Abiding and Christian Integrity; 1 John 3:7-9

When we are filled by the Spirit, walking by the Spirit, that is where righteousness is produced because that is the arena of production by God the Holy Spirit. This is what Galatians 5:16-25 is all about. Walking by the Spirit will produce certain character qualities—real virtue, not morality. The biggest problem is Christianity is that people confuse morality with spirituality. Morality is not spirituality. Just because somebody is extremely religious and moral doesn’t mean that they have a relationship with God. The Pharisees of Jesus’ time were extremely moral, but Jesus said, Matthew 5:20 ^NASB “…unless your righteousness surpasses {that} of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, it is not enough to be moral, to have human virtue; there has to be something more. Only the believer walking by means of the Holy Spirit can produce true righteousness. That is because it is not produced by us, it is produced by God the Holy Spirit who is working in us.

So in 1 John 3:7 ^NASB “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.” He is looking at a person’s life and says that if you can see real righteousness there, that they are doing real righteousness, then that means (2:29) that they are born again, that they are walking by means of God the Holy Spirit. They are doing righteousness just “just as He is righteous.” How did Jesus produce righteousness? By walking by means of God the Holy Spirit. That is why He pioneered the spiritual life of the church age. He went through all the testing we go through but He didn’t surmount the temptations by relying on His deity, He surmounted the temptations by relying on the Holy Spirit and the same spiritual skills that He bequeathed to us; everything, of course, except occupation with Christ and confession of sin, because He didn’t need to use those two.

1 John 3:8 ^NASB “the one who practices sin [lit. the one who does sin] is of the devil…” The word “practices” is incorrect; it is simply “the one who does sin.” Immediately people think that this means not saved. But see, when you are walking in darkness, walking in the power of the sin nature, you are also walking in the world system. Remember 1 John 2:15 ^NASB “Do not love the world [cosmic system] nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” He is not saying they are not saved, he is saying that at that point they do not understand their relationship with God, it is not motivating them, and they are living according to the devil’s thinking. So in 3:8 what John is saying is that the one who sins is doing what the devil wants him to do; he is operating on the cosmic system. The devil’s system has different manifestations such as arrogance, pride, a haughty look, etc. We have to understand that sin is sin; there are moral sins and immoral sins.

“… for [because: o(ti] the devil has sinned from the beginning…” The devil is the father of sin, John chapter eight. “… The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” That is the point of the believer’s life. We are not supposed to sin. It doesn’t mean that we are going to get to a point of sinless perfection but the believer is not supposed to sin. That is what Paul says Romans 6: “Don’t you know that you have been freed from sin?” That means we are no longer a slave of sin, so we are to live like a slave to righteousness and not like a slave to sin.

1 John 3:9 ^NASB “No one who is born of God practices [does not] sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” He who is “born of God” is a reference to the believer. He does not sin. What he is talking about here is that the believer in fellowship, walking by means of the Holy Spirit, doesn’t sin. To understand the first clause we have to understand the second: “because His seed abides in him.” What is the seed? Some have suggested it is the Holy Spirit; others that it is simply faith. But we have to look at how the term “seed” is used in several passages. For example, in Matthew chapter thirteen in the parable of the sower the seed is the Word of God. In 1 Peter 1:23 ^NASB “for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, {that is,} through the living and enduring word of God.” So the seed is the Word of God, i.e. the gospel that brings forth new life in the believer. “His seed abides in Him,” and we have seen that abiding is not a term absolute but a relative term. So the point that John is making is that as long as the Word is abiding in us we don’t sin. John 15:4 ^NASB “Abide in Me, and I in you...” The living Word has a double meaning there. Jesus is the Word of God and the Bible is the Word of God. He is the living Word; the Bible is the written Word. So by hearing the gospel the seed that is planted in us is the message about the living Word of God, Jesus Christ. Jesus said: “Abide in Me, and I in you,” so therefore we have this double activity here that when we are abiding in Christ he is abiding in us. When we are not abiding in Christ he is not abiding in us. “… As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither {can} you unless you abide in Me. [5] I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him …” It is a dual factor. So when John says in 1 John 3:9 “He who is born of God does not sin, because His seed abides in him,” he is talking about this mutuality of the fact that if we are abiding in Him and His seed, the Word, and Jesus Christ abides in us, then we don’t sin. This is exactly what Jesus says in John 15:7 ^NASB “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” So when we are abiding in Him there is also the reciprocal activity of Jesus and the Word abiding in us. So when that is taking place we don’t sin.

What John is saying here is that, yes, it is true that we still have the sin nature and we are going to sin. But the point is, we are not supposed to and if we are a child of God that is not supposed to characterise your life. Sin is not supposed to be a part of the believer’s life. It is, but we have a solution and that is 1 John 1:9; but it is not acceptable behaviour for the child of God. That is what 1 John 3:9 is talking about.

So the emphasis in this section is that the believer is saved for a purpose, and that is to perform righteous deeds and righteous works. They are not produced in his own energy and his own nature; they are produced by his walk and by the Holy Spirit. We only have that when we are abiding in Christ. We have recovery through 1 John 1:9 but the point is we are not supposed to just bounce in and out of fellowship, we are to stay, remain; we are to abide in Christ. This is what is to characterise the life of the believer. Furthermore, where he is going with this is to emphasise the fact that this is related to fulfilling the commandment that Jesus gave in John 13:34, 35—that we are to love one another as Christ has loved us.