Putnam Church Message – 09/28/2025

Last week, we continued through the letter of 1 John and explored how to have “A Discerning Life: Living in Light of the Lord’s Return."

This week, we continue through the letter of 1 John, and we will explore how to have A Discerning Life: Discerning the Works of the Devil" from 1 John 3:4-10 from the NIV, which is found on page 1901 of your Pew Bibles.

When a person today hears the phrase “What you’re doing is a sin,” they probably won’t hear it as “I love you enough to point out that destructive behavior in your life.” Instead, they hear something like, “I’m judging you.” The idea of loving sinners enough to help them deal with their sin is lost on a world that has increasingly downplayed that three-letter word.  (Bulletin)

To understand what sin is, we must explore the root meaning. In both Hebrew and Greek, its root meaning is “to miss the mark” or “to fall short.” It conveys the idea of missing a target, straying from the path, or failing to meet a standard.

Let me share two illustrations to understand sin:

Archery Picture: Imagine aiming at a target. Even if you shoot an arrow that lands just outside the bullseye, you’ve missed the mark. That’s how the Hebrew root ḥaṭṭāʼ illustrates sin—falling short of God’s perfect aim for us.

Modern Analogy: If a GPS guides you to a destination but you take a wrong turn, you’ve deviated from the path. Sin is choosing our own path instead of following God’s direction.

Whatever happened to sin? When did it get deleted from our cultural lexicon? Why have we been told that it’s now one of those “politically incorrect” terms? The word "sin" is obviously no longer in use. Today, it’s been replaced by words like error, mistake, tragedy, addiction, sickness, misdeed, faux pas, failure, weakness, or fault. And on that last one, more often than not, it’s someone else’s fault!

However, the Bible presents an entirely different message regarding sin. The entrance, presence, and consequences of sin are major plot points in the drama of God’s story of creation,>fall,>and redemption. Romans 5:12 sums it up nicely: When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. Adam was the figure by whom sin made its first appearance on the stage of human history. The consequence of death followed. And from that point forward, the entire story was marred by sin, which spread universally to all humans and brought suffering and corruption to all creation (Rom. 8:18–22).

However, we’re not left in this desperate plight of bondage to sin and death. The hero of the story of redemption appears on stage, providing a way of escape for all of us enslaved by sin: Because one-person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous. (Rom. 5:19). Jesus Christ is that life-bringing hero who bore our sin on the cross and rose again: For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s extraordinary grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5:17).  Nevertheless, the drama isn’t over. The curtain hasn’t dropped. In the present act, we still await the return of Christ, when He will utterly vanquish sin and death. In the meantime, the old sin nature remains, still subject to disobedience, corruption, and death. The result is a spiritual conflict between the power of Christ’s righteousness dwelling in those who are saved and sealed by the Holy Spirit and the old tendency toward sin, which Paul calls “the flesh.” Paul depicts this constant melee in Romans 7:18-21:

What, then, should be the normal expectation of holiness in the Christian life? Constant victory? Constant drudgery? Frequent defeat? Slow but steady progress? The apostle John helps us begin to answer this question in 1 JOHN 3:4-10. We must be cautious here, though. If we don’t pay close attention to the specific words and the way John uses them, we might come away unsure of our salvation and wondering whether we’re saved by more than just faith alone. Let me assure you that John’s purpose is not to cast doubt on the truly saved but to call pretenders to conversion and straying believers to faithfulness.

With his opening words of this section, John refers to “everyone who practices sin.” Stop there. Understanding this phrase correctly will make the difference between good theology and bad theology, as well as right and wrong application. The Greek term translated “practices,” poiōn (from poieō [4160]), is a present active participle. John has in mind a person who sins continually, persistently, habitually—as a lifestyle, not an occasional sin.

In short, the kind of person described in 1 John 3:4 is the opposite of the Spirit-indwelled child of God. This person who “practices sin/lawlessness” is the opposite of the true believer mentioned in 2:29—the person who “practices righteousness.”

Christ’s mission in His first coming was to “take away our sins” (3:5). Christ came “in a body like the bodies we sinners have.” (Rom. 8:3) as the incarnate God-man, lived a sinless life, died to pay for the sins of others, and rose again because sin had no power over Him. Paul wrote, “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin,[a] so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” (2 Cor. 5:21). Christ could only accomplish this self-sacrificial, substitutionary act if He was perfectly righteous, without sin. When we place our trust in Him and become children of God, the righteousness of Christ enables us to be declared righteous (positionally) and begins working within us to produce righteousness (experientially). The result for the believer is an all-day, every-day struggle against the power of sin. Because of the Spirit of God living in us, the battle is palpable, and righteous living is possible. But the unbeliever, devoid of the Spirit of God and the righteousness of Christ, will be characterized by “practicing sin.”

In 1 John 3:6, John hammers this point even harder. Nobody who abides in Christ—that is, true believers in fellowship with Him—lives in sinfulness habitually and persistently. And the opposite is also true: Those who do live in such a lifestyle of unchecked, unrepentant, continual sin have never seen or known Christ in a genuine, saving sense. Again, I need to underscore the fact that John doesn’t have in mind the true child of God who struggles against sin as part of their lifelong process of sanctification, who frequently follows the practice of 1 John 1:9—But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. Rather, in 3:6, John is writing about the unsaved person who has no intention of confessing sins because they are devoted to the world and its carnal pleasures.

