Now, this morning we come to the third
catastrophic denial made by some professing Christian people,
according to the Apostle John.
And the words of my text this morning
will be found in 1 John 1, reading
verse 10, and then the first verse in
the second chapter.
If we say that we have not sinned,
we make him that is God, we make
him a liar, and his word is not
in us.
My little children, these things I write unto
you, that ye sin not.
And if any man sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
Now, those of you who have been with
us on previous Sunday mornings will remember that
this is the third such charge that John
the Apostle brings against certain professing Christians of
his day.
In the first place, there were those who
said that they had fellowship with God.
Oh, they were so sure that they were
in communion with the living God.
But then John announced, and announced categorically, that
the God with whom we have allegedly this
kind of communion is one who is light.
He is holy.
Now, he says, if you say that you
have fellowship with God who is light, whilst
you yourself are walking on the plane of
moral darkness, well, he says, the thing doesn't
make sense.
We lie, as a matter of fact, says
John.
It's a very outright statement.
We lie, he says, and we simply do
not the truth.
That was one.
The second was this.
If we say we have no sin.
Now, the claim here is that we have
no sin in our nature.
Somehow or other it's gone, if we had
it at all.
Some of these people believe that there had
been no sin anyway in human nature, that
human nature was perfect, untouched by sin.
Sin was in the body.
Sin was only in the material part of
us.
Some of the Gnostics believe that.
Says John, if we say that we have
no sin, that is in our nature, well,
that's just a matter of self-deception.
We know ourselves, he says, or if we
know ourselves, we're just playing fast and loose
with the facts that we ought to know
about ourselves.
We deceive ourselves, he says, and the truth
of the gospel, the truth of God, is
simply not in us.
Now, the third.
The third denial to which John refers is
a denial with regards to the practice of
sin.
Notice it.
If we say we have not sinned, if
we say we've not committed any sin, we
have no charge that can be leveled against
us.
We are innocent of all the charges of
wrongdoing.
If we say that, says John, then we
make Him, that is, God, a liar, and
His word is simply not in us at
all.
Now, let's look at this.
Following the analogy of John's style up to
this point, in which he has stated, first
of all, in these three cases, he has
stated, he has referred to the profession that
is made.
If we say something, then he has come
to his own conclusion as to what is
said, and he says in each case that
it is wrong.
He uses different words, but he comes to
the conclusion that it is wrong, and then
he follows that with a correction.
In each case, he has a correction.
He puts the correct view of things and
the correct approach to things before the people.
Now, if that is so, I take it
that, really, the last verse in chapter 1
and the first two verses in chapter 2
ought to be considered together.
Now, we can't do that today, because it
would take us too long.
But I would like you to remember that
in your mind.
If you want to analyze this epistle properly
and see how peace fits into peace, this
is one aspect of the truth.
And we need to see verse 10 in
chapter 1 alongside verses 1 and 2 in
chapter 2.
Now, that being so, there are three things
to consider, two of which alone we shall
be looking at this morning.
The three things are these.
First of all, John again refers to an
abortive profession about sinning, if we say we
have not sinned.
Secondly, he refers to the apostles' own announced
intention in writing this epistle.
These things I write unto you that ye
sin not.
And then, lastly, he refers to God's adequate
provision for those who do sin, if we
sin.
For then, if any man sin, we have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous.
And he is the propitiation for our sins,
and not for ours only, but also for
the sins of the whole world.
What we are going to be dwelling upon
this morning, then, is but one-half, or
two-thirds, should we say, of this remarkable
nugget of truth that we have in these
verses.
Now, let's look first of all, then, at
the abortive profession that someone makes concerning sinning
as a practice.
If we say we have not sinned, the
disclaimer is clearly specified, and it's very obvious
here in the language that John uses.
He's envisaging the kind of person who, for
one reason or another, claims that he or
she has not committed sin in the sight
of God.
The use of the aorist tense here, pardon
the reference to grammar, but the use of
this tense means that John is thinking of
someone who says, I haven't even committed one
sin.
