Text: 1 John 3:1-16
Focus: Sin
Function: To help people consider the need to grow in holiness.
Form: expository
Intro:
I have a good friend who is an old fashioned Nazarene minister and I hear him quote this principle of the Church of the Nazarene: Holiness unto the Lord.
He is different than my nephew and his wife, who are also Nazarene ministers.
Between their generations there are two different definitions of holiness.
If you ask the question, what is holiness, you will get several answers.
• One would say: “To be religious”
• Another would say: “to be like God”
• Another would say: “to practice the values of Jesus.”
• Another may say: “To abstain from sin.”
Sometimes the extremes in those definitions can get ridiculous, for example:
A pastor friend of mine told me they had a visitor a few weeks ago who made it clear they were leaving their former church. The pastor asked the woman why and she said, “They started serving donuts in Sunday school. Sunday school is about God, not donuts and if they are going to water down the Word of God by serving donuts, then I can have no place with that church.”
This took place while walking down the hall with the woman to the adult Sunday school class. The pastor said, well, I am not going to apologize for what you are about to see, but honestly, God doesn’t care about donuts, either way. Then the pastor opened the door to the room and you guessed it, there was a tray of coffee and donuts there.
The pastor then told the lady to go back to her church and work it out with her pastor.
We want to avoid the extremes because they cause us to lose sight of Jesus’ care for the world.
The extreme goes the other way to the preachers who do water down the faith and deny the fact that Jesus died for the sin of humanity. They preach that any lifestyle, any action is okay because there really is no such thing as sin.
Sometimes I get accused of that and I want people to know that isn’t what I believe at all.
That extreme denies Jesus Christ, His death and Resurrection, His sacrifice for us. And this passage certainly talks about it.
I just believe that God called the Church to be the place welcomes every sinner. Sinners like me. But I never deny the fact of sin.
So, this morning we are going to look at scripture about what holiness is.
(ASK) To you: What is holiness?
The fact is that the definition of holiness varies from person to person, from Church to church, from and from denomination to denomination.
We all believe we are right, but even my wife and I have different passions about holiness, different emphasis for the way we conduct our lives as followers of Christ Jesus.
It is not that we are confused, the differences are biblical, its right in our text: (SHOW): Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
It’s not confusion, but when he is talking about what it means to him to look like and be like God’s child he says: “what we are right now is not clear…”
This passage is about holiness, but the definition of that varies according to the movement of the Holy Spirit in different people.
Our holiness -the passion of scripture that draws us together makes us unique- makes us special, but not more so than others.
Of course, that thought -that it doesn’t make us special- is part of our brand of holiness. It is defined in humility. That is a holiness trait that we value.
But we can’t say: “Because we are humble, we are holy.” We would cease to be humble and holy.
But there are some common attributes of holiness that the whole Church experiences and I want us to look at them this morning.
The first thing I want us to see is that Holiness springs out of our nature.
By nature, we are Children of God. (SHOW) See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.
There’s this story of a fine woman with two rebellious daughters.
• Although she taught them to follow Jesus and be kind to others, they decided to go their own way.
• They both became bitter, nasty, unforgiving, selfish monsters.
• Then the woman fell ill and messages were sent to the two daughters.
• One came home, the other decided to wait until what she said: “The old crow passes.”
• The daughter who returned finally got to know the real inner beauty and wisdom of the mother.
• For the three months she spent with her until she died, the character of the mother rubbed off on her.
• When she died, the other daughter returned as well and people commented on the difference between the women.
• The daughter who had been with her mother, who had embraced her and learned from her wise ways, who repented and changed the direction of her life was kind, wise, gracious and loving.
• She acted like the child of the mother.
• The Children of God reflect God’s character.
(adapted from Alex Stevenson)
So the concept “Child of God” needs to be understood from scripture.
Because God is the Father of Adam and Eve, God is the Father of all of humanity.
In that sense, everyone is God’s child. Many times in scripture, that is what we see. It is an important concept, especially when we think of human rights and justice, when we answer the question: “who is my neighbor?”
(SHOW) Everyone is a “child of God through creation.”
But this passage is talking about something different. (SHOW) This passage is talking about those who are “Children of God by Salvation.”
Both of those women were daughters of the mother. But the daughter who took on the character, wisdom, faith and love of the mother was the one who was redeemed by the transforming love of the mother. She was the child of salvation.
The mother loves both daughters equally, but only one daughter loved the mother in return.
Which child are you?
