06 Does John Say Christians Never Sin? (1 John 2:29-3:12)

Speaker: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word, a serious Bible study applied to real life. Today is October 14th, 2013. Our passage is 1 John 2, 29 through 3, 12. And our teacher is Krisan Marotta. This is the sixth message in our series on the book of 1 John. Krisan Marotta: As a younger Christian, I struggled a lot with patience and having a quick temper. And I'm happy to report that my temper is much slower now. Of course, my kids grew up. Kind of helps. But when I was a new Christian, I mean, really brand new Christian, I was talking to another friend about how I was struggling with controlling my temper. And she told me, well, then I wasn't really a believer because if I was, I wouldn't sin. You can tell that made an impression on me because I still remember 30 years later. So I, you know, just shocked. I said, well, how do you know that? And she read me 1 John 3, the passage we're going to study today, and said that was how she knows. She knew. So particularly 3.6, no one who abides in him sins, and no one who sins has seen him or knows him. And then later, 3, 9, and 10, no one who is born of God practices sin because his seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor does the one who does not love his brother. Well, if that interpretation of the passage is correct, not only was I not a Christian then, I'm not a Christian now. So I want to ask, is this what John's saying? Is this really what this passage is about? And we are in chapter, we're going to start in 229 and go to 312 today, so that's where we are in your books. So let me just review what we've looked at so far. First, we talked about which voice do you listen to. So of all the competing voices out there, how do you know which one carries authority? And then a couple weeks ago we asked the question, what's essential and what's non-essential? So when you disagree with another believer, where do you draw the line? What are we free to disagree about and what are we, uh what should we hold firm to? So today we're going to hit and add another kind of application question to that, and and that is when you have two very different interpretations of a biblical passage, how do you know which one's right? So how do you decide between them? So scholar A says, well, this passage means X, and scholar B says it means Y, and they both sound persuasive and compelling, and how do you know who's right? Or in my case, when my young friend said, well, 1 John 3 is saying that genuine believers no longer sin, and if they do sin, something is wrong. How do I judge that? How do I decide is that a valid understanding or not? So, as you know, in Wednesday and the Word, we not only want to teach the Bible, we want to teach you how to study the Bible and model good Bible study. So we're gonna spend the first couple minutes on that, and I want to give you the kind of the criteria. I learned this as the five C's of Bible study. You've probably if you've studied any books on how to study, you may have run into them under other names, but the five C's is the way I learned them, and it makes it very easy to remember. So first I'm gonna run through the five C's and then we're gonna look at this and her interpretation and see how it fits. So the first one is credible. So the first C is credible, and that is it understands the words and the syntax and the grammar according to their normal usage at the time the author wrote. So everything in its context at the way the at the time the author wrote. For example, if I'm watching a Doris Day movie and she says he's gay, I would understand her differently than if I'm watching a Sandra Bullock movie and she says the same thing. Because Doris probably meant the character was happy-go-lucky, you know, in the 19 whatever that was. Sandra Bullock today would mean he's not interested in her, and I don't expect him to be the love interest in the movie. So words change their meaning. So you have to understand the words at what they meant at the time the author wrote them. Another example, this more biblical example, um, in Acts, it used to say Paul was stoned. In the 1970s, they changed that to Paul received a stoning. Because it came to mean instead of he was punished by people throwing rocks at him, he was uh under the influence of drugs. So words change their meaning. So when we see something like Paul was stoned, we have to understand what that meant at the time the author wrote it. So that's credible. It understands the word syntax and grammar according to their normal usage at the time the author wrote. The second one is comprehensive, and that is it explains each and every detail in the passage. Nothing's left out, no words are skipped, no verses are skipped, everything is accounted for, even if you say, well, that's just stylistic or something like that. So, for example, in the parable of the widow and the unjust judge in Luke 18, he starts that and he says, He told them this parable so that they would not lose heart. And any understanding of that parable ought to take into account that the author is saying, here's the point. The part of the point of this parable is that they should not lose heart. So if an interpretation doesn't account for that, it's not a good