I haven't said a word.
I haven't done a wrong deed.
I haven't done a thing that requires forgiveness.
In other words, I stand before God without
fault.
He envisages someone who denies the solitary action
of disobedience to the divine command.
Whether or not the person concerned likewise denies
the presence of sin in his or her
nature is beside the point for the moment.
At least, they deny this much.
I have not sinned.
I don't need forgiveness.
I don't need to repent.
I wonder, my friends, whether, though we may
judge such people harshly, I wonder whether, as
we come into God's presence today, we all
came with the realization that sinners, believers, and
unbelievers, we have all sinned.
Did you come to God's house today knowing
that you needed forgiveness?
Now, if you didn't, don't be too harsh
on this man that John exposes.
Far too often, we Christian people only deal
nebulously and generally and unspecifically about our sins.
Oh, Lord, forgive us our sins, but we're
not consciously acknowledging any one solitary item that
is positively wrong.
Like the lady who went to John Wesley,
I guess you've heard this many times, and
said to him, Oh, Mr. Wesley, I'm such
a terrible sinner.
You are, he said.
I beg your pardon, she said.
What do you know about me?
You know, it's so easy, isn't it?
We say it in our prayers.
Miserable sinners, we say about ourselves.
But if someone turned around and said, Sir,
you're a miserable sinner, we'd be terribly offended.
You see, we don't take it seriously.
What we have here, then, is a claim
to perfection of practice, if not a perfection
of condition.
Now, if you proceed, as I'm sure you
would do in your thoughts at the present
time, if you proceed to ask, How can
anyone honestly say this or claim this?
Well, historically speaking, there have been one or
two reasons why people have done it.
Sometimes, in history, people have claimed a kind
of perfection.
It is alleged, and I deliberately put it
like that, that John Wesley did.
When John Wesley preached so much about perfect
love, it was believed by some people that
he was preaching a doctrine of actual Christian
perfection.
Now, John Wesley actually disclaimed that.
In just a year or two before his
death, in a certain London newspaper, he made
a public announcement to the effect that he
had told the whole world that he himself
was not perfect, but still a miserable sinner
under the blood of Christ, and in need
of it.
I say it is alleged that Wesley believed
in this doctrine.
Someone who did, of course, was Dr. Charles
Finney.
Now, I don't want to enter into the
details of the beliefs of these good people
this morning, but just to refer to them,
people have done this.
People have believed that they did not commit
acts of sin over a period, at any
rate.
Now, how can they do that?
Well, historically speaking, one of the main factors,
and I can only refer to one, one
of the main factors is this.
That they distinguish between what they call sin,
in the true sense of that word, and
shortcomings or faults.
And ultimately, there is such a downgrading of
sin that they can do certain things and
not call them sins.
You see, as a few evenings ago, when
we were dealing with a doctrine of sin
in the evening, whether it's malignant or benign,
if any of you were here then and
you have good memories, we were saying that
one of the main words in the Old
Testament and the New Testament describing sin is
a word which means simply this, shortcoming.
Coming short of the mark, aiming at the
bull's eye and failing.
All shortcoming is sin, says Paul.
All have sinned and come short of the
glory of God.
The standard of perfection in the Bible is
the glory of God revealed in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Anything that comes short of that standard is
essentially sin in the sight of God.
Now, some people have been able, therefore, to
claim that they have no sin because, really,
they have not followed through the implications of
the biblical doctrine of sin.
The moment we take this view of sin
to heart, then, it becomes clearly impossible—I mean
the proper view, the biblical view—it becomes impossible
to deny that we have transgressed.
What happens is this.
The turn and to quote from the prophet
Isaiah, the moment we acknowledge this high elevated
view of righteousness and of purity and of
perfection, that very moment we have to acknowledge
that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
Now, this is what the prophet does.
He does that because he accepts the glory
of God as the norm.
Man was made on the likeness of God.
Redemption is a renewal after the likeness of
God.
Sanctification, fully completed, brings us back into the
image of God.
