Isolation of Sin

We have studied on many occasions “confession of sin” in I John 1:9. All of us should be aware of how to stay in fellowship with God and under the control of God the Holy Spirit. What we may not realize is that God has completely blotted out our sins and doesn’t even remember them any longer. Therefore, we have no right to take them back…. to relive them, to think about them, to cry about them, to worry about them and to regret them.

God says that we need to “forget” them. Forgetting means that we are to lose them out of our mind, to neglect them, don’t consider them, don’t dwell on or ponder them. In other words, don’t give them an audience in your thinking. If and when they sneak back into our memory, we can simply use gratitude and thank God that they have already been forgiven and dealt with…. blotted out. God will never use them against you, and in fact, He doesn’t even remember them!! Therefore, don’t insult God by using them against yourself! 

Is there a procedure for doing this? Yes! Philippians 3:13, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind (past sins), and reaching forth (studying and applying God’s Word)) unto those things (God’s plan for your life) which are before, I press towards the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (exhibiting the character of Jesus Christ).”

So, let’s start where God starts. When we name our sins to God, what happens? He forgives them and purifies us from all wrongdoing (sins we have forgotten and sins that we did not even know were sin). But wait a minute, what does it means to forgive? It means that God completely blots out our sins and He remembers them no longer. (Psalms 103:12; Isaiah 43:25) 

Once we name our sins, we are once again in fellowship with God and under the control of the Holy Spirit. This prepares us to once again move ahead in our Christian lives utilizing the power of God the Holy Spirit. This is the power that we need to deal with our sin in the same way God deals with it. We are to forget it! (Philippians 3:13-14)

But what happens if we fail to forget it and we begin to think about it, talk about it and worry about it? Out of fellowship we go and no more control of the Holy Spirit. This is the pattern that plagues many believers in the church today. They spend so much time jumping in and out of the same sin that they never advance in their Christian lives. They stay immature believers until they die!

This is not how we want to live our lives is it? Well, the answer is found in the Word of God. The answer is isolation of sin and it something that each of must learn how to accomplish if we want to successfully execute God’s plan.

The fastest way to get out of fellowship right after getting back in, is to begin thinking and worrying about the sin that you just named. Remember God has blotted it out, therefore, we have no right to that sin any longer. When we take it back, we are making a mockery of God’s recovery procedure. Do you think this is pleasing to God? God wants us to be happy. This is the reason that He has provided this wonderful system for us.

Failure to use this system can result in “chain-sinning” or building one sin upon another (even if it’s the same sin over and over). However, failure to isolate sin normally leads to other sins like guilt or bitterness or hatred (even of self). This type of sin pattern will also incur the discipline of God. God is a good father and only wants the best for His children. Therefore, He does everything it takes, short of violating our volition (free-will) to get us back on track. This does not mean that God is trying to hurt us or torture us. It means that He loves us. (Hebrews 12:6)

Here’s what most of us do: we commit a sin, we confess it and God turns what might become divine discipline into divine blessing. However, sometime later when the pressures of life close in on us and we are facing adversity, we immediately think that we are being disciplined for that past sin (our pet sin or worst sin) and we start feeling guilty. But divine discipline is not the case since that “confessed sin” has been dealt with and was blotted out by God. But in the process, we have committed a “new” sin, guilt. Do you see how the pattern of chain-sinning begins?

The truth is that the pressure or adversity in our lives may have nothing to do with divine discipline. It may simply be a test to strengthen our faith. Everything “bad” that happens to the believer is not because of sin in the life! This is exactly what they said in the Old Testament was causing Job’s adversity, when in fact, it had nothing to do with divine discipline. (I Corinthians 10:13)

Since we have no right to any sin that we have confessed, we must learn to put it away from us (isolate it) and stop thinking about it. The best way to do this according to the Word of God is to replace it with Bible Doctrine. The more time we spend thinking and applying God’s Word the less time we will have to think about any past failure. (Romans 12:1-2)

However, if you just love your “pet sin” and you want to know how to keep it around, let me show you how. There are four ways:

Mental Attitude Sins

We have studied a number of these sins already. They include arrogance, jealousy, bitterness, hatred and guilt, just to name a few. Remembering past sins is also mental and will normally cause the believer to get out of fellowship. Remembering past sins means that either we don’t believe God has blotted them out or we don’t feel they are blotted out. Remembering your sin after God has blotted it out causes discouragement and will often lead to guilt. Therefore, if we are feeling guilty about anything, we are out of fellowship and we are very unhappy. As long as we carry guilt about anything that occurred in the past, we will never execute God’s plan for our lives.

