Well, please take God's Word and turn with me to 1 John chapter 3. 1 John chapter 3. We have returned to our study of 1 John and today is our third message in chapter 3. And we're going to begin to look at verses 4 through 10. That's the next unit of thought. Verses 4 through 10. So follow me as I begin reading at verse 4. Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness. And sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins. No one who sins has seen him or knows him. Little children, make sure no one deceives you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because his seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. Now that final verse sums up essentially what the text is about. By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. How can you tell a Christian from a non-Christian? How can you tell someone who is born again from someone who is not? How can you tell someone in the family of God from someone in the family of the devil? Well, the answer is given right there in this passage. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. Clearly, it's obvious whether a person is a Christian or a non-Christian by virtue of whether or not they practice righteousness or practice sin. That couldn't be any more clear. There's nothing about that that is unclear or vague or obscure. Yet, there are those who teach otherwise. Some years back, there was a very famous seminary that taught the following statements. Listen to what they taught. They said repentance is just a synonym for faith. No turning from sin is required for salvation. Here's another. Faith might not last. It's a gift of God, but it might not last. A true Christian can completely cease believing and therefore can commit the ongoing great sin of willful unbelief and still be a Christian. Here's another one. Saving faith is simply being convinced or giving credence to the truth of the gospel. It is confidence that Christ can remove guilt and give eternal life. It is not a personal commitment to Him. Here's another one. Christians can lapse into a state of permanent spiritual barrenness. Here's another one. Christians may fall into a state of lifelong carnality, born-again people who continuously live like the unsaved. Here's another one. Disobedience and prolonged sin are no reason to doubt one's salvation. Another one, a believer may utterly forsake Christ and come to the point of not believing. God has guaranteed that he will not disown those who thus abandon the truth. And you have to ask the question, how can a seminary that trains men and women for ministry and men for pastorate can teach such truths? You'd be shocked to find that the men that came out of those seminaries that taught such things were people like Charles Ryrie, who have the Ryrie Study Bible. Zane Hodges are two notable men that taught a no lordship theory. And again, this is something that was given and taught and came out of the seminary that has caused many people to stumble. To say that you can have Christ and still be in your sin and still practice sin? That goes against everything we just read in verses 4 through 10. Here's some more that might even be more disturbing. They say repentance is not essential to the gospel. In no sense is repentance related to salvation. And I read something like that and I think of Jesus as he began his ministry and he said this, repent and believe in the gospel. Or I think of Acts 17, 30, and 31. Truly these times of ignorance God has overlooked, but He commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge all the nations by the man whom He raised from the dead. Jesus is gonna judge the nations. He came back first time, or he came the first time as a little baby in a manger. When he comes back the second time, he's coming as judge, as executioner on all the unbelieving. So if you're sitting here this morning, please give heed to my words. Give heed to the warnings that you hear. That easy believism is not taught in scripture. It's not just believing some facts about Jesus Christ, and that's all you have to do. Or at some point in your life, walking an aisle and saying certain things and all of a sudden now you're a Christian and you walk right back out and walk right back into the sin that you supposedly had left. There is a separation. Again, verse 10, by this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. See, what they're basically saying is that saving faith is the experience of a moment. It is simply believing for a moment certain facts about Jesus, asking Him to save you based upon those facts. There's no necessary repentance. There's no necessary obedience. There's no righteousness. There's no turning from sin. There's no spiritual fruit required. And I have to say, what Bible are they reading? Again, you look at verse 10. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. There are two categories that are given here. One is the test of practicing righteousness, and the other is the test of loving his brother. And the first few verses running up to verse 10 deal with the matter of righteousness. And then from verse 11 on to the end of the chapter, it deals with the issues of love. You can tell who a Christian is, the children of God are obvious, they practice righteousness and they love their brothers. Those certainly are not new themes, they were all in chapter 1 and chapter 2, but here the approach is a little different because it's expanded, it's widened, and it's broadened. You have in chapters 1 and 2 the emphasis was on fellowship, in chapters 3 to 5 the emphasis is on sonship, or that is being a child of God. And you say that you're in the fellowship, then there is going to be a manifestation of that reality in what you believe and how you conduct your life. So here is the emphasis on being a child of God, and if you're a child of God, that will manifest itself in what you believe and how you behave. And as we've said on so many occasions, you do what you believe. And it's even remarkable that in our study in Sunday School on the Lord's Prayer, Al Mohler pointed out that when you pray, you're revealing what you believe. And that is so true. And I would just take it a step further. How you live, you're revealing what you believe. What you believe about God, what you believe about Christ, what you believe about sin, what you believe about heaven, what you believe about