The Practice of the Children of God – Part 1

1 John 3:4-8

March 2, 2003

            Our text this morning is found in 1 John 3:4-10.  1 John 3:4-10.  Follow along as I read the text this morning.  Read text.

            We have been looking at 1 John 2:28-3:3 for the past three weeks and in that passage dealing with the practical implications of the second coming of Jesus Christ to this earth for our lives today.  The heart of that text is found in verses one and two where John declares that we are now the children of God.  It is by God’s eternal plan in Jesus that we are the children of God, and someday it will be brought to consummation by the return of Jesus to rescue His people and bring wrath on those who do not believe the Gospel.  Our redemption will be accomplished in its completeness and totality and we will be just like Jesus – completely free from all sin.  John’s closing exhortation in that text was a logical deduction that if we have the hope of being like Jesus when He returns, we will be trying to be like Him before He returns so that when He returns we will have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame.  John has dealt with our redemption from the standpoint of the future coming of Jesus and what that means for us today. 

            We are children of God, and we have fellowship with God as His children even this very moment as we are here in this building listening to the Word of God if we are in Christ.  And if we are in Christ we know that we are practicing righteousness.  That is the teaching we have just heard.  And now here in this text this morning, 1 John 3:4-10, John proceeds to explain how we as children of God will act in light of Jesus’ incarnation, His first coming.  How does Jesus’ incarnation impact our fellowship with God?  In these seven verses we read this morning it becomes evidently clear that our standing as children of God will have real, practical, definable, tangible results.  We could entitle these seven verses The Practice of the Children of God.  We can call it that because that is what John is doing here.  He is laying down the pattern of conduct that we, as children of God, will manifest in our lives if we have truly seen and known Jesus Christ.  And he does that in two ways.  The first way is to show us the purpose of the Incarnation, which he does in verses four through eight, and the second way is to show us the results of the incarnation, namely, the new birth, and we see that in verses nine and ten.  This morning we will focus only on the purpose of the incarnation.  Next Sunday we will (Lord-willing) move on to examine the results of the incarnation to complete our picture. 

            Now this morning we are concerned to answer the question: What was the purpose of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?  Why did God the Son come into this world as a baby, live a sinless, holy, perfect life, die a gruesome, violent, tortuous death on the cross, lie in the grave over the course of three days, and then rise on the third day in a resurrected, glorified body?  What is the meaning of all of that?  Philippians 2:7-8 tell us that Jesus emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men…He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Why did He do it?

            It is important to remember at this point that the Gospel message is not mere theological discourse or religious talk.  The Gospel is not some message about a religious theory or a metaphysical philosophy.  The Gospel is the retelling of historical events that happened in space and time on the very planet on which we live today and explaining the real-life impact those events must have on a person’s life.  The Gospel is not calling a person to do some act or to accept a philosophical religious system.  The Gospel is explaining what God did in Jesus on this earth in history and the implications those events have for our eternal destiny.  It is telling people what God did for us in His Son in this world.  Don’t ever think of the Gospel as a mere theological system.  When you share the message of Jesus Christ with someone you are explaining to them historical events that took place and the reasons those events had to take place.  As we think about the incarnation it is essential that we bear in mind that we are considering actual historical realities.  And the question that we face this morning is: Why did those historical events occur?  Why did Jesus come into this world, into history, and live the life He lived and die the death He died?  This is not speculating about religious theory; this is understanding the nature of reality in our world and universe.  So we ask the question: Why did these historical events occur?  Think about the events for a minute.  Reflect on what you know from the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – and then think about why all of those things happened. 

            The Bible gives several reasons why the incarnation happened.  This morning we will look at two of them.  I want to focus your mind in on two purposes of the incarnation.  Two purposes of the incarnation.

Purpose #1 – To take away sins (vv. 4-6)

            Purpose number one: Jesus came into this world to take away sins.  To take away sins.  That is found in verses four through six.  The incarnation happened so that Jesus might take away sins.  This is very clearly stated in verse five.  John writes, You know that He appeared in order to take away sins, or so that He might take away sins.  John, however, does not start this passage with this verse.  He has to go back one step before he gets to this statement, and he does that in verse four.  The question must first be answered: What is sin?  And John starts with this question in verse four.  He begins by defining sin for us.  He writes in verse four, Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness.  What does he mean by that?  John clearly has some emphasis in mind when he uses these two terms, sin and lawlessness, so what is that emphasis?  Why does he put it like this? 

