The Christian Life
"A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight."
Proverbs 11:1
In the ancient world a merchant carried his weights in a leather bag at his belt. There were no printed scales and no government inspectors at the market gate. When a customer came to buy grain, the merchant took out a stone weight, set it in one pan of his balance, and poured grain into the other until the two sides hung level. Everything depended on the honesty of that stone.
And so a certain kind of merchant carried two stones. One was slightly heavy, and he brought it out when he was buying — the seller had to pour in more to balance it, and the merchant went home with extra. The other was slightly light, and he brought it out when he was selling — less grain balanced the scale, and the customer went home with less than he paid for. Both stones looked ordinary. Both sat in the same bag. Nobody could tell by looking which one was coming out.
God saw the bag. And of all the sins He might have singled out for the strongest word in His vocabulary, He chose this one. This article is about that judgment, about what it means, and about the two stones that almost all of us are carrying without quite admitting it.
Before anything else we must clear up a misunderstanding that has grown common, because it empties these verses of their meaning entirely.
Many readers, meeting the word balance in the King James Bible, hear it the way we use it in ordinary modern English — as moderation. To be balanced, we say, is to avoid extremes; not too far one way, not too far the other; sensible, even-tempered, in the middle. A "balanced" Christian, in this way of speaking, is one who does not go too far in any direction.
That is not what the word means in Scripture. Not once.
In the Bible, a balance is an object. It is a weighing instrument — a beam with two pans hanging from it, used in the market to measure grain, silver, and wool. When Scripture speaks of a false balance, it is not describing a man who has become extreme in his opinions. It is describing a set of scales that has been tampered with so that it lies about what is in it.
And the accompanying words confirm it. Weights are the stones placed in the pan. A measure is a container of fixed volume. The bag is the pouch where the stones were carried. This is the vocabulary of commerce, not of temperament.
"A just weight and balance are the LORD'S: all the weights of the bag are his work." (Proverbs 16:11)
Why does the distinction matter so much? Because the modern misreading turns a sharp moral command into a bland recommendation. If balance means moderation, then Proverbs 11:1 becomes little more than advice to avoid excess — a proverb about temperament, easily agreed with and easily forgotten. But if balance means the scales in a man's hand, then the verse is about honesty, fairness, and truth-telling in the way we weigh people and matters. It stops being about our personality and starts being about our integrity.
There is a broader lesson here too, and it is worth taking. When a word in the Bible seems obvious, it is wise to check whether we are reading our own century's meaning into it. The Book is not obscure, but it was written in another age, and some of its plainest words carry a weight we have lost. Reading carefully is part of reverence.
This is not a scattered theme. God legislated it directly, twice, in the Law given to Israel.
In Deuteronomy He forbade the man of God to keep in his bag two kinds of weights, a great and a small, or in his house two kinds of measures, a great and a small. He was to have a perfect and just weight, and a perfect and just measure. And the reason attached is startling: that his days may be lengthened in the land. National stability was tied to honest scales in the market.
In Leviticus the same command appears in the middle of a chapter about loving one's neighbour as oneself, and it is set alongside justice in the courts — no unrighteousness in judgment, in weight, or in measure; just balances, just weights. God places the merchant's stones and the judge's verdict in the same breath, because they are the same sin in different clothes. Both are the deliberate misrepresentation of what a thing is actually worth.
Notice something in that pairing. God does not treat commercial cheating as a small matter of business ethics and judicial corruption as a great matter of state. To Him they are one category. A man who shaves an ounce off a customer's flour and a judge who shades a verdict toward his friend are doing the identical thing at different scales.
Now to the word itself, because Scripture does not spend it lightly.
"A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight." (Proverbs 11:1)
"Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD." (Proverbs 20:10)
"Divers weights are an abomination unto the LORD; and a false balance is not good." (Proverbs 20:23)
Three times, in the plainest terms available. Abomination is the strongest word of moral revulsion in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is used of idolatry, of child sacrifice, of the practices for which whole nations were driven out of the land. And here God applies it to a man with two stones in his pocket.
Why so severe over a matter of ounces? For three reasons, and each is worth weighing.
First, because it is a lie told with an object. The merchant never says a false word. He does not need to. The scale speaks for him, and the scale is calibrated to deceive. This is deception without the risk of a spoken falsehood — which is precisely what makes it attractive to a certain kind of religious man. He can maintain that he never lied, and he would be technically correct.