hell, what you believe about judgment, what you believe about righteousness. How you live reveals what you believe. And so as John goes through this, he's gonna deal with those people who claimed to be Christians, but they were habitually practicing sin, and they had no visible, measurable, dominant love for other Christians. So if you look at verse three, John has just talked about those whose hope is fixed on Christ. And what do they do? They purify themselves just as He is pure. And then in verse 4, he turns to the individual who is not purifying himself, but rather is practicing sin and gives the universal statement regarding sin. And here's this universal statement. If you practice sin, you are not a child of God. If you practice sin, you are not a Christian. It does not matter what you say. Because if your life is a habit of sin, you're not a Christian. You could have prayed the right things, prayed it at the right moment. You could have had a little moment in your life where you had some kind of experience. But if your life is not changed, If there is no transformation of your life from the state of darkness to the state of light, you're not a Christian. And I'm not the one saying that. John is saying that right here. Look at what he says in verse 4. Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness and sin is lawlessness. If you practice sin, you're not a Christian because, first of all, children of God practice what? What's he say? Righteousness. This is now the habit of their life, not sin. Their sin is infrequent. It's not a habit like it was before they came to Christ. It's not saying that Christians don't sin. And I know that there's a section here that we're going to deal with because Christians do sin, but it's not habitual sin. In fact, in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 1, it talks about falling into sin, falling into a trespass. You who are spiritual restore such a one, one who has fallen in this trespass, you restore them in a spirit of meekness and gentleness. You have to go to them. This is Matthew 18, where you go to an individual and you confront them in this sin that they have fallen into. And the goal is to get them to repent. so that they can be restored, because sin breaks fellowship. Sin destroys. It destroys churches. It destroys people's lives. And so this is a test that each of us need to make. In 2 Corinthians 13, 5, it says that we are to examine ourselves to see whether we be in the faith. We are to prove ourselves. In the words of James, James says, faith without works is dead. If you have no works that back up your faith, you do not have saving faith. It's not saying that you're saved by works. He didn't say anything like that at all. He is saying that if you have true, genuine saving faith, it will produce godly works. That's the fruit that will be produced. When you go to Matthew chapter 13, you see the parable of the soils. All of them there but one was given the condition of the heart of an unsaved person. Only one indicated that there was salvation. And you know what indicated that? Bearing fruit. It bore it a hundredfold. And now you might look at your life and say, fruit? Let's get out a magnifying glass. Let's see if we see some. And that's just being humorous. Because there is a change that takes place at salvation. It is a transformation of the heart. And if that transformation hasn't occurred, it will show up like it's doing in this passage to where you have not been freed from your sin, you're still in bondage to it. And those who commit sin are slaves of sin, Jesus said. So again, this is a test that everyone needs to make. Notice he says in verse 4, everyone. The use of everyone means that this is all inclusive. It applies to everyone that is habitually practicing sin. Now if you go to chapter 2 and verse 29, he already mentioned something like this. He said, if you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of him. So again, you see that if you're habitually practicing righteousness, then it gives an indication that you are a believer, that you truly have been born of God. But if you're one who habitually practices sin, it also gives an indicator that you're not a child of God. Again, verse 10 makes that very clear. So if you practice sin, or the plural, practices, Now if you have the King James Version, you might have the word commit. He who commits sin. Now that's a little misleading because it suggests a point of action rather than the continuing practice. The word that John is using here is used in the present tense. The present tense is referring to continuous action. The one who is continuing to commit sin, it could be translated like that. But I like how the NAS translates it as practicing because it's showing a continuous action. Now, again, that's not the first time we find it used in these verses. It's used six times in verses 4 through 10. We find it two times in verse 4, one time in verse 7, one time in verse 8, one time in verse 9, and then one time in verse 10. This is a course of sinning, a willful, obstinate persistence in sin. Again, it's a continuous action. It refers to the habit of doing sin. There are two things that that participle points out. One, it points out continued behavior. And secondly, it pictures the individual as actively engaged in doing sin. The Edmund Heibert says the reference is not to his being engaged in a definite act of sin, but to his characteristic practice of sinning. You know, that was true, again, To those of us in here who are Christians now, but before we became Christians, before we became followers of Christ, we lived in this state of sin. We thought that way. We responded that way. And I'm not saying that sinners can't ever do acts of kindness, but they can. But even sometimes that has to even be questioned because the motives behind those acts of kindness can be sinful. But here, again, he is talking about this person who is still in this state of sin to where they're practicing it, that this is the habit of their life. And like we said, although genuine Christians have a sin nature, chapter 1, verse 8, and do commit sin and need to confess sin, chapter 1, verse 9, and chapter 2, verse 1, this is not the unbroken pattern of their life. A genuinely born-again believer has a built-in check or guard against habitually sinning due to the new nature that they