The reality is we are all daily in need of confession and repentance, daily in need of counsel and accountability within the body of Christ, and daily in need of longsuffering grace in order to strive together as Christians. Do not put off this vital warning until tomorrow. As the writer of Hebrews reminds us, tomorrow may just be too late.
Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
—Hebrews 3:13
I was thinking this past week about cases where a person who has been a professed believer, maybe even a well-known Christian leader, falls into public sin or even apostasy, walking away from the Christian faith. Sadly, there have been many such cases in the news lately.
We often think, and maybe even say, afterward that in hind sight there were some tendencies we could see in that person’s life that led to their eventual demise:
“I did notice he treated his wife very coldly, so come to think of it adultery is not that surprising”,
or
“I do recall now that they were always seeking approval from people, so I suppose its only natural that they followed that bad crowd,”
or
“I did hear her constantly complaining about her circumstances, so I guess we shouldn’t be shocked that she ended up declaring she was angry with God and deciding not to be a Christian any more.”
But the fact is, those tendencies toward destructive sin, even apostasy, are alive in every one of us every day!
We must not put off until tomorrow the repentance that is needed today.
There is not a human alive who does not struggle every day with some sin that, if left unchecked, will bring him or her to spiritual ruin.