1 JOHN 3 (NOTES OF A READING)
[p. 399] 1 JOHN 3 (NOTES OF A READING)
CAC It is a wonderful word, “In him sin is not”. That is said of the Son of God. This refers to His present condition — in Him sin is not, not was not. What is true of Him in His glorified condition was just as true of Him in the days of His flesh. The taking away of our sins was done in absolute perfection because He did it — as complete and perfect as the perfection of the One who did it. The children of God know that their sins have been taken away by the Son of God. To think that they have not been taken away is downright unbelief. Otherwise we could not abide in Him. Sins taken away means not a single spot, so that we can abide in that absolutely holy One, and if we do, we shall not commit sin.
Rem One great object in His being manifested in this world is to take away our sins. John the Baptist speaks of His taking away the sin of the world.
CAC That meant, God’s Lamb to take sin out of God’s world. He came to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself — the great sacrificial thought that sin and sins are put away, so that in Hebrews 1 it says, He made purification of sins, and having done so, set Himself down, all, the whole work, accomplished in His own Person. These are not sins exactly as resting upon us, but as a pollution before God. He makes purification so that they are all removed from under the eye of God. We are liberated so as to abide in the One in whom sin is not, and whoever abides in Him does not sin. How could anyone sin who derives the whole spring of his moral being from the One in whom sin is not? The thoughts of God are supremely wonderful. If we do not abide in Him, somehow or other we have been led astray. Our proper, normal place is to abide in the One in whom sin is not — like the earth and the sun, every movement regulated by the [p. 400] sun. John would almost suggest that we are either abiding in the Son of God or in the devil. I€ I sin I am really acting like the devil. I have lost for the moment the consciousness of my relation with the One in whom sin is not. There is nothing in common between sin and the One in whom sin is not. It is a dreadful thing if I have to acknowledge that I have done something in which Christ could not possibly have a part. What lover of His would be guilty of such wandering away from Him? No wife who loves her husband would do something alien to her husband’s thoughts. The only thing to do, if we do sin, is to get it away immediately by confession; it is an alien element that does not belong to the saints at all.
It is good for us to remember what we really are if we are born of God. We have to consider ourselves as begotten of God and not in the flesh, as of divine generation. Natural birth brought us into a state of death and sin, but as born of God we come into a new moral condition, an entirely new origin; and as born of God, we are as sinless as Christ. His seed remains in him, he cannot sin. John puts it down in this definite way because he wants us to take it up in this definite way. It does not do to weaken these statements, but to accept them as divine statements. Peter speaks of incorruptible seed — so we are holy in our origin as born of God.
The Son of God was manifested that He might undo the works of the devil — that is, whatever the devil has wrought in the souls of men, the Son of God came to undo it. It supposes that we have been a workshop for the devil, every one of us, and the Son of God was manifested to undo in our souls all that Satan had wrought there — not only in John and James and Matthew, but in you and me. Everything has to be picked to pieces and put together again in an altogether different way. There is a spiritual working out of this in Romans 7, our being extricated from evil and brought into good. It is not deliverance we want, but the Deliverer, the Person actuated by divine power and love, Jesus Christ [p. 401] our Lord. Nothing else is any good to me. There are things in me, such as the law of sin working in my flesh; they are too strong for me and only One Person can deal with them. He is delighted to destroy the works of the devil. He would not leave a single bit active. We do not get it all at once, it is a continuous process. As soon as I become conscious of something in me that is of the devil, I want the Son of God as Deliverer, and He is able to deliver me and to destroy the works of the devil in my heart and to put something else there instead. Romans 7 shows you the passage from the one to the other. Most people who call themselves believers are in Romans 7 to this day. They have never come to the Person who can set them free, and who can give them a new breath of life. We are alive to God in Christ Jesus, and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. You are not sinning when you love the brethren. If I abide in Christ I shall love the brethren, for they are born of God, and in so doing I escape from sin. So that it is a wonderful thing to have contact with the children of God. The whole system of christendom has been built up by Satan to hinder the children of God from loving one another.
It is a great thing to have brethren that we can love. Perhaps they are poor samples, we may say sometimes. Well, do you recognise them as children of God? This is a nasty, cantankerous man, you say, I cannot get on with him. But if I think this man was once convicted of sin by the mighty operation of God and he was brought to self-abasement and to see the value of Christ, well, I want to think of him in that way and to love him. We want to cultivate that way of thinking. The devil shows us the blemishes, but the blessed Spirit of God would bring before us that they are born of God — and from that viewpoint we can help the nasty brother. He would shed it off A nasty, cantankerous man does not know what it is to be born of God — “the brother for whom Christ died” carries a great appeal. John is writing to people like ourselves, not to angels in heaven. It is a case of being born either of God or of the devil. When a believer falls into a sin, it is a danger signal. My trouble is not only the sin, but whatever was the matter with me to be in such a state as led to that. It is a red light, so that you would say, ‘See where you have been’. We get careless, and the devil sees to it that something crops up that leads us into actual sin — a hasty word or something not exactly true. We were not abiding in the One in whom sin is not. These are great moral realities and we have all got to face these exercises.
It is not easy to say the actual date of this epistle, but spiritually it comes after John’s gospel. In the gospel you see the One in whom sin is not, and in the epistle the working out of that which is true in Him and in you.