Jesus Drew A Line

What Did Jesus Do?

All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.
1 John 5:17

How do you keep a sinner in fear? Well, if you are God, your goal is not to keep sinners in fear, but to cast out all fear by means of your perfect love. The Father did not send the Son in order to frighten us to death, but to love us to life. But this is not to say that sin in any way could or can be overlooked. Sin, wrongdoing, has real consequences, and it ultimately pays but one wage to the sinner—death (Romans 6:23). Jesus came to love us to life by collecting, if you will, the wages for our sin, in order that, by believing in him, we would receive a totally different currency from the Father—eternal life. All humanity may be separated into one of two groups. Oh, we’re all of us sinners. But some have been, or will yet be, in and through Christ, forgiven, while others, rejecting Christ, are not, nor will ever be, forgiven. So, in a way, Jesus came and drew a line to separate the forgiven from the un-forgiven. In truth, Jesus is the line that divides all humanity.

John’s little children (the Church) were those who had heard and accepted the message about Jesus Christ, his life and atoning death on the cross, and who, believing in Jesus, had repented of sin, received forgiveness, and crossed over the line from death to life. But false teachers, antichrists had come among them denying the truth of the Father and the Son (1 John 2:22). So John wrote to remind the Church about the line that Jesus drew. While the wages of sin, all sin, is death, there is sin that does not lead to death. Huh? It’s not as confusing as it may sound. Think about it. Are there any of us who have never sinned? Of course not. Yet, for those of us who have been, or who some day by the grace of God will be, convicted of our sin, and repented, and received Christ, our sin does not lead to death, though it required the death of Jesus (Never forget that, though grace is free, it came at a very high price!). Okay, but what, then, is “sin that leads to death?”

I mean, should believers, even though we have received salvation by grace through faith in Jesus, be afraid of committing some ill-defined, but absolutely deadly, unpardonable sin? I bet there are no few believers who in fact go about day to day carrying a pretty heavy burden of fear of stepping over the line from life to death. What could this sin that leads to death which John talked about be? Let’s think again about the context of the letter. John wrote it to warn and to arm his little children against the false teaching of the antichrists, those who denied the truth about the Incarnation, who denied the true deity and true humanity, along with the death and bodily resurrection, of Jesus. In short, John seems to be warning the Church about the sin of apostasy, of having heard and received the truth, and then denying and forsaking it. Forsaking Jesus, having once received him, leaves one in essentially the same place as one who has never accepted Christ at all.

So there is sin, no use in any of us denying it, especially in our own lives. But we can take our sins to the cross, be forgiven of those sins of which we repent, and be secure and free of fear, because of the love of the Father in and through the Son, who is the promise of eternal life for all who believe. We also need to be committed to prayer for any brother or sister who commits a sin not leading to death (1 John 5:16). This means we all should be praying for one another pretty much all the time, because, though we are being renewed in the Spirit, our flesh, still falls short of the glory of God regularly. “Pray for the brother/sister who sins—those sins that do not lead to death—and God will given him/her life.” As for those who, like the false teachers of the First Century, and the many sects that have risen and fallen in the years since the time of John, reject and turn from the truth about Jesus, who fall into apostasy, committing sin that leads to death, John does not instruct us to pray for them (Though he does not actually say not to pray for them either.).

Our job then, according to John, having in Jesus crossed from death to life, is to stay on the Christ affirming side of the line, and to pray for our brothers and sisters who sin, who should be praying for us. The Father’s one big family united in prayer in and through the Son. This is the very work and prayer of Jesus (John 17).

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4