Presented to Alberni Valley Corps of The Salvation Army, 05 August 2018. By Captain Michael Ramsay
This week like last week, in the valley here, we are looking at 1 John. We are actually half way through a mini-series. There are these great little tracts called the 4 points. We have been using them as a rough outline. Last week Susan spoke about love. Next week, if all goes according to plan, we will speak about Jesus' death and then we will chat about following Jesus.
SIN
Today we are talking about one of everybody’s favourite topics: sin! Okay, maybe that isn’t anybody’s favourite topic but still it is what we looking at today. 1 John has a few things to say about sin and at first read it can sometimes seem a little confusing. For example:
- · 1 John 1:8 says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” AND
- · 1 John 3:6 says, “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”
If we claim to be without sin the truth in not in us. HOWEVER no one who lives in Christ sins; how can this be? John says that no one who knows Jesus keeps on sinning but I am guessing that most of us here have sinned; so how does this work? The word ‘saint’ in the Bible more-or-less just means ‘Christian’ in today’s vernacular.[i] We, in this room, are mostly saints and we saints aren’t supposed to sin. But those of us who claim to be without sin, John says are liars and that we don’t even have the truth in us while at the same time he says that those of us who do sin don’t know and have never known God. It can be a little confusing
Sin is one of the key things that John is writing about in his short letter so I thought that we might spend some time looking into what the Bible means when it speaks about sin.
EVIL
Sin, in the Bible, can be defined a few different ways: there is the word Awon, which refers to a deep moral evil that is mentioned in Amos and a few other places.[ii]
MISSING THE MARK
Hamartanō is probably the word most commonly translated as ‘sin’ in the Bible; hamartanō, carries with it the classic definition of sin that we have probably heard before: that of ‘missing the mark’. It brings to mind the idea of an archer shooting for a target and falling short, missing the target. On the surface this seems innocuous enough but… if we find out that that archer is William Tell – who is famous because he shoots apples off of people’s heads – and if we then find out that the apple is about to be placed on our head, missing the mark becomes important.
NOT MEASURING UP
John Phillips explains sin as coming short of the divine standard. He gives this illustration:
Two men went to the recruiting office in London to join the guards regiment. The standard height for a guardsman was a minimum of six feet. One man was taller than the other, but when they were measured officially both were disqualified. The shorter of the two measured only five feet seven inches and was far too short; his companion measured five feet eleven and a half inches and, stretch to his utmost, as he did, he could not make it any more. Nor did his pleas avail. It mattered nothing that his father was a guardsman, that he promised to be a good soldier, that he had already memorized the drills and knew the army regulations by heart. He was short of the standard.
Yes, he is taller than his friend (just like some people may seem holier than the rest of us) but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that he is taller, he still isn’t tall enough and there is nothing he can do about that. There is nothing he can do to grow any bigger. Thus he failed to obtain his goal. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if we are Jew or Gentile, male or female, employer or employee, a missionary, a relatively good person, or what have you… for we have all sinned and thus fall short (Romans 3:23).
This is important. The word John uses in 1 John here is that same hamartanō when he says that “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” No matter what we do, we have all fallen short[iii] but as Chapter 3 makes clear that does not give us a right to just keep sinning and doing whatever we want because “No one who lives in him [Christ] keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” We cannot do anything to measure up but, in Christ, we certainly do have the freedom to be delivered from our sins. Jesus wants us to be free from the power of sin. As Christ makes us sinless we can sin less.
ID PLEASE: SINNER OR SAINT
Another way that the Bible talks about sin is contrasting sinners to saints – ‘Hagios’ is the root for both the word ‘holy’ and the word ‘saint’. They mean the same thing.[iv] And like we said earlier here, a saint is what Christians were called in the New Testament.[v] So, in essence you have two choices in the NT epistles: you can either be a holy saint and a Christian or you can be a sinner. You can’t be both.
In this sense the words ‘sinner’ and ‘saint’ are identity words. No one thinks that a sinner will never do anything right and certainly sometimes we saints have sinned; however, NT Christians no longer identify themselves as sinners; we are now saints. I liken it to when I was a young man. I used to be a smoker. Like many people I tried more than once to quit but to no avail. One day I decided I was a non-smoker. This was a key for me: even if I slipped up and had a cigarette or a drag from a cigarette, I never threw in the towel and decided that I am a smoker again. I kept identifying as a non-smoker until I one day I realized that I hadn’t had a cigarette in 20 years or so. Philippians 3:16: let us to live up to what we have already obtained. Since we are now saints and no longer sinners we will naturally want to sin less and be sinless. This is major part of what 1 John is addressing about sin in this short letter.[vi]
EVIL PERSONIFIED
There is one more aspect of sin that is very important here as well. Sin is not only an identity statement, a choice we make or an action we perform and it is even more than merely missing the mark or not measuring up; sin can also be a powerful force, as powerful as any addiction or habit; The Apostle Paul says, Romans 7:15, ‘I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate [to do] I do’. I don’t know if any of us can relate to that. I don’t know if any of us have ever struggled with wanting to do one thing and winding up doing another.
