1 John 3:4-9
Preached 1/28/202 [Previous Sermon]
INTRODUCTION
Today we are back in the book of First John after a little over three months, so a short review is apropos here. Remember that John’s gospel was written to bring people to Christ – “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31) But this letter is written to Christians who have believed, as we see in the final chapter of the letter:
1
John 5:13 I write these things to you who believe
in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal
life.
There are various ways of giving people assurance. We can shower them with unmitigated praise and tell them how wonderful they are and how deserving they are and build up their self-esteem until they have no doubts that all good things are owed to them. But remember what Jesus said in the parable of the two men who went to pray – the one with the unlimited self-esteem went away without salvation while the tax collector who had a realistic assessment of his standing before God and asked for mercy with the faith of an empty hand “went away justified” before God. So John doesn’t mess around giving false hope to people who may or may not have been born again. He does us a far greater service. He has instead given us a series of tests, or signs, by which we can have assurance that we have eternal life. Every believer will be able to come away with a wonderful assurance of his or her own eternal salvation after reading this book. And they will be able to verify it themselves, so it is amazingly practical for all of us.
The tests have centered around three factors of spiritual life: truth, righteousness, and love. These three themes are woven into a tight braid of glory through all five chapters of this comforting book. But all tests have two outcomes. We do ourselves no favor if we ignore this book. If we are saved but do not examine ourselves daily, we will languish in doubt, stumbling our way through what should be a ministry of love and confidence. If we are not saved, well, this book should send us back to the starting point so we can be sure of our eternal destiny. But John wrote all of this with the assumption that he was writing to God’s redeemed family, with the goal of producing joy and unfettered love for God. Our job is only to do what Paul advised the Corinthians:
2
Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test
yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is
in you?--unless indeed you fail to meet the test!
So let’s get back into the text. Back in chapter two, John laid out the purpose of the tests in a stark and clear fashion. He split mankind into two groups. One group contains the true believers, and those on the other side were what he called “antichrists”. In fact, John said that many of these antichrists were “among us”. These antichrists may have looked like Christians but eventually their true nature was revealed. In the rest of chapter two John revealed three characteristics of these Antichrists. Interestingly, if we look at Jesus’ teaching in the parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 there is a strong parallel with John’s teaching here.
Mat
13:3-9 3 And he told them many things in parables,
saying: "A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds
fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Other
seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately
they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6 but when the sun
rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. 7
Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8
Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some
sixty, some thirty. 9 He who has ears, let him hear."
In that parable Jesus described three types of soil that represented different types of unbelief which characterized those who rejected the gospel. The first soil in his story was the hard-packed road next to the field, in which the seeds never made it under the surface and were eaten by birds before they could sprout. Jesus said that this first soil represented people who heard the word of the gospel but Satan snatched it away before it could take root. In the same way, John talked to us about antichrists who had never believed in the substitutionary death of Christ but held to other doctrines that conflicted with the gospel. They heard the gospel but they were stuck in the world’s way of looking at things and warped it to conform to other philosophies and so missed the lifesaving message.
In the same way, in the parable the second type of heart that Jesus described was pictured as poor soil. This soil was shallow and filled with rocks. When the seeds were sown in this poor soil they sprang up quickly and looked like they would do well until the hot sun beat down on them and they withered away because “the soil had no depth”. Like these plants, John’s antichrists were among us, but eventually they left our midst to show that they “were never really of us”. These people looked like believers for a while, but when the going got hard they ran away as quickly as they came. Or as John puts it, they did not “abide”, or stay.
The third soil in the parable was better than the rocky soil, but it had not been cleared and weeded. The seed that was planted had too much competition. When the seed of the gospel tried to grow, it started out okay but the competition of the weeds (which represented the cares and desires of the world) choked out the new plants and they failed to grow to fruition. In the same way, John’s antichrists loved the world (which he said is going to pass away) rather than the Father, who is eternal. This shows in a person’s motivations and behavior with respect to sin.
Remember that Jesus’ fourth type of soil grew plants that produced fruit, which represented those who believed in his words. In the same way, people are known by their fruits. A plant does not decide to produce fruit as an elective activity. Fruit comes from its life by design. It’s what plants do. The fruit comes from its excess life, and the fruit’s type is in accordance with the plant’s type. I really wonder if John was remembering the parable as he wrote this part of his letter.
