Let's return to 1 John 3. 1 John 3. This is where John, in
this chapter, John is building the case for God's people, which
is according to God's will and purpose for us in Christ Jesus,
that we be holy and without blame before him in love. And I want to stress this when
you're hearing these words which are spoken to the new man born
of grace. Understand, brethren, that what
God wills, God brings to pass. What He wills in you, He brings
to pass. And that, not by man's power
and strength, not by man's will, not by man's hand and man's facilitation
and man's help and man adding to it. No, God does it by His
sovereign power. He's revealing these things to
us that we would know His will and purpose for us and that we
would seek Him for it because we're walking by faith. So, this
is not about the child of God making themselves righteous to
justify ourselves or to sanctify ourselves with God. That work
to justify us, to make us righteous, to sanctify us is the work of
the Lord Jesus Christ. We're told that we are his workmanship. And the scriptures tell us that
of God are ye in Christ Jesus who has made unto us wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. It's of God,
it's the Lord's work in you. So John here is laying out several
methods that God uses. This is what God does in us,
and this is how the Lord conforms us to his will and purpose for
us in Christ Jesus. It's for our joy, it's for our
peace, it's for our comfort, it's for our keeping. He does
this work. Now we've looked at God's revealed
will for us in Christ. We saw how that Peter says in
1 Peter 1, verses 15 and 16, that as he which hath called
you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. That's your whole life, in all
manner of conversation, because it is written, be ye holy, for
I am holy. And what God wills for us, He
brings it to pass. He does. He accomplishes this
work. And John's first argument to
us after revealing the will and purpose of God, his first argument
was the love of God for us in Christ. God does this because
he loves us in Christ. He said there in verse one, Behold,
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we
should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth
us not, because it knew him not. And so God's love for us, for
the people of his choosing, when he gave us to Christ, his love
for us was a means of him sending his beloved son, his only begotten
son, to obtain eternal redemption for us, to make us righteous
in himself. And so this brings us to the
second argument now this evening. for our holiness, and so this
is part two to what we saw last week when John was making the
case for our holiness, but I think I'll title this one Holiness
by the Death of Christ, and that's what we're looking at. And so
for this, let's pick up in verses four and five. Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth
also the law, for sin is the transgression of the law. And
ye know that he, Jesus Christ, was manifested to take away our
sins, and in him is no sin. So these two verses here reveal
a comparison us. A comparison between the first
Adam and the last Adam. And the last Adam is Christ. And John is laying out for us
what we are in the flesh. We are sinners by nature. We are transgressors by nature. When Adam sinned in the garden,
We all were in Adam. We're all guilty of Adam's transgression
of the law. We sinned and rebelled against
God in Adam. In Adam. His eyes, when he ate
that fruit, his eyes were opened, knowing good and evil. And he recognized, I'm naked. I'm naked. And he went to clothe
himself. And how did he clothe himself?
with fig leaves. He took that which grows from
the dust of the ground and tried to cover his nakedness, which
by the way, we were formed of the dust. It's just of the flesh. It's a picture of this flesh. And so when he heard the voice
of God walking in the garden, which is Christ, he's the word
of God. When he heard that voice, he
hid from God. He didn't come to God and confess
his sin. He didn't cry out to God for
mercy and to save him and to help him. He fled from God. He ran from God because God became
his enemy. He looked at God distrustfully. He looked at God as his enemy
and thought, he's gonna destroy me. And he hid himself among
the trees. Well, that's the sin that all
of us are born of. We all come forth from Adam's
seed. And so all men's eyes are opened,
right? They're open so that we have
a knowledge of good and evil. We see governments around the
world making laws born out of their understanding of what's
good and evil. to punish men for doing what's
wrong. All men know that they are naked
in trespasses and sins. And that's why we see men turning
to religion and turning to works to try and cover their nakedness. Men and women do this to this
day. They try to do it. That's what
we call fig leaf religion. They're trying to cover their
nakedness before God with fig leaf religion. But there's another
picture in that too, right? That tells us that it's dead.