Anything short of that is sin.
You know, there is, in the book of
Exodus, chapter 28 and verse 38, a very
terrifying reference.
It's a reference, actually, to the atonement that
was made in ancient Israel for the iniquity
of the holy things.
Of the holy things.
Now, this is the King James Version that
I'm quoting.
In other words, the Israelites brought their offerings
and they went through their worship, but even
the bringing of their offerings and the going
through the formalities of worship had sin in
it.
Sin that required atonement.
Just, my dear friends, as we have to
acknowledge our prayers need cleansing, and our praise
is faulty.
I'm not referring to the choir now.
I'm referring to myself.
But oftentimes our hearts are not aglow with
praise to God, and our lips say what
our hearts do not.
You know, there was a time in the
18th century when men like Wesley, and I
could quote a number of others, who only
chose a hymn that they concluded from the
pulpit was in agreement with the ethos and
the atmosphere of the congregation.
And if they could not think of a
hymn that agreed with a temperature, the spiritual
temperature of the hour, they didn't sing.
They thought it was hypocrisy.
Now, the founder of the Presbyterian Church of
Wales under God was one of these men.
He was a vast knowledge of hymnology, but
if he could not put his hand on
a hymn that he felt was truly representative
of the general atmosphere and response of a
congregation, he would just dismiss the people.
Because people sing what they don't believe.
Take my life and let it be, consecrated
Lord to thee.
How many of us have sang that and
we've never consecrated ourselves?
Take my silver and my gold, take my
voice and let me sing ever only for
my king.
No, we just don't do that.
We sing for anybody and we sing everything.
You see, we're not genuine in these things.
There is a sin, there is an iniquity
of holy things.
All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags as
the prophet.
Every failure to do what we know to
be our duty, says James, if we know
what is right and we do it not
to that person, it is sin.
It's as serious as that.
The disclaimer specified, if we say we have
not sinned, now the disaster exposed.
If we say we have not sinned, we
make him a liar, and his word is
not in us.
These words describe the most serious state of
affairs envisaged in any of the three false
approaches mentioned in this challenging context.
To make God out to be a liar
is the most serious thing yet.
For me to lie to God is serious.
For me to lie to any man is
serious.
A lie is a lie.
To deceive myself by saying there's no sin
in my nature, it never was there or
I got rid of it, it's self-deception.
That is serious in spiritual matters as in
any other matter.
But when I deliberately make my God out
to be a liar, that's still more serious.
In other words, the whole revelation of the
Bible says that all men sin.
It calls us not to sin, and yet
it tells us there is no man who
sinneth not.
Now, John adds a further comment here, and
it adds to the gravity of the situation.
He says we make him a liar, and
then he says his word is not in
us.
Now, let us try and get this.
It's exceedingly important.
We make God a liar, but his word
is not in us if we say this
kind of thing.
It's not in us.
We may have read it.
We may have heard it, but it's not
got in.
It's not got in.
And it's not working within us.
Now, sometimes in the New Testament, even our
Lord Jesus Christ appears to distinguish between the
word and the truth.
You notice earlier on John said the truth
is not in us.
Now he says the word is not in
us.
Does he mean to distinguish between one thing
and another?
I don't know, but I ought to say
this.
Sometimes the New Testament takes one view, truth
is one thing, the word is something slightly
different, related, but different.
Let me quote to you what I mean.
In John 8 and verse 31, Jesus said,
if you continue in my word, you are
truly my disciples, and you will know the
truth, and the truth shall set you free.
Now you see the point.
The word is the verbiage The word is
what we have written down here.
We continue in the word, right?
But if we continue in the word, we
will get beyond the word to the truth
of which the word speaks.
And that is one way of looking at
it.
Jesus apparently looks upon it like that in
that context.
But then in John 17, Jesus lets us
think that they're wholly separate, and there's a
dichotomy between them, as some of our Bartian
friends suggest, and others.
Jesus says, thy word is truth.
