1 John 2:29—3:10
Last week we looked at John’s very stern attack on the false teachers who were threatening his friends. These false teachers, said John, had at one time appeared to have been part of the Body of Christ, but had left to follow their own strange teachings which denied the deity of Christ. The apostle calls these men “antichrists” because what they were teaching was in opposition of the Gospel of Christ and detrimental to the spiritual well-being of certain believers whose faith, perhaps, was not as strong as it should have been.
We come now to the second major division of 1 John, which is 2:29—4:6, in which John gives his readers a way to know beyond the shadow of any doubt whether or not they are true believers (Glenn Barker). These tests, which are remarkably simple, are as follows:
- Doing what is right, 2:29—3:10
- Loving One Another, 3:11—24
- Testing the spirits, 4:1—6
1. A common sense statement, 2:29
If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.
What a simple way to tell if you, or someone who claims to be a Christian really is or not. Bengel comments on the profound truth behind this verse—
The righteous produces the righteous.
If a person claims to be a child of God, then that person will demonstrate the same qualities as his Father in heaven has. To be righteous does not mean be being right, but rather it means being holy. Believers, in other words, will live lives in obedience to the will of God, thus they will be holy just like He is holy. This reminds us of one of what Peter wrote—
[F]or it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16)
Peter is actually quoting from Leviticus; a command from God to His people. Being holy is not an option for a person who would claim to be a believer. Being holy means doing what God wants you to do; it means living in constant obedience to His commands. However, the way John has worded this sentence, a person’s conduct is right because they are children of God. Some might be tempted to read it the other way; a person is a child of God because their conduct is right. This is not at all what John is implying nor what he is saying. Our conduct reveals our condition, we don’t create our condition by our conduct, for that would be salvation by works, something no true preacher of the Gospel would ever preach!
2. God’s true children, 3:1—3
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.
The very first phrase of the very first sentence begins with a command in the Greek. John says: “See!” He is advising his readers to open their eyes and look at how God is manifesting His love all around them. But this is no mere command; it is also a statement of bewilderment and amazement. The phrase “how great” is seen 6 times in the New Testament in this form and always implies “astonishment” and “amazement” at something. What is the amazing thing about God’s love? Simply this: that He shows it all to people who themselves are unlovely and unlovable, in other words, people like us. It is a wonder that God loves us at all.
But like any Father, He loves His children, and John says that is exactly what we are: God’s children, and by virtue of that relationship, we are loved. What an honor that is! What a glorious and enviable relationship to be in!
The positive side of being God’s children is that He loves us. But because we are God’s children, the world does not know us. Those four words together mean much more than they appear. The world does not recognize our status as God’s children. Other believers do, but the world does not. In fact, not only does the world not care about our relationship with God as our Father, sometimes the world can be downright hostile to us because we are bound to God. Unbelievers can’t understand us. Brown comments—
The world does not recognize us because it never recognized him.
Unbelievers live in world separated from our world. We are in the Kingdom of God and they are not. They are literally incapable of knowing the significance of our spiritual relationship with God. We make no sense to them. Why is John saying this? The most frightening thing for a Christian is to be admired by and approved of by the world. True believers should never ever seek the approval the world in anything they do because to be loved and admired by world would mean the possibility that we have forfeited our status as God’s children. The world of sinful man should have nothing whatsoever to do with us as it had nothing whatsoever to do with Christ. Indeed, to be hated or treated badly by the world may not be a good experience; it does serve to reassure members of the Body of Christ that they are loved by God. And that is infinitely more important than the world’s hatred.
Verse 2 begins like John is about repeat what he just wrote, but he adds “now.” Our position as God’s children is a fact today. However, there is much more to come. Just like natural children who do not stay children forever, so God’s children must grow and develop. Natural children become adults and enter a whole new world. God’s children will eventually enter a whole new world, too. What that “new world” will be like will not be made a reality to us until the Lord returns. When Jesus appears, John says, we will be like Him, that is, we will become like Him. John is not teaching a new thing, he is simply reteaching what Paul had taught—
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Romans 8:29)
Today, in our “immature” state and our position as “children,” we may be like Christ in some of our actions as we seek to emulate His perfect life in our imperfect way and as we seek to obey God’s righteous commands as best we can. But when Christ returns, we shall be like Him for at long last we shall look on Him in all His glory with no flesh and sin coming between us.
What is this hope in verse 3? It is really a two-fold hope. First, it is the hope all believers have that one day they will be like Jesus, and second, the hope that Christ will appear. If we have that hope and if we believe we will be like Jesus and that He will come again, then we will do all we can do to “purify” ourselves. No person is strong enough to keep themselves pure and holy using their own devices. But, as we continually strive to walk in the light—that is, continue in the teachings of the revealed Word of God—that light will serve as a “purifying ray” (Blaney). The light of God’s Word searches our hearts and our inner most thoughts and desires and it will burn its way into our consciences and will until we are able do right and live right. But this is a slow, continuous and often frustrating process. When Christ appears, our change will be in an instant.
