At this time, let me invite you to turn to John's first epistle, 1 John 1. If you're using the Black Pew Bible, you can find this on page 1218. John 1. We're actually going to begin at verse 5. And we'll go as far as chapter 2, verse 2. Even though there's a chapter break, the thought is still connected. And I hope to show you that this morning. So, 1 John 1. We'll begin at verse 5. And this is the Word of God. This is the message we've heard from Him and announced to you. That God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. 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. So far from The holy Word of God, may He bless it to our hearing this day. In 1 John 1-7, we were told that fellowship with God means that we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light. And what that means is that We are found exercising a dependent faith in God to live according to the truth and the goodness of the Word of God. We live in the light of His Word. And then further in verse 9, we saw that walking in God's light, we heard that walking in God's light means that we confess our sins, trusting God to both pardon our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Again, according to His Word and according to that blood of Christ shed for us. And yet, John is also clear that not everybody walks in the light. That some walk in darkness. That some say that they have no sin. That some deny or excuse their sin. And there are others who will not understand the gospel of grace. And they will act or react like we heard Paul speaking of. They will say as they hear this grace, as they hear about confessing your sins and being forgiven and being cleansed, are you saying that grace becomes some kind of license for us? Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? Is that what you're saying? And so John provides here, as he continues in his letter, a clear call in his writing. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. It's easy for Christians to fall into complacency. It's easy, if you know yourself, it's easy to fall into a presumptive kind of indifference. A compromising, negotiating even, mindset with sin. A toleration of sin in your life. So John gives The same command that Jesus Himself would give when He was on earth, and He would heal people, and He would forgive people. You remember this phrase that He would say. Go and sin no more. In order to walk in the light then, the first step is to confess our sin, and the next, is that we should forsake all sin. We confess our sin and we should forsake all sin. However, John knows that indwelling sin remains in the Christian. When he tells us to confess our sins, he's not talking about some one-time confession and then that's it for life. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. John knows that indwelling sin remains. That there is a war within every Christian who must fight against the sinful tendencies of the heart and the mind. The competing persuasion and influence that runs through you. That voice, that inner voice that speaks to you, that tempts you, that entices you. It's your voice. It is the voice of the flesh. It is the voice of indwelling sin. And because John is a pastor, and because he has seen Christians falling not only into complacency, but at times, despondency, despair, misery, because of indwelling sin, he adds comfort to the command. But if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And what a comfort this is. Bunyan writes a book about the advocacy of Christ, and he highlights the fact that if John were to speak to us that we were to no longer sin, he would be right But it would be so hard. Because that is not the experience of the Christian in this life. When we sin, we cannot trust our instinct to hide from the Supreme Judge of all the earth, but instead to enter into His courts and to stand with Jesus, our Advocate. Now, there's too much. There's too much here. So, this week we'll take up the command. Next week, Lord willing, we'll take up the comfort. wants to protect Christ's disciples from being persuaded by false teachers that somehow forgiveness and cleansing from unrighteousness provides a license for sinning. And so John writes this whole letter to teach us why and how we must abstain from sin. why and how we must abstain from sin. I have three points today then to move us just through verse 1. Sin, first of all, remains in the believer. Sin remains in the believer. But secondly, sin is overcome by the Scriptures. Sin is overcome by the Scriptures. And thirdly, we want to talk about reasons we ought not to practice sin. And then I have a fourth point, actually, which has to do with how we should approach mortification of sin. But it comes by way of that third point is really application. So with that, let us consider our text. Again, 1 John 2, 1, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. You notice how John addresses his audience here in verse 1 of chapter 2. My little children. My small children. most likely he's shifting a little bit in his thoughts. He was addressing opponents, those who would deny their sin, but now he wants to turn to the disciples of Christ. He wants to turn to those whom he has himself discipled. He wants to strengthen them as they walk in the light, and he wants to provide for them both a command and a comfort in their war with sin. He knows. And so, He warmly approaches them. It's as if He's talking to a whole group of people, but then He calls out these little children. Their ears perk up. And what He tells them is that at the heart of this call, to mutual fellowship with the triune God. At the heart of this call is that we would avoid anything that would threaten such a fellowship. Sin disrupts our relationships. All of them. Even the relationships that are based on sin actually disrupt The ways that we were made for true relationship. But let's think most specifically about our relationship with God. Do you actively and intentionally sin and worship at the same time? It's very hard to be in your sin and worship in God. Do you rebel and pray together? Do you purposely sin in the light in front of everybody? Typically not. Typically not. Because sin disrupts our relationships. And sin threatens mutual fellowship with our God. It interrupts our communion with