Often people allow guilt and self condemnation to hinder them from approaching Christ for forgiveness of their sins. I have heard people say, "I have gone to far, He can't forgive me," or "I have done the One thing he can't forgive." These are lies from the devil. Jesus Christ can and will forgive any sin, no matter how dark it is, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness." (1 John 1:8-9). That's the promise, and no thought in your head or demon can change God's mind, He died for your sins on the cross and is ready to forgive you when you confess those sins and take Him as Lord of your Life and believe in Him for salvation. Once you do that all sin now falls into two categories, stumbling and practicing sin. Stumbling is that you know its a sin, you feel conviction (a type of guilt, not condemnation) to stop doing it, you confess the sin to Jesus as the as Scripture says, and you are forgiven and done. Practicing sin is another thing, this is when a person decides to get good at sin, which generally thrives on their decision to self justify it, "Now I can do this because its not as bad as that, or everyone does it." This eventually leads to a seared conscious, "Now the Spirit expressly states that in later times some will abandon the faith to follow deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons, influenced by the hypocrisy of liars, whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth." (1 Timothy 4:1-3). This seared conscious then mutates into no longer needing to justify sin, causing indifferent and a state of being were they don't even think, feel, or sense the sin as anything wrong, in fact they have so seared their conscious they are deceived, as if a veil is over their minds and they can't sense the guilt anymore. This is what Jesus is talking about, "I correct and discipline everyone I love. So be diligent and turn from your indifference/Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent." (Revelation 3:19).
When someone has reached the point of Practicing Sin they are like the Roman Church the Apostle Paul confronted, they presume on blood and forgiveness of Jesus, "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (Romans 2:4). The Blood of Christ is available at any moment to cover and assuage our sins, its is like fountain in spiritual realm from Calvary, continually cloaking our flesh, failings, and wicked nature in the Blood of Jesus. So when we stumble in a sin we know is something we should no longer do, that fountain of God's mercy pours out on it. But when someone decides to practice sin, they take advantage of the fountain, and actually are mocking it. This happen with the Church of Rome, "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." (Romans 6:1-4). The Roman Church had decided to keep on sinning the way their Pagan Romans were as in examples of orgies, drunkenness, and more. They weren't stumbling in these behaviors and writing Paul for advise how to conquer them or confessing them to Christ, they were taking advantage of the fountain of God's grace, and thinking they could do whatever they want, even get good at sin since they thought "its covered." That's not how it works, our forgiveness is a free gift, but like all gifts if you put them on the shelf they collect dust and entropy. You cannot presume on Blood of Jesus, that is practice sin and just expect it to be alright with the Alpha and Omega, that is why Apostle says, "The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, idolatry and sorcery; hatred, discord, jealousy, and rage; rivalries, divisions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who practice (live this sort of life) such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:19-21). Notice the Apostle doesn't say, "Those who struggle, stumble, and sometimes give into these things will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven." No, the Apostle is saying those who practice those things will not inherit. Practice comes from word to "get good at, become best at, practice makes perfect." Thus the attitude of practitioner of sin is to be preform better and better at sin, and do it more frequently, while in contrast those who penitent, who confess and repent of sin feel guilt and conviction of the mistake and turn to Jesus in remorse and receive free forgiveness for the sins in Him. It's a fine line, but attitude, motives, and disposition of heart have something to do with it. To put it another way, a practitioner of sin really doesn't care about Jesus or the Fountain of His forgiveness, their presuming on the Blood and sinning without shame or contrition shows they actually don't care about Christ's sacrifice on the cross in the first place, which then raises the question if they are saved, because recognizing your sin and your need for God's Grace through Jesus' sacrifice on cross is crucial to salvation, you have to believe and recognize you need a Savior because of your sin and its path to death and eternal death (Revelation 20:15) to then seek Christ and receive eternal life (John 6:40). Finally a practitioner of sin probably will end up a Hebrews 6:4-6 person since they already show disregard and carelessness about sin and Christ's sacrifice for sin.