Those works, that attempt by us to cover our nakedness by
our works and religion, it's dead. Because as soon as you
pluck the fig leaf off the vine, as soon as you take it off the
tree, what happens? That thing dies. it dies. In some plants you notice it
sooner than others. It becomes limp pretty easily
within a few minutes of being plucked off the vine and it slowly
just decays and deteriorates and crumbles away to nothing. It returns back to the dust from
whence it came. Well that's a picture of my fruit,
your fruit, our fruit by religion and the law, where we think that
this is our righteousness and our covering before God, that
God will be pleased with it. It's dead fruit. Paul emphasizing
this when he said, we were in the flesh, when we were in the
flesh, the motions of sins which were by the law did work in our
members to bring forth fruit unto death. It's dead fruit that
cannot give life, that cannot save, that cannot cover our nakedness,
and all it produces in us is more death, more death. So all
men born of Adam reject the voice of God, which is Christ, the
word of God. We all flee from him except the
effectual working of God's power sees us and stop us from running. and draws us to Christ. Only
then will we hear him. And in this old man of flesh,
as John said, we commit sin. We transgress the law. We continue
to do it. It's what we do by nature. It's what we are by nature. And
the Lord makes this known to us through the preaching of the
gospel, through his word, and through the declaration of his
gospel, of his good news, so that we would stop trusting ourselves
and so that we would hear the word of God and cry out to him
for mercy, that we would beg him, Lord, give me this salvation. Cleanse me of my sins. Wash me
in the blood of your son. It's so that we would believe
the promise by faith of Jesus Christ. That's why he makes this
known to us, that we would stop trusting ourselves. John is simply
declaring what the scriptures say, where they have concluded,
all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might
be given to them that believe. What are they believing? that
the promise is given to them, we're believing that we are desperate
sinners in need of His grace freely given through the Lord
Jesus Christ. We're coming as sinners, crying
out to God for this word of promise, that all who believe the Son
and all who come to the Father in Jesus Christ are righteous
and accepted of Him. That's what we're believing.
That's the promise we're receiving. We're confessing, Lord, I'm a
sinner. Save me by your grace, which
you provided in your Son, Jesus Christ. And so for this reason,
this is why the word of God was manifested in the flesh. John's
saying at the end of verse five that he was manifested to take
away our sins, and in him is no sin. Next, in verse six, verse
six, whosoever abideth in him sinneth not. Whosoever sinneth
hath not seen him, neither known him. Whosoever abideth in him
sinneth not, he says, if any man abides in Christ. meaning
that we dwell in Christ, that we are rooted in Christ, that
we live by Jesus Christ, believing the promise that he is our righteousness
with God. If any man be rooted in Christ,
abiding in him, the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to
that man. That man is righteous. You that believe Christ, You
for whom Christ is all your life, all your salvation, he is your
righteousness. You are righteous. You are righteous
before God. Now I want to try and explain
this verse to you from three angles. From three angles here.
And the first one being the most important one, I believe. The
sinning that this man ceases from, the sinning that we cease
from, that John is talking about here, is that vain confidence
of man that by his works he cleanses himself. That's the sin. That's the unpardonable sin.
How can you be righteous trusting your own works, having a confidence
in this flesh? That's what the Lord delivers
us from. He saves us from that blasphemy,
from that dead work. He raises us from that death
to life in Christ. The leaven of the Pharisees,
which is hypocrisy, is no longer the manner in which God's child
comes to him. He's been delivered from that
confidence. We cease trusting our works. That's sin. That is a transgression. That is having a vain confidence
in self, thinking we're something when we're nothing. That is no
longer the way that we come to the Lord. He's given us the confession
of hoping in Christ. He's our hope. He's our confidence. He's my righteousness. He's my
all. That's the first thing there.
