You must be born again. (John 3:7)

Can a Christian sin? I rarely disagree with anything Oswald Chambers has to say as he thought on a level that not many of us do in our Christian walk. I do not believe the Christian stops sinning after we are saved. We certainly should stop with intentional sins, but there are still unintentional sins we battle with as long as we live in these mortal bodies. How we live our lives, and how we behave daily should change if we are truly submitted to Him as we seek to stop practicing sins as well as how we respond when we do sin.

“Sin” is any thought, word, or action that is contrary to the character or law of God. We all sin (Romans 3:23), and even what we consider good deeds are often tainted by selfish motives or pride (Isaiah 64:6). Left to ourselves, it is impossible to please God or to be completely free from sin (Romans 3:10; Ecclesiastes 7:10).

Paul is not saying that a person who does these things can’t be saved. But the life of a true Christian is that of changed heart that no longer wants to sin, but seeks to please God. When we become Christians, our lives should change dramatically. Anyone who is intentionally and unrepentantly living a sinful lifestyle and claims to be a Christian is either lying, or self-deceived.

Christ’s death is not a free pass to continue living as we did before. But trying to live a life of absolutely no sin will cause us to walk in continual guilt and shame.

The difference between a sinning unbeliever and a sinning believer is that one loves his sin while the other hates it.

The believer who stumbles in his walk with the Lord regrets it, confesses it, He doesn’t consider how much he can sin and still be considered a Christian. Rather, he considers how he can avoid even the appearance of sin in the future.

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Signs of the New Birth
By Oswald Chambers

You must be born again. — John 3:7

How can someone be born when they are old?’ Nicodemus asked. . . . Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit’” (John 3:4–5). When someone dies to every self-righteous impulse, to their religion and their virtues and everything they’ve been leaning on apart from Jesus Christ, then they may be born of the Spirit and receive into themselves a life that was never there before. This new life manifests itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness.

“To all who did receive him . . . he gave the right to become children of God” (1:12).
Is my knowledge of Jesus based on personal spiritual perception or on what I’ve heard others say? Do I have something in my life that connects me to Jesus Christ as my savior? The bedrock of any spiritual history must be personal knowledge. To be born again means that I see Jesus with my own eyes.

“No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (3:3).
The new birth brings with it a new power of vision that enables me to discern God’s rule. Am I discerning it? Or am I merely hunting for miraculous signs of his kingdom? When I am born again, I see that his rule was there all along.

“No one who is born of God will continue to sin” (1 John 3:9).
Have I stopped sinning, or am I merely trying to stop sinning? To be born of God means that I have received from him the supernatural power to stop sinning. The Bible never asks, “Should a Christian sin?” It says emphatically that no one born of God will continue to sin. The effect of the new birth in us isn’t simply that we receive the power to stop sinning; it’s that we actually stop sinning. First John 3:9 doesn’t mean that we can’t sin; it means that if we obey the life of God in us, we needn’t sin.