1 john 3:4-9

All right, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions this morning. We're gonna talk about whether you are a child of God Or a child of the devil How do you know? How do you know whose child you are? Let's have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get into God's Word Nope. Okay. Well, you're lost my game.
Let's pray Father, thank you so much for the blessing you've given us to read your word. Father, we pray that you would please help us to understand it. Please teach us your ways, Lord, where we are wrong. Correct and rebuke us where we need taught because of our ignorance. Instruct us where we need your Holy Spirit. Please send it in Jesus' name. Amen. Here we go. We are at 1 John chapter 3 beginning at verse 3 or verse 4. We'll go through verse 9. So how about you read the first paragraph and I'll read the second.
Whoever abides in him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen him nor known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God.
All right, so we need to ask ourselves our three questions, right? A. What is this about?
B. What is the best for us to summarize? And C. What do we call the trip? All right, so what's this about? I think it's kind of... I just know, like, sometimes it's hard, even when you get older, just like, how do I know if it's that person? Like, does that person look like this, judging by the outside? Like, how do they... What do they appear to be? Oh, you're saying to determine whether or not somebody's like a good person to be listening to and learning from and hanging out with? Yeah. All right. And so what's the test? Are they lawless or are they righteous? Okay. Yeah. So lawlessness and righteousness, right?
But weren't the Pharisees pretty law-keeping? Yeah, pretty law-keeping. But Jesus called them whitewashed tombs. Yeah, because the Pharisees, Jesus, when you're doing talks with him, the Pharisees were very, they were not unholy people. They were very, I'm gonna say devout. Devout, okay.
And they were not, except in how they would do is they would tell everybody else what they should do, but they themselves would find loopholes. Okay, so they would find loopholes for themselves so they could look holy but without actually practicing righteousness.
Interesting that you picked up on that, that the word law is in here. What is sin? Sin is lawlessness, antinomian. This is why the Westminster Confession, or a shorter catechism, when it says, what is sin? Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. Meaning, we aren't conforming to God's law, or we're transgressing God's law. Primarily in the Ten Commandments. We look at the Ten Commandments and we go, oh man, I've fallen short. So I'm a sinner.
But isn't it interesting here, Nathan, that he says whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And then he says that you know that he was manifested to take away our sins. Who's the he that was manifested? Who came in the flesh? Jesus. Jesus.
And Jesus came to take away our sins and in Him, that being in Jesus, He says, in Jesus there is no sin. And whoever abides in Jesus does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Okay, so if you are a Christian, then you should no longer ever sin again because you're in Jesus, right?
But I thought that's what it kind of seems like. And if you do sin, then you're of the devil. Well, I think that. Are you just trying to create a loophole? No. I think that that when It says, whoever sins has neither seen him, not known him. I think that... That's interesting.
Yeah, so he's not letting people off the hook for sin, is he? No. No, right, we should not be sinning. If we're in Christ, we should not be sinning. But we keep breaking this apart by little chunks, right? But in chapter one, he specifically said, if you say you have no sin, you deceive yourself. And you make God a liar. I don't think in chapter one he's saying that somehow we don't sin anymore. No, if you say you don't have sin, you're lying and you're making God a liar. So, what must he be talking about here? That if... That he doesn't want anybody to deceive them. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. I think it's, um, unforgiven sin. Oh, there's sins that God doesn't forgive you of?
No, so maybe like you were you sinned and but then someday you were baptized and once you were baptized and all those Sins were washed away. And now you're at a clean slate. And so you don't need to sin anymore. No, I think it's That Forgiveness is free gift and God But a gift can be declined I Like somebody can choose not to take a gift. And so I think that, yes, we should not sin. But when we do sin, we have forgiveness to wash away.
I think there's some theological challenges there and some Bible things that maybe fight against certain ideas of like rejecting that gift in certain areas. But what I think this is saying here is the tenses I think are really important. We've been learning about, I've been teaching guys Greek, and he who practices righteousness, present, active, indicative, It's the ongoing practicing of sin. It's that walking in unrighteousness.
It's the, I don't care. I'm going to sin because I want to sin. Can somebody be a Christian and not care about sin? Can somebody be a Christian and say, you know what? I don't care. I want to sin. And I'm going to sin. And I'm going to keep on sinning. Because I know that Jesus is going to forgive me for my sins.
No. Is that true faith? No. That's what he's saying here. There's even those people in the world who will say, who will try to reconcile this, and they'll say things like, well, I no longer willfully sin. Okay. Whatever. Right? Like, they'll just say, well, it's just my flesh within me that's sinning. It's not actually me. Well, that creates all sorts of theological problems. Hold on. No, no, no. I don't think that's what this is saying.
