No
Sin When Abiding; 1 John 3:4-6
1
John 3:4 NASB “Everyone who practices sin also practices
lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. [5] You know that He appeared in order to
take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. [6] No one who abides in Him sins;
no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.”
When
we look at those verses it looks as if God is saying that a Christian doesn’t
sin. But that would be a contradiction because in 1 John 1:8 John made the
statement that the person who says he doesn’t sin is lying and deceiving
himself.
In
John 15 Jesus’ term [abiding] “in me” is not a positional term or a judicial
term, it is a relational term. This is so important to understand. It is a
relational concept. How do we know that? We look at the passages in which Jesus
uses the terminology “in me” to describe His relationship with God. For
example, in John 10:38 NASB “…though you do not believe Me, believe
the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I
in the Father.” When He says that the Father is “in Me” He is talking about
this close, intimate relationship He has with God the Father. Remember, He is
in hypostatic union. Because Jesus never had a problem with sin the idea of a
judicial or positional relationship with God is nullified. It is not necessary.
He is talking about intimate fellowship on John 10, not positional union. In
John 17 Jesus prayed to the Father “that they may all be one.” That is
potential, not actual. He is praying for the church, for the disciples. Here is
potential for unity but it is not actual yet—“even as You, Father, {are}
in Me and I in You.” He is talking about intimate fellowship here, not
positional union, because positionally, once we believe in Christ we are in
union with Christ and there is a unity in the body of Christ
positionally—we are all one in Christ. So why would He be praying that we
could all be one if we are already actually one positionally? The point is that
when Jesus uses the phrase “in me” He is not using it as Paul used the phrase
“in Christ.” So when John comes along in the epistle and is talking about
abiding, he is talking about love, it is in the same terminology Jesus is
talking about (abiding in love) is the upper room discourse. Remember the
command in John 15 when Jesus said “Abide in me,” is in when section from John
13:38 on is an explanation of how we achieve the main command given in 13:34,
35 NASB “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another,
even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will
know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” So the main
command governing the entire upper room discourse is to love one another as
Christ has loved us. In order to be able to fulfil that command something has
to happen experientially in the life of the believer, and that is that he has
to abide in Christ.
So
in summary we learn that abiding in Christ is a key command. Abiding “in me” is
in terms of relationship with Jesus, not positional truth. It means that it has
to do with our ongoing fellowship with Christ, not our initial union with Him
in terms of salvation.
In
John 15:4 the statement about “abiding in Christ” is the sole necessary
condition to produce fruit. NASB ““Abide in Me, and I in you. As the
branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither
{can} you unless you abide in Me.” In other words, you can’t bear fruit in the
Christian life—fruit is Christian maturity; spiritual service is not
fruit, it is the result
of spiritual growth—without abiding in Christ. [5] “I am the vine, you
are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for
apart from Me you can do nothing.” It is a mutual relationship of intimacy that
characterises the concept of abide. The Greek word meno means to stay, to remain in one place; it has the idea
of an ongoing relationship and fellowship with Jesus Christ. That produces
fruit.
In
Galatians 5 the sole and necessary condition for producing fruit is to walk by
means of the Holy Spirit. Fruit production has to do with character, spiritual
growth, the element of virtue in the Christian life, the character of Jesus
Christ. This is seen in Galatians 5:22, 23 NASB “But the fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Notice it
doesn’t say the fruit of the Spirit is Christian service—giving,
evangelism, teaching Sunday school; these are the results of our priesthood. As
a believer we should be involved in these to one degree or another and that
degree or level will be affected by your spiritual growth and maturity.
What
is the condition for the fruit of the Spirit? Galatians 5:16 NASB “But
I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”
So the command is to walk, and this is an instrumental dative here and should
be translated “walk by means of the Holy Spirit.” It emphasises the fact that
it is the Holy Spirit who is the means for living the spiritual life. The
Christian life is not difficult, it is impossible apart from divine enablement.
The Christian life is supernatural way of life; it demands a supernatural means
of production. So if in this passage walking by the Spirit produces fruit and
in John chapter fifteen abiding in Christ produces fruit, then walking by means
of the Holy Spirit an abiding in Christ must be somewhat equivalent terms,
talking about the same thing but from a different vantage point. To abide in
Christ means that at the same time we are walking by means of God the Holy
Spirit; to walk by means of God the Holy Spirit means that we are also at the
same time abiding in Christ.
1
John 3:4 NASB “Everyone who practices sin also practices
lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.” The word here for lawlessness is the
Greek word anomia. It is the word
“law” with a negative prefix: without law. The Mosaic Law is not the precedent
for the spiritual life. The Mosaic Law represented the constitutional and
spiritual life of Israel in the Old Testament, but the precedent for the
spiritual life in the church age is Jesus Christ and His walk by means of God
the Holy Spirit. To get an understanding of what anomia means we have to look at how it was used in the Greek
LXX which was a
translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. It translates the Hebrew word abon.
