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Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions. We're in Day 2 of looking through 1 John
chapter 3. We're going to look at verses 4 to 6 today, and as we look at these
verses we're continuing our talk about how you tell whose family you're in.

We were talking about what it means to really be God's child yesterday. Today
we're going to talk about one final evidence, one final signature of being God's
child. Remember, yesterday we talked about being God's child means that the
Father's love is great.

He wouldn't be God's child except for His love. It means, number 2, that the
world doesn't know us, that there's a separation once you become God's child
from the world's way of thinking and God's way of thinking. It means, number 3,
that there are things in your life that have not yet been made known.

You have a lot to look forward to. And it means, number 4, that as you grow up,
you grow up to be like Him, you're God's child. Well, there is one final
evidence, one final mark of being God's child in these verses, and it is one
that it throws us.

This last one throws us. The final evidence is, well, let me read verses 4 to 6.
Everyone who sins breaks the law.

In fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that He appeared so that He might take
away our sins. And in Him, there is no sin.

No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either
seen Him or knows Him. So there it is, that final evidence.

No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. He says it again just to make sure we
get it. No one who continues to sin has seen Him or knows Him.

Now, what is this about? Does this mean if I'm a true believer in Jesus Christ,
I really have made a decision and come to faith in Christ that I will never sin
again? Let's deal with what 1 John has to say about sin in the life of a
Christian.

This is very important to understand. First, does it mean what I just said? Does
it mean that once I become a Christian, I'll never sin again?

Well, no. John himself said in chapter 1 that if we say we have no sin, we're
deceiving ourselves. We're liars.

In all the New Testament letters, all of them, by the way, written to
Christians, there is talk about sins that those that are in the church are
struggling with in their lives. First Corinthians is a great example. Paul talks
about many sins that they were struggling with in their marriages and taking
each other to court and their worship practices.

But he continues to call them saints and talk about them being Christians even
though they struggled with some sins. In fact, if you take a close look at the
Bible, every great person of faith in the Bible sinned. Abraham lied about his
wife and said she was his sister so that he could get out of some potential
problems and he created more problems.

Moses lost his temper. David sinned with Bathsheba. Peter denied the Lord three
times.

So this doesn't mean that once I become a Christian, I'll never have one
activity of sin again in my life. Let me say one more thing it doesn't mean
before we talk about what it does mean. Does this then just mean sin in some
spiritual sense?

Some people in trying to figure out these verses say, "Well, maybe it means when
Christians sin, they're not really sinning because Jesus Christ has already paid
for that sin. " So it's really not talking about anything in our lives. It's
just saying, "Well, Jesus already paid it so it's really not sin.

" Well, Jesus already paid it, that's for sure, but sin is still sin. No doubt
about that. Other people say, trying to figure this out, "Well, Christians never
sin in their new nature because they have a new nature now in Christ.

They just sin in their old nature. " So if you say something hateful to your
spouse, you would say, "Oh, it wasn't me talking. It was my old nature talking.

" Right. That's absolutely ridiculous. I mean, you over-spiritualize these
verses and they mean nothing.

They wouldn't even need to be written. So why are they written? What do they
mean?

No one who continues to sin has either seen him or knows him. Here's some things
that they do mean, these verses. Number one, it means that becoming a believer
doesn't mean I can stop taking sin seriously.

And that was the false teaching that they were facing in the church that John
was writing to. This idea that because this world is a material place and God's
not interested in material things, you don't really have to take sin seriously
now that you've become a believer. We also struggle with that in our world
today.

I talk to people who there's a sense that, "Well, I've become a believer now and
I know that Jesus Christ has died for all of my sins. And so because of that,
maybe I don't have to take my sin so seriously because it's all forgiven. "
Well, that's obviously ridiculous.

That sin is very serious. How serious is it? It's serious enough that Jesus
Christ died on the cross for that sin.

What do these verses mean? It means, and here's the core of it. It means that a
lifestyle of sin and the life of Christ do not fit in the same heart.

Now, what am I talking about when I say a lifestyle of sin? Well, he says no one
who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin, keeps on
sinning, continues to sin.

Those are indications of a particular verb form in the Greek that the New
Testament was written in. Earlier, when John talked about if we say we have no
sin, he used a form, an aorist form that meant an action of sin, something that
happened once. Here he uses a different form, a present active indicative form,
which means something that is a continual habit in your life.

It is a constant choice in your life. What's he talking about here when he talks
about this lifestyle of sin? We're talking about an open, deliberate, unchanging
choice to sin.

You know it's wrong and yet you continue to do it openly and you don't care who
knows. In fact, you're glad if other people know. This is not about the person
who is being confused by Satan or by false teachers as to whether something is a
sin or not.

