Alright, I want you to open your
Bibles to the book of 1 John chapter 3. Now this morning I'm going to
begin an exposition, verse by verse, through this chapter. But I've listed as my text a
verse of scripture that I began with last week out of Matthew
chapter 12. And the reason I did that is
this. In the past few weeks, I've been talking about the family
of God, the true family of God, the household of the living God. And I began with the message
entitled, is God really my father? Who has the right, the title,
to really say God is my father? Bible teaches us God is not the
father of all people without exception. Because we fell in
Adam. And we prostituted literally
ourselves out in a spiritual way to another father who is
the devil. We talked about that. I'm not
going to go back into all that. But basically, if you call God
your father, the only way you can do that scripturally is by
his grace and his power through the Lord Jesus Christ. You've
come to Christ for all salvation. You plead His blood and righteousness
for your only salvation. If you truly, scripturally, by
the power and grace of God, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, called
upon His name, as He's identified and distinguished in the scripture,
then you have every right to say, God is my heavenly Father. And that assures you If that
is truly the case, from the new heart, that assures you that
when you stand before God, you will, without doubt, meet Him
as a heavenly Father. Not at the expense of His justice,
but right in line with His justice through the Lord Jesus Christ,
who took all your sins away. And I'm going to talk about that
in just a minute. And then the next messages that I've been
dealing with is this. Are you really my brother? Am
I really your brother? The Bible doesn't teach the universal
brotherhood of man. It teaches the universal neighborhood
of man and how we're to love our neighbors as ourselves. But
not everybody is our brother or sister in Christ. That's the
family of God. And the text that I've been basing
all these messages on is found in Matthew 12 where Christ and
his He's ministering in a house, teaching the gospel. And then
some people came in and said, now your mother's outside and
your brothers are outside and they want to talk to you. Now
he's talking about his physical mother, Mary. That woman who
was blessed among women to be the physical instrument through
whom the Christ would come into the world according to the flesh.
And I may mention last week how Mary was a sinner saved by grace.
She and Joseph, when they were married, they had other children.
They were Christ's half-brothers according to the flesh. Christ
was not born after the flesh in the sense of being born through
man. His birth was a miraculous conception of the Holy Spirit
in the womb of the Virgin. He had a literal human body and
a soul, but without sin. He is God in human flesh. He's
the Word made flesh dwelling among us. He is God manifest
in the flesh, what the scripture says. He's God manifest. That's
the kind of person that it takes to save his people from their
sins. He had to be made like unto his
brethren without sin in order to take our sins away. But Christ
makes this point in verse 50, and that's my base text for this. He says, for whosoever shall
do the will of my Father, Matthew 12, 50, which is in heaven, the
same as my brother and sister and mother. My spiritual family
consists of those who do the will of my Father. Now, later
on, I'm going to deal with that subject, understanding the will
of God and understanding what it means to keep His commandments.
We'll go into that. But I want to lay the foundation
of that in 1 John chapter 3. What is it to do the will of
the Father? Well, the Scripture teaches us that the household
and family of God, they're number one, all whom God chose before
the foundation of the world. Their names were written on the
Lamb's book of life before the world began. They're all whom
Christ redeemed by His blood on the cross. He owns them, He
will have them. He said, All that the Father
giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. And they are all who have been
born again by the Holy Spirit under the preaching of the gospel.
They've been brought into the family of God by the power of
the Spirit through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the
household, the family of God. And they do the will of the Father.
Let me just give you this real briefly, and I'm going to capitalize
on this later on. But they do the will of the Father.
They keep His commandments in the way of believing on the Lord
Jesus Christ and resting in Him for all salvation. We're going
to see that in 1 John 3. They keep His commandments. Does
that mean they keep the Ten Commandments? No. Does that mean they keep
any commandment perfectly? No. It means they believe in
the—this is the will of the Father. This is the work of God, that
you believe on Him whom the Father has sent. They look to Christ
for salvation. They cling to Him. They keep
His commandment to repent of dead works and idolatry. In other
words, they don't look anywhere else to nothing else in them,
from them, of them, behind them, in front of them, except Jesus
Christ. They repent of ever thinking
that God could have saved them, forgiven them, blessed them,
justified them, based on anything but the righteousness of His
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And they keep His commandment
to love the brethren. Well, is that a perfect love?
No. It's a very imperfect love. But it is a love. And that's
what Christ is saying here. This is my spiritual family.