Now there are these two strands, and to
be fair with scripture and objective, we've got
to acknowledge them.
Thy word is truth.
We may not have come to the depths
of the word where the truth is at
the beginning.
We're just dealing with words.
Someone that I once counseled said to me
that she came from a very godly home.
And she says, my mum and dad only
hurl texts at me.
I just don't know what they mean.
Now she wasn't ungrateful for that, but she
hadn't been taught concerning a most important moral
principle.
And her allegation, I don't know whether she
was right, was this, that her mum and
dad threw the texts out at her.
Learn your texts.
Learn your scriptures.
Now that's great.
I'm not condemning that.
Please don't misunderstand me.
But the truth lies hidden.
The principles, the reality, the truth is still
deeper than the word.
He shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free.
There are many of us who know the
words, and we are as fast bound to
temptation as ever we were.
If John is distinguishing between the two here,
then what he's saying is this.
What he's saying is this.
Even the word is not in you, let
alone the truth.
It's all on the outside.
It's in the head.
It's objective.
You've never let it in.
You know, we can do that when we
hear the word of God preached or taught,
whatever it is.
We can be a kind of spectators in
the grandstand, and we look at the preacher
and we say, well now he's going through
his part.
And we're just lookers-on, spectators.
But we've got our armor on.
We keep it out.
But that represents some of us this morning.
You know, you can go through a lifetime
of religion just like this, and the word
is on the outside of the window.
It's all out there.
I'm examining it.
It is objective.
It is outside of me.
But the word is not penetrating.
And therefore it is no explosive dynamic in
the soul.
The positive truth to be considered at this
point, of course, is this.
When once the word of God gets in,
it makes me aware of sin and of
sin.
That's what, John, that's the whole philosophy.
That's the principle upon which John bases this.
If only the word of God was inside,
really in your heart, really in your conscience,
really in the depths, then you couldn't say
that you've not sinned.
That's the implication.
Because when the word comes in, it brings
with it its own diagnostic capacities, and it
quickens me to an understanding of things that
are wrong.
You remember this great classical passage in the
epistle to the Hebrews?
The word of God is living and active,
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to
the division of soul and of spirit, of
joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and
the intents of the heart.
And before him, now you notice that speaking
about the word of God, and now the
writer speaks of the word of God in
the masculine, because God and his word are
one here.
And before him, the God of the word,
no creature is hidden, but all are open
and laid bare before the eyes of him
with whom we have to do Hebrews 4,
12 and 13.
The word of God, then, within us, at
any rate, ought to quicken an awareness of
things we've done wrong.
My friends, if the word of God doesn't
do that for us, we need seriously to
examine ourselves.
Something's gone wrong somewhere.
It may be capable of being rectified, but
somehow or other we've gone wrong, and we've
got to go to the physician, and we've
got to get things put straight.
And it's disparately important if our aim is
fellowship with God who is light.
You see, the word of God, even viewed
objectively, even before it comes into our hearts
as the seed of the gospel, even viewed
objectively, tells us categorically there is no man
who doesn't sin.
I quote from 1 Kings 8, 46, there
is no man who does not sin.
I quote from a psalm, the Lord looks
down from heaven upon the children of men
to see if there are any that act
wisely, that seek after God.
They have all gone astray.
They are all corrupt.
There is none that does good, no, not
one.
I quote from Ecclesiastes, there is not a
righteous man on earth who does good and
never sins.
I quote from Isaiah 53, all we like
sheep have gone astray.
We've turned everyone to his own way.
I quote from Isaiah 64, we've already referred
to it.
We have all become like one who is
unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like
a polluted garment.
And from Paul, all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God.
Even objectively, the word tells us that no
man does so live that he never commits
it.
But when that word comes into us, into
the depths of the soil of our hearts,
it will quicken us to an awareness of
things that are wrong with God.
Incidentally, this is such a big theme.
You know when the canon of Scripture was
being brought together in the early church?
Now this was something that happened over a
period.
The question that people often ask is this,
how did the church gather together these documents
into the Bible and leave some documents outside?
