Say what? Saint Paul never thought he got to the place where the power of sin was completely gone in his life. Saint Augustine never preached that once you received the power of Christ into your life all sin was gone. Martin Luther, from whom we get all these Reformation slogans, preached "always sinner; always justified." So what does this mean? "Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him" (1 John 3:5-6).

What does that mean, because there are so many who testify that the deeper Christ comes into one's life the more conscious one is of the power of sin? The more one strives to fulfill the love and will of …