The Epistles of John, Part 16: The Case for Discernment

Many years ago I was taking my wife to work one morning.  I was very young and very rash and I thought it would be fun to drop the pedal of my truck to the floor for a couple of minutes.  I had no particular motivation.  There was no one to impress.  It was quite literally a whim of fancy.  Before I had gotten very far I saw the bane of every foolish driver in my rear view mirror; the flashing lights of a police cruiser.  I took my ticket, took one step further down the road to maturity, and moved on. 

This was a classic case of poor judgment.  Fortunately, in the providence of God the ramifications of my action were fairly tame; a few points on my driver’s license and a few dollars out of my bank account.  But the news is filled every day with stories of people who have exercised excruciatingly bad judgment that have injured themselves or others, damaged property, and sometimes cost lives.  In many cases the perpetrators of these offenses spend years behind bars.  If they were young when convicted the typical assessment is that they ruined their life before they even got started.  And these situations are easy for us to evaluate.  It is clear when someone has made a visible and obvious mistake in issues dealing with the physical realm we exist in.

However, the eyesight of Christians is not always 20/20 when it comes to exercising good judgment for themselves in the spiritual realm.  In other words, sometimes we make really dumb decisions relating to spiritual matters.  And what’s worse is, that we may not always even realize what we have done because we lack the visual clarity to properly assess our conduct.  The theological term for this spiritual clarity and judgment, or lack thereof, is discernment. 

This is truly a backwards state of affairs.  In Matthew 10:28 Christ teaches us: Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.  In the context of that passage the Lord is speaking about how to respond to evildoers who persecute us.  It is not particularly related to the issue of discernment.  But the principal is the same.  Our minds should be tuned and honed to a razor’s edge on heavenly issues, with worldly concerns trailing a distant second.  It’s not that we are to be ignorant of the world.  But our focus is not on the world.  Unfortunately, often it is the other way around for Christians.  We spend so much time and energy learning to operate in the worldly sphere of reality that we allow our spiritual muscles to atrophy.  We fall victim to the danger Paul warned of in Colossians 2:8: See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

This issue of discernment is on John’s mind as he moves into the next section of his letter.  We know it in our modern English Bible translations as chapter 4.  The first verse reads as follows: Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  There are two key words in this verse that we need to understand; spirit and false prophets.

The English word spirit in this verse and the following five verses is a translation of the Greek “pneuma”.  It can mean breath, wind, the Holy Spirit of God, inner life as well as the rendering here of simply spirit.  Breath and wind don’t fit the context of the verse because the implication is that of a moral agent capable of professing either truths or falsehoods.  Similarly, John cannot possibly be talking about the Holy Spirit, because He leaves room for these spirits to be in error.  If he was referring to the Spirit of God this would be blasphemy.  Therefore, John must be talking about an inner life or a spirit.  But what does this mean exactly.

Here are a few passages that will shed light on this for us.  In John chapter 4 Jesus is speaking with the woman of Samaria whom He met at Jacob’s well.  In verse 24 He tells her: God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.  In other words, God the Father is a non-corporeal being with a soul.  It is this that makes Him a living being, even having no flesh such as the dust we humans are made of.  Because of this aspect of who He is we, being subservient to Him, must approach Him on His terms not ours; with our spirits.  It is the soul or the spirit which provides animation, reasoning, and volition to an entity.  If bereft of our souls, we would be vacant husks of flesh with no motive force to compel our limbs to move in a purposeful pattern.

In John 11:33 Jesus, coming to the home of His friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, sees Mary weeping over the recent death of her brother.  The Scriptures say: He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled.  It was not the Lord’s feet, presumably aching from the journey, which caused Him distress.  No, it was His inner life that was emotionally affected, resulting in His sorrow.  We understand this.

To see another angle on this principle we can look to Revelation 11:11: But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet.  The scene is of two messengers from the Lord who have been killed by the beast.  Their dead bodies are left in the street for three days, after which verse 11 comes to pass.  So we can see in this verse that “pneuma” is something directly given by God to those of His creations that He chooses.  It is the quality that makes one truly alive and the absence of which that makes one truly dead.

Going back to our 1^st John passage, the point is that spirit simply refers to any created being that God has chosen to imbue with that inner quality of life that is a reflection of His own quality of life.  But this is still not enough for us to gain a full understanding of John’s meaning here.  After all, “pneuma” used in this way could conceivably be used to refer to either humans or angels.  Which is John talking about here?  Who or what is it that we are being instructed to test?  The answer to that can be found by examining the other important word; false prophets.

The Greek is a single compound word, “pseudoprophetes”.  “Pseudo” means lying, deceitful, or false.  We still use this word today in English in its original form so it may already be familiar to you.  English dictionary definitions convey an additional quality for this word: that of almost, approaching, or trying to be something but not actually.  Applied to people, it is a person who purports to be someone else.  Revelation 2:2 gives an excellent picture of this: you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false.

The other half of the word, “prophetes”, means just what it sounds like.  It is, outside of Judaism, an interpreter of oracles or other hidden things.  Within the bounds of the Jewish religion that John was familiar with, “prophetes” refers to one who, moved by the Spirit of God, becomes the Lord’s spokesman, as in the case of Jeremiah 1:5 and 7: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations…Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’ because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you shall speak.”

Prophets of antiquity, both Jewish and otherwise, were always humans.  Even if hypothetically a demon had taken possession of a Greek oracle, his status as prophet to everyone who heard him would have been tied to his humanity.  And for a Jew prophets were unquestionably men that God chose, not angels.  So getting back to the question of what does John mean by a spirit, we are left with the following.  This is a human who professes to be a teacher of truth, but is really not.  They appear to have knowledge but are filled with empty shadows of wisdom.

I think in John’s mind he was specifically referring to false Bible teachers and preachers.  These are those who claim to be relaying accurate truth about the word of God but in reality are distorting it, compromising it, and outright contradicting it.  That image of a false teacher certainly has relevance today.  The world is filled with those who claim to be agents of truth but in reality are teaching a different gospel and are to be accursed according to Paul in Galatians chapter 1.  This is why we need to be serious students of the Bible.  The only way we can possibly spot error when we hear it is to have an understanding of truth so as to notice the discrepancies between the two.  If we don’t know what God’s word says how will we know when someone is mis-interpreting it?

This is John’s point in verses 2 and 3: By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

In the first verse John has told us to be sure we test the spirits to see whether they are truly from God or not.  And now in the next two he is going to tell us how to test them.  He begins with a command: know the Spirit of God.  To “ginosko” something is to come to understand it intimately.  John commands with the imperative voice to “ginosko” the Spirit of God.  Before we can even think about performing accurate tests of the truthfulness of the spirits in the world we must have an intimate, relational, thorough, and experiential knowledge of who God is.  Because the Bible is His revelation of His own character we come to know Him through studying it.  And then in turn we are equipped to recognize who is from God and who is not.

Think of it this way.  A Christian immerses themselves in the Scriptures over months and years of study, discipleship, preaching, and prayer.  They may not know every verse by memory.  They may not be the most articulate expositors of doctrine.  But they have a solid practical working knowledge of what sounds like God from the Scriptures and what does not.  Therefore, when they hear someone speaking or teaching false truth about God there should be an almost instinctive red flag that goes off in the Christian’s mind.  This drives them to search the Scriptures to clarify their hunch and determine truth from the written text rather than the spoken word.

