Presumptuous Sinning

SOME have corrupted this precious, blessed truth, and made it the occasion for license and carelessness and looseness of living. They say that if we sin the Lord is ready to forgive; we can just ask Him to forgive us and it will be all right again. They claim therefore, that they can sin again and again and just be forgiven over again and again. But the Bible teaches no such thing. While it is true that the Lord forgives and cleanses us as often as we confess, there is a penalty attached; for even though He forgives, we must still pay the price. “Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7) was written concerning believers. When a Christian disobeys God, he must pay the price. No Christian can disobey God without reaping the harvest of his disobedience, even though God freely forgives him.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the life of Abram, the father of the faithful. God had told him to go out from the land of his fathers, to another land. This was the call of faith. Abram believed it, left his country and went to the land of Canaan. But while he was a believer, he was a disobedient believer; for instead of leaving his father and his kindred, he took them along. You will recall the sorrow that this disobedience brought into Abram’s life. God stopped him half way to Canaan, at Haran, where he spent six barren, fruitless, miserable years, until he was compelled to bury his father, a type of the flesh. His disobedience ended in a funeral far from home. Abram reaped in the death of Terah the sowing of his disobedience of not leaving his father behind according to the word of God.

Adapted and modified excerpts from Studies in the Life of Abraham by M. R. De Haan (1891-1964)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.