one. And that may sound like a firm grasp of the obvious, but think of how often you hear that. You know, teachers will read a passage, they'll take one or two words out of the passage, they'll build a whole talk around it, and that's the end of their, you know, of the passage. Well, they may be right, everything they're teaching may be true, but it makes it hard to evaluate when they're skipping and jumping through the passage. It makes it hard for us to say, well, is that really what it's saying if they don't account for everything? Okay, so we've got credible, comprehensive, coherent is the third one. That is, it fits the flow of thought in the passage in the larger context. So to give you a picture of this, if I'm standing on a bridge and there's water flow over a stream and water's flowing under the bridge, and I look on the left side of the bridge and the water's flowing left to right, and I go to the right side of the bridge and the water's flowing left to right, I can deduce that the water under the bridge is flowing left to right. So we expect it to fit the flow or the context. So the kind of poster child for this is Galatians 3.28, where Paul says, there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus. All the verses before that, he's talking about how we are saved. All the verses after that, he's talking about how we are saved. And it's we would assume that that verse is talking about how we were saved, and that everyone is saved the same way. There isn't a different method for a Jew or a Gentile or a male or female, but that verse has been taken to mean everything out of context, that that there's no differences between men and women whatsoever, anywhere, anyplace, or any time, when the context is salvation. So similarly, if we've got these really hard verses in a text and we know he's talking about, say, how we're saved before them and how we're saved after, we would assume that this is not a tangent on, you know, duck hunting in East Jerusalem, but that he is actually uh making a flow of thought. So follow me there? I didn't know if I explained that very well. Probably not. I don't know where that came from. Okay, so coherent, and then the fourth one is consistent, and that is with it's consistent with information not in this passage. So the author's other letters, the rest of scripture. So for example, a couple years ago when we did our James and Galatians study, we started from the premise that James and Paul do in fact agree, and any interpretation which started from the saying, well, James was wrong and Paul was right, or vice versa, would be suspect. This becomes crucial in things like studying the role of women in church leadership. So in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul gives guidelines for how women are to prophesy, and in 1 Corinthians 14, he says women are to be silent in church. Okay, how do you reconcile those? We start from the premise that in context, those verses are not contradictory and they don't mean what you think at face value. And that's a whole nother talk, but those I think do can be reconciled. Okay, so consistent is the fourth one, and conforms is the last one. It conforms to the author's purpose and the author's original intent in writing. So in the final analysis, the a text means what the author intended it to mean. So if you and I are having a conversation and I say A and you say B, and I say, oh, that's not what I meant, that should settle the dispute. Now I may have failed to communicate, but what I intended to say is the only correct interpretation of my words. So the what the author intended to say is the final arbiter. So, for example, in the passage where it says Jesus fed 5,000, say historical evidence comes to light, and we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt there were 5,010 people present. The text isn't wrong. The author didn't intend to give a precise numerical account. He was just saying there were a lot of people there. So what you have to go by intent. Okay, so we've got credible, let's see if I can remember them without my notes. Credible, comprehensive, coherent, consistent, and conforms. So let's think about this interpretation of 1 John 3, which says genuine believers no longer sin. Is that credible? Does it understand the words? Could the words in like 3, 6, 3, 9, and 10 mean that? Yes, they could. That's possible. It does, those are legitimate understandings of the words. Is it comprehensive? Well, this is where we start to slide a little bit, because the language of the passage indicates that John is talking about something other than committing a sin now and then. So you wouldn't know this necessarily without study, but the present tense is used throughout this section, and especially in 6 and 9, present tense in New Testament Greek tends to mean a lifestyle. So when the author wants to talk about a repeated ongoing action, he would use present tense. So like if I'm a jogger and I in Greek I would say I run. It's mean I do this a lot, it's a settled lifestyle. And you'll notice the translators have added the word practice in like uh, where is it, in 3, 7 and 9. They've added practice to the idea because they're trying to clue you in. This is present tense, he means a lifestyle, a repeated, ongoing lifestyle. Okay, so maybe