Alba 8-4-2024
HOW TO KNOW WHOSE CHILD YOU ARE
I John 3:4-10
Have you heard this story? A young man shopping in a supermarket noticed a little old lady following him around. If he stopped, she stopped. And she just kept staring at him. She finally overtook him at the checkout, and she turned to him and said,”I hope I haven’t made you feel uncomfortable, it’s just that you look so much like my late son.” He answered, “That’s okay.”
“I know it’s silly, but if you’d call out ‘Good bye, Mom’ as I leave the store, it would make me feel so happy.” She then went through the checkout, and as she was on her way out of the store, the man called out, “Goodbye, Mom.” The little old lady waved, and smiled back at him.
Pleased that he had brought a little sunshine into someone’s day, he went to pay for his groceries. “That comes to $171.85,” said the clerk. “How come so much? I only bought five items!” The clerk replied, “Yeah, but your Mother said you’d be paying for her things, too.”
The lesson here? Be careful whose child you seem to be. We all exist in this life as a result of two people, a father and a mother. Whether we claim that relationship depends on several things. If the parents are abusive or show no love, a child is likely to disassociate with them.
At times children have to be taken out of a bad situation which may even lead to adoption. Then the birth parents are no longer the parents. When that happens, the child is given a brand new birth certificate which shows that the adoptive parents are the “real” parents of that child. Still there may be some hereditary characteristics that continue in the life of that child. If they are positive characteristics, that would be good. If they are not, then there is trouble.
The apostle John speaks to the issue of parentage in I John 3:4-10 where he writes: “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him.
“Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.
“Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.”
John tells us that there are ways we can know who is a child of God and who is not, and therefore whose child we are. It is quite simple. Heredity will show. Because...
1. There Are Only Two Options
John says that there are only two classifications of people that matter. We are either of our Father, the holy, righteous, and glorious God of all creation, or we are of our father the devil, the one who has come to steal, kill, and destroy.
In Matthew 12:33 Jesus said, “A tree is identified by its fruit. If a tree is good, its fruit will be good. If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad” (NLT). You can't expect it to be different. It works the same with people. Just as tree will produce fruit based on the kind of tree it is, people show their heritage.
I am sure that you have noticed that apple trees always produce apples. You don't plant an apple tree and expect to get lemons or oranges. The tree will only produce according to its kind. So, if the fruit looks like an apple, smells like an apple, feels like an apple, tastes like an apple; it is an apple! If is looks like a lemon, smells like a lemon, feels like a lemon, tastes like a lemon; it is a lemon.
In the orchard of life there are only two trees, the tree of God or the tree of the devil. Thankfully by God's grace we can all become part of the tree of God, receiving His righteousness through Christ, and then produce acts of righteousness.
But just by claiming that we are from the tree of God does not make us part of that tree. The people who sin without thinking twice, with no conviction, and no change, they have no relationship with Jesus at all. We can say we are an apple all we want, but if we have the look, smell, taste, and feel of a lemon, we are not an apple. We are a lemon.
And if you walk under an apple tree, you don't see a bunch of lemons lying under it. When an apple falls from the tree, it stays close to the tree. In an orchard, you can tell which apples came off of which trees by their proximity to the tree. As we live our lives, it doesn't take long to become evident which tree we fell from. We will know whose child we are. Our actions will tell the story. Because:
2. Children of the Devil Sin
That is what verse eight tells us. “He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning.” If we are children of the devil then our character and conduct will reflect the heart of that evil father. Also verse ten says, “Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God.” That means that the way we live our lives, the fruit of our lives, will answer the question of whose child we are. And sadly, if we are not practicing righteousness, the conclusion will be correct.
Satan, is the father of lies. If the devil can cause us to believe his lies he has gone a long way toward wrecking our life. He does his best to cause us to be like him in heart as well as in mind. The devil wants us to love the things we ought to hate, and hate the things we ought to love.
Our hearts were made to love the Lord Jesus, God made us that way! But the devil seeks to replace that love with the love of sin. He does it by making sin attractive and alluring. He uses the pleasures of sin to enslave us morally.
He is deceptive in every way. He seeks ways to lead us away from God, to deny God's laws set forth in His creation and His Word. Satan tells the lie that we can be our own lawmaker, that we can determine what is right and wrong, and we should do what feels "right" for us.
That's why verse four describes sin as lawlessness. A lawlessness person is one who commits sin actually knowing the right thing to do, but who does wrong through willing disobedience. I think we have seen a lot of lawlessness with the way people feel that they can loot and rob stores and get away with it. And in today's world, they seem to do so.
And now, lawlessness is justified as being a ‘lifestyle’. Sin isn’t called sin anymore. We are told, “Oh, don’t be so closed-minded and judgmental; its just an alternate lifestyle, and they have a right to their lifestyle.”
Many today in our society have bought into the lie of those who try and convince us that there is no such thing as evil, that sin is merely a construct of society, and not a reality. It’s either an accident that happened to us, or something “unfortunate” (as in, “I didn’t lie, I just used an unfortunate choice of words”) or it’s a lifestyle. Satan has tricked people into calling things something that they are not in order to hide from their own minds the sinfulness of sin!
God doesn’t agree with us when we call our sin a lifestyle. If we live a life of sin; then we are not of God. We are a child of the devil. When someone continues in sin, if we’ll be honest with ourselves, as one fellow said, it is a ‘sty life’, not a lifestyle. In other words, it is living with the pigs.
