Untitled Sermon (33)

Imagine with me that you are in charge of a group of people…well, maybe we can even say that you’re a parent in charge of some little humans…now as any good parent, good leader, good teacher, etc. you want those in your charge to be “good”.

You want them to not sin. You want them to be pleasing to God. You want them to flourish. You wan them to make good choices and not silly ones. You don’t want them to rebel.

So how do you do it? What do you say to encourage them to not sin?

One option is fear. This is what Machiavelli taught…if you can’t have both, it’s better to be feared than loved. Because love is fickle. But being afraid of making the emperor mad and getting your head lopped off…well, that’s always present.

You want to make people “good”. Make them afraid.

Another option is shame. You can put in some societal pressure on this one. Look at all your friends, they aren’t doing this…what’s wrong with you…you don’t fit in…you don’t match up…we’re so disappointed in you. You’re bad. You’re giving us a bad name.

That’s a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is saying…I did something bad. Shame says…I am bad…there is something fundamentally wrong about me.

You want somebody to think twice before sinning…make them feel shame.

And guilt is really the other motivator. You make them feel bad about what they’ve done. Nobody likes to feel bad. So you just tell them what they did wrong this time and while you are at it bring up all the other things they’ve done wrong. Don’t I matter to you?

I’m not sure we can really have a relationship until you clean your act up. That’ll motivate them to behave....to not sin.

There’s a fourth option…and I think it’s the one that John employs. You’re going to hear him say in this text, “I’m writing these things so that you don’t sin...” That’s clearly his motivation…those he is discipling he wants them to be holy, pleasing to God…all the things we mentioned earlier…but how does he do it?

Listen in, see if you can spot it....

1 John 1:8–2:2 ESV

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Sermon Introduction

Guilt. Shame. Fear. All of those things are real. They are things every person, at least every person impacted by the fall, experiences. We see these things present in the Garden of Eden.

And in some ways…they are our right response to sin that we’ve committed. There is something very unhealthy when we don’t feel guilt, shame, or fear of God.

But are these the principle motivators that God uses in the new covenant? Is this what John is using here?

Let’s just think about this for a moment....what do you tend to do whenever you feel guilty, ashamed, or afraid? Hear those words and develop some mental pictures…think of someone who is experiencing any of these...look at their body posture. They are hiding aren’t they…they aren’t out in the open…they are curled up…attempting to get as small as they possibly can...

Do people become holy…in the way the Bible talks about holiness…when they are all shriveled up? Holiness isn’t about not doing the bad stuff…it’s about living life to the fullest as God intended.

Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Self-Control. Those aren’t shriveled up words. Those aren’t cowering in the corner…afraid to take a step…living with this big massive burden or dark shadow over you. No, these are words of power and honor and freedom. These words dance and run and sing.

But fear, shame, and guilt seem to be what we champion. Even as Christians. It seems to be our strategy. And we’ve experience so long that I think we might read those things into a text like this.

But look at John’s strategy…listen to what he’s saying in 1 John 2:1. I don’t want you to sin…but listen, you need to know that when you do…you have an advocate—Jesus Christ the righteous one—pleading for you.

Do you know what he’s saying through this whole thing. I want you to know that you’re going to be forgiven. I want you to know that when you come back home after your silly rebellion…you’re going to be met with open arms. The Father will run to you…just like in the story of the prodigal son. I want you to know that.

And THAT is what John is using to motivate to holiness.

In the 1500s the church had really been overcome with these ideas of fear, shame, and guilt. There was a young monk named Martin Luther who was so overcome with all of these that he would beat his body. He’d pray for hours per day. He’d fast. He’d go to confession about every 5 minutes...

Once asked about whether or not he loved God…he said, “Love God? Sometimes I hate him...” Luther’s view of God was one that evoked fear, guilt, and shame. Luther could never be enough for this searchingly holy God. Luther said this of his time:

I was a good monk, and I kept the rule of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery it was I. If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading, and other work.”

But he never found peace. Listen to this:

“Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, “As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!” Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience."

Luther rightly understood God’s holiness. He wasn’t going to be like those false teachers in verse 8. He wasn’t going to say “I have no sin” and thus deceive himself. Oh, no, Luther would acknowledge it.

And that is where some would take the path of the false teachers in John’s day. Martin, Martin, your problem is that you’re taking this all too seriously.

Calm down. You aren’t guilty, you aren’t that bad, you don’t need to feel this way…let’s reframe this. Sin isn’t the right word here. You—who you really are—no you aren’t sinful.

That’s what they were teaching. But the problem as John alludes to…we are only deceiving ourselves. We aren’t walking in the truth…Denying reality doesn’t actually soothe the conscience…it just sears it.

Now Luther would come to a verse like 1:9 and really emphasize the confession part…did he confess enough…was he serious enough…it was all based upon himself. In his mind righteousness was something he brought about…it was something he earned...