Second, because it robs the defenceless. The person hurt by a false weight is almost always the one with no way to check. The rich merchant buying in bulk has his own scales. The widow buying a day's flour does not. Dishonest weights are, by their nature, aimed downward.
Third, and deepest, because it is a lie about reality itself. God made the world so that things have a true weight. A pound is a pound whether or not anyone is watching. When a man falsifies the scale, he is not merely cheating a customer; he is asserting that reality is negotiable, that a thing may be one weight when it suits him and another when it does not. He is playing God with truth. And note where Scripture says the true standard comes from: all the weights of the bag are his work. The standard is not ours to adjust. It was issued from heaven.
Consider how this sin is carried out, because the method reveals the heart.
The weights are in a bag. That is, they are hidden. Nobody sees the whole collection; only one stone comes out at a time, and it comes out looking like an honest stone.
They are portable. The merchant does not decide once and for all which weight to use. He decides afresh at every transaction, reading the customer, judging the situation, choosing which stone serves him best this time. It is not a single act of fraud but a settled habit of self-service, exercised again and again.
And they are plausible. A weight wildly wrong would be caught immediately. The successful cheat is only slightly off — enough to profit, not enough to provoke. This is why the double standard is so hard to expose, in the market or anywhere else. The man using it is never grotesquely unfair. He is only ever a little more generous to himself than to you, every single time.
Now we come to the point of the whole matter. Scripture is not only concerned with the merchant's bag. The wisdom literature uses the marketplace because everyone understood it, but the principle reaches everywhere a human being weighs anything — and we weigh constantly.
Every day we assess. We decide whether an action was acceptable, whether an excuse was adequate, whether an offence was serious, whether a person is trustworthy, whether a claim is credible. Each of those is a weighing. Each requires a standard. And the question God puts to us is not whether we weigh — we cannot help it — but whether we are using the same stone twice.
Here, then, is the honest work of this article. What follows is a list of the places where the second stone is usually kept. Read it slowly, and read it as a mirror rather than a window. The temptation with a list like this is to think of someone else at every line. That temptation is itself one of the weights.
One measure for my sin, another for yours. This is the parent of all the rest. My failure was a slip; yours was a pattern. My sharp word was provoked; yours revealed your character. My absence was unavoidable; yours was neglect. Nothing has changed but the owner of the sin.
One measure for my friends, another for those I dislike. When a man I love does something questionable, I supply the charitable explanation myself, unprompted, before anyone has to ask for it. When a man I resent does the same thing, I wait for him to explain — and I weigh his explanation sceptically. The identical act receives two verdicts, and the deciding factor is my prior affection.
One measure for those who benefit me, another for those who cost me. We are remarkably slow to find fault with people whose approval we need, and remarkably quick with those who can do nothing for us. Scripture calls this the respect of persons, and it condemns it flatly — warning against honouring the man in fine clothing while despising the poor man, and commanding that we not respect the person of the poor nor honour the person of the mighty, but in righteousness judge our neighbour. Note that the command cuts both ways: favouring the poor because it feels compassionate is also a false weight. Justice is not partiality aimed in a direction we approve of.
One measure for my motives, another for your actions. This one is almost universal and deserves particular attention. I know what I meant. I have full access to my own intentions, my pressures, my exhaustion, the long chain of reasons that made my behaviour understandable. Of you I see only the act. So I judge myself by my intentions and you by your conduct — and I come off better every time, not because I am better, but because I am grading two different examinations.
One measure in public, another in private. The man who is gracious in the meeting and cutting in the car. The one who speaks warmly to a person's face and coolly about him afterward. Two weights, and the choice of which to use depends entirely on who is watching.
One measure for my family, another for strangers. Sometimes this runs as indulgence — my child's behaviour explained, another child's condemned. Sometimes it runs the other way, and a man is patient with everyone in the world except the people who live in his house. Either way it is two stones.
One measure when I am accused, another when I accuse. When I am charged with something, I want the full process: hear my side, consider the context, weigh my history, assume good faith, give me time. When I bring a charge, I want the verdict immediately, and I am impatient with the very protections I would demand for myself.
