In 1 John 1:8-2:1 we find a passage of Scripture that has been twisted by religious man into meaning what it does not mean–that man must sin due to Adam’s miraculous infusion of a sin gene into his and Eve’s descendants.  The result of this Satanic lie has led billions of God seekers to bypass God’s strait gate and narrow way which forbids sin and commands righteousness, and to enter Satan’s wide gate and to walk his broad way which not only ridicules the idea that man can be righteous through obedience to God’s Word, but also makes sin and rebellion against God’s Word  an unavoidable staple in the lives of his parishioners–Catholics and Protestants. Let us view the total passage in a clear-eyed search for God’s Truth rather than with a feel-good focus that permeates the entirety of professing Christendom. The problem stems from the fact that church people do not study God’s Word. Two good examples of this are found in Romans 3:23,25 where we are told that 1) we have all sinned (past tense) and that 2) Jesus was the propitiation of our PAST sins which He forgives through His grace alone. However, He says nothing about future sins. As this series will reveal, when one is justified (has past sins removed) by the death of the Messiah, sin is to be a thing of the past. As Jesus told the prostitute whose sins He had forgiven, we are to “Go and sin no more” (Jn. 8:11). This was not an option or an ethereal goal to think about. It was a command to her and us.  What nominal church members do not understand is that the truth they have been given is not the Truth of God’s Holy Bible. So gird your loins, dear reader, the narrow path God’s saints must walk is much narrower than you have been told. For this reason He warns that few would walk that path (Mat. 7:13,14).

In verse eight we find the first point of church error regarding sin within the church: “If we say we have no sin,” means that we say we have not sinned in the past as verse ten reveals: “If we say we have not sinned” (past tense). Taken together the two verses tell us that if we say we have never sinned we deceive ourselves, make Christ a liar and do not have His Word in us. Verse nine states that if we confess our past sins He will cleanse all of our past sins from our lives. In 2 Peter 2:22 we find the Lord, speaking through the apostle, comparing one who continues to sin after having been cleansed of sin to a sow that, having been cleansed, returns to her mire and a dog that, having gotten rid of that which sickened it, consumes his vomit. At this point I want to tell you of yet another episode in which the Lord has had me in a place and doing something that I don’t normally do–watching television. This time I was running the channels trying to find something interesting when I came across four woodsmen who were walking through a forest carrying some ropes. They had come to a large hole in the ground that measured approximately ten feet by fifteen feet and was quite deep. At the bottom of the pit was a full-grown deer that was trying to get out but could not. Over perhaps 20 minutes the men, using their ropes and a great deal of muscle power, managed to drag the creature out of the pit. Upon finding itself on level ground the deer raced off at top speed and disappeared in the brush. What happened next was a shock to the men and me. From out of the brush that same deer ran straight back the way it had fled and jumped back into the hole. It did not fall in accidently, it actually jumped back into the hole. Once again the men worked with their ropes and finally pulled it out. I turned the program off, knowing that the Lord had just given me an example of the sow and dog parable. Those who continue in sin following justification are like the deer, the sow and the dog. They believe that God will bail them out and clean them up no matter how many times they sin. As this series will show, this is not the case. Billions of salvation seekers have believed Satan’s lie to their peril. L.J.