He Loves Me (and You)…Regardless.

1 John 3:4-10 (New International Version, ©2010)

4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

We’ve all had those moments. The ones where we find ourselves begging and pleading for God to help us not do “that” anymore. Those times when we become so overwhelmed by our own sin that we wonder if we will ever get “it” right. Then we take a look back. Not to yesterday but to yesteryear. We see how far we’ve come and we find our breath, repent, and continue on.

That’s the beauty of belonging to God. To being born of Him as 1 John 3:9 states. That while we have not yet reached perfection, the grace and mercy and love of God prevents us from wallowing in our unrighteousness. We just can’t keep doing the same ugly things over and over again because of the friction it will create with the Holy Spirit that resides within us.

Sure, it would be easy for us to say, “Fix me, Lord.” Or, run to those that we love and ask them to help us fix our issues. We often try to turn our search for deliverance from our sins into something that we can manipulate. However, the true answer to our sin problem lies in the journey we take from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:16-18). It is in the exemplification of God’s love in our lives; which of course covers a multitude of sins (I Peter 4:8). And ironically, we are both completely deserving of it and terribly undeserving of it. In either case, His love is capable of inhabiting us fully and completely if we let Him and results in us being able to sin less, even if we are not sinless.

Because our very identity as children of God lies in our ability to grow, it’s important that all of us take a long look in the mirror and ask God to show us ourselves. Reveal to us the areas of brokenness in our lives so that we can begin the journey toward wholeness. We want to be whole in our relationships because it will be our wholeness that will be our witness, our testimony, to those who don’t know Christ.

TMLG