            The emphasis is that if a person lives a lifestyle characterized by sin, his lifestyle is also characterized by lawlessness.  In John’s day sin and lawlessness were often used as distinct and different terms by false teachers.  Sin was characterized as moral defection or unrighteous acts committed by a person outwardly, but lawlessness was inward rebellion against God that was of the same form as the devil’s rebellion.  So the false teachers taught that a person could sin but not be lawless.  If a sin was committed by a person with his body it was of no consequence because that person still was a child of God and not of the devil, so that person, even though he lived in habitual moral sin and decadence, was not lawless as is the devil.  That was the logic.  John, however, says that if a person practices sin that person practices lawlessness.  Anyone who makes a practice of sin actively practices rebellion against God and His law.  That is John’s point.  It is impossible to practice sin and not be a rebel against God and His law.  A person cannot say that he is a sinner but still stands uncondemned because he is not as bad or as wicked or of the devil. 

            John brings that point home when he writes, and sin is lawlessness.  They are synonyms.  Sin and lawlessness are not separate and distinct concepts for John.  They are one and the same.  The person who sins breaks God’s law, and that person is guilty of rebellion against God.  The practicing sinner is an active rebel against God’s holiness no matter how he tries to redefine his own sin.  We have tried to redefine sin, haven’t we?  What the Bible calls a drunkard we now call an alcoholic.  When the Bible teaches that homosexuality is an abomination, we call it a sexual preference or sexual orientation.  But John’s point is that it doesn’t matter what you call sin, if you break God’s law, you practice sin and you practice lawlessness no matter how you label it or how you define it.  Sin is a violation of God’s holy law and brings about condemnation and wrath and death.  So John says, Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.  Sin is breaking the law of God at any point.  Lawlessness is a word that simply means to act as against the law.  The idea is that sinning is acting against the law of God and breaking His holy, righteous, just law.  John says, “Sin is lawlessness, and before I venture into verse 5 and explain why Jesus came, I want you to understand the nature of sin.  It is lawlessness.  It is acting as if God’s law does not apply to you.  It is directly spitting in God’s face, as it were, and choosing something other than honoring His infinite glory and worth.” 

            Verse 5, then, is an explanation of why Jesus came in relation to sin.  John writes, You know that He appeared in order to take away sins.  He begins with that familiar phrase we have seen so often: you know that…  The phrase is used to introduce an undeniable fact.  The fact is that Jesus came to take away sins.  He came for the express purpose of taking them away.  The word translated take away literally means “to lift up and carry away.”  Jesus came, then, to lift up our sins, to take them upon Himself, and carry them away.  Here John is talking about our individual sins, all the acts that we have ever done that have been lawless.  All the times we have violated God’s holiness and chosen the devil’s lie over God’s truth, Jesus came to take all of those sinful actions and thoughts and motives and to take them off of us and to put them on Himself and to carry them away from us. 

            There is a beautiful picture of this in the Old Testament that helps us understand what Jesus did on the cross.  Turn with me to Leviticus 16.  This is the chapter about the day of atonement when all the sins of Israel were to be atoned for by sacrifices to the Lord.  In this chapter Moses is given explicit instructions as to how he should act to make atonement for the sins of Israel.  One of his instructions is to find two male goats and to cast lots over each of them.  One of them will be a blood sacrifice and the other will be a scapegoat.  In verses 15 through 19 we read about the goat that is slaughtered for the sins of the people.  This goat is a blood sacrifice to make atonement for sin.  But in verse 20 we realize that even this sacrifice is not enough.  Look with me at verse 20.  Moses writes, When he finishes atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall offer the live goat.  Now this goat is the second goat.  The first goat has already been killed and his blood has been sprinkled on the altar and all the other necessary places.  How shall he offer the live goat?  Look at verse 21.  Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness.  The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.  So here’s the picture.  One goat is killed and his blood sprinkled.  Then Aaron comes and lays both of his hands on the live goat and confesses the sins of the people of Israel over the goat, and when he does that he lays the sins on the head of the goat.  The goat, then, carries the sins of the people outside the camp into the wilderness and takes away their sin.  This is exactly the picture of what Jesus did for us on the cross.  He fulfilled the role of both goats used in the sacrifice, and John here is especially concerned with the second goat that carries away the sins of Israel.  That is what Jesus did.  God laid upon Him our sins, and He took them away in His own body.  And John says that this is exactly why Jesus ever came into the world as a human in the first place.  He came to take away our sins.  He came so that we would no longer bear the guilt of our sins, but He would carry them on Himself on the cross and forever take them away from us.

            John emphasizes the point by writing and in Him there is no sin.  Jesus has no sin of His own.  He never committed one sin; He does not have a sinful nature.  He is absolutely perfectly holy.  What’s the point?  Why add that phrase?  How is that relevant?  Here’s the point: there is no friendly relationship between Jesus and sin.  Sin and Jesus have nothing in common.  Jesus came to get rid of sin, and He is not a sinner.  He is so opposed to sin that He left His throne in glory to come and take it away.  Jesus is the exact opposite of sin.  That is John’s point.  The whole purpose of the incarnation was to take away sin, and not only that, but Jesus Himself does not have any sin in Him at all!  He is completely separate from sin and hates sin enough to die to get rid of it. 

