 Go and sin no more. This is a continuation of the last video where we looked at the fact that John's Gospel never tells us to repent and it's specifically written with the intention that we would have everlasting life. So it's quite problematic if we can't preach the full Gospel and the full necessities of eternal life from John's Gospel account if it was written for that purpose and it doesn't ever tell us to repent of our sins. In fact, it doesn't even use the word repent, let alone repent of sins. John's Gospel does tell us to go and sin no more and this is an alternative way of saying repent of your sins even if it doesn't use the verb to repent. Since John's Gospel is written to tell us that reading it, we may have everlasting life through his name as we saw in the last video in chapter number 20 verse 31 and it says twice to sin no more. Should we not then assume that sinning no more is a requirement to obtain everlasting life. Now you may remember I explained in the last video that people read the Bible like a convoluted conspiracy theory, but well over there it says be baptized and over there it says drink the bread and wine and over there it says something else. And so they join all of these random things together. But the Bible isn't really written like a completely muddled up Ikea furniture assembly manual with all the steps in the wrong order. Regardless of the reason why John wrote his Gospel account, it's still a Gospel account that is to say John wrote a testimony of the things Jesus did, said and who he was just as Matthew, Mark and Luke did. The New Testament was not yet written. Each conversation that Jesus has in any Gospel account should be a self-contained conversation where the recipients can only take away what Jesus says to them in that dialogue. And we need to understand who Jesus is speaking to, when in any given dialogue, what he is saying and crucially why is he saying it. Now false prophets often overlook the why. So sin no more comes from John chapter 5 and chapter 8. So we'll look at chapter 5 first and then we'll look at chapter 8. In chapter 5 we are introduced to some waters at Jerusalem that supposedly healed diseases. Now I don't know whether this was a legitimate supernatural thing that God ordained or maybe it was some sort of pagan superstition but we're not really told that level of detail about it. We're then introduced to this lame man that tries to make it into the pool but keeps missing out because he is lame. Jesus then heals him and sends him on his way. The Jews then question him for carrying his bed on the Sabbath and he explained that a man healed him and told him to do so. They then asked who this man was but the man who was healed didn't know who it was. Jesus had already left the area and there was a multitude of other people. Now Jesus finds him later in the temple and says to him, Behold you are made whole, sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you. And when the man departed he told the Jews that it was Jesus. And this is the last that we hear about this man so that's the end of the story. We have very minimal dialogue between Jesus and this man. We know so little about him this passage probably leads us with more questions than answers so it's not the best passage to be using to substantiate repent of sins to be saved. But here are a few observations that I take from this passage. The first thing to observe is that Jesus has not once mentioned believing on him or having everlasting life. So why would we choose a passage which makes zero mention of salvation or everlasting life and make that the answer to says what must I do to be saved? Who cares if the man doesn't sin anymore if he isn't going to know to believe on Christ anyway? The second thing we observe is that we are not told exactly what sin he was guilty of. Was he a drunkard, a murderer, an adulterer? We don't know. He had an infirmity for 38 years and was likely lame for most if not all of that time. How can he be out sinning all the time if he can't even walk? Who would be carrying him to parties and brothels if he can't even get a volunteer to put him in the pool? There is no mention or substantial evidence of his quote, sinful lifestyle end quote. The third thing we observe is that concerning how many people define repentance of sin as a changed lifestyle, we don't have the salient facts about this man's changed lifestyle. We will never hear from him again. We have no evidence of his sins or lack thereof after he was healed. Another thing we can consider is that what would happen if he were to disobey Jesus command to sin no more? Jesus said that a worst thing could come upon him. Remember he was lame for 38 years. This was pretty bad in of itself. Jesus did not say sin no more so that thou shalt be saved. Sin no more take up your cross and follow me. Sin no more or you cannot be my disciple. Sin no more lest you be cast into hellfire. Jesus only said sin no more lest a worst thing, worse than being infirm for 38 years, come upon you. Now people will of course at this stage say that hell is the worst thing that could come upon you and that is worse and that's what Jesus means here. But then like my question would be if he meant hell why not just say it? He didn't have a problem mentioning hell in the other Gospel accounts. So why does he have to use this fluffy way of saying it here? If I use this fluffy language to avoid saying the H word I would be accused of being a false prophet but for some reason we want to accuse Jesus of doing it right here. Makes no sense. But then of course false doctrine never does does it? Now I perceive that there are two possibilities regarding his sins. The first one being that it was a specific sin that caused him to end up lame therefore he knew exactly what sin Jesus was referring