Salvation: Practicing or Pretending (BFM pt. 7)
Text: 1st John 3:1 – 10
By: Ken McKinley
(Read Text)
One of these days it is my hope and my desire to have a doctorate degree in theology. I have wanted this for a very long time. Now MariJo has a cousin who has a doctorate in medicine. She’s a D-O. When she first informed MariJo and I that she was going to medical school I said that’s great, maybe one of these day’s you and I will both have our doctorates. I’ll be the doctor who preaches and you’ll be the doctor that practices. She caught the joke, but then said, “You had better be practicing as well.”
As a pastor I think a lot about relevance. What I mean by that is - why should anyone listen to what I’m saying up here? Why should anyone really care? I pray that I say things that are significant to our lives, even if we don’t realize that they are, and the best way I know to do that is by staying as close as I can to what God says is important in His Word. Now there might be some here today, upset about the direction our nation is headed, upset with the administrations health care plan, angry about terrorism, or racism, or the issues you will hear on the evening news, and when they hear me say that we are going to continue on with our study of the BFM, specifically the doctrine of salvation, they might leave the service saying to themselves, “That sermon was irrelevant. It had nothing to do with the problems we are facing in the world today, or the problems I’m facing in my own personal life.” And if that’s you today, let me just say this… YOUR WRONG! Because what Jesus had to say about the new birth is extremely relevant for the direction of our nation, health care, terrorism, racism, and every other social issue we face today. And if that’s you today you would be wrong for thinking that those issues are the most important issues in life. They aren’t. Sure they might be life and death issues. They might fundamentally change our country and our culture, but they are far from the most important issue we face today. Because they deal with relief of the symptoms, but they never really get to the cause of the symptoms. They deal with the living for the next 80 years or so, but ignore living eternally in the presence of God for 80 trillion years… and longer.
But; on the flip side of this, if all we do is preach it, or listen to it, then maybe we are wasting our time here at church. I’m wasting my time searching the Scriptures, studying them and preparing sermons, and you’re wasting your Sunday’s being here listening to them. If the Gospel isn’t changing us, then something is wrong. We are missing something somewhere. If it isn’t challenging us to in some way, then there’s a good chance that we aren’t looking into like we should.
Now our text this morning is taken from 1st John, and 1st John, maybe more than any other book of the Bible seems to be written in order to help us with our daily struggle against sin, and to give believers assurance of their salvation.
Now, just last Sunday evening we finished up our evening study of the book of Jude, and if you remember, Jude was concerned about false teachers creeping into the church. Here in our text, we see that John also had the same concern. In verse 7 he says, “Let no one deceive you…” We seem to have missed this in our world today.
John is saying here that if a person claims to be a Christian but they are practicing sin, living a lifestyle of on going sin, then they aren’t really Christians. They’ve fooled themselves. Most likely, they are what I call “evangelized sinners.” In-other-words, they have probably sat in church for a long time, they’ve heard hundreds of sermons, on just about every topic, but they have never come to saving faith. They think they have, but the reality is that their hearts are far from the Lord.
So John was worried about people who have fallen into “easy believism,” what that means is that they believed that if they said a little prayer, then they were saved, and then they could go on living their lives exactly like they were.
This is why the BFM says, “repentance and faith are inseparable experiences of grace.” And look at point C – where we read about sanctification (read).
Now you all have heard me say this before, the evidence of the new birth is not a public profession of faith. It’s not a certificate of baptism. The evidence of salvation is a changed life.
Look at verse 9 of our text (read). John says that we are born of “God’s seed,” and that “God’s seed” abides in us, and because of that “we can’t keep on living lifestyles of sinfulness,” Apple seeds make apples, orange seeds make oranges, watermelon seeds make watermelon, pumpkin seeds make pumpkins. If you have an apple seed and you plant it in the ground, you wouldn’t expect that seed to make pumpkins. If you did then you might need some help. If you have a watermelon seed and you plant it in the ground, you wouldn’t expect an orange tree to spring up. Well in the same way, God’s holy seed should be bringing forth holy people.
