Born of God

1 John 3:1-9 and the Identity of God’s Children

We take up your Bibles and turn to 1st John in chapter 3. I'm going to read verses 1 through 9. This is God's holy and infallible Word. 1st John chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God.

Therefore the world does not know us because it did not know him. Beloved, now we are the children of God and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. But we know that when he is revealed we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is.

And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure. Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness and sin is lawlessness. And you know that he was manifested to take away our sins and in him there is no sin.

Whoever abides in him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen him nor known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous just as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil for the devil has sinned from the beginning.

For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin for his seed remains in him and he cannot sin because he has been born of God.

Please pray with me now. Oh Lord I pray for your blessing upon our study of your Word. Holy Spirit we ask that you would supply light and heat conviction and comfort that your church would be edified and built up and we ask all this in Jesus name.

Amen. Please be seated. Today we'll be considering verses 4 through 9 in our section. The title of the message is Born of God and the simple statement that tells us about what we're going to be learning about in this section is the believer in sin.

The believer in relation to sin. I put this on our channel but I'll give you a quick overview of the outline. The first point is committing sin is lawlessness. This is derived from verse 4. Second, Christ came to take away our sins.

Hallelujah! The gospel in verse 5. Verses 6 through 8 we have a question to be answered. Are we abiding in Christ or abiding in sin? And finally in verse 9 .4 those born of God cannot remain in sin. When we read a text like this it causes us to wonder if anyone can be saved.

It says in very stark terms that people who sin are not reconciled to God. When we read this text we often look for a way to minimize its force. We are urgent in our desire to seek a reprieve from the harshness of the tone.

We look for an exception or an explanation that makes sinning more palatable. This is an error. There is an explanation but we need to receive the correction. We too quickly say well we're all sinners and Christ died for our sins.

We need to be corrected by the scriptures today. Let us now accept the weight of its correction. Let us receive the chastening of the Father that loves us. Do you remember our text from last week? I just read it.

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God. Hebrews chapter 12 it says my son do not despise the chastening of the Lord. Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him.

For whom the Lord loves he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening of which all have become partakers then you are illegitimate and not sons.

Furthermore we have had human fathers who corrected us. I will pause here. Fathers you better be correcting your children. Fathers who love their children correct their children. And now when we're older the scripture continues we paid them respect.

We didn't enjoy the correction when we were young but now we enjoy it. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? This is all from Hebrews 12. For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them.

Fathers the time of chastening is now because the days are few. There's only a few days you get to chasten your children. Pretty soon we'll be going to Thomas's wedding and Thomas will have grandchildren.

It all happens very fast. God has done this for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present but painful. Nevertheless afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

It seems that verses 4 through 9 are a direct application of the great idea that we were rejoicing in last week. Beholding the great manner of the love the Father has us that he calls us children of God.

Let us be those faithful sons who spurn not the Father's correction knowing he loves us too much to leave us in our sin. I encountered it this week. The spirit of the church of the age seems to ask what can I do and still be a Christian?

What can I get away with and still profess my faith in Christ? It's a horrific question. It's a wrong question. What a rebellious question. What an abomination. The proper question is oh merciful God what ought I to do to be faithful to you?

Oh God what sins must I repent of? What righteousness should I hunger and thirst for? Not how much can I get away with and still be a Christian? Let us consider what it means to be born of God to be his sons to answer the question at least in part how is the believer to view his sin?

It's been famously said a few different ways back to the church fathers and through the Puritans. Sin must be bitter in order for Christ to be sweet. Sin must be bitter in order for Christ to be sweet.

Sin as Lawlessness and the Call to Obedience

Now let's continue with the exposition of the text in verse four. It says whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness. If I were to do a poll before the service today I would ask the question what is the antithesis of law?

We might have had the answer with grace or gospel. The antithesis of law is lawlessness. It's different isn't it? You see grace and law are compatible. Law and lawlessness are not. This term anomia and it sounds like very familiar to us doesn't it like antinomian.

It's a similar root. Nomos being law. The absence of law. Here in John it is the utter disregard for God's law. It is the condition of one without law. This is what characterizes the reprobate and all who hate God.

Here in our text it means to do iniquity, to act wickedly. Brethren to show contempt for God's law is to show contempt for God. Sin by definition is the rejection of God's law. John has already reminded us both in his gospel and he does here in different ways in the epistle echoing Christ's words.

