Download discussion questions:  1 John 3:1-16

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Table Talk:  What are ways that you have seen evidence of God’s work in your life?  What have you seen recently?  What have you seen over the long term?

[“Table Talk” is an opening question or topic for discussion at the beginning of our time together.  The intent is to help group members (around tables, with four to six at each table) build connections with each other, as well as to guide thinking in a direction related to the passage.]

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This passage seems to contain a shift in John’s tone.  He has made many encouraging and comforting statements about the forgiveness of sin and having fellowship with God.  Some of his comments have been warnings about the consequences of “walking in darkness” or loving the things of the world.  In these verses he makes stronger, unbending absolute statements, such as “no one who abides in Him sins” (1 John 3:6a) and “no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him” (v. 6b).  Any honest reader must be troubled by these pronouncements:  “I sin, so what is John saying about me?”

Like many of the New Testament writers, John probably was writing in response to specific questions or known problems in the church.  We don’t have the details of the situation he was addressing, but we can speculate.  Our discussion began with the question, “What questions or problems might cause John to write a passage like this?”  Since John has mentioned love repeatedly so far in this letter, one person suggested the problem was a lack of love.  The possibility of erroneous or even dangerous teaching was raised, since John had warned twice in the last few verses about “those trying to deceive you.”  Another idea was that the people in the church, rocked by troubled relationships and questionable teaching, had a simple question, “Who is on our team?”

Our group meets during the second hour of the church services on Sunday morning.  As often happens, the sermon we all heard during first hour was a great accompaniment to our discussion.  The teaching from Philippians 2:19-20 was on spiritual friendship, with the themes of having the same leader, pursuing the same mission, and being on the same team.  John could have been writing to a church with just such questions.  In the first century those kinds of questions could be life and death if a persecution started.  Who can we trust?  Who can we talk openly with?  John’s inflexible, absolute statements may seem harsh to our twenty-first-century American ears.  To John’s original readers they were vital practical guidelines.  How do we know who is on our team?

Some from the church had left (1 John 2:19).  Others may still have been associated with the church but were actively promoting distorted teaching (1 John 2:26).  It is easy to imagine a majority of church members who were simply confused.  We have two millennia of church history and theological development to help us, and an attractive heresy can still confuse us.  Early believers had many competing messages – the Judaizers who opposed Paul, the pagans who wanted to blend their practices with Christian worship, the philosophers who scoffed at the idea of a resurrection, the official religion of emperor-worship.  How do we know who is on our team?

John repeatedly emphasized early in his letter that words are not enough:  “If we say…” (1 John 1:5, 8, 10); “Whoever says…” (1 John 2:4, 6, 9).  As long as there is no persecution, as long as it is socially beneficial, as long as there is no real price to pay, it is easy to affirm certain doctrines and claim genuine faith.  We all use the same religious language, we all sing the same worship songs, we all celebrate Communion together.  How do we know who is on our team?

Behavior is a more reliable indicator than words.  John has already suggested that keeping commandments (1 John 2:4) and our relationships with others (1 John 2:9) are standards of authenticity.  Two of his comments in this passage clarify his logic based on the purpose of the Incarnation.  “You know that He appeared in order to take away sins” (1 John 3:5a) and “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil” (v. 8b).  We discussed the meaning of “take away sins.”  Our typical understanding of those words is the forgiveness of our sins.  One member brought up the Jewish practice of the scapegoat ceremony (Leviticus 16).  Laying his hands on the goat, the priest would confess the sins of the people, and the freed goat would then “take away the sins” into the wilderness for the atonement, the removal of the guilt of the people.  Certainly Jesus accomplished that atonement on the cross, the propitiation John already mentioned (1 John 2:2).  Several members of our group pointed out other Biblical affirmations from Isaiah 53:6 (“the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all”) and 2 Corinthians 5:21 (“For our sake He made Him to be sin”).

Jesus has taken away the guilt of our sin.  Perhaps John is also saying His purpose was to take away the practice of sin, or, as he says a few verses later, “to destroy the works of the devil” which would include the sin in our lives.  That part of Jesus’ work will not be completed until we see Him in His full glory (1 John 3:2), but the present process is the result of knowing Him right now.  Everyone (one of John’s universal statements) who hopes in His atoning work “purifies himself as He is pure” (v. 3).  Notice that John acknowledges the reality of our sin, we “are purifying” ourselves, a present tense verb.  As in 1 John 1:9 the Apostle acknowledges that sin is still present even in the life of a believer.