That being said, John is not content to leave us with just a nebulous proof test of authenticity.  He gives us an explicit benchmark to measure the truth that we hear against.  If it doesn’t pass this initial test, then there’s no point in bothering to go any further.  The premise is quite simple.  Anyone purporting to be proclaiming truth who does not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh cannot possibly be from God.

It is incredibly important that we understand exactly what John is saying here.  He uses a very specific word in the Greek; “homologeo”.  This is different from “pisteuo”.  To “pisteuo” something is to think it is true, or to be persuaded of its truthfulness, or even to place confidence in it.  It is a solid profession of belief.  But to “homologeo” something is to not only agree with or assent to something, but to do so publicly and openly.  In other words, when you “homologeo” you are sticking your neck out if it is in reference to some sort of controversial topic.

Let me show you two examples from John’s other writings that will really drive this point home and make the distinction clear.  In John chapter 12 we find Christ nearing the end of His earthly ministry.  He has performed wonders, cured disease, prophesied about the future, expertly dissected the Old Testament Scriptures to explain them, and sprung the traps of the Jews unscathed at every turn.  Yet in spite of all this evidence many of the authorities refused to believe in Him.  And in verse 42 we find that: nevertheless many even of the rulers believed (pisteuo) in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing (homologeo) Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue.  Do you see the difference?  The rulers were willing to believe that Jesus was the Christ privately.  But they were not prepared to declare that belief openly out of fear and peer pressure.  Their belief was rendered null and void by their love of the approval of men rather than the approval of God (v.43).

In Revelation 3:5 we find the risen Christ coming in power and addressing the church at Sardis.  This church as a whole was condemned because of their lack of spiritual life.  But there were a few there who were faithful.  To them the Lord says: He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess (homologeo) his name before My Father and before His angels.  

Several weeks ago we looked at 1^st John 2:1 where Christ is described as our advocate, or our lawyer, or our legal defense.  How would it be if Jesus said He would defend us in the court of the Father, but then when the trial date arrived He was nowhere to be found?  His profession of availability for our defense wouldn’t mean much would it?  That’s the idea of “homologeo”.  We “pisteuo” Jesus because we have confidence that He will “homologeo” us before the Father.  He will not leave us stranded high and dry or up the creek without a paddle.

That is the benchmark for approving whether a professing spirit is truly from God or not.  Someone may claim to be a Christian.  Talk is cheap.  But when the chips are down, the game is on the line, and the starting pistol fires what do their actions tell us?  Is there a disconnect between their spoken profession and their demonstrated actions?  If there is then we need to understand very clearly that the person we are observing is labeled by Scripture as an antichrist.  They are of the group spoken about in chapter 2 verse 18 who are opposed to the work, the ministry, the glory, the authority of Jesus Christ.  John once again uses the perfect tense of the verb “akouo”, or to hear.  He is telling us that we have heard about these antichrists in the past, are still hearing about them in the present, and will continue to hear about them in the future.  There is no shortage of those who would either claim outright to be Christ or seek to more subtly undermine His character and reputation.  We must remain on guard against such as these.

I think that for most of the people who read this, this need to guard against false Bible teaching may be fairly obvious.  But I think that if we take the principle at stake and apply it to the world we live in today, we will see that the core issue that defined a false prophet in John’s mind is alive and well today in far more than just the religious spectrum of life.  The problem for John was that people were claiming to be agents of truth but were not.  The arbiters of truth in his day were the religious elite, typically.  It was the priests, the oracles, the Pharisees, the prophets.  It was primarily from these sorts of individuals that people received their ultimate truth in life.  Philosophers and doctors were present in the culture, to be sure, but it was the sages of religious wisdom that people went to for direction in life.

Now take that concept and apply it to our day.  We live in a quite godless age.  Increasingly, preachers and teachers of the Bible are marginalized and made irrelevant in the minds of the populace today, especially among the young.  We live in an age of humanism where the altar of science is primarily where people sacrifice their affections.  In this environment, I am suggesting that it is the scientists, the doctors, and the professors who rule the hearts and minds of our country as the dispensers of truth. 

Let me be clear.  I think that when John wrote these words what was in his mind was false Bible teachers.  I think he is referring very narrowly to religious charlatans masquerading as Christians and professing to be possessed of truth from God.  But at the same time I think if we take the timeless truth, or the core principle, that was behind the false teachers in John’s day, we will find that the issue has spread to more than just the religious spectrum of life.  So I believe that in addition to the need to guard against Bible teachers who speak lies we have to be on guard against secular intelligentsia who speak lies; specifically lies that controvert biblical truth.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.  National Public Radio produces a radio talk show called Fresh Air.  The format is an interview style program where the host, Terry Gross, brings on guests and discusses topics relevant to their profession or personal life.  A few months ago the guest was a physician named Siddartha Mukherjee.  He is an Indian-born American.  In addition to his oncology work he is a scientist and writer specializing in the area of genome research.  During the interview Terry asked Dr. Mukherjee about the current scientific thought regarding the role the human genome plays in sexual preference and identity.

In response to the question Siddartha proceeded to lay out what he called “the data”.  The premise that he presented was based on studies done of identical twins compared with regular siblings.  Apparently the research showed that in identical twins the percentage chance that both twins would share their sexual preference was much greater than in siblings.  From this evidence Siddartha made the specific statement that there “may be genetic determinants”.  He went on to say that the percent chance of shared sexual preference in identical twins is not 100% but he never gave an exact figure.  Further, he stated “we know that there are either genes, or intra-uterine exposures, or some other factors; environments have a powerful effect on this; society, culture has powerful effects on this.”  About forty seconds deeper into the interview Siddartha made the following statement: “we know that there are some genetic determinants.”

Do you see what he did?  He presented research that is both far from complete and far from clearly understood.  He even admitted that the results were inconclusive.  But then just a minute or two later he casually states his conclusion as a certainty; namely, that genetic determinants play some role in sexual preference.  This is a man that most of the listening audience of Fresh Air would naturally assume knows what he is talking about.  He presents himself well.  He is eloquent of speech.  He laudably pleads for an avoidance of wild statements and irrational conclusions about the very research he is describing.  By all accounts he comes off as a reasonable, sophisticated, and supremely intelligent man who should be listened to as a source of truth in this area of genetics.

Yet, whether wittingly or unwittingly the doctor contradicts himself with his own words for those who are listening closely enough to catch it.  It is very subtle.  The point in the interview that I am describing is almost offhand or casual.  It would be extremely easy to miss it.  And what this man is presenting as fact is in clear opposition to the only written source of absolute truth that exists; the Bible. 

This is why I am making the claim that John’s warning in chapter 4 about false prophets and antichrists must be extended beyond the religious establishment of our day.  To be sure, it must include them, but it must also go farther.  Our discernment radar must be honed and trained to spot anomalies wherever they exist.  This should not mean that we concoct falsehoods out of thin air.  But we as Christians in an increasingly godless society and world simply cannot afford to fall asleep at the wheel in this area.

This leads me to verse 4: You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.  Frankly, I think at first glance we might be tempted to question the apostle here.  After all, the condition of our country doesn’t look very much like conquering or overcoming.  To add insult to injury, John uses the perfect tense for overcome.  So he is claiming that we have already won and are continuing to win, with results that are constantly ongoing.  Is John going a little batty here?  Or is his understanding of the world just not relevant for our day and time?

