Well, good morning. If you have your copy of God's Word, flip over to 1 John chapter 2, 1 John chapter 2, verses 1 through 6. The text has been read for you already this morning. We're continuing our series, Light, Love, and Life, How the Incarnation Helps Us Live Out the Sacred. This morning, we're looking at the idea of having victory over sin. As you're turning to 1 John, many of you have been concerned, and I just want to follow up. Apparently, my issues last week were bronchitis, and I didn't know I had it. So it was a surprise to me and the doctor. He's like, you're really sick. How long have you felt this way? And I was like, week and a half, two weeks, I don't know. And so he gave me some really strong medication and told me to stay away from people for a few days and to try and rest, whatever that means. And even beyond the work and the job, if any of you have a child that's under the age of three at your house, you understand that there's no such thing as trying to rest. And so, but I'm generally better today and I thank you for a lot of the concern that people have expressed in your prayers. I think I should be able to make it through most of this sermon without without coughing, and as I said that I have to cough. And so we'll see how it goes. So this morning, when John is pushing forward, you know, we've looked at the idea of walking in the light, being in the truth, walking in Christ, this idea of this total cleansing, this total redemption, this proper fellowship that we have with each other and with God, and how He has come to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and this interaction between the work that Jesus has done and the things that are still going on and the differences between justification and sanctification and future glorification. We kind of walk through a lot of those things. John kind of moves from that more theological but with some practical application to a fuller practical expression of what he's talking about in this text. And the text today is how do we have victory over sin? Because that's the goal. And that's part of what sanctification is about. It's about sin no longer dominates my life the way that it did before. That there becomes now a tendency in me to actually want to move toward and enjoy the things of God rather than the things of self and this life. So how do I actually do that? How do I actually accomplish that wonderful lofty goal of having victory over my sin? I want to not continue to fail and to fall and to stumble. I actually want to grow in righteousness and holiness and Christlikeness. So what does that actually look like? How does it work? And so John kind of walks through some of these things. So first, he lists out for us in the first part of verse one, the goal. The goal is not to sin. Now I'm keeping this really low shelf accessible this morning and I'm doing that on purpose because a lot of times when we have a conversation about sanctification, we have a conversation about growing in holiness, we have a conversation about having victory over sin, a lot of times we go straight up to the top of the ivory tower of theology and we start saying all of these things and we start bringing all these concepts together and what God's like and what we're like and the interchange of Imputed alien righteousness and all this different kind of we start going through all this kind of stuff and at the end of it Guys are going yeah, but I still know how to have victory over sin And so we're gonna keep this Very accessible this morning. So Christian, other than having a heart, and by the way, the other than here is kind of a tongue in cheek. Other than having a heart that just fully and completely loves Jesus, what should your life be about as a Christian? And the wink wink there is your goal should be not to sin. By the way, that's the exact same thing that I just said, just in a different way. Because if you're wholeheartedly loving the person of Jesus, then you're not going to be sinning. That's the thing. If you're really gonna be emulating Christ and walking with Him and looking like Him and being like Him and loving Him and loving the things He loves, He doesn't love sinful things. So you won't be sinning. So same goal, just verbalize differently. So the goal is not to sin. I don't know if I've ever met a Christian person who says, you know, I've been doing this not sending thing pretty good for a few days. I think I really just feel like I need to steal something or, you know, cheat on something or lie about something, you know, just, I kind of miss it. No, the goal is not to sin. That's the goal. Now it's pretty, it's pretty out there, but I want you to notice I want you to notice the compassion that John has for this church when he says this to them. Look at the beginning of verse one of chapter two. He says, my little children. Now by this time, likely John is in his eighties, depending on when you view the writing of this letter, He's probably, for this age and this culture and this day and time, I understand in our world with modern advancements of healthcare, somebody can be in their 80s and still, you know, go water skiing, you know. But at this day and this time, for him to be in his, likely in his 80s, some people say maybe even in his 90s, perhaps, just depending on how you do his age around the time of the first preaching of the gospel and that kind of stuff. He has all the right to call these people in the church, my little children, because there's probably nobody in the congregation that's as old as he is anyway. So there's that first thing, but he actually loves them that way. That's how he views them. If you're looking at the development of the church kind of as the development of a family, he's kind of like the great grandfather that still has energy. You know, you love going to his house. You love hanging out with him. You love hearing all these cool stories he has to tell about all these great people that he got to meet because he, you know, you see this guy and he's just kind of a regular guy. And then you start hearing these stories that he gets to tell. And you're like, this is incredible, the life that this guy's had. I want to hang out with this guy and just hear stuff he has to tell. That's John. The only guy living still who was a living apostle of Jesus Christ. The only one that's left in the whole church. And so he's writing to this church and he's writing to them with incredible compassion. He's referring to them as his little children. And he