I Want Plenty in 2020
“Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.”
(1 John 3:7–10, NASB95)
Whenever I read this passage, it always causes me to stop and think about what is being said. It also causes me to stop and think about what it is not saying. It says that the Christian cannot sin. That should make all of us sit back and wonder what in the world John is talking about. How can John say that no Christian sins?
First, consider the writer of the book is none other than John himself. You remember John! One of the “Sons of Thunder” who wanted Jesus to destroy some people because they would not accept the gospel message. One of the brothers who used their mother to attempt to negotiate a high position in the Kingdom for her sons. One of the disciples who fled the night Jesus was arrested. The disciple who followed Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard and watched the trial, but never spoke up. The disciple who believed Jesus had risen but went back to fishing with Peter when things weren’t progressing like they thought it should. Yes, he is that John.
Also consider what else John had just written in his letter. In chapter one, he said that if we think we have never sinned, we don’t get it. If we think we are not struggling with sin right now, we are foolish. If we think we will never sin in the future, we forget that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father praying for us because He was the payment for all of the sins of the world. He also encouraged us to confess our sins with the promise that God is faithful and will forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
It hardly seems like that same John, because of his own experience and earlier teaching, would be saying that a Christian never can sin. That is when I remember the little word that I have bolded and underlined in the passage, “practice”. You might be thinking, “How does that help? I don’t practice sin because I am already better at it than I want to be!” The word practice means a normal way of life. To use a term from the computer world, the normal operating mode.
John is saying that a person that calls his or herself a Christian is not someone who sins with impunity as a normal way of life. Do we sin? Yes, John had said so in chapter 1. The question is aimed at our hearts. What do we want to do? No, not to be know we are supposed to say we want to do? That is a different question. I may say that I want to eat healthy. I say this because I know it is the right thing to say. But if I have a regular diet of cookies, chips, sugary soda, and junk food, I show by my actions that my statement is more a parroting of what others have said than a statement of my own values and convictions. My normal operating mode has not changed.
As we end the year and look forward to 2020, we are left with a time to search our hearts and determine what the normal operating mode of our lives really is. Do we value worship enough to say no to other pursuits? Do we value obedience enough to say no to some things so that we can tithe, attend church, participate in church, share the gospel with others, or love our neighbors in practical ways? Do we want to? What do the answers to those questions reveal about whose we are? What needs to change? Let’s pray we change plenty in two thousand twenty!