Guilt also produces of self-recrimination or self-torture. And no one can torture you like you. This torture comes in the form of emotion. “I don’t feel forgiven,” “I’m being punished for my past failure,” “I’m a failure,” “I’m a loser,” “I’m worthless,” “I’ll never amount to a hill of beans for God,” blah, blah, blah. What are we doing? We’re emoting, we are thinking human viewpoint. We are forgiven, we are not being punished for past failure, we aren’t failures, we aren’t losers, we are worth a great deal to God, and we can amount to something for God. Now what are we doing? We are thinking Divine Viewpoint. (Philippians 2:5)

Bitterness is another mental attitude sin that causes a lot of misery. If you’re bitter, it’s probably because you haven’t recognized and dealt with the sin problem in your life. Therefore, you begin to blame others or even God for your miserable condition. All the time it’s your failure to isolate and forget past sin. (Hebrews 12:15)

As a believer in Jesus Christ, you have heard others describe their lives as wonderful or marvelous or fantastic and you are wondering why you are getting left out. Why? Because you are spending all your time thinking about, crying about, worrying about, feeling sorry for, trying to atone for or trying to destroy the terrible feelings of guilt of past sin that have already been blotted out. Therefore, you have no right to even think about this sin. This is failure to isolate it.

There is good news, however. Every great believer in the Bible failed at some time during their lives. The reason they became great is that they learned to isolate their sins. When they confessed them, they knew that God had forgiven and forgotten them. 

Did they sit around and cry about it? No! They never looked back. They just picked up the pieces and moved forward by the grace of God. They didn’t allow past failure to hold them back in their service to the Lord. 

We all have a “skeleton” in the closet and no one is immune. The key is to not keep the “skeleton” in the closet. The key is to let it out and get rid of it, so you can stop taking it out of the closet and “playing” with it. Until you do this, you will never experience the inner peace, the inner happiness and the inner power that belongs to you as a child of God. (Philippians 3:13-15)

Failing the Grace of God

First, failing the grace of God means that you don’t understand what God is like. God is gracious. (Isaiah 30:18) In His grace He not only made salvation simple for us, He also made fellowship with Him simple. Both are grace functions. Both are appropriated in a non-meritorious way – salvation by faith, fellowship by confession. God does all the work! (John 3:16; I John 1:9)

Second, failing the grace of God means failure to appropriate God’s grace, experientially. Isolation of sin, like everything else in the Christian Way of Life, is a grace function. We don’t earn or deserve forgiveness (blotting out of sin) from God. (Ephesians 1:7)

Failure to utilize or apply the grace of God will lead the believer to failure. You’ll try everything and everybody to make you happy and all you will find is misery. Why? Because happiness is not found in overt activity, it is found in Divine Viewpoint Thinking! (Hebrews 12:1-3,15; Psalms 146:5; Proverbs 3:13)

Sins of the Tongue

Engaging in sins of the tongue will keep a believer out of fellowship and under divine discipline. This is a not where you want to be as a believer. Unlike mental attitude sins, the sins of the tongue do far greater damage to the cause of Christ, even in the local church. Participating in a group to malign, slander or criticize another person is sin. Taking revenge on another person, friend, loved one, co-worker, husband or wife is a sin. God is the One Who does the “repaying” according to Romans 12:19.

Furthermore, when you are committing the sins of the tongue you are setting yourself up for triple compound divine discipline. First, God disciplines you for the mental attitude sin that lead to the sin of the tongue. Second, you are disciplined for the sin of the tongue itself. Third, God transfers the discipline, if any, that would have gone to the person you are maligning to you. 

Overt Sins

Mental attitude sins that lead to verbal sins can often lead to overt sins. It is a slippery slope of sinning when not confessed and isolated. Sins such as fear, hatred or maligning can lead to revenge, which can take the form of violence or harassment or both. Revenge tactics do not solve problems for anyone. Taken to its most extreme revenge can lead to murder.

Whatever you have done in the past cannot be undone. Failing to isolate your sins will keep a believer bogged down in a quagmire of guilt, fear and misery. This is not how God wants a believer to live. God is a God of grace and has provided perfect plan for us which includes a way to deal with our failures. No one is immune to personal sin since we all still have a sin nature. However, by following God’s perfect plan of living in His power system, the Divine Dynasphere, under the filling of the Holy Spirit, a believer can handle his sins, isolate those sins and live a victorious Christian life.