[[the New Covenant God presaged in Jeremiah as He told us that when He gave us this New Covenant, He would forgive our wickedness and recognize our sins no more.]]
Exactly- well said- We don;’t have to ‘go and sin no more’ in order to ‘remain a Christian’- Because God remembers our sins no mor-e past present and future- We are redeemed once and for all- We are sealed- and that seal can never be broken
It is impossible to ‘go and sin no more’ (Jesus told the man he healed not to do the sins that made him sick lest he get sick again with a worse disease- hence the admonition to ‘go and sin no more’ was given as protection to the man- not as a warning that he would lose his salvation- Same principle applied to the woman he told to sin no more- He told her to sin no more to avoid the consequences of being stoned to death by self-righteous hypocrites- He was not warnign her that if she sinned again, or didn’t immediatetly repent of every single sin right after she committed them that she would lose her salvation)
and it is equally impossible to live in a state of active repentance and not suddenly die without having had the opportunity to acknowledge your sin at the time of death and ask forgiveness- What a cruel thing it would be to live the ‘Christian life’ for 70-80 years only to suddenly die before you’ve had a chance to repent of some wrong thought or action- or to become a vegetable, or mentally disabled person while in a state of unconfessed sin-
Well said.
Sin can open the door for demonic oppression of the believer, which is probably why Jesus gave the admonition. Especially if the person had been healed from a spiritually caused affliction.
By engaging in that sin again, that would allow for the same spiritual attack that brought about the previous illness.
Aside from the fact that sin dishonors God and breaks our fellowship, our lines of communication, with Him.
Thank you - folks who cite that usually tend to forget that Jesus walked the Earth under the Old Covenant and had to be true to the Law under it even as He prepared us for His sacrifice. When He told us if we even think it, then we have effectively done it, he was stressing how incapable we were of leading sinless lives on our own.
God Bless