Now, in the passage that Brother Mark read in Hebrews chapter
3, did you notice how it started out there? Or Hebrews chapter
3. It started out, wherefore holy brethren. Holy brethren. Now when you think of the word
holiness, what do you normally think of? Well, we think of somebody
who, like the Lord Jesus Christ, for example, was perfect in every
way. Morally perfect. But that's not
what it's talking about. The word holy means set apart.
You've been set apart. You who are brethren. This is
talking about the brotherhood of Jesus Christ. That's the title
of the message. The brotherhood of Jesus Christ. You who are
members of his household. His family. You have a household,
don't you? You have a family. Throughout
your daily lives, when you walk into your house, you don't expect
to see strangers hanging around, do you? You expect to see your
wife, your husband, your children, or your relatives who've been
invited, sometimes not invited. But you don't expect to see strangers
there, do you? Well, it's the same way with
the household of God. And these are holy brethren.
How are they holy? Well, first of all, they've been
set apart, as I said, by divine electing grace before the foundation. They've been set apart in redeeming
grace. Christ died for their sins. And in doing so, he didn't
make a stab at saving them or try to save them. He put their
sins away. And they've been born again.
Just like you're born into your physical family, you're spiritually
born into your spiritual family by the new birth. Christ said
you must be born again. And that's the Holy Breath. Now
they stand perfect only in one way. I can tell you without embarrassment
that you're looking at a perfect man behind his pulpit, but only
in one way. as I stand having Christ's righteousness
imputed, charged, reckoned, accounted to me. No other way. My thoughts are not perfect.
My actions are not perfect. Sometimes my motives are not
perfect. Well, my motives are never perfect. My goals are never
perfect. I have a struggle with sin every
day of my life. That's called a warfare. But
in Christ I stand perfect. Now that's the household and
family of God. But look at verse 6 of Hebrews
3. It says, but Christ as a son over his own house, his own family. Whose house are we? I'm members
of that household. If We hold fast the confidence
and the rejoicing of the hope from unto the end. Now the if
there is not a condition I must meet in order to attain membership
in this household. The if there is evidence that
I already am a member of this household. There's a difference. And what is my confidence and
the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end? My confidence and
my hope of rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end is my looking
to Christ as my only salvation and clinging to Him. Now with
that in mind, look over at 1 John chapter 3. This chapter starts out talking
about the children of God, the brotherhood of Christ. Verse
1, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon
us. These are the children of His love. People say, well, we
just love everybody. I saw there's a big billboard
there on Dawson about a church. They said they love Albany. They do not. That's just religious talk. Now,
I'm not being facetious. That's just religious talk. I
could prove it easily. Just like Christ proved it to
the rich young man. Well, go sell everything. You
claim you love everybody perfectly? Well, go sell everything you
have and give it to the poor and follow Christ. Now, there's
your standard. Now, how many of you are going
to do that today? I'm not. And the problem is we love ourselves
too much. What's he talking about? He's
talking about the perfect love of God to his elect people in
Christ. I'm going to talk about this
more in later messages, but let me tell you something, folks.
There is no love from God to any sinner apart from Christ. Outside of Christ, there's only
hatred, and that hatred is not what you think it is. That hatred
is God's justice and wrath upon those to whom sin is charged.
That's what it is. But that God should love any
of us is a miracle of His grace. Did you know that? When your
children are born into your family, you love them because they're
extensions of you. But the Scripture says in Romans
chapter 5 that God loved us, His people, His children, His
chosen. When we were yet enemies, Christ
died for us. Now think about that. Behold
what manner of love. This is a manner of love. This
is a kind of love that we don't know by nature. that we've never
experienced in our natural way of doing things and thinking.
This kind of love. And listen, even to a believer
who's been born again, one who's been born again, one who's been
given a new heart, one who's been given a new spirit, I'm
gonna tell you something, this kind of love does not come easily.
At all. It's a fight. And why is that? Just what I said, we still retain
so much self-love and self-interest. But here's how that love bears
us out. He says, Behold, what manner
of love the Father hath bestowed upon that we, sinners, by nature,
children of wrath even as others, enemies of God in our minds,
before God brings us into his family by regeneration, that
we should be called the sons of God. That is something. We didn't become sons of God
because we were better than everybody else and we rose above the crowd
and made our decision for Jesus, no. That's not the way it happened. The Bible tells us that if we're
children of God, we became so by the will of God, the power
of God. And he says, therefore the world
knoweth us not because it knew him not. If you're a child, listen,
if you're in the brotherhood of Jesus Christ, If you're a
child of God, the world won't recognize that. They won't recognize
it properly. Oh, they may say you're a Christian
because you try to do your best at things, but their judgment
is wrong. They don't know what a Christian is. The world doesn't. They think they do. They look at the reformed drunk,
and they say, well, I know he's a Christian. He stopped drinking.
