You know how you can read a scripture verse 100 times and then one day God turns the light on and Ta-da! Revelation! Well, that just happened to me again this past week. I love when God shows me things in His word and then real understanding comes. That is such a ‘huge’ deal to me when it happens.

A while back I had heard a teaching at church about sin. During that teaching our pastor read I John 3:9 - “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remained in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” Even after hearing the entire sermon, I still didn’t have a real good grasp of what that meant, but what I had heard was coming from the Word of God and God cannot lie, so by faith, I believed it.

This past Wednesday morning during my prayer and devotion time, I was reading the Bible and was led to read Proverbs 24:16a - “For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again,” and immediately I John 3:9 was brought back to my memory. The Bible doesn’t contradict itself, I thought. A just man can fall? But I thought whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin. Ok God, how can this be? It wasn’t making sense.

I continued with my Bible reading and started reading Ephesians 1:4 (NIV) - “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless, in his sight,” (now this is where the light bulb went on for me), IN HIS SIGHT! Those words hit me like a ton of bricks. O my word, I finally get it! I was ecstatic. You see, when we look at people, (ourselves included) with our carnal eyes, we are bound to see their iniquity, but when God looks at his elect, those that are born of him, he sees them through the shed blood of his son Jesus Christ and views them as ‘holy and blameless’ because time is not relevant to God and he sees things as though they ‘already are’, and that’s why he can say in I John 3:9 - “he cannot sin.” I could do a little dance right now just thinking about it! Praise God!

Though there is much sin in us and done by us, as every true believer admits and confesses (1 John 1:8, 10), yet God sees no sin in His people. The Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to destroy, purge, remove and take away the sins of His people; and He has done it (John 1:29; Hebrews 1:3; 9:26; 1 John 3:5). All the sins of God’s elect were laid upon Christ, he bore them in his own body on the cross, endured and satisfied the wrath of God for them, and carried them away. The Son of God redeemed us from the curse of the law, made an end of our sins, and justified and sanctified us by his blood. God Almighty has, through the effectual atonement of Christ, so thoroughly blotted out our sins that He does not see them. He has cast our sins into the depths of the sea. He has put our sins behind his back. He has removed them from us as far as the east is from the west, and remembers them no more.  I hope all of you 'get' this.
 

This however, does not give a child of God a license to sin. As Psalm 18:23 says, “I have been blameless before him and have kept myself from sin.” Those who are truly God’s chosen will continue to do righteous things. By the grace of God, they will do whatever they need to do to make their calling and election sure because they are His workmanship.  I thank you LORD for this great revelation that you've given.  O, the wonder of God's saving grace.  Hallelujah!