When you have been outside working and it’s 100° in the Texas heat there is nothing more refreshing than diving into the swimming pool or taking a shower and getting all cleaned up. It’s like becoming a brand new person. There’s nothing like going from being all hot, sticky, stinky, and sweaty to being cool, clean and smelling gooooood.
Before we become Christians we are condemned sinners who need to be cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. When we accept the grace of God by faith we are baptized into Christ and we are born again. Ananias told Saul of Tarsus, “And now why do you delay? Arise, and be baptized, and WASH away your sins, calling on His name” (Acts 22:16). After we become Christians we need daily cleansing from our sins as we walk imperfectly by faith. John writes, “but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (I John 1:7). And again, “…These who are clothed in the white robes, who are there, and from where have they come? …he said to me, these are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:13-14).
Not only can we say goodbye to our sins when we become Christians, we can say goodbye to our sins every day; however, isn’t is spiritually ironic that it was easy accepting our forgiveness when we were baptized into Christ, but when it comes to accepting our daily forgiveness from the Lord we aren’t quite as quick to accept it and rejoice?
I want all of us to grow in our relationship with the Lord to the degree that we can say with the psalmist, “And besides Thee, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25). I want all of us to live for Jesus with total commitment. I want all of us to come to a mature knowledge of His word and understand that we are forgiven every day and we can SAY GOODBYE to yesterday every single day as we walk by faith.
Read I John 3:1-10; 5:10-13. Then listen to Say Goodbye by Mandisa. Then say hello to Jesus and goodbye to the old self.
1 John 3:1-1
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.
1 John 5:10-13
Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.