If you love me keep my commandments. Children you say you desperately love your parents. You are in love with your parents. You adore your parents. Do you obey your parents? You see sentimentality will only go so far.

Oh I love God. I just I love worshiping him but I don't want to live as a Christian. I don't want to live according to his word. That's a duplicitous kind of living and John is trying to arouse us out of that.

We would not have that duplicity in our lives. Sin is lawlessness. The last phrase in verse four. This is the brand of sin that emphasizes its self originated nature. It's not a faith. It's not originated or empowered by God.

This is that which is a doing of a wrong and offense a violation of divine law in thought or act. And so John is asking the question how do we as Christians reconcile being lawless and sinners and having faith in Christ abiding in him being born of God and he is saying to us he's urging us to not reconcile what is irreconcilable.

First question I have for you today is what areas of your life are you compromising in? Or are you compromised in? How do you reconcile praising the name of God on the one hand and then perverting that faith with a life that doesn't match it?

Don't worry the gospel is coming but we're really quick to rush off of this aren't we? I need this to be explained away. John's speaking in harsh tones. We don't like our church services to have this edge this this hardness.

John is saying that sinning and lawlessness is inconsistent incompatible with faith in Christ. The church today has made them compatible. If you're a sinner practicing sin you commit lawlessness. That takes us to the second point.

Christ Came to Take Away Our Sins

He gives us a breath of air and it's Holy Spirit air. It's refreshment. It's a balm to the soul. He hits us with reality. You call yourself a child. I've declared you to be a child of God. Oh what manner of love that father has shown on us.

Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness. Look at verse five. This takes us to the second point. And you know that he referring to Christ was manifested to take away our sins. And in him there is no sin.

When I think about Christ and his sacrifice on the cross, I'm led first of all to think of Christ paying for the penalty of my sin and my guilt. But I forget often that he goes to the cross and he is my mediator that sin might be put to death in my life in a very practical sense.

That I might be a righteous one that I might have his righteousness and walk in his righteousness. Christ has come to take away the presence the penalty and the power of sin. And we like the penalty part.

But are we denying the other two? Christ has slain the power of sin in the life of a Christian. Our doctrine of total depravity is so far much better than us being new creatures in Christ. Isn't it funny?

We defend our total depravity stronger than we defend our new nature in Christ. We are no longer under bondage to sin. We've been set free from it in Christ. Why do we go back and put the shackles on again?

He's unlocked them. And yet we go and we bind ourselves to them again. Christ came not only to remove the penalty of sin, he came to reduce, remove the presence and the power of sin in our lives. How are you responding to this great work of Christ?

Christ has come to cause our sins to cease. Heaven will be the cessation of sin. Because we enter into a fellowship with Christ, who is free from sin. And because we then begin to abide in that fellowship, you should be taking ground away from sin in your life.

You should be putting sin to death. You say, well, I've been doing the same sins for 20 years. I haven't really restrained or changed them. I would urge you to be chastened today, to be corrected. Christ has come.

He's come without sin to be sin for us. He appears to take away our sin. He comes in the incarnation that we might be freed from sin. Not just its penalty. We love that. I don't want to go to hell. I want to go to heaven.

But what about its practical power and presence? Are we impotent to act against our sin? Apparently not, according to John. The Holy Spirit dwelling within us, how can the Holy Spirit live within us and flourish our lives if there be sin?

Practiced, cherished, coveted, residing in our hearts. What causes us to get back to this question. Look at verse six of abiding in Christ. So cover three verses this idea. Are you abiding in Christ or abiding in sin?

To abide, you'll remember, means to be knit to him by the Spirit. I love that idea of knitting. I've never knitted. But I love the idea of the thread and the needle and going from one person from Christ and going to the believer and then back again and binding himself to us.

Christ has exercised himself in such a way. We're going to learn later that a seed has been planted in us. There is a permanent difference for the child of God who's been united to Christ. They are now fully knitted together.

They abide. They stay with Christ. And this power of Christ exerts itself in the heart of the believer. But apparently there is some responsibility on the part of the Christian to stoke these holy flames, to not quench the spirit, not throw water on it.

