Integrity of God; Integrity of Believers; 1 John 2:29

1 John 2:29 ^NASB “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.” This is going to introduce a key word: righteousness.

This is going to be developed consistently throughout the next ten verses. Down through 3:10 we have the importance of righteousness contrasted with continuous sin. For example, 1 John 3:6 ^NASB “No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.” This is not saying that Christians don’t sin but that if we are in fellowship we are not sinning. So v.6 is going to tie us back to the main commandment which is to abide in Him. What John is saying is that if we continue in a lifestyle of carnality then obviously we haven’t come to the point where we really know God. That comes through doctrinal orientation and grace orientation. Then in v. 7 he says: “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.” What he is saying here is that if we are believers we need to grow up and act like your father, and that is the bottom line of the message. He is communicating that there are certain things that should never characterise the life of a mature believer, and advancing believer who is a child of God. Because of his position in Christ, because of his position in the royal family, these things should not be part of his life; there is something that is different and that comes as a result of growth. The righteousness is v.7 is not imputed righteousness; it has to do with application. John says we are to practice righteousness. That is not self-righteousness, not arrogance, not legalism. Then in 3:9 he contrasts this and says: “No one who is born of God practices sin…” 2:29 says the one who is born of God practices righteousness. The theme here is that the believer who is abiding in Christ develops applied righteousness.

Verse 29 jumps into a change in topic. “If you know that He is righteous.” Where in the world did righteous come from? It is not mentioned in the previous verse, there is just an abrupt shift into a new topic.

1. Righteousness is not human morality; it is not some sort of legalistic external standard; it has to do with the basic integrity of God.
2. The opposite of this statement is not true. If you make any statement or affirmation the opposite of that statement is not necessarily untrue. There are many people who will look at this and say if everyone who practices righteousness is regenerated, truly born again, then everyone who practices unrighteousness is not born again. John isn’t saying that, and that is a false conclusion drawn from this. “…everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.” In other words, you can’t practice true divine righteousness unless you have first been truly regenerated. The unbeliever may be moral and have a relative integrity, but he can’t produce the kind of true integrity and righteousness that only the believer can produce.
3. The concept of righteousness in John is related to understanding love. If there is not righteousness there can be no love. No matter what someone is like if there is no integrity there, there can’t be love because love is based on righteousness and integrity.

1 John 3:22 ^NASB “and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. [23] This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.” Notice there are two commandments there that are listed: Believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ (salvation); Love one another. Jesus added that second commandment for the believer, John 13. So these are the two issues for the believer’s life. As we have seen before, loving one another is not something we do the day after we are saved. We can’t do it until we have developed some real Christian character, and that comes only by spending some time walking by means of the Holy Spirit and abiding in Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who produces that. Scripture says we have to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is basic spiritual skills, growing in grace and knowledge, and then we can begin to get to understand what love is. [24] “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him…” This tells us once again what abiding in Him is. It is not believing in the name of His Son; it is related to keeping His commandments, starting with believing and adding to it advancing to spiritual adulthood and loving one another. Abiding in Him produces righteousness. Righteousness is related to loving one another and keeping His commandments.

1 John 3:1 ^NASB “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 does not know us, because it did not know Him.” He moves directly from talking about practicing righteousness (2:29) to the love the Father has for us.

The doctrine of the righteousness of God

1. Righteousness is the second element in the essence box.
2. Righteous means that God is the absolute standard. It refers to the absolute standard of God’s character.
3. The Greek word for righteousness is dikaios [dikaioj]; it is also the same word for justice. The same applies to the Hebrew word tsaddiq. Why is it that we have in these two languages a single word that a double aspect. The reason is that that single word looks at this concept of the integrity of God from two aspects. One aspect has to do with the standard, the absolutes by which things are evaluated. The second is the application of that standard. So righteousness has to do with the absolute perfection of God, the standard of His character. Justice is the application of that standard to His creation.
4. The perfect righteousness of God is affirmed in numerous places in the Scriptures. Psalm 11:7 ^NASB “For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; The upright will behold His face.” God cannot love personally anything less than righteousness. Psalm 89:14 ^NASB “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Lovingkindness and truth go before You.” That verses links four attributes: righteousness and justice on the one hand; lovingkindness, i.e. the application of love to His creatures, and truth, the expression of His character in terms of revelation. Psalm 101:1 ^NASB “I will sing of lovingkindness and justice, To You, O LORD, I will sing praises.”
5. Here in these two verses, Ps. 89:14; 101:1, we have the relationship of lovingkindness [chesed] to the justice [tsaddiq] of God. We see that same connection drawn between 1 John 2:29 and 1 John 3:1. Modern man often objects to this connection between divine love and divine righteousness. How often we here the objection: How can a loving God send His creatures to the lake of fire? Or, How can a loving God call for the execution of criminals? Or, How can a loving God allow suffering and evil to take place? They all ask the same basic question: How can God really love us and have such harsh standards? What modern man does is look at the character of God and takes one attribute of God or another attribute, rips it out of the essence box, blows it up way out of proportion and then makes that the standard by which he judges all of the other attributes. He fails to understand that these attributes all work together in perfect harmony.
6. All the attributes of God work together in perfect harmony, and that is called integrity. There is a unity and a wholeness in the character of God. So the core of divine integrity includes three elements or integrity: righteousness, justice and love. These work together in perfect harmony and are never at odds with one another. What the righteousness of God demands the justice of God supplies (application), and the love of God expresses this to undeserving mankind through grace.
7. As God has integrity, so must His children. That is what God is producing in the character of the believer through the work of the Holy Spirit.

1 John 2:29 ^NASB “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.” The phrase “practices righteousness” includes the participle of poieo, which means to do, to work, to practice something; referring to someone who does something—he does righteousness. This is not legalism it is the outworking of spiritual growth. The last verb, “born of Him,” is the perfect passive indicative of ginao. John does something here that is typical of his style of writing. First he uses the present participle of poieo and follows that up with a perfect tense verb. Here it is an intensive perfect, it emphasises the results of an action completed in past time. A present participle contemporaneous with a perfect tense, it happens at the same time. What negates that principle is that there is a definite article in front of the participle and in John’s writings that makes that participle function as a noun. It is talking about a class of people, people who do righteousness. They were saved at some point in the past but at this present time, as a result of this past action, they are now practicing righteousness. It does not have the idea that they have to be born again before they are righteous; it is just saying that of this class of people they have all previously been born again. People who practice righteousness are people who at one time were born again.

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