A fool's errand?

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts. (I John 1:8-10 NLT)

A claim is just an assertion that says something, but is it always backed up by fact? Not always. Miners back in the day tried to stake 'claim' to a vein of gold or silver because it declared it as theirs and no one else could 'lay claim' to that portion of the mining area. How many of those 'claims' left the miners physically spent and financially broke as all was said and done? Probably more than actually paid off big time. Claims don't have to always be backed by fact - they can be misguided beliefs that something exists when it actually does not!

To 'claim' to have no sin in our lives is a fallacy straight out of the pit of hell. We ALL have sinned - ALL were born with a sin nature - none of us is able to claim 'no sin' as fact in our lives. It is one of those claims that is not backed by truth! Why do we attempt to claim one thing while another thing is actually fact? It is often a matter of pride. Those miners gave heart, soul, and sometimes even their physical life in the pursuit of what was never really there. They refer to that as a 'fool's errand'. We might pursue life with a gusto, but if that pursuit is without God at the center of our lives, the real 'gusto' is absent.

The claim that we have not sinned or don't have a sin nature is never going to hold up under the examination of God's eye on the day we stand before him. We might claim to be 'good' - good deeds don't amount to being good or being of pure character. The devil can mask sin a million different ways - packaged as 'good' doesn't change the fact that the nature of the one who does the 'good deed' is still a sinner at heart. We all need to confess our sins - admit that we have a sin nature that is at work within us - and accept the gift of God's cleansing, transformed character, and grace to live by a new nature.

God's Word has a way of pointing out where sin has taken root. It also has a way of exposing 'false claims' that we have come to believe - such as if we do good deeds, we are good. The more we allow his Word to show us where we have believed any lies, the more we will begin to desire his truth to replace all of those lies we have come to accept as fact in our lives. Not all lies seem all that bad, so we need him to show us where it is we have 'laid claim' to any falsehood in our lives. That claim will eventually peter out - our 'stake' in that claim will only lead us to realize the 'mother lode' we thought we'd find was nothing more than a fool's errand. Just sayin!