            So what follows in verse 6 is the natural, logical outflow from verse 5.  John writes, No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or known Him.  What does this mean?  How can John write that no one who abides in Him sins?  Does he mean that the true Christian never sins?  Because that is what it seems to say on the surface.  How can he make this statement, especially in light of what he wrote in chapter 1, verse 8 where he wrote, If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us?

            The key to understanding this text is in the Greek present tense that John uses.  John uses a tense that signifies continuous action.  John is not talking about individual acts of sin.  He is talking about a lifestyle characterized by sin.  We could render this verse, No one who abides in Him makes a practice of sin; no one who makes a practice of sin has seen Him or known Him.  The meaning is that of life direction and practice.  Are we characterized by sin?  Would people look at us and see lawlessness as the defining trait of our lives, and I mean lawlessness in the sense of breaking God’s law, not lawlessness in the humanistic conception of the term? 

            John basically says the same thing here two different ways.  No one who abides in Him practices sin.  No one who is a Christian, which is what it means to abide in Him, practices sin.  The true believer does not live a life characterized by continual practice of sin.  It must also be true, then, that everyone who does live a life of sin has not seen or known Jesus. 

            Jesus came, then, for the purpose of removing our sins.  He came to take away sins.  The practical implication of that is that those who are in Jesus will not live in sin, since that would defeat the whole purpose of His coming.  Those who are in Christ do not live a life of constant opposition to Christ. 

Purpose #2 – To destroy the works of the devil (vv. 7-8)

            It is a great temptation to not believe this text, or to make exceptions to it.  And for that reason John begins verse 7 by saying, Little children, make sure no one deceives you.  Don’t be deceived!  Don’t let anyone lead you astray and away from the path of truth!  It’s a command that we be on guard against anyone who would argue against this teaching of John, because those who would contradict him are trying to lead us astray. 

This transition in verse 7 bridges the gap between the first and second purpose John gives for the incarnation.  The first purpose of the incarnation of Jesus is to take away sins.  The second purpose is to destroy the works of the devil.  The second purpose John gives for Jesus’ coming to earth as a man was to destroy the works of the devil.  He explicitly states that in verse 8.  Notice, he writes, The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 

Once again, though, John does not just jump right into this purpose.  He begins with the warning of verse 7.  Make sure no one deceives you.  Really verses 7 and 8 say the exact same thing that verses 4 through 6 say, John just says it a different way.  He is so concerned that we understand this truth he takes pains to state it again in a different way in case we missed it the first time.  This is nothing new from verses 4 through 6; it’s just John’s way of emphasizing the importance of this doctrinal truth.  “Make sure no one deceives you, and to make sure that no deceives you, I’m going to restate it again,” John says.  The warning against being deceived consists of two parts.

The first part is about those who are righteous.  John writes, the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.  It is a basic truth: if you do righteous deeds consistently and that is your life habit, you are righteous, just as Jesus is righteous.  There is more being said here than is on the surface.  John says that the person who practices righteousness, not necessarily perfectly, but as their lifestyle, is righteous, just as Jesus is righteous.  How can that be?  How can I be just as righteous as Jesus?  Even if I could somehow make it the rest of my life without ever sinning again, which I certainly will not, but even if I could, I still have the sins of the past, so how can I be righteous just as Jesus is righteous when I am so unrighteous and have been so unrighteous, and Jesus was never unrighteous? 

The reason John can say this is because it is not a salvation by works.  It is not what you do that makes you righteous or unrighteous.  What we do makes all of us unrighteous.  But what you do demonstrates whether or not you have the righteousness of Christ which is received by faith in His name.  If you live a life characterized by righteousness, you can be certain that you have received the righteousness of Christ, and therefore God sees you just as righteous as Jesus.  This is just another way of saying, “The one who practices righteousness is a Christian, is saved.”  Christians practice righteousness because they are Christians.  That is what God has created them to do, and that is what they do, however imperfectly.  So John can say that the one who practices righteousness is righteous not because of that person’s deeds, but because that person has the faith that makes them righteous in Christ.  The one who practices righteousness must have faith, because the life patterned by righteousness cannot be lived without faith at all.  And so John’s point is that if you live a life honoring the law of God as your practice and standard, you are a Christian; you have the righteousness of Christ.

The opposite of that, which is the only other option, is to live a life of lawlessness, a life of sin.  Verse 8.  The one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.  If you live a life pattern of violating the law of God willfully and continuously you are of the devil.  The devil is your father.  He is the one you serve.  The only two options are to be in Christ or to be of the devil.  Where did John get this teaching?  He got it from Jesus.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 8, Jesus made this explicitly clear.  Speaking to those who were not believing in Him, Jesus said in John 8:41, You are doing the deeds of your father.  The Jews then claimed in verse 41 that God was their Father, and Jesus response in verse 42 is, If God were your Father, you would love me.  And then He goes on to say in verse 44, You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.  And so John, back in 1 John 3:8 echoes Jesus’ words and says that if you practice sin, if you do the works of the devil, the deeds of the devil, then you are of the devil.  You belong to him.  You are working for him.  You serve him.  You are in his kingdom.  He is your master.  He has you captive to do his will. 

