Children of God

What we inherit from our parents…

We have a family lineage, and family name, and we live according to that lineage because that’s our new DNA.

The righteous mimic their Father.

God is THE Righteous One. As His people, we are called to remain in Him and mimic Him, to represent Him in the world. This is our family lineage. This is the price of the family name.

Chapter 2:28-29

It starts, as John has mentioned already, with abiding in Christ. Remaining in Christ is a discipline. Our natural man wants to return to the old self. John exhorts believers to abide in Him. While the walk of faith begins with the initial confession of Christ, it doesn’t end there. The Christian life is a marathon of consistently pursuing Christ.

The innocent don’t fear the judge, but the guilty fear the judge and bear shame.

Per volume, the word abide appears more frequently in 1 John than anywhere else in the NT, and over half of the occurences of meno happen in either John’s gospel or 1 John. It is a key idea in John’s ethic — abide in Christ. Some ideas from Sinclair Ferguson on abiding:

It isn’t some mystical and undefinable experience.

It is dependent upon God’s grace because abiding is birthed out of the fellowship with God that salvation brings.

Obedience is key to abiding in Christ and involves a response to His truth.

We should allow God’s Word to “fill our minds, direct our wills, and transform our affections.” So, our relationship with Christ is intimately connected with what we do with our Bibles. (Here, though, I’m tempted to pause and say what about those who had no copy of the Scriptures, no ability to read, etc.?)

It involves resting in the declared love of Christ, returning frequently to the cross to remind ourselves of the gospel.

Finally, we must submit to the pruning shears of God’s love as He cuts away all that is not of Him and every part that does not resemble Christ.

Verse 29

Righteousness is evidence of spiritual birth, rebirth (see John 3).

Beware of interpreting this verse in this context alone, i.e., anyone who does anything righteous must be born of God. Isolated, this verse would surely seem to indicate this to be the case. But, the whole counsel of Scripture would reveal that righteousness is an issue deeper than mere external actions, and that even the motivation of righteousness is weighed in determining the validity of one’s righteousness. The right thing done for the wrong reason still isn’t righteous, because it isn’t doing what’s right in relationship to God. Second, if one is not careful to consider the whole counsel of Scripture, you may interpret this as righteousness earning salvation. This is clearly not what Scripture teaches. Rather, righteousness is the result of being born of God. Ephesians 2 is quite instructive here; we were dead in sin, but God made us alive by grace through faith in Christ that we as His workmanship might walk in the good deeds He’s prepared for us.

Chapter 3 verse 1a

God’s extravagant love for us is seen by that fact that we are called children of God. Truly this should cause us to marvel that we, as unrighteous sinners, could be children of the righteous God. How are we called children of God? It is by God’s grace — we are born of Him (see 2:29). Just a child is born of no doing or their own, so it is God’s grace that brings us from death to life. Now, we are His, complete with family blessings/inheritances/etc. The fact that we are God’s children truly is remarkable, especially in light of cultural considerations surrounding fathers in the Greco-Roman world. They held the power of life and death over children, able to determine whether a child was wanted or to be discarded. Often, they were not affectionate or even equitable. In light of this, that God would make us His own is all the more astounding.

Verse 2

We are our Father’s children, but everything that entails has not yet been unveiled. What we do know is that when He appears we shall be like Him. Obviously this isn’t in every regard. We will not be omniscient or omnipotent or omnipresent. We won’t rival or be like God in His divinity. But, we will live eternally with renewed perfection and holiness, free from sin and perfectly righteous.

Verse 3

The idea of purity and righteousness plays big in these verses and sheds light on being like Him in the previous verse. Realizing the absolute purity of God has a cleansing effect on us as well. The farther from God we are, the less we feel the need to rid ourselves of unrighteousness. We tend to see sin in grand terms rather than specific terms. However, the closer we get to the purity of God, the more we see our specific transgressions and the more we strive for purity, just as He is pure.

Skipping ahead, and we’ll circle back to some of these verses, don’t worry, but verse 5-6a.

Two things this passage affirms: 1.) that Christ appeared to take away (eliminate and take up or away, removing forever from sight) sins, and 2.) in Him there is no sin. It then seems rather clear that God’s aim for His people is that they’d be righteous as He is righteous, that they’d walk in the light as He is in the light.

The idea of taking away sins meshes well with the earlier statement in 2:2 — He is the atoning sacrifice/propitiation/expiation of our sins. It should not be read in light of experienced perfection, but declared perfection. Remember that Christ is our once-for-all sacrifice, sufficient for each and every sin, past, present and future.

Also, read in light of what is to come (v.2), remember that Christ will one day abolish sin altogether. While the believer is free from the penalty of sin (2:2), he is in the process of being set from from the power of sin (3:3) while anticipating the day when he is freed from the presence of sin (3:2, 5).