God. God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all, as John says. So those who have fellowship with God must put away their sin so they can walk with Him in His light. In order to bring us into this shared light and love, God has provided His Son, Jesus Christ. And according to Paul, in Him, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Our salvation is not merely then one wherein we are given a right standing with God, but one in which we are made holy possessions of God. What did He say to His people when He brought them out of the slavery of Egypt? I brought you out so that you would become a holy nation. Be holy as I am holy. The intention there was that their condition would change, that they themselves would be people who change. God's purpose, Ian Hamilton says, for His children is to remove sin completely from their lives. That is the purpose of salvation. And yet, that is an uncomfortable removal. That is because it requires a kind of exposure to the sin that remains within us. We know that in salvation, in our coming to Christ, in our taking hold of Him by faith, sin's penalty is removed. And sin's power is broken. And yet, sin's presence and influence remain with the Christian in this life. And that's why John argues with those who deny sin's presence. We deceive ourselves. The truth is not in us when we say we don't have sin. Are you so unaware of yourselves? But there is no sinlessness in this life for the redeemed. There is what we call remaining or indwelling sin. It's hard. It's hard to deal with that indwelling sin. And you can think about those who were saved from the slavery of Egypt, brought out of that slavery and into a broad place, into a place of freedom, into a place where they remained in the presence of God. And what was manifested? What did God expose to them? that their true slavery was not so much the slavery they experienced in Egypt, but the slavery that was in their own hearts. That caused them to complain instead of being thankful. That caused them to not believe God instead of freely trusting Him. We too, having entered fellowship with God and being given glimpses of His glory, we too have our sins exposed to us." We can say things like, we don't sin. We can say things like, we don't have sin. But you and I know that's not really, we're not really being honest. In fact, those kinds of statements and those kinds of coverings and those kinds of excuses are really because in some sense, we understand the offensiveness of our sin. But it's not until we have been made alive, been given new birth, It's not until we come into this fellowship with God that we really see how offensive and repulsive our sin really is. You can say it like this, you are more troubled by sin now as a Christian than when you lived in darkness before. And that's a good thing. Because what it means is that you begin to see things the way that God sees things. It's not wrong for us to have a holy impatience. To long for a time when sin will be completely eradicated from us. When there will not even be a trace or a hint or a drop of rebellion within us. That is right. But we must remember that we are in the beginning stages of salvation, not the completed stage. Children, think about this. When the farmer plants the seed into the ground, Does he wipe the dirt off his hands and say, oh, my work's all done? No, his work has just begun. There's so much to be done with this seed planted in the ground. The watering and the weeding and the caring for, the pulling up and the tying, whatever needs to be done, there's a lot of work to be done. Think of the sculptor who starts with this clay or this marble or whatever it is. And he begins to remove every blemish and every flaw. But removing some pieces off of the block is not the end, it's the beginning. And so sin remains. The Bible teaches that sin is not merely an outward action, but it's an inward motivation. If we are really going to understand what sin is, and if we are really going to seek to not sin, we must understand that it starts from within us. You can think of Jesus in His own teaching on this. You've heard that it was said, don't murder. You shall not murder. But I tell you that, and really what he says is, but murder begins in the heart. You've heard it said, don't commit adultery, but I'm here to tell you that adultery begins in the heart. Same as all the commands. Sin is first and foremost internal. Mark Jones says, we can, like a king in a palace, fortify ourselves with many guards and protections, but we need to remember that no king is truly safe when his enemies are within the gates. And so it is with indwelling sin. And we can look to Christ as a model. We can look to Christ as what our redeemed humanity is supposed to look like. But we must be mindful. We must understand, just as John Owen argues, that our Lord was tempted more intensively and extensively in number, quality, and fierceness from Satan and the world than any other person. And yet, in all of these temptations, Jesus had to deal only with that which came from without. that He did not have internal, indwelling sin the way that you and I struggle with. We deal with sin's constant internal heart persuasion and temptation. There's no vacation for the Christian. And yet, too often, why do we fall into complacency or despair? Because we want to stop fighting. We don't understand that the call to being a Christian in part is a call to spiritual warfare all of our lives. That's why it's hard to understand John here without sometimes losing a sense of our assurance. I'm writing these things so that you may not sin. John, what are you talking about? How are we going to not sin, John? And then we have these wrong doctrines that come out of it that I really don't want to spend a lot of time with today because they're just false and counterfeit doctrines like perfectionism and eternal justification and all these other things that are not helpful to the Christian. The true believer's goal in their Christian walk is to not sin at all. The true believer's goal in their Christian walk is to not sin at all. And you may object to that. You may say, if I seek sinlessness, which I cannot achieve according to the Scriptures, I will always fail at this goal and I will despair. It is a maturing belief. It is a maturing goal. It is something that