Jesus Takes Away our Sin
1 John 3v4-6
10th June 2022
We saw last time that:
1 John 3v4
Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.
We've all sinned. We've all broken God's law. But the next thing John tells us is:
Verse 5
But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins.
I really hope you know this. On the cross, Jesus paid the price for everything you've ever said, thought or done that was contrary to God's will, as described in the Holy Scriptures. If you've received His redeeming sacrifice by faith as paying for you, then you're regarded by God the Lawgiver as not guilty – justified, clean, holy in His sight. He's taken away your guilt and the penalty for your sin.
And God has done more than that. To all who believe and put their faith in His saving blood, He gives the Holy Spirit to work in us, to purify us, so we're saved not only from the guilt of our sin, and the resulting penalty for our sin, but also from the power of our sin. Bit by bit, day by day, God is weakening sin's grip on you, setting you free to be the person God designed you to be, a child of God like Jesus the Son of God (verse 2).
More than that, one day, when you stand in His presence with great joy, you will not only be free from the guilt of sin, the penalty for sin and the power of sin; you will be free even from the presence of sin. There is no sin in heaven, and one day you will be in heaven. As we read in Verse 1, "Behold what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!" The children of God will live for all eternity, with no sin. Christ has done what He came to do. His Holy Spirit is doing in you what He came to you to do. And one day Jesus will take us home, and we will never see sin again.
Now John presents us with a challenge, and it's a serious challenge:
Verse 6
No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him
or known him.
John has already said in Chapter 1 verse 8 that "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." True Christians will sin, but we won't "continue" to sin. This is an important distinction that we need to grasp. Every true Christian is putting his sin to death. None of us have completely succeeded yet but we are in the process of killing off our sin. None of us will be sinlessly perfect this side of the grave, but every true Christian is a great deal more pure than he was when he came to faith in Christ.
To make this more clear, we could add the word "regardless" to this verse: "no-one who goes on sinning regardless", nobody who carries on with his own lifestyle as if he'd never met Jesus, can really be a Christian because, if you know that Jesus died on the cross for you, you must have some gratitude. If you know who Jesus is, you must admire Him and want to be like Him. If the Holy Spirit dwells in you, He must be having some effect on you.
If you're living the same sinful life that you did the day before you met Jesus, you're not a Christian. But if, day by day, with admittedly several failures along the way, you're becoming more holy and more pure than you used to be, then the reason why that's true is because you are a Christian. None of us has the power to live better lives by our own efforts. We need the Holy Spirit, operating in conjunction with the Bible, and the church, and our conscience, and our will. It's the power of the Holy Spirit that makes us better people.
So examine yourself. Have you grown in holiness and purity? Then you are a Christian. Or have you not? Then you're not a Christian. It's that simple.
Nonetheless, I hope you and I want to be the best Christians we can be. I hope we love Jesus enough that we want to be like Him. I hope we're grateful enough to the Heavenly Father who has lavished His love on us and called us His children that we want to please Him.
May I urge you, if you call yourself a Christian, to try to live like a Christian. Let the Holy Spirit have His way. Read the Bible and do what it says. Encourage the other people in your church. Break bread. Celebrate the love of God, manifest on the cross when Jesus died in your place. Day by day, you will glorify Him more and more. And the more we glorify God, the more good we will do on this earth. The more gentle, kind, pure, loving, patient and forgiving we are, the more other people will find Jesus for themselves, and the more we will help to build the church of Christ.