to. So for example this is just a couple of examples how it could have happened. Maybe he got drunk, climbed on a roof, fell off, injured himself in the spine becoming paralyzed. That's one way he could have sinned and got lame. Or maybe he did something disgusting with a prostitute and contracted polio becoming paralyzed. Now I apologise for being graphic here but hopefully you get the idea. If this is true then this is the only context to the commandment to sin no more warning him of earthly consequences of sin such as not ending up lame for 38 years. But no prospect of whether he would go to heaven or hell from this. The second possibility, now we would have to use some conjecture here and suggest that maybe these healing waters were actually superstitious hocus pocus. Then his only sinning question was turning to pagan methods to seek healing instead of turning to God. If we did apply this to the Gospel this has got nothing to do with repenting of a sinful lifestyle. Instead it means not turning towards paganism or witchcraft for healing or everlasting life for that matter but turning only to the living God. And of course people will make the logical, well if that's a sin then we have to repent of our sins but it's not a sin in relation to works. It's not changing your works, it's a sin in relation to faith because you're trusting in the wrong thing. If he was trusting in this pool to heal him rather than trusting in God. But both of those views are conjectural because John doesn't really tell us either way. A fifth observation is that when he was healed he didn't know who it was that healed him. Later in the temple he then somehow knew it was Jesus because he would tell the Jews later. This lends itself to three possibilities. Possibility number one, he knew about Jesus before the encounter but didn't realize it was Jesus until meeting him at the temple. Or possibility number two, he didn't know anything about Jesus and by the time he met Jesus in the temple he still knew very little about him other than that he was Jesus. Possibility number three, he knew very little or nothing about Jesus until meeting him at the temple and there may have been extensive dialogue between them but John does not record it. It's quite possible that when Jesus met him in the temple he may have had an extended conversation and given him a gospel message and said hey if you believe on me you'll have everlasting life. But John didn't seem to think it was important enough to record it if that happened. There's nothing here. All we know is that Jesus is telling him to sin no more with absolutely no reference to everlasting life. No reference to anything that has anything to do with salvation. Jesus did go on to talk about eternal life later in the chapter but this is to the Jews that questioned him. Not to the healed man because he departed in verse 15. There is no discernible connection between sin no more in John chapter 5 and everlasting life. John does not document Jesus as saying anything relevant about eternal life or believing the gospel to the healed man. John made no such connection between the statement sin no more and everlasting life. It's that simple. So that was John chapter 5 but what about the other example in John chapter 8 and this is the encounter with the woman caught in adultery. So in chapter 8 we are introduced with the woman who was taken in adultery. Now this did seem like a kangaroo court of sorts but anyway so they are charging the woman with adultery and tempting Jesus with his answer in relation to the mosaic law and at first it almost seems like Jesus is ignoring them perhaps. So they press him some more, issues them with a challenge that if any are without sin they may cast the first stone. They are then convicted by their own conscience and left one by one. And so after seeing that no men condemned the woman Jesus said neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. Now this story differs slightly from John chapter 5 in so far as we know the specific sin that's being addressed here. But there are some common themes that we can see from this chapter that we can also see in chapter 5. First of all as in John chapter 5 the outcome of her sin was a physical earthly suffering. As a result of her adultery she was almost stoned to death. There is absolutely no warning or suggestion that this condemnation had anything to do with Hellfire or eternal condemnation. There is no such context. The second observation then is that following this Jesus once again did not mention everlasting life. He did not mention believing on him. There is absolutely no indication whatsoever this passage has any relevance to the question serves what must I do to be saved. As with chapter 5 Jesus does also go on to talk about eternal life later in chapter 8. But this is after his dialogue with the woman caught in adultery. She is not part of that later conversation. A third common observation is that again as with the healed man we have no further follow-up about this woman. We never hear about her again. If go and sin no more demines a changed lifestyle we don't have the salient facts to establish whether this woman had a changed lifestyle or that Jesus had any opinion about her lifestyle after hearing these words. There is no evidence of a changed lifestyle here. So we see a similar pattern. Once again we have absolutely no connection whatsoever between sin no more and everlasting life. There is no discernable connection in the evidence of those conversations. And if you're going to say well it is eternal life relevant because of how John bridges it with what comes later that doesn't change the fact that the woman who we said it to and the man who we said it to walked away with absolutely nothing about eternal life in their mindset. Now again this is