12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord that he has trusted me and has appointed me to do his work with the strength he has given me. 13 In the past I cursed him, persecuted him, and acted arrogantly toward him. However, I was treated with mercy because I acted ignorantly in my unbelief. 14 Our Lord was very kind to me. Through his kindness he brought me to faith and gave me the love that Christ Jesus shows people. 15 This is a statement that can be trusted and deserves complete acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the foremost sinner. 16 However, I was treated with mercy so that Christ Jesus could use me, the foremost sinner, to demonstrate his patience. This patience serves as an example for those who would believe in him and live forever.
Introduction:
In this small country church, there was a man. For our purposes here today, we will call this man “Brother Jones.” Brother Jones was the type of man many of us have come into contact with during our experiences in church life. He was the type of man who would respond to the invitation and ask to be baptized at every single gospel meeting (revival).
On this particular Sunday, the visiting minister had preached a stirring sermon, and when he asked for responses to the invitation, Brother Jones hurried to the front. Everyone in the congregation knew what Brother Jones was about to do for the umpteenth time; everybody except the guest minister. As the visiting preacher began to announce Brother Jones’ intentions, a voice from the back of the room called out,
“Don’t do it preacher. He leaks!”
Why did this person feel that he needed to be baptized each and every time the invitation was issued?
We all have known people who, by every right, should be joyful and secure in their relationship with God. But instead they go through life downcast and, whether expressed or not, doubt that they will ever make it past those pearly gates into heaven.
They never say confidently,
“Yes! I am saved!” “Yes! I am going to heaven!”
Instead, they use phrases like,
“I hope so.” I think so.” “I’m doing the best I can.”
Their words and their tone of voice betray their thinking that,
“No matter how hard I try, I’m just not ever going to make it into heaven.”
Now, there are a variety of reasons people feel this way, but in many cases, somewhere in their past is “That One Sin.” It is some sin or incident in their past that continues to drag them down spiritually even though they have confessed it to God and repented of it. "That One Sin" is like a ship that is redlining the engine but never gaining any momentum because it is dragging its anchor or like a person trying to swim across a lake with weights tied to their ankles. No matter how hard that person swims, they are pulled under the water again and again. It is a weight that, over time, becomes heavier and heavier and requires more and more of their time and energy until they are finally pulled under for the last time and drown.
Who has this problem?
Ironically, the people who probably should worry the most don’t. You know; those people who go out every Saturday night carousing around with their friends thinking they are living their best life only to spend most of the Lord’s Day sleeping off a hangover and trying to piece together what they even did the night before. Those people don’t have this problem. They are too busy enjoying their indulgences and not giving God even a momentary thought.
The people who are struggling to get a foothold in their Christian Walk are those burdened down with their past sins and are usually one of 3 groups:
1. Our Most Faithful Members. The ones who are the hardest workers. The ones who never miss a service. They are trying so hard to be good, faithful Christians, but they never seem to be able to do enough to erase “That One Sin” from their past.
2. The Ones Who Used To Be Faithful but have given up and gone away from the church. They tried so hard to be faithful, but finally, the struggle became too great, and they just gave up. “That One Sin” finally got the best of them.
3. The Ones Who Just Trudge Along In Their Christian Lives. Like an old mule or oxen pulling a plow. They are just putting one foot in front of the other. They are Christians but show none of the joy of Christ in their face or their lives. Their present lives are absent of joy because they dwell on “That One Sin” in their past. They would say,
“Sure, I know I am good now, but in the past, I was so bad, I'm ashamed of that person.”
or
"I don't want to flaunt who I was in my past life, so I just don't tell others what God saved me from, after all we are told to be humble right."
Illustration:
A chaplain at a state mental hospital tells of a patient at the state hospital who had a seemingly innocent incident with another girl in her dorm room at college. The patient had been a student at a Christian college. She had not gone home for Christmas because of her job. A few other girls also did not go home. To conserve energy, the college moved all the girls into rooms clustered at one part of the dorm. This young woman was sharing her room with another young woman. One cold winter night, the heat went out, and they huddled together in one bed to keep warm. At one point during the night, this young woman’s roommate accidentally rubbed up against her, and a lustful thought immediately rushed into her mind. Nothing was ever acted upon, but THAT ONE burst of temptation from that innocent, thoughtless touch burned inside her and tormented this young woman’s mind and conscience for years to the point that she was driven almost to the brink of insanity.
