Hi 1cl, welcome to the club,16 year adultery ended 9 years ago and now married 2 years to the girl I cheated on who is Christian & has forgiven me.
John/the 12 all have relevant teachings for their respective audiences/ages of which some can be applied to us today.
To be saved today, I rely on who Christ selected as my Apostle >> Paul.
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""Sin unto death ""
What is that sin & what happens to a Eph 4:30 'sealed unto redemption' believer today if they were to do it ?
That would be willfully going against your new nature. Jesus made it easy to continue on the path of righteousness. It would be like Adam going against God on purpose, which is what he did because he knew that Eve had already eaten. Though he didn't know what would happen, he chose his companion over God.
Adam committed a sin unto death as in "the wages of sin is death." His action brought sin and death into the human race. 1 John 5:16-17 shows the two levels of sin. For sins not unto death there was a sacrifice under the Law; but Got did not provide a sacrifice at that time to cover a sin unto death. They were stoned to death. Numbers 15:22-29 shows the sacrifice for unintentional sins. Note that these would be things they were not consciously aware of committing. Leviticus 5:15 shows they are "trespasses" unintentionally committed. Today we would call it "missing the mark." But everyone knew what the Ten Commandments were, and the man who was stoned was merely picking up sticks on the Sabbath. It was a sin unto death against a LAW OF GOD. Same today. Those who commit a sin unto death, which is any willful sin God speaks against, no matter how small it seems is called "lawlessness," 1 John 3:4. The next verse says, "but He was manifested to TAKE AWAY sin, and in Him is not Sin." That is not all sins that miss the mark, only sins unto death - lawlessness, the context of the whole chapter.
And as we see in 1 John 5:16-17 naming the two types of sin that has been known for 3,500 years, when the Reformationists came along 500 years ago, they changed this important distinction and lumped all sin together, "sin is sin," making lawlessness forgivable, covering past, present and future willful sins. But you see that John had said not to even pray for a believer who commits lawlessness, sins unto death. John wasn't talking about praying for an unbeliever who was committing these sins, because then we couldn't pray for our sons and daughters to come to Christ to be free from sin. Lawless sin, that is. Immature fruit of the Spirit is what causes sins not unto death, and it is Jesus that matures us, AS LONG AS WE ABIDE IN HIM. Abiding in Jesus should be what all sermons should be about, because as Peter said in 2 Peter 1:5-9:
"5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, 6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, 7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. 8 For if these things are yours and abound,
you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9
For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
Note, his "old sins" are the only sins unto death that are cleansed. Not present. Not future. That only applies to unintentional sins while walking in the Spirit. 1 John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." That sin is the only sin that someone walking in the Light can commit.
Watch for these doctrines of demons, because since the Reformation lumped both types of sin altogether, the Church has become lukewarm regarding sin:
1. "Sin is sin"
2. 1 John 1:9 is no longer how to become a Christian like Acts 2:38, but a "get out of hell free card you can pull out of the hat after you are a Christian for any type of sin.
3. "Past, present, and future" sin.
4. All sin is willful.
5. There is no such thing as unintentional sin.
6. Once saved, always saved, OSAS (no matter how many commandments you break.)
7. You will always sin until after you die and receive a new body. (As if sin originated in the puppet, and not in the puppet masters (spirit and soul, together making up our nature. What is born again NOW and must be per Jesus is our spirit and soul. The old man of Romans 6 is the sin nature that was crucified and BURIED. It is gone)).
8. Once a Christian you still have a sin nature, so you have 2 natures fighting against each other. (John 15:3 "you are clean.")
9. Jesus frees us from the punishment of sin, not from sin, itself.
10. The blood of Jesus blinds the eyes of the Father so He only sees His Son's blood, not the sin continuously going on underneath.
11. Romans 11:14-25 is Paul as a Christian. NO! It is replaying what it was like for the Jews and Pharisees under the LAW having to keep the law with a sin nature in opposition.
12. 1 John 1:8, and also 6 and 10 are to born again Christians.
No, the reason for John writing this epistle is because of the Gnostics spreading their filth in the congregation of John. They are part of the "we" in John's congregation in Ephesus. 1 John 4:1-3. The Nicolaitans started by one of the 7 men in Acts called Nicolas to pass out food evenly. He started his own cult and claimed that only sins of the spirit were sins, but sins of the flesh weren't and were to be encouraged to make grace abound all the more. (Sound familiar? Yes, Paul dealt with them too.) In his cult he ordered all the men to rape each other's wives daily!"
13. The process we go through for the rest of our lives to overcome sin is called "sanctification." It is not for "overcoming lawless sin." And it is not called Sanctification." It is called "Glorification" and is the maturing of all the fruit of the Spirit to be conformed into the image of Christ on earth. In John 17:20-23 Jesus gives us his glory. Jesus already overcame sin, and has given the Holy Spirit of Christ to His true followers. (BTW, not everyone going to church is a Christian, because of bad doctrines of demons who want you dead before you catch on to their evil plot to send you to hell.)