wants them to grow and to be nurtured and to develop and to mature. And he knows that the way for that to happen is for them to pursue a life of holiness, to pursue a life where they become sanctified, to pursue a life where they're able to have victory over sin. And so notice the lofty possibility that he gives. He says, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. Now notice, what I call it, I call it a lofty possibility. I say, Philip, it's not possible to not sin. And we can have a wonderful conversation about the interaction of the old man and the new man and all this sort of thing. But friends, I'm a sovereign grace guy as much as the next one is. I believe in total privacy as much as the next guy. You know, we can do the cheer and the chant and make the letters and stuff. You know, hold the signs up, that's great. Spell out the flower's name, that'd be wonderful. But at the end of the day, sin is not greater than the work that Jesus has done on the cross. If you think that your sin is greater than the work that Jesus has done on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and the indwelling power of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, you have an idol in your sin. That's just the bottom line. And I hear a lot of more sovereign grace reform-minded people when they start talking about sin, sin becomes this remarkably monstrous beast that can't be overwhelmed by anything or anyone, and by implication, not really even Jesus. Well, until the Eschaton one day. Jesus is doing his best, and when they get to the 15th round, I just dated myself there, they don't fight 15 rounds anymore, do they? When you get to the 12th round, then Jesus will finally knock sin out. but he's really got to do a rope-a-dope. He's really kind of do a peek-a-boo. He's really got to kind of hang off to the back because, man, that sin, it's tough. It's gonna take a long time. Do you hear what we're saying when we say stuff like this? So what does John say? John, who walked around with Jesus, what does he say legitimately to this church? Listen to what he says, this lofty possibility that he gives them. I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. so that it might actually be a possibility for you to really live in the holiness of Jesus Christ. That's why I'm writing this letter to you. I just want to be honest with you. The mere fact that it's a lofty possibility is incredible to me. While there's even a shot that I might could actually do something in my life that's really and wholly pleasing to Jesus because it's done in the power of the Holy Spirit. That really might can happen. I'll just be really honest with you. It doesn't sadly happen in my life almost ever. I'm just being honest. And that depresses me greatly about my spiritual condition. But the mere fact that it's a possibility, I'm writing this stuff to you so that you may not sin. That's even an option on the table. That's great. I didn't even, I thought that it wasn't. I thought that that was like way outside of the realm of what was even possible. John's saying, I'm writing this to you so that that might be a possibility for you. That you might actually do something in your life that's not tainted with the old man. Even if it's just one thing, that's just really fully, meaningfully devoted to Jesus. Guys, that opens up a whole new world of possibilities of Christian living. It's beautiful what it does. And so that's the goal. The goal is not to sin. Now, I want you to notice the hope though, because if you're like me, you see that goal. And I don't know how you guys are. We're coming to the end of January. Today's the last day of January. And I know a lot of people at the beginning of each year, they set goals for themselves. And a lot of guys from back in the day always thought that was, thank you, man, you're a great partner, I appreciate that. And that's grace right there. I know that a lot of people set for themselves goals. And I was telling somebody the other day, they were kind of asking, what do you do as far as goal setting? And every year I set very, very achievable short-term goals. that I know I'm not gonna have to try really hard to be able to accomplish. It's always good to have little steps that you know, I'm gonna be able to do that. It's not gonna be that hard and it's gonna make me a better person and the people around me better people because I've done this. And then I have lofty, virtually unattainable goals that I set for myself. And the intention is never to actually reach them. The intention is to just get on the journey of trying to reach them. Because I know that even if I never actually reach them, I'm still gonna be a way better person than I was just because I tried. And a lot of times what people do with goal setting, like this is the goal, the goal is not to sin. And what people do with goal setting is they set a big goal and then they don't reach it and they view themselves as failures. Friends, not reaching your goal, you're not a failure. You're not a failure. Not trying to reach your goals what makes you a failure. That's what makes you a failure. You go and ask any Olympic athlete who never medaled, do you view yourself as a failure because you never won an Olympic medal? Unless they're just insanely narcissistic, they're gonna say, well, no, I'm not a failure. I was an Olympic athlete. I went through the training and I went through the process and I actually got to compete in the games. I mean, just to be there, it's like, you're talking about 3% of the global population ever has ever gotten to do that. That's not failing. That's incredible success is what that is. And so we have a lofty goal. One that I'll be honest with you is gonna be really, really hard to actually grab ahold of. It's to not sin. And in the process of trying to get to that goal, along the way, if we're not careful, we're going to begin to beat ourselves up with unnecessary guilt because we're going to feel like failures because we never seem to reach that goal. And John knew that that's what was going to happen to us. Do you know why he knew that was going to happen to us? Because here he is 80, maybe 90 years old, and it's happened to him his whole Christian life. He's experienced it personally of trying to reach out to the lofty goal of not sinning and coming up short more times than not. And he knows what that feels like. He understands what it's like to not quite live up to the standard that Jesus has set. He understands it probably better than