The apostle John has proclaimed a glorious truth for us to hear. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are” (1 John 3:1 ESV). We have been placed into an amazing, undeserved relationship with the Father, being called his children. We noticed in 1 John 3:3 that everyone who has this hope of enjoying the fullness of this relationship when Jesus returns purifies himself. Seeing what kind of the love the Father has for us that we are children of God is the motivation for us to purify our lives. What John is going to express to us now is the power of God’s love to change and purify us. The apostle John wants us to know that we have eternal life (cf. 1 John 5:13). So he is going to describe what the children of God do and do not do with the Father’s love. This will be a difficult lesson but I ask you to stay with the lesson to the end to hear the message that God has for each one of us. Please open your copies of God’s word to 1 John 3 and we are going to spend our time considering verses 4-10.
The Seriousness of Sin (1 John 3:4-5)
John begins by teaching us to think rightly about sin. Sin is incompatible with the law of God. There is a problem with sin. The word “sin” is a Greek word that, if you grew up in the pews you might have heard, means missing the mark. But I want you to notice that John does not merely say that sin is missing the mark. John does not merely say that sin is failing to meet up the standard given to us. Notice that John wants to emphasize the seriousness of sin. Sin is lawlessness. John plainly proclaims in verse 4 that everyone who practices sin is practicing lawlessness. Practicing sin has an attitude to it and the attitude is that you do not care about God’s laws or ways. Everyone who has this hope as children of God purifies himself (1 John 3:3). Everyone who is not purifying themselves has an attitude of lawlessness with God.
The point is to underscore the seriousness of sin. Sin is a problem. The practice of sin is a problem. If we are children of God then we can never be dismissive about our sinning. If we are children of God then we can never excuse our sins. We can never soften the seriousness of our own sins. Practicing sin means we have an attitude of lawlessness with God. We are exhibiting a stubbornness about our sins that was the reason the people of Israel were repeatedly condemned in the scriptures. We have recently been studying some of the messages from the prophet Jeremiah. I would like to remind you of their lawless attitude though they were to be the people of God. In Jeremiah 19 God described the judgment coming because of the people’s sins. Listen to God’s plea and the people’s response:
“Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.” But they say, “That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.” (Jeremiah 18:11-12 ESV)
God says to stop sinning and change your ways. The people respond that they refuse. They will continue to practice their sins. They will maintain their lawless attitude toward God. The Christian no longer has this attitude. The Christian does not live as if he is a law unto himself. The children of God are no longer stubborn with their sinning because they understand the seriousness of sin and they understand the character of God.
Continued sinning is also incompatible with the life of the Christian because of Jesus’ purpose. Look at verse 5. You know that Jesus appeared in order to take away sins. Jesus did not come to merely forgive your sins. Jesus came to take away sinning. His coming was to get the world to stop sinning. Jesus did not come to this earth and endure the shame and suffering of the cross so that we would keep on sinning. Seeing Jesus does not mean that we now relax in our concern for sin because we know he will forgive. Rather seeing Jesus means that we intensify our efforts against sin because we know that he came to remove sin and there is no sin in him at all. Jesus is pure and we must likewise purify ourselves (1 John 3:3).
What Practicing Sin Says (1 John 3:6)
Listen to the strong words of verse 6 to drive home this truth even further. No one who remains in Christ keeps on sinning. Jesus came to take away the filth and we are not going to keep running back into the same filth. We are not going to willfully ignore what our Savior has told us to stop doing. God has gone through the process of meticulously cleansing us. How can be possibly run right back into our sins? Lawlessness is not who we are anymore. We do not hear God’s ways and run away from them. We do not listen to his word and look to defy it. We desire his law because we see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we would be called children of God. No one in relationship with Jesus keeps violating what the Father said to do. Seeing the love of God is supposed to radically change us day by day.
This is what John says at the end of verse 6. John tells us that no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Now it is important to think about that at this time when John writes this there would be very few people who had ever physically seen Jesus. Jesus rose from the dead and ascended around 60 years earlier. John is not talking about physically seeing or knowing Jesus while he was on the earth. What John is saying is that if you are stubbornly persisting in your sins then you are not looking at Jesus at all and you certainly do not know him at all. In Hebrews 12:1-2 the author of Hebrews proclaims that we will lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely so that we can run with endurance, fixing our eyes on Jesus. Continuing in sin means we are not looking at Jesus. Persisting in sin means we are not looking at Jesus and do not know Jesus. There are a lot of people who are going to be surprised because they think they have been looking at Jesus and think they know Jesus. Jesus warned everyone about this.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matthew 7:21-23 ESV)
Jesus made it clear that he does not know anyone who is not doing the will of the Father in heaven just as he did the will of his Father.
