1 John 2:1
If you sin, there is someone to plead for you before the Father. His name is Jesus Christ. (TLB)

Many Christians are crippled in their relationship with God because they have what the church calls, ‘A besetting sin’. This is a sin they keep repeating.

Because they keep repeating it, they think God won’t keep forgiving them because they should by now have conquered it. This plays havoc with our belief system,  and because we are not sure if God will continue to forgive us, we are plagued with intense guilt and condemnation.

This way of dealing with sin is an Old Covenant (O.C.) Law approach to resolving sin and will always keep us trapped, never to break free from it. Under the O.C., every time a person sinned, a sacrifice would be offered on their behalf. Hence over their lifetime, many such sacrifices would be repeated. This knowledge would make the people sin conscious because it would be a reminder to them that they were sinners (Heb 10:1-4)

Sin consciousness means we are always looking inward at our failures, defeats and sins, triggering guilt and condemnation. But we are no longer under the O.C. sacrificial system of law, we are under the New Covenant (N.C.) of grace.

Step forward Jesus Christ. When He died on the cross, Jesus took the full punishment for our sin, past, present and future; His blood cleansed us from all unrighteousness, and whereas, under the O.C., the same sacrifices would be offered again and again to deal with sin, under the N.C., Jesus offered Himself ‘ONCE’ for sin, for all time and eternity.

Therefore, if all our sin has been dealt with, we no longer have to be sin conscious because all our sin has been forgiven and cleansed away. It doesn’t matter if we repeat the same sin 5000 times. At the cross, God looked forward up the corridor of the future, saw us committing all our sin, and took the punishment for it out on Jesus.

In the next Blog, I will look at how the sacrifice of Jesus, breaks the power of besetting sin.

Meditation Point: Heb 10:1-4. We are no longer sin conscious because of the ‘once’ for all time, sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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