After the meeting today, a brother came seeking me, his face filled with worry. He said that God requires people to be sanctified, but that he often involuntarily commits sin, and if he always lives like this in sin, then will he be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven when the Lord comes? I told him that the Lord Jesus was crucified and that He took upon Himself all our sins, paying the price with His life. I said that our sins had been forgiven because of our faith in the
Lord Jesus, and that the Lord no longer saw us as sinners, and that as long as we could give up everything and expend ourselves, work hard for the Lord, and endure till the very end, then we would be raptured up into the kingdom of heaven when the Lord returned. After the brother heard me say this, he looked as though he hadn’t gotten the answer he’d wanted, and he left looking somewhat disappointed. As I watched him walk away, I felt some very complex emotions. To tell
the truth, didn’t I have the same worries as this brother did? Thinking of how I had believed in the Lord for many years but had often been bound by sin, and had been living in a condition whereby I sinned in the daytime and confessed in the evening, I didn’t wish to keep living that way either. But I really wasn’t capable of overcoming sin, and so I often prayed to the Lord and strengthened my reading of the scriptures. And yet I never resolved the problem of my sins. The Lord is holy, so would He commend someone like me, so filled with sin?