If you are practicing sin, without repentance and without confession and without righteousness, then you are living in the sty. Someone has said, “Laying down in a pig pen doesn't make you a pig; but you'll sure get up smelling like one”. If you are continuing in sin, if you can remain comfortable wallowing in the pig pen of life, then, this scripture says, you are a child of the devil and not of God.
Early in the movie, The Wizard of Oz, before the storm, remember that Dorothy was playing in the farmyard. As she is walking along the rail fence that encircles the hog pen, she suddenly she loses her balance and falls into the sty. Now, ... hogs are big animals. Hogs can be mean, especially when you fall on them or surprise them.
So Dorothy starts yelling and trying to get up, and Bert Lahr jumps into the sty to rescue her. Now, here is the perfect example of how the Lord wants us to react to sin. He wants us to be just as afraid of it as Dorothy was of those hogs.
The difference between one who is of the devil and the one who is of God, is that the one who is of the devil will stay and wallow, and grunt and root with the hogs. But when we become children of God, and recognize the sinfulness of sin.., when we find ourselves fallen into it, we should be so frightened that we’re as anxious to get out of that situation as Dorothy was to get out of the pig pen.
It was when the prodigal son finally came to realize how far he had sunk, when he was wallowing in the mud with pigs, that he woke up and determined to go back to his father and beg forgiveness. He became a child of his father once again.
So you can know whose child you are. You are a child of the devil if you have the same attitude and actions in your life as he does. But there is a way to know you are a child of God by the same metrics. In other words, because God is holy...
3. Children of God Do Not Continue in Sin
Verse six says, “Whoever abides in Him does not sin.” And verse nine seems to say it in even stronger terms by saying, “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.”
Now before you say, “That counts me out”, remember that in the first chapter it says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” And again it says, “ If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”
But there are those who use the verses in chapter three to teach that a Christian can become perfect in this world. I knew a lady who said that a preacher visited in her home and claimed that he hasn't sinned since became a Christian. Her response was, “You are sinning right now. Because you are telling a lie.”
This scripture is not saying that a person who abides in God will never sin. But it is saying that if you are a child of God you cannot continue to be a deliberate sinner. Cannot! As a child of God you are not perfect – you are forgiven. But that is not an excuse to run around doing things for which you need forgiveness. Romans 6:1 asks“Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?”. The answer is: No!! Grace does not give us permission to sin. Once you realize you’re forgiven you are to do away with those sins.
If you are really following Jesus, sin should bother you. Does it? If it does, then the Holy Spirit is working in your life to convict you. And the proper response to that conviction is to confess that sin to God, and repent of that sin. Repentance simply means to turn away from those sins. Repentance means that you leave that sin behind.
So to summarize: Our parentage will be known by what we practice. Whether it is righteousness, or sin. This scripture makes it clear that if we are children of God, our actions will give evidence of a life that is Godly. The reason the cliché, "Like father, like son," is often repeated is because a father has great influence over his child. What we do reflects to whom we belong, because a child is like his or her father. And if we are children of God, His influence should be evident in our lives on a daily basis.
We didn't choose our biological father, whether he was loving or cold, or whether he was present or absent in our years of growing up. But we can choose who our spiritual and eternal Father will be. And John tell us that we are either the offspring of the devil, continuing in sin as he does; or the offspring of God, having received His righteousness, and acting accordingly.
If a life is controlled by Satan, then the fruit of that life will be a life of sin: an unrighteous, sinful life. But if a life is controlled by God, then the fruit of that life will be a life of righteousness.
And you know, if we don’t choose God as our spiritual and eternal Father, we will by default have the devil as our spiritual and eternal father. That's not a good place to be.
Sometimes it feels difficult to be what we should be. We need help. And help has arrived! Because verse eight tells us, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” Though Satan often seems so powerful, he is still powerless before Jesus Christ. The devil’s power and authority has been taken away by Jesus through His death on the cross and His resurrection.
Verse five tells us that Jesus came, “to take away our sins”. He did that by removing the punishment from us and taking it on Himself when He went to the cross. He was the perfect sacrifice because verse five says, “in Him there is no sin”. Yet II Corinthians 5:21 says that God, “made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
That is what He has done for us! “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”
So, if we want to be considered as God's children, then we had better act like it.
CLOSE:
Gerald Penix told of his experience when he and his wife adopted a son. He said, “My wife and I waited 15 years for a child that never came by the natural way. However we were approached one day with a lead of a newborn not yet born.”
He said, “I remember standing in front of the judge on our day of adoption. He pointed his finger and asked of me, ‘Is anyone coercing you to adopt this little boy?’ After we had assured him that we were doing so out of love for our son, he made this statement. ‘From today on, he is your son. He may disappoint you, even grieve you but he is your son. Everything you own one day will be his and he will bear your name.’ Then he looked at the clerk and gave this command. ‘So order a change in this child’s birth certificate and may it reflect that these are the parents of this child.’”
Penix said, “It was then that I realized that my Heavenly Father loved me so much that, without coercion, He loved me and gave His all to me. On that day, He changed my name and I gladly bear His name and His image.”
This is what God has done for us: Colossions 1:13-14 says, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”
Those who are in Christ are no longer children of the devil. By God's grace we can be the children of God.