2. What sin is, 3:4—6
Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
Even the most genuine, hardworking Christian who tries his hardest to live in continual obedience to the will of God knows that he is still a sinner and that even his best deeds remain tainted by sin. Even the most earnest saint knows that no matter how hard he tries, he will by an act of the will commit a sin. But this in no way means that he is under the control of sin. When we find ourselves on the outs with God because we sinned, forgiveness is available to us, free for the asking.
However, as we shall learn, the person who continues to live in sin is in deep, deep trouble.
In verse 4, John uses two very interesting words:
- Hamartian, translated as “sin” in this verse and it describes the breaking of the law, a breaking of God’s commandments.
- Anomian, translated “lawlessness,” describing a rebellion against God and is also used of Satan’s rebellion against God.
The two words are not quite synonymous, but both are to be regarded as sin. Guthrie—
[Sin] is a deliberate rejection of God’s standards and a resort to one’s own desires.
Sin is putting what you want above what God wants for you, and since sin has its origins in Satan, to sin is prefer Satan over God. This is why John says this—
He who does what is sinful is of the devil.
It is one thing to be “overtaken in a fault,” but quite another to continue in that fault for an extended period of time. This is the whole point of verses 5 and 6. In Christ, there is no sin. As God’s children, we are to be like Him. God never makes a demand of His children that we cannot attain; God always gives us the capability. We are to be sinless, and God makes that possible—
[H]e appeared so that he might take away our sins. (verse 5)
But there is a caveat: we must not keep on sinning; we must ask for and accept God’s forgiveness, but then make every effort not to fall into the sin again. If a “Christian” is continually in sin, this is evidence that there is a problem with their relationship with God: either they don’t really have one, or they are woefully immature and some drastic intervention is needed.
3. Who is your daddy? 3:7—8
Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.
Here is John the pastor, “Dear children,” warning his readers against accepting the teachings of the false teachers. That bad teaching has the potential to take them out of the fellowship. The mere fact that John uses the phrase, do not let anyone lead you astray, shows how easily that may happen. In fact, if a believer is not constantly on his guard and ever mindful about whom he is listening to and what he is reading; he may find himself in the company of the false teachers without even knowing how it happened!
Living a righteous and holy life out of love for God the Father should be the norm for the genuine Christian, but that does not always happen automatically. A life of holiness is most often learned and is a discipline that must be practiced daily. Jesus had similar thoughts to those of John in Luke 9:23—
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”
If we read verse 8 with the wrong attitude, we might get the wrong idea about what John’s point is. John is not intending to say that every Christian who sins is of the devil. If that were the case, God the Father would have no children. In fact, John has already told his readers that Christians do occasionally sin; but what he is getting at here is this: a Christian’s whole life should be motivated by love to obey God and to respond in the appropriate way to the temptations of Satan. One who habitually sins, John says, is numbered among those Jesus referred to in John 8:44—
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.
A child of God wants to please his heavenly Father. Not so the sinner. Charles Gore—
John has no doubt that behind the rebellious will of men there is a master-rebel, who sinned before they were in being (from the beginning), and who, as the enemy of all good, is called the devil, the slanderer, or Satan, the adversary.
Of all the sinners who have ever existed, Satan is the worst. But, as John declares in verse 8, Jesus came to destroy the devil’s works. Jesus does this today by providing forgiveness of sin, restoration to fellowship with God, and a continual cleansing of the souls of those who belong to Him. Eschatologically, Jesus will do this when He returns in glory and once and for all ends Satan’s career on the planet. But for now, since Jesus came to destroy the devil’s work, the Christian has no business getting involved in it.
4. The secret to living right, 3:9—10
No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
John restates what he has said before back in verse 6; anybody in Christ cannot practice a life of sin. But here John changes the words slightly by saying, “no one born of God,” which literally means no one with “God’s seed” in them can keep on sinning. John had a two-pronged theology of what it means to be a child of God: we must be in Christ, and Christ must be in us. If we live in Him, then we have been removed from the world, for nobody can live in two places at once, and if He lives in us, then our life will be His life in us and we will endeavor to live even as He lived (Barker).
Finally, with verse 10, we reach the very heart of what John has been saying. This is his test for determining who the genuine children of God are. John is not writing as a philosopher or professorially, but rather John gives his readers a very practical test: children of God do not sin, but children of the devil continue to sin.
A person cannot be a child of both God and of Satan at the same time. The child of God, because God’s nature resides in Him cannot continue sin any more than God can sin. We, who call ourselves Christians, should want to do what is right and we should be continually demonstrating our love for God in real, tangible, visible ways in the way conduct ourselves in our day to day lives.
When we fall into sin, it is not the end of the story. We realize that Satan has led us astray and we turn to God in sorrow and repentance, and humbly ask for forgiveness, which we receive. It is vitally important for all Christians to understand: as children of God, we are never, ever again under the power of Satan. Not even for a second.