So at the end of chapter 2 John gave a strong admonition that summarized his points. If we want to have assurance, we must manifest the miraculous change that has happened on the inside in our behavior on the outside. As Jesus put it in the gospels,
Luke
6:43-45 For no good tree bears bad
fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is know by its
own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked
from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart
produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for
out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
Finally John finished chapter two and started chapter three by admonishing his readers to abide in Christ, to remember who we are because of the work of Christ, and to rejoice in the love that the Father has revealed to us. And as a result we should not let this world steal our hearts, because it does not know us. But he also reminds us to practice righteousness, because, as he put it in 2:29: “you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of Him.” Now in chapter three verses four through ten John returns to the topic of practicing righteousness, what it means and what it is evidence of. He gives three reasons why the practice of righteousness is a sign of a truly saved heart: God’s Precepts, His Purpose, and His Paternity. Let’s look at verse 4:
I The
PRECEPTS of God (3:4): An unchanging law.
Before reading this verse, we must be very careful to understand what John is saying here. He is not saying that Christians never sin. We only have to look back at the first chapter of this letter where John makes it clear that anyone (and he is talking to Christians), anyone who says that they have not sinned is engaging in self-deception, and then he told us how important it was for each of us to confess our sins to God, which means “to say the same thing as God does about our sin”, and that God will then forgive us and cleanse us of our sins. So if even Christians still commit sins, is John going to contradict himself now in chapter three? No, he won’t, as we will see. He will not be talking about individual stumbles into sins, but rather to a pattern – or better - a direction of life. But first he lays down a principle of sin that gives meaning to the rest of this passage:
1
John 3:4 Everyone
who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
The very first thing that John points out is here in verse four, where he states the obvious fact that sin involves breaking the law of God. Even before we start talking about patterns vs stumbles and verb tenses, we must understand here that this principle is really true of all types of sin. Every time we sin we are really rebelling against the law of the sovereign Lord of the universe. Period. The fundamental truth that comes before all else is the eternal God. He is the Creator and Sustainer of all things. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. He is perfectly just. He is infinitely holy. He is the King of Kings and ruler of all things. There is no other Authority or Power apart from Him. As the writer of the Book of Hebrews put it:
Heb
4:13 [NASB95] … there is no creature hidden from His sight, but
all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
His word is law, and everyone will be measured by that law. The verse above describes Him as “the one with whom we have to do”. He is inescapable. As Paul warns us all in Romans:
Romans 14:10b-12 10 …For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God." 12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.
We must start at that point. And John tells us that sin is lawlessness. Think about it: every sin is merely the substituting our will for the will of the creator. It is the created being carving out a piece of creation and telling his creator “this is mine, not yours, and you can’t tell me what to do here!” The Greek word translated lawlessness is anomia. If we look at the times Jesus used that word is was usually to describe someone who was under God’s judgment. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave a warning about those who would come to Him at the judgment and declare all of the things that they had done for Him and called Him “Lord, Lord” but who had ignored his teaching, saying “And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matthew 7:23) Their hearts were never changed by the miracle of salvation. Their works were useless. They were lawless, even though they were “religious”.
The word anomia is used often to describe the enemies of God. Remember that back in chapter two, before John mentioned these “antichrists” in the professing church, he referred to the fact that “Antichrist is coming”. There will be an actual person referred to by that name. While John is the only writer who refers to him by this name, he is mentioned by other bible writers. This individual that will lead the final public rebellion against God is given a different name by the apostle Paul. What does he call this person? He calls him “the man of lawlessness” or “the lawless one”.
John does not really have to say more than he has in verse 4 to make his point, does he? But he goes on and gives two more good reasons to expect those who are saved to be on a trajectory away from a life characterized by sin.
II The PURPOSE of God (3:5-6):
Jesus has an intentional and specific mission.