anyone else because he had more life to do it with. And so how do we find hope in constantly not quite reaching the goal? Because he knows we're not going to most of the time. He lays out for us the hope at the end of verse one and the second and the rest of verse two. And he says that we have an advocate. He says, we have an advocate. Notice what he says. He says, and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. Now, I wanna touch on this word for advocate. Now, a lot of times what you'll see commentators do and theologians do is they'll move that advocate word into their arena. And I've done this some before myself. They'll move that advocate word into the arena of the legal world. The world of one who takes up a case on your behalf before the judge. And there is a sense in which some of that's probably going on here. But I don't want to go there with this word this morning, because the word that's used here is only used a very few times in all of the New Testament. Not many at all. I think maybe five or six total. It's very small. It's less than 10. This word is actually the word that's most often translated as helper. And everywhere else in the New Testament, except here, it's used of the Holy Spirit. It's that word that's used of the Holy Spirit, but I will send to you another, the helper, the Holy Spirit, and he will come and this is what he will do for you. Same word. The only time that it's used of anyone other than the Holy Spirit is here when it references Jesus as our advocate. If we sin, we have an advocate. We have the helper, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. So what's he helping us with? How is Jesus helping us if in our pursuit of not sinning, we keep on sinning? I'm trying not to sin. I'm trying to live in the power of the Spirit. I'm trying to emulate my life after Christ. I'm trying to be like Jesus. I'm trying to live in His death, His resurrection and His ascension. I'm trying to live as if I am truly seated with Him in heavenly places. How then do I maintain right proper relationship with Him and purity of heart and mind before him and cleanliness of lifestyle before him. If in my quest to not sin, I keep on sinning. How does that work? Well, it says that Jesus helps us. Now, how does he help us? He helps us by the reference that John gives him here. We have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Jesus himself is perfectly righteous. He was that way already in his eternality as the second person of the Trinity, but he was actually impractically that way in how he lived without sin in this world and in this life. He came into a fallen environment, surrounded by fallen people and never committed sin himself. He was the model of what John is saying our lives should be like. You're gonna be in the middle of a world of fallen people, with a fallen nature, with fallen creation, with fallen governmental systems, with fallen economic systems, with fallen social systems, and you need to be presented as unfallen. He said, you wanna see somebody that can help you with that? And I know we get really uneasy when we start talking about Jesus as a model, as Jesus is one to model our lives after. Jesus as our example, but friends you're gonna have to get past the uneasiness there because yes, he's God in the flesh And yes, he's king of kings. And yes, he's Lord of your Lords. And yes, he's the lamb slain before the foundation of the world And yes, he's the one worthy of our worship, but he's also our example He's the one we're supposed to look at and go my life needs to look like that and And so John, when he says, you wanna see how Jesus helps you on this? He doesn't go to a big theological thing right out the gate. He gives Jesus a title. He says, you want some help? We have an advocate, we have a helper. It's Jesus Christ, the one who was righteous. You wanna be righteous. What does that look like? How do I do that? Jesus. Take a look. How did he do it? He's helping you by the way he lived his life. He's showing you what a righteous life would actually look like. It's really cliche and it's really corny, but the old question from the 90s from that book, In His Steps Still Sticks, what would Jesus do? I know it's just kind of goofy and I know people really went over the top with all the bands and the bracelets and the stuff and the headbands was weird. And let's not do that again. But it's not a bad question to ask. You know, You get cut off in traffic. You say, Philip, you always go back to traffic. It's because when I see the people with the bumper stickers, I love this church or they got the fish on it and it's eating the upside down Darwin fish or whatever. And then they're like, you know, road raging, screaming, honking, you know, clearly not communicating with uncorruptible speech. You know, it's a beautiful moment to really kind of test the sanctification. So you get cut off in traffic. What would have Jesus done if he got cut off in traffic? You want a model for righteousness in the middle of a very unrighteous situation? You gotta help her. What sort of things would he have done? How would he have helped? What sort of words of comfort would he have expressed to a person in need? How would he have done this or that? You just kind of look and go, what was Jesus about? What were the kind of things he would have done? What are the sort of things he would have said? How would he have dealt with complicated situations? What sort of course of wisdom would he have used? How did he use the Bible to help him understand the world around him because he grew in wisdom and stature and understanding of the Lord. What would his life have been like? John is saying, look, if you want help in being righteous, look at the only righteous person who's ever actually walked on earth. That's very helpful. You know, we do that almost intuitively with anything else. Hey, I want to, I want to be healthier. I want to know how to eat better. I want to exercise better. I want to know how to manage money better. I want to know how to do this better. I want to know how to do that better. And what's the very first thing that comes to mind? You know, I probably ought to find somebody that does that really good and find out how they do it. It doesn't, I mean, not rocket science to figure that out. It's like, oh yeah, there's probably somebody out there that knows about that. Let me go see what they have to say about it and I'll just do what they said because they really know their stuff. And then when it comes to