(Text Only)
Title: Another Zinger From John
Last week we looked at verses 4,5,6 and a pattern emerged. We saw that the teaching in verses 4 and 5 were very straight-forward and easy to comprehend, but the last verse, verse 6 provided some really interesting discussion because John said something that seemed a bit revolutionary when he wrote, “Whoever sins has neither seen him, nor known him”
But we got through it, we wrestled with the idea of abiding in Christ’s presence.
Today, the same pattern will emerge. Today we will look at three verses: 7,8,9. And it’s my strong guess this morning that verses 7 and 8 will provide no deep controversy. But verse 9 will again cause us to look closely and carefully at the original language to understand it in its context.
For that reason, we will spend most of our time this morning in verse nine. At first glance it may seem confusing and even contradictory, but be patient, and I promise, it will all come into sharp focus for us.
Let us begin.
(Read 7-9)
I. Good fruit only come from good trees.
(Read v. 7)
When I read this passage, I am drawn to Christ’s words in Matthew 7:17 “Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.”
This is a rather simple and yet profound truth, but elegantly stated by our Lord. The point is that the action has to come from a source. And if there exists in an orchard a beautifully, well kept, well pruned tree, it will bear good fruit. Is it possible that this tree can occasionally bear a bad piece of fruit? Certainly, though that is not the norm.
And it is the same with us.
If that same beautifully well maintained tree started inexplicable producing nothing but bad fruit, would the farmer curse the fruit, or examine the tree itself. Something would have to be wrong with the tree, the fruit is only a result of it’s root system.
And it is the same with us.
On the other hand, a tree that is left for dead, gets little light, is not properly fed and nourished, and is never pruned, its branches tangled and disheveled and crossed to the point of literally killing themselves..this tree has no hope of producing good fruit.
And it is the same with us.
Paul extends this analogy when he speaks that we will be known by our fruit. He then outlines what the fruit are. Johns is simply amplifying and reiterating these truths:
A person can’t produce righteous fruit unless their roots are righteous.
II. Where is the battleground?
(Read v 8)
So here we read that “he who sins is of the Devil” Now, it is in the word “sins” that we get our first linguistic clue as to what John is talking about. One of the problems with bringing the Greek language into the English language is that there can often be a problem, not with the vocabulary, but rather with the tense of a word. The Greek phrase is “poieo hamartia” which translates “He that committeth sin.” The key is the tense. The tense here is present active, which means that this is sin is presently being committed and will continue to be committed.
This is why the RSV says, “he who commits sin”
and the NASB says, “the one who practices sin”
and the NIV says, “he who does what is sinful”
This is not a one time, or occasional occurrence. If it were, then what John writes in I John 1:8 makes no sense, “If we say that we have no sin, we are liars, and the truth is not
in us.”
So this is the practice of continual sin. Essentially, the state of being of everyone who isn’t saved. But what I want us to pay close attention to is the last part of verse 8, where John says that Christ came to “destroy the works of the devil”
Here’s my pastoral question: Where is this destruction taking place?
A: Inside you!
We are the battleground. Do we still sin? Yes. But can we also say that we, the further we get in our walk, sin less? Can we say that God has delivered us from bondage to many particular sins in our lives?
This is why the walk is hard. There is war going on inside you. Your flesh, owned by Satan, and your Spirit, bought by Christ’s blood, they don’t get along. And every day is a new battle.
III. The proof is in the (fruit) pudding.
(Read v. 9)
Okay, so the obvious trouble lies when John says that those who are born of God cannot sin. Again, this is an issue of tense with the Greek. Look at the trouble and variance we have with this with our English translations:
NIV/NLT: “he cannot go on sinning”
NASB/KJV/NKJV/RSV: “he cannot sin”
The correct translation of the Greek is to simply write “he cannot sin” But that fails to take into account that the Greek “ou dynamai hamatano” is again in the present active from, meaning that this is a continual action.
Before you think I’ve cooked this up to make this verse easier to swallow, let’s look at two scholars, one modern, and one classical, and see what they say:
Does not sin and cannot sin each have the same verb tense as does not sin in 1 John 3:6, meaning a continual practice of habitual sin. John tells us that when we are born again – born into the family of God – there is a real change in our relation to sin.
-David Guzik
He cannot continue in the course and practice of sin. He cannot so sin as to denominate him a sinner in opposition to a saint or servant of God. Again, he cannot sin comparatively, as he did before he was born of God, and as others do that are not so. And the reason is because he is born of God, which will amount to all this inhibition and impediment. 1. There is a light in his mind which shows him the evil and malignity of sin. 2. There is that bias upon his heart which disposes him to loathe and hate sin. 3. There is the spiritual seminal principle or disposition, that breaks the force and fulness of the sinful acts.
-Matthew Henry
So what is the point and the lesson with all this? It actually is quite simple and ends where we began. It is simple a matter of fruit revealing our roots.
1. If we continually produce bad fruit we are not regenerate.
2. If we continually produce good fruit we are not lost.
3. If we occasionally produce bad fruit, we are not lost, but must be pruned.