Bible Text: 1 John 3 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
When I was a kid my dad would often say things like, “Christians don’t do that.” So, skipping church for sporting events: Christians don’t do that, dad would say. Saying God’s name in vain. Christians don’t do that. Getting drunk. Christians don’t do that. And I remember using that line on a member here at Mount Hope when I first came, and he responded, Yes, they do. I know plenty of Christians who have serially skipped church to play sportsball, plenty of Christians who’ve used God’s name as a throwaway word, plenty of Christians who’ve gotten drunk. Christians do in fact do these things. Christians fall into sin.
And as we heard last week, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins. And as we heard the week before, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is, in fact, the main reason we come to church, especially on a Sunday morning: to confess our sins and receive forgiveness from our God. And it’s definitional of a Christian: a forgiven sinner, that’s what we are.
But Dad had it right too. Christians don’t get drunk, they don’t use God’s name in vain, they don’t put trivial things above hearing Jesus’ word. That’s what the Holy Spirit says in 1 John 3. “No one who abides in Jesus keeps on sinning.” And again, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.” Literally, the Greek says it much more starkly, “No one who abides in Him sins.” “No one born of God commits sin.” That’s what it says.
So how can these both be true? How can we read one chapter two weeks ago that says you’re a liar if you say you have no sin, and then two chapters later we hear that Christians don’t sin?
Because John is focusing today, in chapter three, on who we are as Christians, who we now are according to our Baptism. He’s not just saying what Christians should or shouldn’t do. It’s not, “No one born of God should keep on sinning,” it’s, “no one born of God keeps on sinning.” He’s talking about who we are, what we do, as water is wet and fire burns, our very nature. It’s how John starts things out: “See what great love the Father has given us, that we have been called children of God – and we are.” God put His name on us in our Baptism and He gave us His Spirit and He joined us to Christ, and He gave us new birth, so that we are really and truly His children who want to please Him in everything we do. That’s our nature. When we say, “Christians don’t do that,” we’re describing the impulse and nature of the one born from above, the child of God.
And as Christians, as children of God, we want to please our Father. He has loved us and so we love Him and want to do what He says. There is still sin in us. The sinful nature isn’t gone. And we are often, daily, guilty of sinning. But that sin is also foreign to us, it is strange and unnatural to us, so much so, that the entire life of the Christian is a war against the sin that is still in us. Why we pledge to renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways all our life.
St. Paul says it this way in Romans 7, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”
That is how we should regard the sin that we end up doing. It goes against our very nature.
But that obviously doesn’t mean we say, “Well, I can’t help it. It wasn’t me. The devil made me do it.” And then and go and do what we know is wrong. No. A good tree bears good fruit, Jesus says. The one who is born of God does not make a practice of sinning. And if we do sin, we own it as ours, something I participated in, and it hurts and pains us, because it goes against everything we are as Christians, our very nature as children of God.
That nature is to love. We were born again by God’s love. He Himself laid down His life for us. He bore our burden, our pain, our death, the punishment for every lawless and loveless thing we’ve ever done or been or said or felt. He loved us to His death. This is what forms and shapes and inspires the life of a Christian. If we see hatred and false judgment and anger rising in our hearts against our fellow Christians, we recognize it for what it is. The Holy Spirit says it’s of the devil. And so we fight against it, because we have renounced the devil and all his works and all his ways. And if our heart condemns us because we’ve allowed that sinful nature to boil up in us, we look to God and we know that He is greater than our heart. He knows everything, our sin, yes, but more, our faith in the One who bore our sin away, and our honest desire to live as His children, even if we fail far too often. And more than that, He knows His own promise to us that He will be our Father and forgive all our sins for Jesus’ sake.
Our song is love unknown. Unknown not to us but unknown to the world. It is simply normal to hold grudges in the world, it’s normal not to forgive, normal to want a pound of flesh, to satisfy my sense of justice, to obsess over some wrong that I think has been committed against me. That’s why St. John says that the world doesn’t know us or understand us. Because that’s not how Christians operate. For us, there is nothing to gain by insisting on our own way. Because the only way that matters is Jesus, to know Him, and the power of His resurrection.
That’s why the great commandment in John is twofold: the first part is simply to believe in the name of Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son. And the second is to love one another. The second can’t come about unless we do the first. We can’t love unless we first know God’s love. When we see ourselves not loving our brothers and sisters in Christ, when we see instead our own selfishness rearing its ugly head, and leading us captive to anger like Cain against Abel, there is nothing to do but return to the foundation of who we are as Christians, and that isn’t a matter of looking inward, it’s a matter of looking outward to the Son of God, crucified for us. Believe in Him. And you will see that He is in you. He hasn’t remained out there. He didn’t remain on the cross. He rose again. And He makes His home in you. He abides in you. And when you meditate on His love for you, as surely as water wets us, as surely as fire burns, so surely will you learn to love. That’s your nature and when you see Him in heaven, you will be like Him, and whatever else that means, and it means a lot, it means you will forever be and feel and act as a child of God, with constant, uninhibited love, forever and ever, in the presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.