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How to be Free from Sin – Righteous

Sep 16th, 2008
by Anthony Delgado.

How to be Free from Sin – Righteous
Righteousness is observation of all the Lord’s commandments. Everything that is law for us to do is required to be done in order for us to be righteous. If there is any evil, any sin, in us we are not righteous. Certainly our unrighteousness has been covered over by the blood of Jesus Christ, but we should still desire to do what God has required of us in order to bring Him glory. There are three categories of sin which require very different methods in order to be repentant of them. They are intentional sin, unintentional sin and unknown sin.

“When your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean which the LORD our God commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the LORD brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand. ‘Moreover, the LORD showed great and distressing signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his household; He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land which He had sworn to our fathers.’ “So the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God for our good always and for our survival, as it is today. “It will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the LORD our God, just as He commanded us.

Deuteronomy 6:20-25 NAS

In simplest form, this passage from Deuteronomy tells us that we are to remember that once we were slaves, but through many trials, God delivered us from sin into holiness. For the Israelites that was a literal deliverance from slavery, but for Christians today, it is a deliverance from the slavery of sin. We are no longer subject to the control of sin and are free now to observe all the commandments of the Lord, just as the Israelites were free to observe them once they reached the Holy Land. The passage is clear that in either case we will be righteous of we observe the commands of the Lord God.

Observing the commands of God is a daunting task. There are so many! How can we know them and how can we obey them? Broken down categorically it makes more sense.

  • Intentional Sin. “If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear” (Psalms 66:18 NAS). To regard is to observe closely or attentively. If you attend to evil in your heart, you are not yet free from the bondage of sin. You must choose Christ and give over all sin to him; you will be forgiven. This step is really the easiest for most. With Christ comes a desire to do right and so avoiding sinful actions of this nature are easily avoided.
  • Unknown Sin. This is a trap for many Christians. “If I don’t know it is sin, it isn’t sin.” Wrong! If there is unknown sin, then there is a lack in the knowledge and wisdom of God. “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (1 Timothy 3:16 NAS). If there is unknown sin, it is because you have not been trained in righteousness. How do we become trained in righteousness? Scripture. As Christians we are accountable for all of our sin. If we are to rid ourselves of sin, we must know sin and must be trained to be rid of it. Through careful study of the Word of God we can become aware of sin, trained in righteousness, so we can be repentant of this sin.
  • Unintentional Sin. “Thus you shall do on the seventh day of the month [put blood from the sin offering on the doorposts] for everyone who goes astray or is naive; so you shall make atonement for the house” (Ezekiel 45:20 NAS). To an extent everyone is naïve to sin in some form or another. The naïve will go astray if they are led too close to sin. A good example is lust. A man may be fully aware that lust is a sin and make a conscious effort not to lust in his mind, but if he finds himself in situations which become a temptation to lust, he is likely to fail. So, the solution is to not be hasty in action, instead exhibit patience in all action, considering carefully the words of God so that we will not be led into temptation and be subject to our naïve nature which will cause sin.

    • This is not all to say that if one sins he is not a Christian. “There is none righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10 NAS). No one is going to be completely sinless, but we are free from the slavery of sin through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Still we are all called to be set apart from sin and if we truly believe the words of God, and regard Holiness in our hearts, then freedom from sin is a feasible goal, even if we are not likely to obtain it of our own power.