The longer you fight against sin, the more temptations you may experience to no longer fight so hard. Once your zeal burned; your spiritual blood boiled. But as months passed and years rolled by, desires for a more comfortable discipleship somehow got wedged beneath your armor.
Paul talks of killing sin, starving sin [Romans 8:13; 13:14], but you have begun to wonder whether a less decisive, more long-term approach may work just as well. Jesus speaks of tearing out an eye and cutting off a hand [Matthew 5:29] to emphasize how to act against temptation. You theoretically agree but, if honest, can hardly imagine a metaphorical self-denial so extreme.
You may have once found relish in the righteous ferocity of a man like John Owen, who wrote of walking “over the bellies of his lusts” (Works, 6:14). But some time has passed since your boots have trampled any lusts. And as another Puritan once put it, you may feel tempted to speak of your sins as Lot did of Zoar: “Is it not a little one?” [Genesis 19:20]. Time makes way for many little sins; and little sins, in time, make way for larger ones.
The softening happens slowly, by degrees. And often, what we need most in such seasons is a righteous trumpet blast, a rousing note that shakes the bones and awakens us back to reality. Such the apostle John gives to us in his first letter:
No one born of God - Yehovah makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God - Yehovah. [1 John 3:9]
To the question, “Can the born again make a practice of sinning?” John responds simply, clearly, unequivocally: impossible.
Let No One Deceive you
Recent events had cast a shadow over the community that received John’s letter. We catch a glimpse in 1 John 2:19: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out.” Once, a group of seeming brothers and sisters belonged to us; now, John can speak of them only as they.
And they did not leave quietly. No they left speaking strange new ideas about Jesus — that he didn’t really come in the flesh [1 John 4:2-3], that he wasn’t really the Messiah [1 John 2:22]. And with this new theology came a new and twisted spirituality. Many, it seems, professed to know God - Yehovah while walking in darkness [1 John 1:6], as if somehow one could be righteous withouit doing righteousness [1 John 3:7]. They claimed new life; they kept old sins.
Some scholars call them “proto-gnostics,” forerunners of the heresy that would bedevil the called-out Assembly in the next century. John himself speaks with a sharper edge: they are liars, antichrists, children of the devil [1 John 1:6; 2:18; 3:10]. Tough words from the beloved apostle. But the called-out Assembly desperately needed to hear them.
No One Born of God Keeps on Sinning
John knew the church was standing firm for the moment. In fact, he wrote his letter in large part to assure them that eternal life was theirs [1 John 5:13]. Their faith in the Messiah Jesus was steady, their love for the brothers deep, their righteousness evident. Though not perfect [1 John 1:8-9], they belonged to God - Yehovah.
Yet John knew the power of flesh-pleasing lies, especially when given time to work. He knew too how demoralizing it could be to watch a brother-in-arms lay down his weapons and cross enemy lines. Perhaps the called-out Assembly wouldn’t embrace the heresy, but their hands might grow slack around the sword hilt. They might wonder if the life of a disciple really requires such ruthlessness against sin. Some might wander into a “practice of sinning,” less afraid of what such a practice might mean.
So, John writes, “Little children, let no one deceive you” [1 John 3:7]. Remember, little children, that sin is lawless. Remember that the Messiah was sinless. Remember that you are a new. creation in the Messiah Jesus.
Sin Is Lawlessness
When a professing disciple of the lord Jesus begins to make “a practice of sinning” [1 John 3:9], a deep yet subtle change has already taken place. Somewhere along the line, sin has become less serious in his eyes: no longer black, but gray; no longer damnable, but understandable. A slow hardening has crept over his conscience. Where he once blushed, he/she now shrugs.
John will have none of it. He had stood on Calvary. He had watched God’s - Yehovah's wrath against sin swallow the sun; had seen the wages of sin stain the dirt red from His son sin-offering sacrifice. And so he writes, “Everyone who makes a practice of sin also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” [1 John 3:4].
Woven into the DNA of sin is a lawless, traitorous, insolent, anti-Messianic character. It cannot bear God’s authority; it cannot bend to the Messiah Jesus rule. And though isolated instances of sin do not amount to a life of lawlessness; "a practice of sinning” does [1 John 3:4]; even the smallest sins are lawlessness. Every sin bears some resemblance to the nails and spear that pierced our Lord; every sin sounds something like, “Crucify!” So, if nourished and cherished, if cultivated and indulged, any sin can take the heart captive to a kind of rebellion that cannot abide with the Messiah Jesus.
