3rd January 2024

3rd January 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read - 1 John 3:4-10 (focus v4-7) 


Message Alan Burke 


I was in doing a visit recently and heard how the husband after the Christmas dinner is all done, the dishes are washed and the family are sitting down says “and that’s it for another year”. In a sense yes but in a sense no. Yes because the festivities are over but no because of what took place in the incarnation all those years ago was hugely significant. For Christ came to take away sin, his appearance was to deal with our sins, he didn’t stay in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes, he came as one of us, true God and true man to die for our salvation. The incarnation is a wonderful truth that impacts everything the church does but without the reality of his death and resurrection there would be no atonement for sin, we would still be in our sin. 


While we are all law breakers, there is not one person who has ever kept the law bar Jesus, he appeared to that he might take away our sin and how did he do that, we went to the cross on Calvary’s hill and experienced the wrath of a holy God poured on upon him. Jesus on the cross took the sin of all the elect, his children, those who God choose since before the foundation of the world and paid the penalty for it. As a result, our response comes in verse 6 as we are told “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning, no one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”


Now is the implication of this that those who are in Christ do not sin? Is John saying that anyone who is in Christ, who is a child of God should not sin, in other words are they to be sinless? Is there some kind of sinless perfection that we are to be able to attain here in this life as believers? is that what we are being taught here?


Well the simple answer is no, that is not what is beings said, if it were our experience would mean that we are all condemned and that none of us are his, none of us know salvation. Look back to what John has already said in Chapter 1 in verse 8, for John has already said something that directly impacts our understanding of this, 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 Jn 1:8). There John was making the point to those who were deceiving themselves that somehow they were sinless, they had not understood the divine reality of who they are before the Holy God.


What this means for us is that although believers after being made the children of God still sin in this life we are not to allow that sin to  define our lives, our sin should not control us, it should not be who we are. For Jesus came to take away sin, he came that we might be freed from guilt, free from it’s power and that when this life comes to an end that we would finally be free from sin power. What has happened is that when God called us to himself we were made holy, not because we are holy by nature but by the work of Jesus Christ, his holiness is imputed to us, it is given to us, but until we go to glory we are to live as children, we seek to honour our heavenly Father, we no longer live like we once were but want to become more like our elder brother Christ Jesus. 


What this mean for the believer, if we are in Christ Jesus, if we have been saved from our sin is that we are to live according. For the believer this is what should be happening as we try to mortify sin in our lives, as we try to put it to death. As we do this we are saying we no longer what to be what we once were, were are trying to rid ourselves of it, because we know that sin is lawlessness, we know that Jesus appeared to that he might take away our sins and as a response in our lives we desire not to sin. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q32 What benefits do they that are effectually called partake of in this life?
They that are effectually called do in this life partake of justification, (Rom. 8:30) adoption, (Eph. 1:5) and sanctification, and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them. (1 Cor. 1:26,30)
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