When Temptation Becomes Sin

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Sins are committed when we deliberately respond, positively or negatively, to temptation as an independent self. These responses James calls an adultery (not a fixed marriage union) from which a return is made by confession and the forgiveness and cleansing of 1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God never sees sin because of the blood of His Son, and we therefore are forgiven. Thus, our guilty consciences are cleansed from the sin of the slip into independent self (Heb. 9:14), and we replace our sin consciousness with praise. John underlined that committing a sin is a rare, not a regular, fact when he adds, “My little children, I write this unto you that ye sin not; and if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.” Thus the committing of sins is rare, whereas so often we have been mistakenly taught that it is continuous and common, so often by confusing temptation with sin.

The whole area of temptation and sin is most important for us believers, for this is where so much of our confusion and conflict resides. If we do commit a sin, we must be careful not to slip back into that false self effort which tempts us, if it is something we often repeat, to resolve that we won’t commit it again. When we are in such a situation, we stand in our total faith position: He as me is also my Keeper (Jude 24). So when we feel desperate through the weakness of an apparent habit, we boldly tell Him we can find no deliverance by our own false self effort or good resolution (that lie of the independent sell). We are already delivered. We boldly say, “I shall do it again unless You keep me, but You are my Keeper.” If we commit it again, we return by the same way of 1 John 1:9 and back again to that same position of faith as an already delivered person, and faith is the substance.

The same is true if it is something which is not sin in any specific form named in Scripture, but we find ourselves tempted to consider a harmful “habit.” In this we walk the same way. We shall not look for “deliverance” by good resolutions or forms of that lie of self-effort. No! We boldly say that we do not even talk of a needed “deliverance.” We are in that same position of faith that I as He know no such tiling as a habit which is not He as me. I continue as before with no condemnation, and disregarding the condemnation of others; and in that freedom He will make any changes that please Him. Faith will produce changes that no negative false condemnation can produce.