Well, I'm glad he stopped drinking, but that doesn't make him a Christian,
folks. All the drunks should stop drinking. Isn't that right? I don't want to be driving down
the road knowing that there's drunk drivers out there. They
ought to stop. And when they do, that's great. But that doesn't
make them a Christian. That does not make them a son
of God, a child of God. It cannot. Well, if you are a
child of God, should you stop getting drunk? Well, sure. But
that's not what's going to wash away your sins. That's not going
to take away, that's not going to make you righteous before
God. The world knoweth us not. Well
look at verse 2, he says, Beloved, now are we the sons of God. That's
not a future aspiration. That's a present reality. If
you're in Christ, you're a child of God. And it doth not yet appear
what we shall be. Listen, it certainly doesn't
appear to the world what we shall be, but it doesn't even yet appear
to us what we shall be. Listen, when we're glorified
together with Christ, we will be resurrected in a perfect spiritual
body. We will exist in the presence
of God forever and ever and ever without any contamination, influence,
or presence of sin in our life? He says, here's what we do know,
verse 2, when he shall appear, when Christ shall come the second
time, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. We'll
see him with perfect eyes, in the glory of everything that
he is. We see him now, but Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13, we
see through a glass darkly. We see Jesus, the scripture says.
And look at verse 3, he says, And every man that hath this
hope, this certain expectation of salvation, of final glory,
of perfect glory forever and ever with God, has that hope
in Christ, in Him. That's where my hope is. It's
not in me, it's not in you, it's in Him. It's by virtue of His
merits, His righteousness, Every man that hath this hope in him
purifieth himself, even as he, Christ, is pure." Now, how in
the world could I ever say that I'm purified as Christ is pure? It can't be in the efforts that
I make to obey Him, because they'd still fall short. It can't be
in my thoughts, the perfection of my thoughts, because they're
not perfect. How can I say that I'm as pure as Christ is? There's
only one way. As I'm washed pure in the blood
of Christ. What can wash away my sins? Nothing. But what? The waters of baptism? The tears of repentance? The
promises to obey? No. Nothing but the blood of
Jesus. What can make me holy? Nothing but the blood. Now he
says in verse 4, now there's the foundation laid right there,
isn't it? We're in Christ. We who are in
the brotherhood of Jesus Christ are those who are in Him. You remember the law of the firstborn
in the Old Testament? The firstborn who was to receive
the blessing of to be the spiritual head of the family? and all the
blessings would come through him. That's what Christ is to
his people. He's our firstborn brother. That
literally refers to his resurrection from the dead based upon the
merits of what he accomplished in his obedience unto death.
But all the blessings, all the salvation, all the acceptance
before God come through Christ to his family. Now look at verse
4. Whosoever committeth sin transgresses
also the law. They tell me today you can't
define sin. Well, there it is. What is sin? It's transgression of the law. The most common word for sin
in the Bible means to come short, to miss the mark. What is the
mark? Perfect righteousness. You know,
righteousness in the Bible means justice. Righteousness is really
not a moral quality of character, but it is the standard by which
all moral qualities of character are to be measured. So that when
I say, well, I'm going to strive to love you perfectly, well,
what's the standard that I'll be shooting for? Righteousness.