Now; before we get too far into this, we need to make sure we look at what John says in context. Turn back a couple of chapters to 1st John 1:8-9 (read). John does not teach that there is a point in this life that the Christian becomes sinless. In-fact, he says if we say we have no sin we’re fooling ourselves. No… he says if we say we have no sin, we are liars. So when we look at the entire book of 1st John in context, we see that he’s not saying that there will come a point in this life, while we are on earth, that we will ever be free from sin. That’s not what he’s saying; what he’s saying is that throughout life, we should be striving towards holiness, and that the sin that is in our life should become less and less as life goes on. This is that process of sanctification we just read about in the Baptist Faith and Message. This growing in morality, and maturity, and faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ.
So the question is, what is the practicality of this? What is the relevance of this in our lives today, in Fort Supply Oklahoma, 2009? How do we as born again Christians deal with our sin, and with sin in our lives? Well; lets look at what John says.
First of all in verse 3 he says that if we have that glorious hope of seeing the Lord in eternity, and being like Him – then we will be working towards that goal while on earth. Think of it like this: if you believed that a famous person was going to come to your house next Friday, then most likely you would spend extra time making sure your house was clean, probably more so than you normally do. If Billy Graham or Franklin Graham called you after the service and said, “I’m going to be at your house next Friday.” Then you would make sure that everything was in order, that your house was clean, and presentable to them – right? Well in the same way, if you know that you are going to be with Jesus in eternity, you start cleaning house so to speak.
Secondly; look at verses 5 and 6 (read), What John is saying here isn’t very popular today. He is straight forward, and we have to be straight forward with this issue, this is an issue of eternal life, or eternal separation from God. So John says that Jesus was manifested to take away our sins. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus Christ is the Author and Finisher of our faith. The book of Romans tells us that we have been united to Christ. What I’m trying to get at, and not doing a very good job of, is that if you are in Christ, then you are a new creation. Let me put it this way. Because you were born of God’s holy seed, and because Christ is in you, and you are in Him, you will begin to feel very uncomfortable in your sin. Like oil and water – they don’t mix. Well Christ and sin… holiness and sin, don’t mix.
Think about it like a journey, you are on a journey to holiness, the closer you get to it, the further you get from your sinful lifestyle – the course of the world that we all once walked in. If you’re going towards holiness, then you’re going away from sin. The great classic Christian book, Pilgrims Progress details this wonderfully. When we’re following that straight and narrow path we are making our way to the Celestial City. It’s when we get off that path, or get turned around that we get into trouble.
And you notice that John says here, “Whoever abides in Him, does not keep on sinning,” or, “Keep making a practice of sin.” Now I want to make it clear that John’s not saying that it’s up to us to keep ourselves saved… remember Jesus is the Author and Finisher of our faith. What he’s saying here is that if you’re a real Christian, if your faith is genuine, then you will not go on living a lifestyle of sin. We could look at this in the negative meaning and say, “If you return to a lifestyle of sin, then you did not abide in Him.” In-other-words; “If you return to a lifestyle of sin, then you were never a true Christian.”
Now it’s our fallen nature to try and find the boundaries. We ask ourselves, “How many sins is too many?” “How many sins a day constitutes ‘practicing’ of sin?”
If that’s you today, then you need to get that thinking out of your head. That’s dangerous ground. It’s like the truck driver. I think I’ve told ya’ll this before. But I’ll tell it again, just in case I haven’t.
There was a trucking company that wanted to hire a truck driver for driving on a dangerous mountainous pass. They had it narrowed down to two men. So they asked the first one, “How close can you drive your truck to the edge of a cliff?” The driver sat back in his chair, confident in his abilities and said, “I can get to close to the edge that my outside set of dualies is over the edge.” So the company asked the second driver the same question. The second driver shook his head and said, “I have no idea, I want to stay as far away from the edge as possible.” The company hired the second man.
That’s how we should be. If you are a Christian, then you are united to Christ. What fellowship has light with darkness?
So how do we deal with the daily sin in our lives as Christians? Well first of all, we realize that we; on our own, are incapable of doing it. We must rely upon the Lord. We must seek the Lord in prayer, we must put on the full armor of God, we must trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding, acknowledge Him in all our ways and He will direct our paths. We must lay aside every weight of sin which so easily besets us and then look unto Jesus who is the Author and Finisher of our faith, we must hide God’s Word in our heart, so that we don’t sin against Him. What all that means is draw nearer to the Lord through prayer, church, and Bible study. Daily confess your sins, and repent quickly, give no place to the devil. Don’t be around the things that lead to temptation. Cast down those strongholds and stay in the light.
Lets Pray
