Class Outline:

Sunday April 11,2021

We fell when we ate. As God promised, death resulted. We were placed in peace in the Garden which gave us the added potential of obedience, and like Satan, we rejected God’s right to rule and we declared ourselves independent of God.

 

What God did for us in return is extraordinary. Jesus was the answer from God. What He gave us could never, and should never, be confused with anything other than heaven and perfect holiness.

 

It is revealed to us that though all believers are alive to God and are born of God that they still sin.

 

Someone born of God should not sin, for born of God means from God and therefore like Him.

 

This unbending truth helps us understand a very difficult passage, which is used in the same way that Jam 2 is used by some to try and teach that salvation is only assured by works.

 

1JO 3:6-9

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; 8 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, that He might destroy the works of the devil. 9 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.

 

John’s use of the present tense “poiei - does” cannot be confidently translated “continually.”

 

We have to be careful of adding the word “continually” to a present tense unless we can be sure.

 

1JO 3:5

And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.

 

There is no sin in the Son of God.

 

Then:

 

1JO 3:6

No one who abides in Him sins;

 

The point is unmistakable, no one who abides in the sinless Son of God sins. The regenerate one is sinless because he is begotten by a sinless Parent.

 

1JO 3:9

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.

 

John does not water this down even a little. A sinless parent does not beget a child that only sins a little.

 

At the first, one would think a statement like this would frighten us and send us away from a pursuit of holiness, but for the believer who accepts it, it drives him to pursue perfection and at the same time not completely condemn himself when he doesn’t achieve it, and he especially avoids the trap of antinomianism. He finds that perfect love is doable and he actively searches for it.

 

He also comes to understand that he is always growing and reaching for the divine life, and he never thinks he has finally achieved it.

 

If we water down John’s words, then we will miss the truth and we will fail to see why sin is still associated with death in those who are born of God and possess eternal life.

 

But how are such claims to be harmonized with the direct assertion of 1:8 that no believer can claim to be sinless?

 

The solution is found in one of John’s favorite words, “abide.”

 

Sin is never the experience of a believer abiding in Christ. Abide means to remain (in a home say) and not leave. The Lord used similar imagery with His disciples the night before His death. He said that if anyone loved Him he would keep His word, and the Father will love him, and the Father and the Son will come to him and make their abode with him. By love and subsequent obedience, the believer can abide in a house made by the Son and the Father with him.

 

Sin is never the act of the new man, but the act of the believer who has current ignorance and blindness towards God.

 

1JO 3:6

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.

 

The one who sins is ignorant and blind to Christ. That is their type. Therefore, when we sin we are acting from an ignorance and blindness toward Christ, but by the grace of God we are forgiven and by the grace of God we can correct that ignorance and have the eyes of our hearts enlightened.

 

So then, we see more clearly vs. 9 and it is not so difficult.

 

1JO 3:9

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.

 

The new man, born of God cannot sin, but the old man, the self, born separate from God, can and desires to.

 

ROM 7:16-20

But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good. 17 So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. 19 For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. 20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

 

The Mosaic Law is judged to be good because it perfectly condemned the sin. But why can Paul say that he is no longer the one doing it? Is he, and we, no longer responsible for bad decisions?

 

There are a lot of theories as to what Paul means by this, but when we read on into chapter 8, we find that he is revealing to us what and who we are in Christ.

 

Continuing to read through chapter 8, we find that Paul is revealing our true selves in Christ that are perfect, but housed in a dead flesh that desires sin.

 

ROM 8:1-11

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. 10 And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.

 

“If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” God imputed righteousness to every believer because they are justified by the blood of Christ. So the spirit within is alive, but the body is dead. So, the Gnostic would say, “Give the body what it wants, its dead anyway and can do nothing. Be spiritual within and worry not about over behavior.” But Paul writes, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.”

 

So, there is within each of us a war between old man and new man, old world and new world, old covenant and new covenant. The old is dead, but can still function. The new is alive and endowed with power from heaven. Our choices lie in the middle, and still we know that our true selves are born of God and so cannot sin.

 

We are those who walk by the Spirit, alive, uncondemned. We could not imagine that Paul would think that we would interpret chapter 7 as not being responsible for our sins.

 

Rather, we are new creatures in Christ, and when we sin we are allowing the crucified, dead, old man in Adam to call the shots. That’s not who we are any more, but when we sin, we are doing the things of death.

 

Paul admits that when he allows the flesh to command his thinking and decisions, he is following the law of sin, which is the Mosaic Law (ROM 8:2), which is the perfect law of condemnation.

 

ROM 7:24-25

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

 

Galatians and our passage in 1Jo 3 also bear this truth and so we can be confident in it.

 

GAL 5:16-17

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.

 

From a slightly different perspective, the same conclusion is to be deduced from a statement like that found in Galatians 2:20.

 

GAL 2:20

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.”

 

If only Christ lives in him then he should be sinless, but since he is not sinless, but Christ in truly the only “life” in him, then sin must not be a fundamental part of the new life. So, sin can easily be given the title of death.