Will you turn with me in the word
of God to the first epistle written by
John in chapter 3, and I would like
to read verses 3, 4, 5, and 6.
We are continuing in our expositions of this
wonderful Christian document, and we come now to
a very important section.
And every man, says John, that hath this
hope, the hope to which he has referred
in the first two verses, every man that
hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even
as he is pure.
Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law, for
sin is the transgression of the law.
And ye know that he was manifested to
take away our sins, and in him is
no sin.
Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not, whosoever sinneth
hath not seen him, neither known him.
Now, at this point, the Apostle John has
begun for the second time round to apply
his three tests to those who profess to
be Christian.
And here, beginning toward the end of the
second chapter, he's applying the test of righteousness,
or of obedience.
What he's saying, in effect, is this.
It is impossible to profess properly that we
are Christian unless we can show by our
lives that we are obedient to the Word
of God and to the God of the
Word.
Obedience is essential.
It is a necessary fruit of the Christian
life.
If Christ is dwelling in us, if the
Spirit of the Lord is in us, if
we are truly the Lord's, then we ought
to be obedient to our Lord as a
general pattern of life.
We may slip, we may fall.
He tells us in chapter one that no
one can say that he hasn't sinned.
So he's not preaching a kind of sinless
perfectionism.
He's not doing that.
But what he is saying, nevertheless, is this.
A man who is a genuine Christian should
be living a consistent life of righteousness.
Unless he does so, there is no evidence
to point that he is truly a child
of God, a Christian man or a Christian
woman.
Now, you will notice then, as you read
the verses before us today and the verses
preceding, that John is insisting that the Christian
life is Christocentric.
Christ is in the center of it all,
and Christ determines it all.
John puts it in this way.
He says, first of all, in the order
of the text here, he says, if we
are members of the family and the household
of God, then we are awaiting the coming
again of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Brothers, he says, we are already the children
of God.
It doesn't yet appear what we are going
to be, but we know this.
When he appears, we shall be like him.
And then, every person who has this hope
set on him purifies himself, even as he
is pure.
Christ is coming again, and if I'm his,
I'm busy preparing myself for the vision glorious.
Now, in verses 3 and 5, he refers
not to the second coming of Christ, but
to the first coming of the same Christ.
You notice what he says in verse 3,
every man, I'm sorry, in verse 5, you
know that he was manifested to take away
our sins.
Christ has already come.
The incarnation is a historical fact.
Jesus was born of the Virgin.
He has lived upon earth, and he came,
says John, at this point.
He says he came in order to do
something which is most relevant to the theme
under consideration.
He came to take away our sins, and
in him there is no righteousness.
So then, there is the second coming of
Christ, there is the first coming of Christ,
and then in between John speaks in verse
6 of communion with him.
Whosoever abideth in him.
The Christ who came and lived and died
is a Christ who continues alive, as we
were reminded so beautifully this morning by one
of the boys.
He who is risen from the dead is
the living Lord.
It's Easter day today, in one sense, because
our Lord is alive.
And a Christian man is not simply a
person who awaits the second coming, or who
looks back to the first coming, and is
related to both foci, but he is a
person who is living in Christ today.
The Christian life is Christocentric, it centers in
Christ.
It arises out of what Christ has done,
it awaits what Christ is going to do,
and it draws the whole of its inspiration
from the living Lord Jesus today.
A Christian abides in Christ, he's a man
who is in his element.
The element of the fish is the water,
the element of the bird is the sky,
the element of the Christian is Christ.
And a Christian is a man in Christ,
living in him, breathing in him, serving in
him, everything he does, he does out of
that relationship.
Now then, what has that got to do
with the subject under consideration?
John will expound this and the application of
his test of righteousness in terms of two
main things.
They all arise out of the fact that
Christ is so central in Christian experience.
I want to refer to two things, the
prospect that purifies and the practice that identifies,
if that helps us to remember well and
good.
First of all, the prospect that purifies, verses
2 and 3.
Beloved, we are God's children now.
It does not yet appear what we shall
be, but we know that when he appears,
we shall delight in him, for we shall
see him as he is.
And everyone who thus hopes in him, purifies
himself as he is pure.
John's statement to remember is this, if you're
a Christian man, you ought to be obedient.
