[Note: This is Part A of the sermon on 1 John 3:9, delivered 6 February 1983, Montreal. The series is titled "Regeneration and Renewal." Part B continues with a deeper exposition of what abiding means in John 15.]
Today we look into this matter of renewal, addressing particularly the question of post-regenerative sins. To put it in simple language: why do Christians who appear to have been born anew still sin? You may see someone baptized, and you have no reason to doubt that they have been born again — yet you observe certain imperfections in them. Or you may ask of yourself: if I am born anew, why do I still do things that are clearly not pleasing to the Lord? I would like to look at this question particularly in the light of 1 John 3:9, which will be our passage today.
1 John 3:9 reads: "No one born of God commits sin, for God's nature abides in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God." We touched on this passage briefly in an earlier message without expounding it in detail, and it is time to return to it. Because any incorrect exposition of this verse could lead us onto the rocks. I must say at the beginning that I have problems with John Wesley's exposition on this passage and his perception of holiness — it is evident that he seems to be quite confused when it comes to the exposition of this verse. This verse may appear prima facie to mean eradication of sin: if you are born of God, because God's nature is now in you, you simply cannot sin. This is the basis for what is technically called an eradicationist theology — sinful nature has been eradicated and replaced by the divine nature, so that you cannot sin.
To answer this question we must first go back a step and examine two extreme views. The majority of Christians today hold to a purely judicial doctrine of salvation: Christ died for us, we are thereby legally acquitted of our sins, and justification consists entirely in this legal transaction. In this view, nothing much has actually happened in us — we have simply believed in Jesus, and the judicial process has come into force whereby we are forgiven. As for the person themselves, they are still the sinner they were before, and hopefully slowly they will become a little better. Holiness in this view is desirable but not essential — it makes no difference to the judicial matter of justification. On the other extreme is the eradicationist view, which says: if you are born of God, you literally cannot sin.
Now there is no doubt whatsoever that salvation in the scriptures has a legal aspect — it is quite true and quite correct. Justification does have a sense in which you are declared forgiven. The problem only begins when we stop there. When we say justification is only legal, and nothing much has actually changed in us, we run into serious trouble. John Wesley was right in seeing this: a church that holds to purely legal justification is a church that will end up with nothing but hypocrisy, because there is no genuine holiness and no power in the life of the church. They depend purely on a legal transaction and then go on living as before, accumulating sins while Jesus pays the debt. If this were the whole truth, the church can never be the light of the world.
Let me illustrate the seriousness of this with an analogy. Suppose you are a drug addict, arrested and fined an enormous sum. Someone very kindly pays your fine so that you are freed from the legal penalty. Wonderful — that is the judicial part of it. But where does that salvation leave you if you come out of court acquitted but still a drug addict? You cannot help going back to the drug. The addiction is still there. Has your friend really done you a great service? Would you perhaps not be better off in jail, where it might be harder to get drugs? The point: simply to be forgiven of sin doesn't solve the real problem. It is wonderful that guilt has been removed, but if Jesus has not broken the power of sin in me, what kind of Savior is he? Until Jesus breaks the power of sin in me, he can forever pay the debt of sin, because I will never be free from it. This kind of Christianity is frankly not worth living. I am condemned to a life of misery, forever grieving the one I love.
Some of you have experienced exactly this kind of defeated Christian life, brought up on a doctrine of salvation that is purely judicial. You tried to live the Christian life and couldn't. You failed again and again in simple matters of personal relationship. Unless salvation breaks the power of sin in my life, I have no use for it — any more than a drug addict has use for a forgiveness that does not remove the addiction.
The scriptural teaching, as John Wesley rightly saw, is salvation from the guilt and the power of sin. The doctrine is not one of eradication but of victory. When the law of life by the Holy Spirit becomes operational in us, we can overcome the law of sin and death in us — that is what all of Romans 8 is about. And when we have this power, when we are born again, we will find that we do overcome. And yet from time to time we may still fail. Why? Because of the danger of remaining in spiritual childhood.
When you were baptized and entered into newness of life, you became a child — literally an infant in the new life. As I warned in earlier messages, spiritual infancy is a dangerous stage. Three things characterize it. First is ignorance: young Christians are naive, uninformed about vital spiritual principles, and therefore may commit sins unwittingly. Paul asks the Corinthians six times in one chapter "Do you not know?" — pointing out vital principles they should have known. The reason for the lay training is precisely to fill that ignorance, because if you understand these principles and apply them, they become principles of power.