possess. Now again, that's not so with unbelievers. Over in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, As Paul is speaking to the Corinthians, he says in verse 20, I'm afraid that perhaps when I come, I may find you to be not what I wish and may be found by you to be not what you wish, that perhaps there will be strife, jealousy, anger, tempers, disputes, slanders, gossip, arrogance, disturbances. He says, I'm afraid that when I come again, my God may humiliate me before you and I may mourn over many of those who have sinned in the past, and get this, and not repented of the impurity, immorality, and sensuality which they have practiced. See, that's what we're talking about here. If you're practicing sin, you haven't repented. And if you're truly a child of God, your life is a life of repentance. It's not just repenting one time coming to Christ, but your whole life is that of repentance. You have a bad thought come into your mind, what do you do with it? You confess it and you repent of it. Right? You do something, you fall into sin, what do you do? You confess it and you repent of it. You hurt somebody, you say something you shouldn't say to them, you go to that person and you confess it and you repent of it. This is something that we have sought to teach our kids from the moment that they could talk. And the moment they could be pointed out to them that what they're doing is sin, we would say that to them, point it out to them, show them that this was sin, and we would get them between whoever it was with to ask for forgiveness. And the other person couldn't just sit there and just not say anything or walk off, but that other person had to say, I forgive you. There had to be this note there showing that there was an acknowledgment of sin on both parties and that there was forgiveness granted. Because what happens if you don't forgive someone who sins against you? What's it turn into? Hebrews tells us it turns into bitterness. Right? Is bitterness sin? Yes. So we certainly don't want to go there. So the Christian does not and cannot habitually and persistently sin. He will sin sometimes. He will sin willfully. But He will not sin habitually and persistently and relentlessly. One writer says, few have been saved, born again, regenerated, made new. The whole direction of their life is now toward God, and the direction of their life is now toward holiness. Their mind is set on the Spirit. Their mind is set on things above. They're disconnected from earthly things. And so that they can say, although they sometimes sin, yet the ruling principle of their life is opposition to sin so that they hate the sin that they see in their own life. Put it in the language of Romans 6, sin does not reign in us any longer. Now, I think we have this idea that we look in our lives and we tend to see our sinfulness and we see our disappointments and sometimes we fail to look at it the way the scripture looks at it. The Bible tells us in Romans chapter 6 that you have to consider yourself to be dead indeed to sin. And if you're dead to it, then you shouldn't be responding to it. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that you play around with it. Did Joseph play around with it when he was tempted by Potiphar's wife? No, he got out of there. He left the situation. And you and I must do the same thing when we're tempted to sin. We don't stand there and go, well, you know what? I'm dead to sin. I've got power over this. I am not weak. I'm strong. And the Bible says, take heed where you stand lest you fall. Know the weaknesses of your own heart. Get out of there. That's the first thing you need to do. So if you practice sin, You're not a child of God because children of God practice righteousness. And this is certainly a test that everyone needs to make. And the next one, I would say, the reason for all of this is that sin is incompatible with a Christian. It's incompatible with a Christian. What is sin? Think about that. I don't know if you've ever asked that question, but what is it? We see its effects. We see its behavior, but what is it? Well, there are several definitions of sin in the Bible, like Romans 14.23 says that whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Or Proverbs 24 and verse 9, the thought of foolishness is sin. Or James 4.17, therefore to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. Or 1 John 5.17, all unrighteousness is sin. But John's epistle defines sin as lawlessness. It views sin as defilement, but here it views it as defiance. Look at that, verse 4. Everyone who practices sin also practices what? Lawlessness. And sin is lawlessness. Sin's a deliberate deviation from and an infraction of the standard of right. It's a willful rebellion arising from the deliberate choice of the sinner. It's the greatest tragedy of the entire universe. This is what Lucifer did to God. He lifted up his heart in pride against God. He rebelled against God. He had defiance in his heart. And this is exactly what Eve experienced because when she failed to listen to God and rather listen to the devil, she rebelled against the word of God. And anytime you and I sin, we are rebelling against the word of God. So this is rebellion. By its nature, it has this character of lawlessness. William MacDonald says, it's insubordination to God, wanting one's own way and refusing to acknowledge the Lord as rightful sovereign. In essence, it's placing one's own will above the will of God. It's the opposition to a living person who has the right to be obeyed. So it's living your life as if there is no law, no standard of righteousness, that you are the final authority when it comes to these issues. So it conveys more than just transgressing the law of God, as the King James will put it. It conveys the ultimate sense of rebellion, living as if there was no law, ignoring even the law that exists. This is the assertion of the individual will against and in defiance of the law of God, the refusal to live in accordance with the revealed standard of right and wrong. You know, even for the unbeliever that they have been given the law of God, you know where it's written? On their heart. They have a conscience that accuses or excuses them. They have a conscience that will tell them between right and wrong. Even our society. even though it's going more and more down into the pit, still knows the difference between