To answer that I will continue on to verse 5: They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them.  The word “them” in verse 4 and the two occurrences of “they” in verse 5 all refer to the same source; the antichrists and false prophets of verses 1 and 3.  John is telling us that these liars are born and bred by the evil world system they are fully a part of.  They are all of the same family.  So naturally the world is going to gravitate toward listening to them and giving heed to their supposed wisdom.  Why would those in rebellion against God follow the teaching of Christians who are born of God? 

To be blunt, the United States of America, with whatever level of ingrained Christianity it has possessed over the past 250 odd years, is a historical anomaly.  It is not normal for Christians, living in the world, to be ascendant or triumphant on a material or physical level.  Our victory is not in terms of political power, temporal wealth, or the respect and admiration of our worldly peers in society.  John actually makes this quite clear in the next chapter.  Verse 4 of chapter 5 reads: For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.  Whom do we have faith in?  Jesus Christ.  Where is His kingdom?  He gives the answer to Pilate in John 18:36: Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world.  If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”

So I don’t think John is talking about temporal victory at all in 4:4.  He is speaking of our eternal future, our unfading inheritance, and our ruling authority to come in Christ’s kingdom.  Picture a boxing match.  It is round 3 of a twelve round fight.  One of the fighters is getting pummeled and everyone in attendance is sure he is going down.  But somehow he hangs on and makes it to the bell.  Not only that but he, incredibly, gets stronger the further into to the match he gets, until ultimately he knocks out his opponent in the final seconds of round 12 and wins the championship. 

That’s not a very good analogy, but it’s kind of like the situation we face as Christians.  God does not promise us honor and glory and victory in this life.  He promises it to us in the next.  God does not promise us a triumph and a powerful kingdom on this earth.  He promises that we will reign beside Christ in His future kingdom which is not of this world.

John concludes in verse 6 with a contrast of his preceding statement as well as a summary of the whole passage: We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.  By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.  The world is inclined to listen to the words of the antichrists who tickle their ears with speech they like.  In the same way, those people who are truly from God are naturally disposed to listen to and give heed to the truth of the gospel.

This raises an interesting, albeit easily answered question.  Namely, does this mean that if someone doesn’t agree with our theology they are not from God?  That might seem an extreme interpretation of this verse, and it is.  But rest assured someone somewhere will make that leap and use 1^st John 4:6 as a mandate to vilify anyone who doesn’t line up with them right down the doctrinal dogma line.

To be blunt, such an interpretation is a perversion of John’s words.  He is not talking about disagreements between Christians.  He is not talking about doctrinal differences or preferences of tradition.  Remember that the whole context of these six verses is that of the conflict between those who are from God and those who are from the world.  John uses the exact same construct in verse 2 to describe those who confess Jesus as the Christ as he does in verse 5 to describe the antichrists as being of the world.  The former group is literally “out of God” while the latter is “out of the world”.  The distinction is quite clear in the original language and makes it obvious who the opposing sides are.

So as we close out this group of verses I think the take away is this.  We must continually be vigilant against false doctrine.  We must stay alert and train ourselves in the Scriptures in order that we may spot false teaching.  And I am convinced that this necessity extends beyond those who profess to be delivering the word of God to us in the form of preaching, teaching, evangelism, or anything else.  In our modern “enlightened” age there are more so called sources of truth than just the clergy.  With the advent of the Internet everyone seems to think they are an expert on just about everything.  And one can find a well-reasoned and seemingly solid argument for pretty much any theological perspective one likes.  Beyond that, the vast majority of the scientific community is adamantly opposed to the glory of God and the work of Christ.  As such, although their “doctrine” may not be advertised as such, they are no less guilty of spouting error in the guise of truth than are the traditional false teachers John was probably referring to.  There is no room for complacency in the life of a Christian who is serious about seeking truth.

The Epistles of John, Part 15: The Believers Guide to Love

“For” is a crucial word in the Bible.   Sometimes translated as “because”, “since”, and “that”, the Greek word behind all of these is “hoti”.  It is a word of cause and effect, of meaning and implication, of relation and consequence.  “Hoti” gives us the rationale behind the doctrine.  God is not a master who expects His creations to blindly follow His every whim.  To be sure, there is an undeniable and necessary element of faith and trust implicit in the text of Scripture.  But at the same time, there is logic and reason.  There are clauses and arguments and rebuttals and points and counterpoints.  God expects us to use the minds He gave us with the mental faculties humans alone of all creation possess in order to process the information He reveals and extrapolate conclusions from it.

Consider the words of Christ to the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matthew 16.  These men came to Him with duplicity in their hearts and asked for a sign from heaven.  Beginning in verse 2 we find: He replied to them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’  And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’  Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?”  The point was this.  The Jews were possessed of great powers of inference and deduction.  They were capable of assessing evidence and arriving at a rational hypothesis.  And far from decrying this Jesus applauded them for it.  His concern was not with reading the sky and determining whether a storm was on the horizon.  Rather, He was upset with them because they refused to apply those same mental faculties to spiritual matters.

So it is with us today.  God desires for us to understand the why behind the what.  So He provides us with passages of Scripture like the one before us in verses 11 to 24 of 1^st John chapter 3.  God’s messenger, John the apostle, closed his last sentence by explaining the clear and obvious distinction between children of God and children of the devil.  Those who do not practice righteousness or love their brother are of the devil, whereas those who do practice righteousness and do love their brother are of God.  And then he begins the very next sentence with the “hoti” conjunction, translated in most English Bibles as “for”.  This is the hinge on which this chapter swings.  The next 14 verses are John’s explanation for why love is equal to righteousness.  It is a rich and detailed description of how to live out the love of God on a daily basis.  It is, if you like, a guide to love for the believer in Christ.

Without such a detailed description we would be left to simply take God at His word and blindly obey.  This is of course not a bad thing and in fact is sometimes necessary as a Christian.  But how often do we consider the richness of the blessing that God gives us by explaining the rationale behind our actions.  He delights in us so much that He wants us to understand why we should love, then proceed to do it, and consequently produce a far richer sacrifice of worship and praise as joyfully willing participants than if we were mindless puppets dancing and shaking on the ends of a string.

So, let us begin with verses 11 to 13: For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother.  And for what reason did he slay him?  Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.  Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.

It was God’s mandate from the very beginning of creation that mankind would live in harmony with one another.  His design for man and woman was intimacy and companionship.  God clearly broadcast His intent to Adam by literally forming Eve out of him, as Genesis 2:21-22 tells us: So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.  The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.  Now, we don’t know how much of this Adam understood at that time.  But it is very clear that he received God’s message loud and clear, judging by his response in the very next verse: The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”  Adam had just finished viewing all the animals on earth, naming them, and exercising authority over them.  Sadly, he had felt a kinship with none of them.  But then he beheld his wife, and oh how his outlook changed.  He immediately responded with an intimate affection and abiding love for this special person the Lord had brought him.  It is this image of the original marriage that defined and described the high water mark for all marriages to come, in verse 24: For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.  Adam’s union with Eve was literally born out of a sharing of flesh.  And although spouses no longer have that special privilege the same unity and oneness is nonetheless the goal our marriages should aspire to.

This model of love was a microcosm of the intended relationship of every human being afterward.  To be sure, only the marriage relationship was set up for such a deep level of intimacy.  But the bond of love that man and woman shared was to be the foundation upon which all other relationships were built.  The parents were to instruct their children after them through both spoken word and witnessed deed.  But then sin entered the picture.  And with the presence of this hateful, rebellious, and unnatural perversion of God’s design, it didn’t matter how good Adam and Eve’s instruction was, their children bore the brunt of their terrible disobedience.