living righteously, we act like we're at a roadblock. I just, I wish there was someone we could look at that could show us what it means to live righteously. Duh. There was this guy, his name was Jesus. He was righteous and was that way his whole life. And then he said, hey, come follow me. That means exactly what John's saying here. We got a guy that can help us out with this. Just do what he did. And so this is beautiful. We have Jesus Christ, the helper. He's righteous. Now, how does he apply that righteousness to us? John does go pretty theological here for us and it's deep. And I want you guys to hang on just for a second. He says that this righteousness works for us, this example of Jesus works for us because, and he links these two together by saying and, because Jesus himself is the propitiation for our sins. Now, It's a whole lot of sad and unfortunate and debate in theological circles for the past couple of thousand years as to what John means when he uses that word because it's not used very often in the New Testament. And it's making reference to some things that are going on in the Old Testament. And there's, sadly, many trees have faced a great demise of the books that have been printed for people trying to have this conversation. I think trees are nice and I think those books a lot of times aren't, and I think we probably should have kept the trees, but that's a whole other conversation for another day. I want to give you the essence of what this word means. It means both of the things that people are trying to get it to mean. That's the reason why I think the debate is kind of squirrely. Because some people think that it's just an atoning sacrifice, a sacrifice that forgives sin. Other people think that it's a wrath bearing sacrifice, a sacrifice that removes God's wrath away from us. So there's the positive side and the negative side. And people have split lots and lots of hairs over which one is it. Is it the one that removes God's wrath and anger? Is it the one that positively gives to us God's righteousness? And I'm reading through this stuff all of these years and I'm like, you know, these guys are brilliant and they're smart and they're great theologians. But yes, do you guys ever think that maybe you could not crucify each other if you just said, hey, your good point and my good point should get together and get married and have a kid called the right idea. That maybe Jesus is the propitiation of our sins means that he both applies to us the positive righteousness of God and simultaneously removes God's wrath away from us. Just a thought, fellas. Hey, you know what? I didn't even have to write a big book. That was like a little paragraph. It's awesome. More trees. Anyway, and so, so Jesus is the atoning sacrifice. He has made atonement for us. And in atonement, you necessarily have both elements. You have the positive application of Jesus's righteousness to us, and you have the negative removal of God's wrath from us. And so that's what Jesus has done in the atoning sacrifice for us. That's what it means. Then John goes and he makes everybody in a place like Sylvania just incredibly uncomfortable. But not only for our sins, but for those of the whole world also. They look, man, we were just spelling out the flower and you can't spell out the flower if we did it for everybody this, we come on. I mean, that becomes like a toot. I don't know what that even is. So friends, let me give everybody peace of mind. We're all wrong about it. I just want to tell you that. I have a position that I think is right. It's the one that most of you probably think is also correct, but I'm probably wrong. Say, Philip, what are you doing? Don't do that. No, I'm probably wrong. I have to be humble enough to admit that. There are some incredibly righteous, God-fearing, brilliant people who have lived in the Christian church who absolutely don't agree with me on how all this works. They just don't. I happen to think that they're incorrect in this small theological position. But at the end of the day, this particular one is really not that big of a deal. It's got some outflowings that are kind of significant. Mind you, if you go too far with it, it can get really bad, really quick. But I'm gonna pull the Whitfield Wesley thing on you this morning. Whitfield was the Calvinist, Wesley was the Armenian, and a news reporter asked Whitfield one day about Wesley. He said, do you think that when you die and go to heaven, that you'll see John Wesley there? And Whitfield said, no, actually, I don't think I will. So the newspaper reporter's getting excited, because it's like, ooh, this could make a juicy story in the paper. Because by the way, believe it or not, back in the day, juicy stories in the paper were about theology, go figure, not Kardashians. So anyway, and so, couldn't we have the good old days like that? That'd be great. Anyway, and so the news reporter's like, what, you think his theology is so wrong that he's not really a Christian? He said, oh, oh, no, no, no, it's not that at all. He said, I just personally think that John Wesley is so much holier and more righteous than I am, that when the crowns of glory are divvied out and people are placed in their position in closeness to the throne of God, I'll be so much further away than he is that the throngs of people between us will keep me from seeing that he's there. I think that's more of a good tempered viewpoint for us to have about some of these nice in-house debates that we get to have as Christian. Notice I called them in-house debates. One of my dearest brothers that I went to seminary with was from the radical reformation, full-blown, full-fledged, free will, lose your salvation, Arminian guy. Dude loved him some Jesus. and preach the gospel like a crazy person and absolutely would tell you a different interpretation of what this verse means than I'm going to. So I just want to give everybody a heads up. Most of us are probably wrong. Now, what do I think it means? Because I know some of you are still holding your breath. You're really stressed out about me saying this and being this transparent from the pulpit. What do I think that it means? I think that John is giving an implication to the global reality of the gospel. I don't think he's specifically saying something about every human person who's ever lived and breathed. And the reason why I think that is that several chapters from now, which is going to be a couple of months from now, there's another place in John's letter of 1 