[God won't spend time where you sin, if you keep sinning it builds relationship with sinners. Christ has no interest in sin, He was whipped for it, and died to cover it. He is also sinless and so has nothing to do with sin]
I am not saying we are saved by works or merit, no we are saved by the Grace of Christ (Ephesians 2:1-18). What I am addressing is the fruit that proves a saint from a sinner. A saint is someone who confesses Jesus as Lord, confesses their sins in that moment, and believes Jesus died for their sins on cross and rose from dead by power of God. A saint keeps believing this, and is forgiven for every sin they committed, but a saint who practice sin is someone who takes this for granted and keeps sinning, perhaps even more without any care for their behavior or attitude towards Christ. To put it simply, its an attitude of the heart. The Pharisees knew Law and Scriptures, but they were enemy number one of Jesus Christ the very God they worshipped and read about in the flesh, because their hearts were corrupt, "What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness." (Matthew 23:27-28). You see the heart matters to God. This is why Apostle says, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved." (Romans 10:9-10) and that Jesus Himself said, "Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:36-41). Notice the heart comes up again, and this isn't just the organ, but the soul and spirit of a person, where the Spirit of a Man resides. If a person turns to Jesus He will forgive all your sins and you attain eternal life, its simple believe in Him and it is so (John 3:16, John 6:40), but a person who practices sin is saying something else in their heart, they are acting like what John said, "we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," (1 John 1:8), that is exactly what sin practitioner does, they deceive themselves and believe they have no sin anymore because they are so deep in the pool of sin and have justified it to point that it isn't sin in their eyes. By contrast, if we move in Spirit, the Holy Spirit will convict us of sin and lead us to cheerful reminder that Christ forgives our sins and His blood is enough. See, a Christian isn't sinless. No, instead they are sinner who trusts in the Savior Jesus Christ to forgive their sins daily, but they don't suddenly decide all sin is ok or stop calling it sin. In contrast, a Christian knows sin's presence is a reminder every day that they need Jesus and His free forgiveness. A saint doesn't forget sin as time goes on, but rather overtime they become more conscious of it, because they are pressing in to and abiding in the Sinless Godhead and that makes us aware of our sin more, but we don't despair because we see the fountain of Jesus' blood bubbling over the sins, and we do feel conviction, but its not condemnation because we can't be condemned, Christ has covered our sins once for all time, "Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit." (1 Peter 3:18). When we repent of our sins it isn't like some kind of penance, but rather it is acknowledgement of why Jesus had to die, and asking the Lord's blood that already flows over us to cover that sin (which is covered), but also to cover our conscious, to heal our hearts and minds of the sin's damage too.
I am sure much of this may seem like difficult doxology (doctrine) to digest, but it isn't. It's about the heart, and is your heart yearning and loving God fully (Matthew 22:36-41) or has Satan injected the deception John spoke of, where you now are justify sin and slowly slipping away from bosom of the Savior Jesus Christ, and the wounds that heal you of your sin? You see, where your heart is determines the distance between you and God. God doesn't move, we do when our heart shifts to things that are wicked. Jesus is always there waiting to receive us like Prodigal Son's Father, quick to forgive us, for He already forgave us from the cross two thousand and seventeen years ago!; but that forgiveness must come into action in our lives in this moment and time, that is when we repent and confess the sin, then Jesus' merciful blood captures the sin and drowns it for all time. If we die, we will appear before Jesus as white, and we look white to Christ even now, for the sins are covered, but we confess those sins because of our conscious and to watch them be whipped away by Christ's blood, and feel his compassion and mercy now; its like this, Jesus has paid all our bills and debts, but we keep receiving the bills and debts and so confess them and turn them over to Jesus who has paid the debt so he can affirm the debt has been paid to bill collector, Satan. It's complicated because of time, we live in time, but God lives outside of time and inside time (1 Peter 3) so it makes our minds spin to try and fathom how it all works. But always the safest and best bet is to bank on Scripture, and do what it says, and as we read it says confess the Sin to Jesus and He forgives it (1 John 1:8-9) and so that's what we do, how the whole thing works is not for us to try and master in our reasoning, but to believe it, and trust Christ. The part we must steer clear of is becoming a person who practices sins, because that person is building an indifference to the truth (1 John 1:8) and Jesus is Truth (John 14:6) and so they are numbing themselves to God, not just wallowing in sin; practicing sin as Christian desensitizes you to Christ
