Lesson 31 Washing at the Cross, Jesus is Your Advocate
Questions 1 and 2
Greetings, friend, welcome to your next lesson!
Question 1. How are you doing in the battle with sexual impurity?
It’s important to understand that lasting change, or what the Bible calls sanctification, is a lifelong process. At times, it can seem like we take two steps forward and one step backward. In this life, we can still be tempted by Satan (1 Peter 5:8), we are still plagued with our unredeemed flesh (Romans 8:23), and we still have to battle the pull of a fallen world (1 John 5:19). In other words, we can still sin.
For the believer, sin “clings so closely” (Hebrews 12:1). And while our sinning discourages us much, it shouldn’t surprise us. Sinless perfection is not available in this life; rather, it is reserved for the new creation (new heavens, new earth, new bodies, etc.).
Sanctification is a gradual and lifelong process, and it can seem painfully slow going at times, but it is possible to be entirely free from sexual impurity and to cease self-gratification entirely. God has designed sexual relations to be enjoyed only within the context of a married couple, man and woman in commitment to each other, not self-sex, same-sex nor any other form of sinful sex.
So let’s study our lesson for today and see if we can find out what we are to do when we get tripped up and fall, when our spiritual progress seems painstakingly slow and when we don’t seem to apply the gospel very well.
Here is our passage for today:
1 John 2:1-2 ESV My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. (2) He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
Question 2. According to 1 John 2:1, why did John write his Book of 1 John?