WEEK 11
Last week we studied three of the tests of
sonship: 1) God’s wonderful love; 2) Christ’s promised return; and 3) Christ’s
death on the cross. All these tests are the motives for our obedience to the law
and word of God. This week we will study the next two of the
five. 4) THE NEW NATURE WITHIN (1 John 5:9-18) When John addresses those who are born, he is speaking to
those who have been born spiritually. This denotes the fact that the person
who has received divine life is by nature a spiritually alive individual. One
who has been born of God does not habitually and naturally commit sin. This is
because the seed is properly sown in the individual—the seed of divine life.
It has been produced in the heart by the word and the spirit of God and may be
regarded as having been implanted there by God Himself, thus His seed. The
seed continues to operate in him and makes it impossible to continually sin.
This is not speaking of sinless perfection, but saying one who has been born
of God will not have a lifestyle characterized by sin, or a state of sin. An
act is different from a state of sin. God has given that person, by the new
birth, real, spiritual life, and that life can never become extinct. It is
eternal life. All who are born of God will be plainly recognized or known.
Children of the devil are all those that from Adam inherited a totally
depraved nature—the same as that of the devil. So both are very clearly
recognized. The children of God practice, naturally, righteousness and not
sin, and they also love their brother. The children of the devil practice sin
and not righteousness, and they love not their brother. Righteousness is God’s
uprightness or standard and refers to the will of God. "Loveth" refers to: The tense of this love shows continuous action. The readers had a message of love for one another when they
first heard the gospel, but the message goes back to the time of Cain and Abel
as verse 12 brings out. Cain’s conduct typifies the attitude of the world
towards Christians. The devil seeks to drag everyone else down with himself
into the corruption and destruction that awaits him. Cain was of the wicked
one in the sense that he was under his influence, and acted from his
instigation. Cain was dissatisfied that his offering was not accepted, and
that his brother’s was. He acted out of envy. The wicked envy the righteous of
their righteousness and try to destroy what they cannot share. John’s readers
were astounded at the fact that the people of the world should hate them
because they were children of God. Jesus had warned of this in John 15:18-19
Human nature is the same today as it was in Cain and Abel’s day. There is
still a Cain, the world, hating its Abel, the church. No matter what the world feels about us, we have an absolute
knowledge that we have been separated from the death. Evidence of a saved
condition is that the person is habitually loving Christians with a love that
impels him to deny himself for the benefit of the fellow-Christian. A
Christian can no more live without love than a plant can live without growth.
Absence of love implies an atmosphere of death. John takes no account of the neutral ground of indifference.
As every one who does not love is potentially a hater, so every hater is
potentially a murderer. He has the spirit of a murderer. He has that which, if
it were acted out, would lead him to commit murder, as it did Cain. The
private malice, the secret grudge, the envy which is cherished in the heart,
is murderous in its tendency, and were it not for the outward restraints of
human laws, and the dread of punishment, it would often lead to the act of
murder. We know what true love is. Love itself was seen in its highest
form when the Son of God gave Himself to die on the cross. Cain is a type of
hate; Christ is love. Cain took his brother’s life to benefit himself; Christ
laid down His own life to benefit his enemies. Our Lord’s death on the cross
involved not only His physical death, but also abandonment from God because of
human sin laid on Him. One’s ego must be crucified and self must be denied for
the benefit of one’s brother. There may even come a time we may have to die
for our brethren. True Christians do not hate and murder; instead they show
love and try to help others. This is because of the new nature that is
implanted at the new birth. Love must be practical. It is easier to do great things where
all can see than to do the "little things", facing day by day the petty
sacrifices and self-denials which no one notices and no one applauds. John
tells us we are to be compassionate toward all of our brothers. We are not to
express or love merely by word or by the tongue. He does not condemn kind
words which are comforting and cheering, but warm words should be accompanied
by warm deeds. 5) THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT (1 John 3:19-24) If we have true love to other, we manifest it by a readiness
to make personal sacrifices to do good to others. We are not deceived in what
we profess to be, that is, that we are true Christians. A true Christian does
not attempt to conceal the fact that there is much that his heart and
conscience might justly accuse him of. But when he examines, he finds evidence
that he is a child of God, and he is persuaded that all is well and all will
be well and that he has nothing to fear. In whatever our heart condemns us, we
shall quiet it with the assurance that we are in the hands of God who is
greater than our heart. Who surpasses man in love and compassion. God’s
omniscience is linked with His love and compassion and He knows every secret
of our hearts. He knows our sins, but He also knows our temptations, our
struggles, our sorrow, and our love. The heart attitude of a saint is that as far as he knows he
has no unconfessed sin in his life, has nothing between himself and the Lord
Jesus and is yielded habitually to the Holy Spirit and living in close
fellowship with his Lord. Thus we will have boldness toward God in our
prayers. We pray continually, with confidence that our prayers will be
answered. The answer may not always be in the form that we expect, but it will
be better. There are two reasons why we receive answers to our prayers
regularly: When one obeys His commandments and practices regularly those
thing that are pleasing to Him, that person’s heart will not condemn him thus
he has confidence toward God. Saints had already believed on the name of Jesus Christ for
their entrance into salvation, but now in their saved state they were to
believe all that the Bible states is true of our Lord and this requires a
heart submission to Him personally. This is living faith. This involves one to
love Him with all their heart, mind, and soul and to love one another "as He
gave us commandment." He that obeys His commandments abides in God and God in
him. We abide in God and God abides in us through the Holy Spirit. The Holy
Spirit bears witness with our spirit and this ought to motivate us to be
obedient to the Lord. The "Christian" who claims to be born of God, but who
repeatedly disobeys the Word and has no desire to please God, ought to examine
his heart to see if he really is a child of God.