1 John Lesson 32

If you’ll turn to 1 John 3, we’ll work our way through the third chapter here. As I said this is one of the most controversial parts of this epistle. That’s why I’ve been taking a lot of time working with it to get the vocabulary of John down so we’ll understand the emphasis here. Always remember that biblical theology precedes systematic theology. That is exegesis of the text - you have to exegete what the author in his particular and peculiar way is saying. After that you try to systematize. That’s called systematic theology. Let’s open with a word of prayer.

(Opening prayer)

To get into the text again - just some reminders. First slide I’m showing here is a statistic. We want to remember that when you see vocabulary changes like this as you work your way through a text and you get into a passage of Scripture, all of a sudden you’re looking at word frequencies in that passage of Scripture. It’s a dead giveaway that there’s an emphasis going on here that’s undeniable. This is not somebody’s subjective opinion; this is what’s in the text itself. So very clearly in this section from 2:14 through chapter 5, John is using occurrence of love per verse. Notice the frequency on the side here. We’re talking as high as 30-35%. That means one out of every three verses has the word love in it. That kind of tells you what the emphasis here is in chapter 3 and following. So that’s the new section.

John is talking again about fellowship. Remember 3 phases of salvation – justification, sanctification, glorification (phase 1, phase 2, phase 3.) This epistle is written about phase 2 sanctification. So it’s talking about fellowship. That’s why when we look at the text here… Jason and I just tested this of course. Yes.

This is a slide that we’ve shown again and again. There are nuances to fellowship with a triune deity. Remember that the Christian faith, God is one in essence and three in personality.  This is unique among all religions. This is the only way by the way you can have a personal God. A solitary monotheistic god can’t be personal because he has no object for his eternal love.

In the Christian biblical view, we have Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Fellowship with the Father, fellowship with the Son, fellowship with the Holy Spirit - the way John approaches it seems to have a definite emphasis, a definite trend. So let’s look at that to remind ourselves.

Every time he’s talking about the Father, which is the first part of the epistle, He says:

^NKJ 1 John 1:5 … that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

So clearly the emphasis is on God’s essence, the nature of God.

Then we come to the Son and he says:

^NKJ 1 John 2:3 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.

So clearly it’s revelation. It’s the authority of the revealed word because Jesus is the Word, the Word Incarnate. So that’s the emphasis in fellowship with the Son, submission to His revelation.

Then the Holy Spirit – the Holy Spirit is not explicitly named in John’s writing here. We have to infer that when he’s talking about this love of the brethren, he’s really talking about the work and appreciation of God the Holy Spirit. That’s why we’ve said here he’s the worker of God. It’s the influence of His nature; and we love His workmanship.

Then we have talked about the analogy with a person. This goes back to Nathan Arwood’s book written back in the 1930’s, the President of Gordon College, Christian college near Boston. Nathan Arwood pointed out the tri-unity concept is embedded throughout creation. We have 3 dimensions in space. We have 3 dimensions in time. The person has this triune aspect. That is if you think about it - here we have the nature. Each one of us is a person. You can’t physically see nature. You sense the nature by knowing the person. We as people express a nature. So the nature is that which is not empirically seen; but yet we infer it’s there by our interaction with the person.

Then each person, each one of us, has an influence on other people. So the influence again is effect of visible person in history. It’s this tri-unity that helps us understand the emphasis on the Father, the Son and the Spirit because when we talk about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is actually bringing into history the influence of Jesus Christ. That’s why He is the Comforter that’s to come.

Well now one more slide that we want to get started in this third chapter, that is the nature of God’s being. Here we have the eternal relationship within the godhead. I show this slide because it’s contrasting our culture with the Bible. Our culture does not know what to do with the word love. We have sentimentalized it. We have emotionalized it. We’ve sexualized it. We have separated it completely from any kind of ethical content. If you go back to God, that’s not the way it is because if you look at the text of Scripture, we have passages like Psalm 45:7.