The next reason that we should make a practice of not sinning is that Jesus died for the express purpose of taking away sins. Remember that right after John writes about confessing our sins to be forgiven at the end of chapter one, he starts chapter two with these words: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” In other words, “Yes, you still sin, but STOP IT! THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT HERE!” We are to walk in the Spirit and no longer be slaves of sin. The rest of John 2:1-2 says “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” His job of advocate is to cover our sins, yes, in eternity the situation will be different. If you are a Christian, in your past Jesus saved you from the penalty of sin. In the present, He saves you from the power of sin, and in the future, He will save us from the presence of sin. Sin will be no more. The main request of what we call the Lord’s Prayer will be completely fulfilled. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. The point of Jesus coming was to seek and to save the lost. His goal is to present all of us in heaven. Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians:
Ephesians 1:4 … he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him…
Jesus had a plan for coming. It was not a haphazard plan put together with bubblegum and bailing wire. It was not a competition between Him and a horde of other gods who all thought that they had good ideas on how to get people to heaven. There was one problem – lawlessness and rebellion – and One whose law was broken – the eternal infinite Creator and King of the Universe – and one just result: an eternity of the wrath of God. Because God’s wrath was righteous, correct, and inescapable, only that Judge could save us from His own judgment. We couldn’t do it. Even if there was one human being who somehow escaped being born in sin and who never committed a single sin, he or she could only save themselves. So God had to make a plan for us to be saved. He took the initiative. Why? We all know what Jesus told the great teacher Nicodemus as related by John in his gospel:
John
3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”.
While that verse is
familiar to many, the next two verses are important too:
John
3:17-18 “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the
world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes
in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
He came to seek and to save that which was lost. Our plight was hopeless, but Jesus was the Man with the Plan. The gospel is good news because without it we have no hope. The Bible tells us clearly that “… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 3:23, 6:23). As Jesus tells Nicodemus, He did not come to condemn the world. Why? Because it didn’t need condemning. We were condemned already! Sin (and sins) were the problem, and that problem was not going to go away by itself. Now John tells us the purpose of Jesus in our salvation:
1 John 3:5-6 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
Somehow people who claim to be followers of the Lord Jesus Christ have simplified all of salvation to the formula “Jesus died to save sinners from the penalty of sin” but take it no further. They are the people that Paul addressed in his hypothetical question in Romans 6:1 that stupidly ask “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Paul’s answer is emphatic: “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (6:2) John basically says the same thing here. Jesus came to take away sins. The verb here describes someone picking something up and carrying it away. He did not save us so that we could sin without penalty. He saved us so that we could become more like God and eventually live without guilt or fear in his presence forever. No sin will be allowed in his presence. It must be done away with. So Paul’s question is appropriate here: How can we who died to sin still live in it? It would be like taking mud into the bath with us. If Jesus has taken away our sin, there ought to be less of it. Why? Because it is the purpose that Jesus came for. He is the one who can get it done. He is the Good Shepherd, He knows his sheep, and they know his voice, and they follow Him.
One final thought: Jesus is not the only one with plans for us. It is a universal truth that sin loves company. And the first sinner, Satan, is the greatest example of that. John continues:
1 John 3:7-8 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
This
is the continuation of John’s discussion of the purpose of Jesus. The Son of
God had a plan – not just to take away sin, but also to destroy all that has
come from the works of that first sinner. His final judgment is delayed, but
still sure. Jesus invaded this sad and broken world to rescue those
oppressed and deceived by the devil. When Jesus does away with sin He
replaces it with righteousness. The word “destroy” here is a rich word in the
Greek, with a lot of different images. It is used for removing restraining rope
or bandages. It conveys the idea of destroying, crushing, dissolving, untying,
and releasing from bondage. Jesus is the ultimate Savior. And He will finish
the job. I love the assurance Paul gives in his letter to the church in
III The PATERNITY of God (3:7-9):
I saw a funny meme a few months ago that showed a picture of a man with a very unique face. He had heavy eyebrows, a wild mop of dark hair on his head, and two large ears that stuck out straight from the sides of his head. He was holding a baby up in the picture, a baby with a wild mop of dark hair, thick eyebrows, and ears that stuck out from the side of his head. The man was beaming with pride, and the caption on the picture said, quote, “The smile of a man who does not need a paternity test”. This is a perfect illustration of the third principle that John talks about – the principle of Family Characteristics. Most families have common characteristics, like the man in the meme. Skin color, hair color, height, eye color – all of these tend to be found in common among family groups. Sometimes it is subtle, and sometimes it is obvious. John uses similar wording to describe two spiritual families:
1 John 3:9-10 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
It is a common saying that “we are all in God’s family”, but Jesus often indicated otherwise. Speaking to the religious leaders of his time, He said:
John 8:42, 44, 47 42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. ... 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. ... 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God."
