No Coesxistance
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4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
If I had to name today's sharing I would probably call it No Coexistence. When preparing for today I kept picturing that COEXIST bumper sticker that you see now and then and realized someone needs to do a No COEXIST bumper sticker. We will see today how there is no coexistence.
4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
Quite clear here that John is talking to Everyone, all, Who so ever, not just the ungodly but also the Godly .
I want to point out that sinning is different than practicing sinning. John doesnt say everyone who sins he says everyone who practices sin.
Whats the difference? If I grab a bat and Tim throws the ball in my direction and I swing at it and I miss and put the bat down that would be like sinning. It is done once and it didn't work out very well for me. But when we Practice something we do it over and over. And usually when we practice something we get much better at doing it!!
We will talk a little more about this in a few verses.
and when we talk about lawlessness here we might think of living with out the wordly law but what John is referencing here is the Gods law of living pure.
In Matthew we see a similar comparison of sin and lawlessness.
23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
I find that in life we read and are taught things and just never look into them. We take things for granted. SO in my preparation for today I ran across some interesting things.
I never really looked into what sin was. I mean we know that sin is not obeying Gods laws and living like the Devil.
Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Bible (Chapter 3)
But a man cannot act like the devil, and at the same time be a disciple of Christ Jesus. Let us not serve or indulge what the Son of God came to destroy. To be born of God is to be inwardly renewed by the power of the Spirit of God
But what does sin really mean. I found that there is no word that exactly means sin. This is both in the old testament and new testament. There are 4 words that are translated as sin but what do they really mean.
In Hebrew we find the verb Chatta which means “To go astray, miss the path or miss the mark.” The action of sin here is in the broad sense to include intentional and unintentional offensive behavior towards an individual, nation or God.
The feminine noun form of Chata is chattaah which is a genreic term for Sin, Crime or offense.
7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
also seen in Ex 34:6-7
6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
In the new testament or Greek we see again that there is no exact word for sin but rather the word Hamartia . This word is also used in Greek mythology and when it is, it is used to be a fatal flaw leading to the tragic downfall of a hero or heroine.
what does Wikipedia say about hamartia
hamartia means "to miss the mark" or "to err".[1][2] It is most often associated with Greek tragedy, although it is also used in Christian theology.[3] The term is often said to depict the flaws or defects of a character and portraying these as the reason of a potential downfall.[4][5] However, other critics point to the term's derivation and say that it refers only to a tragic but random accident or mistake, with devastating consequences but with no judgment implied as to the character.
Hamartia as it pertains to dramatic literature was first used by Aristotle in his Poetics. In tragedy, hamartia is commonly understood to refer to the protagonist's error that leads to a chain of actions which culminate in a reversal of events from felicity (intense hapiness) to disaster.
What qualifies as the error or flaw varies, and can include an error resulting from ignorance, an error of judgment, an inherent flaw in the character, or a wrongdoing.
Greek was a martial society or warlike so many believe that In Greek missing the mark could be the same as an example of trowing a spear and missing the target.
Hamartia is a mistake or failure to reach a spiritual goal. It is a comprehensive expression of EVERYTHING AGAINST GOD!!
5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
Again we see here that sin and Jesus/Godliness can not coexist. the very reason why Christ manifested was to take away sin. It doesn't say here that he came to do anything other than to take away sin.
And then John says in Him there is no sin. I find it interesting here that John didn't say in him WAS no sin.
6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
Dark and Light can not coexist. Where Christ is there can be no sin. If you abide in him, tarry, remain, to continue to be present with, than sin can not be there.
You can not “Continue” or practice sin and say that you know Christ. As we saw in Matthew 7:23 used earlier if we continue in sin Christ will say I never knew you. Not i don’t know you now or I forgot who you are. It says I never knew you.
We all have heard it right. Well you are a christian you shouldn't have done that. Being a Christian doesn't make you perfect. It doesn't mean you are not going to make mistakes and sin. It is that intentional continual repetition of sinning.
This should make you sleep better at night. Other religions teach that if you make a mistake and sin one time, and don't repent of that single sin you are going to burn in hell for ever. That just kind of makes you want to give up and walk the other way because its a level of perfection that can not be reached.
I compare this to a marriage or friendship. either one of these if we make a mistake and slip up more then likely we will continue in that relationship but if we continue to slip up (which at that point it is not rally slipping up) more then likely we will not continue in that relationship.
In 7 and 8 we see the same idea repeated.
7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
This does take in one step further and that is to say that whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil.
Christianity is not an art, or a matter of dexterity and skill, but it is a new nature. It about being regenerated. being born again. When that happens there is a new light in your mind that shows the evil of sin. There should be a hatred for sin and if committed there is a repentance for that sin. Once regenerated it should be against this new nature to sin with forethought. We can not be Christ but we should be striving to be Christ Like.
One of the quotes I found when preparing for today is that as a Christian we may not walk in sin but we do fall into it.
8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
And to wrap up vs
7 and 8 we again see that John repeats that the reason Jesus appeared was to destroy sin. and actually goes a little further and connects sin to the works of the devil
9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.
If you remember one of the last times I shared I mentioned repetition and I have taken a lot of classes and have taught a lot of classes and when a teacher repeats something that means it is going to be on the final exam. So I am here to tell you that one of the answers of the final exam of life is this. If we practice sin, or live in habitual sin, sin with forethought and a complete disregard for that Christ like life, Christ will tell us that he ever knew us because where sin is Christ can not be.
one of the differences we see in this is the reason why we can not keep sinning and that is because the seed of God resides in you. the living word of God.
10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
To wrap up today's scriptures we wee a summation of this topic and will move on to another topic next week. the one thing we do see here in verse 10 is that there is no middle ground. We have two different people Children of God and Children of the devil. Nothing in between
If you do not practice righteousness you are not of God oh and by the way if you don't love your brother you are not of God either. this is quite a slide in or transition to the next thought.
In conclusion there was two quotes or thoughts I wanted to leave you with that I could use to summarize today's topic and the first is:
I am quite certain tat almost everyone here has used a compass and when you are navigating with a compass the magnetic needle in there is suppose to point north. occasionally when you turn the compass the needle will easily be moved from side to side and for a moment will not be pointing at the “pole”, but it will kind of move back and forth seeking until in comes back to where it is pointing north again. This is a great comparison of our Christian lives. We easily “Miss the Mark” but our goal should always be to seek out the mark and refocus our lives to where we are pointing the way to christ.
and finally
1-3 John The Great Theme
John Newton once said, “If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: First, to meet some I had not thought to see there. Second, to miss some I had expected to see there. And third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there