We come now to the climax of this section, where John clinches the truth he’s driving home. He begins by repeating his term of loving affection, “Dear children.” He switches to this gentle tone because he warns us again, in his stern-but-loving, grandfatherly way, of the danger of false teachers: “don’t let anyone deceive you about this” (3:7). John knew that the deceivers who were on the prowl were dealing in more than just false doctrines about Christ. Their perverse practices and muddled morality were consistent with their counterfeit Christs.

One of the goals of the deceivers in John’s day was to persuade people that a life of righteousness really wasn’t all that important. Your lifestyle, these antichrists urged, has no relationship to the condition of your eternal soul. John severely strikes back at this false teaching, unleashing some of the strongest language he could muster. A person who is truly righteous by virtue of their positional relationship with Christ will practice righteousness (3:7). However, the one who practices sin “belongs to the devil,” who was a sinner from the beginning. I can’t think of a more sobering label than “belong to the devil” to describe unsaved false teachers.

For John, doing is the test of being. He must have been listening carefully when Jesus taught,

43 “A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. 44 A tree is identified by its fruit. Figs are never gathered from thornbushes, and grapes are not picked from bramble bushes. 45 A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart. (Luke 6:43–45)

And the phrase “belong to the devil” or, possibly, “from the devil” appears in Jesus’ teaching in John 8:44 when he says to some of the hypocritical Jewish leaders who were rejecting Him, For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does.

So, on the one hand, people are claiming to be followers of Christ who live such remorselessly wicked lives that they appear to be children of the devil rather than children of God. On the other hand, some people practice righteousness and follow the teachings of Jesus. And because the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. (1 Jn. 3:8), It stands to reason that the group that is doing the works of the devil can’t possibly be on the side of Christ.

What wise words! One of the best tests you can apply to any ministry is to weigh the importance it gives to balancing doctrine with duty, loving the Lord alongside loving one another, believing, and doing. If you’re not seeing both, something’s wrong. It may be a cult, or at the very least, a fertile seedbed for false teaching.

1 John 3:9 can appear to be a contradiction of 1:8-10 if we forget our careful definitions of terms as discussed in relation to 3:4. In 3:9, John says: Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life[a] is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God. But in 1:8-10, John says, “8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts. So, which is it? Does the person born of God “not commit sin”—even being unable to sin—or is such a claim to be without sin a lie? No, the verb tense in this passage indicates that sin will not have dominion over us. 3:9 We do not make a practice of sinning. The inability to continually practice sin is a direct result of being “born into God’s family” (3:9). This expression refers to the new birth of regeneration, resulting in the abiding presence and internal working of the Holy Spirit. The “seed” that abides in the one who has been born again is a reference to the Spirit, though the work of the Spirit is always connected to the planting and sprouting of the Word of God (Matt. 13:1–23). In 3:10, this section concludes with a final test to discern between the teachers of righteousness and the teachers of falsehood. The children of God live lifestyles of righteousness and love their brothers and sisters> in Christ,/ whereas the children of the devil do not live righteous lifestyles and do not love fellow Christians. What a stark difference John expects from the children of God and the children of the devil!

 

To help you blot out sin, let me give you three simple statements. For most of us, these are reminders of very basic biblical truths. However, I would like to add some important practical implications to each of them.

First, we’re all sinners. Some of us are saved sinners, and others are lost sinners. However, since the events of Genesis 3, all humanity has been in a state of sin, as sinning is inherent in our nature. The lost often don’t accept that they’re lost … and often don’t regard themselves as sinners or call their actions “sin.” Some have so resisted the inner conviction of the conscience that they have little or no remorse for the things they do (see Rom. 2:15; 1 Tim. 4:2). Such people are in persistent rebellion, usually antagonistic to God and the Christian faith. On the other hand, those of us who are saved sinners, who have acknowledged the truths of Genesis 3 and Romans 3, are still sinners; but we have a different understanding. We call it what it is: sin. (Missing the Mark) And we have a new desire to align our lives with Christ. The Spirit bears witness to our consciences that engaging in thoughts and actions contrary to the will of God is dishonoring to Him and destructive to ourselves.

Remember that each one of us saved sinners,/before coming to know Christ’s salvation, was a lost sinner. We need to have compassion for the lost, showing mercy and kindness as we offer to them what someone once offered to us: forgiveness from the guilt of sin and a new start. Don’t be surprised when lost sinners persist in sin, make fun of spiritual things, or find your own struggle against sin for the sake of Christ silly. But when those who claim to be believers in Christ embrace a sinful lifestyle, you have every right to question and challenge this contradiction. Read 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 for Paul’s perspective on how we should approach lost sinners and saved sinners.

Second, God loves sinners. He loves lost sinners enough to send His Son to die for them (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8). He loves lost sinners enough to send His Spirit into the world to “And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment.” (John 16:8). At every moment, God bids the lost sinner to come home. God also loves saved sinners enough to send the Holy Spirit into their lives (Rom. 5:5). His love compels us to live self-sacrificial lives (2 Cor. 5:14–15; 1 Jn. 3:16; 4:9–11). And His love for us through the Son keeps us in a permanent relationship of salvation (Rom. 8:35–39). He never leaves us nor forsakes us (Heb. 13:5).

As believers—sinners saved by grace—our response to both the lost and the saved should reflect this basic truth of the love of God. Just as God loves the lost enough to reach down from heaven through the Son and the Spirit, we, too, as the body of Christ indwelled by the Spirit, must reach out to the lost across the street and around the world. If the perfectly holy God loves lost sinners, what excuse can saved sinners like us possibly have to reject the lost as unworthy of the gospel? How are you involved in...