Rather than seeking the best for his brother, Cain looked out only for himself.  John tells us exactly what Cain’s motivation for murder was; petty jealousy.  Cain didn’t like it that Abel had a righteous testimony before God.  He was furious that God looked with favor upon Abel’s loving and selfless sacrifice of the very best he had.  Abel took to heart the lessons of his parents by placing the fullness of his affection upon the Lord God who had created him.

This was something Cain, in his debased and unregenerate state, simply could not allow.  Proverbs 29:27 tells us the ugly truth: An unjust man is abominable to the righteous, and he who is upright in the way is abominable to the wicked.  There can never ever be peace between the children of God and the children of the devil.  This is an unreasoning and unrelenting opposition and antagonism that will break all bonds and rupture all agreements.  Jesus said it this way in Matthew 10:34-36: “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.”  What is it that causes such division?  Is it the Lord that forcibly severs family ties?  No, it is the fact that “his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.”

So honestly it should come as no surprise whatsoever that we face opposition from the world.  The righteous and the unrighteous do not and can never mix.  If you live a righteous life you are guaranteed the hatred and antipathy of those around you who are guilty of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.  In fact, the testimony of the Scriptures before us make it very clear that it is impossible for you to have peace with the world.  This raises what should be an alarming realization.  Namely, if you are not facing the hostility described by John and Christ then the world does not perceive your deeds as any more righteous than theirs.  Therefore, they have nothing to fear from or be jealous over you.  Be mindful of the instructions of Paul to the church at Corinth in 2^nd Corinthians 6:14: Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?

The second point that John makes in this passage is found in verses 14 and 15: We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.  He who does not love abides in death.  Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

John uses the perfect tense of the verb “eido”, or know in English.  This is a knowledge and understanding that resonates inside our minds and ripples across the pools of our thought.  It continually informs, strengthens, delights, and captivates a Christian.  It is not a lifeless clinical book knowledge that is gained from reading a lot of Bible verses.  It is an experiential wonderment and fascination that is gained from gazing long upon and drinking deeply of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God in the Scriptures (Rom. 11:33).

In verse 14 this worshipful knowledge based adoration of God takes the form of an understanding of our freedom from death.  Jesus said in John 8:51: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death.”  What was the word of which He was speaking?  John has already told us in verse 11; it is to love one another.  He states it again here in verse 14.  And he’s going to tell us again in verse 24 just to make sure we get the point.  It is love for one another that gives us the knowledge of our life in Christ. 

Conversely, those who hate each other are, in God’s eyes, murderers.  Our fickle little human minds, so easily distracted and so quickly confused, would seek to deny this truth.  After all, hatred of one another does not always lead directly to physical death, right?  Ahh, but consider the deeper issue of the heart. 

God looks not merely upon the surface of what we do.  He considers the thoughts and intentions of our minds as well (1^st Sam. 16:7).  And what exactly is the heart issue at stake here?  Jesus explains in Luke 16:13 that hatred is synonymous with derision and disgust.  If we despise someone, for any reason, we are guilty of hate.  Jesus clarifies in Matthew 5:21-22 that such attitudes are worthy of the fiery pits of hell itself.  Why?  Because it is the same issue of the heart that led Cain to physically murder his brother.  Abel’s blood cried out to God from the ground and so does our hatred of our brother.  Be exceedingly careful of how you consider another human being.  This is a very serious matter to the Lord and He expects His children to place a profound level of significance upon that which is important to Him.

As a demonstration of the importance of this issue John says at the end of verse 15 that the murderer, or the hater, lacks eternal life right now.  We have looked at the Greek word “meno” several times in this series.  It means to abide or remain in a place, or to be held or kept continually.  John uses the present active form of “meno” here to convey the idea that this state of being, death, is a current reality for those who fail to love.  It is not some far distant eventuality they will have to face one day.  They are caught up in death this very hour.  They are quite literally walking corpses and know it not.

In direct and stark contrast to the profane image of murderous hatred leading to eternal spiritual death, John now gives us a sacred picture of sacrificial love that leads to temporary physical death.  Verses 16 to 18 read: We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.  But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of god abide in him?  Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

I have been saying over and over that “agape” is a sacrificial love.  But if you were to look it up in a Greek dictionary you would find the following definition: brotherly love, affection, good will, love, benevolence.  Nowhere in there is necessarily dictated the idea of sacrifice.  So why have I been pounding on the concept of “agape” as requiring sacrifice?  It is because of passages such as this one.  It is Christ’s surrender of His divine prerogatives, His submission to shame and infamy, and ultimately His freely willing acceptance of death that John says gives us our understanding of what love is.  It is not a lexical definition but a contextual one.  God defines our expectation of love in how He demonstrates it for us.

What is particularly instructive about this verse is the word that John chose to use here that we translate into life.  It is “psuche” in Greek and it means literally the breath of life.  In Genesis 2:7 we read the following: The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.  It is nothing less than the very essence of God that infused man with life.  There is nothing more sacred.  There is nothing more precious.  There is nothing more spectacular than God’s own being.  He passed a part of that into man.  And it is that which Christ surrendered on our behalf.  For God to taste death, which is a visibly galling and irksome reminder of all He is not, is shameful.

Furthermore, notice the latter half of the verse.  Every English translation renders the word “ought” here, as in “we ought to also lay down our lives”.  I find this to be incredibly unfortunate.   When I read the English word ought I interpret it as a good suggestion.  This course of action would be best for me to pursue.  It is the superior choice among several options.  But that is not at all what John intended to convey.  The Greek word that he used is “opheilo”.  It means to owe money or to be in debt.

Our expected response of sacrificial love, up to and including death, is far more than a good suggestion.  It is an obligation.  It is a debt that we owe.  Paul says this well in Romans 13:8: Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another.  He goes on to say in the following verses that by having love for one another we automatically fulfill the entirety of the rest of the law.  Love for a Christian is not optional or extra credit.  It is a baseline requirement.

Then in verse 17 John addresses a question that has not been asked.  He is anticipating objections from his audience and countering their arguments before they even have a chance to coalesce.  Paul does this extensively in his writings, particularly in Romans.  Here, John is responding to a Christian who says they do not have any opportunities to surrender their life for someone else and therefore the preceding verse doesn’t apply to them.  So John clarifies that even in the mundane routine of everyday life there is love to be lived out practically.

As we looked at several weeks ago, the word “bios” in Greek means life.  But here in verse 17 it is translated as “goods”.  The reason is that what John is talking about is the necessities that are required to sustain life.  He is describing a situation in which a Christian has those things (e.g. food, water, shelter, clothing, etc.) and then sees another who lacks those items.  Even in this relatively tame situation we are required to display the “agape” love of God to the one who is in need.  If we fail at this task of giving temporal aid, then we certainly are not likely to be surrendering up our lives.  And John’s assessment of such a person is that they do not have the love of God abiding in them.  Furthermore, and most damning of all, going back to verse 14 we know that if love is absent from us then so is eternal life.

Concluding the point in verse 18 John exhorts us to refrain from a love that exists merely in the spoken word.  It is completely insufficient to just say that we love someone while failing to demonstrate that love with visible and concrete evidence.  In fact, John says that we are to love in deed and in truth.  The implication is that the love of word or tongue that he just mentioned is not of the truth and is therefore a lie. 