^NKJ Psalm 45:7 You love righteousness …

What’s the object of His love? It’s righteousness. That’s what God loves. Then we have the fact that:

^NKJ Isaiah 61:8 "For I, the LORD, love justice;

So it’s clear that the attribute of God’s love has moral content to it. Another way to think about this and get it together in our thinking is - what’s the greatest act of love in all of history? John 3:16. Now isn’t that act of love in John 3:16 connected with righteousness and justice? Sure, it’s the crucifixion. So you can’t separate love from righteousness and justice.

So this is where we are at odds with our culture. There’s a terrific difference here and you want to grasp hold of this when you hear people sentimentalizing about love. Love has ethical and moral consequences and connections. It’s that connection now that’s crucial as we go through these verses.

With that in mind we have one more slide we want to look at; and that’s a word frequency chart. That’s the frequency of this, manifest. Now it’s true it’s high frequency; but those are only four verses so it doesn’t take many occurrences of the word manifest to get a high frequency there because it’s so few verses. But over here we have a big section of Scripture and you can clearly see again this word frequency, manifest. This word occurs again and again. So that tells us what to look for as we go through this.

Let’s go now to the text, 1 John 2:28. Start with verse 28. Verse 28 is the key text here. We have then:

^NKJ 1 John 2:28 And now, little children, abide in Him,

There’s the command. There’s the emphasis – abide in Him (fellowship.)

that when He appears,

There’s our first case of manifest.

appears,

Think about how He appears. What kind of appearance - is this a spiritual appearance? Is this something we have to detect that’s invisible and we make ethical inferences to get the appearance or is this “appear” a physical one? Verse 28, when He shall appear is clearly Jesus’ second return and His appearance physically. So we have to watch this. Manifest is going to be used two ways here. We want to be sure as we move through the verses that we connect.

So in verse 28:

^NKJ 1 John 2:28 …that when He appears

That means He physically appears.

 we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.

…because we are going to be ethically evaluated at the Bema Seat. That’s the warning about staying in fellowship.

But then in verse 29, now we have a different manifestation. This interplay between physical manifestation and making a moral, spiritual inference that’s crucial to understand as we go through these verses.

^NKJ 1 John 2:29 If you know that He is righteous,

That’s your theology, the doctrine.

you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.

Now you can’t conclude that somebody is born of Him necessarily because there’s some supernatural appearance. You have to infer it from behavior. You have to infer the fruit is there. So he says you have a yardstick. You can’t deduce something empirically if you don’t have a standard that you use to come to the data.

Data doesn’t interpret itself. This is something that again we’re not taught well at all in secular education. Data are mute. Data do not interpret themselves. Man interprets data by imputing meaning to the data.  That means all interpretation of data is worldview dependent. You have to have something to interpret data. Data is just a number. Data is just a sensation. It means nothing. It has no meaning. It’s given meaning by us. The molecules don’t have meaning. They’re not speaking. Data doesn’t speak by the way. This is an idiom we use in our language - the data speaks for itself. No, the data doesn’t speak for itself. The data is there. We are giving imputed meaning to the data.

So verse 29 says:

^NKJ 1 John 2:29 If you know that He is righteous,

There’s your worldview. If you know that, then you can infer the following. That is people who do righteousness are born of Him. That’s the nature. The “born again” is the regenerate nature. So it’s saying fruit and inferring the regenerate nature is producing that fruit.

Now in verse 1 - we covered that last time but again emphasis on the first word in that verse. The word is behold. It’s an important one because it means think attentively about this. Study this. 

^NKJ 1 John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!

Then he infers a result, a consequence of this.

Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

Now does the world see physically some supernatural, overwhelming thing here? No, it doesn’t. Jesus in His incarnation – yes, He did miracles; but the point is His appearance at His First Advent is not like His appearance is going to be at the Second Advent. See, there’s a difference. In His First Advent, think of a lamp and think of a lampshade. Think of the bulb and the lamp as deity; and think of the lampshade as humanity. The lampshade covers the bulb. Think of the Second Advent as the bulb alone without the lampshade - not that it denies humanity, but rather the deity is overwhelmingly obvious.

