1 John Lesson 33
… chapter 3. We’re going to look down at verse 8; and we hope today we’ll finish this section from 2:29 through 3:10. As I said repeatedly in the series, this is probably the most conflicted section of 1 John because of verse 9. That’s why we’re giving all this background so when we get to verse 9 we’ll understand that it’s not some unusual thing that John says here. We’ve had commentators and other Christians trying to worm their way around verse 9 by referring to a Greek present tense. We’re going to deal with that this morning.
Let’s go before the Lord.
(Opening prayer)
Again we look at that major outline. We’re in this large section of John. We’ve already gone through the word frequencies in this section so we’re all attuned to the fact that the two key words love and manifest. That is a tip off to the emphasis in the content of this passage. He’s talking about love. Remember the love he’s talking about is not love of neighbor; the love he’s talking about is the love of other believers. It’s a very particular kind of love. It’s not just love in general. That’s also important to understand here as we work through the verses.
Then the emphasis is on manifest. Obviously the issue here is what are you loving. Are you loving every kind of person’s personality? That’s not an issue here. The issue is that you have to define what it is you are to love. What it is we are to love is God’s word - which gets back to this diagram that we’ve seen time and over again is the trinity. The trinity is not some theological extraction for some seminary student. The trinity is the structure of the God with whom we have fellowship. We need to understand how John uses this because John is a Trinitarian. With all due apologies to the Aryans and Jehovah’s Witnesses and other people like that, John is a very strong Trinitarian. That means in the first part of the epistle there he’s talking God’s character, His righteousness and His justice.
NKJ 1 John 1:5 …that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
That sets up the whole epistle. The emphasis is on the nature of God. Once we deal with the nature of God and His righteousness and justice - not what a Gallup Poll said last Tuesday afternoon but what God’s character has from all eternity said. That character is what defines justice. It defines righteousness. It defines ethics. It is not defined by statistical surveys. It is defined by God’s character. So understand that because what we’re seeing in our culture today is opinion - group opinion. Group opinion doesn’t count.
Paul says in Romans 3:
NKJ Romans 3:4 …let God be true but every man a liar.
So it doesn’t matter to God whether – are we short of handouts? Huh. There’s not that many people here. I wonder why we’re short. Thank you, Jack.
In Romans 3 there’s a passage here. When you read it you think it’s poetic kind of sarcasm there. It’s not. Think of what it says.
NKJ Romans 3:4 ..let God be true but every man a liar.
That means if you have a Gallup Poll and 100% of the people believe something is true when it’s false - doesn’t count. If 100% of a Gallup Poll says, “I believe that this is just,” or “I believe this is evil” – it doesn’t count if God’s character is at stake.
NKJ Romans 3:4 … let God be true but every man a liar.
That’s the answer to Gallup Poll ethics. Okay. Good verse to remember. So God’s character is the basis.
Then we have God the Son because God the Son is the only member of the trinity who’s ever seen. In the Old Testament, it’s the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ that is seen.
It’s always funny how in church history there’s a group of people called the Marcionites. The Marcionites divided the Bible in half like many Christians still do devotionally. That is we never read the Old Testament; we just read the New Testament. The Marcionites believed there were two gods – that there’s a god of the New Testament, a loving god, and a God of the Old Testament which is a nasty, just god. The trouble is it’s the same God. It’s the same Son of God that’s manifesting in the Old Testament. It’s the Son of God manifesting in the New Testament. So you cannot divide the Old Testament from the New Testament. It doesn’t work – same God, same revelation – logically consistent.
So we have the Son. He is the Word of God, which means the Word or the revealer of the Father. He is the revealer of the Father’s nature. That means in our relationship to the trinity we emphasize the nature of God, but we also emphasize the revelation of that nature which is in the Son. That’s how you think trinitarianly about fellowship with God.
Ultimately we are answerable to His nature; but we wouldn’t know His nature if it wasn’t revealed to us. So the Son is the revealer of the Father. The Son is the one therefore in the Word of God. That’s why it’s the commands of God, the commands of the Word, that count.
