1 John 2:1-11
1My little children, these things
write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin , we have an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
2And he is the propitiation for our
sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
3And hereby we do know that we know
him, if we keep his commandments.
4He that saith , I know him, and
keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
5But whoso keepeth his word, in him
verily is the love of God perfected : hereby know we that we are in him.
6He that saith he abideth in him ought himself
also so to walk , even as he walked .
7Brethren, I write no new commandment
unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old
commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning.
8Again, a new commandment I write
unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past ,
and the true light now shineth .
9He that saith he is in the light,
and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.
10He that loveth his brother abideth
in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.
11But he that hateth his brother is
in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth ,
because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.
John here
gives us the motive behind the writing if His epistle “that you sin not”
followed directly by the assurance that if we sin Jesus is our solution.
The modern
church has accepted in many circles various teachings of a grace that are
false. Most of these false ways have at their root the reasoning and thinking
of men trying to align the scripture with assumptions about how our lives
should be lived. The very way we define grace is often the reason we develop understandings
that frustrate grace from being effective in our lives. So what is grace?
We often
hear grace defined as an undeserved gift which while being true leaves much to
be interpreted.
Many view it
as synonymous with forgiveness. There is no denying the forgiveness in grace
but it is in no way the sum of it. It is as if I asked how does a car run and
was answered with you put fuel in it. Fuel is vital to the answer but it is not
its sum. Grace is not a precept of God as to our position in Him nor is it a
declaration of our innocence by Jesus sacrifice but it is His life actively living
in us.
Paul would
say we have been made partakers of the promise established with Abraham but
what is that promise? Our thinking and our teaching often go to Abraham’s
promise of land, influence, importance, progenitor, a heir, yet these things
are a result of the promise. The promise of Abraham came directly after His separation
from Lot and it was this; God said “I am thy shield and thy exceedingly great
reward”. The Father has given us far more than what is in His hand but He has
given Himself. His very life all He is now has been made one with us.
This is
grace; the experience of God living in and through us a shared life. When we
see this then it becomes obvious why John says if we say we are walking in
fellowship with Him we do not walk in darkness. So how is it possible we sin if
it is God living in us.
Mercy is
like a blanket which covers all of my actions but the grace of Gods breath in
us is a vitality of life. Your life before you came to redemption was the
result of every moment, every decision, and every thought all active in your
flesh. This flesh generated life can, whether desire is for good or evil, only
steal, kill, and destroy both ourselves and those around us. To some degree it
is the revelation of this from God that brings us to repentance.
At the
moment of conversion we are forgiven and justified by our faith in Messiah but
the grace that we walk in is a moment by moment walk of faith. In a perfect
walk we would immediately live as our messiah lived by complete dependence on
the Father to act and speak through Him. However the believer has strongholds
in their mind of a trust in the self or others to provide in certain ways and
times.
This trust
causes us to sow in certain ways to our flesh and when that seed has grown it
produces fruit. This is the way that a true believer can in some way find
himself committing sin. “The just shall live by faith” means in essence that
the life of God in us is only as active as we are trusting His life to live
through us.
The chastisement
of the Lord is when the Lord allows the trust of the flesh to produce works of
the flesh in the Christians life. This becomes how He reveals our heart to us.
The sin of Adam that brought death to men was simply to trust that by his own
ability He could produce life just as God does. This trust in self is the seed
of the plant called death and the works of the flesh Paul gives us in Galatians
5:19-21 are its fruit. So it is that when we see this rotten fruit in our
living we know that the seed is present.
Paul says
lay aside the sin that so easily besets us, this does not mean to ignore it but
rather that when we see it place it in the death of Messiah by faith and trust
the Fathers life in us to be our life.
For when
Messiah who knew no sin carried our sin to the cross that it should die along
with the results of that sin described in the curse of the law. Jesus has
brought to us the good will of God by destroying in His body the power of death
by His own death on the cross.
So Jesus
went to the cross to die and we as His believers come to Him to die therefore He
forever stands as a legal reason for our acceptance before the judge of all the
earth if we are found in the faith that He has become our life.
How is it
that we know we are one with His life being our own we keep His commandments.
This word causes problems because we perceive it as a rule but the deeper
meaning of the word is that it is a precept or description. It is not a
description of an action to attain to life so much as a description of the
effect of actions occurring because life is present.
For example
it is not a rule that my heart must beat but for along as I am alive it is my
nature to have a beating heart. So when we seek to perform the things of live
we witness that we do not have that life naturally. By our trust in His life
living in us we do as Paul said the things contained in the law by nature.
If we say we
are living by His life in us but we walk in sin we lie for God cannot sin. As we
trust Him he takes us from trust to more trust and from more trust to even more
trust and as Paul says from faith to faith the righteousness of Messiah is
revealed in us who hold this life in earthen vessels.
This is the
commandment from the beginning; trust Gods life in you and commit yourself completely
to love for Him. This is the command to Adam to not forsake the life breathed
into Him and attempt to become his own life. This oldest of commands to love
God with all we are is made alive, effective, and new in Messiah.
The light of
the Fathers presence has through His Son Jesus been made to abide in men once
more bringing us back into sonship. If we love God and His love is in us then we
also love our brethren and there is no place in love for sin.
However if
we lift up the self we will hate our brother whether by trying to rule over
him, take from him; to envy, to covet, and to lust are the only tools of the
blind because Gods life and the light of His presence is not in them.
I once heard it said that the worst liar is the man who lies to himself...are you blind?...Jesus still heals blind men who call on Him.