So now in verse 1, the world doesn’t know us because it didn’t understand Christ.

By the way there’s another example of the data not speaking. The worldview of the unbeliever has a problem interpreting the data of the gospels. The gospels are the data. The historical manifestation of Christ is the data; but these people are not inferring properly from the data because of their worldview. They’re contaminating their process of interpretation.

Now we come to verse 2. Now watch the interplay here. We’ve talked about this verb manifest, to make obvious, to make clear. We said in verse 28 manifest is clearly the physical, overwhelming presence of Jesus when He comes back.

Verse 29 is talking more about a moral inference.

Then in verse 1, the last part:

^J 1 John 3:1 …Therefore the world does not know us,

It’s talking about a moral influence.

But now in verse 2 - now we have John brings us into this verse; and now on John’s mind appears to be this problem of manifesting.

^NKJ 1 John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God;

So we are that in a position and by name

and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be

There’s the appearance again. Now what does he mean in the first part of verse 2 when he says:

^NKJ 1 John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed

What’s this “yet appear” business? That’s linked to Jesus’ second coming; and it’s linked to an overwhelming physical, undeniable thing that’s being observed.

and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be

It’s a contrast of our present state where the world is misinterpreting it. There’s just fruit there; but the fruit has data that has to be interpreted with a worldview.

But he says:

and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be

We will be somehow overwhelmingly obvious who we are, but that will wait until Christ returns.

and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed,

See there’s appear again. See what I’m talking about – word frequency.

He is revealed

That’s a reference directly to verse 28 because verse 28 “when He shall appear” – same words.

and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is

Seeing is empirical. It’s seeing Jesus as He is in His overwhelming resurrection life. So in verse 2 you can tell John is trying to get at two different kinds of manifestation. The kind of manifestation that can be misinterpreted and the overwhelming manifestation that comes about when Christ returns.

Then he goes on in verse 3 and he says:

^NKJ 1 John 3:3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

The tendency for us when we read verse 3 is to think that what John is saying here is that knowing the return of Christ is going happen - that encourages us and that it purifies our life because we’re living in the conscious idea that we’re going to be evaluated since we know He is going to evaluate us. So it purifies us in that sense. Well, that’s the truth That’s theologically correct; but that doesn’t happen to be apparently what’s on John’s mind in this particular verse. Why? Look at the last clause. The last clause doesn’t make sense if you’re just talking about a psychological thing here.

^NKJ 1 John 3:3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

Is He perfectly pure? Jesus? Yeah.

^NKJ 1 John 3:3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

Yeah, the pronoun is the third person – so who’s the he? The antecedent in the context is Jesus because that’s the one whose appearance is going to make this difference.

as He is pure.

This is one of several cases in this context where John throws these little goodies into the verse. It forces you to have to interpret that he means what these verses mean. That is absolutely pure. Well we know we’re not absolutely pure because we have the flesh. We have the sin nature. We’re well aware of that.

John himself says, “He that denies that he has sinned, deceives himself.”

So how do we reconcile John 1:8 that says:

^NKJ 1 John 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves…

…with a verse like this that says you are perfectly pure? Well, it seems only one way to do this - that is he’s talking about the regenerate nature. That regenerate nature is as pure as He is pure because it’s created by Him. At the point of regeneration something is created. That something is not contaminable by sin. It is part of the new creation; it can’t be contaminated. It’s a powerful statement of what regeneration really is.  This new nature that is instantly is created. It doesn’t take 8 million years and descent from an ape to create the new nature. The new nature is instantly created just like we were instantly created in the garden.

^NKJ 1 John 3:3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

The purifying there is the word for washing and is the same expression as Titus 2:5 where he talks about exactly the same thing, Paul washing of regeneration.

Now we come to verse 4.

^NKJ 1 John 3:4 Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

English translators have translated the Greek word anomia here with lawlessness. That’s literally correct. Anomia – nomia means law; “a” (prefix) means not law just like theist means belief in God and atheist means doesn’t believe in God. So the “a” prefix is the denial of the noun, a contrast. So it’s anomia.