Our group considered the distinction that John makes between “sinning” (v. 6) and “practicing sin” (v. 8-9).  Neither is good, but “practicing” sin (or “doing sin” or “continuing to sin” in various translations; ho poion ten hamartian, ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν) certainly seems more serious.  Perhaps John is making an intentional distinction.  Our abiding with the Lord is not perfect.  In our imperfection we drift away from abiding.  Those lapses are when we fall into sin, when we lose sight of Him and our dependence on Him.  The purifying John describes is the process of increasing our consistent communion with Him.  As we abide more consistently, we see a corresponding progress in reducing our sin, not perfectly, but increasingly.  On the other hand, there are those who “practice sin” and demonstrate no such purifying progress.  John says they show no evidence of a genuine relationship with God but rather are “of the devil” (v. 8).  As one person in our group said, for those who actively desire the purifying process, the sin we fall into creates a “gut-wrenching feeling.”  The confession and forgiveness John describes point us back to our abiding and to the “practice” of righteousness as the evidence of our relationship with Him.  Believers sin but seek the promised restoration and practice of righteousness.  Lawlessness ignores God’s call to holiness and disregards the practice of righteousness.  Lawlessness, the practice of sin, is the evidence of superficial or counterfeit belief.  John provides a guideline to the question, “How do we know who is on our team?”

In our discussion of the “practice” of righteousness, two in our group mentioned the analogy of golf swings.  (Not being a golfer I defer to their wisdom!)  Practicing a golf swing is an intentional repetition and preparation.  Not every golf swing will be perfect, maybe not even successful, but the practice will normally lead to improvement.  As one golfer commented, “We practice because we want to be good at it.”  Likewise, we practice righteousness – always imperfectly, often unsuccessfully – because we want to be good at it.  We make a conscious decision that we want to purify ourselves as He is pure.  We want to see Him at work, taking away sin in propitiation and in practice.  As another person remarked, we want to develop a “holy hatred” of anything that does not reflect His righteousness in our lives.

John’s absolute and universal statements apply generally to sin, but he has something quite specific in mind.  One of the earliest suggestions in our discussion was that John may have written in response to the lack of love that was troubling this church.  Behavior in general may answer the question, “How do we know who is on our team?”  Relationships with others define genuine saving faith:  “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14).  Whatever anyone says (including what we say) about belief, the surest evidence consists in how we relate to one another.  John is accurately reflecting exactly what Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).  Not only do we know, but so does everyone else:  “How do we know who is on our team?”

John did not offer only a general idea about love.  He called his readers to a particular expression based on the model of Jesus:  “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16).  Once again, John is not offering a “new commandment.” He is reminding them of something that they have been hearing from the beginning of their Christian experience:  “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).  Laying down one’s life is the evidence of genuine faith, of the continuing work of God in the life of an individual.

It is probably true that none of the members of our group will be called upon or have the opportunity to die for another person.  It could happen, but right now it seems unlikely.  So what does laying down a life mean in day-to-day practice, the “practice of righteousness” we are called to?

Self-sacrifice is certainly a key part of laying down our lives for someone else.  The sacrifice of time and energy and resources might be a measure of laying down our lives.  Shoveling snow for a neighbor, running errands, cooking a meal were suggested as practical examples.  As good as those ideas are they are generally occasional, intermittent acts we do when the occasion arises.  Since Jesus said we should take up our cross daily, perhaps we should think how we can lay down our lives daily as well.

One comment was that laying down our lives can mean laying down our defenses and pretenses and be more honest with one another.  There is certainly an element of risk as we let others see into what a mess our lives may be, a mess that no one else knows about.  Another suggestion was that Jesus laid down His life not only on the cross, but daily as He emptied Himself (Philippians 2:7) in His relationships with the people around Him.  As C. S. Lewis says, He was “killed every day in a sense:”

And because the whole difficulty for us is that the natural life has to be, in a sense, ‘killed’, He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His human desires at every turn— poverty, misunderstanding from His own family, betrayal by one of His intimate friends, being jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture.[1]

The Apostle Peter provides even more practical detail:

For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.  1 Peter 2:21-23

For us, laying down our life may often be a matter of not speaking, not defending ourselves, not getting in that cutting remark.  Peter explicitly says that Jesus is our example.  A rude store clerk or an impatient friend or a completely innocent comment by a spouse may trigger in us the desire to “revile in return” to make our point, to show that we are in the right, to prove that we don’t have to take that.  Laying down our lives can begin by laying down our desires for self-protective or defensive responses.  Is my desire to practice righteousness stronger than my desire for revenge or sarcasm?  Can we entrust ourselves, our reputation, our dignity, our rights to Him who judges righteously?  Do our responses to others in uncomfortable circumstances demonstrate “that we have passed out of death into life?”

 

[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York:  HarperCollins, 2009), Kindle Electronic Edition:  Location 2238, page 180.