Instead, we're confessing that we're sinners in need of the
grace of God, confessing that Christ is all, that God has provided
him for salvation for his people. We're confessing that it's all
of Christ, all of grace, all of him. And that's why John,
after saying, whosoever abideth in him sinneth not, he follows
that with, whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known
him. If you continue in work salvation,
you've not seen Christ. You've not heard what Christ,
who Christ is and what he's saying. If you continue in that, you've
not heard him. If you continue trying to work
a righteousness for yourselves, you sinneth and have not seen
Christ nor heard him. You've not believed on him, you've
not known him. All right, so that's the one
way that we understand this verse rightly, is that we're delivered
from that vain confession. that it's my works, that it's
my righteousness. No, it's not. We lay that aside. We lay that aside. That's not
our hope. Sure, that thought comes in our Arminian flesh all
the time, and we think that we have to do something. It still
comes back on us. That's not our hope. That's not
our hope. Our hope is Christ. That's how
we walk. That's how we come boldly to
the throne of God. Second, And maybe I shouldn't
say that the other one was the most important. They're all important.
Second, the new man of grace, born in you by the Holy Ghost
of the seed of Christ, that new creation in you, which is born
of Christ's seed, cannot sin. He cannot sin. That which is
created of Christ, that new creation of Christ in you, He cannot not
believe. He cannot sin. The new man, the
new man in you cannot sin. This flesh sins. That which is
born of Christ cannot sin. Look down at verse 9. Whosoever
is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in
him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God." He's talking
about the new man born of the seed of Christ. That new man
is not born of this flesh. It's not born of Adam. It's not
of this flesh. It's of Christ. It's his seed. It's his creation. It's born
of God. He cannot sin. Third, because
of the life of Christ in us, his Holy Spirit dwells in us,
leading us in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Therefore, we don't continue
trying to make a life for ourselves continuing in rebellion and just
designing our life around what we know to be sin and rebellion
against God. If we're His, He's going to shut
that down in us. He's going to deliver us from
seeking to live a life in this flesh, just doing what we want
to do. He's going to deal with us. He's
going to teach us. He's going to instruct us. He's
going to lead us out of paths of darkness. And so he does that
work. When an elect child goes astray,
and they do, we do, when we go astray, there's a coming day
when it pleases God. If you persist in it and continue
in it, there's coming a day when the Lord will visit you, and
he will turn you from that. He'll turn you from it. Sometimes
it begins with a still, small voice. Don't do that. Don't do
that. But when you keep on going and
keep on going in it, the Lord will make it known to you more
and more, I'm talking to you about this. I'm talking to you
about this. Stop doing that. And you persist
in it more and more. The Lord will eventually take
it from you. He'll do what he has to do. And
you can push on it as long as you want to, but if you're his,
he will deliver you from it, and he will deal with it. He
will chase in his child, because you're his child. He's not going
to let you go on doing what you would do in the flesh. Sin remains
present in our members. I know it does. I know it from
experience. I see it in my own members. I
know it because the apostles exhorted us. Peter said it this
way, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. If
that sin wasn't present in these members, in this flesh, he wouldn't
have had to say that. He wouldn't have to say that,
but they all said it. Peter said it. John says it.
Paul says it. James says it. They all say it
because it's present in this flesh. It's present. And so they're
encouraging us. This is why we're tempted in
the flesh. Why we get tempted, because we're
in the flesh, and sometimes we stumble and fall. And the Lord
heals His child. He speaks to His child. He turns
His child, corrects His child, and brings His child back to
them. John, and again, for example, with John, he said in the first
chapter, verse eight, if we say that 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 that we have not sinned,
we make him a liar and his word is not in us. In the body, we may disagree
about what constitutes sin. We may disagree on the severity
of certain sins. And some things don't necessarily
bother one person that may be bothering another. That's true.