Renewing grace is an abiding principle. The regenerate person cannot sin as he did before he was born of God. That is our testimony, isn't it? There's conviction. There's mourning over sin. There's repentance.

The child of God cannot continue in that perpetual state of sin. There is a light in his mind which shows him plainly and gives him the ability to distinguish between evil and righteousness. I have two questions for you.

Do you hate sin? We don't hate it that much. The hardest question. We hate sin in the culture. We talked about this recently. Do you hate your sin? You hate the sins that you don't perform. You hate the sins that are performed against you.

Do you hate your sin? I can see some room for growth in us. For me, for you and our hatred of sin. We don't hate it that much. We learned in Sunday school today. We don't love Christ. We don't love his church and we don't love one another as much as we ought.

We certainly don't hate sin and we really don't hate our sin. In fact, we protect it. We cherish it. We excuse it. Do you hate your sin? Little children, don't let anyone deceive you. Whoever continues in this sin has neither seen him or known him.

Little children, that term of endearment, let no one deceive you. The false teachers are saying it and they're rampant in our age. Morality is not so important. The standards of scripture in the church historically are antiquated.

We're living in a new time now. The standards of sexual ethics, the way we use our mouths, our view of every area of life, those things are old fashion. John says, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous.

I told you at the outset that I wanted us to feel the weight and conviction of this text. I think the language in English, practices righteousness, gives us a clue and insight. John is not calling us to sinless perfection.

We don't have that. It's not possible. Only Christ is. But is your life characterized by a practicing of righteousness or is it something else? Righteous people perform righteous deeds. They do it because Christ enables them to.

They are righteous because they've been united to the one who is righteous. Look at the end of verse seven, just as he is righteous. He's the one who performs all righteousness. He that does righteousness is a righteous man, a woman, a child.

And to be a follower of Christ, it shows an interest by faith in his obedience and sufferings. One commentator has said, and I love this, I hope you catch it. It is the hope of hypocrites, not of the sons of God that makes allowance for gratifying impure desires and lusts.

Hypocrites make an allowance, not the sons of God. Man cannot act like one under the sway of the devil. At the same time, be a disciple of Christ Jesus. And if Christ came to take away sin, we have to say, let us not serve or even indulge what the son of God came to destroy.

You and I have to shed our duplicity. We have to repent of every known sin and we take comfort because we have a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, who forgives us all of our sins. He cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

Abiding in Christ and the New Birth

The section concludes with this. Verse eight says, He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the son of God was manifested. It says in verse five, he was manifested to take away our sins.

It says in verse eight, he was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. Why do we tolerate sin in our lives? There's something so much better for us. We can walk in faith. We can turn away from sin.

We're not enslaved to sin any longer. That is a great lie. We have been set free in Christ. This is the very purpose for which he came into the world. And finally, in verse nine, something very exciting happens here.

It says, whoever has been born of God does not sin. And again, we're terrified because we've sinned. Does that mean we're not born of God? No, the idea here is pattern, unrepentant pattern of life. Whoever has been born of God does not sin for his seed, and the Greek word is sperma, remains in him.

When conception happens, a baby is produced. And in the spiritual conception that John here speaks of, God has planted his holy seed in his people, and they cannot continue in sin because they have a new nature.

They're new persons. They've been born of God. So how's your sin today? What sins are you cherishing? We confess corporately some categories of sins today. You need to confess and repent particularly.

Right now there are sins in your mind that you perform and commit. You need to turn from them. You need to repent of them. You have a Savior to forgive you and a Holy Spirit to work within you that you might be able to mortify and put to death these sins in your life that you might more consistently walk as a child of God.

Today, it's coming into sharper focus. I saw Thomas when he was the first day he was born, and now as we have a few weeks have passed, his distinctive characteristics. I see Mr. Stevens and I see David Stevens and Mr. Stevens.

I see both parents of Sara in Sara's face. I look at the Zenos. I see Zeno characteristics. Let us to bear the family resemblance of the people of God. We're different. We've been born of God. Sin has no allure for us because of what Christ has done.

You need to preach that to yourself because your flesh tells you something different. I don't understand the idea of getting high, but the heroin addict loves getting high. It feeds something in him. He loves it.

He pursues it. It's sin. He's got to put it to death. You and I have our own heroines, and we need to see it no matter how pleasing it is to our senses. We need to put it to death. Let us to bear the family resemblance.

