6No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. 7Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; 8the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 9No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
After reading this passage, we could easily fall into depression every time we sin. Some theologians deal with this by asserting that we can and need to attain sinless perfection before Christ’s return. However, John also wrote:
If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us . . . If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:8, 10)
The paradox is that if we sin, we are not abiding in Christ, do not know Him, are not righteous, are of the devil, and cannot possibly be born of God. Yet, if we say we have no sin in our lives, we are lying. Where then do we turn? Paul struggled with this issue as he recounted in Romans 7:14–24, so this dilemma is not unique to John’s writings. On the surface, there would be no hope for all professing Christians who look honestly into their life, behavior, and attitudes.
Taking the Word of God as inspired and without contradiction, we resolve this paradox by recognizing that John is here using the present progressive sense of the verb “sin.” He is speaking of those who practice sin without reservation; for them, there is no external behavior change to give evidence of an internal change. Their claim to know Christ is vacuous. While it is true that only a liar will say he doesn’t sin, a genuine, born-again Christian does not make a practice of sin without conscience; that would be entirely against the new nature that comes with being in Christ and knowing Him.
John is building on what he wrote earlier:
Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. (1 John 3:2, emphasis mine)
Then we will become sinlessly perfect. We are now born again and freed from the consequence of sin, but in practical terms, we are not yet free of sinning. We strive for what will be true when we see Jesus in His righteousness. Only true believers have this hope because we abide in Him and He in us.
PRAYER: Lord, I praise You that I already am what I am not yet to be—like Christ.
0 Comments