No Sin When Abiding; 1 John 3:4-6
1 John 3:4 NASB
“Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.
[5] You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is
no sin. [6] No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has
seen Him or knows Him.”
When we look at those
verses it looks as if God is saying that a Christian doesn’t sin. But that
would be a contradiction because in 1 John 1:8 John made the statement that the
person who says he doesn’t sin is lying and deceiving himself.
In John 15 Jesus’ term [abidiing] “in me” is not a positional term or a judicial
term, it is a relational term. This is so important to understand. It is a
relational concept. How do we know that? We look at the passages in which Jesus
uses the terminology “in me” to describe His relationship with God. For
example, in John 10:38 NASB
“…though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so
that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the
Father.” When He says that the Father is “in Me” He is
talking about this close, intimate relationship He has with God the Father. Remember,
He is in hypostatic union. Because Jesus never had a problem with sin the idea
of a judicial or positional relationship with God is nullified. It is not
necessary. He is talking about intimate fellowship on John 10, not positional
union. In John 17 Jesus prayed to the Father “that they may all be one.” That
is potential, not actual. He is praying for the church, for the disciples. Here
is potential for unity but it is not actual yet—“even as You, Father, {are} in Me and I in You.” He is talking about intimate fellowship
here, not positional union, because positionally,
once we believe in Christ we are in union with Christ and there is a unity in the
body of Christ positionally—we are all one in Christ.
So why would He be praying that we could all be one if we are already actually
one positionally? The point is that when Jesus uses
the phrase “in me” He is not using it as Paul used the phrase “in Christ.” So
when John comes along in the epistle and is talking about abiding, he is
talking about love, it is in the same terminology Jesus is talking about (abiding
in love) is the upper room discourse. Remember the command in John 15 when
Jesus said “Abide in me,” is in when section from John 13:38 on is an
explanation of how we achieve the main command given in 13:34, 35 NASB
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have
loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you
are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
So the main command governing the entire upper room discourse is to love one
another as Christ has loved us. In order to be able to fulfil that command
something has to happen experientially in the life of the believer, and that is
that he has to abide in Christ.
So in summary we learn that
abiding in Christ is a key command. Abiding “in me” is in terms of relationship
with Jesus, not positional truth. It means that it has to do with our ongoing
fellowship with Christ, not our initial union with Him in terms of salvation.
In John 15:4 the statement about
“abiding in Christ” is the sole necessary condition to produce fruit. NASB
““Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither {can} you unless you abide
in Me.” In other words, you can’t bear fruit in the Christian life—fruit
is Christian maturity; spiritual service is not fruit, it is the result of spiritual growth—without abiding
in Christ. [5] “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you
can do nothing.” It is a mutual relationship of intimacy that characterises the
concept of abide. The Greek word meno
[menw] means to stay, to remain in one place; it has the
idea of an ongoing relationship and fellowship with Jesus Christ. That produces
fruit.
In Galatians 5 the sole and
necessary condition for producing fruit is to walk by means of the Holy Spirit.
Fruit production has to do with character, spiritual growth, the element of
virtue in the Christian life, the character of Jesus Christ. This is seen in
Galatians 5:22, 23 NASB “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control;
against such things there is no law.” Notice it doesn’t say the fruit of the
Spirit is Christian service—giving, evangelism, teaching Sunday school; these are
the results of our priesthood. As a believer we should be involved in these to
one degree or another and that degree or level will be affected by your
spiritual growth and maturity.
What is the condition for the
fruit of the Spirit? Galatians 5:16
NASB “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the
desire of the flesh.” So the command is to walk, and this is an instrumental
dative here and should be translated “walk by means of the Holy Spirit.” It
emphasises the fact that it is the Holy Spirit who is the means for living the
spiritual life. The Christian life is not difficult, it is impossible apart
from divine enablement. The Christian life is
supernatural way of life, it demands a supernatural
means of production. So if in this passage walking by the Spirit produces fruit
and in John chapter fifteen abiding in Christ produces fruit, then walking by means of the Holy Spirit an abiding in
Christ must be somewhat equivalent terms, talking about the same thing but from
a different vantage point. To abide in Christ means that at the same time we
are walking by means of God the Holy Spirit; to walk by means of God the Holy
Spirit means that we are also at the same time abiding in Christ.
1 John 3:4 NASB
“Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.”
The word here for lawlessness is the Greek word anomia
[a)nomia]. It is
the word “law” with a negative prefix: without law. The Mosaic Law is not the
precedent for the spiritual life. The Mosaic Law represented the constitutional
and spiritual life of Israel in the Old Testament, but the precedent for the
spiritual life in the church age is Jesus Christ and His walk by means of God
the Holy Spirit. To get an understanding of what anomia means we have to look at how it was used in the Greek
LXX
which was a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. It translates the Hebrew
word abon.