he could mean, it still could mean what she says, but maybe not. It might not account for present tense. So coherent would be the next one. Well, does it fit the flow of thought of what we've seen in 1 John? Well, in 1, 8, and 10 he said, anyone who denies that they are sinful deceives himself and makes God a liar. That kind of implies that John thinks Christians continue to sin. And in 2, 1 and 2, he talks about Christ's death covering our sins when we sin. So you kind of get the idea that from the rest of what John has said that he expects believers to sin, and he's writing about what happens when they do. So again, we're starting to slide a little bit. No, it doesn't quite take into account that. And then here's where I think it really diverges. Is it consistent with the rest of Scripture? And I would say no. The rest of Scripture clearly teaches that Christians continue to sin. Romans 7, for example, um, where Paul says, I find the principle of evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good, and he has a whole section about how he struggles with his sinfulness. And then look at the Old Testament. Pick a believer, David, Solomon, Moses, Abraham, who didn't sin. I mean, they all did. Every just about every hero of the faith we can look at, and there's some episode of recorded sin in their lives. So it's not consistent with the rest of Scripture. And then the last one, does it conform to John's original intent? Well, that's what we're going to look at for the rest of the time, because we're going to ask the question, what does this mean in context? What do we think John was trying to say? So I that I would say no, I'd rule out any interpretation of this that says believers no longer sin. So what is John doing? What is his original intent? What is he trying to say by a statement like 3-6? I think he's providing another test by which we discern true believers from false believers. You'll remember that's part of the purpose of this letter, that he is writing to settle the heresies that are popping up in the early church. Primarily, he's writing against Gnosticism, which believed that the body was evil and the spirit was good, and that all things physical were therefore evil, all things spiritual were good, and that led to three views of sin. First was it didn't influence our behavior, so we could control it through asceticism, you know, like fasting, celibacy, abstinence, or rigid control or physical abuse. So there was a group of Gnostics that were ascetics that tried to control sin through their lifestyle. There was another group that thought, well, sin didn't even exist in our spirits, it's only in our bodies. So once we have the right knowledge, it doesn't matter what we do with our bodies, we can do whatever we want with our bodies. All forms of immorality are permissible as long as your spirit is enlightened. And then there was another group that said, well, maybe there's sin in our spirit too, but it doesn't affect our relationship with God because God would only the body is evil, and God would never stoop so low as to have anything to do with that. So that's all kind of irrelevant. What we do in our body, uh, we're we're right with God. So that's the view of sin that's in John's world that he's writing against, and that ought to inform our interpretation. And I think here he's saying, notice in 10, he says, by this we know the children of God and the children of the devil are the obvious. So he's giving us another idea of how do we tell the true from the false. And last week he talked about the doctrine they held, uh, and is do they confess Jesus as Lord? And now he's saying, you can also tell by their lifestyle. The way they view morality, the way they view sin, is also going to give them away. And notice this is very similar to what Jesus taught. This is Matthew 7, verses 15 to 23. Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but are inwardly ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. And he goes on with that analogy, and then he ends. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform miracles, and then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. And notice a similar language of practice lawlessness in our passage. So I think what Jesus is saying in the Matthew passage is look, it doesn't matter how eloquent they are, how many verses they quote, or how many degrees they have after their name, if they reject biblical morality or they put themselves above it, it's going to give them away. Alright, so let's look at then what this means. And um, I put a kind of a very simple outline of where we've been so far on the whiteboard. You may not be able to read it, but just to set the stage for us, remember in 1.5 he starts out with his premise. He says, God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. So he starts out with God is holy, there's no sin, no evil, no darkness in him at all. Therefore, genuine believers will know they are sinful. That was one, chapter one, basically, one five through ten. They will know they were sinful. 2.1 through 11, they will love the things of God. So they will long for holiness, long for righteousness, love righteousness. 