A few words of application and we'll conclude. We have to be honest about our sin and not coddle it. Our counsel to one another shouldn't be, oh, it's okay that you've sinned. Our counsel to one another should be you need to repent of your sin.

Let's be honest about our sins. Let's also be honest about the power of Jesus Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit to break the yoke of sin's presence and power. It seems fitting for us to show our gratitude for this great gift of salvation that we would walk in the light to abide in Christ and that we would love his righteousness.

We love his forgiveness. Do we love his righteousness? You love daddy's money, but do you love daddy? It's very different, isn't it? Third, abiding in Christ is characterized by conquering sin. Some of you today have been bound by sins, and I'm telling you that you've given yourself a pass.

You have said that these things can't be beaten. I promise you today that today could be the day that those sins could be overturned in your life, never to be returned to. It's possible with the active working of the Holy Spirit in us.

Christ came to take away sin. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. It seems that Christ is able to help us put sin to death. Abiding in Christ is characterized by this conquering and saving faith is an abiding principle.

It knits us to Christ never to be severed, never to be let go. It may weaken, but it never fails. Those of us who are born of God cannot remain in sin. It's in time for us to live lives of continual repentance.

Your confession of sin should not be limited to Sunday morning. You should be confessing your sins daily, hourly, moment by moment. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And finally, if you are uncomfortable today, and parents, this is a little practical parenting advice. When correction happens, we want there to be a restoration. We want there to be repentance. We want that child to know just how much we love them and want them to come back.

But sometimes we rush as fast as we can through the correction. Sometimes we learn that the child doesn't want real repentance. They just want to be relieved of the correction. Fathers, you must be those who receive chastening from the Lord and are changed as an example to your family.

Your children need to see you waging war with sin, enduring the chastening of the Lord happily, joyfully accepting the correction of your God that they might understand how they're supposed to repent.

Same for moms, same for older siblings. We need to receive the chastening of our Heavenly Father and not rush really quick through it. We need to receive it. We need to be instructed by it. Are you being corrected of the Lord?

Do you model repentance and become exemplars of this to your children? Are your children rebellious? Is it because covenantally you've been rebellious? Have they learned their rebellion from you? All of us have to receive correction from the Lord.

All of us need to make progress in the faith and to grow in godliness. Are you applying the word from your devotions? Will you apply the word of this sermon? Are you willing to submit to the discipline and correction of the church?

All those should be yes, yes, and amen. I'm going to close with that passage I started with and this will be our conclusion. It starts in Hebrews 12 verse 3, for consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, referring to Christ, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.

You've not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin, and you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as sons. Here it is again. Listen carefully. My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him.

For whom the Lord loves, he chastens. Thomas needs to be chastened by his parents and by the Lord because he's loved. The congregation needs to say, Thomas, you can't do that because we love him. He scourges every son whom he receives.

Now listen carefully. If you endure chastening, children, do not rebel against your parents' correction. You have to endure it. Dads, you have to endure the chastening of the Lord for the good of your family.

If you do this, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, which all have become partakers, and you are illegitimate and not sons.

Furthermore, we've had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the father of spirits and live? They indeed for a few days chastened us and seemed best to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.

See, if you love Christ and you love righteousness, then that excites you. You want that. You want holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

O Lord, train us by your word. Train us to see that sin is incompatible with our lives. Help us to cherish and love Christ and his righteousness far more than we could ever cherish our sin. Let's pray together now.

I'm so thankful for your salvation, O Lord Jesus. What a wretched man I am. O Lord, I pray that your love would be the impetus to my growth in godliness. That your forgiveness and the security of your love, the permanence of the sonship you have given to your people, that this would be an encouragement to me to walk in your ways to look more and more like Christ.

O Lord, I pray that in the power of your spirit that you would bring heavy conviction upon your people who are cherishing sin today. That you would press down on them until they repent to never do it again.

To turn from their cherished sins, O Lord, that they might be set free to walk in the liberty you have supplied in your Son. O Lord, we ask for you to make us uncomfortable today, not from a manipulative standpoint, but because we love righteousness.

We want to be trained. We want to be instructed by it. We want the peaceable fruit of righteousness. We want to be those who are easily recognizable as those who have been born of God. We ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.