John where he uses this exact same expression in the Greek language, whole world. And he absolutely is not talking about every person that's alive on the planet, because in the context he's comparing, quote, the whole world to a different group who's part of what that whole world should be. And so there's very clear from inside of the letter itself that when you say whole world, you're not necessarily talking about every living human being because the same writer, just a couple of paragraphs later, there's something completely different with the same construction. So I don't think that's what he's saying there. I don't think that's what he's saying here. I think he's just talking about the global reality of the power of the gospel. And friends, if you don't believe in the global reality of the power of the gospel, you haven't seen what the gospel actually does in the world. The fact that we all go to hospitals that have decent medical standards is an outworking of the global reality of the gospel. It was the Christian church that really established a formalized hospital system like we understand even remotely today. The fact that we have people of both genders, male and female, that received advanced education and learning through the university system is an outworking of the church because of the global reality of the gospel. And so now Muslim women in Arab countries who are receiving the freedom to attend universities are participating in part of the global reality of the gospel, whether they realize it or not. This is the splendid beauty of Christ atoning, sacrificing work for the world is that the entire world, whether it wants to have it happen or not, is going to be positively impacted by the fact that the gospel is in it now. And so he hasn't only done it for just our sins, but for that of the whole world. The whole world, and I know that somebody's gonna accuse me of sounding like a post-millennial at the end of this service, Kevin Ryan, but the whole world really is becoming a better place because of the gospel. Amen, he screams amen. It's the only time he ever says amen. The gospel really is making a difference in our world. Even for people who hate it, their lives are better because of it. Women, you vote in this country, not because of some sort of secular, moralistic, deistic philosophy of the equality of the human sexes. You vote in this country because the gospel has made a difference in people's perceptions of equality. The gospel makes a huge difference in what the world is like. If you don't believe that, go to the handful of nations that are still on the earth that don't have a strong permeation of the gospel and see what their cultures are like. The most oppressive, dark, dangerous places on earth are the places where there's minimal to no gospel presence. The places that even if they've moved to a post gospel reality are starting to become places that aren't very safe and inviting to be in anymore because the gospel presence is beginning to fade. So yes, there's a global reality of what the gospel does, and it's magnificent. It's wonderful. So how does it work? The goal is not to sin. The hope that we have is that we have a helper in Jesus Christ who can show us the way and can forgive us and cleanse us and help us along. So what's the process look like? Well, the last few verses, that's what he shows us. beginning in verse three, going down through verse six, he shows us what the process looks like by this. We know that we have come to know him. If we keep his commandments. The one who says, I've come to know him does not keep his commandments as a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him, the love of God has truly been perfected by this. We know that we are in him. The one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked. And there it is again, looking like Christ. So the process is the pursuit of Christ likeness. So I have this lofty goal way out here to not sin. I keep tripping up in my pursuit of that lofty goal, but I want to get to it. What course of action do I need to take to actually have a chance to reach the lofty goal all the way out there of not sinning? It's the pursuit of Christlikeness. It's the pursuit of being like Jesus. Now, how can we know that we have Christ in order to be able to pursue him? That's a very good question to ask. People ask it all the time. How can I know for sure that I'm a Christian? How can I know for sure that I'm in the faith? How can I know for sure that I'm really there? And a lot of people aren't gonna like this answer, but this is the consistent New Testament answer. It is marked by our transformed lives. What you mean it's not marked by my personal profession of faith that I had when I was six? I remember walking in an aisle, filling a card, praying a prayer, and getting dunked in a tank, and everybody was kind of celebrating that, and it was a really cool time, and they had a post-ice cream fellowship, and they gave me a little Bible with a candle. By the way, that's the new sacraments of the evangelical church. You've got seven things you're supposed to do so that you can have grace, and so you walk through all that process. And I can mark off my list of the seven things I'm supposed to do, and I'm good. Only difference is the modern evangelical church doesn't excommunicate anybody. So once you've done those things, you're eternally in and nobody can look at you and say, you need to get out. And so, but friends, the new Testament answer is not any of that stuff. The new Testament answer is, is you can know that you have Christ because it will be marked out by your transformed life. And I'll go ahead and tell you, I'll be honest with you. The absolute worst conversations that I ever have people in pastoral counseling are about this. People come in and they want to talk about abuse situations. They want to talk about divorce situations. They want to talk about extreme health situations. Those things are all brutal and they're tough and they're difficult. And sometimes they have a lot of nastiness to have to work through. You want to talk about brutally difficult conversation to have with somebody. is to sit across the table from someone who can give you all of the correct theological answers as to what it means to be a Christian and not one thing in their life shows that they're actually following Jesus. And then to have the audacity, that's usually the word used with some other words I can't share from this platform, then to have the audacity to