Intro: How We Respond to Our Sins
I don’t like calling out my own mistakes. Nobody does.
There are times I respond to people in ways I shouldn’t, and I have to apologize. There are times I think about doing things that are ungodly, and I have to ask God for forgiveness. There are days I look back on and wish I could go back and try again. At times I make judgment calls that I’m wrong about and I have to sit my family down to tell them how sorry I am.
But in all my failures and all the times I have missed the mark, the one thing I have learned in the short time I have been following Jesus has served me better than almost anything else:
If I get things right as fast as possible, I avoid a lot of judgment.
1 Corinthians 11:31 “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.”
If I can honestly look at what I did wrong, own it, and turn from it, sometimes God does not have to bring the correction Himself!
Self judgment is a mercy exit in the Christian life.
Missing the Shot is Not the Issue: It’s All About the Rebound!
Proverbs 24:16 “For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.”
The just man falls seven (7) times. God’s Word does not paint the righteous as sinless. It paints them as people who get back up after they miss the mark. The Christian life is not about never falling. It is about how we respond when we do.
Every Christian is going to fail. That is not the question. The question is what we will do with our failure. And the Bible gives us four options to pick from.
What We Mean By Failure
For this series, failure means any moment we fell short of what God asked of us. That covers actual sin, wrong attitudes, and missed opportunities. It covers the times we knew the right thing and didn’t do it. Anything that puts distance between us and God’s best for us counts as failure in this study.
And before we go any further, we have to draw a line on what sin means for two different groups of people.
If you are saved, your sins are forgiven. Past, present, and future. Christ paid for every one of them at Calvary.
Ephesians 1:7 “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.”
But, you must realize , your sins still greatly impact your fellowship with Jesus.
1 John 1:6-7 “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
Your salvation is settled, but your fellowship is not. Self-judgment is how a saved Christian keeps his walk with Christ clean.
If you are lost, your sins are not forgiven, and they will be judged on the final day.
Hebrews 9:27 “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
Revelation 20:12 “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”
Self-judgment cannot save you because only Christ can. If that is where you stand, the first step is not learning how to respond to your failures. The first step is coming to Jesus, trusting Him as your Saviour, and being born again.
What Self-Judgment Is NOT
We need to be careful here. Self-judgment is powerful, but it is not everything.
Self-judgment does not save the soul. That is Christ’s work alone.
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Self-judgment does not remove all consequences. David judged himself after Nathan came, and his child still died. You cannot plant a crop and pray for it to fail.
Galatians 6:7 “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Self-judgment does not make us sinless. We still live in this flesh.
What Self-Judgment DOES
Now the other side, here is what self-judgment actually does for the Christian.
God does not have to chastise what we already dealt with.
1 Corinthians 11:31-32 “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.”
Self judgment brings restoration faster!
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.”
Owning our failure early costs less than being made to own it later.
Psalm 32:3-5 “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.”
David tried denial first and his bones wore out. His strength dried up. God’s hand pressed down on him day and night. The moment he confessed, the pressure lifted. Every unconfessed failure carries weight and every confessed one gets set down.
Speed Matters
There is an urgency in Scripture about dealing with our failures that most Christians ignore.
Ephesians 4:26 “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”
Hebrews 3:15 “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”
Matthew 5:23-24 “Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”
God’s Word is not casual about timing when it comes to dealing with our sin. Speed matters, a lot. We tend to put off dealing with our sins and we forget more of our sins than we remember.
The longer we wait, the harder every step becomes.
The Four Ways We Respond to Failure
Every Christian, in every failure, picks one of four responses. Every Bible character we can name picked one of these four. So did we, the last time we fell.
Over the next four blogs, we are going to walk through each one.
1. Deny It
We pretend the failure did not happen. We bury it, hide it and cover it up! This is what David did with Bathsheba for about a year.
2. Deflect It
We admit something happened, but blame someone else. We make excuses, justify the sin and get bitter at God through the process. This is what Adam did with Eve, and what Saul did with the Amalekites.
3. Dress It Up
We feel bad about the failure but change nothing. Performative repentance without living it. This is what Judas did when he threw the silver back to the religious leaders and hanged himself. He felt bad for what he did to Jesus, but his repentance was misplaced.
4. Die To It
We own the failure honestly, turn from it, and let God restore us. This is what David did in Psalm 51 and what Peter did after the rooster crowed.
Three of the four keep the wound open! Only one closes it and makes us whole.
The four D’s are a choice for right now, but not forever!
We remember Esau and how he tried to repent too late.
Hebrews 12:17 “For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”
Pharaoh hardened his heart so many times that eventually God hardened it for him. Judas ran out of time too. Every failure has four exits, and every exit has a window.
We will come back to this at the end of the series. For now, know this: the invitation to choose the right D is open today. It may not be open tomorrow.
Jesus died to sin once for all so that we could die to sin daily.
Romans 6:10-11 “For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The cross is what makes the fourth D possible. Without Christ, none of us can die to our sin, because none of us have the power to. But because Jesus already did the dying, every Christian has the power to keep dying to sin every day of our walk.
In Part 1, we start with the most common D of them all: Deny It!
It is what David did for a full year with Bathsheba. It is what Achan did after Jericho. It is what Ananias and Sapphira did in front of the whole church.
And if we are honest, it is probably what most of us are doing right now with something.
