Sinning Doesn’t Leave Believers Vulnerable To The Devil

Length: 11 minutes

People often believe that if a Christian sins, that leaves them susceptible to the Devil, to bring trouble or sickness into your life. While I don’t agree with sin, if that is true, none of us have any surety of protection.

The Way God Fixes The Sin Problem

It is true that being in sin was the initial problem that kept us bound under the Devil’s power. I don’t mean just “sinning” (the verb, the action). I mean “sin” (the noun). Everyone was born sinful and that did keep us in the Devils power, but Jesus has already provided the fix to that problem. It’s called forgiveness and cleansing!

The new covenant way that God fixes sin (which gave the Devil power over us) is not by telling us to not sin anymore (which would have been impossible), but by forgiving those sins!

1 John 3:5, 8 (NKJV) And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.
Verse 8) For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.

Notice how John first states that “Jesus was manifested to take away our sins,” but then just a few verses later says, “Jesus was manifested to destroy the works of the Devil.” That’s because the way that Jesus redeemed us from the Devil’s power is by dealing with the sin that gave him power over us to begin with. 

Sin gave the devil power over us. True. But God’s answer was not to tell us to stop sinning. Then, if we don’t sin, the devil won’t have influence over us! God’s answer was to take away our sins Himself, through the cleansing of His Holy Spirit, through the forgiveness of sins!

Colossians also ties Jesus’ triumph over demonic powers to forgiving us all our trespasses and removing the law (which also gave fallen angels the right to accuse and punish, but that’s for another time).

Colossians 2:13-15 (NKJV) And you… He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us [the law], which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers [the Devil and his angels], He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

This verse speaks of the forgiveness of sins and the removal of the law. Then, it directly ties it to how Jesus disarmed the devil!

Then again, in Colossians 1, God ties our freedom from the kingdom of darkness (the kingdom of the devil) with the forgiveness of sins!

Colossians 1:13-14 (NKJV) He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

What are all these verses saying? Sin did give the devil power over us, but God’s answer to the sin problem was not in telling people to not sin anymore, but through forgiving their sins, thus freeing us from the devil!

In all of this, I’m not saying that sin is good or acceptable. If it was, why would Jesus pay such a high price to redeem us from it? Sin is inherently destructive and unprofitable, but for those who have received Jesus, sin does not give the devil some spiritual door into your life. Why? Because you are forgiven of those very sins, effectively making them as if they’ve never been done.

Two Different Men

In John 5, Jesus heals a sick man by the pool of Bethesda. People will use the scripture to show that “sinning makes you vulnerable to the devil.” This takes place in the temple, after the man had already been healed. Let’s take a look:

John 5:14 (NKJV) Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”

Jesus clearly tells a sick man to not sin anymore so that something worse wouldn’t happen to him. Doesn’t that imply that sinning would make us vulnerable to the devil? Or at least vulnerable to sickness? 

Let’s compare that with another verse. Look at how Jesus healed a paralytic man. When He saw the paralytic, He certainly dealt with this man’s sin, but He didn’t deal with it by saying, “Sin no more.” He dealt with his sin by saying, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Matthew 9:2 (NKJV) Then behold, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.”

Why did Jesus tell the man by the pool of Bethesda to, “Sin no more,” but told this paralytic man, “Your sins are forgiven you.” The important part here is that “Jesus saw their faith.” That is vital. Jesus saw faith in this man, which is necessary to forgive someone’s sin, thus freeing them from all sickness and the power of the Devil.

Regarding the man by the pool of Bethesda, I don’t know the condition of his heart, but I do know that the Bible doesn’t say Jesus saw faith present for him to receive forgiveness. If Jesus had seen faith, things would have been different. 

Under the law, the best thing you could do to keep yourself from something bad happening to you is to not sin anymore. I don’t believe for a second that Jesus thought this was possible, but God had given a law prohibiting sin (to show people they couldn’t keep it). Jesus was being true to that law (as He always was) and told the man without forgiveness, “You better not sin anymore, because if you don’t clean yourself of it, something worse is going to happen to you.”