look that person in the face and say, friend, I can't know your heart for sure, but based on what the New Testament tells me, you're probably a false professor. You know all the right answers, but your life hasn't been touched by Jesus at all, and you need to be saved. You wanna talk about having a really hard conversation that day? That's a wonderful way to start one right there. So Philip, you have no right to ever call anyone's salvation into question. Please read the New Testament sometime. We have, as Christians, every right to call people's salvation into question. That's what church discipline is actually about. When the church puts someone under discipline, they're basically announcing to the rest of the world, it doesn't matter what this person says, their life so doesn't reflect Jesus that we collectively as a community don't think they're actually a Christian. And we don't want you as the lost world to confuse them with us. That's what church discipline is. You'll know them by their fruit. You'll be able to actually identify them by what's being produced out of their life. And so John here says, this is the process. You pursue Christ likeness. And when you do that, it causes a transformation of life. Now, it might be slow going for some people. It might be really slow going for some people. And I wanna give you a somewhat sensitive example. And I'm gonna be really diplomatic in the way I try to talk about this because of the age diversity in our group. There's a particular sin that usually affects men but has had a high effective rate among young women these days that is mostly done now through the internet. All the grownups in the room are aware of what I'm talking about. Yes, okay, very good. And so I've counseled people who've struggled with said observations and sinning. And they usually fall into one of two categories. You'll have one person who comes in and they try to self-justify. It's not that big a deal. It's this, it's that, it's learning, but then really, and they try to make all the excuses they can as to why it's not really a big problem. It's not that big of a deal. And then you have the other guy who comes in and he's incredibly devastated with himself. I didn't want to do that. I felt terrible while I was doing that. And when I was done doing that, I couldn't stand myself for having done that. But there was such a struggle going on in me that I just don't feel like I could not do that. And I don't like that about me. That drives, it sickens me to know that this evil in me wants to drive me to places I don't want to go. Sounds a lot like something Paul said in Romans chapter seven. But I don't want this and I need help and I need accountability and I need people to come in my life and I need to do whatever extreme things I need to do. I don't want this, but it's still there. So the one guy maybe only does it a couple times a year and he doesn't think that's a big deal. Everybody does it, it's no big deal. The other guy maybe does it all the time. He actually commits the sin constantly and regularly, but he hates it and he doesn't want it. I will go ahead and tell you right now, based on what the New Testament says, guy number one may not even have a relationship with Jesus, even though he does the sin less. Because guy number two, even though the sin overwhelms him frequently, The Holy Spirit is driving him toward a hatred of the sin, which is a mark of transformation in Jesus. I find greater hope for the guys going back to his computer every other day, but is hating it and admitting it and owning up to it and repenting of it and giving public accountability to it so he can get the help that he needs from it. I give greater hope to that guy of actually having victory over his sin than the other guy any day, any day. Because transformation into Christ likeness doesn't mean that you're always going to look as cookie cutter as everybody wants you to look. And I say that point this morning because there's a lot of you out there who are struggling with lots of sin and it's deeply ingrained. It's the sin that the New Testament says is the sin that so easily besets you. It's the one where you're the dog returning to his vomit over whatever that thing is. This is the thing that just trips you up constantly and you just feel like it beats you down all of the time, and you hate it, and you hate yourself for it, and it causes you to call all things into question, and you're trying to put as many things in your life as you can to try to rid yourself of it, and it's a war for you. Friend, be encouraged this morning. That is a beautiful picture of being transformed in the image of Jesus. That's beautiful. The fight is worth it. to the self-justifiers in the room? Oh, it's not that big a deal. Everybody does it. I can stop anytime I want to. You may need Jesus in your life. Forget about overcoming your sin, you may just need Jesus. You might need to start with the doorway of repenting of your sins and legitimately calling out on Christ as your savior, because Christ is not gonna drive you to self-justification. And friends, this can be applied to any sin at all, anyone. Give me the guy who is honest and broken and devastated and hates it and doesn't know what to do about it, and it's crushing his whole existence, but he knows that he has to figure out some kind of extreme way to get away from it over the guy who doesn't think it's that big of a deal any day. Because if your right hand offends you, you cut it off. If your right eye offends you, you block it out. You don't look at it and go, You don't look at a raging fire that you need to reach into and get something out of and go, oh, that's not a big deal. We don't have to worry about that. I got this. No, you get all the protective gear on that you need and you're smart about it. So this is what it looks like. So he says something that also makes a lot of us very uncomfortable as we get ready to close this morning. He says that, how do you do this? You do this by the commandments of Christ. Oh no, Philip, what? I thought Jesus came to save us from the law. I thought we don't have to follow that stuff anymore. I thought that the point of it was is that we didn't have things that we're actually supposed to do and look at that and the other. Now, I understand that my viewpoint on the law is a little different from some other people's and that's fine. It's not a big deal. It's another one of those in-house debates. But friends, the scripture teaches us plainly that there's a law