This is astounding language, is it not? I can hear people in our modern times yell back at Him “who are you to judge!” But Jesus was speaking not of blood, but of behavior. The Pharisees were very religious. They practiced their religion diligently and obsessively. But Jesus was not talking about religion, but sin. They said one thing, but did another. They were self-righteous but were hypocrites. They were telling obvious lies. They had closed their ears and hearts against the truth of God and were rendered unable to hear the words that would save them. And it was no secret at this time that they were making plans at this time to murder Him. Their family resemblance gave them away. We can’t control how tall we are. We can dye our hair but in a short time the roots of our hair give away what color our hair really is. Because it is in our genes. If we have been born again we have been given new spiritual genes in a very real sense. The word seed above is the Greek word sperma which was used for plant seeds but evolved into our word for the conveyor of our hereditary legacy.
As
a born again believer the Bible says that we are adopted as sons into
God’s family, with all of the rights and privileges that come with it. But scripture goes farther than this
metaphor. We read in Paul’s writings to
the church in
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
In the miracle of salvation it is not just our legal status that changes. It is not just our destiny. What changes are our very thoughts and desires. In the Old Testament God described the changes that were coming by talking of replacing our hearts of stone with a heart of flesh, and of writing his law into the hearts of his people. It is not based on us or on our resolve to change. Our spiritual DNA is re-written at salvation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!
John speaks very strongly in these last two verses. He makes a strong case for family resemblance. He gives us the form of a paternity test. He goes further in verse ten – he says in so many words that the family resemblance is evident. Some bible translations use the word “obvious”, like the NASB, which translates it as “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious.” And it all comes down to continuation in sin. At the end of the verse, John adds another of his tests when he adds that a child of God will “love his brother”. But that is what the next sermon will be about.
Conclusion
Do John’s words seem harsh here? Remember that he has written this book not to cause doubt, but to give hope and calm assurance. Are you not perfect? Neither am I. What John is talking about is primarily the direction of our lives. Our new heart is developing in this life. We are like a cocoon, whose contents are neither caterpillar nor butterfly, but both. We are like a teenager, no longer a child but in the process of reaching full adulthood. All of us who were teenagers remember how we struggled to find our adult identity in those confusing times. We made mistakes. But we grew. In the same way believers can say like Paul “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” (Phil 3:12) In the same way, Peter described virtues that Christians must grow in, saying “if these qualities are yours and are increasing” and then urges us to “be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” (2 Peter 1:8,10).
What is sin? 1 John 3:4 contains one definition of sin, which is disobeying the law of God, also called sins of commission. But there are other types of sin that are just as destructive. There are sins of omission. James writes in 4:17 of his letter that “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” In Romans 14:23 we read that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin”, meaning that we also sin when we take our moral responsibilities lightly and don’t seriously evaluate them by God’s word.
So we still commit sins. But we shouldn’t. And saved people don’t – and can’t - live lawless lives. In the end, I will repeat that this is all about direction of life. If you are stuck in the same ruts as when you made a profession of faith, then something is wrong. But don’t despair if you are not there yet. Consider the promise of blessing at the end of Isaiah chapter 40:
Isaiah 40:31 but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Does this verse seem backwards? Shouldn’t the progression be from walking to running and then to flying? Surely flying is harder than walking? But in the walk of life this verse shows great wisdom. Remember the seed that sprang up in the bad soil but which withered? The wisdom is this: When people first hear the gospel they often experience an emotional high and make great commitments. But life drags on. We are tempted, we are tested, we are persecuted. The measure of spiritual life is not in the moments of flying, but in the daily grind of living. How is your walk? What direction are you walking?
That is where true
assurance is found.
