Faith vs. Sin

Anthony W. Franklin

Easter • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

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Our faith in Christ gives us life in Christ so we can live like Christ.

Notes

Transcript

Scripture: 1 John 3:1-7

1 John 3:1–7 NLT

See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure. Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in him. Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin. But anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is. Dear children, don’t let anyone deceive you about this: When people do what is right, it shows that they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous.

Hook

Faith without Sight

There are some aspects of our faith that are and will remain a mystery to us until the very end.

How did that story of Jonah and the great fish happen?

Why could Peter walk on water when He looked at Jesus but sank and nearly drowned when he looked away?

Last week we read about the fact that there are almost no physical descriptions of Jesus after the resurrection. In reality, the gospels offer very little physical descriptions of Jesus at all. Why is that?

The questions get bigger the further we get from the scripture stories themselves and the closer they get to what God wants us to do with them.

How do we live as children of God? What does that even mean?

John’s gospel and John’s letters give us some excellent guidance on preserving and celebrating some of that mystery, while giving us some bite-sized answers to how to live out this faith together. In fact, John brought out a very important idea at the end of his gospel last week. He wrote that those were believed without seeing were even more blessed than those that saw first and then believed. Then he went on to say that he wrote his entire gospel for those that had not seen Jesus, but would believe because of what they read, heard, and experienced through others.

To John, real faith was believing without seeing (at least in a physical sense). In his first letter, he breaks down the big mystery of how our faith (without sight) transforms us into children of God. He shows us that:

Thesis: Our faith in Christ gives us life in Christ so we can live like Christ.

Faith in Christ

How do you follow what you cannot see? That is the first question and the first step we have to take.

Jesus compared God’s invisible Holy Spirit to the wind. We can’t see the wind, but we can feel it blowing against us and we can see the effects it has. We never know where it is coming from or where it will end up, but we can hold up our finger or watch the clouds and know which direction it is going.

Some people try to use random chance to figure out what God wants. I know of a church that would flip open the bible to a random page to figure out what to preach on each Sunday morning. They spent a lot of time preaching on the Psalms because it was right in the middle. Even in the Old Testament, the priests and prophets had colored stones they would draw out of a bag to help them discern God’s will.

I don’t think that is the kind of relationship God wants with us though, even if some people in the Bible did that. The people that had a personal relationship with God in the scripture didn’t have to roll dice to guess at what God wanted. Those like Mary Magdalene, Peter, Thomas, even Abraham and Moses, whom God treated as His beloved children, knew exactly what He was telling them because they used their ears to hear what their eyes could not see. They spent enough time in God’s presence that they knew the voice of their Lord and Savior.

We learn to recognize God’s voice from reading scripture, hearing the testimonies of others, and most importantly from those that walk with us as mentors, teachers, disciple-makers. They help us recognize what is and is not God in our lives the same way parents help children know who to trust and who to be cautious of as they leave home and experience their neighborhood, school, eventually the internet, social media, and the rest of the world. We hope, by the time they leave home, they know how to recognize their family of faith when they see and hear them.

Life in Christ

Hearing God speak to us is a first step to living as a child of God. But having faith means more than just hearing from God. It means living with Him.

Jesus taught that we are to live in Him like branches live in a vine: rooted in, connected together, and receiving life from Jesus. That’s a strange way to look at relationships, especially in our culture which values independence and self-governance so much. We have a hard enough time living with others, we certainly don’t want to live in them. That just sounds awkward. What does that even mean?

We know what it means to live separately from others well enough. We probably even have some experience of what it means to live off of someone. This happens when one person takes advantage of another and receives benefits from them without contributing anything in return. It is the relationship of a parasite. That is not the kind of relationship Jesus wants with us.

Looking at the example of vine and branches, the vine gives life and nutrients to the branches, and the branches share that glory and life with their flowers and fruit. They reach places beyond the vine and connect things back into it. While Jesus taught about this vine in a positive sense, if any of you have dealt with vines you did not intentionally plant before, you know they can totally take over a garden, a yard, a porch, a house, even a forest if they are not pruned and kept well. They can be unstoppable, and not always in a good way.

The same is true with our life in Christ. We get forgiven and the power to do more than we ever imagined with Jesus, and sometimes we can use that for our own selfish ends instead of for God’s glory. That’s when the gardener comes out with pruning shears and we get lopped off. That’s why, if we are going to live in Christ… in the family of God, we have to not only listen, but obey. Following Jesus means giving up your rights to yourself and your independence and it is a decision that should not be taken lightly.

However, if you choose to make your own way in life, you will miss out on being in the family you were truly made for. There are some things in life that will cost you everything, and they are worth even more than all you have and all you are.

Living like Christ

I hope you have a better sense now of what it means to be a Christian, to follow Jesus, to live in Him. Because without faith to make that choice each and every day - to stay in Christ, you will falter and flounder along awkwardly and often painfully.

You see, the world doesn’t teach us the right way to live, and it doesn’t matter how good your parents were. Parents that raise their children and pass on their faith go beyond just raising kids to being disciple-makers of their family members. Choosing that faith is not automatic or inevitable. It is always intentional from God’s perspective, and in the best cases, it is intentional from those sharing their faith.

We need that personal relationship with Jesus, the being and staying in the vine for two reasons. The first is to understand how to do what is right. The Bible is not a rulebook. It doesn’t cover every situation you will come across. It is meant to put you into relationship with the rule maker, so you can go to Him directly.

The second reason is even more important because far too many people stop with learning about God and how to live. Yet they still struggle with sin. They read Romans 3 that tells us we are all sinners and stop there. Sin continues to get the better of them day in and day out. Some of us hope that we will get better with age, but most of the time we just go further down whatever path we are walking with age. What do we do when we need to change direction to live the life God has created us to live?

We ask God for help.

When was the last time you felt tempted and you honestly asked God to help you make a different choice? Not just sarcastically asking God to save you or forgive you for a choice you have no intention of changing. God can help you make different choices and He can give you the strength to say no to temptation - but only if you have the faith to trust Him. As Christians, we not only do not have to sin, we no longer have an excuse for it, because we have God as our helper.

And the goal is not just getting through life avoiding sin. It is much more than that. It is living like Christ. You can live as a hermit in a cave and avoid sin, but that would probably be a pretty boring life. The life of Jesus was anything but boring. Pick any page of the gospels and ask yourself when was the last time you lived like that. You will likely decide that you’ve never lived like that because that’s Jesus and we are just human beings. But that is not completely true. We are human beings who are connected in Christ and one another through the Holy Spirit, as children of God. Jesus Himself told us that we would do all that He has done and more.

But only if we have the faith to ask God for help and then to trust Him enough to obey HIm.

Faith that conquers sin in our lives and the lives of those around us is faith that is willing to do WITH God what we cannot do WITHOUT God.

Announcement

(Invite Jeff Smith forward)

We have trusted God to put us where we can share what God has given us. The DS has informed Bekah and I that we will be moving in June to another church and will be moving another pastor here. We have faith that God is guiding both parts of this move and we are trusting God enough to follow. Jeff Smith is our Staff-Parish Relations Committee chair and he will be helping guide the transition in the next couple months.