Does my efforts to love you perfectly fall short? Yes. And you know
what that means? That means I'm a sinner and I
need a righteousness I can't produce. Sin is transgression
of the law. That's what sin is. It means
coming short, it means rebellion, it means breaking the law. But he says, verse four, for
sin is the transgression of the law. Whosoever commit a sin transgresses
the law. Now what is he talking about
in the context here? Well, I want you to jump across
the page to 1 John chapter 2. And I want you to look at verse
18. 1 John chapter 2 verse 18. He says in verse 18, little children. Who's he talking about? Children
of God, the family of God, the household of God, the brotherhood
of Jesus Christ. He says it's the last time, the
last days. Everybody talks about the last
days. We're living in the last days. Well, we've been living
in the last days since Christ came the first time and did his
great work, died, was raised from the dead, and ascended to
the Father. We've been living in the last days. John is writing
a short period of time after the resurrection of Christ, and
he says it's the last time. This is the last age. That's
talking about the New Covenant age. That's talking about the
Gospel age. Now we can argue this, are we living in the last
of the last days? We probably are. But he says
in verse 18, little children, it's the last time. And as you've
heard that Antichrist, what is Antichrist? You say, well that's
some guy who's coming and he's going to sit in Jerusalem. No, Antichrist means against
Christ. Here's what John says, you've
heard that Antichrist shall come, but even now there are many Antichrists,
plural. He's talking about the spirit
of Antichrist. That's those who stand in opposition to Christ
and the gospel. That's Antichrist. And he says,
in this way, we know that it's the last time. But look at verse
19. Now here's the context. He said,
they went out from us. He's talking about false Christians
here. He's talking about false believers. He's talking about people who
claim to be Christian and claim to be their brothers and their
sisters in Christ, but they did what? They left. They went out
from us. And he says, but they were not
of us. They were not of us. They were
false. You know, people say, well, they
were saved, but then they lost their salvation. That is anti-Christ. That is anti-biblical. That is
anti-gospel. It's not the case. Here's what John says, for if
they had been of us, if they'd been truly brothers and sisters
in Christ, of the brotherhood of Jesus Christ, if they'd been
truly saved, they would no doubt have what? Continued with us. If God saves you, you will continue
by His grace. You won't continue because you're
better than everybody else. You won't continue because you're
so powerful and so good. You'll continue because God's
grace will not let you go. That's right. You won't be a
perfect person. You'll have a lot of faults,
a lot of misgivings, even doubts. You'll struggle. You'll even
get sick. And if you get old, you'll eventually
come to where you die. But you will not leave Christ
totally. He will always bring you around. That's what the Bible teaches.
He said, they would no doubt have continued with us, but they
went out that they might be made manifest. It might be made known
that they were not all of us. They were exposed to be false
brethren, false Christians, by their totally forsaking and leaving
Christ and the gospel. They apostatized. That's the
word for it. They fell away. And by that,
they revealed they had never believed it to begin with. They
were false Christians. Somebody says, well, now, wait
a minute. I just don't believe it because I know Brother so-and-so
and I saw what he went through and how much change he made.
I just know he... Well, that's all right, but you
need to write your own Bible. Because the Bible that I'm reading
here doesn't say that. And if you want to, listen, believe
what you want to believe. It's a free country. But here's
what the Bible says. If they'd been of us, they would
have what? Remained with us. But they went
out for, and you know what that kind of thinking today is so
prevalent because of all these false conversions. Where, especially
during these revival meetings, when they get here and they drag
these kids down the aisle and they get them in the baptistry
because it makes mommy and daddy feel good. You know what I'm talking about. Well, look at verse 20 of 1 John
2. He says, but you have an unction. That word unction is an anointing.
And it comes from the Holy One. It comes from Christ who is our
life. This is the resurrection life of Christ. And you know
all things. All things pertaining to life
and godliness. You see that? If you remain with
Him, what does that prove? It proves that you've been regenerated
by the Holy Spirit. You've been born again. You have
an unction from Christ. You have within you the resurrection
life of Christ. Now how do you know you have
that? Well, jump down to verse 24 of chapter 2. He says, let that therefore abide
in you which you have heard from the beginning, that's the gospel,
if that which you have heard from the beginning shall remain
in you, that is you continue to believe the gospel, you also
shall continue in the Son and in the Father. You won't apostatize. You'll stay with Christ. And
he says, and this is the promise that he has promised us even
eternal life. He said, I'm writing these things to you concerning
those who would seduce you. He said, I'm writing these things
to you because there are certain individuals who want to seduce
you away from Christ. They want to get you thinking
about other things, believing in other things, searching into
other things, and get your mind and your heart off of Christ. But he says in verse 27, but
the anointing which you have received of him abideth in you.
If God brought you to a saving knowledge of Christ, that word
abide means continue. He says, you need not that any
man teach you, that is the gospel, you already know it, but as the
same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and
is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, you shall abide in
him. You abide in Christ. Verse 28,
now little children abide in him, that when he shall appear
we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his
coming. We'll stand before God in Christ when he comes. And
he says in verse 29, if you know that he's righteous, Christ is
righteous, you know that everyone that doeth righteousness is born
of him. What is it to do righteousness? It's to stand in Christ. Cling
to Christ who is our righteousness. And then he launches in, Behold
what manner of love. We'll look over verse 4 of chapter
3. He says, Whosoever committeth
sin transgresses the law, for sin is the transgression of the
law. Listen. How do we define that in the
specific context? We'll look at verse 5. And you
know that he, Christ, was manifested, made known. That's what that
means. He came to this earth to take away our sins. Now, how did he do it? Well, Christ was set up before
the foundation of the world to be the surety of his people,
having their sins charged, accounted, reckoned to him, imputed to him.