Now this was a consensus over a period.
But one thing that the old saints insisted
was this, concerning the books now found in
our Bible, whenever you hold them in your
hand and let your eye fall upon them,
they make you dirty.
Now, I've not made a mistake.
They used to put it like that in
Hebrew.
The Scriptures make you unclean.
What do you mean?
And of course what they meant was this,
these Scriptures create a sense of sin, because
they're the word of God.
The words of men don't make you feel
sinners, don't make me feel a sinner.
The words of men, popular philosophy, popular theology
even, it just doesn't make you feel a
sinner.
But the word of the Holy One does.
It has the capacity to disclose the hidden
thoughts of the heart and the measure of
their being out of alignment with the purpose
of God.
It's an abortive profession that we have not
sinned.
Now, and very briefly with this this morning,
I've got to turn to the next one
because we've got to see these two things
together.
Immediately afterwards, it's a pity that we have
the division of the chapters here.
There should not be a division at this
point.
There wasn't, of course, in the original manuscripts.
And very often we find that these chapter
divisions are good, but very often they're not.
They divide things up that should never be
divided.
Well, the very next breath, it would seem,
John goes right on to say, my little
children, these things I write unto you that
ye sin not.
If any of you claims that you've not
sinned, then you're wrong.
But don't you judge from that, says John,
that you've got a license to sin.
But God excuses sin, all that the apostles
of the Lord Jesus Christ can excuse.
Not on your life, he says.
What I have said does not for one
single moment excuse wrongdoing.
You see, some of the things that John
has said could be interpreted, I say could,
need not be and should not be, but
could, by a perverse mind, could be interpreted
in this way.
But John was making light of sin in
one sense.
For example, he has said, you see, that
God has provision to forgive and to cleanse
all sin.
Jesus Christ has died to bring about forgiveness,
to bring about pardon, and to bring about
cleansing.
And then, as we stressed when we were
in that passage, the blood of Jesus Christ
is some cleanses us from all sin.
All right, then.
If there is such a vast provision, it's
not all that important that I sin not,
is it?
Uh-huh.
But the one who died to make it
possible for my sins to be forgiven and
cleansed is the blessed Son of the living
God.
And he is my Savior.
He's the beloved of my soul.
He's the one who sought me when I
was lost.
He's the one who, though he was rich,
became poor, that I, through his poverty, might
be made rich.
And I love him.
And therefore, I don't want to trade upon
his mercy and to crucify him afresh with
my sins.
That's the logic.
So John proceeds, and he says, now he
says, these things I write unto you that
ye sin not.
In other words, the aim and the goal
of every Christian should be not to sin,
not to sin, to be a nonconformist as
far as evil is concerned and the breaking
of the law of God.
I'll be brief and just dwell a moment
on this.
Notice John's affection here.
These apostles were men, but they were great
men.
Oh, how the grace of God had wrought
in their hearts.
My little children, says John.
And he's here not simply speaking as a
man of age who has the right to
speak to his juniors.
He is speaking as a man of affection,
the beloved disciple whom Jesus loved.
And that love of Jesus would flow through
him.
And now he takes them up, and like
little children in his arms, he caresses them.
I was reading from a grammarian this last
week, and he said that both in Latin
and in Greek, diminutives have a special affection
in them.
Diminutives are words which are used, as it
were, with a caress.
My little one.
And that's exactly what John says here.
He uses a diminutive.
He wants every believer addressed by him here
to know, look, I'm coming to you as
a father, and I'm coming to you as
a lover.
Oh, my little one, he says, I'm writing
to you that you sin not.
His affirmation is simply that.
The intention of his writing is not to
make it easier to sin, but to encourage
and summon them to aim at nothing less
than a life that is free from sin.
Now, there is a tension here, a very
real tension, and John means us to live
with it, apparently, as long as we are
in the body.
For only when we see our Lord, says
John in chapter 3, only when we see
him shall we be made like unto him.
When we see him, we shall be made
like unto him.
We have privileges now.
