Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
Our sexualised global consumer culture surrounds us with constant incentives to sin. In this seventh address on the biblical letter of 1 John, Greyfriars' Senior Minister Rob Yule explains what sin is, how it has been overcome by Jesus' sinless life and sacrificial death, and how Jesus makes it possible for us to live a moral and holy life. Rob preached this message at Greyfriars Classical Service on 20 August 2006.
In my previous message on 1 John I showed that the hope of Jesus' coming again is a powerful incentive for us to live a moral life here and now. Eschatology (Christian hope) is an incentive to ethics (Christian living). 'All who have this hope in them purify themselves, just as he is pure.' (1 John 3:3). Today we look at this theme, God's call to live a holy life.
It's important to live a holy life, John says first of all, because sin is so prevalent in the world.
What is sin? Most people minimise or ignore it. It's not talked about in polite society. It's not referred to by secular humanist thinkers, educators and shapers of public policy, or referred to in textbooks of psychology, sociology and criminology. Even when committed and found out it's often excused as an 'accident' or a 'failing' or a genetic trait – seldom something we should accept personal responsibility for.
Sin can be intended or unintended. It is Paul who focuses more on the unintentional or tragic side of sin, in his definition of sin in Romans as 'missing the mark' or 'falling short'. 'All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.' (Romans 3:23). The image is of an archer, taking aim, but missing or falling short of their target. That's the unintentional or tragic side of sin. We all mean well, but fall short, miss the target, miss God's purpose for our lives.
But John focuses on the intentional or treacherous aspect of sin. In a concise definition that goes to the very essence of sin, he says that 'sin is lawlessness' (1 John 3:4). Lawlessness, anomia, being 'without law', is the deliberate, defiant repudiation of any higher authority than yourself. It is refusing to recognize any authority outside yourself. It is a refusal to submit to God's law or will, or even recognise there is a God to whom you are ultimately accountable. It is being a 'law unto yourself'.
If the tragic face of sin is so well illustrated in the plays of Shakespeare, the treacherous face of sin is spelt out in the novels of Dostoevsky. As Ivan Karamazov says in Dostoevsky's great novel The Brothers Karamazov, 'If God does not exist, everything is permitted – even cannibalism.' If human beings acknowledge no higher authority than themselves, terrible evils and crimes will be the result, as the twentieth century so chillingly illustrates.
John tells us that sin originates with the devil. 'The one who is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.' (1 John 3:8). The devil is the cosmic tempter or deceiver who from the first has been trying to lure human beings to turn away from God and from God's good purpose for human life.
The devil is the father of doubt, deception and destruction. From the very first he caused Eve to doubt God's word and integrity: 'Did God really say?' (Genesis 3:1). The devil has deceived humanity into thinking that God is a misanthropic spoil sport; that the only way we can free or advance ourselves is by rejecting God. Deceived by the devil into denying God, we end up destroying ourselves and our world, making life a misery for ourselves and others. As a result of this deception, John says 'the whole world is under the control of the evil one' (1 John 5:19).
So what was God to do? Abandon his plan, or intervene to put things right? What we call salvation is God's great project of global restoration, the re-establishment of his purpose for the world and for human beings. He sent his Son Jesus Christ to be the Saviour of the world.
To bring salvation John says there are two things that Jesus had to do, two reasons why he came into the world:
First, Jesus came to take away sin. 'You know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins.' (1 John 3:5). The very name 'Jesus' indicates this. It means 'Yahweh saves', or colloquially, 'God to the rescue.' The angel at Jesus' birth told Joseph, 'You are to give him the name “Jesus”, because he will save his people from their sins.' (Matthew 1:21). When John the Baptist announced Jesus to the world, it was in the same terms: 'Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.' (John 1:29).
How did Jesus take away sin? First by living a holy life, then by dying an unholy death. John says that Jesus lived a sinless life. 'In him is no sin.' (1 John 3:5b). Paul says that Jesus died an unholy death. 'God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.' (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus overcame temptation and turned our humanity back to God in a life of perfect obedience. He lived a holy life in our humanity, showing that a holy life is possible and attainable. So if we live in him, a power is available to help us overcome sin.
The second reason Jesus came into the world, John tells us, was to destroy 'all that the devil has done' (1 John 3:8, CEV). The devil is the one who originates sin and seduces us to sin. There are many things the devil has infiltrated into God's perfect creation. These include enticing us to sin, shaming us with guilt, deceiving us with error, inflicting us with disease, degrading us with misery, and finally afflicting us with death.
The works of the devil are many and nefarious. Jesus came to defeat them all. He defeated them by his life: 'God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.' (Acts 10:38). And he defeated them by his death: 'Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.' (Colossians 2:15).
The devil is the great deceiver and destroyer, but Jesus is the Saviour and Restorer. The devil led mankind astray in the perfect environment of the Garden of Eden. Jesus restored mankind to God on the barren outcrop of Golgotha.
John says we are either children of God or children of the devil (1 John 3:10). Jesus, by taking away sin and destroying the works of the devil, makes it objectively possible for us sinners to become children of God and live a holy life. So the question is: how can we personally appropriate what Jesus has done for us? How can we recover God's purpose for us to live good and holy lives? How can such a surprising change be take place?
John says we can't live a holy life in our own unaided strength. We need God's holy life in us. For that to happen we must be 'born of God' (1 John 3:9), or, as Jesus said to Nicodemus, we must 'be born again.' (John 3:3, 7).
The miracle of the new birth imparts to us God's life. It is God's life in us that gives us the power to overcome sin. It puts in us the impulse to live a new and holy life. 'In him is no sin', says John of Jesus (1 John 3:5). So if Jesus' life is in us, and we live in fellowship with him, a power is available to us that enables us to overcome sin. 'God's children cannot keep on being sinful. His life-giving power lives in them and makes them his children, so that they cannot keep on sinning.' (1 John 3:5, CEV). Jesus gives us the power to live a holy life.
That's the divine side, what God has done in Jesus Christ to make it possible for us to live a holy life. The human side is for us to recognise that, resist temptation, overcome sin and live a holy life.
The biggest enemy we have to overcome is passivity. We must actively exert ourselves to live a holy life. We need to recognise that it's not hopeless but possible to live a holy life. If the 'seed' of this new life is in you, you will strive to resist and overcome sin, because that's the nature of this new and wonderful Christian life. It is Jesus' life, a holy life, a prevailing life. You won't ever be without temptation to sin, but you will be able to resist temptation and not sin.
In the worldly and rationalistic eighteenth century, Englishman William Law became so concerned at the lack of Christian devotion he saw in the church, that he wrote A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1726). In it he says, 'If you will here stop, and ask yourselves, why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance, nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.' (Ch. 2). In other words, after what Jesus Christ has done for you, there is only one thing you need to live a holy life – a firm resolve.
Rob Yule, 20 August 2006
© 2006, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