The basic root meaning is something that is distorted or twisted. It came to be
used of sin because it distorts or twists the soul of man, and because it is a
twisting and a distortion of the absolute standard of God. Often
translated “iniquity” in the Psalms. So John says, v. 4, whoever commits
sin also commits iniquity. Probably the best way to translate this is: “Every
sinner—a participle in Greek can either function verbally, like an adverb, or
adjectivally like a noun. How you tell the difference is whether or not it has
a definite article with it. In this case it has, which means it is used like a
noun, and John is using it like a name, “the sinner.” This is not one who is
practicing sin; he is saying, “The sinner.” The sinner violates the absolute
standard of God, which is why he is using the term anomia—does/commits transgressions of divine absolutes; and
sin is a transgression of the divine standards.”
1 John 3:5 NASB “You
know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.”
This is the same term, AIRO [a)irw] that John
the Baptist used when he said: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin
of the world!” Our typical knee-jerk reaction is to say this is what happened
at salvation; Jesus died on the cross for our sins. But if we take it that way
we end up having a real problem with this passage because we are going to end
up saying Christians can’t sin. So John isn’t saying that, because it didn’t
stop at the cross, it is ongoing. The Bible uses the word “salvation” in three sense. The Bible word “salvation” simply means to be
delivered and we always have to look at the context to determine what we are
being delivered from; it isn’t always the same. In phase one our deliverance is
from the penalty of sin—justification. But the spiritual life has to do with
working out that salvation, learning how to be free from the power of sin in
the Christian life. Learning the mechanics of the spiritual life is what this
is all about—learning how to grow so that we can be free from the power of sin
and we do not self-destruct by living a life based on the sin nature. It began
at the cross where we are freed from the penalty of sin but it is ongoing in
sanctification where we realise the benefits of that work on the cross in terms
of being freed from the day-to-day power of sin. It is not until we die or the
Rapture occurs and we are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord
that we have a glorified body and are eventually freed from the presence of
sin. So Jesus Christ appeared to take away sins at the cross, and secondly he
demonstrated in His life that He could live a sinless life in dependence upon
God the Holy Spirit. This was to demonstrate the power and the reality of God the
Holy Spirit for the believer in the church age.
So John, then, is saying that
[in abiding] in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. He makes
it clear in the first clause of verse 6 that “in Him” is not positional, it is
experiential. If we are abiding in Him we won’t sin. It is the same thing Paul
said in Galatians 5: if we are walking by means of the Spirit we won’t sin; we
can’t sin. This is why failure in the spiritual life is the result of one’s own
decision. If we reject the provision of God in terms of the Holy Spirit, reject
the provision of God in terms of His Word, and reject all of the spiritual
assets that God has given us, and are going to just live life in terms of our
own objectives, priorities, and our own value systems, then the end result is
always going to be self-induced misery and failure in life.
1 John 3:6 NASB
“No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.” The
words “who sins has seen Him or knows Him” is translated in the English with
just a simple past tense but in the Greek it is a perfect tense. A perfect
tense in Greek is different from an English perfect. In the Greek it is talking
about action that is over with in the past and you are focusing on the present
results of it. We are focusing on the ongoing results here, and what John is
saying is that the sinner, the person who is sinning, who is carnal, who is out
of fellowship, has neither seen Him nor known Him. At first glance a lot of
people are going say that that means they are not saved. No, it doesn’t mean
they have never seen Him or known Him. An English present perfect tense does
not imply “never,” it simply implies a present reality blindness and ignorance.
The Greek perfect says that at this present time the person is blind and
ignorant spiritually as a result of a past decision. He is not saying, and
there is nothing in the grammar to suggest, that what he is saying is no one
who sins has never seen Him or known Him. It is saying that as a result of sin
he is spiritually blind and spiritually ignorant.
Put this together with
what Paul says in Galatians 5. You make a decision to stop walking by the
Spirit and now are out of fellowship, and now you can bring to completion the
work of the lusts of the sin nature. Once you have made the decision to sin and
you are operating on the sin nature, that is now a present reality, what is
going on at this present point—out of fellowship and that means you are not
walking by the Holy Spirit, so you are spiritually blind and spiritually ignorant,
out in spiritual darkness at that instant in time. John is saying that the
person who abides in Christ and is walking by the Spirit, filled by the Spirit,
can’t sin. But once he chooses to leave that position of dependency that
activates the sin nature, he is out of fellowship and walking in darkness, and
when he is walking in darkness he is spiritually blind and spiritually
ignorant.