Integrity and Impersonal Love; 1 John
3:9-12
1 John 3:6 NASB
“No one who abides in Him sins…” If “abide” there is belief
in Christ then it could be read, “Whoever believes in Him does not sin.”
That is patently false and is a contradiction to what John says in 1 John
1:6-10 where he recognises that believers sin. The NKJV
says: “Whoever abides in Him does not sin.” That is a much closer rendering of
the original. It is a true statement; it doesn’t say what kind of sin. It
doesn’t say, “No one who abides in Him commits heinous sexual sins,” yet that
is how most people hear it. They think of whatever their worst sins are and say
that if somebody abides in Christ and they want to interpret that as belief
they say that no one who abides in Christ or believes in Him, no one who is a
true believer, sins. John goes on in the second half of verse six to say NASB
“no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.” That is, the person who sins is in
a not seeing or not knowing state. At that point the believer is out of
fellowship and in darkness, and in spiritual darkness the Word of God is as
irrelevant as if he was blind and ignorant of the Word because he is under the
control of the sin nature.
1 John 3:9 NASB
“No one who is born of God practices sin, …” In the NASB there is
the insertion of the word “practice” and yet there is no such word in the Greek
text which uses poieo [poiew], the word to do: NKJV ‘Whoever is born of
God does not sin.’ That could mean one of two things. It could be taken to mean
that no one who is born again sins, i.e. believers just don’t sin. We have
already refuted that error. It is clear that John means something else. “No one
who is born of God does sin.” Why? “… because His seed abides in him; and he
cannot sin, because he is born of God.
So “All who are born from
God do not do sin because
his seed abides in him.” He is not just talking about a simple believer, he is
talking about a believer who is abiding, whose seed abides, and in that state
he cannot sin—literally, “he is not able to sin,” the negative ou [o)u] plus dunamis [dunamij] which means not able to and excludes any possibility
of being able to sin. He doesn’t qualify the sin. There is one other way to
take this, and that is that John is describing what is true about the abiding
believer, that only the abiding believer can reach the state of not sinning.
John is saying that only the person who abides, only the person who is born again, is capable of producing righteousness and it is only the believer who has his seed abiding in him that is capable of not sinning. He is not stating that of you sin you were not ever a believer; he is not saying that believers can’t sin; he is stating that only believers have the possibility of being sinless and practicing genuine righteousness; and that only occurs when they are in that status of abiding in Christ.
1 John
To get into full-blown
adulthood we have to understand what love is. Love is the unique characteristic
of the believer versus the unbeliever. This is what is going to characterise
the believer—not just practising righteousness but it is connected with the
believer who loves his brother. Love becomes a major theme for the rest of this
chapter and down through 5:5. Love is chosen because love is designed to represent
and to characterise what the mature believer looks like. This isn’t going to be
produced in the life of the immature believer; he doesn’t know enough yet, he
hasn’t grown enough and matured enough yet.
John 13:34 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. [35] By this all men will know that
you are My disciples, if you have love for one
another.” He is not saying “by this all men will know that you are saved.” Being
a disciple is different from being a believer. A disciple is someone who is a
learner, a student, someone who is implementing all of the teaching of his
master. That is why in John 15 Jesus talks about abiding in Him. They are
already believers. If a believer is automatically going to love, already going
to abide, then why tell them to love and abide? If a believer does not abide he
will not produce love, and that is why love is the mark of the disciple, the
one who is abiding, the one who is advancing and is
growing to spiritual maturity. In John
Remember that in the Old
Testament the command was “love your neighbour as yourself.” Jesus said: “Love
your brother as I have loved you.” There is a big difference between those two.
In the Old Testament the analogy was “as yourself,” and it was directed towards
your neighbour who is anybody. Burt the command here is to love your brother,
i.e. other believers, not like you love yourself but as Christ loved them. So
it grounds that mandate in an absolute concept as displayed by Jesus Christ on
the cross. There is no wiggle room when Jesus is the model.
1 John 3:11 NASB
“For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we
should love one another;