Some people smoke cigars. Some people say, I won't smoke
cigars. Some people will eat fat, greasy hamburgers and a
bag of chips. I do. Some people would find
that gluttonous and not do that. Some things bother us and some
things don't bother us. I can't say what it is how the
Lord's dealing with you in the body. Some things we know, don't
do that. You shouldn't do that, don't
do that. Other things, there's a certain liberty that we just
don't even think about. But that doesn't mean that they
are sin or not sin, it's just the Lord deals with each one
of his children as he purposes. Don't we have bodies? And don't certain parts of our
body hit things hard? And some things don't. Some things
take various abuses, and other things can't handle it. It's
just what it is. But the Lord knows. And so for
some people, his grace will be sufficient to cover them. He
might need them to be a certain type of member in the body. Now,
we don't pick and choose that. We may want to excuse some sin,
but if the Lord's dealing with it, He's gonna deal with you
and me personally in that. He'll deal with it, and He'll
instruct us. I hope that's making sense. We're members in the body,
and just as members have different uses and purposes, so God deals
with his children in different ways. Some are very sensitive
to things. Some are less sensitive to things.
Some things bother you based on how you were raised and what
you saw and were exposed to. Other things, another person
doesn't even think about it. But if God Don't try to make
a problem out of something that's not a problem for you. And if
God talks to you just because it doesn't bother somebody else,
if God's speaking to you, hear him, listen to him. It's how
he works in the body. It's what he does. And so, primarily
here, John is speaking of the sin of rejecting Christ. We don't reject Christ. We don't
turn from Christ. He is all our hope. And he's made us new creatures.
And he deals with us. He talks with us. He grows us. He keeps us. He ministers his
word and grace to our hearts personally. And now continuing
in verse seven, little children, let no man deceive you. He that
doeth righteousness is righteous. even as he is righteous." Now,
this verse further cements what we just saw, those same three
points. And so let's reiterate that from
a slightly different view here. First, he says, let no man deceive
you. If you are found righteous of
God, it's not because of you, it's because of the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, let no man deceive
you. If you're righteous, it's for Christ's sake. and it's because
of him whom he sent to make his people righteous and accepted
of him. Romans 3, 22 and 23, even the
righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto
all and upon all them that believe, for there's no difference, Jew
or Gentile, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. Christ is the righteousness of God. and you must come by
faith in Christ. He said, come unto me, go to
Christ, believe him, trust him, cry out to him for grace and
mercy, learn of Christ through the preaching of the gospel,
begging God to reveal him to you and to teach you, and he
will draw you to Christ. It's his word of promise to you.
All who come to Christ, he will in no wise cast out because God
has drawn them to him. The hypocrisy of the Pharisee
and of all men by nature is believing that we are the makers of our
own righteousness. that we're our righteousness
now through religion and through law, maybe a little help from
Jesus. Sure, we'll put him in there
too. No, that is man's nature, but
no, that's not the truth. That's not the light of God.
That's not what he does to save his people. Don't miss Christ. because he is all of the salvation
of God's people and many people miss him and many people go on
in religion thinking that that is their righteousness and their
acceptance with God. Jesus Christ is our righteousness
and he is our acceptance with God. Anything else is taking
bricks that we've made with our hands and formed by our works
and baking them in the oven of religion to make a tower of Babel
and thinking this is how we're going to get to heaven. And it's
just not so. That's just confusion. That's
confusion. Paul said, they being ignorant
of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own
righteousness have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness
of God. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believe it. He's our righteousness. And then secondly, Secondly,
again, we're born again by the Spirit of God. We are made new
creatures in Christ, and this new man delights in the Lord,
delights in Christ, delights in his word, delights in his
law, delights in his statutes, delights in his way of righteousness. We're delighting in Christ, and
in Christ and by Christ, that's how we bear fruits of righteousness.
Romans 7.4 said, Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become
dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married
to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we
should bring forth fruit unto God. That's how we bring forth
fruit unto God, in Christ, looking to him, trusting him, seeking
him. That's where Righteous fruits
are wrought in Christ, in Him, looking to Him and believing
Him. We're dead to the law, but raised again to newness of life. Let me just read Romans 6, 4,
and 5. Therefore, we're buried with
Him by baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised from
the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should
walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together
in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness
of his resurrection. When our Lord came unto this
place, and took upon him flesh, a body, And that body is the
body of his people. When he went to the cross, we
went to the cross with him. We are his members. And when
he died, we died. We were put to death. And when
he was raised from the dead, it means that in the day of his
grace, we will die to the vain confidences we had and live unto
the Lord. and believe him and walk by faith
in him. It's his grace, it's his power.