we have to come to terms with. The Christian is resolved to break with sin rather than to break with God. The Christian believes with our Savior that the worst affliction is more desirable than the least sin. And I understand it's easier to say that and to say that you believe that than to actually believe it and live it out. But overcoming sin in your life needs to be a priority. It needs to be approached with purpose and a plan. You will not attain perfection in this life. You will offend the Father. You will grieve the Holy Spirit. You will deny your Savior. And yet, the one who is walking in the light has a new attitude regarding sin. As I said in the beginning, you begin to see sin the way that God sees sin. It becomes more heinous to you, more repulsive to you, more disgusting to you. The Bible describes sin in various ways that highlights how terrible and offensive and disgusting sin is. It's like having pus oozing sores. Have you ever seen that? Have you ever experienced that? It's like having a heavy burden that you cannot actually lift off of you at all, and yet you are being crushed underneath it. You think about being pinned against something and the impossibility of moving it yourself. Sin is spoken of as defiling filth. or an impossible debt to pay, a deep darkness, or one that children often snicker at, a dog eating its vomit. You might snicker at that, but it's actually really gross. It's intended to be gross. Any of you eat vomit? Any of you sin? See? Well, then you do eat vomit. You know exactly what it's like then. The weird thing is that you actually delight in vomit. So do I. See, that's how deceived we are and how much more we need God's perspective on sin. The believer desires to be free from sin so that they can love God entirely and commune without sin. One Puritan says it well, though we cannot be all together without sin in this life, yet we must not altogether leave off to resist sin. Sin reigns where it is not resisted." Sin reigns where it is not resisted. And so understand that one of the things that John is saying here is this, is that you have sin still, and your goal should be to not sin. Let's move to our second point, because John says something else very interesting and very helpful here, even in this verse, without even moving to verse two yet. He says, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. Our second point is that sin is overcome by the scriptures. That the biblical message of salvation is not that God has saved us from a burning building, or a car wreck, or we have been saved by the skin of our teeth, and now we can just go on and live our lives. Those are comic book heroes. Rather, what the Bible teaches us is that when God saves us, He saves us from His condemnation. that God rescues us from God. And therefore, we belong to Him. And not only does He save us from His condemnation, which we rightly deserve because of our offensiveness and heinousness and rebellion, but He also saves us from corruption. He saves us from condemnation and He saves us from corruption. perversion, rebellion. He gives us a taste for vomit. And we say, ew, that's disgusting. We're changed by Him. He changes our spiritual taste buds, as it were. And we begin to desire to eat the things that actually spiritually nurture us. We desire Christ. God provides a free and full salvation. from His condemnation, from our own corruption. And because He provides a free and full salvation, we really could say that there are no limitations on forgiveness. That if we are forgiven, if we are rescued, if we are kept from that which we deserve, then we become His servants. We are moved, as Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 6, from being slaves to sin to being slaves of righteousness. One pastor writes in a book about a woman who comes to understand this. He says, some years ago, I met a woman who began coming to our church Growing up, she went to church and believed that God accepts us only if we are sufficiently good, sufficiently right. And she never understood that we can be accepted by God by sheer grace through the work of Christ, regardless of anything that we do or have done. And one day, the pastor and this woman, they were talking about this very thing, and she said, you know, that's a scary idea. It's good scary, but it's still scary. And the pastor writes, I was intrigued. I asked her, what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this. If I was saved by my good works, well, then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty, and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace at God's infinite cost, well, then there's nothing He cannot ask of me. How powerful is that? She could see immediately that the wonderful, beyond-belief teaching of salvation by sheer grace had two edges to it. On the one hand, it cut away slavish fear. God loves us freely despite our flaws and our failures. And yet she also knew that if Jesus really had done this for her, well, then she was not her own. She was bought with a price. And John provides the same conclusion here. John believes that the Gospel can help you abstain from sinning. That there are not limits on God's forgiveness, and therefore, He can say to you, go and sin no more. In fact, what John writes here in this verse implies that the whole Bible is written to you so that you may not sin. Is that how we use the Bible? To encourage us not to sin? Are we like the psalmist who says in Psalm 119.11, your word I have hidden or I have treasured in my heart that I may not sin against you? The gospel does not encourage people to continue in sin. Rather, those united to Christ through faith have died to sin's power. They've been made alive unto God so that you can live for Him in your worship and service and obedience. The gospel does not leave you free to choose how you want to live. Rather, you live as a servant to sin or a servant to God. It is a counterfeit gospel that says, oh, God has removed condemnation, therefore I can do whatever I want. Psalm 19 verse 12, which highlights the power of God's word. Who can discern his own errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. See, this is the response. As I read the Bible, I come to this realization. Who can discern his own errors? Acquit me of hidden faults, and keep back your