of Christ, that there's the command of Christ. Christ has set forth A standard. It's one to be obeyed. It's one to be followed. It's one to be embraced. It's not one to be ignored or neglected. And his standard, though able to be defined quite simply, is incredibly profound and difficult. There's at least three main parts with a fourth supplemental section to the commandments of Christ. Number one, there is a call to follow. You cannot have victory over sin if you're not following Jesus. And I'm not just talking about becoming a Christian, I'm talking about actively being a Christian. You followed Christ, you wake up tomorrow and you follow. Your life has been on, I wanna be like Jesus. I wanna go where Jesus goes. I wanna do what Jesus does. I wanna love what Jesus loves. There is a call, a command to follow. Second, There is a call, a command from Christ to self-sacrifice. If you're truly going to be pursuing the life of Jesus, then you are going to find yourself, and I'll be honest with you, I really do try to be transparent with you guys when I'm preaching with you. This is the one that's hardest for me in my Christian journey. Because I'm proud and I'm arrogant, you know, stuck on me. And I think I'm great and wonderful and marvelous. And I think things should mostly be about my personal well-being and happiness all the time. And if everybody else would just figure it out too, we would accomplish it and things would be great. Don't look at me like that. Most of you feel the exact same way about yourself. That's why you get into conflict with other people because other people feel that way about themselves. And then you decide to get married and live in a house together. And both of you want it all to be about you and never about them. And it's, you know, it's just bad. Yeah. Okay. I was letting it settle. Cause I saw some nudging and stuff. I'm letting the, I'm letting the little wrestling matches stop for a second. There we go. Okay. There's a call to self-sacrifice. Jesus said, if anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself. Self-denial, self-sacrifice, putting the well-being of the other, which is the third one. It's an other's first worldview. What did Jesus do? Think about the incarnation. Remember, this series is about how the incarnation helps us live out the sacred. What did the incarnation do for us? Well, it did a lot of things theologically for us and atoning sacrifice and propitiation, all those stuff we talked about. But as far as a model, what did it do for us? The second person of the Trinity who was absolutely eternal, holy, and perfect, who needed nothing added to himself to be all glorious as he was, came into our world, veiled in the flesh of a human being, made himself lowly, a baby in the manger who had to grow and learn things, had to learn a trade and earn a wage and have a living, developed a system in himself where the one who was completely indestructible could die, and he did all of that for what benefit of his? How did that make Jesus greater than he already was? The incarnation itself is an other's first worldview. Jesus says, look, I didn't come to be served. He says it from his own mouth. I didn't come here to be served. He said, if anybody's gonna show up in the world and tell everybody to serve them, it's me, I'm the king of kings. I could have broken open this atmosphere and been like, bow down. But he didn't do that. Instead, he bowed down and washed feet. He said, I didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many. He said, that's what the whole incarnation is about. An other's first worldview. It's like, I don't need anything from you guys. You need everything from me. So I'm going to come down into this and I'm going to give you everything that I've got my whole life. And friends, when we begin to view the world in that way of what's gonna be best for that person, not what's gonna be best for me, what's gonna be best for that person? When we're getting ready to have this conversation, what's gonna be best for that person? And sometimes those conversations are hard conversations. Think about the conversations Jesus had. He called the Pharisees blind guides leading the blind into hell because that was the best thing for them to hear right then. He also looked at the woman caught in adultery and said, look, where are your accusers? They weren't getting ready to stone her to death. She said, Lord, they're gone. He said, well, neither do I accuse you, go and say no more. And she got to live that day and be forgiven. Sometimes that's the best thing that the other person needs. Jesus was always looking at what's best for the other person, which by the way, is the summation of the law. What was the law? What was the law? Jesus said, here's the law. You wanna know what the law was about? It was about love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second one is just like it, inseparable from it. You need to love your neighbor as you love yourself. So this is the whole law. This is Paul's summation of the law in Galatians. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. Against these things, there is no law. Why? Because when you live those things out, you're loving God with all your heart and you're loving people the way you love yourself. This is the commandment of Christ. We love God, we love people, we self-sacrifice, we self-deny, we have an other's first worldview, and we follow in the footsteps of Jesus while we do it. That's the call of Christ. Now, it's stated very simply here, but friends, I wanna tell you, that's radically complicated. That's so hard. I'm not even gonna stand up here and try to be self-righteous and pious about it. Man, this is hard. There's things that I do in my life that are hard that nothing is as hard as this. This is remarkably difficult. You say, Philip, you're not really encouraging me here. I don't wanna lie to you. I wanna tell you the truth today. Following Jesus is brutally difficult because the goal is lofty, be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. And that what John just said, the goal is not to sin. John's not making this stuff up, guys. He's coming right from the mouth of Jesus. It's beautiful. He's basically taking everything Jesus said and he's kind of toning it down a little bit for people to be able to get bite-sized pieces of it. And you know when Jesus said, be perfect the way God's perfect, be holy the way God's holy, he was saying you don't need to be sinning. And so how do you do this? What does