Do Not Be Deceived (1 John 3:7-8)
Now we see the heart of John because he says in verse 7 that he does not want any of them to be deceived. “Little children, let no one deceive you.” This is an area where there is a lot of deception. There is the deception of the devil, the deception of the world, and the deception of our own hearts. The deception is that you can be righteous and practice sin. Listen to what the apostle John teaches in verses 7-8. The person who is righteous is the one who practices righteousness. Practicing sin means you are not righteous. Now he really wants to break through the deception by saying something hard that no one wants to hear. Look at verse 8.
“Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil.” Those are not words we would say and those are not words that we would ever want to believe about ourselves. But John compassionately says it to us. Choosing to continue in our sinful ways means we belong to the devil and not to Jesus. Practicing sin means that you belong to the devil. We are not showing that we are children of God but are children of the devil. Now we hear words like this and think that this cannot be right. But Jesus himself spoke this way and we often do not realize how strongly he spoke. Listen to what Jesus said:
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. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.” (John 8:42-44 ESV)
Jesus told a whole crowd of people. But he did not just say this to any crowd of people. Jesus said this to a crowd of people who believed in him (cf. John 8:31). He was not speaking to the rebellious world. Jesus was speaking to people who believed in him to show them that their belief was not where it needed to be if they were to be true disciples. Coming back to 1 John 3:8 we hear the apostle John make the point that the devil has been sinning from the beginning and the Son of God came with the very purpose of destroying the works of the devil. Jesus did not come so that we would keep on sinning. Jesus did not come so that we would not change our lives. Jesus came for the purpose of repentance: life change. Jesus came to put an end to sin. Jesus came to put an end to the devil’s works. The apostle Peter said it like this:
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. (1 Peter 2:24 ESV)
Born of God (1 John 3:9-10)
Now John is going to give us another picture of why sinning is incompatible with the Christian life.
“No one born of God makes a practice of sinning” (1 John 3:9).
You see that our actions show to whom we belong. Continued sinning means that we belong to the devil. Continued righteousness means that we belong to Jesus. No one who is born of God keeps on sinning. No one who is a child of God holds on to their sinful ways. Why? Look at the rest of verse 9. No one who is born of God keeps on sinning because God’s seed abides in him and he cannot keep on sinning. No one who has God’s seed planted in them will keep on sinning. People who have God’s seed planted in them are born of God. What does this mean? I think the apostle Peter can help us understand what John is speaking about. Listen to what Peter said:
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God…. (1 Peter 1:22-23 ESV)
God implants a seed in your heart through his word that bring about a pure heart that obeys the truth because we have been born of God and are children of God. If God’s seed is working in us, then we will not keep on sinning. Continuing in sin shows that we have not been born again. Continuing in sin shows that we do not have the living and abiding word of God at work within us. Continuing in sin shows that we are not children of God but children of the devil. This is what John says in 1 John 3:10. You know who are children of God and who are children of the devil by actions. The fruit of our lives shows who we belong to. The fruit of the lives shows what is inside of us.
The Power of Love
John is teaching us what the power of God’s love is supposed to do to our lives. So what conclusions and lessons are we to draw from what the apostle is teaching us? First, John is not saying that a sin means we are not children of God. Remember that John taught in the first chapter that anyone who says that have not sinned and have no sin are liars, are self-deceived, and make God a liar (1 John 1:8-10). John’s point is not that when we commit a sin that this means we are children of the devil. The problem is the practice. The problem is the stubbornness to continue doing the same sin. The problem is excusing our sins. It is shocking that this is exactly what supposed Christians will do. They will name that they are doing something that is clearly condemned in the scriptures but have a reason for why they are doing it. This is exactly what John is talking about. Continuing sin shows that we are children of the devil and God’s seed does not abide in us.
Second, we are not forever condemned to our habitual sins. This is the good news. There is no sin that cannot be stopped. There is no practice that you do not have the power to gain control over. Now it does not feel like this is true when we are captured by our sins. It does not seem like we can ever stop. So we think that this is the way we are wired. We think that we are born this way. We might think we are defective because we have feelings and desires that seem to be unchangeable. But here is what John is telling us: the power to fight sinning is by seeing what kind of the love the Father has given to us that we are called his children. The power to fight sin is to know who we are and where we are going. The power to fight sin is to see our future hope of glory.
Third, the power of love is the power God gives to us to win against the power of sin. What you love is what you do. You will do what you love. You will do what you want to do. This is why John wants us to see what kind of love the Father has given to us to call us his children. We have to admit that we do what we love and we do not love God if we keep practicing sin. What we are doing is showing that we are children of the devil and not children of God. John does not say this to hurt our feelings but to wake us up before it is too late. Do not be deceived. You are not with God and you are not children of God if you are not fighting sin and putting sin to death in your life. But the solution is not to merely stop it. God does not say to just have some willpower. God says to see Jesus. The one who keeps on sinning has not seen Jesus and does know Jesus. The power to fight sin comes from seeing and knowing Jesus. The power to overcome is in Jesus because we are to love him more than we love ourselves and more than the sins we give ourselves over to. Living in the love of God is the power we need to be children of God and to live righteously before God.