Purity and the Child of God
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1John 3:4-9.
I. Purity is Provided For the Child of God vs.4-5,8
I. Purity is Provided For the Child of God vs.4-5,8
a. The Standard Was Set v.4
a. The Standard Was Set v.4
“the law”
This is the standard that was set in the garden. You say we are no longer under the law. You are correct we are not under the law but we are still judged by the law.
1. God still requires the law to be obeyed.
1. God still requires the law to be obeyed.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
That is it in a nut shell.
The Law.
Honor God with everything you have.
How many in here honor God every day?
Then you and I have broken the Law of God.
James tells us in James 2:10
For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
That is how much emphasis God puts on the Law.
so then
2. The Law is the standard we are judged by
2. The Law is the standard we are judged by
The law is what tells us we are sinners and unable to satisfy God’s standards.
Rom.3:20
Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.
Paul is saying he did not know he was a sinner until the law told him he was.
Some people say this verse shows that we no longer have to keep it. they go as far has to put Rom. 6:14 with it.
For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
The point of these verses is not that we have no further obligation to keep the law, but that we have now a new incentive to keep it.
Lets put it in modern terms.
You can go out and break the laws of this land all you want and you may think that the law does not apply to you. but once you get caught, it does not matter what you think of the laws of the governing authority, they are still laws and you will be held accountable. The incentive for us to obey the laws of the land are no fines and or no jail time.
The same thing goes for Gods law. You wake up every day and give it no thought and continue in your sin thinking His law does not apply to you. But there is coming a day that you will have to stand before the Judge the Governing Authority, and you will be sentenced for your crimes and God only hands down the death penalty for breaking His Laws.
So regardless of what you or I think about His laws, they are right and just and perfect!
Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
and the thing is We have all disobeyed the laws of God.
3. The law forces us to acknowledge ourselves guilty before God.
3. The law forces us to acknowledge ourselves guilty before God.
Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
But with all that the law does, the most gracious purpose of the law, lies behind what Paul says in Gal. 3:24.
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
so The law teaches us three things
1. We ought to do it. 2. We havent done it. 3. We cant do it.
So our very helplessness drives us to Christ Who alone has fulfilled the law so that we may be justified by faith.
How ready we are, then to be brought unto Christ in whom we find that...
b. The Failure was Met vs.5,8
b. The Failure was Met vs.5,8
The failure of the human race, our failure was met and satisfied by Christ.
Christ became a man…was manifested in the flesh..
1. To Take Away Sin v.5
1. To Take Away Sin v.5
“manifested to take away, …and in him is no sin”
Long "before the foundation of the world", (I Peter 1:20)
before there was a world,
before there was a race,
before there was a sin,
GOD knew what would happen, and what would be the unhappy plite of man would be,
and in the Council Chamber of Deity a plan of salvation was drawn up to meet the situation that would arise.
And in process of time, Christ appeared as the Divine Executant of the Plan of Grace.
This was the prime cause of His being "manifested" among men.
Paul tells us in I Timothy 1:15 so clearly that,
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
You say you dont believe Paul, How about Christ Himself. Christ says in
For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
And how would he save that which was lost?
Verse 5 gives us the answer.
"To take away our sins" -
His precious Blood is the Sovereign Eraser of all our guilty stain.
The blood of the Old Testament sacrifices could not do it
For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
It could only cover them for a season
But there came a Divine Time for Rom.3:25
Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
God sent His son to take away the sins of all those that would call upon Him.
Hypothetical,
You have been tried and convicted of capital murder. Your punishment is death, but at your sentencing as the Judge is about to slam the gavel, One steps up in the courtroom and says, Judge I will take his punishment. The judge looks at you and says, there is someone that will take your punishment do you accept him as your replacement?
if you dont accept his offer, you will be punished.
So I ask those that are here this morning lost and without Christ, will you accept the offer that has been presented to you this morning. Will you accept Christ to be your propitiation?
Christ not only came to take away our sin, He came....
2. To Destroy Satan
2. To Destroy Satan
“manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil”
This verse can be looked at in three different ways,
the past, the present and the future.
In the Past: Christ bruised satan’s head at Calvary and he took captivity captive and took the keys to hell and to death.
In the Present: To be alive in Christ is to be dead to Satan Rom. 6:6
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
In the Future: Satan will be cast into the bottomless pit
Satan was conquered at Calvary and another blow is laid on him every time a sinner is saved by grace and every time a saint realizes they no longer have to live a defeated life and can live a life of purity because God as provided “Christ” for the believers purity. And when it is all said and done, Christ will once and for all destroy satan’s works and satan himself.
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
Next we see..
II. Purity is Produced in the Child of God
II. Purity is Produced in the Child of God
Let me go ahead and say this, our purity is just like our righteousness
it is nothing more then filty rags, but if we are a Child of God Purity can be produced in us..
a. Through our Residence
a. Through our Residence
“abideth in him”
Now I believe one can be saved by the grace of God and not abide in Christ. They can be a child of God, but not living in fellowship with Christ.
The first word sinneth is used differently then the second word.
The first word sinneth is a finite verb, dont worry I had to look it up to.
