SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (November 8, 2026) - Why can't Christians just pray to be healed from sin? Ronald Smith asked his associate pastor, Dave Neckers, that question over breakfast at the Sunshine Cafe in Muncie, Indiana, 33 years ago. "We pray to be healed from cancer," Smith said. "Why not sin?" Neckers told him he could, and that John Wesley had taught it. Then he added: "Today, most people in the church don't believe it."
That answer became Smith's new book, A Child of God Does Not Sin: How Gospel Truth Was Buried, and Why It Must Be Restored. It came out October 15. In its first week it reached Amazon's Top 10 New Releases in Christian Salvation Theory and was the #1 New Release in Methodist Christianity.
Smith, a sales and marketing executive and lifelong churchgoer, argues that most churches preach a "half-gospel": forgiveness without freedom, grace without power. Drawing on Scripture, John Wesley's holiness teaching, and a documented look at how modern translations softened 1 John 3:9 ("Whoever has been born of God does not sin"), he builds his case across eighteen chapters like a legal argument. He is careful to define the sin he means: willful, knowing disobedience, not mistakes, ignorance, temptation, or human infirmity.
The idea has cost him before. A Methodist church once asked Smith to stop teaching it in his Sunday school class, even though Methodism's founder, John Wesley, preached it more passionately than anyone.
Smith grew up in Arizona and earned a journalism degree from Northern Arizona University. He says that training sent him straight to one question: why had the church stopped teaching it?
"I'm not a theologian. I'm a layman who spent thirty years working out an answer I was given early on," said Smith. "The New Testament promises more than forgiveness, and I want readers to test that for themselves."
The book features two graduates of Asbury Theological Seminary. Neckers, who holds an M.A. in Pastoral Counseling, discipled Smith and contributes a "Pastoral Word." Rev. Lawrence P. Brown, a pastor for 30 years and author of Holiness Illustrated, wrote of the book, "May the Holiness revival begin!"
Inside the book: why grace is power as well as pardon (Romans 6:14); how to tell willful sin from the mistakes every believer makes; the daily walk; what to do when a believer falls, and when a church teaches otherwise; and an appendix of 56 supporting verses.
A Child of God Does Not Sin is available now on Amazon in paperback ($19.99), hardcover and ebook.
About the author
Ronald Smith is a sales and marketing executive and the author of A Child of God Does Not Sin. He was raised in Arizona and holds a journalism degree from Northern Arizona University. His faith was awakened at a Promise Keepers event in Boulder, Colorado, and led to a decades-long study of Scripture and the writings of John Wesley. He lives in Scottsdale with his wife, Nancy. They have six children and two grandchildren.
Interview topics
- Why "a child of God does not sin" is not a claim of perfectionism
- The recovery of holiness as a New Covenant teaching
- Breaking cycles of guilt and failure
- What victory over sin looks like day to day
- The breakfast question in a Muncie diner that started a 33-year search