This is exactly the same point that James makes in chapter 2, verses 14-17 of his letter: What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works?  Can that faith save him?  If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?  Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.  Words spoken in this way are hollow and empty.  They are useless.  Paul calls them a clanging gong.  In other words, they are nothing more than an irritant and a nuisance.  And they are proof of an empty spirit devoid of life and abiding in death.

Before we move on I want to address a question.  Namely, who is John talking about in this passage; believers or unbelievers?  In other words, is it only other Christians we are supposed to be willing to lay down our lives for and is it only those within the church who are to be recipients of our goods for the sustenance of their lives?

This is actually a tricky question to answer.  The reason is because the word John uses, “adelphos”, can mean anything from a biological brother to a fellow countryman to a brother in Christ.  In some contexts, it can even refer to a work associate.  So to pin down exactly what each biblical author means when he uses “adelphos” is challenging.  That being said, my answer to the question is both yes and no.  I believe John is making both a general reference to all mankind as well as specific points relating to fellow Christians in this chapter. 

First of all, love for all men is a baseline foundation of Christianity.  Consider the following three points.  One, by explicitly calling our attention to the very beginning of human relations in verse 11 and 12 I think John is defining a universal umbrella truth that applies to all men equally regardless of station, rank, or level of faith.  It’s true that John uses the example of Cain and Abel who were literal brothers.  But I believe just as Adam and Eve serve as surrogate examples for the rest of humanity in how to positively relate to each other, so Cain and Abel serve as surrogates of how not to negatively relate to each other. 

Besides, if someone desired to be so technical as to make the claim that the example of Cain and Abel dictates love only toward other Christians, then we have to acknowledge that in point of fact they were biological brothers rather than spiritual brothers.  So on those grounds then wouldn’t John really only be talking about brothers by blood rather than other Christians?  That is clearly not at all the spirit of what John is communicating here.

My second reason for thinking that Christians should have love as a default mode of relation to all men is the teachings of Jesus in Luke chapter 10.  A lawyer put him to the test by asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life.  Christ answered his question with a question of His own; namely, what does the Law say?  The lawyer correctly responded with the first and second greatest commandment of love for God and love for neighbor.  Jesus approved of this answer.  But the man didn’t particularly like being nailed down to the requirement of displaying love for all mankind.  So, wishing to justify himself, he asked Jesus who his neighbor was.  And from verses 30 to 37 the Lord tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, the point of which was that any other human being is our neighbor in the context of who to show love toward.  John was almost certainly there when Jesus delivered this teaching.  It would have deeply informed his understanding of the concept of love later in life.  And I think this was exactly what he has in mind here in chapter 3 of his letter.

My third reason is found once again in James.  It is a short and simple point, but no less powerful for its brevity.  Chapter 1 verse 27 states: pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.  Clearly in the mind of James a visible and demonstrable love that targets those in need wherever they may be found is a requirement of true Christianity.  Clearly in the mind of Christ showing love to our neighbor means showing love to anyone, no matter where they come from.  And I believe just as clearly in the mind of John we are meant to understand this mandate of love as being applicable to both Christian and non-Christian.

However, and this is an important point, while love for all men is clearly a mandate for every Christian John is making some specific references to fellow believers here.  If we took the time to examine John’s usage pattern for the word “adelphos” throughout his other New Testament writings we would find that every time he uses the word with a clear contextual definition, he is referring to brothers either by blood or by spirit.  He never uses “adelphos” in the more general senses of countrymen, neighbors, or associates.

This pattern seems to be borne out in the passage we are looking at today.  In verse 13, “adelphos”, or brethren, clearly refers to other Christians.  It wouldn’t make any logical sense to think otherwise because he is describing hostility from the world toward Christians.  Having set this tone it seems likely that John would continue his example of love in the context of the church in verses 14, 15, 16, and 17.  So the specific example he gives of proof of eternal life is love for other Christians.  The illustrations of laying down one’s life and providing goods to the poor are given with other believers in view.

All of this leads me to the previous “yes and no” answer to the question of whether “brother” means Christian or non-Christian.  Anything John writes in this letter does not alter or contradict the umbrella concept of love for all mankind that is a hallmark of Christianity.  That commitment to a universal love clearly applies no matter what the situation is.  Yet at the same time, John seems to be indicating a special love that goes above and beyond all other expressions of love.  This is a love directed toward brothers and sisters in Christ.  If we are not willing to die for a fellow Christian, we surely are not going to get anywhere near death’s door for an unbeliever.  And if we withhold the necessities of life from those less fortunate within the church I think it less than credible to think that we would turn around and be generous to the world.  Our starting point of love ought to be those within the church.  And then once established, that love should flow outward into the streets and alleys and byways of the world we live in.

This brings us to the fourth point of John’s guide to Christian love.  It is found in verses 19 and 20, as follow: We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

The “this” that John is referring to is the exhortation in the previous verse to quantifiable love rather than ephemeral love existing in word only.  Not only should we love truly to avoid being caught up in a lie.  Not only should we understand that a lack of love indicates the presence of death.  But a genuine attitude of love in imitation of Christ’s own is the best possible medicine for the inevitable human doubt that will at times creep into our minds.

You may be familiar with how this goes from your own life.  You have a season of sin.  Perhaps it is overt and tangibly horrible, such as adultery.  Or perhaps it is more subtle than that.  Maybe you are guilty of preferring the world more than Christ.  It comes out in your time management, your entertainment choices, or even your church attendance.  And immediately the great slanderer comes and begins to prey upon your already unstable mental faculties.  He slides questions into your consciousness such as “did God really say He would never leave you or forsake you?”  “But what about that passage in James about faith without works being dead?  Doesn’t that apply to you?”

Understand that Satan knows the Bible better than you do.  And He is exceptionally skilled at taking the truth of God’s word and twisting it into a cruel sham and mockery of what it really is.  When these times come in your life, and they will come believe me, what are you going to draw on to sustain you?  How are you going to resist the flaming darts of the devil?  There are perhaps a number of different answers to that question.  But John’s answer here in chapter 3 is, your love.  It is the visible pattern of love for others that must exist in the life of a Christian which will sustain them through the darkest periods of self-doubt and fear.

Such a body of loving evidence not only nourishes our own internal courage.  It also strengthens our external reliance upon God.  Because as we contemplate the acts of love in our life we should be reminded that God sees all and knows all.  Yes, He saw the horrible depravity you just entered into last week.  But He also saw the tender acts of mercy you performed.  He sees both the good and the bad.  And He is faithful and just to both forgive us our sins when we come to Him in repentance (1^st John 1:9) and reward us for our love with gracious love gifts of His own.

This is a wonderful self-feeding cycle of love for God resulting in love for man leading to love from God fueling love for God.  Perhaps a simple graphic will make this clearer…

It is precisely this loving relationship that enables us to approach Him with confidence, as John points out in verses 21 and 22: Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

John is not teaching a first century version of the prosperity gospel.  He is not promising us health, wealth, and happiness here on earth.  The whole reason we can have confidence of having our requests granted is because we begin from the premise of obedience.  We keep His commandments John says.  We do the things that are pleasing to our Lord.  We approach Him with humble sacrifices of praise and offerings of love.  Of course He will take pleasure in us and shower us with blessings.  Whether those blessings take the form of temporal or eternal rewards is entirely up to the Lord.  But the blessings are ours just the same.

