1 John 3:4-6 ESV
“Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”
We know from reading 1 John 2, as well as from reading the
whole of the New Testament, that this is not teaching that we can never or that
we will never sin if we believe in Jesus (see 1 Jn 2:1-2). But we also know
from reading the whole of the New Testament that our Lord draws a line in the
sand, so to speak, when he says if we make sin our practice that we will not
inherit eternal life with God.
Please notice that about half of these Scriptures referenced
here are the writings of Paul. So, it isn’t just John or James or Peter who
taught this, but Paul taught that if we walk in sin, and if we make sin our
practice, that we will die in our sins because we refused to die with Christ to
our sins. Therefore, if sin is our practice, and righteousness is not our
practice, we will not inherit eternal life with God.
The most popular gospel message today, which is not of God,
but of human making, excludes the necessity for obedience and for cessation of
the practice of sin, for it teaches that Jesus took care of it all and so we do
nothing. And they teach obedience and repentance as works-based salvation, and
they teach we are to cease from works for that is still being under the law.
So, they teach God’s moral laws as something we must not adhere to.
But that is because they are mostly willfully
misinterpreting the Scriptures when they teach about the law and grace, and so
what they are actually promoting is lawlessness. But if we study the Scriptures
and what they teach, we will not be able to miss the fact that “the law” they
were freed from was all the liturgical, ceremonial, and sacrificial laws under
the Old Covenant, but the New Testament still teaches we must obey God’s moral
laws, and that if we don’t, we are those who practice lawlessness, which ends
in death, not in life eternal with God.
Now, some people may differ in opinion on what it means to
make a practice of sinning, for they say we all sin sometimes. I do believe the
Scriptures make it clear what it means, for it has to do with deliberately and
habitually and premeditatedly sinning against the Lord, repeating the same sins
over and over again, as a matter of life course, without any true repentance,
always going back to the same vomit and slime in direct defiance of God.
Now, what we learn here, but also from what Paul taught, is
that if we walk in sin, making sin our practice, and if we are not those who
practice obedience and righteousness as a matter of life course, we do not know
the Lord. Now, this is not to say we will never sin again or that we might not
ever have a time where we wander. But if we profess faith in Jesus and then we
go on living like we were living, or if we turn away from the Lord and go back
to our vomit and remain there, we don’t have eternal life.
1 John 3:7-8 ESV
“Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”
So, let no one deceive you. All those people telling you
that you can believe in Jesus but that you don’t have to repent of your sins
and that you don’t have to obey the Lord are lying to you. When they tell you
that Jesus does it all and that we do nothing, that is a big fat lie! Yes, we
can do nothing in ourselves to earn or to deserve our own salvation. Only by
God’s grace are any of us saved, but his grace trains us to say “No” to ungodliness
and fleshly lusts and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.
Jesus died on that cross to put sin to death in our lives so
that we will no longer be enslaved to sin but so we would now be slaves of God
and of his righteousness. He died that we might no longer live for ourselves
but for him who gave his life up for us. He died that we might die with him to
sin and live to him and to his righteousness. And he shed his blood to buy us
back for God so we would now honor our Lord with our bodies.
[Rom 6:1-23; 2 Co 5:15; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Co 6:19-20; Tit
2:11-14]
Also, “righteousness” is not just something we inherit
positionally from Christ by faith in Christ, but righteousness is to be what we
practice. We are considered righteous in the eyes of the Lord when we make
righteousness our practice, by God’s grace, and in his power and strength. For,
if sin is what we practice, we are not of God but of the devil.
1 John 3:9-10 ESV
“No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”
Now, this takes it a step further, although this was already
made perfectly clear, I believe. We cannot claim that we are born of God, that
we are his children, that we are saved from our sins, and that heaven is our
eternal destiny, if we make a practice (deliberate and willful habit) of
sinning. And this would be like someone addicted to porn, as an example, who
keeps willfully and defiantly returning to his sexual idolatry no matter who
gets hurt in the process.
And it is not true repentance if all you do is “sin,
confess, sin, confess” but you don’t ever change directions, if you don’t
become someone else. You may have pauses between incidents, but if that is what
you keep returning to, and you do so knowingly, and you plot it out, and you
even lie in advance and/or afterwards to cover up your sin, hoping to not get
caught, and you willfully cause pain and suffering to others over and over
again, that is not repentance. Repentance is a spiritual U-turn.
And this is really the bottom line here. If you do not make
righteousness your practice, if obedience to our Lord is not what you do as a
matter of life course, and if you do not love others, but you fake
righteousness in between or during your sin cycles, then you are not righteous
in God’s sight no matter what you profess with your lips. Those who are
righteous live righteously. They walk (in conduct) according to the Spirit and
not according to the flesh. And they are the ones who are the true children of
God.
The Prayer
Written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager,
Alberto Testa and Tony Renis
I pray you'll be our eyes
And watch us where we go
And help us to be wise
In times when we don't know
Let this be our prayer
When we lose our way
Lead us to a place
Guide us with your grace
To a place where we'll be safe.
I pray we'll find your light
And hold it in our hearts
When the stars go out each night
Remind us where you are.
Let this be our prayer
When shadows fill our day
Lead us to a place
Guide us with your grace
To a place where we'll be safe.
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