But then other people will say that, well, you can be a carnal Christian. You can be a Christian, but you can still enjoy the pleasures of this life and the things of this world. And you can still sin because God forgives you. He's a gracious and loving and gentle and forgiving God. And so He's not that God of the Old Testament who's all about holiness and wrath.
And by their theology, they're essentially wiping away. There is no more law. Parts of the Spirit now. And so John is saying, no, no, neither of those. We know that we have an advocate with the Father when we sin. Jesus is faithful and righteous. He's the just one. He forgives us of our sin.
But if we're of Christ, if we're His, are we going to want to keep on sinning? No, and over our lives, should we see us hating sin more and more and loving righteousness more and more and seeing that transition happening in our lives? Yeah. Is this saying that you're no longer going to ever struggle with sin? No, but if you're not a Christian, what will happen? you'll just engage in unrighteousness and lawlessness, and show in your life that you're not really one of God's people. So I don't get discouraged or despaired when I see people convicted of sin, and they'll read passages like this, and I go, no, oh no, right?
I thought I was reborn, but I still sin, I still struggle with my sin. I say, good. Good, keep putting it to death. Love Christ more. Keep walking towards holiness. What really concerns me is when somebody decides they want to sin and then digs in their heels and they say, no, I'm going to do this. And I go, oh, back up. You're in a really dangerous spot. Sometimes I'll read this passage with them. Who are you? What's the pattern of your life showing?
So we don't believe in the doctrine of perfectionism. I'm saying we as in our denomination, our constitution, our theology in Reformed theology says, no, we don't believe in perfectionism. We're not saying that you no longer willfully sin. No, your sin is really your sin. You've got to repent of it. It's yours. Nor are we saying that we're just brushing these verses under the rug. You should really be concerned about your sin. Because if you're practicing lawlessness rather than righteousness, it shows you're not following in the path of Christ, but you're following in the path of the devil. So, it's kind of a big area, huh? Yeah. What do you think would be the best verse to summarize this? 7 to 8 maybe? Yeah.
For some reason I don't actually have anything underlined in my Bible. I'm going to reach over here and grab my pencil because that's exactly what I was thinking I should have underlined in my Bible too. So what would you say you are called to do? I think we should I never actually found out how this points to Jesus.
Well, what do you think? Because there's a few places where Jesus is talked about in this passage. Yeah. He was the one who was manifest. Oh, I got it. And notice in verse 8 what you just said. What's the second half of verse 8 said? the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil."
And we should take after Jesus. We should try to be like Him. Yeah, we should. As it said in the previous verse, we should abide, verse 8, whoever abides in Him does not sin. So how do we overcome sin? We abide in Him. So I might even underline the first part of verse 6, whoever abides in Him does not sin.
Jesus says He is the vine and we are the branches. If we abide in Him, we will bear much good fruit. But if we don't bear good fruit, what happens? What happens to the branch that's not bearing good fruit? gets cut off. I think these should be practical things. We abide in Jesus. We rest in Jesus. We follow Jesus. We have hope in Jesus. We eat and drink when we go to the sacraments. Spiritually fed by Jesus there. Remembering what he's done for us. And out of a love for him, put to death our sins.
Sound good? All right, so let's get real nitty gritty though. I'm gonna put you on the spot. What sin are you trying to put to death by abiding in Jesus? Just saying. You want to know mine lately? What? I think it's... Trying to eat for comfort rather than being a glutton. Trying to find my stress relief in food rather than going to Christ. Probably getting easily angered and annoyed. Because I think I get annoyed, which makes me angry, which makes me annoyed, then I get angry, which makes me more angry, and then I kick it at somebody else. Actually being angry at being annoyed. Yeah. So we can talk maybe after devotions about how to put on and put off that. So maybe we can hold each other accountable and work on it together. Yep. You ready to pray? You want to pray this time? Nope. Okay.
God, we pray that we would not walk in sin. that we would abide in your Son, Jesus Christ, and as we abide in your Son, as we abide in our Lord and Savior, as we remain and our lives are hidden in Him, Lord, we pray that we would grow in holiness, that we would not walk in lawlessness. God, we pray that we would hate sin, that we would seek to put it to death in our mortal bodies, that we would, Lord, that we would even as Paul says, pummel our bodies into submission, that we might attain to the prize. Lord, please help us to love Jesus more than anything else, even more than our sin. And let us walk in righteousness, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, may God's spirit rest in you. May you pursue righteousness and holiness all your life by abiding in Jesus. And we'll see you next time. Bye!