The reason John says this is because the devil sins from the beginning.  The interesting thing about the statement that John makes, the devil has sinned from the beginning, is that in the Greek the verb translated has sinned is not past tense.  It is present tense.  It denotes continuous action.  The devil continuously practices rebellion against God.  He never ceases to be at enmity with God and against God and hating God.  He is the arch-enemy of God.  And he has been that way since the beginning of this world.  We see it in Genesis 3, do we not?  Who introduced sin into this world?  It wasn’t God.  It was the devil.  He showed how he is against God from the very beginning.  That has been his practice as long as human beings have existed.  The devil is opposed to all that God is, and he makes continuous assaults on God and on God’s people, which we will see more next week in verse 10. 

If your life is not characterized by righteousness, the fact is that you are not saved; and if you are not saved, then the fat is that you are of the devil, because the devil is the author of evil and sin. 

Having said that, John states the second purpose for Jesus’ coming.  He writes, The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.  Jesus purpose in coming was to destroy what the devil was trying to do.  His whole purpose was to tear down what the devil is attempting to build.  The devil’s whole system is built against God, and Jesus came to pull that system down, to smash it, and to tear it apart.  

John emphatically says that the one who leads the charge against God is the devil, and his work is to defame God and blaspheme God and kill and lie and destroy, and those who do those things cannot claim to be on the same side as God, because if you’re on the same side as God then you work against the devil, not for him.  Jesus works against the devil.  He came to destroy the devil’s building and to tear down the devil’s works.  How can a person claim to be in Christ if he is trying to rebuild what Christ came to destroy?  It makes no sense! 

What are the works of the devil?  Jesus made it plain in John 8:44.  He said, Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.  The work of the devil is and always has been lying, and especially lying about God.  Is that not what he did in the Garden of Eden with Eve?  God created a beautiful paradise for men and women to enjoy, and God only gave one stipulation, which was for their own good, and that was not to eat from a certain tree.  So what did the devil do?  He lied about God.  The abundance of God’s love was clear, but the devil came along and convinced Eve that God did not love her, but in fact God was against her and trying to suppress her, and the devil convinced her that God was an unreasonable tyrant who cared nothing for Eve.  Eve believed the lie about God.  She was deceived by the devil, the liar.  And is it not this way with us today?  The devil is always trying to get us to believe lies about God.  Who do people blame when bad things happen to them?  God!  Who do people credit when good things happen?  Luck, themselves, chance, good fortune, karma.  The lie is put forward day after day, week after week, year after year – God is not for you, He’s against you.  God doesn’t love you, He is unfair and unreasonable with His laws and rules.  God won’t punish you for your sin; all is well. 

And it was for this reason that Jesus came – to destroy the lie of the devil, the works of the devil.  The devil’s ultimate lie is that God is against us, hates us, is unreasonable and unfair, and is to blame for all that goes wrong in the universe.  The cross of Jesus Christ proves what folly, deception, and lies that is.  Jesus Christ came as proof that not only does God love us, He loves us even after we have completely marred and ruined His good creation.  Jesus came to undo and disprove the lie of the devil.  He came to destroy the devil’s work.  When men say God is unfair or unreasonable, very rarely do they mean that God is unfair because He provided salvation at Calvary.  Very rarely do they look at the cross and say, “That’s unfair!  That’s unreasonable of God!  How could God be like that!” 

Jesus’ work on the cross destroys the lie of Satan.  It destroys the works of the devil.  Because of the cross, the devil has nothing to stand on or point to or claim.  His whole operation comes crashing down because of the cross of Christ.  That’s why Paul could say in 2 Corinthians 2:14, Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ.  That is why in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 Paul could say, the weapons of our warfare…are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.  We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.  The incarnation makes that possible, and it makes ultimate victory certain.  It is the cross of Christ at His incarnation that allows believers to have victory over sin.  It is the cross of Christ that destroys the works of the devil and smashes down fortresses, speculations, and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.  Those are the works of the devil, and Jesus came to destroy them.

No one who is truly following Jesus actively works against Jesus.  Jesus came to take away sins, and Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil.  It’s hard to imagine that there is more John could say about this, because what he has already said is so wonderful, so awe-inspiring as we think of the coming of our Lord to this world as a man and dying on the cross to take away our sin and destroy the works of the devil.  But he does have more to say as he explains the practice of the children of God, and we will see that next time.  Let’s pray.

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