Confidence in Christ

Once in a while, we come across a passage that is deeply misunderstood, and such is the passage we will be preaching on this Sunday. It is a passage that is intended to give us confidence. 1 John 2:28…  “Abide in him so that when he appears we may have confidence…”.

But then we read verses such as this: 1 John 3:9… “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.”

The NIV translates, “No one born of God continues to sin”. And the Holman translates “Everyone who has been born of God does not sin”.

This seems more than a little difficult for those of us who know full well that we continue to sin! How are we to understand this?

Context is so important. Recall that 1 John 1:8 says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar.”

How do we reconcile these verses, not to mention our own experience? The answer is in John’s understanding of what sin is. 1 John 3:4 says, “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness: sin is lawlessness.” Notice that John doesn’t say: “sin is breaking the law”. John isn’t taking us back to the Law of Moses or the 10 Commandments here. If that were the case, then every time we fail to love God with our whole heart, we would be confirming that we are not a genuine believer! No! John is describing the sin of Adam, namely a complete disregard of God’s authority. This is the attitude that holds that sin doesn’t matter, and John is saying that is an impossible position for a genuine believer.

Rather, John describes the believer’s position as walking in the light. (1 John 1:7). What does that mean? It means that we have recognised God’s love for us in Jesus and turned back to God (repentance) and into his embrace. Yes, we continue to sin, in the sense that we fall short, and we need to continue to confess our sin. However, we do not walk in the darkness, which is to hide our sin, deny our sin, and pretend that sin doesn’t matter. And that is what John means in [verse 8] by “makes a practice of sinning”.  It is what the Old Testament called, “sin with a high hand”, that is sin which defies God and says, “I don’t care, it doesn’t matter!” In other words, that sort of sin is “Lawlessness”.

The same is true in reverse. 1 John 2:29 says, “You may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.” Does that now mean that, having been justified and declared righteous through the death and resurrection of our Saviour, we now have to be righteous in our own life and behaviour to continue in Christ? Again, we must ask what this ‘practices righteousness’ actually means here in 1 John. And the answer is there in 3:22-23. “… We keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us.” This is the practice of righteousness. This is the same as what the Apostle Paul calls “the obedience of faith”, Romans 1:5 and Luke in Acts 26:20, “That they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.”

In the congregation that John is writing to it is those who have left the church who have failed to practice righteousness. Why? Because they have turned away from believing in the name of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and they have failed to love the brethren. They have become ‘lawless’. On the other hand, if you are doing these things, you can take comfort that the blood of Jesus purifies you from all unrighteousness and you can have confidence before Christ.

Bruce Morrison
Senior Minister