What freedom looks like?

This past week I had made some plans with a close friend and I thought God was orchestrating it. He was definitely involved, but he arranged for my plans to completely change and be completely out of my control.
Not being where I wanted to be, I spent extra time in the Word of God, and I feel like God was finally helping me connect the dots between what I have always grown up believing and what true freedom looks like (as 180 Degrees Ministries and others have tried teaching me).
When I’ve read 1 John 3:6 in the past, “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”, I’ve always felt guilty. I thought I knew Jesus and was saved, but I also knew I wasn’t perfect and I’ve questioned whether I was truly saved or just fooling myself.
But I’ve never put passages like that into context with other verses such as that which follows shortly after:

This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

I’m not sure how to explain how this alone gives me such a sense of freedom. I looked at verse 6 and saw myself guilty, but verses 19-23 say that the command that matters is believing in the name of Jesus Christ and loving one another. Okay, maybe my sins weren’t exactly loving one another, but I feel like this is within reach, whereas verse 6 felt out of reach. And now that I have this new confidence, I can go back and read Romans and feel a new sense of freedom and hope, because I do not have to be a slave to sin anymore and I can live by the spirit!

~ by Daniel Koster on June 21, 2008.