Sermon Tone Analysis
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Claim - Children of God strive for sinlessness and one day will be made perfect, like Jesus.
Focus - Children of God will not have habitual sin in their lives becasue they belong to a loving father and desire to be like Jesus.
Function - To cause a deep search of our lives to reject sin out of recognition for what we are (Children of God)
This sections of 1 John requires some very careful thought for 2 reasons.
1 - John presents a key test for all humanity to find out who our spiritual Father is.
There are only 2 options in this life,
This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are.
That’s a sobering thought.
And whether you consider yourself a Christian or not, it’s something worth thinking about.
2 - This passage, on the surface of it, should properly concern us if we consider ourselves children of God.
Why?
Well that sounds like a problem for me, and I suspect it’s a concern for you.
So. we’re going to look at those 2 issues today by asking ourselves 2 Big Questions.
1 - Do I have to be sinless to be God’s child?
2 - Whose child am I?
But before that, John get’s excited again, as should we, about our wonderful God, who if you remember from chapter 1, is our only hope of eternal life in joyful fellowship.
So we’re going to look first at:
A Loving Father and His Sinless Son
In the middle of last weeks section that ended on a warning to expect and ignore false teacher’s,
or antichrists,
who deny Jesus,
and this passage where we are asked to inspect the sin in our lives, John wants to remind his readers what it is all for and how it is all possible.
And v28 ties last week’s passage to this weeks, which is why we have it again today.
28 And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.
1 john2 28 And now, dear children, continue in him (Jesus), so that when he (Jesus) appears we may be confident and unashamed before him (Jesus) at his (Jesus’) coming.
28 And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.
Continue in Jesus, abide in Him, obey him, live for him - have joyful fellowship with him as we called it in 1v1-4.
And, if you remember, that joyful fellowship was having something in common - and that is eternal life.
When Jesus returns to judge the world, we will not be ashamed v28 if we have proved our faithfulness to Jesus in the way we have contnued in Him.
We will receive the great reward of eternal life with Jesus and with God the Father.
How is it all possible?
Not through our obedience, no, v29 reminds us again, that our obedience is just a sign/test/measure to show that we have already been made right with God by Jesus.
It’s simple logic, If Jesus is perfectly righteous, does everything that God the Father requires, then those that are ‘born of Jesus’ , those who Jesus has given life, will also behave in a right way.
Behaviour doesn’t earn us life in Jesus, Jesus’ righteousness influence our right behaviour once we follow him.
Thisincredible John reminds us.
And almost, as if, as John re-lives the wonderful truth that Jesus is perfect in everyway,
and then chooses to make us right with God through himself,
John cannot help but to emotionally remind us how great our heavenly Father is, who constructed this incredibly loving plan,
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
And that is what we are!
For those of us who know and love the Lord Jesus, see how great the love of God is!
He didn’t just love us a little, or even a lot.
He loves us lavishly!
He sent his Son, part of himself, to give up the glory of heaven become a man who was despised and murdered.
Gave His son who was perfectly obedient, even to death, so that he could live the life we could not.
Die the death we all deserve, accept the just angre of God against OUR sin, so that we may have fellowship with Jesus and with God the Father for all eternity!
How lavish the love of God is.
It’s crazy love, undeserved love, extravagant love, it’s silly amounts of fizzy drinks like we saw in the kids talk love.
It’s the love that should be the basis of our own lives.
We do not fight against sin to earn God’s love, we fight sin because God lavishly loves us, so why wouldn’t we!
A lavishly loving Father and His Sinless Son, made known to us perfectly in God’s word through the Holy Spirit as we saw last week.
I wonder if we, each time we are reminded of Jesus our saviour, cannot hold our emotions in like John.
Do we declare the lavish love of God towards us.
I often feel that the hardest part of our monthly prayer meetings, or any prayer meetings, and perhaps our personal prayers as well.... is to declare and praise God for his incredible love.
hat often feels to be the hardest part of our monthly prayer meetings, or any prayer meetings, and perhaps our personal prayers as well.... it is to declare and praise God for his incredible love.
It’s easy to pray for needs and wants, but as we move forward as a church into 2 services, seeking to reach more and more people in WP.
Let us be a people known for constantly rejoicing in and declaring the Lavish love of God and His sinless Son.
It’s easy to pray for needs and wants, but prayers declaring God’s lavish love is sadly often hard!
So, let’s change that today as we move forward as a church into 2 services, seeking to reach more and more people in WP.
Let us be a people known for constantly rejoicing in and declaring the Lavish love of God and His sinless Son.
So, God’s love and Jesus’s sinlessness is the basis for this next section of 1 John, and it is an important context as we deal with some tricky verses.
We ask the question..
Do I have to be sinless to be God’s child?
It certainly sounds like we are all in trouble.
I claim to know, love and seek to follow Jesus in obedience, but I certainly don’t claim to be sinless.
Does that mean I have never known God all along?
Does it mean I’m not a child of God?
Well, thankfully, there are 3 clues that help us understand exactly what he is meaning.
1 - John (and other NT writers) acknowledge that true Jesus Followers do sin
Context of the book cannot mean what it initially sounds like
2 - The context of this immediate passage doesn’t fit with this very literal interpretation
3 - A close understanding of the original words suggest an alternative understanding
So -
1 - John (and other NT writers) acknowledge that true Jesus Followers do sin
John himself has already acknowledged that Jesus Followers will sin.
1 joh 1 9-2:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
We argued in week 1 that this was an ongoing regular confession of sin that John was insisting on.
He goes on and makes it even clearer by saying.
2v1 - My dear children (Jesus Followers), I write this to you so that you will not sin.
But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.
3 - A close understanding of the original words allow an alternative interpretation
The apostle Paul also writes in:
rom 7 19-
So if John and the other NT writers acknowledge that we will sin (in fact, cannot help but sin according to Paul), what does John mean.
Here our second idea helps us.
2 - The context of this immediate passage doesn’t fit with this very literal interpretation
We are children of God, but we are not fully what we one day will be, when Jesus returns.
We shall be, when Jesus returns, ‘like him’.
What is it about Jesus that we will be like?
Well we wont be God, like him.
This isn’t an exact replication likeness.
This is a ‘we will reflect him perfectly’ likeness.
And what has John been continually reminding us about Jesus, he was perfectly obedient to the Father, and therefore perfectly sinless.
1 john 3
This is very exciting, and very key to what John is teaching us.
His constant instruction to us throughout this book is to be obedient to God, as a sign that we are Jesus Followers, children of God.
But while we reflect Jesus dimly at the moment, (because we are not perfectly obedient) we will one day be just like Jesus in obedience, when he returns!
It’s a ‘now and not yet’ situation.
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