“That One Sin,” better described as “That One Temptation,” Satan harnessed and used to practically destroy what otherwise would have been a wonderful, fruitful Christian life.
People with the “That One Sin” syndrome tend to spend a great deal of time analyzing over and scrutinizing “That One Sin” and their role in it. They always see themselves as totally guilty. The sin that weighs so heavily on their souls could be something they did, or it could even be something they did not do. It might even be something that happened to them, and someone else had convinced them that it was their fault that this bad thing happened to them.
In their guilt and shame, they walk around with this invisible “Scarlet Letter” hung around their neck. Nobody else can see it, but they can, and they assume everyone else can too. It is a big red “G.” Guilty, Guilty, Guilty.
There are some traits common to everyone who suffers from the “That One Sin” syndrome.
They tend to look at their sins on a kind of sliding scale or varying levels of punishment for sins committed. For instance, there is that little white lie, and then there is that big black lie. Most all of our other sins can be forgiven, but “That One Sin” is so bad, so immense, that in their eyes, they can see no way that God could, let alone should forgive “That One Sin,” whatever it is, becomes their “Unforgivable Sin.”
God does not look at sin that way. To God, all sin is equally bad. Look at Gal. 5:19-21; Rev. 21:8 . . .
19 Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
8 But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
All those “big” sins and all those “little” sins are all lumped together in one ugly mess.
Remember, God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden for eating a piece of fruit. All sins are equal because all sins at their foundation have a single source, UNBELIEF.
The writer of Hebrews says plainly in Hebrews 3:15b-18 that the disobedience of the Israelites in the wilderness was because of unbelief. So it is with all sin, no matter how large or small it is to us, it has as its foundation a lack of faith in God.
15b“Today if you hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.”
16 For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
Because those suffering from the “That One Sin” syndrome look at sins on a sliding scale, they either cannot or will not accept God's forgiveness for all their sins. They allow God to forgive all those little and even medium-sized sins but not “That One Sin.” They seem unable or unwilling to let go of the weight or burden of that sin and receive God’s forgiveness for it.
Illustration:
The Lord of the Rings was a blockbuster movie developed from a series of books written by J.R.R. Tolkien. The stories center around an ancient ring with magic power and the quest of a little hobbit named Frodo to destroy it. Along the way, Frodo encounters a whimpering, whining little creature named Smeagol, who is obsessed with the ring. Through his obsession, the ring has turned Smeagol into a sniveling, conniving, murdering little creature who will do anything to have his “Precious” and prevent Frodo from destroying it. Smeagol cannot seem to see that his obsession with the ring is destroying him.
Those who cling to “That One Sin” are allowing themselves to be destroyed by it so long as they do not accept God’s forgiveness of it.
God sees all sins alike and if he can forgive one, he can forgive all. If anyone had the right to have “That One Sin” syndrome, it was the apostle Paul.
Saul of Tarsus, who later became known as Paul, was at the center of the great persecution of Christians recorded in the 8th chapter of Acts. But his life changed completely when he met Christ on the road to Damascus. Paul writes of his transformation from persecutor to apostle in I Tim. 1:12-16 . . . Paul is saying,
“If God can forgive me, he can forgive and save anyone."
Paul also illustrates the reality that the closer we come to God, the greater our sins seem to us. Look at the different ways Paul describes himself over the years as he writes his various letters. In I Cor. 15:9,
“For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God . . .”
But in I Timothy, which is one of Paul’s last letters shortly before his death, he describes himself in I Tim. 1:15
"as the foremost or greatest of all sinners."
As Paul grew closer to God, his perception of his sins changed. They became greater and greater in his sight. But he also adds in I Cor. 15:10,
"But by the grace of God I am what I am . . ."
And in I Tim. 1:16, Paul says,
“I found mercy.”
Paul says in Rom. 3:23 that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But Paul also says in Eph. 1:8 that “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”
This happened when we were baptized into Christ and became his disciples. But John says in I John 1:7 concerning the one who is living the Christian life, that the “blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
Not just some or most.
