Mapperley Monday Mail, 21st October 2013

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Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community

Good Morning!


Yesterday all our services seemed to have a theme of sin and forgiveness.


In the morning, we were back in 1 John thinking about how we as Christians cope with the fact that we all mess up. We saw that a common response is to try to deny or to hide it, but that when we do so we insult God all the more. The best response when we mess up is to be honest about it and to say sorry – sorry to God and to one another.


When we do that – when we confess our sins, John tells us that God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.


When God "purifies us from all unrighteousness", that means that:

  • in the past, he has freed us from the penalty of sin when Jesus took our punishment on the cross.

  • in the present, he frees us from the power of sin as he transforms our minds by his Spirit

  • in the future, he will free us from the presence of sin as we live in his new creation where we will no longer fall short of the perfection God calls us to.


We talked a bit too about how God frees us from the power of sin in the present. Our sins tend to be rooted in our wrong thinking or feeling about God or ourselves. As we spend time with God and as the truth of how amazing he is and how much he loves us sinks deeper into us, those wrong patterns of thinking and feeling gradually get challenged and changed and so Christians should be continually moving away from sin and towards Jesus. That's one of John's tests for real Christians – are we living lives which are more honouring to God now than we used to be?


John Newton wrote this:

I am not what I ought to be — ah, how imperfect and deficient!

I am not what I wish to be — I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good!
I am not what I hope to be — soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, "By the grace of God I am what I am."


God bless,

John

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