We will continue to sin this side of kingdom of God -Yehovah; on that point John is utterly clear [1 John 1:8]. Yet as D.A. Carson writes, sin never becomes something less than “shocking, inexcusable, forbidden, appalling, out of line with what we are as disciples of the lord Jesus.” “Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil” [1 John 3:8]; and every sin, however small, beats with a lawless heart.
The Messiah Jesus was the only perfect sinless man who has ever lived
If in sin we see absolute darkness, utter lawlessness, in the Messiah Jesus we see absolute light, utter purity. The two are mortal enemies, opposite poles: the one crooked, the other straight; the one night, the other day; the one death, the other life. And therefore, because of who the Messiah is and what the Messiah does, “no one who abides in him keeps on sinning” [1 John 3:6].“If we abide in him, sin cannot abide in us; not persistently, not presumptuously, not peacefully.”
Consider, first, who the Messiah Jesus is. “In him there is no sin,” John writes [1 John 3:5]. How then can anyone abide in him; live in him, commune with him, worship him; and keep sinning as before? The Messiah Jesus holds no tinder for sin; he gives no oxygen to lawlessness. If we abide in him, then, sin cannot abide in us; not persistently, not presumptuously, not peacefully.
Then, second, consider what the Messiah Jesus does. “You know that he appeared in order to take away sins” [1 John 3:5]. Or again, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” [1 John 3:8]. He came, the sinless one, to make many to become like him. He accomplished this by first by becoming a sin-offering sacrifice so we could be reconcilled to God; enabling our God and Father Yehovah to forgive and justify us. Then the lord Messiah Jesus gradually yet ceaselessly purifies us as we obey the word His God and Father Yehovah gave to him to give to us and the world.
In a season of encroaching sin, then, we do well to ask ourselves, “Jesus came to destroy the devil’s works; and will I endorse them? Jesus died to take away my sins; and will I now take them back?
You Are A New Creation in the Messiah Jesus
So far, John has bid the called-out Assembly to look outside themselves. Now, however, he tells them to look at themselves. Three times in one sentence, the apostle points to their newness in the Messiah Jesus:
No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. [1 John 3:9]
Conversion - regeneration involves not just a change of mind, but a change of heart, your entire being; a change so great it can rightly be called a new birth. And a new birth brings the truth about sin and the Messiah Jesus down into the deepest places.
By a new birth, we not only see sin as lawless, but we have hearts and minds whose lawlessness has been replaced by God’s - Yehoah's life-giving law [Jeremiah 31:33]. The pen of the Spirit has reached where ours never could. And by a new birth, we not only see Jesus as sinless, but we enjoy him as glorious, the Spirit opening our eyes to a beauty far beyond sin [Ezekiel 36:27]. We have felt, deep down, the blessing of obedience without burden [1 John 5:3], the delight of abiding in the one who knows no darkness [1 John 1:5].
Pulsing in these words of John, then, is not only a mighty cannot; “he/she cannot keep on sinning”; but a mighty can overcome sin. However strong temptation seems, and however weak we feel, we can overcome the impulse to sin and cleave to the Messiah Jesus. We can raise these weary feet and flee again; we can lift these tired arms and strike again. We can put our face in the Bible and our knees on the ground. We can say no to the loudest urges of the flesh and yes to the quiet promptings of the Spirit.
Our ‘Truceless Antagonism’
The battle against sin lasts all life long. But in the Messiah Jesus, we have a different disposition, a better bent, a new life that will never die. And buried deep in our spiritual DNA is a ruthless opposition to sin; a “truceless antagonism,” as Robert Law calls it.
Such antagonism will look strange and unnatural to the world around us; at our worst, we too may wonder if the road of the life of a disciple can run on roads less narrow. But when we remember what sin really is, who the Messiah Jesus really is, and who we really are as new creations in him, then even seemingly small compromises; little so-called white lies, secret glances, prayerless mornings, quiet bitterness; will appear for what they are: Lawless guides lead us from the Messiah Jesus. Dark hands steal our hearts. Utter contradictions of our new birth.
Then our zeal will burn again. And then our spiritual r blood will boil again. Then our boots will walkover the bellies of our lusts. For “no one born of God - Yehovah makes a practice of sinning” [1 John 3:;9]. And in the Messiah Jesus, we are born of God - Yehovah; irrevocably, eternally, powerfully new.
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