Jesus came to set us free from sin. (SHOW) The one who strives to obey Him, who purifies his or her life is the one who is the child of salvation.
The one who cares nothing for the tremendous cost of Jesus sacrifice, who lives his or her life in sin without regard to the salvation purchased for them is merely the child of creation.
And He says that in this passage (SHOW): We know that He was revealed to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen Him or known Him.
Those who know Him do not want to sin. They don’t want to drive any more nails into His hands and feet.
There is unfortunate translation in most of the English versions of the Bible in this verse and in verse 8. He makes it sound like if you sin, once you are saved, then you are a child of the devil and you haven’t really been saved in the first place.
Some churches preach that true Christians cease from sinning. Sometimes the Bible is hard to understand, it isn’t a 1st grade primer.
It is a deep book of theology written by the breath of God Himself. And the New Testament was written originally in the Greek language and translated into English.
The Greeks had verb tense priorities that were much more important than the English language uses. They were much more colorful and meaningful and unless you study the ancient Greek, it is hard to explain.
That is sometimes why churches hire preachers, so that these people can make a lifetime work of studying the Bible in order to accurately preach its truth.
Sometimes the education can make a dull person boring, or a smart person arrogant, or so confused with knowledge that they forget the simplicity of its truth.
But in this case, I am glad I studied it. I read this verse, and verse 8, especially in the King James translation and read the words, “no one who is born of God sins” and I wonder if I am still lost –because I am not yet perfect.
But the Greek, very beautifully, and difficult to translate into English renders it more like this, “The one who practices sin…” or: “The one who doesn’t care about sin, or purity…” or: “The one whose conscience hasn’t changed as a result of the great grace God has given them is not the child of salvation.”
(SHOW) The Child of Salvation cares enough to try to stop sinning.
The Greek makes it clear, not that we never sin again, but that we have a desire, a passion to be different, to change, to repent, to be like Jesus and struggle against sin.
Maybe the definition of holiness in this passage would be, “Holiness is a personal choice to struggle against the temptations of sin.”
Sin is real. Sin is our enemy. Sin killed our Savior, and if we love Him, we will care about not sinning.
He says it in this passage: (SHOW): Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
• Sin is lawlessness.
Sin is living as if God doesn’t care about our actions, that God isn’t a God of justice who will punish evil and wickedness.
Back to those two extremes: the extreme of donuts in Sunday school, and its opposite: the extreme that no behavior is wrong or evil.
Josh McDowell, a great Christian apologist was telling a story about how he was giving a series of lectures on ethics from a Christian perspective at New York University.
• The environment at NYU was hostile to Christianity.
• The worse evil among the professors and students was for someone to be dogmatic and proclaim certain truths to be wrong.
• Earlier in the week, a young woman told how her grandparents survived the holocaust in Germany.
• The class was debating whether or not it was okay to describe certain people as evil.
• He asked the woman “was it wrong for Hitler to murder your ancestors?”
• She wanted to be politically correct, so she replied: “I have my truth, he had his truths. I cannot speak about his truths.”
• She was so caught up in this concept that she couldn’t bring herself to name the fact that evil had happened to her grandpa.
• “Sin is lawlessness” is born from the concept that there is no such thing as sin.
• That kind of lawlessness denies the fact that Jesus died for us, to save us from sin.
Again, a faith based on that is a faith from which you should run away!
The hostility toward Josh McDowell is explained in this passage (SHOW): The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now;
CONCL:
(SHOW) We have the privilege of showing Jesus to the world around us.
Don’t look at the Jesus of culture, but the Historical Jesus.
The historical Jesus avoided the religious extremes on both sides.
When the extreme religious right attacked Him, or more importantly, one of God’s precious offspring –Jesus stood up to their religious arrogance and condemned them.
When the extreme religious left attacked Him and denied the very concept of heaven, hell, eternal life, salvation, the Supernatural, angel, demons, the devil and even God Himself, Jesus made fools of their obvious denial of apparent spiritual truth.
We are not these people who are so obsessed with religion that we forget to show the love and mercy of Jesus Christ to the world.
At the same time, we aren’t that group that denies the fact that Jesus came to set us free from sin and death.
We aren’t middle of the road believers, no. We are sinners saved by grace looking to please Him by serving Him and each other.
We want to focus on that common denominator about holiness that affects every child of God: We are striving to be like Christ.
So, here is the question:
(SHOW) Has Jesus changed your life so that you want to show Him to the world?
Are you a child of salvation, or a child of creation? I invite you to Him.