One measure for the doctrine I like, another for the doctrine that costs me. Some texts I read plainly and apply strictly. Others — the ones that would require a change in my life, my habits, or my treatment of someone — I discover to be complicated, disputed, culturally conditioned, in need of careful nuance. The Bible has not changed between the two readings. Only the cost has.
One measure for what confirms my view, another for what challenges it. Evidence that supports what I already believe passes inspection easily. Evidence against it faces cross-examination. We call this being discerning. It is often just a heavy stone and a light one.
One measure for the same act in different seasons. A thing was acceptable when it served us and became scandalous when it stopped. Nothing changed but our position.
If you read that list and found nothing that touched you, read it again. That result is not possible for an honest person.
The Lord Jesus Christ addressed this directly, and He used exactly the language of the marketplace:
"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." (Matthew 7:1-5)
Take that passage apart, because it is more careful than it is usually treated.
With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. The standard you apply becomes the standard applied to you. This is not arbitrary punishment; it is a kind of justice so exact that it is almost mathematical. You wrote the rule. You will be graded by it. If a man wants a strict accounting for others, he has asked for a strict accounting for himself, and God will honour the request.
The mote and the beam. Notice that the mote is real. The Lord does not say the brother has nothing in his eye. There is a genuine speck there, and it genuinely needs removing. The problem is not that the critic saw something; the problem is proportion. He has a plank and is exercised about a splinter.
Thou hypocrite. This is the word the Lord chose, and it is worth understanding. It came from the theatre and meant an actor — a man wearing a mask, playing a part that is not his own face. The hypocrite is not necessarily someone who believes nothing. He is someone presenting an appearance while the reality behind it is different. And note: what earned the word here was not the criticism itself, but the double standard behind it.
And then shalt thou see clearly. Here is the part most often missed, and it is decisive. The Lord does not conclude by saying leave your brother's eye alone. He says deal with your own beam first, and then you will see clearly to help him. The goal is still the removal of the speck. What is forbidden is attempting delicate work on another person's eye while your own vision is obstructed.
This must be said plainly, because the verse is now more misused than almost any other in the Bible, and the misuse is itself a false weight.
"Judge not" is regularly quoted to mean that no one may ever assess anyone's conduct — that all moral evaluation is forbidden. That reading collapses on contact with the rest of Scripture, and with the rest of this very passage. Six verses later the same sermon tells us to recognise false prophets by their fruits, which requires judgment. Elsewhere the Lord Jesus Christ commands: judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. He does not say do not judge; He says judge rightly.
So what is forbidden is not evaluation but hypocritical evaluation — the judgment made with a rigged scale, by a man who exempts himself from his own verdict.
And notice how convenient the misreading is. A blanket ban on judging is enormously useful to anyone who does not wish to be corrected. It is not humility; it is armour. Real humility can receive an honest weighing. It is pride that demands the scales be put away altogether.
If we are to weigh justly, Scripture gives us practical rules, and they are as relevant to a family argument as to a courtroom.
"He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him." (Proverbs 18:13)
Two words are used of the man who does this: folly and shame. Folly, because he is deciding without data. Shame, because when the facts arrive he will be exposed as having decided anyway. And observe how ordinary this sin is. Most of us form our verdict early, and then spend the hearing looking for support rather than information.
"He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him." (Proverbs 18:17)
This is one of the most practical sentences in the Bible, and it should be written above every door. The first account always sounds right. Not because the first speaker is lying — he may be entirely sincere — but because a single perspective, presented alone, with its own emphases and omissions, is inherently persuasive. Then the other party comes and examines it, and the picture changes.
The Law required this too: a matter was to be established at the mouth of two or three witnesses, never one. God built a delay into the process precisely because He knows how convincing the first version is, and how much damage a confident single account can do.
So here is a rule with enormous power to keep a man from injustice: never form a settled judgment on a matter you have heard from one side only. If you find that difficult, notice how much you want to — and ask what that reveals about the scale you are using.
There is a further verse that speaks to what happens when a false weight is used in judging people, and it is unsparing:
"He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD." (Proverbs 17:15)
Both. The same word again — abomination — and this time applied to two opposite errors held equally guilty.
To justify the wicked is to excuse what should be named: to defend a man because he is ours, to explain away real wrong because acknowledging it would be costly or embarrassing, to call something a misunderstanding when it was a genuine wrong.
