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I was just visiting with family in Seattle when the topic of theology came up. There was a point in the evening when a few people were sitting around thinking about questions of theology and of the Christian life, “How much can people sin and still consider themselves a Christian? Is it possible to sin so much that we sin ourselves out of our salvation?”
These are important questions, and how you answer them means a great deal for your experience of what it is to be a Christian. If, for instance, you answer the question, “Can I lose my salvation if I’ve sinned too much?” with a “yes,” then there’s a good chance that you’re going to live a life filled with anxiety constantly wondering whether your latest sin has tipped the scales and somehow rendered you ineligible for salvation. 1 John 3 is an excellent Bible passage for helping us understand the connection between works and salvation.
What is the relationship between the Christian and good works?
Consider the following two verses in 1 John 3:
No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. (1 John 3:6)
Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. (1 John 3:8)
Now you’ll notice that in verse 6 there is the phrase “keeps on sinning,” and then again right after it, “keeps on sinning” appears again. In verse 8 there’s a similar kind of phrase that reads “makes a practice of sinning.” These are actually very accurate translations of the biblical Greek language in which the New Testament was written.
Some earlier English translations, however, didn’t do so well. The seventeenth-century King James Version reads in a way that has frequently confused things. So, for instance, verse 6 of the King James translation reads, “Whosoever abideth in him [Christ] sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.” And then verse 8 reads: “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning.”
At first glance in the King James Version, it sounds like John is saying, “If you sin, you’re not a Christian. If you commit sin, of any kind, then you’re in league with the devil.” Historically, this translation is one reason why there’s been a good bit of confusion in the Christian church as to how we understand the relationship between the Christian and sin. Is the Christian someone who never sins? Are they just someone who doesn’t commit the big sins?
In 1 John 3 the apostle is referring to the regular, repeated, unrelenting, and unchanging habit and pattern of the person's life.
Importantly, the reason that the text here in the ESV translates the verb “sin” as “keeps on sinning” and “makes a practice of sinning” is because of the specific kind of verb that’s used. Specifically, the verbs are present active. And this matters—a lot.
It’s the difference between, “I am hiking this Saturday” (a statement intended to convey that you do something once) and “I hike” (suggesting continual action).
The first suggests a one-time event and the other suggests an action that’s ongoing. So, when John is talking about sin here, he is referring to the regular, repeated, unrelenting, and unchanging habit and pattern of the person's life. The person who is uninterrupted and unrepentant in their orientation towards sin cannot consider themselves a Christian.
So then, what is the relationship between the Christian and sin? Well, it's not that the Christian is the one who never sins, but rather the Christian is the one whose regular habit and pattern of life are lived in the direction of righteousness. And what is the root of that righteousness? What motivates the good deeds of the Christian?
Our righteousness is not based on what we do; rather our righteousness is based on what Christ has done for us.
The clue to discovering the root and motivation of the believer's good works is found in verse 7:
Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. (1 John 3:7)
Notice that John doesn’t say that the one who does what is right will be righteous. Instead, he says that the one who does what is right is righteous.
John tells us the root, the foundation, and the motivation behind the good works of the Christian are to be found in the unchanging reality of our secure and righteous status in Christ.
And why does he do this? Because as soon as we hear someone say, “Do good works, and be righteous,” our inclination is to think it means that we’ve now got to strive, we’ve got to grind, we’ve got to do the right thing in order to be righteous.
But that’s not what John is saying. If we say that we’re righteous if we do the righteous thing, we find ourselves right back squarely in the middle of what every other religion teaches: do enough good and then one day you’ll be rewarded, maybe.
It’s not only that believers shouldn’t go on sinning, but the genuine believer cannot continue on in a state of ongoing unrepentant sin.
One thing the Bible never does is give bare moralism—do good and maybe one day you’ll be good enough. Rather, the Word of God comes and says this: Because you are righteous, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, because you’ve been made new, everything has changed!
No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. (1 John 3:9)
One reason why people don’t go on making a habitual practice of sin is first because “God’s seed remains in them.” The Christian doesn’t go on sinning because an unstoppable seed of righteousness has been so firmly planted in them that the only reasonable outcome is to progressively, more and more, live in righteousness.
The seasons of your life may not yield the same amounts of spiritual fruit or different kinds, but there’s no going back to our former unregenerated state.
Article 24 of the Belgic Confession states:
Therefore it is impossible that this holy faith can be unfruitful in man: for we do not speak of a vain faith, but of such a faith, which is called in Scripture, a faith that works by love, which excites man to the practice of those works, which God has commanded in his Word.
I was just visiting Seattle, and one of the things you notice when you’re up there in the summer is that there are blackberries everywhere. And these blackberries are incredibly aggressive things. In the Pacific Northwest, they’re actually considered an invasive species. Once they take hold, you can’t stop these things from growing.
And in 1 John 3 the apostle is basically telling believers that they have the seed of “blackberry righteousness” planted inside of them. And once those seeds are planted, it’s impossible to unplant it. This seed is so powerful that it begins to take over and produce the fruit of righteousness. It is impossible for true faith not to yield the fruit of good works to God’s glory in our lives.
As new creations in Christ we have been adopted by God and are members of his family.
The other reason that John gives in verse 9 for why and how we do good deeds is that we have been “born of God.” As new creations in Christ we have been adopted by God, brought into his family, given his identity, and legally been transferred from the spiritual family of Satan to the family of God, and this reality of being a child of God is seen more and more as we mortify the deeds of the flesh (dying to the old self) and live unto God.
And so it's not that the Christian never sins. Rather, the Christian, when he does sin, says, “This isn’t me! This isn’t who I am!” In the moments of rage or lust, in the moments of a Christian’s impatience and unkindness, of anxiety or greed or hate, the Christian says, “This isn’t actually who I am.” So do Christians sin? Yes, of course. Do they even commit grievous sins sometimes? Sadly, yes. Don’t forget about what John said in 1 John 1:8:
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Christians, though, in true repentance turn away from their sin and turn toward God to walk once again in righteousness, not to save themselves but rather because they are “little children” of God—not children of the devil:
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:18)
God himself is at work in the lives of all his children, conforming them to the image of the Son:
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. (1 John 1:10)
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Rom. 8:29)
We will be like our Savior—this is our hope and our future.
My mother-in-law has a great little magnet on her refrigerator that says, “Sooner or later, we all quote our mothers.” It's that weird thing that happens as you age—even despite our efforts to do the opposite, we end up doing the things our parents did and looking like our parents, even down to bald spots!
And if you are a child of God, sooner or later, you will look like your Savior. That is incredibly hopeful news for the believer! It's also an encouragement to celebrate and affirm one another when we see the fruits of the Spirit being produced in our brothers and sisters, to remind them of the fact that God is at work, even when the growth occurs slowly.
One of the things that our righteousness can do is to accentuate the sin of others. Your good works are inevitably going to have the effect of exposing the sins of others. When you start saying no to the idols of our culture that everyone else is saying yes to, people are going to take note. When you start saying yes to things that everyone else in our culture is saying no to, people are going to take note. And some of them are not going to like you for it.
As we grow in holiness by the work of the Spirit in us, we should expect that there will be people who don’t like us for it:
Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. (1 John 3:13)
In the moments when this happens, don’t forget that you too were once lost in darkness. You too were at one point considered a child of the devil, bent on lawlessness, self-glory, and sin.
And what did Christ do for you and me who were his enemies? He loved us to the point of death. Christ came and laid his own life down in love for us when he had every reason to abandon us. And this is the call of every child of God: to follow our Savior all the way to the cross until we go to be with him in glory for all eternity.
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All of Grace by Charles Spurgeon
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