SINNLESS (week 4)

Is it possible to live a sinless life? From the day Eve ate of the apple in the Garden of Eden, we have lived in a fallen world. Sin seems to be a part of all our lives. What if I told you we could live without sin? Didn’t Jesus Christ die on the cross to take away our sins? If they are taken away, why do we still hold on to them so tightly?

Exodus 24-40 walks us through the covenant God gave to Moses including the Ten Commandments written in stone and instructions to build a dwelling place for the Lord. Up to this point, He did not live among the people, and in Exodus 25:8 the Lord told Moses, “Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all it’s furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.” Just understanding that it takes 15 chapters to explain the tabernacle’s design gives us an idea of its extravagance. At the center of the tabernacle was a room considered the most Holy Place. The only person allowed in this room was the High Priest with no sin. Once a year, the Day of Atonement, the High Priest sacrificed offerings for the people and entered the most Holy Place. If the High Priest went in with any sin, he was struck down dead and the people of the land would mourn for a year because they were not cleansed of their sins. Sounds pretty harsh. Luckily for us, this old covenant was replaced with a new one.

The old covenant brought the law and an awareness of sins. The new covenant allows us to leave sin behind and walk into life. 2 Corinthians 3:6 explains, “He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter (the law given to Moses) but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Not only does the new covenant offer life, but also establishes that the Lord’s dwelling place is no longer in a room, but inside each of us as Christians. The tabernacle is now only a representation of the new covenant, except the most Holy Place is in us. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Referring back to the old covenant, we remember that the Lord does not allow sin into His presence. Friends, our identity is no as a sinner! Hebrews 10:8-10 explains that by the new covenant “we have been made holy” through Jesus’ death. Note the verb tense. This has been done. We are holy. The passage goes on to reaffirm that this has been done “once and for all.” We are completely free from sin. 1 John 3:9 goes a step further to say that Christians cannot sin. “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning because he has been born of God.”

Biblically, we have the evidence in front of us that we are not sinners, yet the problem stems from where we place our identity. We hang onto sin and allow it to define us. When we realize that Jesus died for our sins, all of them, we can begin to see ourselves not as people bound to sin, but rather people completely free from sin. We will quit accepting sin and learn to walk more and more as saints.