Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Somewhere along the line I heard the old witticism (you’ve probably heard it too) about a lawyer that they’ve been “practicing law” for twenty years, and hopefully one day will start getting it right (or something like that, you can use the same pun on doctors who “practice” medicine…) For some reason we refer to the career of doctors or lawyers as a “practice”—the years of their training and conducting their expertise in their field.

You may have noticed that the word “practice” comes up a lot in the verses of Scripture I just read for us:

1 John 3:4 (ESV)

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness...

1 John 3:7 (ESV)

...Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous...

1 John 3:8 (ESV)

Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil...

1 John 3:9 (ESV)

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning...

1 John 3:10 (ESV)

...whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God...

And I think that the way John is using the word practice here (it’s the Greek word for doing) is meant to get across the same kind of sustained, regular conduct that is meant by referring to a doctor’s practice of medicine.

And I think we can state the main idea of these verses this way:

You cannot be a “PRACTICING Christian” if you are still PRACTICING your sin

You may have heard people talk about their spiritual condition that way: “Oh, I’m Catholic, but I’m not a practicing Catholic...” What they mean by that is that they have some affiliation with the Catholic Church, but the duties and obligations and spiritual pursuits of being a Catholic are not a part of their lives.

There is no sustained, regular reality of their Catholicism woven through their daily experience.

I think that’s a good example of what John means when he writes about those who practice righteousness or practice sin.

And his point here is that if your daily experience, your regular conduct is one of sinful behavior, rejection of God’s demands for holiness, pursuing your own desires and wants and turning your back on Him, then you are a “practicing sinner”.

And if you are a “practicing sinner”, you are not a Christian.

The reason John says that is because of what we read in verse 5:

1 John 3:5 (ESV)

You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

Last time we saw that the blessings of the Christian life come from abiding in Jesus—here John points out that you cannot be “abiding in Him” if you are a “practicing sinner”, because in Him there is no sin!

The life of a Christian is totally incompatible with a life of a “practicing sinner”, because

I. Christ came to DELIVER you from your SIN (1 John 3:4-6)

John says that a Christian—one who “abides in Christ”—cannot “make a practice of sinning” because “sin is lawlessness” (v.

4)

1 John 3:4 (ESV)

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.

We are accustomed in our day and age to talk about sin (if we talk about it at all) in terms of “making a mistake” or “poor choices” or “failure to live in a way that maximizes human flourishing” (I didn’t make that one up!)

But John doesn’t let us get away with this sort of euphemistic language when it comes to sin—sin is not just “making bad choices”; sin is breaking God’s laws.

God has commanded us to obey Him, to do the things He has revealed in the Bible and not do the things He prohibits.

And when we do the things He prohibits anyway, we are lawbreakers, we are outlaws.

Sin is breaking God’s laws—sin is an infinite offense against the utterly holy, infinitely righteous and powerful Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, and it is the single most deadly thing in the world because there is enough lawlessness in even the “smallest” sin to damn a sinner to Hell for all eternity.

And this is why the Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news for sinners, isn’t it?

Because

He APPEARED and CONQUERED sin (3:5; cp.

John 1:29)

1 John 3:5 (ESV)

You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

The Good News is that Jesus Christ, the only Sinless One came and took away the sins of everyone who calls on Him in faith!

It is impossible for a “practicing sinner” to stop practicing sin on his own: eventually, a sinner will always succumb to the temptation to sin.

But Jesus Christ is the opposite—it is impossible for Him to sin!

Where we are outlaws, continually practicing sin, He is the sinless one, who never even once sinned in even the slightest way at all.

As the writer of Hebrews puts it, because Jesus could not sin,

Hebrews 7:25–26 (ESV)

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.

Jesus appeared and conquered sin by His death on the Cross as a perfect substitute for hopeless outlaw sinners like you and me.

John points this out here in verse 5 because he wants us to see that there is no way a “practicing sinner” can be abiding in Christ, the Sinless One who came to take away sin, because

We ABIDE with Christ and do not LIVE in sin (1 John 3:6)

Look at verse 6:

1 John 3:6 (ESV)

No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.

There is no sin in Christ—in fact, He came into the world to take away sin.

Therefore, no one who continually and unrepentantly sins is living in Him.

And if you are not living in Him, then you are not a Christian.

If you are abiding in Him, then you will not be constantly, actively, continually pursuing the life of an outlaw, breaking and ignoring God’s laws.

If you are abiding in Him, you have a power that you did not have before; you have the power to say no to sin that you never had before—before you came to Christ, you might be able to resist sin for a while, but eventually you would always give in.

Because, deep down in your outlaw heart, you wanted that sin!

It was attractive to you, you wanted that sin more than you wanted anything to do with God, and you didn’t care what God thought of your behavior.

But now that you abide in Christ, you love Him more than you love that sin, you want Him more than you want whatever that sin promises you, you are able to turn away from that lawlessness and embrace Christ instead.

Jesus appeared in order to take away the penalty of sin from you, and He took away the power of sin to enslave you!

This is why John says that you cannot be a “practicing Christian” if you are still practicing the lawlessness of sin.

Jesus appeared in order to take away sin, and in verses 7-8 we read that

II.

He came to DESTROY the works of the DEVIL (1 John 3:7-8)

1 John 3:7–8 (ESV)

Little children, let no one deceive you.

Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.

Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Not only is sin lawlessness, as he writes in verse 4, John goes further here to say that sin is Satanic— whoever makes a practice of sinning is not only an outlaw, but is also diabolical.

The silly old bumper sticker “The devil made me do it” might try to play this for laughs, but the truth is that living a life of constant, unrepentant breaking of God’s laws, not caring (or even scorning) the warnings of God’s punishment for sin is the work of Satan himself in your life.

John writes about Satan’s work in terms of deception—when he says “Let no one deceive you, whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil”, he is pointing out something that Jesus said in John 8—that the Devil has always been a liar.

And He says that Jesus came and

Exposed the Devil’s DECEPTION so that we may pursue RIGHTEOUSNESS (v.

7; cp.

John 8:44)

A few verses down from our Scripture reading in John 8 earlier, we read that Jesus said that the Devil

John 8:44 (ESV)

...was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Satan’s lies about sin usually fall into two broad categories—first, he uses the lie

--that sin is NO BIG DEAL

He used that deception against our First Parents in the Garden of Eden, planting the seed of doubt in Eve’s mind: “Did God really say this was a sin?

I don’t think God even cares if you do this, it’s so insignificant compared to other sins!”

And his other tactic is the lie

--that sin is INEVITABLE

that resisting his temptation is pointless, that you may as well give up and give in because that temptation to sin won’t go away, and that you just have to make your peace with your anger or your lust or your bitterness or envy or gossip or faithless fearfulness because you will always have it with you, and since God has already forgiven it anyway it doesn’t matter whether you sin or not.

But Jesus Christ came to defeat that deception—He defeated the deception that sin is “no big deal” by His death on the Cross—sin is so serious that the only way to defeat it was for the sinless, perfect Son of God to be abandoned by God the Spirit and tortured to death under the wrath of God the Father!

And He defeated the deception that sin is inevitable by demonstrating just the opposite—that practicing righteousness is inevitable for those who abide in Him!

As one writer puts it,

“[Satan’s] deception is defeated by a righteous life that gives tangible, visible evidence that we have been born again through faith in Christ” Akin, D. L., Platt, D., & Merida, T. (2014).

Exalting Jesus in 1,2,3 John (Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary) [E-book].

Holman Reference.

loc.

1310

Jesus came to expose Satan’s lies so that we may pursue righteousness, and He

Exposed the Devil’s SINNING and DEFEATED him (v.