To condemn the just is the mirror image: to attribute guilt where there is none, to assume the worst motive, to treat an accusation as proof, to punish a man for a wrong he did not do.
Both are false weights, and God will not let us choose one and feel righteous about avoiding the other. The person who is scrupulous never to condemn the innocent, but who habitually excuses the guilty because he likes them, is on the same list as the person who does the reverse.
Injustice is always serious. It becomes something worse when it happens between people who share a faith, and Scripture notes the peculiar damage:
"A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle." (Proverbs 18:19)
Read the two images. A strong city — because the walls go up quickly and come down slowly. Bars of a castle — because the disagreement, once fixed, holds like iron. Anyone who has watched a family or a fellowship divide knows how exactly true this is. Wounds between strangers heal; wounds between brethren calcify.
And Scripture lists among the things the LORD hates the sowing of discord among brethren. It is placed alongside a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood — which tells us how God regards the deliberate setting of one believer against another.
This is exactly why God gave a procedure, and the procedure is itself a just balance. If your brother trespasses against you, you are to go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. Not to a third party. Not to a group. Not to the internet. Alone, first — because the goal is stated plainly: if he hears thee, thou hast gained thy brother. The aim is a brother regained, not a case won.
Only if that fails are one or two others to be taken along, so that every word may be established. Only if that fails does the matter come before the assembly. Each stage is slower and more public than the last, and the design is unmistakable: God builds in every possible opportunity for reconciliation before exposure. To skip the stages is to use a false weight, however true the underlying complaint may be.
And the manner is prescribed as carefully as the method. Those who are spiritual are to restore such a one in the spirit of meekness — considering themselves, lest they also be tempted. The word for restore is the word for setting a broken bone: painful, necessary, and done by someone whose object is that the limb should work again. Nobody sets a bone in anger.
So Scripture holds two things together that we constantly pull apart. Rebuke your brother when he sins — do not pretend, do not paper over, do not call the wound healed when it is not. And do it in a way, and by a route, that aims at his restoration rather than his defeat. A man who will not confront is using a false weight. So is a man who confronts in a way designed to win.
All of this comes to rest in one of the best-known verses in the prophets, and it is best known because it summarises everything:
"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Micah 6:8)
Three things, and they must be held together, because each alone becomes a distortion.
To do justly. Not merely to admire justice or to demand it from others, but to do it — to use one weight, to keep the same standard when it costs you as when it profits you. Justice without mercy becomes hardness, and men who pride themselves on being just are often only being severe.
To love mercy. Not to tolerate mercy grudgingly, but to love it — to be the kind of person who is glad when someone is forgiven. And mercy is not the suspension of justice; it is what a just person does with the guilty when he has the power to crush and chooses not to. Mercy without justice becomes sentiment, and sentiment protects the strong and abandons the wounded.
To walk humbly with thy God. This is the safeguard on both. The moment I am certain I am the just one in the room, my scales have already tipped. Humility is what keeps a man checking his own weights, and it is the first thing to go when we become sure of our own case.
Notice, too, that this verse comes in a chapter where God is contrasting these things with religious offerings. A man may bring everything the ritual requires and still be carrying two stones. God says plainly what He would rather have — and it is not more offerings.
And within the same chapter God asks a question about a city He is judging: shall He count them pure with wicked balances and a bag of deceitful weights? The question answers itself. No amount of religious observance purifies a false scale.
Everything to this point has been about how we weigh others. But there is a scale we have not yet mentioned, and it is the one that matters most.
If God requires one honest weight, then He has one — and it is applied to us.
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
That verse is itself a weighing. Come short is the language of a measurement taken and found insufficient. And the standard is not the neighbour, not the average, not the version of ourselves we present in public — it is the glory of God.
And our best offerings do not tip the scale either:
"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." (Isaiah 64:6)
So let the article do to its writer and its reader what it has been doing to everyone else. Every one of us has kept two stones. We have all been more merciful to ourselves than to others, quicker to excuse our own conduct, slower to believe the best about people who cost us something. We have all answered matters before we heard them. We have all, at some point, justified someone we liked and condemned someone we did not.
And the temptation now — I write it because it is the temptation I feel myself — is to read all of this and think chiefly of the people who have done it to us. That impulse is the last and cleverest of the false weights: to use a study of double standards as a measuring rod for everyone else.
