1 John 2:1 My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

John wrote this letter addressing it to fellow saints in Christ, calling them children because they had not long trusted Christ and the Gospel message rather than trusting only in the law of Moses.

He could not get them to stop all sin because we still have our sin nature; but he encourages them to turn away from sin wherever possible.

It is because Christ has given it all and continues to stand between us and God, smoothing the way that we can look forward to eternal life.

Christ has not given up; He is lifting up!

Psalm 51:2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.

Sin is that dirty blot in our lives which we like to hide from the rest of the world; just as we may try to hide a dirty smudge on our clothes, we try to hide our sin from others.

God can see through any disguise we hold up. God wants to wash us cleaner than we can ourselves.

We may be able to scrape off some things but deep cleansing is God’s domain; he alone can wash us white as snow.

Christ gave His own life, blood, torment and time on the cross so we could be forgiven and brought to Him as clean babes. Trust Him.

Galatians 5:17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

By our very nature we rebel against God. It is not something new and it will continue to be the fact until we all join Christ in Heaven!

Christ came to earth to fight the fight against evil so we could have eternal life even though we fight against Him to start with.

Just as we have many opposites in the physical world, light and dark, fire and water, so our lives are spiritually opposite to Christ’s until we trust Him to forgive us for all those things we do wrong.

We may want to do good things, but our sinful nature leads us astray much of the time!