The problem here is understanding what this anomia is. The best way of doing this is study how anomia is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It appears that anomia has a nuance of its use. It’s not dogmatic; but it tends to have this kind of a nuance – garbage, debris, stuff that’s filthy. That tends to be the way it’s used.

So when he’s dealing with this “whoever commits sin” basically whoever does sin does garbage - would be one way of translating it, just contamination. For sin is garbage. It’s something that in the Old Testament is considered debris; and so it’s useless.

Paul, do you have a question?

Comment Yeah. I hate to go back to 3; but I’m puzzled at this. Purifies himself seems to me to be something that the Christian does.

Yes

Comment I understand what happens at regeneration… I don’t see how that verse suggests that if I have my hope fixed on the appearance of Christ somehow “I” purifies himself.

Well, what you’re saying is true. It does have that psychological effect; but that doesn’t fit the rest of the verse. The verse is, as He is pure. We’re not psychologically pure. So you have to go back and say, “Well then how is this “purifies himself” kind of thing work?” The way you can think of it is that the washing of regeneration as Paul uses it in Titus, for example, would be like us saying we take a shower and we shower. We clean ourselves. It’s the water that’s cleaning us; but yet we are choosing the water. The idea there is that everyone who has the hope in Him is the idea that we trusted in Christ. We have the hope in Him. We did act. We did believe so the idea of the acting, the Christian acting, is included in the fact that the Christian has believed. There’s a bona fide choice to trust in Jesus Christ.  That choice is an act of purifying - purifies himself.

Now you can question why the present tense is used and not an aorist tense, for example. That’s a legitimate question.

There are ways, which the present tense occurs that’s kind of different from English. For example we use this present tense this way. You meet somebody in your office in your group of people.  You say to them, “I hear that you had a bad day at the doctor’s office.” You’re using the present tense aren’t you? You didn’t say, “I have heard.” You say, “I hear.” Why did you use the present tense in that situation when it was a point of time? It’s because that’s the way language is. We do use the present tense that way. So it’s not an undeniable use of the present. It’s just that we say, “I hear that you do this.”

In fact it occurs several times in the epistles. Paul will say to the Corinthians, “I hear that such-and-such is going on.” It’s not meaning that he continually hears about it. It means he heard about a report and when he presents himself he presents it in the present tense. “I hear that you have a problem.” So it’s not any different than the way we use our English verbs.

Yes.

Comment  What you’re saying here - I’m wondering if there is a comparison with another verse. Everyone who has…purifies himself just as He is pure. This other verse – I can’t tell you where it is. Be holy for I am holy. It’s a command. It seems to me to be a command. It’s not you are holy for I am holy. It’s be holy. He’s commanding us to be holy so that sounds like an effort on our part to pursue holiness, to pursue purification. In one sense you’re pure. I trying to… I definitely don’t want to be theologically wrong here. We’re not trying to be pure because in one sense we’re purified, but our actions don’t always play that out. So am I off base here?

No, the difference is that in that verse “be holy as He is holy,” you’re using the imperative mood. This is not an imperative mood. This is not a command here in verse 3. You’re right there theologically. We are commanded to be holy. Why? Because, He is holy. In this case he is saying you are purifying yourselves “as”, not because of, but “as” He is pure. So it’s a different construction, different mood in the verb, different logic between the first and second clause.

Yes

Comment  The comment here is like about…anyway, just something to point out. Seeing Jesus changes you and if we could see Him perfectly right now, we would theoretically be changed as He is like when Paul says, “Now we see through a glass darkly then face to face… you know is true and that you are known by Him you know Him but not exactly, fully. The veil is not totally gone. Because it’s not totally gone, we’re not totally like…something in seeing Him changes us. It seems to me that he’s saying that He does appear…therefore we will be what we should be, as we will be. You know the world doesn’t understand us now. Then it will see. So we’ll still be on the outside of that.