where false prophets will get desperate for their excuses and say that well when Jesus said that I don't condemn you it is talking about everlasting fire. He's you know he's just applying it in that way even though it's not the immediate context. Well of course we have no evidence for this but let us just suppose for the sake of argument that that was true okay that was the condemnation that Jesus was speaking about hellfire. Well the commandment to go and sin no more was after Jesus said that he does not condemn the woman but prior to saying neither do I condemn you Jesus never asked for repentance or evidence of a changed lifestyle or even anything at all without her even asking anything he said neither do I condemn you. So even if sin no more was a message of repentance of sorts this is after there is already no condemnation it's not the precursor for there to be no condemnation. So when these people say well first you got to repent of your sins and then these same people quote John 5 and 8 to justify it the repent of your sins doctrine that Jesus said sin no more it makes absolutely no sense but it just goes to show you the level of moron that we have to deal with when we face these unsaved fools. Now the fifth observation then is that the woman was caught because one act of adultery we have absolutely no information about her so-called sinful lifestyle before she got saved for that matter we don't even know if the accusation against her was even that legitimate. The argument that turning from sin is a lifestyle change once again is complete conjecture. We don't know what kind of lifestyle this woman lived before this encounter with Christ we don't know what kind of lifestyle she lived after this encounter with Christ. And there are so many instances in the New Testament where the gospel was preached to people and or they sent out to preach and then we never hear from them again we don't have all this evidence of these change lifestyles that I keep hearing about apparently or if they did have a change lifestyle it was so unimportant the Bible didn't even bother to mention it. Now before we conclude there are some final observations that we can make from across both passages. The first one being that although one could argue that sin no more is synonymous with repent of sin it still doesn't use the verb repent therefore it cannot be used to define repentance. For this reason we cannot make any connection between sin no more and repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand or repent and be baptized for the remission of sins. There is no such connection to these verses. So if we're just going to use Bible verses that don't mention repentance and say this is what repentance for salvation means we can make the Bible say any old rubbish that we want to. Okay let's suppose that some cult leader said that well if you truly have faith you will go on a religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem because the Bible says Jesus said you know let us go up to Jerusalem well see right there he said let us go up to Jerusalem the Bible says you have to have faith so that's what you have to do to be it's ridiculous. Well it's equally ridiculous to say that sin no more is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. There's no connection to those two but again this is the level of foolishness that we have to deal with when we contend for the correct gospel. The second final observation is that since believing on Christ was not mentioned in these conversations if sin no more was an eternal life commandment then Jesus just told two people to sin no more to get to heaven without telling them that they needed to believe on him. This is completely absurd as it is salvation by works without faith. So since Jesus never mentioned believing on him to either person using sin no more as an eternal life commandment is to offer an alternative way to be saved other than believing on Jesus. This idea that one could be saved by sinning no more and not believing on Jesus. Such a notion is absurd but why shouldn't we expect these absurdities from people who go about establishing their own righteousness. And just think about this if Jesus told one person to go and sin no more and this is a fundamental salvific instruction but he told another person in a separate conversation to believe on me which is also a fundamental salvific instruction then Jesus did not preach the gospel consistently. Person A is being told to believe but is not being told to sin no more as in John chapter 3 and John chapter 6 but Person B is being told to sin no more but is not being told to believe as in John chapter 5 and 8. And again this constantly highlights that I mentioned earlier this problem with work salvation they just pick their own list of things that they want to have a hang up about and you have to accuse Jesus of just giving all these random different people completely random instructions on how to be saved. Now the last thing we can observe about this passage is that in both of these examples Jesus said sin no more to two very specific individuals the first of which we don't even know what the sin was the second of which we only have one sin that occurred one time again we know nothing of their lifestyles. Now people will make all kinds of wild claims from these verses like for example well obviously it's possible to stop sinning and never sin again because Jesus said sin no more Jesus wouldn't say sin no more if it was impossible to stop sinning or words to that effect but again we don't have the salient facts to make that kind of an assertion. We don't know anything about their lifestyle we don't know whether they literally never sinned again ever and this statement was only ever given to two specific individuals of who we know so little about but false