The basic root meaning is something that is distorted or twisted. It came to be
used of sin because it distorts or twists the soul of man, and because it is a
twisting and a distortion of the absolute standard of God. Often translated
“iniquity” in the Psalms. So John says, v. 4, whoever commits sin also commits
iniquity.
Probably
the best way to translate this is: “Every sinner—a participle in Greek
can either function verbally, like an adverb, or adjectivally like a noun. How
you tell the difference is whether or not it has a definite article with it. In
this case it has, which means it is used like a noun, and John is using it like
a name, “the sinner.” This is not one who is practicing sin; he is saying, “The
sinner.” The sinner violates the absolute standard of God, which is why he is
using the term anomia—does/commits
transgressions of divine absolutes; and sin is a transgression of the divine
standards.”
1
John 3:5 NASB “You know that He appeared in order to take away sins;
and in Him there is no sin.” This is the same term, AIRO, that John the Baptist used when he said: “Behold the Lamb
of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Our typical knee-jerk reaction is
to say this is what happened at salvation; Jesus died on the cross for our
sins. But if we take it that way we end up having a real problem with this
passage because we are going to end up saying Christians can’t sin. So John
isn’t saying that, because it didn’t stop at the cross, it is ongoing. The
Bible uses the word “salvation” in three senses. The Bible word “salvation”
simply means to be delivered and we always have to look at the context to
determine what we are being delivered from; it isn’t always the same. In phase
one our deliverance is from the penalty of sin—justification. But the
spiritual life has to do with working out that salvation, learning how to be
free from the power of sin in the Christian life. Learning the mechanics of the
spiritual life is what this is all about—learning how to grow so that we
can be free from the power of sin and we do not self-destruct by living a life
based on the sin nature. It began at the cross where we are freed from the
penalty of sin but it is ongoing in sanctification where we realise the
benefits of that work on the cross in terms of being freed from the day-to-day
power of sin. It is not until we die or the Rapture occurs and we are absent
from the body and face to face with the Lord that we have a glorified body and
are eventually freed from the presence of sin. So Jesus Christ appeared to take
away sins at the cross, and secondly he demonstrated in His life that He could
live a sinless life in dependence upon God the Holy Spirit. This was to
demonstrate the power and the reality of God the Holy Spirit for the believer
in the church age.
So
John, then, is saying that [in abiding] in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides
in Him does not sin. He makes it clear in the first clause of verse 6 that “in
Him” is not positional, it is experiential. If we are abiding in Him we won’t
sin. It is the same thing Paul said in Galatians 5: if we are walking by means
of the Spirit we won’t sin; we can’t sin. This is why failure in the spiritual
life is the result of one’s own decision. If we reject the provision of God in
terms of the Holy Spirit, reject the provision of God in terms of His Word, and
reject all of the spiritual assets that God has given us, and are going to just
live life in terms of our own objectives, priorities, and our own value
systems, then the end result is always going to be self-induced misery and
failure in life.
1
John 3:6 NASB “No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has
seen Him or knows Him.” The words “who sins has seen Him or knows Him” is
translated in the English with just a simple past tense but in the Greek it is
a perfect tense. A perfect tense in Greek is different from an English perfect.
In the Greek it is talking about action that is over with in the past and you
are focusing on the present results of it. We are focusing on the ongoing
results here, and what John is saying is that the sinner, the person who is
sinning, who is carnal, who is out of fellowship, has neither seen Him nor
known Him. At first glance a lot of people are going say that that means they
are not saved. No, it doesn’t mean they have never seen Him or known Him. An
English present perfect tense does not imply “never,” it simply implies a
present reality blindness and ignorance. The Greek perfect says that at this
present time the person is blind and ignorant spiritually as a result of a past
decision. He is not saying, and there is nothing in the grammar to suggest,
that what he is saying is no one who sins has never seen Him or known Him. It
is saying that as a result of sin he is spiritually blind and spiritually
ignorant.
Put
this together with what Paul says in Galatians 5. You make a decision to stop
walking by the Spirit and now are out of fellowship, and now you can bring to
completion the work of the lusts of the sin nature. Once you have made the
decision to sin and you are operating on the sin nature, that is now a present
reality, what is going on at this present point—out of fellowship and
that means you are not walking by the Holy Spirit, so you are spiritually blind
and spiritually ignorant, out in spiritual darkness at that instant in time.
John is saying that the person who abides in Christ and is walking by the
Spirit, filled by the Spirit, can’t sin. But once he chooses to leave that
position of dependency that activates the sin nature, he is out of fellowship
and walking in darkness, and when he is walking in darkness he is spiritually
blind and spiritually ignorant.