There are two different kinds of manifestations here. You can see it already happening. One is the physical supernatural, overwhelming manifestation of the return of Christ.  But then we’re not there yet. We don’t have that manifestation. So we have something lesser. That’s what John is talking about here, the lesser because keep in mind - what’s this whole section about? Remember we said word frequency. What’s the other verb that keeps coming up here? Love What’s the object of the love? Remember we said the love verb throughout this whole passage does not have as its object your neighbor. This is not love everybody. This is love that’s focused on other believers and therefore dependent upon perceiving why you love other believers.

Why do you love other believers? Johannine love here is a little different in this context. He is talking about a special kind of love for what the Holy Spirit has worked into lives of other believers. It’s ultimately not loving the people per se. It’s loving the fact that in their lives the Holy Spirit has worked. Do we or do we not appreciate the work of the Holy Spirit in other believers’ lives? The object of the love here – now that’s not denying that we shouldn’t love our neighbors. But this focus in this passage with John’s vocabulary is loving other believers. You’ll see this comes up more and more powerfully after we get passed verses 9 and 10.

But working our way through that, verse 4. Now watch the end. Here we go again with John’s antithesis. It’s light and darkness, abiding and not abiding, purifying and sin. So verse 3 was a positive verse. Verse 4 is a negative verse. So here we go with Johannine contrasts. Whoever commits sin basically is anomia. It’s not wrong to say it’s transgression of the law; but there’s a flavor to that.

and sin is lawlessness.

In verse 5 then picks up on this. Here is the verb manifest. Here we go again with the verb manifest.

^NKJ 1 John 3:5 And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins,

So that manifestation is talking about the First Advent, Christ comes. What was the purpose?

manifested

Purpose clause.

to take away our sins,

Then he adds at the end of verse 5, the same thing he adds at the end of verse 8. You can’t get away from this. He keeps putting this into the text. At the end of verse 5:

and in Him there is no sin

So you see the powerful contrast. Was Jesus perfect or not? He was perfect. That’s being affirmed here.  In Him is no sin.

He was manifested to take away our sins,

Now look what happens in verse 6. Look at the claim of verse 6.

^NKJ 1 John 3:6 Whoever abides in Him does not sin.

See the flow of thought? If Jesus is perfect and if we are in fellowship with Him, we don’t sin. Now the problem is we don’t abide in Him. But while we are abiding in Him, the branch and the vine – keep that in mind.  Remember going back why we have gone over this and gone over this with all the pictures of the Furches’ vineyard. Remember we kept talking about the vine and the branch, the vine and the branch. Jesus in John 15 used the vine and the branch. He said, “You abide in Me.” He had to stress the metaphor there because branches or the real literal grapevine don’t decide they’re not going to abide in the vine. But we do. So it’s a choice. Do we or do we not abide? If we do abide, this verse is clearly saying we don’t sin.

Now lest we think this is some strange Johannine thought let’s remember this occurs elsewhere in the Scriptures. Let’s turn to Romans 7. Chapter 7 - let’s look at verse 17. Paul struggled with sin. Look at the way Paul looks at this.

^NKJ Romans 7:17 But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

¹⁸ For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

¹⁹ For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.

²⁰ Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

Clearly he’s making a distinction between his regenerate self and the flesh and the sin that dwells in him.

²¹ I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.

²² For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.

²³ But I see another law in my members …

That’s the inner struggle.

In Galatians 2:20 – the life I live, how do I live it? Remember that verse?

Let’s go to Galatians, another case where Paul is talking; and he’s addressing this.  

By the way this kind of deep struggling that is so prevalent throughout the passages in the New Testament is something the world has no concept of. This is why people who have same sex desires wrongly infer that that’s genetic. Same sex desires are no more genetically determined than any of my sinful tendencies are genetically determined. I can’t blame it on the Clough genes because I have desires that are sinful. That’s a wrong interpretation of the data; but you only get the correct interpretation if you pay attention to the Word of God.  