Sin does give sickness, disease, and the devil, power over you. That’s the truth. So, with both men, Jesus dealt with their sin. He told the believing one his sins were forgiven. He told the other not to sin anymore. Why? If you’re not going to be forgiven of your sins, not sinning anymore is your only option. But if you realize that’s impossible (and it is), then you need to go to Jesus and get forgiveness. 

The Real Point

The real point here is this: If, as born-again believers, we can allow the Devil an inroad into our life by sin, then no believer ever deserves any surety of safety, at any point in time. We likely sin every day, even when we don’t realize it. That Is, unless we’re only going to count the “big sins.”

Let me put it to you this way. Who is it that protects us from the devil? Of course, it’s God. God’s power protects us from the devil. If sin makes us vulnerable, that means God must withdraw His protection when we sin. And if that’s true, we are receiving protection from God by our works. There’s no other way to see that. If God releases or withdraws protection and redemption based on our works, then you are receiving by your works. You are trusting your own holy living as the surety of your protection, rather than Jesus (Hebrews 7:22).

If God only protects me from the Devil until the next time I sin, how am I not buying the blessings of God with my own holy living (Isaiah 55:1)? If God’s shield lowers when I sin, how am I not maintaining my protection by my works? But none of our salvation was gained by our works, neither is it maintained by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Thank God, in this new covenant, holy living is a fruit, it is not the prerequisite for anything we receive from God. We receive, not through works of the law, but because we put faith in Jesus (Galatians 3:2-5).

Here’s the truth:

For an unbeliever, unfortunately, they already belong to the Devil, but they can leave at any time. Forgiveness has been offered to them.

For a believer, your sin doesn’t open the door for the Devil to make you sick or bring calamity into your life. God fixed your sin problem by forgiving it, not through you not sinning anymore. 

When a Christian has a problem, it’s not because they’ve been left vulnerable to the Devil due to sin. It’s because of what we don’t yet know, or aren’t remembering, about Jesus (Romans 8:6). 

My Own Healing

Just a quick story in closing. For many years I believed that when I sinned, God still loved me, but I left myself vulnerable to the Devil. At the time, I was dealing with dizzy spells. I would feel like the room was spinning around me and I would have to lay down. These dizzy spells would last hours and sometimes linger for a couple days. 

When this would happen, I would feel sick because of the dizziness. I just remember crying many times saying, “Lord, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” because I thought my sin was letting this happen. This happened once when I was out with some friends at a diner. I had to go lay down in the car, where I continued to tell the Lord how sorry I was.

All this time, I was still rebuking and trying to believe that I was healed; even tirelessly. Then one day I was driving to my house, praying about this, and the Lord said, “Chalice.” One word. I looked that up and realized that it’s a word for the cup used in communion, especially in the Catholic Church. I realized that the Lord was telling me that my issue was not with belief in healing, but with belief in the forgiveness of sins. I knew Jesus said that the cup represented His blood, being shed for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:27–28).

I eventually realized that, if I believed my sin lowered God’s shield toward the Devil, then I believed my holiness was keeping it there. In essence, I realized I was trying to receive from God by my works, instead of faith in the work of Jesus. I was trusting my abstinence from sin, rather than God’s forgiveness of sins, through His Son. I was trusting my own efforts, rather than trusting His blood… the chalice!

After I started to realize this, I had one last dizzy spell. I continued in this truth and never had another, in the many years since.

I thought I was sick because my sins were allowing the Devil in. I didn’t realize that this wasn’t an attack of the Devil. My own ignorance of my forgiveness was allowing sickness in. I was ignorant of what I already had. And isn’t that always the case with our receiving? We receive by simple knowledge of Jesus. It’s only ignorance, through religion, through wrong teaching, and the like, that holds us back. Just stick with the pure knowledge of Jesus and lean on Him for all your receiving. You will always be on the right track! Quite literally, because Jesus Is the only way. 

Your works never said, “I am the Way,” He did.

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