You are either "in" Christ or you are not.
Yes, right.
One either walks in the light-God, or they walk in darkness-sin.
This isn't what John wrote in
1 John 1:5-10 or what is in evidence in the rest of the New Testament. As I explained in my last post to you, your false dichotomy just doesn't fit with what Scripture plainly indicates.
We are talking about sane folks of age who use their consciences to determine good from bad.
What other options are there ?
I explained from the apostle John's own words and from other instances in the NT what other option there is. You are so hardened in your error, however, that it seems you can't take in any other perspective and so reply to my posts as though I had written nothing to you. Interesting, that. Such hardness and blindness is part of the judgment of God upon those who persist in falsehood, I think.
Live, reside, act, exist.
To walk in the light is to walk in God.
To walk in darkness is to commit a sin.
Your terms above in definition of "walk" are essentially the same as what I wrote: to continue in a particular, persistent course of living. But as John clearly indicated, to "walk in darkness" is to make a
practice of sin, to continue in a particular, persistent course of sinful living. This is different from the saint who is "walking in the light" but
at times requires cleansing from sin (
1 John 1:7, 9). Such believers fill the New Testament, as I've already shown.
There are no 'steps into darkness'.
Sure there are. Read the NT (
1 Corinthians 3, 5, 6, 11; Galatians 3:1-3, James 4, Revelation 2-3, etc.). And some born-again believers did more than merely step into darkness, however, they took a regular hike into it. I've already offered scriptural examples in earlier posts.
One sin manifests where the heart is based.
One sin illustrates from whom we are born...Adam or God.
This is silly. And unbiblical.
My wife has gotten cross with me and I with her. Does her anger toward me mean she has ceased to love me? Has her heart grown cold and dead toward me, or mine toward her? Of course not. This would be a ridiculous thing to assume - just as it is ridiculous to say that a saint who falls into sin has manifested a heart not born-again of God. Now, if my wife remained fiercely angry with me for months or years, her anger never cooling, her love completely absent from her interactions with me, if she "walked in anger" toward me all the time, then I would have some grounds to wonder seriously about the state of her heart toward me. But brief moments of temper from my wife no more mean her heart was never truly mine, than my brief moments of disobedience to God mean my heart has never truly been His.
That this isn't obvious to you illustrates part of the terrible penalty you're paying for willfully persisting in error.
Whose spirit is revealed by sinning ?
The devil's.
No. Sin arises ultimately from the "Old Self" (
Romans 6:6), the person we are apart from God, fleshly, temporally-focused, and selfish, not the devil. Satan merely takes advantage of those times when the "Old Self" is in control and tempts the born-again believer to indulge the sinful, self-centered interests of the "Old Self." But the devil is not the primary source of the sin we commit;
we are. We have a sin-nature, inherited from Adam, that remains with us 'til we die and are finally liberated from it completely.
So, then, when a saint sins, s/he is merely revealing who is in charge in that moment: the Old Self. If the Spirit is in control, the life of the Spirit increasingly manifests in the believer. This is what Paul wrote about in
Galatians 5.
Galatians 5:16-17
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
Why would Paul say what he did in
verse 16 to the born-again believers to whom he was writing? Obviously, because they were, at least at times, gratifying the desires of the flesh, that is, they were sinning. His advice to these sinning saints was to "walk in the Spirit" which is to live constantly under the Spirit's control.
Galatians 5:18
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
This is the essence of "walking in the Spirit": being led by him, being always under his direction and control. See:
Romans 6:13-22, Romans 8:14, Romans 12:1, James 4:6-10, 1 Peter 5:6.
In any case, Paul continued in
verse 17 to describe the common state-of-affairs of the born-again person in which the flesh and the Spirit are at war with one another, just as Paul had described of himself in
Romans 7:14-24.
Romans 7:21-24
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
As I pointed out before, Paul writes in the present tense here, describing his current condition, not a past one. What was true of Paul is true of all born-again believers: we all battle every day against the "Old Self-nature." And sometimes, we lose the battle. When we do, there is, thankfully, the direction of
1 John 1:9.
The word 'practice' was added by the devilish to accommodate sin in supposed believers.
Yes, you've said this same facile and silly thing before. Repeating it doesn't make this statement true, however. Prove this assertion. Show that what you claim here is actually true. And show how your mistaken reading aligns with the rest of Scripture that plainly describes saints who sin. So far, you've just asserted this false idea as though doing so by itself makes it true. Well, it doesn't. I understand, though, that your reflex is to just blurt out these unfounded remarks; you can't help yourself, it seems. Again, this is the penalty you pay for persisting in falsehood. Your capacity to see out of the error you've wilfully sustained has dissolved. Scary.
Sin cancels out any work of the Spirit, as sin is of the devil.
Nope. This is patently silly. See above.
Continued below.
