Amos 9:10. "All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say, 'Evil shall not overtake or meet us.'" Note that it is not every sinner who will die by the sword, but those who say "Evil shall not overtake or meet us".

We are all sinners, always have been and always will be, that is the effect of the Fall. What God asks of us is an effort not to sin again, and to repent when we have sinned. This is especially important when we find ourselves in a state of sin after a time of neglect of our spiritual lives. God will forgive us, He loves us so much that He sent his Son to die so that our sins can be forgiven, but we have to at least acknowledge our sinfulness and try to do better. It is the sinners who refuse to do this, those who say "evil shall not overtake or meet us"; those who justify their sin and convince themselves they've done nothing wrong, nothing for evil to attach to; those who refuse to acknowledge that we are all sinners, and that evil has already overtaken us, those are the people who will die by the sword. This is how people choose eternal death, or hell, by refusing, even in the face of the Truth, to admit that they have sinned and to repent. They cling to and nurture their evil, denying that it is evil, even as being begged to repent by the Son of God.

God's words here are a warning not to dismiss evil, not to think that it can't affect you. Evil is real and we are born in its grasp. Even when our original sin has been washed away by baptism, evil continues to relentlessly pursue each one of us. It does not tire, and it knows its time is limited. We will all fall prey to the influence of evil. It may be subtle rather than obvious, in fact that seems to almost be preferred by the devil - the subtle sins we don't even realize or admit are sins are the ones we are most likely to defend and least likely to repent of. Our only hope of salvation is to repent and turn to God. We must acknowledge evil and our tendency to it in order to escape death by the sword.