2.12 through 17, they will not love the things of the world. So he gives us both sides of the coin, and then the passage we looked at last week, which is basically 2.18 to the end of the chapter, they will confess that Jesus is the Christ. So that's what he's told us so far. And we ended last week with, now little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink away from him and shame at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of him. So what's he this is what sets up all these question the the um verses we're really going to look at today. So what is he saying here? Everyone who practices righteousness is born of him. How do we practice righteousness? So I would say that every everyone in the world is sinful. We've just established that from Romans 7, and there are many other passages. But there are two types of sinful people. Um some sinful people long for holiness and want to be freed from their sinfulness, and some don't. So if we're going to broadly categorize the world, you can one way to do it is on our view of sin. There are those who everyone sins, but how do you respond when you sin? Some people hate it, grieve over it, long to be freed from it, and others don't. In that sense, there are righteous sinners, people who are right with God and in the process of being saved and sanctified, but still struggling with sin. And I think that's the category he would put believers in. We have been forgiven, we have been cleansed, we have been promised that one day we will ultimately be free from sin, but we are not there yet. We are still in that process. So we are righteous in the sense that we are right before God, but we are still sinful and that we still struggle with sin. So 28 is his exhortation saying, after everything I've written up to this point, remain faithful to the gospel you heard. Cling to what you've been taught so that when Jesus returns you won't feel ashamed. And then 25, if you know that God is holy, then you know that everyone who is pursuing holiness is a believer. And how do we know that's true? Well, one way because it's part of saving faith. Saving faith begins with the knowledge that I'm sinful, but also includes the desire to be free from sin. So if you've been given saving faith, um you will long to be holy. You will no longer want to sin. And if um you know that God is righteous and values holiness, then you know that whoever loves him will also value what he values, and that is they will love righteousness. Oh, we gotta keep move fast, or we're gonna be way over. So three one through three. See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us that we would be called children of God, and such we are. For this reason the world did not know us because it did not know him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it is not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we will see him just as he is, and everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he is pure. So there's kind of an interpretive question in three, two, and it's the pronouns, because and the real question is when he appears, should that be when he appears, when it appears, should it be like him, see him, who who are all these third these pronouns? Because in Greek it's one of those languages where the subject is inflected in the verb, so you put a different verb ending depending on whether it's first person, second person, or third person, and you don't need a separate subject. So what we've got in 3-2 is these pronouns that are the third person singular verb ending, they could be translated he, she, or it, and the question is what are they referring to? And you can see the New American Standard has taken them all as third person singular him, referring to Jesus. There's a growing number of scholars, and these are the ones that persuade me, who have said, wait a minute, John just said it is not yet appeared what we will be. So that hasn't. And then he uses the same word, but we know that when it appears, we will be like him. Wouldn't it make more sense to say it hasn't yet appeared what we will be, but when it appears, that thing that we will be, it would be like him. So he's saying it's not yet revealed. In other words, what awaits for us as children of God is this wonderful, glorious, profoundly different kind of existence where we will be freed from sin. We haven't seen it yet. We don't know exactly what a how glorious and how different it'll be, but one thing we know when it does appear, we're gonna be like Jesus. So when that happens, so it's just a slight difference in that we will be like him. Um, and we will be holy and righteous and freed from sins, and then everyone who has their hope fixed on this, on being righteous, on being made like Christ, purifies himself. So see where he's going there. Then in three, now we've got this this question of what does he mean by purify himself? That's a scary word. Purity at what level? Does he mean at the level of every action, every thought, every word and every deed, every moment of every day? Well, that that would be the way my friend took it, but I don't think that's what's going on because that's a standard we don't meet. None of us have met in this life. And the whole reason we need a savior is because we can't meet it. So the other option is purity at the level of my heart. In other words, what am I counting on? Do I long for righteousness? Based on