All Sin!
Big, little, or in between.
Again, in I John 1:9, John tells us that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is something that MUST be understood and accepted.
It is really quite simple. If we are immersed, believers...When we Repent of our sin, and confess our sin {s} to God, asking Him to forgive that sin. . . God forgives our sin. PERIOD!
By our own righteousness, NO!
Because of the immense power of the atoning blood of God's Son, YES!
That sin that we have confessed, God has forgiven, and it is gone . . . FOREVER.
How many of us have asked God to forgive us of the same sin more than once, even after we are no longer actively committing it? Why???
Because those who suffer from the “That One Sin” syndrome fail to fully understand and accept the truth that when Christ died for the whole world, he included them.
In fact, there are those who teach that Christ did not die for everyone but only for the elect, which he chose before the beginning of time. But God's Word teaches us in Luke 19 when Jesus confronts Zaccheus and invites himself to Zaccheus’ house, he tells Zaccheus in vs. 10, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
In I Peter 2, when Peter is describing Jesus as our example, he says in vs. 24, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by his wounds you were healed.
In II Corinthians 5, Paul discusses our reconciliation to God through Jesus Christ. He states in Vs. 21, “He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” Jesus came to save the lost. He bore the penalty of the sins of all who are lost in his body on the cross and became sin so that the lost might be saved. Who are the lost for whom Christ died?
All the lost.
Not some or most, but ALL THE LOST. No exceptions!
Those who suffer from the “That One Sin” syndrome fail to understand the nature of their salvation. Paul repeatedly refers to his salvation as an act of grace by God. Like Paul, we are saved by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8). We cannot earn our salvation, and we certainly do not deserve it, but God, through his grace and mercy, extends salvation to us as a gift through his beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
We can never do enough good works to blot out even one of our sins.
But what we cannot do, Christ did for us when he died on the cross.
When we publicly confess that we believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God and allow ourselves to be cleansed by being immersed in water so that Christ's blood can wash away our sins, we emerge completely clean.
All of our sins are washed away, and we are transformed from condemned to justified.
God now regards us as perfect, as if we had never sinned. We are now imputed with Christ's Righteousness.
Conclusion:
How can we keep from suffering from the “That One Sin” syndrome? We need to focus more on the future than on the past. Paul said in Phil 3:8, as he talked about his goal of going to heaven that he was “forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead.”
If our perfect God can forgive our past sins, surely we can do the same and begin living the quality life He sent His Son to die for.
If we accept God's enormous gift of salvation given to us through His grace in the waters of baptism, all our past sins are forgiven, erased, and will never be seen again.
As long as we continue to commit our lives to living for God in obedience, regardless of our imperfections, the blood of Christ guarantees the future cleansing of all our sins. Because of that, we will never need to fear being out of fellowship with God again.
We need to look at our sins as God does. There are no small or great sins; there are just sins, and sins to God are a huge deal! After all, it was because of sin, OUR SIN, that He had to send His ONE and ONLY SON to earth and pay the price for our acts against Him.
God can and will forgive ALL our sins if we but only surrender our lives over to Him confessing and repenting those sins to Him. We need to remember that Christ came to seek and save all of us. He died on the cross for all of us. We must understand that we cannot do enough to abolish “That One Sin” ourselves.
But what we cannot do, Christ can and did through His sacrificial death on the cross of Calvary.
The Blood of Jesus Christ is a powerful substance. IT IS DEFINETLY MORE POWERFUL THAN ANY ONE SIN YOU ARE HOLDING ONTO AND IT’S POWER DESTROYS ANYTHING MANKIND CAN THROW AT IT.
We must not cling to “That One Sin.” Satan will cause it to destroy us if we do. Instead, we must accept God’s forgiveness and rejoice in our salvation.
If you need to surrender your life to God and would like to be baptized, the invitation to come is now!
If you're tired of holding onto "That ONE Sin" and would like to recommit your life to Jesus Christ and begin living a renewed and joyful life for Christ, we welcome you to come.
We will pray with you for strength as you begin this new walk with the Lord.
This sermon was developed from a chapter “That One Sin” found in “Spiritual Depression: Its causes and cure” by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
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