servant from presumptuous sins. Let them not rule over me, and then I'll be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgressions." That is how we are to understand the Bible overcoming sin in our lives. Well, let me then quickly move to our last point. John tells us, my little children, I'm writing these things so that you may not sin. We must appreciate that all doctrine is meant to be practical. Everything that we're given to believe is actually given to us so that we would live in a particular way, a holy, wise, and good, and right way. You know, it's fascinating people who, let me say this, it's fascinating this idea of doctrine must be practical because, because, Both those who are on the very end of the spectrum, very liberal, very lawless in their thinking of what the Bible teaches would say, I don't like doctrine because it's not practical. I don't like doctrine. I don't care about this justification distinguished from sanctification. Who cares about those terms? I just need to love and be loved. And on the very other end of the spectrum, there's an ultra conservative side, a conservatism that is also sinful because it wants to highlight a doctrine that's not practical too. And we get into the weeds and we get into the minutia of very deep doctrine. And we feel like, you know, how wonderful it is that no one else can sit around and discuss these things, only the very doctrinaire among us. And so both of them view doctrine as not practical, but for different reasons. And it's kind of funny because they're on the same exact team. But the Scriptures would show us John would tell us, I'm teaching you so that it affects your life. I'm writing these things to you so that you won't sin. This is what we need. So, avoiding and abstaining from sin. This is a godly pursuit. Let's just consider some reasons why we ought not to practice sin. First and foremost is we desire to glorify God. God is not sinful. He is holy, and it is contrary to His very nature. But further, not only do we want to glorify God, but we want to love God, and God hates and condemns sin, so we ought to hate it as well. One Puritan says this, never think to find honey in the pot when God writes poison on its cover. We may say of every sin in this respect, if God call it foolishness, there is no wisdom to be found in it. So we want to glorify God, we want to love God. Further, we want to maintain fellowship with God. We said before, sin disrupts our relationship with God. while obedience and worship and service maintain our fellowship with God. Fourthly, we want to honor Christ's sacrifice. Sin caused the suffering of our blessed Savior. And in fact, this is why He came into the world. To deal with sin. To deal with your sin. Like a great physician who comes to remove the cancer. Listen to this, Puritan. Did not God spare His own Son? He didn't spare His own Son. That's what he's saying. Did not God spare His own Son? Well, then let none of us spare our own sins. Sin was that sword which pierced Christ. Oh, let sorrow for sin pierce your hearts. If you spare sin, God will not spare you. We spare sin when we faintly oppose it, when we excuse, cover, and defend it, when we are impatient under just rebukes and reproofs for it. But all kindness to sin is cruelty to our own souls and to our Savior. So we glorify God, we love God, we maintain fellowship with God, we honor Christ's sacrifice. We also avoid and abstain from sin to experience true freedom. We live in the most supposedly freedom-loving country that there is. We should want to experience true freedom. Sin is described as a form of bondage. And yet the Scriptures tell us that God's commands provide true freedom for us in Christ. Further, sin hinders spiritual growth. And so if we're going to grow in our faith and in our assurance, in our maturity, if we're going to grow into Christlikeness, then we need to avoid and abstain from sin. We should avoid sin because of the consequences of sin. Sin adds insult to injury. Not only do we have a sinful nature that is constantly persuading and tempting us, but then we enter into the misery of sin. We enter into the harm of sin. We enter into the abuse of sin. We enter into death of sin. Further, not only is our avoidance of sin Godward, but we show love to others when we abstain from sin. We're called to love our neighbor as ourselves. Well, sin is the opposite of that. Sin involves harming others, using others, benefiting off of the backs of others, prioritizing your own desires over the needs of others, thinking yourself more important than others. This is not consistent with love toward our neighbor. And finally, Another reason to not practice sin is because we get the privilege of representing Christ in the world. We're ambassadors of Christ. We reflect His glory. And when we engage in sin, well, we actually don't just represent ourselves. We misrepresent Christ to others. We bring shame to His name. You may remember the rebuke that God gives through Nathan to David. You and your sin have given opportunity to the unbeliever to blaspheme the name of God. So for all these reasons and more, I didn't even talk about the evilness of sin, but we ought to not practice sin. Well, I'm going to end there. I did have one piece on Owen. He has written a masterful work on both indwelling sin and understanding sin within you, but also how to put sin to death according to the Scriptures. And I'll just point you to him, and especially chapter 6 in the mortification of sin, where he will talk about How we need to resist and flee and starve and fight and kill lust. And how we must continue to study our enemy and know our weak points and know the strength of lust within us so that we can resist sin. and how we ultimately need to really cling to Christ and depend upon the Spirit in order to, in the Spirit, put sin to death. John has given to us a good word, a helpful word. I've written these things to you so that you may not sin. What are you doing? to fight against sin. What are you doing to abstain from sin? What are you doing to avoid sin? And along with that, what are you believing? What are you desiring? What are you committed to? Because the Scriptures have been given to us so that we would understand that in Christ, We don't have to serve sin, but rather we can serve our God. Amen.