But only then shall we be likened, and
that means without sin.
The tension to which we refer is this.
Whereas none of us can claim complete freedom
from the polluting influences of sin, or from
deeds of sin, at this present time, we
must be content nevertheless with nothing less than
aiming at this.
Now, that's a tension.
We must resolutely and consistently aim at nothing
less than the noncommittal of evil.
The policy laid down in the New Testament
is not to go as near to the
precipice as we can, without falling over, but
is to keep far away from sin.
An old proverb that comes from the Middle
East, I'm not quite sure which country, but
it comes from the Middle East, and it
says this.
Don't let the camel put his nose under
the canvas of the tent.
Well, why not?
His nose might be cold occasionally.
Why not let him warm his nose?
I don't remember the precise wording of it,
but it goes on to say, because when
once the camel gets his nose in, he'll
get himself in.
My dear friends, sin has a habit of
bringing Satan into the heart, as with Judas.
And Satan moved in lock, stock, and barrel,
and entered into Judas's carrier.
But sin had its nose in a long
time ago.
You play with sin, and you play with
fire.
The first time I commit moral evil, it's
comparatively easy.
No, sorry, I meant to say comparatively difficult.
I have to wrestle with myself.
I have to coerce myself.
I have to reason against reason to get
over the difficulties in my own soul.
For the second time, it's not quite so
difficult.
These things I write unto you that ye
sin not.
My good friends, I don't know what this
is to say to you this morning.
I know what it has to say to
me.
It asks me a very serious question, how
far this is my aim in life.
In all the relationships of life, in the
home, on the street, in the church, in
private, in public, in matters spiritual, in matters
secular, how far is it the set motive
of my soul not to displease my Lord?
How far is it yours?
Honestly now, how far?
Of course, sinlessness is but a negative side
of a truth.
John is not simply after sinlessness.
We haven't come into the body of the
epistle yet.
He's going to clothe us.
He's after righteousness, which is more than sinlessness.
He's after a positive quality of life.
But this is the way towards it.
This is the first step.
He's preparing the stage.
John Owen the Puritan was right, I believe,
when he said, he that hath slight thoughts
of sin never could have great thoughts of
God.
He who deals lightly with sin never deals
honorably with God.
There's a prayer I would like to pray
this morning.
I wonder whether you could join me.
It's the prayer of a hymn and it
comes from the pen of Charles Wesley.
Jesus, my strength, my hope, on thee I
cast my care.
With humble confidence look up and know thou
hearest my prayer.
Give me on thee to wait till I
can all things do.
On thee almighty to create, almighty to renew.
I want a godly fear, a quick discerning
eye that looks to thee when sin is
near and sees the tempter fly.
A spirit still prepared and armed with jealous
care forever standing on its guard and watching
unto prayer.
I want a true regard, a single steady
aim, unmoved by threatening or reward to thee
and thy great name.
A jealous just concern for thine immortal praise,
a pure desire that all may learn and
glorify thy grace.
These things I write unto you that ye
sin not.
And against that background we shall return a
few weeks from hence and we shall look
at the second half of this great truth
because it is only people that have come
here that can appreciate it.
If any man sin, what then?
Since sin is so serious.
Well, says the apostle, God has made provision,
hampful and full and free.
If any man sin, we have an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
And he is the propitiation for our sins
and not for ours only, but for the
sins of the whole world.
There is plentiful redemption in the blood that
has been shed, but these things I write
unto you that ye sin not.
Let us pray.
O Lord, our God, our Father, we turn
to thee with the desire to be honest
and open before thine all-seeing eye.
And we would not make a kind of
general confession of sin in the light of
thy word to us today.
We would not be guilty of such an
affront to the deity that we call them
by their names.
We acknowledge them, thou knowest what they are,
sins of word and sins of thought, sins
of deed.
O God, our Father, cleanse us and forgive
us and give us the single steady aim
of which we read, an aim that is
satisfied with nothing less, content with nothing less,
than thy great glory in our lives.
We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.