Do you ever stop to think of how absurd it is that we have the capacity to please God?  We, of simple minds and limited abilities, have the power, through obedience and love, to provide joy to the incomprehensible God of the universe.  Daniel calls Him the Ancient of Days.  Paul describes Him as dwelling in unapproachable light.  Moses, a man who enjoyed one of the most intimate relationships with God in all of history, could not even look upon Him fully lest he die.  David regarded Him as the rock of his salvation.  Jeremiah considered Him as his portion of hope.  Isaiah felt sure he would be unmade in the presence of Him.

This God of all comfort and provider of all hope and giver of all good things is possessed of ways as much higher than ours as the heavens are above the earth, meaning infinitely.  This is the One whom we are able to please with simple, humble, quiet, thoughtful acts of loving obedience.  When you are kind to your family members do you take time to consider that you are bringing pleasure to God (and conversely, displeasing Him when you are unkind)?  When you graciously mow an elderly neighbor’s lawn for them do you consider that God is delighted with you?  When you give of your time to work at a homeless shelter to provide care for the downtrodden of this world do you remember that your actions are a sweet aroma to God?

It is purely a function of His grace and His love that He even gives us the opportunity to enter into such a joyful relationship with Him.  No, this is not a prosperity gospel of endless riches and luxury on earth.  But neither is it a gospel of terror and consternation before a vengeful deity who will strike us down at the first mistake.  Rather, it is a worshipful delight in a loving Father who takes great pleasure and satisfaction in His loving children.

Because this concept of obedience is of such critical importance, John wants to be absolutely crystal clear about it.  So in verses 23 and 24 he repeats a similar refrain to what he has already told us several times throughout this letter: This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.  The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him.  We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

The lexical definition for the Greek “pisteuo”, translated here as believe, is “to think to be true, to be persuaded of, or to place confidence in.”  This is a fully reliant and rock solid assurance of the truth.  It is not a casual or lackadaisical acknowledgement of facts.  To believe in the name of Christ, as commanded by God, is to throw all your effort into a total body life altering change of direction.

When we do this and it is accompanied by the love John has described to us then we can be assured that we are abiding in God.  God’s Spirit, provided to us for help and enablement, confirms the truth of our divine residency, and we are guaranteed an eternal existence in the presence of our savior.

So to summarize this passage, Christians should expect hostility from the world because righteousness has no accord with unrighteousness.  Those who are born of God have passed out of death into life while those who have not abide in death.  This sets up an unavoidable conflict of purpose and position that cannot be resolved by human means.  Nevertheless, we are commanded to love sacrificially.  God takes first place in our affections, and then all of mankind should follow suit.  This is the evidence that we have in fact received new life.  It assures us of our standing when our sin burdened and susceptible minds fall prey to the accusations of the great slanderer Satan.  The love that we practice gives us confidence before God because we have concrete evidence to prove our innocence.  And because our relationship with Him is one of kind and gracious parent to adoring child we know that He will provide all that we ever ask or think when we do so according to the guidelines of His righteous character.  The indwelling Spirit of God Himself takes the proof of our love and forges it into a steel hard understanding that will stand the test of time until we come physically into the presence of our Lord. 

The Epistles of John, Part 14: Sight Beyond Sight Part 2

John has already dropped a theological bomb on our collective senses in the first three verses of chapter 3 by pointing us to the incredible bewildering enormity of the Father’s love for us.  Now beginning in verse 4 he switches into the second movement of this three part harmony of seeing with spiritual sight; that we are cleansed by Christ.

But before John discusses what Christ has done he clarifies the nature of the enemy the Lord came to earth to defeat; sin.  Verse 4 gives us the picture: Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.  Everyone is an excellent translation.  The Greek word “pas” has both an individual (each, every, or all) and a collective (some of all types) definition.  But the context here in verse 4 makes it clear that it is the individual sense of “pas” that John is using.  It would be ludicrous to assert that only some of the people who are guilty of sin are also guilty of lawlessness.  John ensures that we understand that by clarifying that sin is literally equal or the same as lawlessness.  If sin is the equivalent of lawlessness then it is entirely accurate to state that when sin occurs lawlessness also occurs in equal measure.  Therefore, anyone who practices sin is practicing lawlessness.

I’d like to camp on the word lawlessness for just a minute.  A dictionary definition of it is probably immediately obvious to us: the quality or state of being unrestrained by law; disorder.  But what does lawlessness mean beyond this lexical definition?  To get at this I would like to lead with a correlating question: what is law?  The word law comes from the root word lay.  So a law is that which is laid, set, or fixed.  It is an absolute.  In the context of a nation state laws are rules prescribed by the state for the regulation of the actions of its citizens.

But if we move beyond that realm to the sphere of universal laws set forth by God from the point of creation we realize something else.  Namely, that God’s laws exist to provide an explanation of the intended function of something.  God designed the law of gravity because He intended that planetary bodies be capable of holding objects on their surface so as to prevent them from drifting off into space.  If gravity on earth were to be somehow disrupted then our planet would not be functioning as intended.  Similarly, God set forth a law or a rule that mankind would be image bearers designed to show forth His glory alongside of and ultimately in a more superior way to the rest of creation.  Granted, we don’t normally think of the creation of man as being tied to a law.  But in terms of a law being a fixed statute or rule it is no less a law than the 2^nd law of thermodynamics or the 1^st law of motion.

Now then, we have already seen that the quality or state of being lawless indicates an absence of law.  That is fairly obvious.  But when we take that principle and apply it to our subject in 1^st John 3, of God’s laws and their understood implication of natural function and intended design then a relevant correlating truth emerges.  Lawlessness indicates a malfunction or a corruption of something’s natural function and intended design.  So in effect, what John is giving us here in verse 4 is a view of sin as being not just rebellion, not just evil, but an actual and tangible distortion of reality.  Sin is far more deadly and insidious than just a breaking of the rules.  It is a corrupting pestilence that twists and perverts and undermines the natural fabric of the created universe.

With that in mind, let’s move back and look at the word translated “practices”, as in “everyone who practices sin”.  The Greek is “poieo” and it means to make or to do.  It has both the idea of producing or being the cause of something as well as rightly executing a course of action well.  Consider the following ways it is used from the gospel of John.  Chapter 2 verse 5 reads: His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”  Mary wanted the servants to carry out Jesus’s instructions exactly, efficiently, and quickly.  On the other hand, in verse 15 of the same chapter we find that: He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple.  Christ, with His own hands, with skill and determination, and with awareness of His actions, methodically invested the time and effort into making a whip out of the materials at hand.  He literally produced a scourge that did not previously exist before He came along that day.

What does this tell us about the pattern of behavior exhibited by those John is describing?  It narrates a chilling tale.  We are to understand that these people are careful and deliberate in their sinning.  They have full awareness and understanding of what they are doing and they do it anyhow.  They produce through their own efforts acts of sin that did not previously exist in the world.  They are thorough and deliberate in their pattern of lawless behavior that twists and corrupts and distorts the intended function of their own bodies as well as the envisioned design of the created order they come into contact with.  This is the very face of evil, plastered across the faces and trailing in the wake of those in rebellion against God.  Ruined lives, failed relationships, miserable existences, and ultimately a bleak death and a lonely, terror-stricken eternity are the results of the pattern of behavior John is describing for us.