It’s not often that biblical translators capture the full force of a verb, especially in the present tense. Remember that the present tense communicates the idea of the current state. Both abides and sinning appear in the present tense. Abide is a participle, so “no one abiding (present, habitual state) in Him (lives in a state of) sin (or keeps on sinning).” Again, John in working in black and white terms. Picture abiding in Christ and continuing in sin as two houses. Where do we make our bed at night? Of course, all pictures break down at some point, but the idea is there. Either we sleep at one house, eat at one house, live with our family in one house, etc., or we live at the other. We do not cohabitate.

Verse 7

The true believer lives according to his family’s namesake. To reword and borrow from Forrest Gump, “Righteous is as righteous does.” John’s argument is that a person who practices (poion/poieo - practice or do, again in the present tense) righteousness does so from a place of righteousness. That is, because the genuine believer has been made positionally righteous, he lives that out in his daily life.

Righteousness spawns from The Father who has made us children of God (3:1). Hence, the “true believer lives according to his family’s namesake.”

Verse 9

Let’s circle back to Ephesians 2…we mentioned it earlier. The logic of Paul’s argument in Ephesians 2, that we were once dead, only able to perform deeds of death. But, when God by grace makes us alive, we are called to walk in deeds of life, good works that He prepared beforehand for us to do. The new nature, quickened by the Spirit (who guides us in to all truth, bringing to mind the teachings of Christ) and informed by the Word (written on the heart through the New Covenant), cannot reside in the old patterns of life.

The bottom line is that those who are genuinely born of God will be in the process of sanctification, becoming in practice what they’ve been declared to be positionally (see v.3).

The wicked mimic their king.

Verse 4

To sin is to practice lawlessness. John says, “Sin is lawlessness.” Sin lives with no restraint, only indulging whatever desire of the flesh that presents itself.

Lawlessness casts off all restraints, disregarding the guidance of God and His definition of what is right and good. Living outside of God’s definition of good means that one also rejects the call to holiness. Further, this person is not being purified. This spirit of rebellion against God, this open embrace of sin, this insistence that one can belong to God, walk in the light, and yet live in the dark, has been a major theme for John’s letter so far. Can one live in the dark and have fellowship with the light? Can one belong to God and make a practice of sinning? This seems to be a major point of contention for John and his opponents. Is grace a license to live however we want? Must the Christian be concerned with practical holiness and obedience to Christ? No, grace is not permission to live however we want, and yes, we are accountable to live holy lives.

Some denominations, and the SBC has been guilty of this, probably due to our true emphasis on eternal security and our commitment to the great commission (which has placed an undue emphasis on a decision rather than a commitment), are viewed as having no concern for practical righteousness, for living a godly life.

Verse 6b

John takes it a step farther, noting that the person who lives in sin has neither seen Him or known Him. If being known by Him necessarily means the law of God is written on our hearts, then failing to live according to that truth proves that a person does not have a relationship with Jesus.

Remember that John is not ignorant of the fact that believers still sin. This is not what John is addressing. Confession is a beautiful gift God has given the believers, a gift of restoration when the relationship with Christ is injured. John’s concern here is with those that cast aside any call to living within God’s standards of what is right and true.

Verse 8

Verse 8 is the negative statement of verse 5. Whereas Christ appeared to take away sin as the one in whom there is no sin, the devil has been a sinner from the beginning.

Jesus’ purpose in the incarnation is stated: to destroy the works of the devil. It’s not wrong to associate this with Genesis 3, the serpent tempting man (“from the beginning”), and the promise to destroy the serpent. The world was cast into disarray and brokenness when sin entered the world, but God is reconciling “to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.” This restoration will be the final undoing of all that the enemy has done.

Verse 10

John gives a test once again. Remember with this test that John has already affirmed the believer’s position in Christ. Here, the test should reassure the people of their standing in Christ while simultaneously confirming what John has been stating about those who have gone out from them (v.19). The true barometer for belief is action.

Again, notice that there is no middle ground. A person simply cannot be on the fence about Christ. Either they are surrendered and committed to Christ or not.

Here, John adds a definition of righteousness: love for your brother. While the ESV (and many other translations) choose to translate kai as nor, 7/8 times in the NT it is given its primary translation “and.” This seems to fit John’s argument better. This command is chief, fully supported by the Old and New Testaments. Jesus unsolicitedly named it the second greatest command, and James called it the royal law (the law that should govern the kingdom of God). Joh will go on to question how someone can claim to love God, whom they cannot see, and not love their brother, whom they can see.

Again, the marriage relationship seems instructive here. Righteousness, in simplest terms, is doing what’s right in a relationship. Once you get married, you do what is right in relationship to your spouse. Are you a perfect spouse? No, but you strive to honor the relationship and live according to this commitment.

Experience

When’s the last time you paused to marvel at your new birth, your new family name, your new DNA, your spiritual inheritance? We ARE God’s children, we have been made and are becoming and will be like Him.

This is your identity. He’s declared you right. Rejoice!

Don’t forget the fight. It’s a struggle, I get it…but keep fighting.

This is who you will become, so don’t loose heart. We can get into places where it’s like, “What’s the point?” The point is we win, we will be changed, we are children of God. So you know what, on the days you’re tempted to loose heart…rest in what God has done.