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8)
Here is where this subject stops being a burden and becomes good news.
If God's scale is perfectly just, and we have all come short on it, then honesty leaves us with a debt we cannot pay. A man cannot make up a shortfall by promising accurate weights from now on; the deficit already recorded remains.
So God did something that no rigged scale could ever have accomplished. He did not lower the standard — that would have made Him the very thing He calls abomination, a God with two weights. Instead, He satisfied His own standard Himself.
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
At the cross the Lord Jesus Christ was weighed in our place, with the full and honest weight, and He did not come short. He bore what the true balance demanded of us. And because the payment was real, forgiveness costs God nothing of His justice:
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)
Faithful and just. Not indulgent. God is not being lenient with us; He is pointing at a debt already discharged. The one Person in history who could have demanded a strict accounting from all of us chose instead to be weighed in our stead.
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)
Practically, then. If a man wants one honest weight, how does he get there?
Ask to be shown. The nature of a false weight is that its owner does not notice it. It feels like ordinary judgment. So the first step is to ask God to reveal the stones you cannot see, and to mean the request when the answer is uncomfortable.
Test with the reversal. Whenever you have reached a verdict about someone, ask: if I had done exactly this, in exactly these circumstances, what would I be saying about it? If the answer differs from the verdict you just reached, you have found a stone. This one test, honestly applied, will do more than any amount of general resolve.
Refuse to decide on one account. Make it a settled rule. When a matter reaches you from one side, hold your verdict — not your compassion, but your verdict — until you have heard the other. Say so openly if you must. It will cost you some conversations and save you from a great deal of injustice.
Go to the person, not about them. If a brother has genuinely wronged you, the Bible's route is direct and private first. Most of what divides believers would never have divided them if this one rule had been kept.
Be as generous with others' motives as with your own. You extend yourself the benefit of context automatically. Extend it deliberately to others, especially to those you find difficult, and especially when you would rather not.
Watch what happens when it costs you. Anyone can be fair when fairness is free. The true weight is revealed at the moment when honesty will lose you an argument, a position, or a point you wanted to make. What you do there is what you actually believe.
Make restitution where you can. If you have weighed someone falsely — spoken of them unfairly, believed the worst without evidence, held them to a standard you never applied to yourself — say so, to them. It is astonishing what a single honest sentence can undo.
The merchant with two weights prospered for a while. He was respected in the market, he gave to the poor on feast days, and no one ever caught him in a spoken lie. He may well have thought of himself as an honest man; the stones were small, the difference was slight, and everyone else was doing something similar.
God saw the bag.
And what God asks of us is not complicated, though it costs everything to do. He asks for one stone — used with our friends and with our critics, with our family and with strangers, when it profits us and when it does not, for our own conduct and for everyone else's. He asks us to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.
And He asks it of people who have not done it — which is why the message must end where it began: not with our weights, but with His mercy. The just balance condemns us all. The One who hung on the cross was weighed in our place, so that the same God who calls a false balance an abomination can call a forgiven sinner His child.
Empty out the bag. Keep one stone. And thank God that when your own weighing came, Another stood in the scale for you.
"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"Micah 6:8
Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Thy throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Thy presence.
We thank Thee for Thy beloved Son, and for **Him** who judgeth righteously and in whom is no respect of persons. We praise Thee for Thy preserved Word, which declareth **"A just weight and balance are the LORD's"** (Proverbs 16:11), and which cannot be broken.
We confess before Thee of the two sets of scales we have carried, one for our friends and one for those we did not like. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for Thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
We beseech Thee for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Thy Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Thy Son before this day is done.
Strengthen Thy people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to give every reader one honest measure for all men, for Thy glory and not for ours.
We pray all of this to Thee, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?
You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.
If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:
Dear Holy and Almighty God, I come to Thee just as I am. I confess that I am a sinner. I have broken Thy law, I have gone my own way, and I deserve the judgment and the everlasting fire that my sin has earned. I cannot save myself, and I bring Thee nothing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Thy Son; that He loved me and died on the cross in my place, shedding His precious blood for my sins; that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Here and now I turn from my sin, and I trust Him alone — not my works, not my religion, not my goodness — to save me. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, and be my Saviour from this moment and for ever.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).
2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.
4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.
5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).