Now we come to the Spirit. Again we emphasize this because that’s the key to understanding what John is getting at when he says love the brethren. He’s not talking about loving everybody’s type of personality. He is not talking about loving everybody’s idiocentricity. He’s talking about what God has worked into their life. That is the object of this kind of love. Love of neighbor is a whole other story. But love that John’s talking about, loving the brethren, is God’s work in the brethren. Why? Because the Spirit is the worker of God. He is the influence. He makes God’s nature influential. He does it in regeneration. He does it in indwelling. He does it in baptizing. He put us into union with Christ. He does it through the sealing ministry of the Holy Spirit. There are about two dozen other areas where God the Spirit does this. So it’s God’s Spirit’s work.
We don’t see the Spirit. We don’t feel the Spirit. The Spirit manifests God by influence - by exalting Jesus Christ. If Jesus is the revelation of God and the Holy Spirit works that revelation out in influence, then by definition the measure of the Holy Spirit’s work is how much He reveals of Christ. That’s how you tie all this together.
So then we have - the way to think about this, which is this diagram which we’ve seen. You think of the tri-unity, which we covered at the very beginning of class. We went over the various tri-unities because if God is a Trinitarian God it shouldn’t be surprising that He’s left marks of His Trinitarian nature inside the creation. Sure enough when you come to a person we have a triune nature. We have a nature that is unseen but manifest through us as people. Nobody sees nature. Nobody can look inside our hearts and say, “Oh, there’s the nature.” They can only see the nature in us by looking at us. So the nature of the person is unseen. It is seen in the historic person. Then as people we have influence on other people in our environment. So that’s a tri-unity. Not one of those 3 would ever be there without all three of them being there. We went through that tri-unity earlier.
I emphasis these tri-unities at the beginning of 1 John because I wanted to end this jazz that you hear particularly from anti Trinitarians like Muslims who argue that the trinity is inherently illogical. If the trinity is inherently illogical, space and time are inherently illogical and people are inherently illogical. You can’t say the trinity is illogical. Show me where the Doctrine of the Trinity has an internal illogical contradiction. I challenge anybody to do that. You can’t show that the trinity has any internal logical conflict within itself when you properly understand it.
The other thing in your handout now I’ve listed about 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 - 7 different verses in this immediate context that are references to God’s nature as perfect. Remember the epistle starts out:
NKJ 1 John 1:5 …that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
So that’s the statement of God’s nature. He is the calibrator. He is the standard. It’s His nature - not what happened in Washington last week, not what the Gallup Poll says, not what 52 ½ ministers signed a document says. It is God’s nature. That is sewn into the text in almost every verse. Look at this.
NKJ 1 John 2:29 If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.
So if you know that He is righteous - what’s the standard of criteria there? It is God’s nature - righteous.
In 3:2 what does it say?
NKJ 1 John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God; 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.
So the ultimate resurrection state of believers is that which is perfectly compatible, perfectly compatible, with the radiating glory of Christ. Now apart from our resurrection bodies, we faint. What does do? What do some of these saints do that saw Jesus? What did they do at the Mt. of Transfiguration when He was fully shown? They ducked because in our non-resurrected bodies we’re not able to take the full glory of God. We simply can’t do it - physically, spiritually or any other way.
This is why John says:
for we shall see Him as He is.
Now that’s an end also verse 2 of chapter 3 is a challenge to the argument you will hear in university classrooms from usually liberal arts people. Engineers and scientists don’t argue that way - only liberal arts people do. That is that ideas are only approximate. Ideas are the figment of man’s imagination so our idea of God is a product of man’s imagination.
But this verse says:
for we shall see Him as He is.
That’s an objective viewing of the nature of God.
Then we come to verse 3. This is the verse we were discussing last week.
