Who is Your Father?

1 John 3:4-10

^4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. ^5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. ^6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

^7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. ^8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. ^9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. ^10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

Edwin Stanton led a fascinating life. He was Secretary of War under President Abraham Lincoln. If you thought the Iraq War is a difficult war to lead, how would you have liked to try to manage the Civil War?!  Here he is pictured with Lincoln’s cabinet when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which eventually led to the 13^th amendment outlawing slavery. He was the primary figure which led to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. He was first trial attorney in the history of the U.S. to utilize the insanity defense for a defendant in a murder trial. Stanton holds the record for the shortest term ever served on the U.S. Supreme Court: one day. He was actually sworn in on his deathbed. But of all of these things, he is best known for his lead role in the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated President Lincoln.

Even prior to the 12-day search for Booth, Stanton was known as a man who clearly drew the lines between friend and foe, enemy and friend, Union and Confederate. He supported the right to "arrest and imprison any person or persons who may be engaged, by act, speech or writing, in discouraging volunteer enlistments, or in any way giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or in any other disloyal practice against the United States." But after Booth assassinated Lincoln and managed to escape, he drew the line even more clearly. He offered a $100,000 reward for his arrest and at the bottom of the wanted poster it was written, “All persons harboring or secreting the said persons, or either of them or aiding or assisting their concealment or escape, will be treated as accomplices in the murder of the President and the attempted assassination of the Secretary of State and shall be subject to a trial before a Military Commission and the punishment of DEATH.”

When it came to these important issues, Stanton did not live in the gray areas. For him, these things were clearly black and white, right and wrong. Another person who drew hard lines was the apostle John. In vv. 6-7 he wrote, “Whoever practices righteousness is righteous [and] whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil.” Throughout this letter John makes many more clear demarcations. Either you have fellowship with God or you do not. Either you follow the ways of the Father or you follow the ways of the world. If you don’t dwell in light you are in darkness. Love and hate, truth and lie, righteousness and sin. Everyone has a father—either God is your Father or the devil is your daddy. For John, there are no gray areas when it comes to sin. As Jesus said, “He who is not with me is against me.”

And then in verse six we have one of the most difficult verses in all the Bible. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Let me ask you a personal question. Have you continued to sin? John said that No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him, but has anyone here actually stopped sinning? If you have, make sure you talk to me after the service because I’d like to know your secret. But there are Christians who claim they have arrived at sinless perfection. One fairly prominent Christian writer said the following. “WE SHOULD AND CAN SIN NO MORE! ... I have been preaching AND LIVING this gospel of sanctification for many years. It is not a theory. It is practical, Scriptural reality. I preach it in the prisons, and it works on men who have lived lives of total addiction and enslavement. They come unto me all the time, bubbling over with joy, and TELL ME THAT THEY ARE NOW FREE FROM ALL SIN. ... walking in complete victory over sin and self”.[1]

Most people like this man who claim a sinless perfection base much of their theology on verse six. They believe that a true Christian cannot continue to sin, therefore sinless perfection is the necessary goal for all believers. I have never spoken personally with someone who holds this view, but if I did, the first question I would ask them is how they handle 1 John 1:8, If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. John will not allow a claim of sinless perfection, but we have verse six and verse nine which seem to be saying that a true Christian will not continue to sin. How do we reconcile these two verses? Let me start by saying that there is not a neat and clean resolution to this tension. We are supposed to feel this tension. We are supposed to wrestle with the twin ideas; as Christians we cannot claim sinless perfection, but on the other hand we cannot and must not be mired in habitual sin.

Before we work toward a solution, I want to show you how some denominations try to resolve this tension. One statement of faith explains it this way.

Sanctification is initiated at the moment of justification and regeneration. From that moment there is a gradual or progressive sanctification as the believer walks with God and daily grows in grace and in a more perfect obedience to God. This prepares for the crisis of entire sanctification which is wrought instantaneously when believers present themselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, through faith in Jesus Christ, being effected by the baptism with the Holy Spirit who cleanses the heart from all inbred sin.[2]

I agree with what they state about progressive sanctification—that we should be growing in grace year by year; that we should have an increasing hatred for sin and a corresponding increase in our love for Christ. But then this statement takes a new twist. They introduce a concept they call “entire sanctification” in which the Holy Spirit cleanses the heart from all inbred sin. They do not go so far as to say that this is a sinless perfection but it is something very much like it. The statement goes on to say, “For those who have been saved and have knowingly rejected the Holy Spirit's leading into entire sanctification, a heavenly destination may not be guaranteed.”[3]

Here is where we really begin to part ways with this kind of belief. They claim that a believer can be saved, but if this same believer does not move on to entire sanctification, they may not make it to Heaven. Plainly stated, they are saying that a Christian can lose their salvation.  At one level, I appreciate that they are at least attempting to deal with this tension in 1 John. John is clear that Christians should not be in habitual sin, but this particular denomination, whose beliefs are shared by several denominations and churches within the holiness movement, tries to resolve this tension with an easy out: You may be a Christian, but if you keep on sinning, you can lose your precious salvation. Notice that this is stronger language than many others who believe you can lose your salvation. Many churches teach that if you backslide and do not repent then you can lose your salvation, but this group has an even tougher standard. You don’t even have to backslide to lose your salvation. Rather you can lose your salvation simply by not progressing forward to this so-called “entire sanctification”.