Second is the non-renewal of our thinking. In the old life, we thought constantly of ourselves — my studies, my future, my profession, my family. This habit of mind is one of the causes of sin in the new life. When I first came out of China and arrived in Hong Kong, I still addressed everyone as "Tongzhi" — comrade — because it was so much a habit. The bus conductor looked at me very strangely. In the same way, when we come into the new life, we take many old habits with us. Paul deals with this at length in Ephesians 4:23 and in Colossians 3:1-17.
Third, in spiritual infancy we have not yet learned to abide in Christ — to live moment by moment with him. We abide sometimes, not other times, so we have good times spiritually and bad times, up and down, now better, now worse. This brings us back to our text. The key to understanding 1 John 3:9 lies in verse 6: "No one who abides in him sins. No one who sins has either seen him or known him." We do not sin because we abide in him. And so long as we abide in him, we cannot sin.
The word abide — meno in Greek — occurs 40 times in the Gospel of John and 24 times in this one short letter of 1 John. More than in all of Paul's letters combined. When John says that those born of God do not sin, he does not mean that sinful nature has been eradicated. He means that because God's nature, God's seed, is abiding in us — as long as his Spirit is fully in control of our lives — we cannot sin. And this state is only possible if we on our part abide in him. To live free from sin means one thing: to abide in him. If we abide in constant and close fellowship with him, in that state we cannot sin. We will sin if we do not abide in him. But if we abide in him, his power overwhelms every sinful tendency of the flesh and every force of the evil one.
That is why John writes as he does. I am writing this to you so that you don't sin — by abiding in him. That's why he repeats the word 24 times in this letter. If you, little children, abide in him, you will not sin. Indeed, you cannot sin. Because his power in you will simply overwhelm the sinful tendencies of the flesh. That is why the young men overcome: they are victorious over the devil, they are triumphant at all times — they are strong by the power of God that is within them. May this be our experience, each one of us — to know the glory of the Christian life, not just a forgiveness in a judicial sense from sin, but in abiding in Christ, to live victoriously so that his glory may be manifested in us and in the church as a whole. Let us be quiet before God. Amen.
[Continues in Part B]
# Are We Sinless After Regeneration? (Part B) — John 15:1-7; Vine and Branches; Internal vs. External Connection; Abiding as Vital Relationship; God's Word Alive; Holy Spirit as Guide; Two-Way Communication
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on 1 John 3:9, delivered 6 February 1983, Montreal. The series is titled "Regeneration and Renewal." Continues directly from Part A.]
We continue in our series on regeneration and renewal. Last time we looked at 1 John 3:9 — "No one born of God commits sin, for God's nature abides in him and he cannot sin, because he is born of God" — and we saw that this does not mean the eradication of sin from our nature, nor are we to dilute the significance of these words into merely "we do not usually sin." What we saw then is that this verse must be understood in the light of verse 6: "No one who abides in him sins." We do not sin because we abide in him. So long as we abide in him, we do not sin. The key to understanding 1 John 3:9 in practice is simply the matter of abiding. And this is what we will turn our attention to today: what does it mean to abide in him?
Since it is those who abide in him who do not sin, it is vital for us to understand the meaning of abiding. And so we will turn to John chapter 15, the well-known passage — well-known in the sense that we may have read it many times, but perhaps not so well-known when it comes to its inner meaning. Let us read verses 1 to 7: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you."
There is a challenge: if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will and it shall be done. If the Lord is not real, you can ask what you will and nothing will happen. But if you fulfill this condition — if you abide in him and he abides in you — your whole thinking runs along a spiritual course. You are free from the power of the flesh. And of course then you don't ask for houses and cars and radios and all this kind of rubbish. What you do is look for things which are enduring and eternal. I have big dreams, and I shall see them fulfilled.
Now, what does abiding mean? This is the crucial question. When we look to commentaries for help, we are greatly disappointed — I say this having done it myself. Working through the scriptural teaching on abiding, I turned to some commentaries and looked in vain for something substantial. One old dictionary defines abiding as "steadfast continuance" — that is, faithfulness to one's commitment. Now that definition is acceptable, but not deep enough. And here is why.