NKJ 1 John 3:3 … who has this hope
That is the hope of the resurrection.
in Him
That is he’s destined to be resurrected
purifies himself,
Why does he purify himself? Because he is in shape through regeneration to be able to see Christ as He is. Verse 3 has to be taken in context of verse 2.
purifies himself, just as He is pure
That’s not just the subjective idea. Often people read verse 3 and think.… They think what verse 3 is saying is that if I consciously hope in Christ that purifies me. That’s a psychological and subjective truth. That’s true. It has a subjective, psychological power; but, it can’t be referring to psychological power because of the last clause. Look at what the last clause in verse 3 says. The last clause in verse 3 says:
who has this hope purifies himself,
As what?
As He is pure.
Is that perfection or not? That’s perfection. So it’s not our psychological feelings which are always approximate and contaminated. This is talking about justification. This is John’s way of saying what Paul says that we have His righteousness imputed to our account.
Now we’ve gone down through all the verses. Now we’re going to pick it up at verse 8. In verse 8:
NKJ 1 John 3:8 He who sins is of the devil, 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 “destroying the works of the devil” is a phrase that is similar but not identical to that verse we went back to last week. I point out here Luke 9:52-56. In Luke 9 in the Gospel of Luke, there is a report of something that happened to this apostle. He and James were going along. They called the fire of God down like Elisha. That’s what they were trying to do because the Samaritans rejected Jesus Christ.
“We saw that Lord. Bomb them.”
…just like Elisha. Elisha called fire down from heaven and he destroyed the prophets of Baal. He ended the ecumenical movement - by death. When John and James try that, what does Jesus say back to them?
NKJ Luke 9:56 "For the Son of Man did not come to destroy …
“I did not come to destroy.” What did verse 9 says? Anybody? Remember? They’re calling fire down from heaven. They’re rebuked by Jesus and He says:
NKJ Luke 9:56 "For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives
But, He was preaching the gospel. Now we have that reference in Luke. John heard it. He heard the Savior say.
NKJ Luke 9:56 "For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives
Now in this epistle in verse 8 what is He saying? Why did Jesus come? He came to destroy what? The works of the devil. So the destruction, the war is not against people. The war is against the work of the devil.
Now let’s think about that a minute. What are some of the works of the devil? What does he do? Anyone?
Comment
The strife that you see going on, human evil, proceeds out of our fallen nature. But how does Satan take advantage of our fallen nature? What does he do to get humans to sin and violate God’s ordinances? He influences them.
All right, let’s take it one more step. Satan influences us. How does Satan? What are some of the tools Satan uses to influence human evil or to stimulate it?
Comment
False doctrine. He gives false doctrine because what does false doctrine do? It distorts the truth of God’s nature. Satan is always attacking. That’s his central tactic - to so doubt in our minds, your mind and my mind, that God loves us and that He is just. This has been going on since the Garden of Eden. Every temptation, every random thought that comes into our heads to attack the nature of God is directly from the evil one.
Now sometimes because of our psychology, because all of us have basically been brought up in secular education. Secular education is very, very impoverished. Secular education is trivial. It’s superficial. It doesn’t ever deal with the big questions of life. It can’t define what reality is. It doesn’t know what ethical norms are. It does not know how to identify truth. I would challenge everyone here this morning. I challenge you that if you can remember one time in any of your education from kindergarten on to graduate school where you ever dealt with the issue of how do you define truth. Were you ever challenged to what ethical absolutes are? At any point from your kindergarten through your graduate degree?
Let me tell you something I went two graduate schools. I went to one of the finest engineering and science schools in the world and I never, ever at any course at any lecture ever had a discussion of how you attain truth. We never even dealt with the details of the scientific method. This is in the greatest engineering and science school in the world.
So you can’t tell me that secular education is thorough. It isn’t. The reason why secular education can’t be thorough is because I know darn well if they get into the big questions, where’s it going to lead them? What are they trying to avoid? God! So by definition a secular education cannot deal with the great questions of life because they want to avoid the great questions because they don’t want the great answer. They know what the question’s answer is.
This is why all of us are trapped to a degree – everyone in the room including myself has been infected with secular educational concepts. One of the things is that every thought that pops into your mind and my mind we think is ours. That’s not the Scripture. Ideas that pop into you mind are not necessarily yours.