A finite verb is one whose form changes in order to match the form of the subject.
put it like this : When we abide in Christ i.e are in fellowship with God, we may sin but we realize our sin, we confess our sin and God forgives our sin and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
Now the second word sinneth is an attributive participle which acts like a pure adjective.
It tells us about an action that the noun is performing. So whosoever continues in sin, i.e keeps on sinning with no remorse, no conviction is one that as never seen him, neither knows him.
So I ask which one are you?
secondly His purity is produced in us..
b. Through His Righteousness
b. Through His Righteousness
“he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.”
Isaiah said, Isa.64:6
But we are all as an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; And we all do fade as a leaf; And our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
But John says we are righteous, who is right?
Both of them are.
We are completely unrighteous before God in and of ourselves
but because of the righteousness of Christ we are righteous in the sight of God.
Our Purity is produced only by and through Jesus Christ.
God only accepts what is pure and only the blood of Christ can make you pure.
Are you pure this morning?
And finally v9
III. Purity is Perfected in the Child of God
III. Purity is Perfected in the Child of God
Now I am by no means preaching sinless perfection. What I have been trying to convey to you this morning, is that a Child of God, a born again believer can live a pure life, but only if he stays in fellowship with God.
The first thing we see about verse nine is that..
a. It States a Fact
a. It States a Fact
“Whosoever is born of God...”
This describes every reader to whom the Epistle was written to:
birth is the beginning of life, new birth is the beginning of the new life.
How surprised Nicodemus was when our LORD said to him, "Ye must be born again".
That was understandable for a man in the gutter of sin; but he was not that sort - brought up in a godly home; early taught the Old Scriptures; growing to be an office-bearer in the church; and now the leading Bible expositor of his day - "a master of Israel."
Yet, in spite of all this, our LORD tells him that, to all intents and purposes, he had not begun - "ye must be born again".
It isn't only the bad people, but the good people as well, who "must": you "must".
Is this great, eternal fact a fact in your own personal experience?
Born again believers are not only Servants, Soldiers, and Subjects, but we are Sons.
The simplest explanation of how this comes about is, in John 1:12
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
When we, for ourselves personally, receive the LORD JESUS into our hearts and lives as our own Saviour and LORD, at that moment we are given this mysterious, lifechanging "power" of new birth.
How vividly some Christians can recall the day, and the circumstances, when it happened;
but how sadly others regret that they cannot put their finger on any precise moment.
I would like to think it was for the comfort of the latter that the closing words of John 1:12 were written.
"even to them that believe on His Name."
You don't personally know your physical birthday - you've been told, and you have taken it for truth;
date or no date, you know you are alive!
Even so, although you do not know the date of your new birth, you did and do "believe" - which John says means that you really are a child of GOD.
The blessed fact is your fact.
b. It Shows an Effect
b. It Shows an Effect
“doth not commit sin...”
Because we are born again we do not commit sin. Now wait in 1John 2:1
My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
So which is it do we sin or dont we sin?
John is in no way contradicting himself,
what he is telling us, by the use of his tenses,
is we will sin because we are living with two natures
and because of that when we sin we have an advocate with the father.
So in the eyes of God if we
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
then it is as if we have never sinned to begin with. Why?
Well..
c. It Suggests a Secret
c. It Suggests a Secret
“his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”
We will cover this in more detail in chapter 5: and verse 18; so for the moment we confine ourselves to what is said here.
"His seed" - that is, GOD's seed - "remaineth in him".
Note I Peter 1:23
Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
This new Seed, new Life, new Nature, abides in him, and therein lies our secret against sin.
You have two natures remaining within you.
For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
The "born of God" people are thus twonatured persons; and it is the new-nature, the new "I", of Galatians 2:20 that "cannot sin".
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
Do you recall that strange word of Paul in Romans 7:20
Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
When any sin shows it’s ugly head, it is the old nature, the flesh that does it;
the new nature, the new "I", "cannot sin".
Of course, this is given to us only as an explanation, not as an excuse
there is no reason why it should happen.
A rubber ball cannot sink - unless it is held down.
We must not let our old, sinful nature get us down!
So our Heavenly FATHER has given due provision for the purity of His sons and daughters, thus leaving us without excuse if we fall into unclean ways.
Conclusion
Conclusion
So, God holds His Law up as our standard knowing that we can not live up to that standard. so God sends us His Son to meet the standard for our failure. And now that we have been given a way to become children of God, He has provided a way for each one of us to live pure and holy lives.
and That way is Jesus Christ.
I ask you Have you ever believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God?
Have You ever called out on Him to save you?
If not then may today be the day of your salvation.
If you have believed but are not living a life of purity and holiness, God is wanting you and I to know today that we can and we should live pure and holy because we are Children of God.
As the pianist plays wont you come this morning.
If you have never been born again, come this morning and I or my wife will meet you at the foot of the cross and show you how you can join the family of God.
Wont you come this morning.
Children of God, we all could live a little more pure and holy, wont you come this morning and ask God to show you the areas of your life that you need to get right so you can live a life that is pleasing to Him.
Wont you come!!!