Consider the relationship of a branch to a vine. There are two levels of relationship: an outer relationship and an inner relationship. The branch is evidently attached to the stem — that is the outer relationship. But the inner relationship is the life sap of the vine flowing into the branch. Simply being attached is not going to result in fruit bearing. It is the inner life of the vine flowing into the branch that is the crucial point.
To illustrate with agricultural practice: you can graft a branch onto a stem. You make a cut into the stem and insert the branch — this is what happens in vine growing, and it is mentioned in Romans 11:17. But the critical question is whether the graft has taken. The branch may be externally attached and yet not drawing life from the stem. We speak similarly of skin grafts and heart transplants — sometimes the body accepts the graft, sometimes it rejects it. And even if the graft has taken, the branch could become diseased and slowly die. The external connection does not automatically mean there is an internal connection.
Applied to the Christian life: you may have been baptized, you may have made a profession of faith, you may have done the outward things that associate you with the body of Christ. An outward connection has definitely been established. The question still remains: is there an internal connection? Is the life of Christ now flowing into your being? External connection does not prove internal connection. That is the point we are getting to. Where there is an internal connection, there must be an external connection — but though there can be an external connection, there does not necessarily have to be an internal one. The internal is more important, in many ways, than the external.
So "steadfast continuance" can be understood both externally and internally. You can be outwardly faithful — coming to church every Sunday without fail — and yet inwardly not there. Like a married couple: outwardly faithful, neither running around elsewhere, but inwardly the communication that makes marriage alive is not there. The external connection is definitely present, but the inner connection is weak or dying. And that is not what the Lord means by abiding.
Abiding then means living — not in a geographical location, but in a vital relationship to and with Christ. Not just steadfast continuance in the external sense, but the flowing of Christ's life into our being. In verse 7, the Lord speaks of "my words abiding in you." This word of Jesus is something living. John 6:63: "My words, they are spirit and they are life." The words of Jesus are not like a human book that can be exhausted in one reading. I recently bought a theological book by a distinguished North American scholar who had studied in Germany, England, and the States. One reading was enough to drain it. But the scriptures — I have read John 15 since I was a young Christian, and every time I come to it, new depths of meaning come forth. You cannot do the same with the Bible as you do with an ordinary writing. This is why the Lord's words must abide in us: they are alive and inexhaustible.
So in this internal communication, how does God speak to us? John 14:26: "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." While you are praying, the Holy Spirit is now communicating to you and bringing his word vitally to your mind. Everything you need to know for your daily Christian life, he has already told you — but you can't remember what you never knew, so it is important to have studied the word. And then the Holy Spirit brings it to your remembrance. And "remembrance" here in John's usage doesn't just mean refreshing your memory — looking at how the word is used in John 2:17, 2:22, 12:16, 15:20 and 16:4, it means that what you didn't see as to its meaning before now suddenly comes alive to you in your present situation.
John 16:13: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come." A guide in a museum takes you step by step and explains what everything means. Before, you could walk through and see nothing. But when the guide shows you, suddenly the whole place is alive with meaning. That is what "remember" means — what you didn't understand before now becomes meaningful to you. That second stage is for those who have become accustomed to hearing his truth, to being led by the Spirit. The Lord will then even speak about things not recorded in scripture — as with Agabus, who knew through the Holy Spirit that a famine was coming; as with the Apostle Paul, comforted by the Lord in prison; or as the Lord did to me this very morning: I woke and the Lord was communicating with me, warning me that our time generally in the world is drawing rapidly to a close. The words "wars and rumors of wars" were before my eyes in a very vivid way. The warning to me was very much like that given to Agabus — press on, your time is getting short; these peaceful circumstances we are enjoying right now are not going to last all that much longer.
So then, let us learn to abide. First and foremost, let the Holy Spirit bring to your mind what the Lord Jesus has said that is relevant to your present circumstances. Then in due time you will become accustomed to hearing him speak on other matters. And those who abide in him do not sin. So long as you abide in him, you do not sin. The moment you stop abiding, you may well be into sin and deep into it too. Abide in him — communicate with him in this internal relationship, moment by moment — and you will find that you have neither the mind nor the inclination to sin. You cannot sin as you abide in him. His power is constantly flowing into you and bringing forth much fruit. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.