Example – when Jesus and Peter are talking. Jesus asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am?”
What does Peter say? “Thou art the Christ.”
Fifteen minutes later in the presence of Jesus, Peter is saying, “I don’t want you to go to the cross.”
What then does Jesus say to Peter?
NKJ Matthew 16:23 …"Get behind Me, Satan!
Jesus obviously was not taking that thought. “Oh, Peter that’s your thought.” If it were Peter’s thought Jesus would have addressed it as Peter’s thought. Jesus did not address it as Peter’s thought. He addressed it as Satan’s thought. So who put that idea in Peter’s mind? But if you would have asked Peter, he would have thought, “I just thought of that.”
No, he didn’t just think about that. That was injected. How Satan does it we don’t know. We have a receptor here; and we can’t get too ethereal about this. Our brains are electronic marvels – electronic marvels.
I have been involved at one point many, many years ago where we were dealing with a demon possessed person and thank God I had an electrical engineer in that room who had a voltmeter and 110-volt line. When this person was thrashing around you could see it on the voltmeter of the 110-volt line. So that’s not psychological. That was something going on with the electrical field right in that room.
So the very fact is that Satan has the capabilities of injecting thoughts into our mind probably - this is just speculation on my part; this is not theology here - probably electrically. That means that all of our thoughts are not our thoughts. That means we have to monitor our thinking.
What criteria and filter are you going to use to monitor your thinking? The Word of God That’s why if you have a diet of 5 ½ minutes a week in the Word of God, you are not going to be able to properly filter the thoughts in your mind. You have to be exposed to the Word of God over and over and over so it becomes reaction.
We’ve seen the testimony of the soldiers in Iraq. Some of these guys that get the Medal of Honor and they’re interviewed.
They say, “What happened when this happened?”
Inevitably you hear these soldiers say, “My training took over. I didn’t think; I reacted.”
But why would they react skillfully? Because in military training, unlike civilian training - one of the good things about military training is that you go over something and over something and over something so you can wake up at 2:30 after a nightmare and still function. The only way the military does that is they go through endless repetition, endless repetition.
When I was being trained in the Air Force I wasn’t a pilot but I received some of the pilot training because they wanted all of us in the Air Force wanted know what happened. One of the things you have to be trained in if you’re sitting in the cockpit or sitting in the backseat there are a few levers you don’t want to pull, one of which is the ejection level. So they would go through this, and they would give us all kinds of things. Then they asked us, “Quick, grab it.” You had to know - don’t grab that baby or – ppfft. That’s what’s going to happen.
How often do they do that? When we were cadets we had to climb up all the way to the third floor of the barracks and all the way back down. Every single step we had to give the ejection procedure over and over. When we went to lunch, we give the ejection procedure. When we came back from mess hall, we give the ejection procedure. When we went to the parade grounds in the afternoon, we give the ejection procedure. When we come back from the parade grounds in the afternoon, we give the ejection procedure. You do that for 3 weeks, you know what the ejection procedure is. That’s military training.
The only way…and the military doesn’t do this because they haven’t researched it. That’s expensive training. Do you know why it’s expensive? It takes time. If there were a more efficient way of training people, they would have done it by now. So the very fact that… one of the most …you’re training to survive in battle, in war to save your life. That kind of training is repetitive. There is no other way of training this. That’s why we go through the Word of God.
Yes, David.
Comment
Well, Satan has influenced the culture and the cultural ideas influence us.
Comment I always thought that Satan had the power…
Thoughts come from Satan – either direct or indirect. But it gets back to the fact we can’t sit there and figure out - is this a direct input or indirect. We’ve got to deal with it, expose it and know what it is quickly enough so we don’t start reacting that way because often times we can react to something in a split second. That’s the problem we’ve got here.
So in 3:8 John comes out and he makes this statement.
NKJ 1 John 3:8 He who sins is of the devil,
We said all these admonitions are directed toward believers and he includes himself. He does it because in Luke 9 he himself was involved with this. Now there are two things on your handout and… There are two blanks there. I always am notorious for never covering the blanks. So let me go through those.
