How do we stay in Christ?

[steve]

any true Christian aims to eliminate sin entirely from his life

This is the right answer to the question, "what does it mean to practice sin?" If you aim at sinlessness, you will sin less, and you will disapprove of the times when you find that you have sinned.

[Ian]

Some interesting and helpful answers here, but I think I understand deusy. One is encouraged as a young Christian to sit down with the Bible and to expect that God will speak to you through it. You perhaps don`t have much intellectual background but you come as a "little child" hoping to nonetheless gain some spiritual ground in your "quiet time" with the Lord. You read a verse like 1 John 3:6 and you feel condemned by it. "I`m phoney. I don`t live up to this". Years later you discover that the meaning of the text was not so plain after all, and that in fact you would have benefited from knowing that 1 John 3:9 is in fact in the present indicative active tense. It does rather seem to stand Matthew 11:25 on its head: "I thank you Father that You have hidden these things from little children and revealed them to the intelligent and wise".
I`m not trying to bash intellectual endeavour, and I doubt whether deusy is either, but he does have a point. There are millions of uneducated African Christians who are never going to know what a Present Infinitive Active tense is.

(maybe the "things that are revealed to them" are not particularly theological in nature? For example a simple man looks at a flower and sees a creator behind it while the university professor does not).

[dseusy]

Steve,

I am thankful for the information you presented. It hasn't spurred me on to love and good deeds specifically (Hebrews 10:24), but I believe God uses language (and its grammar rules) to communicate to us. I think we can get lost in the intellectual side of it (since much of the intellectual thought is based on knowledge which puffs up and actually takes us farther from spiritual truths) but knowledge is certainly a component of wisdom. I will be researching the information you presented in more depth, as I am able... for instance, I am curious why Robertson doesn't seem to address the "hardest hitting" component of 1 John 3:9... "cannot sin". Maybe I missed it.

[dseusy]

Paidion,

As far as excusing the practice of sin... under law (as Paul mentions throughout Romans) sin is completely unacceptable. However, grace and mercy recognize:

"For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all." Romans 11:32

This is not to make an excuse to practice sin, but to recognize our condition under law- needful of mercy.

When I become a Christian, am I no longer a sinner? As I look at every Christian's life I know (especially my own) I find us all to be "sinners" compared to the application of Jesus' teachings (wise builder) and Jame's mirror analogy.

I suppose we could discuss the definition of a sinner... one who sins. If we sin, we are a sinner. I don't think you have to be engrossed in it or love sin in order to be a sinner.

1 John 1 tells me that if I claim that I have not or do not sin I deceive myself. (1 John 1:8, 10)

So, the question remains... how do I remain in Him, in light of my unholy condition under Jesus' commands?

[dseusy]

Ian,

Thanks for the encouragement...

I think since our end goal is love, and not just knowledge, we will discover real truth and what truly matters by applying God's commands (which are essentially to love). Searching for truth through knowledge (where knowledge outpaces application) leaves us prideful and blind. I'm with you- God's deepest wisdom is simple and clear and He reveals it to the simple. The complex can often become a clanging cymbal.

[TK]

dseusy wrote:

So, the question remains... how do I remain in Him, in light of my unholy condition under Jesus' commands?

Do you believe that God's love for you (or acceptance of you) depends on your performance?

TK

[backwoodsman]

I am curious why Robertson doesn't seem to address the "hardest hitting" component of 1 John 3:9... "cannot sin". Maybe I missed it.

You might want to check again. Addressing that makes up the bulk of his comments on that verse. Among other things, he says, "A great deal of false theology has grown out of a misunderstanding of the tense of αμαρτανειν [hamartano] here."

[dseusy]

TK,

Nope.

"Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God." 1 John 4:15

[TK]

Dseusy-

I guess i am confused what you are concerned about.

You asked the question: "how do I remain in Him, in light of my unholy condition under Jesus' commands?"... but then you acknowledge (or at least seem to acknowledge) that God's acceptance of you does not depend upon your performance.

I think the answer is that you are "in Jesus" whether you sin or not. You must not sin, but even if you do, you are still in Him. Thank goodness for that.

TK

[steve]

Ian and Dseusy,

I have not introduced any intellectual stuff in this discussion. The Bible was written in Greek, to Greek-speaking people, using unexceptional rules of grammar. Any babe can understand it...unless he does not know the Greek language! In that case, he needs a good translation into his own language. Translating from an ancient language into a modern one is the work of translators, who by definition are trained in language, and therefore know what untrained people do not know. In other words, they are those dreaded scholars. Without the work of such scholars, most of us could not discuss the scriptures at all, since (not being readers of Greek) we would not have any idea about what any passage saying.

The Bible was not written with English readers in mind. The authors assumed a readership that spoke Greek and understood Greek sentences. The audience may never have heard the words "Present Indicative Active," but they certainly would understand a sentence that used such verb tenses, just as an uneducated English reader would understand an English verb in that tense. The problem arises when a translation is not perfect, and when better scholars must improve on the work of earlier scholars who did not do as good a job translating as they should have.

The original readers of 1 John knew a language that we don't know. They needed no special scholarship to explain to them the meaning of words in their native tongue (They also did not need scholars to tell them, as we do, what the Gnostics were teaching, and how John's words were directed against them).

If John had written the same ideas in English, instead of Greek, he would have written something like, "Anyone who has been born of God does not habitually sin." We would understand him as easily as the original audience did. However, had he written such things in English, then his Ephesian audience would have needed scholars to tell them what the English words meant in Greek.