It is against this backdrop of horror that the Lord Jesus appeared as John relates in verse 5: You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.  “You know” is in the perfect tense.  This means it came into being in the past but has continuing effects and results that persist into the present and beyond.  We have known prior to reading John’s letter that Christ appeared to defeat death and destroy sin’s hold over humanity.  And that knowledge continues to have tangible implications in our lives even to this present hour.  If the incarnation of Jesus Christ for the purpose of reversing the corruption and decay of God’s creation is not a prominent center-piece of your life on a daily basis, then John wants you to take his reminder to heart and be transformed anew again and again as you move forward.

As we process the truth of Christ’s mission on earth there is a critical element we need to understand in order to more fully appreciate what He accomplished.  When John says that He appeared in order to “take away” sins, there is a very specific idea he has in mind.  The Greek word “airo”, translated here as “take away” does not simply mean to do away with as I think the English phrase take away conveys.  To “airo” something is to raise it up, to elevate it into the air, and then to bear away what has been lifted.  It is to take upon one’s self a burden and then carry it.  Turning once again to John’s gospel, notice how he uses the same word in John 5:8-9: Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.”  Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.  The pallet of this man was a burden he had to physically lift up and carry away.  Jesus did not offer to do it for him.  The bearing of this burden served as a visual indicator of his healing that would have been obvious to anyone seeing him who knew that he had been previously lame.

Conversely, in John 10:24 we read: The Jews then gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, “How long will You keep us in suspense?”  The meaning of the unbelieving Jews was that Christ was responsible for forcibly preventing them from understanding.  They felt that He was actively opposing their illumination by keeping His identity a secret.

So when we go back to 1^st John 3:5 and read that Jesus appeared in order to “take away” sins we need to realign our thinking.  John does not mean that Jesus did battle with sin, gave it a resounding smack down, and sent it packing back to its corner of the cosmos.  Christ literally picked it up bodily with His own two hands, loaded the burden onto His shoulders, and proceeded to haul it away from us physically while weighted down with the mass of all the corruption, pestilence, and decay that is implicit in the nature of sin and lawlessness.

“But how can this be?” an astute reader of John’s letter might ask.  Remember back in chapter 1 verse 8 and 10?  John plainly told us that we continue to exist in both a state of sinfulness and are guilty of ongoing acts of sin.  Not only that but he went so far as to say that we are bald faced liars if we claim such.  And to add insult to injury he told us that we even make God out to be a liar with such false claims.  So how can John now turn around and state that Jesus took away our sin?

Remember exactly what John is describing in this passage.  He is talking about a glorying in sin.  It is a willing and intentional production of sin that is in view here.  It is an unrepentant and arrogant desecration of the natural order of God’s creation.  Such a pattern of behavior does not at all describe a Christian.  If it does describe you then you are not an authentic Christian.  It’s as simple as that.

Finally, notice the phrase at the end of the verse: and in Him there is no sin.  If we think logically about what John said just before this, we might come to the conclusion that since Jesus carried off our sin that it remains with Him still.  John wants to be sure we do not make this mistake of logic.  And so he adds to the image being painted in our mind’s eye.  After taking away our sin into the far reaches of spiritual reality, Christ did not stop there.  He removed the sin from us, took it out of the equation, and then He proceeded to eradicate it from existence.  It remains with Him no more resulting in His continued state of sinless perfection.

This is exactly what makes verse 6 true: No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.  Christ has physically carted away the sins of a person who has been brought into fellowship with Him, has regenerated them into new spiritual life, and has sent them a helper of no less importance than His own Spirit to be with them continually.  How can such a person, after having been united with the Godhead in this personal and intimate manner, engage in the practice and pattern of behavior described in verse 4?  It is unthinkable and utterly impossible.  By the same token then, one who does engage in the persistent, intentional, and personal sin of verse 4 cannot possibly see Christ or know Him precisely because He has not born the burden of their sin away from them and destroyed it.

There is yet a further point to be seen here.  And it’s a doozy.  John says that those who sin can neither see Christ nor know Him.  John is covering the whole range of possibilities relating to understanding with these two words.  Physical sight is in view as is mental vision.  And layered on top of this perception is understanding or comprehension.  Now, if unbelievers are incapable of this then the implication for believers is that they are in the reverse condition.  Believers can both see Christ and know Him intimately.

But here is my question.  What exactly is it that redeemed people are seeing?  Jesus does not reside physically on earth at the present time.  His life is a matter of recorded history removed from us by two millennia of chronological separation.  My answer is that what we “see” when we behold the Christ is His works.  Consider John 14:10: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.  It is the works that Jesus did that remain as a lasting testament to who He is.  It is these that enable us to know and understand Him when they are viewed through the lens of the indwelling Spirit of God.  So we could say quite accurately that Christ’s works reveal who He is.

Perhaps you already see where I am going with this.  But in case you don’t here it is.  Just as the works of Jesus display for all to see His attributes and His nature, so do ours.  Jesus said it Himself in Matthew 7:20-21: So then, you will know them by their fruits.  Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.  If you are laboring under the foolish notion that because you are saved by grace through faith and not works (Eph. 2:8-9) it doesn’t matter how you live, then you need to give heed to this.  The conduct and manner in which a professing Christian lives, while not qualifying them for salvation, is critically important as a visible evidence of their salvation.

And this is not a grudging or joyless discipline of life where you mercilessly divest yourself of all the “fun” you could be having in order to live a life that is glorifying to God.  No, when you are truly born again and you begin to grasp the enormity of what God has done for you through the cleansing of Christ, there is only one appropriate response; heartfelt gratitude.  I cannot state it any better than King David in Psalm 28:7: The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart exults, and with my song I shall thank Him.  Your heart should leap inside your chest when you consider the providence and grace of God.  Your life should overflow with good works not out of obligation but out of gratitude.  This is why John has written the first ten verses of this chapter.  He is eager for you to gain a new appreciation and vision for the glory of God in both our rebirth in Him and our purification in Christ.

With that we come to the final movement of this three part harmony and spiritual eye examination.  John is going to build upon what he has already covered as he presents us with an image of our enemy.  Verse 7 begins the journey with a warning and a restatement of verse 6: Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.  The first thing to note is John’s admonition against deception.  He uses a word, “planao”, that means to be led astray or wander.  There is a solid biblical metaphor of sheep that is very appropriate to consider at this point.

In Matthew 18:12-14 Jesus uses an example of wandering sheep to display the fervor with which God goes after the lost of this world.  The sheep in His illustration has wandered away from the herd.  Think about that.  Did anyone force the sheep to leave?  Did a rival sheep turn a sign upside down so it pointed the other way, as in old cartoon comedies?  Of course not.  This wayward sheep, under its own power and initiative, with full (albeit limited) understanding of what it was doing, decided to walk away from the safety and security of the herd and the shepherd.  It is without question the sheep’s own fault that it is now lost.

Applying the same idea to Israel in Hebrews 3:10 God says: “Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, and they did not know My ways’.”  You had better believe the rebellious Israelites knew exactly what they were doing when they rejected the God of their salvation in Egypt.

John says to us not to be like the stupid sheep or the stubborn Israelites.  He just got done telling us in chapter 2 verse 27 that we have an anointing of the Holy Spirit which enables us to know the truth instinctively.  So he reiterates here to not be blind to the obvious.  The practice of righteousness is synonymous with the state of being righteous.  If an animal looks and smells like a pig it is probably a pig.  And if a flower looks and smells like a rose it is probably a rose.