prophets do this all the time they just invent their own backstory and just write their own narrative and stick that in the Bible because they can't preach their false gospel without adding and removing and changing God's words all the time and muddling around with it. When legalists make it sound like sin no more is the utmost important teaching that Jesus drilled in time and again and made so clear they make it sound like he was preaching it from the rooftops to the masses but Jesus never preached this statement to the masses he never said to his disciples go and sin no more he never said in the sermon on the mount go and sin no more he never said to the multitudes go and sin no more that's not to say that Jesus didn't preach turning from sin using other catchphrases but this phrase was only ever said towards two individuals in nearly private conversations if go and sin no more was one of the most important teachings that Jesus ever gave and everything hangs on this teaching as legalists seem to think it does Jesus would have said this towards the masses and to his disciples not just to two individual persons furthermore as we alluded to in the previous video if it was so important to eternal life Jesus would have drilled this statement over and over again in all the verses where he said to believe on him for eternal life for example in John 3 16 Jesus could have said whosoever believes in him and sins no more should not perish Jesus had every opportunity to say this and yet he didn't in John 5 24 Jesus could have said he that hears my word and believes on him that sent me and sins no more has everlasting life there was no reason why Jesus couldn't say this if it were true Jesus didn't say this and we could apply this same logic to dozens of other verses where Jesus says to believe on him for eternal life without adding the requirement to sin no more and of course they'll say but he still said sin no more in John chapter 5 and 8 yes in a conversation where he didn't mention eternal life and that leads me on to a closing question even if Jesus didn't mention eternal life or believing on him in this conversation we already saw in the previous video that John's gospel was deliberately written to tell us how to have everlasting life therefore if it was written for this purpose should we not assume then that sin no more is an eternal life commandment because that is the reason why John is documenting it well if you watch the previous video where we considered repentance in John's gospel this argument would make sense if the Bible is written like an Ikea furniture instruction manual with step 1 2 3 4 listed in a logical order but it's not written like that even though his gospel account as a whole is written that reading it we would believe and have everlasting life it's still a gospel account a written testimonial of who Jesus was and what he did and said not everything that Jesus said in this gospel account can be attributed to a salvific requirement if you were to assert that we have to sin no more in order to obtain eternal life just because the phrase is being mentioned in John's gospel irrespective of its local context well he told the lame man in chapter 5 to take up your bed and walk so if somebody who is lame and hasn't been healed cannot obey this commandment does this mean they can't meet the requirements for eternal life? he told the blind man in chapter 9 to go wash in the pool of Siloam are you going to book your flight to Jerusalem find this pool and wash in it? you can't just say that this is fulfilled in baptism Jesus' commandment was very specific about the location Jesus said to his disciples in chapter 11 let us go into Judea again once again are you going to book your flight to Jerusalem? after all Jesus did say let us go to Judea you wouldn't want to disobey Jesus would you? now obviously these examples I'm giving sound ridiculous but it's equally ridiculous to say Jesus said sin no more sounds pretty simple to me you have to do that to be saved even if Jesus did say sin no more in a book that was written that you would have everlasting life John was simply documenting a conversation Jesus had with two people since Jesus did not mention eternal life to the healed man or the spared woman they would not have walked away from that conversation thinking that they needed to clean up their act to obtain salvation Jesus did not mention eternal life to them or John did not think it was necessary to record Jesus talking about it to them we simply don't know about their salvific status when a verse like John 3 16 tells you to believe on Jesus specifically for everlasting life then it is an eternal life commandment if Jesus says go and sin no more but does not mention eternal life then it must not be an eternal life commandment otherwise logically you would have to take that religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem so with all that being said then why are all these people and false prophets and such using a commandment that's not talking about everlasting life and then telling you hey that's what you've got to do to have everlasting life why would they do that? well the thing is if you read the entirety of John's Gospel you already have the answer they are not of Christ's sheep they claim to be his disciple but they were never given on to him by the Father that transaction never took place Jesus knew from the beginning that they believe no they are not the children of Abraham they are of their father the devil God has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts that they should not see with their eyes that they should not understand with their hearts and be converted that Jesus should heal them this is no nonsense Christianity reminding you that nowhere in the Bible does it say repent of your sins to be saved