right and wrong. You need to be discerning and selective over who you listen to. Those who call sin good and evil good, you need to make sure you're running far away from them. But you know what? And this is probably one of the strongest thoughts that I could think of from the Bible. where Hebrews 1 and verse 9 tells us that Jesus hates lawlessness. He hates this defiance against God. He hates this open rebellion in the heart. It says, you have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Think about that. Jesus hates sin. Do you love Jesus? Do you? Do you hate what he hates? Love what he loves? And even Jesus gives this sobering statement to those who habitually practice lawlessness. In Matthew 7, 23, he says, I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Again, if this is the habit of your life, you're not a Christian. You're not a child of God. You're still in your sin. You're still following Satan, and you need to repent and turn to Christ. Adam Clarke says in response to 1 John 3, 4, he says, here's a fearful text. Who is a child of the devil? He that commits sin. Who is a child of God? He that works righteousness. By this text we shall stand or fall before God, whatever our particular creed may be to the contrary. Again, what is your behavior? What is the habit of your life? Righteousness or sinfulness or lawfulness? And yet, Jesus came to take away sin. Look at verse 5. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins and in Him there is no sin. John says Jesus was made manifest, He appeared, He became flesh, He lived, He suffered, He died, He rose again in order to take away sin. And the idea of taking away sins, it indicates from the Aorist tense verb there that the effective removal of human sin was the goal of His coming. This was the purpose of His coming. He came to put away sin. Hebrews 9, 26, He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. You know, John the Baptist referred to Him as being the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Paul said it this way in Titus 2, 13, that He gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed. So again, as Adam Clarke says, he came into the world to destroy the power, pardon the guilt, cleanse from the pollution of sin. This was the very design of the manifestation in his flesh. He was born, he suffered, and he died for this very purpose. And yet for someone who say that they know Jesus in a saving way, and yet their lives are reflecting a continual pattern of sin, are liars. They're lying. I mean, it takes you back to chapter 1. You say that you have fellowship with Him. But you walk in darkness, you lie and do not practice the truth, verse 6 says. Verse 8, you say that you have no sin, you're just deceiving yourself and the truth is not in you. Verse 10, if you say that you have not sinned, guess what? You're making God out to be a liar and His Word is not in you. Because He said you did sin. He says you are a sinner. And look at what He's saying right here. To habitually practice sin goes against Christ's purpose. Because if you look there in verse 5, He was the perfect, perfect sacrifice because it says in Him there is no sin. He's the perfect sacrifice because He's sinless. He's properly qualified to be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of men. Heibert says the phrase, and in him is no sin, is literally, and sin in him not exist. And it emphatically declares the sinlessness of the remover of sins. And as such, he is the perfect pattern of what the child of God should be. Here's our visible pattern right here of how we are to live. Look back at verse 3 of 1 John 3. It says that Jesus is pure. Last part of verse 3, He's pure. 2 Corinthians 5, 21 says, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus knew no sin, but God treated him as if he was a sinner on the cross, as he poured out his wrath on him because of sin. Hebrews 4.15 says, we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. And then 1 Peter 2.22 says, that he committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth. So look at your life. Are you practicing sin? If so, this is inconsistent with your claim to be a Christian. You cannot be practicing sin and say that Jesus took your sin away because you're still doing it. The mark of salvation is the decreasingness of sin in your life. It's now infrequent. It's no longer a habit of your life. So everyone, he says, who practices, continues to sin, is continuing to do lawlessness. And you know what? He appeared to take away sin. Because in him there is no sin. Now next time as we look at this, we'll pick up verse six, where he says, now, no one who abides or continues to abide in him sins. No one who sins has seen him or knows him. And he's saying the same thing. He's talking about, in the first part we just looked at today, about abiding in sin, continuing in sin, practicing sin. But the believer, on the other hand, he doesn't habitually practice sin, he habitually abides in Christ. There is a big difference. And so I would encourage you to examine your life this morning You are a liar if you are habitually practicing sin in your life and you need to repent and you need to surrender your life to Jesus Christ for salvation. And you can do that right now as we pray. Just come to him and confess it. Do what we've been singing, Luke 9, 23. Anyone comes after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. There has to be a giving up of you in order to have Christ. You can't hold on to your life. You have to disown it. You have to be willing to give it up. You have to be willing to make an exchange. And I pray that you would examine yourself now, and if you haven't made that exchange, you look at your life and you see ongoing patterns of sin. Don't look at this as just that you've been fallen. Look at this as you're lost. Let's pray. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this opportunity for us to share together in your word. We pray now that you would help us to do the examination that we need to do. It's essential that we get this right, that The children of God and the children of the devil are truly obvious that anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. So, Father, help us right now as we take this moment to examine our hearts in light of what we have just learned. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.