the blood of Christ only, or am I counting on something else? So am I singularly committed to God, or am I saying, well, God and Jesus might be true, but this other worldview that might be true too? So maybe I'll worship a little bit of God and a little bit of someone else and I'll mix and match. That would be a not a pure commitment. But a pure commitment would be where I'm counting on God and the blood of Christ only. I'm longing for the righteousness of God, seeking those things. I'm a righteous sinner in the sense we just talked about, as opposed to other hopes, other gods, other philosophies, other methods. So purity in that, or is I think James uses this as double-minded or single-minded, the idea that I am only counting on God and God alone. So I'd paraphrase these first three verses as saying, look how great this love the Father has shown us because he chose us to become holy like him. And because we're in this process of becoming holy, the world does not understand us. It didn't understand Jesus when he was here. Even now we are being made holy, but the kind it has not yet come to pass. So we we are not yet the people we are intended to be, but we know that when that happens, when we are made holy, we will be like God. We will be like Jesus because and we will see it for what it truly is. And everyone who's hoping for that, being made holy, will seek to trust, purify himself from sin, so trust only in God to save him from the sin. So I think that's the direction he's going. And then he kind of expands, I think, we explains what he means in verse 3 with five, with um four through six. So let's bring those in. Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins, and no one who sins has seen him or knows him. Okay, so I think this kind of sheds light on what he means in three. So Jesus came to earth to pay the penalty for our sins, and he was sinless, so it follows that those who want to be like him and those who follow him and are his disciples and his children will not pursue a lifestyle of sin. I think that's all he means by no one who abides in him sins. No one who remains committed to the gospel will pursue sinfulness as a lifestyle. So the false teachers are claiming, okay, you can be forgiven, and then you can do whatever you want. So go sleep with the temple prostitutes, you know, wine, hedonism, debauchery, whatever you want. You can have it all because you've been forgiven. And John's saying, wait a minute, that's not the way it works. Those people who are born of God are destined to become holy and they long for holiness and they will pursue holiness, they won't pursue all this other stuff. And that is a motivation to turn away from sin and unrighteousness. Now, some people would claim, well, why is how is that motivation? Why would I hunger for something or long for something that's been guaranteed? If I've been guaranteed that I'm going to be holy, then why can't I just do all the sin I want now because I'm going to get it? You know, let's kick back and relax because the promise will be fulfilled. That's a question Paul deals with in Romans, and I think both John and Paul would say, well, the answer is because the desire for holiness is part of the gift. It's not just that I've been promised holiness, it's that I've been given the desire to want it, to long for it, to value it, to see it for how truly wonderful it is. So let me give you an analogy. If my if my heart's desire is to be the world's best soccer player, and you tell me I've seen the future and I know for a fact it's guaranteed you are going to achieve that goal. You're going to be the world's best soccer player. If I stop practicing, then you could legitimately say, Do you really want it? I mean, if that's what you wanted, why wouldn't you play with all the more excitement and joy? Uh and because if that's my heart's desire, I will of course try to reach it. So I would say, instead, I would practice with joy and confidence and perseverance, knowing that, yes, it looks really bad now because I'm a really terrible soccer player, but I'm gonna get there. So despite how poor my skills are now, I know I'm gonna get there. If you tell me I'm gonna get there, I have reason to keep trying and practicing. And I think that's what's going on here. John's saying we've been promised holiness. We're not there yet. We're still, you know, really bad soccer players in that sense, but we're going to get there. And we have joy and confidence and excitement about that. All right, so where are we? I've gotten myself all uh behind in my notes. Oh, so five and six. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning, and no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or knows him. That's the same idea. If you're walking in darkness and claiming to be a follower of God, you're lying, as he said in chapter one. If you're claiming to follow Jesus, who was holy and sinless, and you claim to want to be like him, you will pursue a lifestyle of holiness and righteousness and not sin. So I don't think he means that believers are those and only those who are perfect, pure, morally obedient, flawless. I don't think he's saying that. He's saying we won't delight in sin anymore, we won't find joy in it, we won't rationalize it or excuse it, we will instead grieve over it and long to be freed from it. So believers, when confronted with their sin, they weep over it, they thank God for his mercy and grace, and they uh thank him for the forgiveness because of the blood of Christ. So there is no, there's a difference in your attitude. There's no joy in sin, no acceptance, no pursuit of it and reveling in it. So the question is not, am I morally perfect or am I perfectly obedient? The real question is what's my attitude towards sin? Do I love it or do I hate it? When I'm confronted with it, when I see it for what it is, do I make excuses for it, tolerate it, try to get more of it, or do I fall on my knees and say, God, save me from this one too? And grieve over it and long for the day when he will one day make it so I never struggle with it again, because he's promised that day is coming. All right, so seven through ten. Little children, make sure that no one deceives you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because his seed abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. So John's making these two big categories. He's saying there are those who practice righteousness, and there are those who are of the devil. And if by righteousness he means we are perfectly morally good, all the time we are believers. You know, we we don't fit. We're not perfect. We know that from 18, 120, 21, and various other passages of scriptures. So that would make us of the devil, and in context in the flow of thought, you can see he couldn't mean that. So if by righteous he means we're justified, we are forgiven, we are right with God, because the penalty for our sins has been paid by the blood of Jesus, so we are justified, not perfect, then we are not of the devil, that is, having the same character and lifestyle of the devil. And I think that's all he means by of the devil pursuing the kinds of things he would pursue, having that same desires and goals and lifestyles, practicing sin, so being committed to a rebellion to God as a lifestyle. So what he adds in this section is this metaphor of the seed and those who are born of God. And I think he's saying, he's using this kind of genetic metaphor to say God's seed or his descendants, his children, and he plants a metaphorical seed. So today we might say we have a gene, and um, God plants this seed of faith in us, and that faith leads to striving toward righteousness and holiness. So, metaphorically speaking, believers are genetically destined to be like God, just as children are genetically destined to be like their parents, and that's the metaphor. The idea is that once we genuinely are born of God, and we are his children, and we are like him, and we are destined to be like him, we cannot continue to pursue a lifestyle of sin. Because God has changed us, God has made it so we no longer enjoy it, we no longer want it. Paul makes the exact same arguments in Romans 6. He says, God's children, God's seeds will persist in following him. They cannot sin because in the long, like destiny sense, because they will persist in following God. So as we grow and mature in faith, as we grow in wisdom, we begin to see the world more and more the way God sees it, we begin to value what he values more and more, to understand what God thinks is true and right, and in the process, as that process comes to fruition, it doesn't lead to a lifestyle that embraces sin. It can't because now we know what God thinks of sin. We've seen his attitude toward it, we know what he thinks about it, we've seen the cross, we know how God views sin, and we don't long for that, we long for holiness. Let me give you an analogy. I um I love Snickers bars, and I there's when I go to the gym, there's a bike I ride, and it counts the calories that you that you're burning while you're riding the bike, and one day I realized that one Snickers bar is 30 minutes on the bike. And now every time I see a Snickers bar, I go, hmm, 30 minutes on the bike. You know, it's just not worth it. I don't and it's kind of a strange analogy, but that I don't have a taste for Snickers the way I used to because now I know what it costs. And 40 minutes, that's just too much, 30 minutes on the bike, and they're not that big, you know. So maybe I just don't, maybe I'm slow on the bike. If I was more, you know, vigorous, it might be less. But for me, it's 30 minutes on the bike. And I think that's kind of the idea. God's given us a taste of what sin really is, and it no longer satisfies. We no longer want it. It doesn't fulfill us the way we we used to think it fulfilled us. Now we see it for what it is, and we go, 30 minutes on the bike, not worth it. So by this, the children of this verse 10, then by this, the children of God and the children of devil are of are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor does the one who does not love his brother. I think he's summing up that section. He's saying, This is their criteria. How do you know who to listen to? How do you know who's right and who's wrong? Who's speaking truth and who's speaking lies? Well, he's given us the doctrinal question last week. They will confess that Jesus is Lord. Now he's saying, look at their lifestyle. Their lifestyle will give them away. And how do you weed out false teachers from the rest of the herd? They will set themselves