The world doesn’t have the Word of God so that’s why we have people walking around saying, “I’m gay.” No, you’re not. You were made in God’s image. You’re a fallen being in need of a Savior. That’s your identity. Your identity is not that you’re gay. Your identity is that you’re a fallen creature in need of a Savior. So let’s get the identity straight here. It’s not genetic.

So we have this struggle that’s going on.

In Galatians 2:

^NKJ Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but…

Who lives in me?

Christ lives in me;

Is Christ compromising His deity by living in us?  Yeah. This is the same kind of truth. It’s just expressed Paul’s way like in 1 John 3 it’s expressed John’s way.

Then, let’s turn to Galatians 5:16. It’s in the outline in there, the handout. Chapter 5 verse 16 - what does verse 16 say?

^NKJ Galatians 5:16 …Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

What possible interpretation can you get out of that but walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh?

^NKJ Galatians 5:17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

There is an either-or. This is the either-or of fellowship that John is talking about. It’s expressed in Pauline vocabulary.

So let’s go back over to John here and see if we can move a little bit further in chapter 3 because we haven’t ended the controversial verses yet. They keep on coming.

^NKJ 1 John 3:6 Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him.

That’s why when I started this 1 John series I took you back to John 14 and the dialogue that went on between Jesus and Philip. Philip was a saved believer in John 14. The only unsaved guy walked out the door in chapter 13 so they’re all believers in chapters 14, 15, 16 when they’re being addressed by Jesus just prior to the crucifixion.

Philip says, “Just show us the way, Lord.”

Jesus turns to Philip and uses the exact same vocabulary.   

^NKJ John 14:9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?

Does Philip know the Lord in the sense of salvation? Sure he does. Jesus isn’t using the word know for salvation. He’s using know there as phase 2 sanctification.

“How do you know Me? Don’t you really know Me Philip?”

John is simply using the vocabulary that he recorded in John 14 with the Philip-Jesus discourse.

^NKJ John 14:17 "the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; …

By the way, this is why earlier I showed this slide. Back when we did chapter 2, let’s hold the place here and go back to chapter 2. Back in chapter 2 when we did verses 3, 4, and 5, I pointed to a structure that John uses.

I made this at the time. I said there’s the pattern for the structure that’s going to repeat throughout the epistle. Look at the structure in verse 3, verse 4 and the first part of verse 5. Look in verse 3 of chapter 2.  

^NKJ 1 John 2:3 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.

Is that first person plural or third person plural? First person plural. Does that include the apostles then?

if we

So John is including himself in verse 3, is he not?

^NKJ 1 John 2:3 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.

Then in verse 4 and the first part of verse 5, it’s third person.

^NKJ 1 John 2:4 He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

⁵ But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him

Then last clause of verse 5:

By this we know that we are in Him.

There’s a sandwich here. Do you see it? “We” is in the first part of it and “we” is in verse 5b. In between there are third persons because it’s used as a principle. When John wants to teach a principle, he reverts to the third person. So he’s saying that verse 4, verse 5b is talking about the general principle that if this happens, this follows. If this happens, that follows. It’s a way of teaching a proverb or a principle.

Okay, now it’s the same thing in verse 3 over here. In verse 3, he’s going to use “whoever.”

^NKJ 1 John 3:4 Whoever commits sin

He’s including himself in this. This is a simple way of using the third person. In verse 6 he says whosoever. There’s the construction again. It’s a principle.

^NKJ 1 John 3:6 Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him.

So when we’re out of fellowship, we’re acting like we don’t know the Lord – kind of rebuking here to think about that. Imagine Jesus coming to you when you’re out of fellowship.

He looks at you and looks at me and says, “Don’t you know Me? That’s what he’s talking about here.

Now he comes in verse 7 and here John is struggling with some of these false teachers. We have to guess what they were talking about because we’re not given much information about these false teachers. But, look at what he’s saying.  

^NKJ 1 John 3:7 Little children, let no one deceive you.