And then third, whosoever is born of him delights in him and
loves him, makes use of his blessed means that he's given for his
sheep. We seek to hear his word. We
want to fellowship with the saints. We seek him in prayer. We have
a desire to be like him. We long for that day when this
body of flesh will fall off and we shall be clothed upon with
that heavenly body. that does not have sin in its
members anymore, that doesn't have this disease, this filth
and this deadness. And so John said above, every
man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he
is pure. Well, that's not something that
we do by our works in the flesh. That's something that God does
by his work of grace. And therefore, as living creatures,
we're turned to him. and to seek His grace, to seek
His face, to seek His leading, and that He would bear fruits
of righteousness in us, that He would give us a heart, that
He would give us opportunity, and that He'd give us that strength
to walk through that opportunity, to bear fruits of righteousness
unto the praise and glory of His name, even as He is pure. Now this brings us to the final
verse here, and it sums it all up. 1 John 3, 8, the first half
of the verse says, he that committeth sin is of the devil, for the
devil sinneth from the beginning. We saw that at the opening in
verse four, that that's the problem right there. That's the problem.
He that committeth sin is of the devil. And that's us by nature. That's what we need to be saved
from. And the problem is we can't save
ourselves from it. But that's the salvation we need
by nature. By nature, this is what we were
all about. We walked according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. That's what we are, that's what
we were, and that's where we were when the Lord found us.
But here's what our Lord did for us in the second half of
verse eight, for this purpose, The Son of God was manifested
that He might destroy the works of the devil in fulfilling all
righteousness for His people. In always doing those things
that pleased the Father, He willingly, faithfully went to the cross
as the sacrificial Lamb of God and made atonement, sacrificed
himself for the sins of his people, and reconciled us to God. By his death, by his burial,
by his resurrection, he satisfied holy God. Thus, in doing that,
he went into the strongman's house where we were bound and
imprisoned, and he bound the strongman and opened the prison
doors and led forth his people out of death, out of darkness,
out of that house. And then he gave us gifts, gifts
whereby we know him, making us new creatures in him. Old things
being passed away, behold, all things are become new. We cease
coming to God in the oldness of the letter and the deadness
of our flesh, and now we come in the newness of the spirit
under the blood of the New Testament, the Lord Jesus Christ. So then,
having the Spirit of God dwelling in us, we're led out from under
the works of the devil, which are defeated and put away by
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Paul exhorts us, then,
in Romans 6, we read some of this earlier, Paul exhorts us
in the new man. He speaks to you in the new man
born of Christ. He says in verse 10, Romans 6,
10, in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he
liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Set your hearts upon that. where
Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. That's where we're seated.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body. You feel the
effects, don't let it reign over you and have dominion over you
that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof, neither yield
ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin,
but yield yourselves unto God. as those that are alive from
the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness
unto God. For sin shall not have dominion
over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace." We're
taken out of that inheritance in Adam, which is put away from
us. We have no part in that. We're
under grace. Let us walk, therefore, in that
grace, trusting God. When we see sin rising up and
seeking to take hold of us, cry out to the Lord, Abba, Father,
save me, keep me. And the Spirit helps us in that
hour. And so I encourage you to read
that whole chapter more. And Paul tells us, he says, I'm
speaking to you in this manner because of the infirmity of our
flesh. It's all the Lord's work. It's
all his work that keeps us, that works in us, that blesses this
word to our hearts so that we would seek him for his grace
according to his word of promise here, that we be holy and righteous
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, This is another one of
the arguments of the apostle. We've seen it's God's revealed
will. We see how that God loves us and gave us to Christ. We
see now in this hour how that we were made righteous by the
death of Christ and what he works in us. So I pray the Lord encourage
your hearts and help us to continue to hear this word from John the
apostle. Amen.