apart. Eventually, their lifestyle will give them away. They will reveal the fact that they don't actually love righteousness, they are not pursuing righteousness, instead, they're pursuing something else. So that's the test. How do and you we can ask it of ourselves. I mean, when you get in those deep dark, you know, moments where you think, oh, what if I'm fooling myself? What if I'm not really a believer? Ask yourself what happens when you sin. How do you feel about it? How do you respond to it? I mean, there's probably all of us initially have that, well, of course I was not wrong. I was just tired, or I just, you know, it was perfectly understandable, but eventually we see through those lies. Eventually we start thinking, oh, that was awful, and I hate it, and I wish I were not this way. So, and you've seen this to be true. Think about people who are not believers, but they live this outwardly moral lifestyle. So, you know, they they follow all the middle class morality and they look good and they do the right things and they say the right things, and they have this acceptably low, you know, kind of standard of behavior. But what gives them away, they will mock believers. You know, think about people maybe at your office or places when they see someone who's following a god, they say, Oh, that person's an ignorant adult, or they're foolish, or they're unsophisticated, or they just don't know any better. So eventually those attitudes will give them away. They will not only not be pursuing holiness, they will mock and ridicule those who are. At least they won't admire them, and that's often a thing that gives them away. So then John concludes this section with an example. He says, Okay, you want an example of this? Look at Cain and Abel. Verse uh 11 and 12. For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. For what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous. Okay, so we're gonna look briefly at the Cain and Abel story just to review it, to so you actually see there's some clues in the text as to what's going on. So this is Genesis four, and it's three through eight. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part, also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his often offering he had no regard. So Cain became very angry, and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it. Cain told Abel his brother, and it came about that when they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. So I think the clues in that passage are that Abel offered from the first firstlings of his flock and the fat portions. So we're told that Abel brought the best and the first and the most desirable parts, and uh Cain just brought an offering, just a plain offering. So it implies that Cain didn't bring what he ought to have brought, that he was holding back, that he didn't bring what God had asked him to bring. And you can only give the first and the best if you're convinced that God is going to take care of you, and you don't have to take care of yourself. But if you trust that you can give your first and best to God because he has your best in mind, and he will trust you, and you can trust him to take care of you, then you can make that offering. So I think the text suggests that Cain held back. He wasn't sure, maybe he didn't think God was trustworthy, or maybe he better just hang on to the best of his offering in case God proved to be unreliable. So it's a hint to his spiritual status that he probably wasn't trusting God as he ought. And his deeds were evil then because they rose from unbelief, and God does God recognizes that. So, in what sense were Abel's deeds righteous? They resulted from faith. They resulted from trust, a desire on his part to follow God, to trust him, and to give him everything. So, not that that Abel was flawless, but that he was trusting God. So then why did Cain kill Abel? Because he was jealous, because Abel was righteous and he wasn't, and Cain hated him for it. So he's saying, you will see eventually non-believers will give themselves away. They will not love the things of God, and they will not love the people of God. So Cain's motivation for murder was he was uh committed to evil and his he hated Abel, who was committed to good. So the darkness hates the light, that idea. And I think that's what John is pointing to. You can recognize true believers by their commitment to holiness. They will love the things of God and they will love each other. Okay, so let's let's wrap this up then with a little application. So up so this whole section, John's been saying, if you're a believer, that will change you. There will be certain things that will become true about you that you can point to, that are tangible, perceptible, objective evidence that you can look at and point to and say, I'm saved. And one of those is I long for holiness and I hate sin. And that's what persevering looks like. So one of the evidences we have for ourselves and for each other is do I long for holiness? Do I long to be freed from my sin or not? Notice what he doesn't say. He never once has said how I feel. Up to this point in the letter, he has never said, you can tell you're a believer by how you feel about it. And I would say that is not true. Our heart is deceitful. It lies to us. It tells us we're