Clearly it’s a false teacher. Clearly they’re being seduced by some teachers that are reputed to be coming from Jerusalem; and they’re teaching false doctrine.

^NKJ 1 John 3:7 Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous,

There we go again.

just as He is righteous.

That’s the third time we’ve seen this kind of thing in the text. It’s perfection. So he’s saying that anybody that does righteousness is manifesting the fruit of the righteous nature.

Yes, Joel.

Comment It seems may be responding to the teaching of the Gnostics…inherently evil

Right

Comment

Right

What Joel is bringing up here is what New Testament scholars have suggested that this Gnostic Greek thing was eminent. It didn’t come to full power until probably late first, second century. Gnostics grew out of Greek culture. In Greek culture they thought of anything material as chaotic and secondary to spiritual world of the ideal. So they made this bifurcation.

It came into Christianity by saying, “Well, you’ve got fallen bodies. You’re of the flesh. You know it really doesn’t matter if you get too concerned with behavioral issues because you know it’s our flesh at work. What the heck?”  

So John is trying to say, “Look, we’re born again; we’ve got to act like we know Jesus Christ.”

So he says:

^NKJ 1 John 3:7 Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.

That’s the third time in the text that he makes this point.

Now in verse 8 - our time is up here so verse 8 is where we’ll have to end here. We’ll finish but what I want to do - I want to read quickly verse 8 and then I want to take you to Luke 9 so you can see an incident that happened in John’s life that apparently played a role here.

In verse 8:

^NKJ 1 John 3:8 He who sins is of the devil,

Now this is third person. This is principle again. He includes himself.

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.

Now watch the last clause. What was the purpose that he says here? First purpose he said was manifested to take away our sins. But here he used the verb destroy.

He might destroy the works of the devil.

Now hold the place and turn over to Luke 9 because in Luke 9... It’s funny when you read the gospels. You know what was one of the early signs of the integrity of the gospels is the writers of each gospel don’t report the things that were embarrassing to the writer. You’ll notice this that Peter who was associated with Mark. Mark’s gospel does have the embarrassing things that happened to Peter. John’s gospel doesn’t have the embarrassing things that happened to John. So we have to go over to Luke. Luke recorded this.

Luke 9: 52 - here’s the incident. Let’s go back to verse 49.

^NKJ Luke 9:49 Now John

See here we are – this is John’s going.

answered and said, "Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow with us."

⁵⁰ But Jesus said to him, "Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side."

⁵¹ Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem,

⁵² and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him.

⁵³ But they did not receive Him,

That is the Samaritans.

because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.

He’s talking about the sovereign plan of God here.

⁵⁴ And when His disciples

Here we go.

James and John saw this,

Look what they said.

They said, "Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?"

These guys are feeling they’re hot stuff here.

“We’ll take care of the Samaritan village right now. Just give us the word.”

But Jesus turned and He rebuked them. Look what he says to John, the writer of our epistle.

^NKJ Luke 9:55 … "You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.

⁵⁶ "For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives but to save them."

Does that ring a bell with 1 John 3?

^NKJ 1 John 3:8 He who sins is of the devil,

John knows what it was because at that moment he was of the devil. Jesus rebuked him.

“You don’t know what manner of spirit you are.”

It’s just a rebuke.

“You came under the influence of Satan when you wanted to destroy the Samaritan village. I am here on a mission of mercy.”

He says to clarify it at the end of verse 8. Instead of saying “destroy men” Jesus said, “I didn’t come to destroy people. I came to destroy the evil one.”

So that’s why He said:

^NKJ 1 John 3:8 … that He might destroy the works of the devil.

That verse makes so much sense when you realize what happened over in Luke 9 to very same author of this text. This is not simple text here. This is a struggle. John is as I said when we started this whole thing - Greek students love John’s writing because it’s simple Greek. It is not simple content theology. It is very profound theology, and you have to work through this with John.

We’re going to finish up verses 9 and 10a. That will end that section then we go into a lot easier portions of the epistle. This is the hardest section to work through because it requires more attention to what John is expressing.

(Closing prayer)