This is about the person who knows they're sinning and they are choosing to live
in that sin instead of repenting and asking God to change them. This isn't about
struggles with habitual sin patterns in the life of a believer. This is about
someone who says they're a believer and has no struggle with open and habitual
sin in their lives.

They just say, "Well, it's okay for me to do this even though I'm a believer in
Christ. " As we walk through this, we could go into literally a million
individual stories here. Is this person who is acting in this way a Christian or
not?

We could go through many, many different stories but that is not the point of
these verses. The point of these verses is not them, it's you. It's me as I read
these verses.

It's what about my life? And when you think about your life when it comes to
this issue of sin in your life as a child of God, there are three truths you've
got to keep a hold of. Truth number one, we have all sinned.

He says here that to sin is to break the law, to be lawless. The idea of being
lawless here is that you have a rebellious heart. You see, we sin because we
want to break the law.

We sin not just because we accidentally broke the law doing something else that
we want to do. We sin because we intentionally want to break the law. There's
something in us that is rebellious.

I love that old story that I was reminded of by Warren Wiersby as I was reading
about this this week about the little girl who's trying to stand up in her seat
as her daddy starts trying to back out of the driveway. And the dad says,
"You've got to sit down, honey, and put your seatbelt on. " And she says, "No,
I'm not going to.

" So he stops the car and says, "Honey, you've got to sit down and put your
seatbelt on. " And she says, "I am not going to do it. " So the dad says, "If
you don't do it, I'm going to stop the car, get out, and we're going to have a
long talk about this and there's going to be some punishment involved.

" So the little girl sits down, she puts her seatbelt on. The dad pulls out,
starts to drive down the street. The little girl looks up at her father and
says, "Daddy, I'm still standing in my heart.

" That's the attitude of rebelliousness. And we all smile a little bit at that
story but also cringe a little bit because we've all seen it in our own hearts.
We have this attitude of rebelliousness.

And apart from Christ, there is no answer. Apart from Jesus Christ, the answer
to sin is a matter of conscience, conduct, and constraint. Conscience.

What don't I feel bad about doing? I'll go ahead and do it. Conduct.

What can I get away with doing? I'll go ahead and do it. And constraint.

Where am I being kept from doing what I want to do? Well, I'll be kept from
doing it for a while until that constraint is removed. That's the answer to sin
without Christ.

But in Christ, the answer is not conscience and conduct and constraint. It's a
new creation. Instead of getting caught up in these externals, Jesus goes
straight to the heart of the issue and he changes you from the inside out.

That's what he does. We've all sinned. And number two, he appeared to take away
our sins.

That's the second thing to get a hold of and to keep a hold of. You never get
over that fact as a believer in Jesus Christ. It's not like you recognize his
forgiveness and then you go on and live the rest of your life for yourself.

No, you live with the cross in sight every day of your life. So then comes the
third truth. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning.

The idea of living in him there is the idea of abiding in him. We talked about
this last week. The branch attached to the vine, abiding in the vine.

And here's the truth. You either abide in sin or you abide in him. You cannot be
abiding in both.

You either try to draw your life from some sin in your life or a multitude of
sin in your life or you decide to draw your life from him. Now, if you try to
draw your life from sin, that ends in death because that's all that sin has to
give. Draw your life from him, that ends in eternal life because that's what he
has to give.

No one who abides in him keeps on sinning because you can't abide in both. So in
light of these truths about sin, what am I going to do? What are you going to
do?

Well, the place to start is with him in conversation with God, conversation with
Jesus Christ. Let's talk to him right now. God help me to remember these truths
in my life.

We've all sinned. We've all sinned. There's a rebelliousness in me that apart
from you, I would be lost.

But Jesus, you appeared to take away my sins and I am grateful. And I pray that
that gratefulness would not be something in the past that I remember having done
a long time ago. Help me to be daily grateful for the forgiveness that only you
can give and for what that forgiveness means in my everyday life and for what
that forgiveness means for my eternity.

Jesus, help me to abide in you, to draw life from you, from nothing else,
nowhere else, no pride in my life, no possession in my life, no seeming power in
my life. I can't get, I can't get life there. Life is found in you.

And so I decide once again today, I remind myself in my heart that that's where
my life is. Jesus, help me to take sin seriously in my life, not by building
little rules that keep me from some noticeable sins, but by building a depth of
trust in you that guides me away from all sin into a life of growth, a life of
change. I pray this, Jesus, in your name.

Amen. Join us tomorrow. We're going to be looking at verses seven to ten and
we're going to be talking about the difference that Jesus makes in your life.