I think this teaching is wrong and potentially dangerous, but I share it with you for a few reasons. The first reason is that all of us will encounter this kind of teaching somewhere along the way. How would you answer someone who claims that you can lose your salvation?  One of the great passages is the one I shared last week from John 10. “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” It is impossible for a true believer to be snatched out of the hand of the Father. Furthermore, think about all of the aspects of your salvation. Just to name a few:

· You have passed over from death to life (John 5:24)

· God has removed your heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh. (Ez. 36:26)

· Christ became a propitiation (atonement) for your sins, bearing the just wrath of the Father. (1 John 2:1)

· God imputed the righteousness of Christ. (2 Cor. 5:21)

· You have been adopted into God’s family and God is our true Father. (1 John 3:1)

· You have been justified (declared righteous) through faith in Christ. (Rom. 3:24)

If it were possible to “lose our salvation,” God would have to reverse all of these precious things he has done for us. He would have to send us from life back to spiritual death. He would need to remove our heart of flesh and put back the old heart of stone. He would have to completely erase his atoning work on the cross. He would have to disown us as his child. He would have to remove Christ’s righteousness. He would have to declare us guilty of all sin and again place the full wrath of God upon us. I see hundreds and hundreds of Scriptures that teach about these wonderful aspects of salvation being granted to those who have faith in Christ, but I don’t see any Scriptures that mention the removing and reversing of these things.

But if those in the holiness movement err on the side of losing your salvation, those of us who believe in the security of the believer tend to err on the side of carelessness for sin. At the very least, the holiness folks have a deadly seriousness about sin. They continually teach that sin needs to be killed in us or else it will kill us. But those who teach eternal security fall into what could be considered an even more dangerous trap: the so-called, “one saved, always saved” mentality. “I got save ten years ago and that’s that. Jesus saved me back in 1966 and I know I’m goin’ to Heaven.” Untold thousands of people think they are saved but show precious little evidence of life change. These people—and all of us too—need to heed the warning of verse six: No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. John doesn’t mean a sinless perfection, but he does intend that the true believer would not continue to make a practice of sin, and that if we do habitually sin, this is very good evidence of an absence of saving faith.

I believe that John wants that tension to linger in our minds. John is not threatening us that we will lose our salvation, but he is raising the bar high and making sure we understand that someone who is born of God cannot continue to practice sinning. But then he does not explain in detail what it means to continue in sin, or as another translation puts it, “make a practice of sinning.” He is not trying to scare his readers into thinking they are not saved but he is also very clear about what a changed life will look like. He doesn’t fully resolve the tension between  verse six in chapter three, No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him ,and verse eight in chapter one, If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. The result is that we are left with this tension between the two verses. We may ask ourselves, “Am I practicing sin or am I practicing righteousness? Does the continual change in my life demonstrate that I am born of God or is it possible that I am still outside of saving faith?” You see, on the one hand the weight and seriousness of sin should hang heavy upon us, but on the other hand, we need to see this gracious Father who is full of mercy and always ready to forgive.

Admittedly, it is a tough balance to maintain and too many people fall off the horse on one side or the other. Either they beat themselves up over their sin and don’t even feel worthy of forgiveness—a type of legalism, or else they overlook their sin and view God’s grace as a license to sin. John wants us to feel the weight of both sides. In a sense, he is pushing in from both sides. He pushes us hard on the side of grace and he pushes us in on the side of the Law, the result being a healthy, Biblically balanced believer.

In this section of his letter, John is definitely pushing harder on the side of sin. His goal is to help us see the seriousness of sin. He gives several reasons why we should have a loathing hatred for our sin. Remember, in the letter as a whole, he is pushing hard on grace, but right here he is pushing hard on sin. Before we look at this list, I want you to think about a sin that has tripped you up lately. It could be fear or worry, lust or greed, pride or envy, anger or bitterness. What is it for you personally? Now, meditate on that as we go through this list.

We should hate sin because…

1. Sin is lawlessness. Sin does not merely result is lawlessness, sin is lawlessness. The very essence of sin is lawlessness, and lawlessness is loving what God hates. Each act of sin shows that we love what God despises. We love the opposite of his righteousness.

2. When we sin, we give comfort and aid to the enemy, the devil. What was Edwin Stanton’s position on giving comfort and aid to the enemy? Any such action would make you subject to a trial “and punishment by death.” If God is your Father then the devil is not your daddy. So why then do we do the deeds of the devil and give aid and comfort to him? We need to see our sin with black and white clarity. We should despise it because it furthers the work of our chief enemy. It is an act of treason, and if we were not covered by the blood of Christ, it would be punishable by eternal death.

3. Sin builds up what Christ came to destroy. Verse eight reads, The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. Christ gave up his eternal throne to destroy the works of the devil. Christ suffered on the cross to destroy the works of the devil. Christ tears down the works of the devil, but our sin builds it back up again. This is like building a sand castle during a rising tide. You build the castle and the waves tear it down. You build it again and the waves tear it down. Most of us are smart enough to avoid such futility as this, but we’re not smart enough to keep building up what Christ tears down. This utter futility should cause us to hate the sin which keeps knocking on our door.

4. God is our Father. The first three reasons would be termed negative reinforcement to hate your sin, but this one is a positive reason to hate our sin. As the ESV translates verse one, See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. John wants us to look at this amazing love. He wants us to gaze at the almost unbelievable notion that we would be a child of God. We are sons and daughters of God the Father and this is the best reason of all to hate our sin. Our Father does not deny us sinful pleasures out of a motive of cruelty but rather out of perfect love. He wants to give his children the best spiritual fruits possible and he hates to see us delighting in the rotten fruit of the world. Our natural appetites cause us to crave sinful things which will ultimately destroy us. Our Father loves us too much to watch us destroy ourselves and destroy others.

Rich Maurer

July 15, 2007

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6-GxkAJ1OBU"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6-GxkAJ1OBU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>