Very well then, he says, drawing now his
thoughts or basing his thoughts on the coming
again of our Lord Jesus Christ and our
belief in that and our hope in his
coming.
Right, he says, if you are a Christian
man with hope in his coming, you will
be a person purifying yourself from unrighteousness and
disobedience and practicing obedience and righteousness.
Now let's look at the way he does
it.
He focuses around two things, the first of
which we've already considered on a previous Sunday
morning, the second of which I want to
say a word about this morning, before we
pass to something else.
There are two things here, the child hope
and the child habit.
The Christian hope and the Christian habit.
The Christian hope is clear.
I can only now repeat the three main
threads in John's statement here.
Here they are.
He will appear.
Oh my good friend, I hope that fills
your soul this morning.
That our Lord Jesus Christ who died for
us on the cross of Calvary and was
buried, risen, ascended, now out of sight and
we can't see him and we can't touch
him or handle him, but he's going to
reappear.
The curtain of blue will be severed.
Now to the skies will come our blessed
Lord Jesus in glory.
He shall appear.
Second statement is this.
We shall see him as he is.
Not as he was, but as he is.
Not as the man of Nazareth in his
humiliation and rejection, but as the Lord of
glory crowned with glory and honor.
We shall see him that day as he
now is.
And the third strand in the thought, we
shall be like him.
Mystery of mysteries, wonder of wonders, a great
metamorphosis proceeding now in measure will at last
be complete and the Christian who has been
born again will come to the image glorious,
the image of his glorified redeeming.
That's the child hope, that's the Christian hope.
If you and I are Christian men and
women this morning, this is something that should
be like a dynamite in our spirits.
The hope of the glory of God.
Right.
Now arising out of that, John speaks of
the child or the Christian habit.
Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself
even as he is pure.
You see the point is this.
John distinguishes this hope in the coming again
of our Lord Jesus Christ from a mere
intellectual belief in the second coming.
I have no doubt that most of us
present here today would say we believe that
Jesus is coming again.
But heaven only knows in how many of
our lives this is a dynamic thing.
We really believe it.
And we really expect it.
If the preacher was to say well now
the doctrine of the second coming of our
Lord is out.
Oh my, I'm sure the whole congregation would
say look we've got to get rid of
that man.
But John is interested in something much more
than orthodoxy about the fact of his coming.
What he's talking about is this.
Hope in his coming.
This is an expectation of the soul because
we love him you see.
And we have faith in him.
And everything we are and everything we hope
to be is related to him.
He's the alpha.
He's the omega.
He's the beginning.
He's the end.
We hope in him.
And therefore we await his coming.
Now this is hope.
Every Christian man or woman, says John, who
hopes in him will do something to express
that hope.
The Christian hope inspires action.
The kind of action it inspires is this.
It makes for holy living.
He that has this hope set on him
purifies himself.
Purifies himself.
Gets rid of things that are wrong.
Examines himself in the light of God.
To go back to John chapter 1.
1 John chapter 1.
Walks in the light of God and sees
what blemishes come to view when he looks
at himself in the mirror of God's light.
And gets rid of the dirt.
Gets rid of the filth.
Gets rid of the evil habits.
He purifies himself.
As he is pure.
The effect of grace already received, as well
as of glory so clearly anticipated, should always
harness the energies of the soul to a
holy, unremitting warfare with impurity and unrighteousness.
A Christian man or woman is a man
or woman at war.
Not with other people, but with sin in
himself or herself.
If a Christian is known as a man
who is at loggerheads with other people, rather
than with sin in himself, there's something gone
sour and wrong.
The Lord is coming again, and if I
really believe that, I'm at war with sin
in my soul, however, however it may appear.
Now, I think we must make it clear
that, viewed against the larger spectrum of Scripture,
this is not self-effort, pure and simple.
It involves effort.
It involves warfare.
It involves struggling.
We wrestle not against principalities and powers.
But we do wrestle.
I'm sorry, we wrestle not against flesh and
blood, but we do wrestle against principalities and
powers.
A Christian is a wrestler, and he's a
fighter.
There's something to fight with.
There's a warfare on.
The main warfare is in here, in my
soul, against the old self and Satan taking
advantage of the old carnal nature, and so
forth.
But now, this is not self-effort.