right when we're wrong and tells us we're wrong when we're right. So feelings alone are not to be trusted. We can manipulate them, we can produce them, we can work them up. They're not evidence. So how I feel at any given moment is not a valid criteria for judging my life. So think about that the next time you're feeling despair. That's not your feelings lie to you. Notice he also doesn't say, I can tell I'm a believer by what I have done. Like I go to church every week, I regularly pray, I regularly have Bible study, I'm on ministry committees, I lead things. It's not our outward actions either. He doesn't say that's evidence of your faith. So it's not feeling the awe, the passion, or worshipful, or and then it's not the things, the outward acts you do, because we can fake those. We can fake our outward actions and we can fake our emotions. And we can go through all the right rituals without having anything change in our heart. Instead, look at the evidence he's given us so far. In 110, he says sin isn't fun anymore. You no longer want it, you no longer value it the way you used to. Now that you're God's seed, there's a different reaction in it, and the Spirit convicts you that you're wrong and you don't enjoy sin the same way you used to. So there's a sense in which that's a feeling, but it's a it's uh there's also a sense in which that's a conviction, what we might call conscious, you know, or um moral compass. So you begin to desire the things of God and you begin not to desire the things of the world. And that's a very different attitude than the world because we don't have sinners today, we have victims, we have personality disorders, we have uh genetic predispositions, dysfunctional families, we have all these excuses for why things are not the we are not the people we should be. And if they found that sin was genetic, you know, like there was a sin gene, that wouldn't surprise me at all because we've all got it. Um but the good news is God can change it. So he's told us we won't uh we will be convicted of our sin in chapter one. We will love God and the things of God and the people of God. So if I know I'm a wretch, if I know I'm sinful and I want to be freed from that, I have no basis to look down on anyone else to judge them because there's no standard by which I could judge someone else that does not also convict me. Um and I long to be holy, I long to be part of the people of God. I love those who are pursuing righteousness the same way that I'm pursuing it. And then last week he gave us the we will also confess that Jesus is the Christ. That was in 2.18 through 27. So that's an essential ingredient. The hope of the gospel is because of the death of Jesus on the cross and nothing else. It's an essential part of recognizing why I even have the spaces for hope. And then today he says, as my distaste for sin grows, I will have this growing desire for holiness because God has marked me. Now, not all at once, not all the time. He's not saying that I will be freed at any given moment of the day from a desire to sin. There are times when I am not going to feel like loving my husband or my neighbor or doing the right thing. There are times I probably will want to do the wrong thing at any particular moment. And I don't think that's what John's talking about, not a moment-by-moment experience, but look at the overall quality of your life. Where are you headed toward? What marks you? What it what if somebody looked at the tenor and the destiny of your life, where would they say you're heading and striving toward? So I think all true believers will be able to look back over their life and say, I'm still here. I went through that hard struggle, I went through that awful humiliation where my sin confronted me in the face, and I'm still here longing for the things of God. And if you haven't ever done that, come to the feast. All you have to do is ask. There's no theological test, there's no, uh, you don't have to get your life together first. All you have to do is ask Jesus into your heart. Ask. Recognize that you're sinful, that you can't do it on your own, that you need a savior, and then ask Jesus to be that savior. That's all there is to it. So, ooh, finished right on time. So let me pray for us, and then you can ask some questions. Father, thank you that you are a God of holiness, and that you don't leave us in our sin, and that you do for us what we could never do for ourselves, and that is get rid of the blackness of our hearts, the sin and the hardness and the uh the wrong way of viewing the world. We thank you for the gift of your son and the and your Holy Spirit, who um your son dying for us to pay the penalty for our sins, and your Holy Spirit to write your law on our hearts to make it true, to make us believe it. And I just pray that if there's anyone here who doesn't know your love and your forgiveness, that you would make it clear, that you would open her eyes to see and her ears to hear, and open the eyes of us around us to be able to help and encourage in that process. In Jesus' name. Amen. Speaker: Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. For notes or study questions related to this message, please visit our website at wednesdayintheword.com. We hope you'll join us again, and may God richly bless you.