That might be where you are today. You have sin…you feel the weight and the burden of sin…maybe the guilt, shame, fear…those things are present. And you assume that if you just get the right formula…you’ll finally get clean.

Kind of like last week with Gus and the skunk. If I just use the right formula…the right concoction…the right spray at Wal-Mart, Lowe’s., etc. then we’ll get rid of the skunk smell.

And it’s true when we’re talking about skunks. But it isn’t true when we’re talking about cleansing from sin. Let’s look again at 1 John 1:9.

What John is doing is grounding our experience of forgiveness into the character of God.

He is faithful…He never fails. He never lets down. He never fails to respond consistently to our confession. He always applies His great and wonderful promises of grace and mercy to our humble confession. Always.

This is where we typically put an emphasis on this verse. We rightly note how God’s loving and merciful character leads to his action of forgiving us and cleansing us of unrighteousness. God is faithful to respond to your confession with His cleansing grace.

But John wants us to connect these actions to another aspect of God’s character; namely, He is just. This means that God is righteous in forgiving a penitent sinner. It is consistent with His character and it is the right thing to do. It is right for God to cleanse the one who asks for cleansing.

He will forgive you, and it’s right for him to do it.

He will cleanse you, and it’s right for him to do it.

Consider the implications of this, though. This means that it would be unjust for God to withhold forgiveness from you when your confess. It also means that the righteous character of God also works to remove the stain which accompanies that which we are confessing.

If you have confessed your sin, live as if it’s been cast into the ocean to be seen no more. If you have confessed your sin, don’t be surprised by the scrubbing that’s coming. God doesn’t just forgive he also cleanses. He undragons us.

And that is what Luther finally came to see. For him, it was through Romans 3:20 and really meditating on that verse. He found that righteousness wasn’t something he brought about…it was something that was done TO him.

To use 1 John 1:9 language…it was the action and work of Jesus to cleanse from all unrighteousness…to truly take off the stain of sin. This gave Luther a new found freedom. Listen to something he’d later say…it’s going to sound really confusing at first…but hang on…I think it’ll help us understand what is happening here in 1 John.

Luther writing to his friend Philip said this:

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong [or sin boldly], but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13), are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God’s glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.

Sin boldly?

What in the world does he mean by that? And friends, that was one of the knocks against Luther and others in the Protestant Reformation. You can’t tell people about grace like this…if you preach too much grace then it’s going to encourage people to be loose in their living.

But let’s look at the flow of thought here in 1 John and see how it squares up.

verse 8....say we have no sin. Denial doesn’t do anything. We’re just lying. And this is where Luther would say “God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners...”

You see what God is doing here in telling us to be honest about our sin…he’s not doing that because he is cruel. He’s not doing that because he just loves seeing us all cowering in front of Him, like he was the great and powerful Oz.

He’s doing that because it is freeing. It’s honest. We are sinners, this is true. And so in 1 John 1:9…if we confess…if we’re honest about our condition, our sins (notice the plural there)…the specific sins we’ve committed…if we bring them before Christ…not pretending, not playing a game, not distancing ourselves…but owning up to them…feeling the weight of them…he is faithful and just…and cleanses us.

v10 if we try to say that we aren’t sinners…when God declares that we are…well we’re making him out to be a liar. If we try to redefine sin. We’re saying that God isn’t true. And that’s why his word isn’t in us.

And then John turns to his disciples...”My little children...” Affectionate. Father to his children that he loves…heart aching for them…I’m writing this so that you don’t sin. I want you to live in the freedom of holiness, to not be tangled up in sin…but to have a life of blessing and flourishing…oh, that’s my heart for you...

And that’s where Luther comes in…but let’s be honest. If you do sin…oh, I hope you don’t…but if you do sin…be bold in it. Don’t hide it. Don’t minimize it.

And know this…you have an advocate with the Father…Jesus Christ the righteous…who pleads for us. Constantly.

And this is where another Luther story comes into play. I’ve certainly told it to you before…but it’s fitting here.

THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST.

And that’s what John is saying in 2:2. He is the propitation…the atoning sacrifice…the blood on the door post…the one who covers us from death…and not only for our sin but for the whole world…what does he mean by that? Does he mean that everybody is saved?

Complicated verse…but what he is saying here is that Jesus is positionally the Savior of all the world. There is no other name under heaven by which men might be saved.

There is no other place to take your sin. And…catch this…it’s a fountain that never runs dry, it’s a fountain that never fails to cleanse…and it never fails to give access…you won’t show up and hear...

“I can’t cleanse that.”

“I can’t forgive that…I won’t forgive that. Nope, go do this thing first…”

The only way you aren’t cleansed…is if you never show up…if you say, “I don’t need it.” Or if you foolishly think you’ve got something else to do the trick.