Paul puts it very beautifully, I think, in
Philippians chapter 2, when he says to the
Philippians, Now, he says, you work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling.
For God is at work in you, both
to will and to do for his own
good pleasure.
Have you noticed it?
That's the beautiful balance.
You do it, says Paul, because God is
at work in you.
If you're a Christian man or woman, God
is at work in you.
Isn't this a sacred, isn't this a holy
notion?
God is at work in you.
Is there someone here this morning who doesn't
know anything of God being at work in
you?
When the word of God is preached, you're
like a stone.
Feel nothing, sense nothing.
God have mercy on you.
You need to be born again.
Is there a man or a woman here
who comes to the word of God every
day, or to prayer, and you don't sense
God at work in you?
Man or woman, I tell you, you're dead
while you live.
Says Paul to every Christian in Philippi, God
is at work in you.
So what?
I sit back and do nothing.
No, no, says Paul.
You now work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling, because God is about His
business in your soul.
Work with God.
Cooperate with God.
Respond to God.
Go God's way.
He that hath this hope set on him
purifies himself.
Do you notice how John ends it?
Purifies himself even as he is pure.
I want you to notice one important thing
here.
John does not say, you purify yourself as
he purified himself.
Say, why do I mention that?
For this reason.
If John said that, he would imply that
Jesus Christ was at one stage or other
impure, and He needed to be purified.
All these incidental statements reveal the glorious doctrines
of the person of Christ and His purity
and His holiness and His deity.
You purify yourself, he says, not as He
purified himself.
He did not need to purify himself, but
He was and is pure.
Always has been, always will be.
He is the pure one.
Now he says, He is the one who
is coming, and when you will be transformed
into His likeness, that's the kind of image
you'll get ready for it.
See that you're preparing for it.
The prospect that purifies.
The child hope, the child habit.
Do you hope in His coming?
Then, this is the habit that gives the
truth, or otherwise the lie, to what we
profess with our lips.
Every man that has this hope set on
him purifies himself.
Now, this brings us to the very practical
detail, the practice that identifies.
Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness.
Sin is lawlessness.
You know that He appeared to take away
sins, and in Him is no sin.
No one who abides in Him goes on
sinning.
No one who sins, that is, goes on
sinning, has either seen Him or known Him.
Now, as we did very briefly in reading
this passage, I want to do it again.
John is here speaking of a general, habitual
way of life.
Not an act of sinning, but a habitual
thing.
He's talking about our habits.
A habit of right doing or a habit
of wrong doing.
It's not just acts of right doing or
of wrong doing, but the general tenor of
a man's life.
That is evident from the language he employs.
What does it mean to be Christlike?
What is Christlikeness?
He is pure.
What does that mean?
How do we spell it out?
Well, now, there are two things here.
I want to mention them briefly.
The first thing is the consistency of God's
Son.
Now, you may think that's not relevant to
our theme.
It is.
I'll come back to it in a moment.
You know, says John, that He appeared to
take away sins, and in Him, Himself, there
is no sin.
The consistency of God's Son.
The purpose of His coming is made clear.
Why did Jesus come?
Well, says John, He came to take away
sin.
This He did in many ways.
Jesus Christ, first of all, came to take
away sin because He came to take away
the consequences of sin, the curse of sin,
the guilt of sin.
These words are reminiscent of those of John
the Baptist when he pointed Jesus out as
the Lamb of God, come to take away
the sin of the world.
Jesus came to take away sin.
In that sense.
He came to take away sin in another
sense.
He came to take away sin by destroying
the power of sin in His people.
You remember the announcement of His birth.
He shall save His people from their sin.
Jesus came to take away sin.
He came to take our sins away from
us and to take us away from our
sins.
And if He doesn't do that, something's gone
wrong.
That's why Paul gloried in the cross.
God forbid, He says, that I should glory,
said, in the cross of our Lord Jesus,
by the which I am crucified unto the
world and the world unto me.
The cross drives a wedge between a man
and the world, which represents the rule of
sin.
He comes to destroy the power of sin
in us.
He came to destroy the power of sin
so that if any man be in Christ,
Jesus is a new creature.
All things are passed away.
Everything's new.
And everything's of God.
That's the purpose of His coming.
To take away sin.
Jesus Christ will never make you, never make
me sin.
