Monday
1 John 3.4-5 “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. “
Did you know that in this quite short letter sin and love are the two most frequently discussed truths in Christian experience? *Sin and love; our sinfulness and need of forgiveness, and God’s love making atonement in Christ. There’s nothing trivial about sin; and there is nothing trifling about God’s love. John had witnessed the cross, the cost and consequence of human sin, and our sins. Sin makes its appearance early in John’s letter because sin is deeply implicated in the why and wherefore of God’s redemptive purpose: “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but for the sins of the whole world.” (2.2) *See the poem I’ve included below
Tuesday
1 John 3.4-5 “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.
Sin is saying no to God. Sin happens when we act as a law unto ourselves. Sin is chosen disobedience and lawlessness is effectively godlessness. Because of sin we live under the condemnation of a holy God and refuse to live within the sphere of God’s holy love. In three short sentences John tells the truth about human sinfulness, and the deeper truth of God’s holiness. The whole purpose of Christ’s appearing is to take away our sins – not just the world’s sins in general, but our sins in particular! “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 or 5.23)Paul and John singing from the same hymn sheet!
Wednesday
1 John 3.6 “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”
New life in Christ is a new creation. To live in Christ is to live in closest proximity to the holy love of God. John’s logic is unyielding. You can’t live in Christ and love the very realities that crucified him. You can’t look on beauty but prefer ugliness. Once we know Jesus, living in Him and Him living in us, faith in Christ and persistence in sin cannot co-exist in the same heart. Yes, we still sin, but it breaks our heart. We now know its cost and consequence. And John has already alerted us: “If anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence – Jesus Christ the Righteous One.” This is pastoral theology at its restorative best for guilty hearts.
Thursday
1 John 3.7 “Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.”
John is anxious about false teachers who may well be teaching that once forgiven subsequent sin doesn’t matter that much! A variation on what worried Paul when he argued in Romans, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? Absolutely not!” Righteousness is not only God’s gracious gift in Christ, it is earthed in the lived reality of new creation. Righteousness is to do what is right for the love of God, by the grace of God, empowered by the Christ within. We are not saved by good works, but for good works. The life we now live in the body, we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us, and gave himself for us. We live because Christ lives in us!
Friday
1 John 3.8 “The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.
The idea that you can claim to know Jesus and keep on sinning is absurd. It’s a lie. It’s the very essence of self-deceit to think sin and faith in Christ can happily co-exist in the same life. Sin breaks the Christian heart, and in shame and guilt we turn yet again to our “Advocate with the Father.” The devil is the cosmic expert in deceit, the originator of the lie, and a lie only has purchase on our lives if we believe it. To believe in Jesus Christ, the truth of God incarnate, the crucified and risen One, quite literally makes nonsense of such lies. God is light, and we live in the light.
Saturday
1 John 3.8b “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”
Jesus is the devil’s undoing! To the devil’s lies Jesus is the truth. The devil’s plan to destroy God’s creation is overthrown in the new creation. The power of temptation, sin and death is repelled by the grace of God which is made real and active in the new life in Christ. The guilt and power of sin is defeated on the Cross and overturned in the resurrection of Jesus. Not death, but life; not hate but love; not violence but peace; not the grim reality of division and power games, but a new community united in Christ, indwelt by the Spirit, and radiant with the light of God.
Sunday
1 John 3.9 “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.
No shades of grey here. This is either-or, Christ or the world, the flesh and the devil. It can never be both–and. You cannot be born of God and willingly continue in sin. God is light and has no fellowship with darkness. Our allegiance is either to Christ or the devil. Either we do right or continue in willing sin. Christian faith is a living relationship of loving trust. Being born of God we share the family likeness to light.
I’ve included this poem as one of the best descriptions I know of the divine dilemma expressed in those two short words, sin and love. The poem is also one of the best commentaries on the text of 1 John which has so much to say about human sin and God’s love. Now and again I’ll include a hymn or poem like this if it adds to our understanding or encourages us to lift up our hearts in thankfulness and trust.
The Agony
Philosophers have measured mountains,
Fathomed the depths of seas, of states and kings;
Walked with a staff to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove;
Yet few there are that sound them—Sin and Love.
Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A Man so wrung with pains, that all His hair,
His skin, His garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through ev’ry vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice which, on the cross, a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like,
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood, but I as wine.
(George Herbert, 1633)
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