In bringing the devil into the discussion rather than merely talking about sinning, what elements does John therefore add in to this whole thing?
A very sobering picture here. What he is arguing in verse 8 is we are deserters when we fall for satanic initiatives when we sin. John says earlier in the passage we don’t understand who Jesus is at that point. So these are sobering passages; and they’re so sobering that it has tempted Christians to try to worm their way around this.
“Oh, this must be referring to unbelievers,” because they don’t want to think of themselves as this vulnerable. They don’t want to think of sin as this serious.
So let’s go then…and furthermore item 3 in the handout… Well, let’s see - the first blank. It sets our Christian life within the context of a cosmic battle. That’s the context. John is not talking about psychology. He’s talking about a cosmic battle that’s going on in this universe. It elevates the seriousness of being out of fellowship so it’s akin to desertion from what God is doing in His church. God isn’t doing sin in His church so we at that point defect.
Now let’s go down to #3.
Now the problem is this – how do you do battle with an enemy you can’t see? Think about this. You’ve got to have target information. You have to have target intelligence on a target or you can’t hit the target. You can’t identify the target. Where do you get the intel?
Think of what’s going on now in Israel. You’ve got the IDF (Israeli Air Force) wanting to take out certain targets. Now the pilot in the plane can’t see the target that he’s going to hit. He can’t reason through what’s going on. What he gets is intel and all I can say is Israel must have a lot of informants in Gaza. They know what automobile Hamas is driving in on what street at 9:32. You can’t tell me they either don’t have a bug in the guy’s car or there’s somebody sitting there watching it telling the guy up there, “Okay, this is the car. Take it out now.” Now that’s precise targeting. But the pilot doesn’t see that. All the pilot has is giving the coordinates. He sets the coordinates in, weapons away, poof. So the pilot is dealing with an unseen; but the pilot in order to hit the unseen target has to have info, intel.
Where do we get our intel from? The Word of God. You can’t get it by reading the Baltimore Sun. You get it by reading the Word of God. You don’t get it by watching a television show. You get it with the Word of God. So how many times do we keep going back to getting in the Word of God over and over and over so we understand our enemy.
All right, now we come to verse 9. Verse 9 is the one that sets the boys from the men.
NKJ 1 John 3:9 Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.
Now the first thing we do is look at the context. Back in verse 6, what does it say about “does not sin”? What is the condition of the one who does not sin in verse 6? He is abiding. So that would tend to say that whatever is going on in verse 9 is the same thing. John is looking at whatever nature is manifesting. In the handout I have a sort of a very crude translation. I do this from time to time - in 3:9 there at the top of your handout in bold font. What I did is I translated from the Greek word order. The reason I followed the Greek word order, you can see it’s very awkward English. You’d never write an English sentence this way. But in the Greek you notice the word order. It says:
Whoever has been born out of God sin does not do.
That Greek word order emphasizes what? After you get through “whoever has been born of God,” it says he does not sin. The Greek says sin he does not. By putting that verb first, actually the noun (sin first), he’s emphasizing sin. What has he just got through saying in verse 8?
NKJ 1 John 3:8 He who sins is of the devil,
Here he says:
NKJ 1 John 3:9 Whoever has been born of God does not sin,
Then he says that his seed remains in him. Now the seed should trigger some other verses to mind. That’s why I put on the handout here 1 Peter 1:22. Let me read these 2 verses from Peter. Here’s the same idea so it’s not some extreme Johannine thing.
NKJ 1 Peter 1:22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,
23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
What is the seed that Peter is talking about there?
born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible,
It’s the Word of God versus a sperm. The corruptible seed is the sperm cell. We are born not of the sperm, but we are born of the Word of God. So he’s talking about regeneration there. What is regenerated? Are our bodies regenerated? No, that’s resurrection. Well, then what is regenerated? Our spirit. So the object that he’s talking about that is regenerated is the spirit. It’s the nature involved here.
In 2 Peter 1:4 Peter goes even further than John. Listen to what Peter says.