This is in stark contrast to the evildoer mentioned in verse 4.  John uses the same word, “poieo”, translated here as practice, to describe the righteous.  The wicked person produces sin and lawlessness.  In the same manner the righteous person produces righteousness.  It springs forth out of them.  They delight in doing right.  It is their joy to have an opportunity to honor their God by copying His character qualities.  They do not see the performance of right actions that demonstrate holiness as a burden.  Rather, they see such a lifestyle as a profound privilege and honor.

Not yet content to leave the point alone, John proceeds into verse 8 where he once again gives us a portrait of the sinner.  But this time he ups the ante and adds an additional nuance to the image: the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.  We have already seen that the one who practices sin also practices lawlessness.  John has also told us that this person cannot abide in Christ and thus they neither perceive nor understand Him.  Now is added the final and perhaps most damning layer of condemnation.  The practitioner of sin issues forth from the devil himself.

The particularly interesting point here is the word that we translate into devil in English.  In Greek it is “diabolos”.  It is an adjective rather than a noun and it means literally “prone to slander or accusing falsely”.  We know that the devil is a liar.  Jesus described him this way to the Jews in John 8:44: You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.  Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 

But the devil’s crime is far worse than just lying.  To slander someone is to tell these lies about them, or even to accuse them of committing crimes they are innocent of.  This begs the question; who does he slander?  The Bible answers back: none other than God Himself.  First he slandered God to Himself by desiring to raise his throne above that of Gods, thus implying that he was more worthy of rule than God was (Isaiah 14:13).  Then he slandered God to Eve by blatantly calling into question God’s integrity (Genesis 3:4-5).  Finally, he slandered God right to His own face by telling Him that the kingdoms of the world were his to dispense and not Gods (Matthew 4:8-9).  As John has stated, the devil has sinning from the beginning.  He is guilty of defamation of character on a global scale that transcends recorded human history.

As an aside, it occurs to me that Satan is quite literally insane.  He is disconnected and detached from reality.  He must be crazy to have actually thought that he could successfully tempt God Himself with such lies. 

So, the very name that the Bible gives him is actually not even a proper name.  It is a descriptor, painting a picture for us of what he does.  The implication then for those who practice sin, being of him, is that they are guilty of the same crime.  Remember that sin is a distortion, a perversion, a corruption of the natural design that God implemented at creation.  Thus the one who sins is a liar on a primal and profound level.  Even without words their works proclaim the message of falsehood that they glory in along with their father the devil.

Even worse for this bunch is the fact that they stand in direct opposition to Christ.  In other words, they are on the wrong side in the fight.  Verse 8 continues: The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.  The works of the devil are the lies and the distortions of God and what He has made.  Thus it logically follows that, as we learned in verse 5, God was manifested to the world in Christ for the purpose of removing sin from the elect.  So because this sin is literally the handiwork of Satan it is his house of cards that was destroyed by the resurrection.

Continuing the theme of contrasts John supplies us with verse 9 to once again turn our attention back from the darkness of sin to the light of God: No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.  Having already looked at verse 6 this new angle on the same issue should not be a great leap for us.  So why did John feel the need to restate almost the same idea again in a different way?  I think he realized that our frail minds would tend to downplay or marginalize the truth of our exalted position in Christ.  Our probable pattern of behavior is to doubt as Thomas did, to fear as Peter did, and to be arrogant as John himself was.  Although as has been stated, through Christ we have been freed from the practice or systematic production of sin we are still vulnerable to bouts of sin.

John knows this and he wants to catch our attention and fix our hope not on ourselves but on God.  It is God who prevents us from continuing in the practice of sin that John has been talking about in this passage.  It is only because of our adoption into His family that we are capable of resisting the ever present allure of the slander of the devil.  A human child shares biological traits with their father due to his seed, his DNA, and his genetics being what they are made of.  So it is with those who are spiritually born of God.  It is God’s “blood” that now flows through our veins.  It is God’s “DNA” that was used as the blueprint to construct our own.  It is God’s “family tree” that we have inherited.  Of course we cannot continue in the practice of sin. 

In fact, if a Christian were to claim that they remain in the practice of sin as John presents it here, consider that they are really saying.  They are in effect implying that God’s own seed is full of the corruption of the devil.  This is in no way shape or form something a true child of God should believe.  It is an unrighteous defamation of God’s own character reminiscent of the devil.  And such unrighteousness is the ultimate litmus test of which army you are a soldier of, which team you are playing for, and which family you are in.  John closes with verse 10: By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

This is somewhat of a repeat of verse 7.  As we have seen, righteous deeds demonstrate righteous character.  Conversely, unrighteous deeds demonstrate unrighteous character.  So the commission or omission of righteousness is critically important for making assessments of who is born of God and who is born of the devil.  Therefore we need to be sure we are clear on what righteousness looks like.

Defining it is fairly easy.  Righteousness is simply doing what is right.  It is the visible evidence of holiness.  Holiness is the state of being pure, unique, or set apart in emulation of God’s own character.  Therefore righteousness is the doing of actions that are pure, unique, or set apart just as God’s actions are.  But what does that actually look like on a daily and practical level?

John provides us with the answer right here in verse 10.  If the one who does not practice righteousness does not love then it stands to reason that the one who does practice righteousness also loves.  John just couldn’t resist going back to his favorite topic could he?  He has been pounding the need for love throughout chapter 2.  And he is carrying that strong tradition right on into chapter 3.  It is love that is the visible evidence of our righteousness and it is the absence of love that is the visible evidence of our unrighteousness.

Love is so critically important in the life of a Christian that it absolutely cannot be overstated.  It is the basis of all evangelism, in that the evangelist both loves God and wants to accomplish His purposes and also loves people and wants to see their souls saved and reconciled to God.  Love is the basis of strong marriages, in that the husband and wife who are joined to each other must reciprocate sacrificial behavior toward each other.  In so doing they both provide for each other’s needs without ever selfishly focusing on their own and they build a foundation of trust and intimacy that can weather the fiercest storms encountered.  Love is the basis of strong churches, in that the brothers and sisters in Christ who gather together follow the example of their head, Christ, in putting the needs of others before their own.  In this way the attacks of Satan against the church are immediately reflected back in his face because there is no soil for them to take root in.

Let me be perfectly clear as John is clear.  If you do not love then you are not righteous, you are not born of God, and you are not a Christian.

With this opening passage of chapter 3 John has given us a glimpse into the reality that we live in.  He has opened the eyes of our heart and given us sight beyond sight.  He has affirmed for us that we are born of God and will be transformed when we can see Him clearly.  He has warned us of the great danger of corruption and perversion of our natural functions that is bound up in the lawlessness of sin.  He has reminded us of the great and mighty cleansing work of Christ in bearing away from us the burden of this terrible sin.  And he has pointed out the need for righteousness as the proof of who is in God and who is not, who stands opposed to Satan and who does not.  The question that I think looms large in the air for us at this point is the following.  Are you a slanderer like the devil?  Is your very life standing as a resounding testament to your false accusations against the character of God Almighty? 

John wrote his letter to the church.  But not everyone in the church is a Christian.  If the pattern of your life is righteousness born on the wings of love thereby proving the authenticity of your claim to be in Christ, then are you resting and meditating upon these great and glorious truths that John has given to us like priceless treasures?  Or are you distracted by the things of the world that he has clearly warned us against loving?