Stop Sinning!

After Jesus healed an invalid of 38 years, He told the man not to sin anymore so that something worse would not happen to him (John 5:14).

How did this man take this counsel? How did he heed this directive?

There’s one of two ways.

First, he could have assumed Jesus meant that if he ever sinned – just once – something was coming his way that would be far worse than being paralyzed for 38 years.

Can you imagine?

The stress level!?!?!

If this was how the man took what Jesus said, he would have spent every moment of his life in total panic and anxiety that if he “blew it” one time, the worst was coming. His life would have been consumed with making sure he didn’t do bad, while thinking through how he could do every good and moral thing possible. On good days, he would be full of pride at how “good” he had been. On not so good days, he would have panicked that he was soon to be struck with severe pain and punishment.

Is this what Jesus meant? When Jesus heals us and tells us not to sin anymore, does He really intend for us to spend our days consumed with whether or not we have disobeyed God, frightened that if we have we are doomed?

Surely not.

There’s another way this healed invalid could have interpreted Jesus’s directive. By “sin” Jesus could have meant unbelief. Unbelief in who He was. Unbelief in what He came to do. Unbelief in what it really looked like to be right with God. In fact, throughout John’s Gospel, sin is referred to as unbelief in Jesus (see John 16:8-9 as an example). In many, if not most, places where Jesus speaks of sin it has to do with not believing in, not trusting in, not following Him.

This makes so much more sense for this poor former paraplegic. I mean, for crying out loud, Jesus told him to stop sinning. How much could a paralyzed man have sinned, apart from unbelief?? When Jesus told him not to sin anymore, he was calling him to a new way of life. Jesus was leading him to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. He was calling the man, not to follow a set of rules, but to follow Jesus.

Will Jesus ever lead us to sin? Of course not! Should we be “okay” when we do sin? No. The point isn’t to treat sin lightly. The point is take following Jesus the serious priority. He took the sin problem. He fulfilled the requirements of the law. We will sin. We will mess up. We will do things we wish we hadn’t done and not do things we wish we had.

Our hope isn’t built on our sinless lives, but in the rock-solid belief that His blood and righteousness make us faultless to stand before the throne.

What are you consumed with today: trying to avoid bad and do good; or trusting in and following the One who has already resolved all of that for you?