NKJ 2 Peter 1:4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature,
you may be partakers of the divine nature,
Now when he says it’s through the promises, he’s talking about us trusting the promises, isn’t he?
through these
He’s saying, Peter’s saying, through these promises, trusting those promises, you partake of the divine nature. He’s talking fellowship just like John’s talking about. So in John 3:9 when he makes this statement he’s saying that whoever has been born of God does not sin. That’s a person living consistently at that point in fellowship and allowing the nature of the new nature of the regenerate nature to manifest itself. That regenerate nature cannot sin. The regenerated spirit within us from the point we are saved can never sin. Our flesh sins. We choose to sin.
What chapter in Romans does this remind you of? Romans 7, that battle going back and forth and back and forth. There wouldn’t be a battle if there weren’t a regenerate nature going on in there. If there were just the flesh there wouldn’t be any objection to sin. The fact that there’s a struggle going on means there’s a conflict. So verse 8 is saying you can be under the influence of Satan when we sin and we can be under the influence of the regenerate nature when we don’t. Or, when we don’t sin we’re under the influence of the regenerate nature.
Now commentators have tried to end run this verse by reinterpreting it. Here’s how they try to reinterpret it. They read into verse 9:
Whoever is born of God does not habitually sin.
Now that at first glance seems to be an easy way out because they’re saying a born again person wouldn’t habitually sin. The problem is it’s the Greek present tense without any qualifying word. So in your handout you’ll notice two things I mention.
NKJ Luke 24:53 and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen.
Diapontos is a word added to that verb. Luke is adding diapontos to the verb to let us know that these people – it’s not just Luke sees them and they’re in the Temple doing these things. What Luke is saying they’re in the Temple yesterday, today, tomorrow, next week. They’re in the Temple. “Every time I look in the Temple they’re in there.” So he adds diapontos to the verb to let us know this is habitual.
Now you have another instance. The author of Hebrews 7:3 talking about priesthood.
NKJ Hebrews 7:3 … remains a priest continually.
He adds diaxxx a Greek term again added to the verb to let you know it’s habitual.
In 3:9 of John there is no such addition to the verb so is taken as a normal present tense. It’s no different from verse 6.
Verse 6 says:
NKJ 1 John 3:6 Whoever abides in Him does not sin.
Verse 9 is simply pointing out when we abide, we’re letting the born again nature show. This goes back to the metaphor that we spent 2 or 3 lessons on. Remember the branch is embedded in the vine. The branch is showing the nutrition; it is showing the structure; it is showing the genetic information flowing out of the vine. So the branch becomes part of the vine. Jesus said in John 15, “Without me you can do nothing.” You can’t live the Christian life out of fellowship with the Lord. The branch has got to abide in the vine because the vine is the source of all nutrition. The vine is the source of all life. That metaphor carries into this passage.
So verse 9 then is talking this action. Now this has some implications. On you handout again, I point out the ultimate source of behavior. Two of them implies - same thing as Romans 17:23 and Galatians 2:20. Those are verses where Paul speaks to the same issue.
NKJ Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;
What’s that talking about? Paul doesn’t live anymore? No, he’s talking about the manifestation of Christ’s nature in us.
Now application – there’s a little box on your handout. I want to apply this directly to a major issue in or culture. This is an issue that the unbelievers don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Sadly many Christians that are going along with this thing, they don’t understand what’s going on because they apparently aren’t seriously reading the text of Scripture. Watch.
The idea of sexual identity on the basis of feelings - on the basis of feelings - is a highly oversimplified view of personality. It is a trivial view of personality.
The whole thing is built on a trivial view of personality. I give you several points.
Mr. Unbeliever over here, his identity is not that primarily of being homosexual in this case. His identity is that he is a creature, human being made in God’s image – period. That’s the identity. So let’s get this straight from the start of the discussion. We can’t even have an intelligent discussion if we don’t start there. So if we are going to accept so-and-so – we can be friends. We’re talking to one another in a cordial fashion. I’m gracious to him. I’m not going to kick him out because he has a sin problem. I have a sin problem so I’m not going to kick him out. I don’t hate him because he’s a homosexual. He’s my friend. I am a friend with a homosexual. Fine. But, I don’t treat him as a primarily a homosexual. I treat him as a person made in God’s image. We’re in a conflict right there. This is a major point, a major misunderstanding. It’s one that’s not even being talked about.