I like the way the writer of Genesis speaks about sin in Genesis 4. He writes about sin as if it were a kitten, a cat or some other predator. Does anyone here have a cat? Have you ever seen them hunting? They watch their prey for a long time and then they slowly move closer and then they crouch, ready to pounce on their target, and then they strike, capturing the one they were hunting in their claws or in their mouth. Genesis 4:7b: ‘But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.’
Genesis 4 contains the story of Cain and Abel. We all know the story of Cain and Abel, right? Cain is sad. Cain is angry that God accepted his brother’s gift but not his offering. Genesis 4:6-7, “‘Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.’”
God loves Cain. God is warning Cain before he ever kills his brother; God gives Cain every opportunity to do what is right and He is warning him that there will be natural and logical consequences if he does not do what is right – sin is crouching at his door. God is warning Cain that sin desires to have him, it wants to devour him and, of course we know, in this story that Sin does pounce on Cain as he gives in and murders his brother.
Sin crouching at the door. This is true in our own life too; it desires to have us but we must master it and this is some of what John is speaking about in 1 John when he writes, 2:1-5a:
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them.
Be careful, Sin is crouching at your door. 1 John 2:1, again: “my dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God;” however, Galatians 3:24 and Romans 6:1-6, we can be free from the power of sin. Since Christ is sinless, we can sin less.
At a conference last year, we saw a video of Immaculée Ilibagiza speaking and I have recently read her book, Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.[vii] I will inevitably share with you more than one story from this book as it is one of the most powerful books I have ever read on power of forgiveness and the power of love.
She lived through the Rwandan genocide: her mother, father, 2 brothers and many of her friends and extended family were among the up to 1 million people murdered by machete in 1994. She speaks about when it was all over and she first returned to her home and saw what had happened to her family. It was almost overwhelming: the devil tempted her with hate and with the sins of plotting, or considering, or fantasizing revenge; Sin tempted her to hope for bad things to happen to the people who killed her family, or to think bad things about those who tortured or/and killed her family. Sin was crouching at her door wanting to devour her while she was in her grief but she was not mastered by it: she refused to hate those who killed her family and thus give Sin power over her life. At one point she asked and was granted a chance to see a person directly responsible for killing some of her family members. She walked into the jail where he was held. The guard brought him out and threw him into the room where she was. Standing by the man, the guard prepared the man to hear what she had to say about what he did to her parents. She said, ‘I forgive you’ and she meant it. She evaded the sin of un-forgiveness that was crouching at her door ready to devour her. Forgiveness is a big part of love and John says that the love and forgiveness of God can deliver us all from the power of sin.
All of us have at some time fallen prey to sin. We have been captured by hate, or harm, or actions, or thoughts that have embraced us like the clutches of a predator’s claws but the love and forgiveness of God can free us from that sin. He offers us all – no matter what has been done to us and no matter what we have done – he offers us all the opportunity to be free from the power of sin. 1 John 2:1: “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” Any of us who are even now trapped by sin or tempted to be trapped by sin in some way, I invite us to either come forward here or pray in our seats that we experience that freedom from the power of sin today.
Let us pray.
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[i] John D.W. Watts. 'Holy.' In Holman Bible Dictionary, general editor Trent C. Butler. Nashville, Tennesee: Holman Bible Publishers, 1991), 660. W.E. Vine. 'Holiness, Holy, Holily.' In Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Word. (Nashville, Tennessee: Royal Publishers Inc., 1939), 555. Cf. Captain Michael Ramsay, ‘1 Peter 1:16 (Leviticus 19:2): God says, “…be holy because I am holy” (Swift Current, SK: Sheepspeak.com). Available On-line: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/02/1-peter-116-lev-192-god-says-be-holy.html
[ii] Donald E. Gowan, Amos. (TNIB 7. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1996), 369
[iii] Cf. Thayer's Greek Lexicon, STRONGS NT 266: ἁμαρτία, cited from https://biblehub.com/greek/266.htm and Simon J. Kistemaker, ‘James, Epistles of John, Peter, and Jude’, New Testament Commentary, (Grand Rapids Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007), 245,301.
[iv] John D.W. Watts. 'Holy.' In Holman Bible Dictionary, general editor Trent C. Butler. Nashville, Tennesee: Holman Bible Publishers, 1991), 660. Cf. G.B. Stevens in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary. Cited W.E. Vine. 'Holiness, Holy, Holily.' In Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Word. (Nashville, Tennessee: Royal Publishers Inc., 1939), 557.Cf. Paul Minear, Interpretation 37 no 1 Ja 1983, p. 22: In his death and resurrection, Jesus' holiness or sanctification became the measure and standard of all holiness, whether of places, times, things, or persons. (Key passages which reflect this are John 10:36; 17:17-19; I Cor. 1:2; 6:11; Heb. 2:11; 10:10; 12:14-24; 13:12-14.)"
[v] Cf. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, ‘40: Hagios’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.1.
[vi] This is especially true in 3:6; cf. NT Wright, The Early Christians Letters For Everyone: Peter, John, and Judah (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 151.
[vii] Immaculée Ilibagiza, Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.(Raincoast, 2006)
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