Abiding
and Christian Integrity; 1 John 3:7-9
When
we are filled by the Spirit, walking by the Spirit, that is where righteousness
is produced because that is the arena of production by God the Holy Spirit.
This is what Galatians 5:16-25 is all about. Walking by the Spirit will produce
certain character qualities—real virtue, not morality. The biggest
problem is Christianity is that people confuse morality with spirituality.
Morality is not spirituality. Just because somebody is extremely religious and
moral doesn’t mean that they have a relationship with God. The Pharisees of
Jesus’ time were extremely moral, but Jesus said, Matthew 5:20 NASB
“…unless your righteousness surpasses {that} of the scribes and Pharisees, you
will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, it is not enough to be
moral, to have human virtue; there has to be something more. Only the believer
walking by means of the Holy Spirit can produce true righteousness. That is
because it is not produced by us, it is produced by
God the Holy Spirit who is working in us.
So
in 1 John 3:7 NASB “Little children, make sure no one deceives you;
the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.” He
is looking at a person’s life and says that if you can see real righteousness
there, that they are doing real righteousness, then that means (2:29) that they
are born again, that they are walking by means of God the Holy Spirit. They are
doing righteousness just “just as He is righteous.” How did Jesus produce
righteousness? By walking by means of God the Holy Spirit. That is why He
pioneered the spiritual life of the church age. He went through all the testing
we go through but He didn’t surmount the temptations by relying on His deity,
He surmounted the temptations by relying on the Holy Spirit and the same
spiritual skills that He bequeathed to us; everything, of course, except
occupation with Christ and confession of sin, because He didn’t need to use
those two.
1
John 3:8 NASB “the one who practices sin [lit. the
one who does sin] is of the devil…” The word “practices” is incorrect; it is
simply “the one who does sin.” Immediately people think that this means not
saved. But see, when you are walking in darkness, walking in the power of the
sin nature, you are also walking in the world system. Remember 1 John
2:15 NASB “Do not love the world [cosmic system] nor the things
in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
He is not saying they are not saved, he is saying that at that point they do
not understand their relationship with God, it is not motivating them, and they
are living according to the devil’s thinking. So in 3:8 what John is saying is
that the one who sins is doing what the devil wants him to do; he is operating
on the cosmic system. The devil’s system has different manifestations such as
arrogance, pride, a haughty look, etc. We have to understand that sin is sin;
there are moral sins and immoral sins.
“…
for [because: HOTI] the devil has sinned from the beginning…” The devil is the
father of sin, John chapter eight. “… The Son of God appeared for this purpose,
to destroy the works of the devil.” That is the point of the believer’s life.
We are not supposed to sin. It doesn’t mean that we are going to get to a point
of sinless perfection but the believer is not supposed to sin. That is what
Paul says Romans 6: “Don’t you know that you have been freed from sin?” That
means we are no longer a slave of
sin. So we are to live like a slave to righteousness and not like a
slave to sin.
1
John 3:9 NASB “No one who is born of God practices [does not] sin,
because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”
He who is “born of God” is a reference to the believer. He does not sin. What
he is talking about here is that the believer in fellowship, walking by means
of the Holy Spirit, doesn’t sin. To understand the first clause we have to
understand the second: “because His seed abides in him.” What is the seed? Some
have suggested it is the Holy Spirit; others that it is simply faith. But we
have to look at how the term “seed” is used in several passages. For example,
in Matthew chapter thirteen in the parable of the sower the seed is the Word of
God. In 1 Peter 1:23 NASB “for you have been born again not of seed
which is perishable but imperishable, {that is,} through the living and
enduring word of God.” So the seed is the Word of God, i.e. the gospel that
brings forth new life in the believer. “His seed abides in Him,” and we have
seen that abiding is not a term absolute but a relative term. So the point that
John is making is that as long as the Word is abiding in us we don’t sin. John
15:4 NASB “Abide in Me, and I in you...” The living Word has a
double meaning there. Jesus is the Word of God and the Bible is the Word of
God. He is the living Word; the Bible is the written Word. So by hearing the
gospel the seed that is planted in us is the message about the living Word of
God, Jesus Christ. Jesus said: “Abide in Me, and I in you,” so therefore we
have this double activity here that when we are abiding in Christ he is abiding
in us. When we are not abiding in Christ he is not abiding in us. “… As the
branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither
{can} you unless you abide in Me. [5] I am the vine, you are the branches; he
who abides in Me and I in him …” It is a dual factor.
So when John says in 1 John 3:9 “He who is born of God does not sin, because
His seed abides in him,” he is talking about this mutuality of the fact that if
we are abiding in Him and His seed, the Word, and Jesus Christ abides in us,
then we don’t sin.
This
is exactly what Jesus says in John 15:7 NASB “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it
will be done for you.” So when we are abiding in Him there is also the
reciprocal activity of Jesus and the Word abiding in us. So when that is taking
place we don’t sin.
What
John is saying here is that, yes, it is true that we still have the sin nature
and we are going to sin. But the point is, we are not supposed to, and if we
are children of God, that is not supposed to characterise our life. Sin is not
supposed to be a part of the believer’s life. It is, but we have a solution and
that is 1 John 1:9; but it is not acceptable behaviour for the child of God.
That is what 1 John 3:9 is talking about.
So
the emphasis in this section is that the believer is saved for a purpose, and
that is to perform righteous deeds and righteous works. They are not produced
in his own energy and his own nature; they are produced by his walk and by the
Holy Spirit. We only have that when we are abiding in Christ. We have recovery through
1 John 1:9 but the point is we are not supposed to just bounce in and out of
fellowship, we are to stay, remain; we are to abide in Christ. This is what is
to characterise the life of the believer. Furthermore, where he is going with
this is to emphasise the fact that this is related to fulfilling the
commandment that Jesus gave in John 13:34, 35—that we are to love one
another as Christ has loved us.