It is worth mentioning Christ's attitude towards pentient sinners, "When Jesus heard this, he told them, "Healthy people don't need a doctor--sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners," (Mark 2:17), and "Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else: “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income. “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." (Luke 18:9-14); the humbling is recognizing you sin, and turning to Jesus in repentance and turning to Jesus for help; your need to partner with Christ; its taking Jesus as your help mate to get over you sin, but more than that it is to get closer to Jesus, the more you go to Him to change your sin the more you building a close relationship with the Lord; what he is wanting is He died for you because He wants relationship with you. You see here that Jesus is highlighting that it is sinners, not the religiously proud that have God's grace. These sinners aren't those who think their sin is fine, on the contrary they are sorrowful and confess it to God, but it is they, the broken hearted ones who confess their sins to God in humility and true contrition that God forgives, not the proud Pharisee counting on his good works and deeds to save Him. You see as Christians we are saints wrestling with sinful nature. meaning we are saved by Christ and transferred from darkness to light (Colossians 1:13, 1 Peter 2:9), but we still wrestle with sin because our bodies are not yet perfect (our spirit and soul is), and when we die or Jesus Returns will have perfect bodies without sin or its inclinations (2 Corinthians 5, whole chapter). Until then we confess our sins, realizing we stumble and fail, and receive freely the Grace of God, Jesus Christ's blood of forgiveness supernaturally cleansing us daily and when we confess. You see if you stop recognizing sin and confessing sin you then are on path to not needing Jesus and His forgiveness (which is already on you when you believe), and that slippery slope leads to apostasy (Hebrews 6:4-6).Two kinds of pride is to say, "I can't get over sin," so they justify it and forget it, and practice it, and other kind of pride is Pharisee, thinking, "I can tithe enough, do enough good for my sins." Both omit Jesus and that relationship, and His covering for sin which is only way sin goes away.
Regarding the Unpardonable Sin, which drives many people mad with fear of condemnation. The Sin that cannot be forgiven, Blasphemy Against Holy Spirit is actually very clearly spelled out by Christ and His response to the Pharisees, "But the teachers of religious law who had arrived from Jerusalem said, “One time Jesus entered a house, and the crowds began to gather again. Soon he and his disciples couldn’t even find time to eat. When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. “He’s out of his mind,” they said.He’s possessed by Satan, the prince of demons. That’s where he gets the power to cast out demons Jesus called them over and responded with an illustration. “How can Satan cast out Satan?” he asked. “A kingdom divided by civil war will collapse. Similarly, a family splintered by feuding will fall apart. And if Satan is divided and fights against himself, how can he stand? He would never survive. Let me illustrate this further. Who is powerful enough to enter the house of a strong man and plunder his goods? Only someone even stronger—someone who could tie him up and then plunder his house.I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences.” He told them this because they were saying, “He’s possessed by an evil spirit." (Mark 3:20-28). This unforgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit is because it is a sin that causes people not to believe in Jesus and His forgiveness, and so they don't even have Jesus and His blood to forgive them in the first place, that is why it's unforgivable, because the like Pharisees in this passage, the person won't even believe what is necessary to be forgiven of sin. For the Holy Spirit leads people to the knowledge of Christ, "He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth [Jesus is Truth John 14:6]. But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you." (John 14:14,26 ) and so this is what is meant by Jesus, if someone attacks the Spirit leading people to be saved in Jesus, then that person is unforgivable because they won't believe what Holy Spirit says, that Jesus is only way to be saved (John 14:6, John 6:40) and all forgiveness of sin is in Him.
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