Jesus Christ will never give you an excuse
for sinning.
He will never give me an excuse for
sinning.
Never will.
He came to take away the wretched sin,
lock, stock and barrel.
And when He returns, every vestige of sin
will be expurgated from the universe.
It's as real as that.
The warfare of Jesus Christ against sin is
total.
He came to take the thing away, out
of the way.
But now notice the consistency of the Son
of God.
And in Him is no sin.
He wouldn't have it.
He came to carry it away, but He
did not allow the wretched sin to cause
the least smudge upon His spirit nor upon
His soul.
In Him is no sin.
In other words, you see, Jesus Christ did
not simply come to do something that was
objective, carry the guilt away, but He kept
His soul pure from the wretched sin.
His pattern of living is consistent with the
purpose of His coming.
Why I'm so thrilled that by the Spirit
of God we have the record that three
times over, Pilate had to announce Him innocent.
I find no fault in Him, says Pilate
three times over.
The centurion at the foot of the cross,
witnessing what he had, said, Surely this was
the Son of God.
But most important of all, God the Father
acknowledged His righteousness, His purity, His holiness, His
sanctity, His perfection when He received the sacrifice
as an unblemished thing for the sins of
men.
When Jesus had offered Himself as the sacrifice
for sin, God raised Him from the dead
and made Him Prince and Lord of life
and of death.
God set His seal upon His Son's perfection.
In nothing, therefore, can we find the least
inconsistency between the avowed purpose for which Christ
became man and the pattern of life He
lived among men.
He was consistently against sin for righteousness, taking
away sin, and Himself sinless, pure, righteous.
In particular, says John, there was no solitary
symptom of lawlessness in Him.
Sin is lawlessness.
Lawlessness is a frame of mind before it
is an action.
It's an attitude of kicking against the bricks.
You remember the prodigal son before he went
away from home?
He was a prodigal a long time before
he left home.
You know, everything was irksome.
He wanted to get away.
That's lawlessness.
You don't need to go away from the
church.
You don't need to leave the fellowship.
You don't need to go and live in
the depths of iniquity to become a prodigal
or to become lawless.
First of all, it's a matter of heart.
I don't want to do the will of
God.
I'd rather my own.
And I think I'll have my own way.
I'm such an individual, you see.
God has given me an individuality.
This is how people talk sometimes.
And I want to be myself, never mind
what God purposes for me.
I want to be my own self, and
I'll have my own way.
That's lawlessness.
You never find that in Jesus Christ.
My meat is to do the will of
Him that sent me, and to finish His
work at the beginning of His life, of
His ministry.
And at the end, not my will but
Thine be done.
No token of lawlessness in Him, by the
avowed purpose for which He became man then,
as well as by the evident perfection of
His life as man, Jesus proved Himself to
be the enemy of all lawlessness, even as
He was the friend of all sinners.
Now, the consistency of God's Son.
The last thing is this.
This is what brings us to the point.
The identity of God's children, faced with the
urgent necessity of showing that the Gnostic heretics
were causing chaos to the people that John
is addressing in this epistle, were not Christian.
The apostle John is telling them how and
why.
They may have shown acts of decency, or
of well-doing, or of goodness.
At one time they were members of the
church.
And they may be very clever.
They claim to be the spiritual elite.
They have new revelations of God, and they
know things better than the ordinary Christians.
That's what they profess.
Says John, look, no man is a child
of God who does not purify himself from
lawlessness, who does not purge himself from sin
and anything that is contrary to the will
and the word of God.
There must be a consistent mode of living
to show a man's habit of life.
John sees every child of God, then, as
not simply believing the record of what Jesus
did when He first came, not simply hoping
in what is going to take place when
He comes again, but as, to quote him,
abiding in Jesus Christ all the time.
A Christian is a man who abides in
Jesus Christ.
This is a most fruitful and a most
pregnant concept.
A man in Christ is a favorite Pauline
terminology.
But this is what a Christian is, a
man in Christ.
And a Christian is a man who abides
in Christ.
Can I quote to you a word from
the Apostle Paul in order to bring out
the marvelous thrust of this?
He's writing to the Corinthians who were dabbling
with immoralities, even the Christians at this point.
And he writes in these terms, Do you
not know, he says, that he who joins
himself to a prostitute becomes one body with
her?