So often I think of that last scene in Patton where he’s having a toast and a Russian general in Berlin doesn’t want to… Patton didn’t want to have a toast with a Russian general. He says, “You son of a b… I don’t drink with those people.” So the Russian translated. You see the Russian general getting very mad. “I don’t want to drink with that son of b… either.” So Patton says, “Well, I’ll drink to that one son of a bitch to another.” That’s how we have fellowship. We’re both fallen people. We’re both made in God’s image and we’re damned by Him because of our sin and we need a Savior so we can get along. Now that’s serious conversation. It’s not demeaning conversation because you’re putting yourself on the same level. We can have fellowship. We can have friendship. We’re damned miserable sinners made in God’s image in need of a Savior. I accept you. Do you accept me? That’s point 2.
None of these three points should generate a self-righteous spirit in our hearts, but they should open a way of intelligent in-depth adult level conversation.
Yes
Comment
What Joel is bringing up is a confessing homosexual, if you don’t think of the four points I just covered, would make you feel uneasy? So what do you do when you feel uneasy socially? You withdraw. That’s what Joel is talking about.
I’ll never forget the words of Frances Chafer. When Frances Chafer was living up in the mountains with his wife he was telling about some of the kids came up, kids out of all kinds of backgrounds. He told us one time in a seminar. He said that one of the first things my wife and I had to learn is that some of the girls would come up infected with all kinds of venereal diseases. They had to sleep in our sheets. I never forgot that.
They didn’t say, “Oooh, we’re not going to have you here.”
You had to wash their sheets pretty carefully. They had to welcome them because otherwise you can’t grow them in Christ. So what Joel is saying here is important for us as a fellowship. We could have alcoholics come in here. By the way we’ve had homosexuals come in here and we’ve been very gracious to them, one of whom 5 or 6 years ago I knew personally. He left not because of the church. He was graciously accepted in this congregation, but he had another problem involving the law and so forth. It’s not true that the church always deals with it that way. Joel’s warning is valid. As we deal with this, understand grace and that we all come to Christ as contaminated people. We’re all Christians who are suffering and need to help one another. That’s going to be the topic from now 3:10 on that’s what we’re going to deal with – what Joel’s talking about, loving the brethren. In this case, he’s a homosexual person. He knows it’s wrong. He’s coping with the problem, but I can tell you from training Christian counselors who have worked years with homosexuals they will tell you that get into their life. It’s not really homosexuality that’s the issue. The issue is their prayer life stinks. They are not in the Word of God consistently. They have anger problems. They have not dealt with their problems in biblical ways - point after point after point. Yes, some of them have been abused; but they have reacted to abuse in unbiblical ways. Counselors will tell you this. We have dealt with this. They’re professionals who have worked with this for years.
Yes, Joel.
Comment
The idea is they’re being told because you have these feelings, you’ve got to let them go. Nonsense. Every sinner has feelings. I have feelings. I have anger feelings. I have other feelings. I don’t sit there and say, “I’ve got to yield my feelings.” That’s a false anthropology. Unfortunately that’s the stuff these guys are getting.
That’s where we have to be articulate in saying, “No, there’s redemption in Christ. I’m a sinner; you’re a sinner. Let’s deal with it.”
So let’s get it straight where we’re coming from. We’re talking about the kind of universe of the Bible. We’re talking about an anthropology defined by Scripture. We’re talking about redemption in Christ that is supernatural. So these are things to remember. They’re not just unique to homosexuals. They could be alcoholics; they could be drug addicts. Drug addicts have the same problem. You can’t become a Christian on Tuesday as a drug addict and Wednesday you’re free from drugs. It doesn’t work that way. The same with homosexuality. The idea that you have to yield to your feelings is absolutely contrary to Scripture.
(Closing prayer)