this look like? Well, he talks about it. It's about keeping the word and walking the walk. Notice what he says at the end. It says, the one who abides in him, if you say that you're in Jesus, the one who abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked. How did Jesus live his life? Live your life that way. Philip, I don't wanna sin anymore. I don't wanna keep wrestling. I don't wanna struggle with this or with that or this thing or that thing. I don't wanna have to keep having these fights and I don't wanna have this and I don't wanna have that. How did Jesus live his life? How did he talk? How did he act? What sort of wisdom did he use? What sort of sacrifices did he make? Apply that in your life to your situation and you will find how much more victory you begin to have over sin in your life. Now, here's the thing. You're gonna have to fall in love. Hear me this morning on this last point, friends. You are gonna have to fall in love with the pursuit of righteousness. You're actually gonna have to fall in love with the pursuit of it because the results of pursuing righteousness don't always feel good. When you have to hold your tongue, when you have to not defend yourself, when you have to give over to someone else, when you have to make confession about your sin, when you have to admit your wrongs, when you have to try and bring two conflicting groups together in peace and do it with wisdom and juggling and diplomacy and compassion, these things are really hard. And sometimes they don't feel very good. Even very recently, she's not here with us this morning, but even very recently, my wife and I were talking about a big decision that we were having to make about something that's completely unrelated to anything else. But the decision itself, we knew was right. We need to do X. And both of us were a mess about it. Because we didn't want to do X. X didn't feel good. X meant we had to give up some things and we had to in faith trust that some other things were gonna happen and we didn't know what was gonna happen after step two. We knew it was gonna be like a five or six step process and that we only knew what the first two steps were gonna be and we had no idea how the rest of it was gonna come together and we didn't wanna be adrift and while we're having to give up a whole lot to try to make that happen. That doesn't feel good. Sacrificing doesn't feel good, just ask the sheep. There you go. Yeah, you caught it. Okay, good. Sacrifice doesn't feel good. Sometimes it doesn't smell good. Sometimes it doesn't taste good. Sometimes it doesn't look good. Sometimes it's not all neatly packaged in a bow where you can say, oh, look at the beautiful thing God's done in my life. Sometimes it looks really brutal and hard and difficult and you struggle through and it's painful and it's not as enjoyable as you want it to be. Sometimes that's how doing, pursuing righteousness actually works. It hurts a little bit. And I love that the New Testament compares this to physical training for a sport. I know that some of you have been athletes or training in the army is another one that it uses. I've done a lot of training for a lot of sports. Some of you guys have done that too. Nobody, nobody, If they say that they are, there's something wrong with them. Nobody likes extreme training for a sport. They might love the sport. They might love the competition. They might love all that goes into it. But no, I never met a guy when I was running track. He said, oh, coach, I can't wait for bleacher day where we just run thousands of bleachers all day long. Man, it's my favorite day of the week. Something wrong with you, man, if you think that. What in the world? We're gonna run bleachers for three hours, man. We're gonna do 25 miles of bleachers by the time the day's done. You know how your quads are gonna, you're not gonna be able to stand up tomorrow. Nobody wants to do that. That hurts. You wanna block three hours out of your day and sprint bleachers? No, no, I don't wanna do that. You show up to practice today, what are we doing today? Bleacher day, ah. Really? I'm not feeling too good, my mom said I gotta think. You don't wanna do that, it hurts. But when you run bleachers, you get that training in, and you get that pain in, and you make that sacrifice, and you do what you know is the right thing, even though it doesn't feel good, what happens on game day? What happens at meet day? What happens at... You're ready. You're ready. You're ready to face whatever the competition actually is. You're ready. Friends, that's how the Christian life is. That's how the pursuit of being like Jesus is. Friends, when Jesus came to be all that we needed him to be, notice what Paul says. I want to close with this. Notice what Paul says. He says, I want to participate in his life. I want to participate in his resurrection. I want to participate in his sufferings. I want to participate in his death. Paul knew I can't enjoy the benefits of the life of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus unless I also enjoy the benefits of the suffering of Jesus and the death of Jesus. And yes, I call them benefits. We don't call them benefits, but there's benefits there. Paul understood that the things that don't feel quite right about the pursuit of righteousness, the things that hurt about the pursuit of righteousness, give way to the glories that are the pursuit of righteousness. You can have no resurrection without death first, without suffering first. He said, I want to participate in the resurrection of Jesus. So I'll participate in his sufferings and his death too. That is what it means to do what John's talking about, about having victory over sin. And I say to you this morning, like John did, my little children, I write these things to you. I say these things to you so that you may not sin. Isn't that what you want? Don't you want a life marked out by righteousness? I do. Let's pray together. Father God, thank you. Thank you for the truth of this that John gives us. Thank you for the pursuit of Christ likeness, walking in the way of Jesus. The way is straight, the way is narrow, the way is not always easy. The way has difficult hills to climb. Sometimes the way is smooth and pleasant. Sometimes the way is dark and lonely. But Father, you have laid out for us a path of righteousness. Give to us by your grace a desire to walk on it. And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. I invite you to stand with us and sing a song of response this morning.