounds like while indwelling sin is still breathing.

So the command to be perfect, in Matthew 5:48, is not a cruel joke and not a claim that you will arrive before you die. It is the direction of the road. You do not get to pick a lesser destination because the destination is far. J.C. Ryle, in Holiness, said a holy man will endeavor to shun every known sin and keep every known commandment. Endeavor is the honest word. He also said Scripture speaks of a holy violence, a conflict, a warfare, a fight, a soldier’s life, a wrestling. Nobody wrestles what he has agreed to keep.

Philippians 2:12-13 holds the nerve of it. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. You work because he works. The striving is real. The power is borrowed.

A man who says “I cannot be sinless, so I will not bother” has used a true doctrine as a pillow. A man who says “I will be sinless by Friday” has used a true command as a mirror he intends to smash. The biblical posture is harder than both. Fight today. Confess tonight. Fight tomorrow. Die still fighting. Be raised finished.

The Daily Work of Killing Sin

John Owen did not write for people who wanted a slogan. In Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers he told the choicest saints, the ones already freed from sin’s condemning power, to make mortification their business all their days. Then the line everybody quotes and almost nobody obeys. Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live. Cease not a day from this work. Be killing sin or it will be killing you.

Owen understood the appetite. Sin aims always at the utmost. Every unclean glance would be adultery if it could grow to its head. Every covetous desire would be oppression. Every thought of unbelief would be atheism. You do not negotiate with a thing that wants the whole life. You starve it. You cut off the supply. You refuse it a room.

Jesus used harder pictures than Owen. If your eye offend you, pluck it out. If your hand offend you, cut it off. He was not opening a clinic. He was saying a limb is cheaper than a soul. The man who will not end the habit, the feed, the secret tab, the second drink, the quiet resentment, has already decided which loss he prefers. He prefers the sin. He will call it a struggle so he does not have to call it a choice.

Colossians 3 does not suggest. It commands. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth. Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Put off anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, lying. Put on the new man. Ephesians 5 says fornication and all uncleanness and covetousness should not once be named among saints. Not managed. Not rebranded as authenticity. Not named.

The tools are old because the enemy is old. The Word, kept open when the feeling is gone. Prayer that actually names the sin instead of sighing about “struggles.” Fasting, when the appetite has become a god. Confession to a brother who will not clap for your honesty and leave you in it. Flight, which Joseph understood better than a thousand panel discussions. Amputation of the occasion. And underneath all of it, a fresh look at the cross, because Owen was right about the power source too. If you intend to mortify any sin without an interest in Christ, it will never be done. To kill sin is the work of living men. Where men are dead, sin is alive and will live.

Presuming on the Blood Is Its Own Sin

Hebrews does not whisper at people who learn the cost of the covenant and then go back to the mud.

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

That is Hebrews 12:14, and it should sit on the conscience like a stone. Holiness is not the garnish on a saved life. It is the road on which the saved walk toward the sight of God. The same letter warns that if we sin willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins. Trampling the Son of God under foot and counting the blood of the covenant an unholy thing is not a small doctrinal mix-up. It is contempt.

This is not a threat that every fall voids the new birth. It is a threat against the settled practice of using forgiveness as cover. Second Peter says the same thing from the other side. If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord they are again entangled and overcome, the latter end is worse. The dog and the sow were never changed. They returned. A washed pig that wants the mire was a pig the whole time.

Second Peter 1 gives the opposite picture, and it is the one to aim at. Add to faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge temperance, to temperance patience, to patience godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness charity. Give diligence to make your calling and election sure.

Diligence. Not vibes. The man who does these things shall never fall. The man who lacks them is blind and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Forgetfulness of the purge is how the old life gets its key back.

What the Fight Looks Like on a Tuesday

This is not a call to perform holiness for an audience. It is a call to hate what nailed the Lord to the wood, and to hate it in the particular form it takes in your own members.

Name it. The respectable sins are the ones that survive revival. Pride that sounds like standards. Envy that sounds like discernment. Lust that sounds like loneliness. Greed that sounds like stewardship. Sloth that sounds like rest. A bitter tongue that sounds like telling it like it is. Gossip that sounds like a prayer request. If you only war against the sins your camp already boos, you are not mortifying. You are campaigning.

Cut the supply line. Most men do not fall in a moment. They browse, they linger, they rehearse, they call it nothing, and then they act surprised at the act. Owen’s utmost is the explanation. The glance was never going to stay a glance.

Confess while it is still small. First John 1:9 is not a car wash for a double life. It is the daily mercy of a Father who already knows. He is faithful and just to forgive, and to cleanse. Just, because the blood already answered the charge. The cleansing is part of the promise, not a bonus.

And refuse the two consolations of hell. One says you have failed too often to be his. The other says you are his, so failure is information and not rebellion. Romans 8:1 still stands. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The no-condemnation is for walkers, not for spectators of their own decay. Romans 8:13 finishes the thought. If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Through the Spirit. Not through a program, and not through despair.

The Cross Is a Door, Not a Couch

We will not eliminate all sin from our lives before we see him. Anyone who says otherwise has not read First John, or has not met himself. The incapacity is real. It is also the worst reason in the world to stop swinging.

He did not die so that sin could become a lifestyle with better music. He died so that sin would lose its throne, its wage, and at last its presence. The wage is still death. The gift of God is still eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Those two sentences in Romans 6:23 are not in tension. The gift is why the wage no longer has your name on it. The gift is also why you do not go back to the payroll and ask for your old job.

So strive. Pluck out the eye if you have to. Cease not a day. Hate the sin because it is hateful, not only because it is risky. Love the Christ who bore it, and let that love make you violent against everything that put him there. You are forgiven. That is the reason the fight is holy. That is the reason quitting is a kind of blasphemy.

Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.