One body, and then he goes on to
say one flesh.
But he who is united to the Lord
becomes one spirit with Him.
Now, my friends, I must be daring and
outspoken in order to bring this out.
Such is the intimate life bond which is
involved in the possession of eternal life.
It is a spiritual intercourse that results from
a marriage of spirits between Jesus Christ and
the believer.
A Christian is joined to his Lord, not
physically, but spiritually.
As man and woman who are involved in
physical intercourse are said to be one flesh,
says Paul, you men, by your spirit in
your soul, if you are a Christian, you
are joined to the Lord.
This is always a fruitful bond.
There are always children, the fruit of the
spirit.
The inevitable fruit is this, purging of oneself
from unrighteousness and lawlessness and sin.
So that a man's general mode of living
is not evil, but righteous.
Not worldly, but Christlike.
O my good friends, I have a fear
in my soul of many people who love
to dabble with evangelical religion, that I am
not fighting the battle against sin.
Don't tease, don't let us tease ourselves that
because we belong to an evangelical church we
are necessarily born again.
To abide in Him is to come under
the influence and inspiration of Him in whom
we abide.
If He is my atmosphere, if He is
my inspiration, if He is my life, and
if I am so intimately joined with Him,
then two things, and I am through this
morning, I'll just put them to you in
two or three sentences.
John puts it here like this.
To abide in Him makes it impossible to
abide in sin.
Now you've got to choose.
I've got to choose.
I can't abide in the two elements.
He is consistent.
He came to take away sin.
There was no sin in Him.
He is consistently against sin.
Right.
I can't abide in Him and abide in
sin.
I may slip into sin.
John has given us the answer to that.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But I cannot go on consistently living in
sin if I abide in Him.
I'm not abiding in Him if I fall
and abide in sin.
That means I have to question myself.
I have to make sure where I am
and discover my true spiritual lineage.
The second statement is this.
To make a practice of living in sin
means that not only is a person not
abiding in Christ, he has never seen Him,
says John, nor known Him.
Now, this is a very, very remarkable statement,
and we need to take it seriously.
Whosoever abides in Him sinneth not, verse 6,
the second part.
Whosoever keeps on sinning has not seen Him
nor known Him.
In other words, if Jesus comes into my
life as my Savior, He breaks the backbone.
He breaks the tyranny.
He breaks the yoke of sin.
Oh, I may fall many a time, many
a time.
Who doesn't?
All of us will.
But the backbone of the thing is broken.
Sin, says Paul to the Romans, shall not
have dominion over you.
The dominion of it is broken.
The rule of it, the reign of it
is broken.
It may come back, and it may invade
your mind and your conscience and so forth.
Very well, then, what's the message?
The message is this.
Those who are the children of God are
intimately related to Jesus Christ.
His coming again, His first coming, His abiding
presence by the Spirit.
On all three counts, because of what He
did, because of what He will do, because
of who He is now and what He
does now, His total influence upon a believer
is to get us away from sin.
My friend, what influences Jesus Christ upon you
and upon me?
Is there a possibility that we are dabbling
with an imaginary Christ?
Or are we dealing with a Christ of
the Scriptures, whose consistent testimony of life and
of life is this, I will make you
like myself?
Oh, may the Spirit of God today come
in upon us like a wave of an
ocean from heaven with an influence that will
capture us afresh.
To walk in the way of obedience and
of righteousness and of purity, even though we
may slip and fall from time to time
and do some terrible things, even as Peter
did and other saints have done, we shall
be known by the general tenor of our
lives as children of God and followers of
Him in whom there is no sin.
Let us pray.
Father, write Thy Word upon our hearts.
We cannot meditate upon a theme such as
this without feeling the wounds of the Word,
but we thank Thee nevertheless that the Word
that wounds wounds to heal, to offer it
with a view to healing.
And if the surgical instrument has been felt
by any of us at this time, we
ask of Thee that having excised what is
evil, we may be healed of spirit and
of soul, so that no root of bitterness
springing up in the soul trouble us, no
seed of rebellion cause us to become obnoxious
in Thy sight and a hindrance to Thy
work.
Cure us in heaven, Thy dwelling place, for
Jesus Christ our Saviour's sake.
Amen.