Think of it as a debt. You know about account books
at the bank and at loan companies and all, they have an account
book. And if you borrow money from them, your account is shown
to be in debt. You owe so much money. That's
what sin is. One of the words for sin in the
New Testament is the word for debt. And see, as long as sin is charged
to your account, it's like a debt. You owe that to God's law and
justice. Don't we say the punishment must
fit the crime? Don't we say that when somebody
goes to prison or suffers under capital punishment that they
are paying their debt to society for their crime? We say that's
what sin is. Well, the debt of the sins of
God's elect have been imputed, charged, accounted, reckoned
to the Lord Jesus Christ. They've been put to his account
and he willingly took that debt upon himself. He said, put it
on my account. I will repay it. And so what did he have to do?
Because that debt was imputed, charged, accounted, reckoned
to his account, he had to actually He had to actually become incarnate.
He had to take on human flesh without sin. God cannot die,
but this man who is God did die. He had to obey the law perfectly
unto death because the wages of sin is death. That's the payment.
And he shed his blood on the cross of Calvary to put away
the sins of his people that were imputed, charged, accounted to
him. Now there it is. That's how He took away our sins.
He didn't just wave a wand. He didn't just think a thought.
He didn't just turn around and say, well, let's act like it
didn't happen, folks. He didn't try to pay the debt.
He didn't make the payment possible if you would accept it. The Bible
doesn't teach that. He took away our sins. the sins
of his sheep. The good shepherd gives his life
for the sheep. What was he doing there? The
sheep were sinners and their sins were accounted to the shepherd
and the good shepherd paid the debt. I often use that analogy about
the debt that if you would walk into a bank and you owed a million
dollars and it was on your account and you didn't have a penny to
pay it off and the banker opens up the books and he says, wait
a minute, somebody paid your debt. You're free and clear. And you get up relieved, don't
you? That caused a little joy, wouldn't it? In fact, the first
thing you'd want to know is, who did that so I can go thank
him? The banker says, hold on, wait
a minute, there's something more here. You say, what? And he says,
there's a million dollars put to your account. You say, wow,
that fella not only paid my million dollar debt, he gave me a million
dollars in the good. Well, that's what Christ did
for his people when he took away our sins. Not only did he take
away my debt, he gave me a righteousness that answers all the demands
of God's law and justice. My debt's fully paid. But I'm
a million dollars to the good, spiritually speaking. I have
His righteousness imputed. That's what 2 Corinthians 5.21
teaches. For He made Him to be sin, Christ
who knew no sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. That's what that means. Everyone
that doeth righteousness is born of Him. Out of Christ's death
came my complete justification, eternal standing before God.
I'm righteous in Him. And look at verse 5 again. And
you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in
Him is no sin. Now it's certainly true that
in the Lord Jesus Christ personally there was no sin. But that's
not what this verse is teaching. The context tells us. It's talking
about He took away our sins, He died for my sins, He shed
His blood to pay my debt of sins, and as I stand in Him, no sin
is charged to my account. I have righteousness charged
to my account. As I stand in Christ. And so
look at verse 6, and I'll conclude here and we'll pick up with this
next week. But He says, Whosoever abideth in Him, now remember
that abiding? That's a brother of Christ, that's
a son of God. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth
not. In what sense do we sin not? Does that mean I'm no longer
a sinner? Oh no, I'm a sinner, saved by the grace of God. But
I have no sin charged to me and I will not leave Christ. I will not totally abandon Christ. Whosoever sinneth hath not seen
him." If you abandon Christ, if you leave him, I don't care
what's happened to you, what you've experienced, how many
changes you've gone through, or what other people think, you've
never seen him, neither known him. You may have had a thousand religious
experiences. You may have reformed your life
to the point that you're as clean as a hound's tooth. But if you're
not clinging to Christ for all salvation, for all forgiveness,
for all blessings, for all righteousness, you've never seen Him and you've
never known Him. The brotherhood of Jesus Christ,
they have seen Him by the power of God in Revelation. They know
Him because they've been taught of God and they come to Him.