“Adopted into Love!”
Sermon Series: Walk in Faith (5 of 10)
1 John 3:1-10 (NIV)
Pastor Jerry Ingalls
First Baptist Church-New Castle, Indiana
February 14, 2010
We are continuing in our sermon series "Walk in Faith". We are in our 5th teaching time on First John. Please open your Bibles, pull out your sermon notes, and grab a pen. Let's dive in!
God's Word to us this morning from 1 John 3:1-10 (NIV)
1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.
4Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. 7Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. 9No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
We only have 2 teaching points this morning and the both revolve around the theme, “Adopted into Love”. The first is from verses 1-3. WE ARE ADOPTED INTO LOVE...BY THE FATHER! (1 John 3:1-3)
The first part of verse 1 declares, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have the privilege of being called “the children of God”! Not only to be called, but to know that we are the “children of God”! This is not an honorary title, it is an ontological reality! This is not simply a self-identity; it is our relational-identity in Christ!
How is this possible? Because our God who is the Father of all Creation has lavished His great love on to us. God has bestowed a massive gift upon us by adopting us as His children through Jesus Christ! We are adopted into Love by the One who is love!
John is building upon the Gospel of John 1:12-13, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God."
What does it mean when describe God as the Father?
There are 2 ways in which we can describe God as Father. There is a way in which all people, regardless of their faith, can say that the God who is Creator is their father. That is in a paternal sense: God is the creator of all that has been created therefore our very physical existence is due to Him.
Then, there is a second way in which we can describe God as Father and that is the sense of fatherhood beyond paternity. God has made His gracious approach, upon His own initiative, to be in personal relationship with us and we then respond and accept His gracious approach and He becomes God as our Father beyond paternity and into an intimate, loving, continuous relationship that daily grows!
As we know from our personal experiences, in this fallen world there is a stark difference between a child’s experience with a father who has simply fathered a child and a child who grows daily with a father who loves, cares, mentors, and walks with his child. This latter sense is what the Apostle John is describing and it is only possibly through Jesus Christ!
The Apostle Paul emphasizes in Ephesians 1:4b-6, "In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves."
Through Jesus Christ, we are adopted into the royal family—sons and daughters of the King—and we are born again from darkness to light; from death to life; from vessels of disgrace to vessels of honor!
Maybe you came to church this morning seeking to know more about God; you are lost and confused and feel abandoned by this one we call Father. Maybe you have been so hurt by your earthly father that this title for God repulses you! Beyond the sins that have been committed upon us or that we have committed ourselves, I am here to declare to you the free gift of relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Today, right now, you can experience God as more than a paternal father; you can experience Him in intimate relationship by asking Jesus Christ into your life. This is the indescribable gift of God through Jesus Christ—no matter you earthly experiences with a father or as a father, your Heavenly Father has chosen you to be lavished with His love and receive the right to be called a child of God!
John continues at the end of verse 1, “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”
We see this truth emphasized by Jesus Christ when He is praying to the Father for His disciples, for you and me today, in the Gospel of John 17:16-18, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world."
We need to realize that Jesus Christ came into this world on a mission! He chose to come and dwell amongst us, sent by the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit, God came in flesh so that we could know God, so that we could see God, so that we could become Children of God. Jesus Christ took the initiative toward us to reconcile us, God’s rebellious children, who were dead in our sin (completely cut off from the Father) back into a personal, intimate, loving relationship that now can grow day by day.
The purpose of the mission of God is to return His children back to their rightful place as the Image Bearers of God; the rightful stewards of His creation! You see, long ago when God created the Heavens and the Earth, He said let us make man in our image. So God made humanity in His image! Humanity experienced God intimately, but then we fell from grace and the relationship was broken!
Prompted by the one who rebelled from the very beginning—Lucifer, Satan, the Devil, the Evil One—we followed in his ways and rebelled against our Father who we once knew intimately. We went our own way not listening to God and in our selfishness and pride we told God that we could figure life out on our own. We made ourselves and the things of this world to be gods rather than rightfully give the One who made us that sacred position in our lives! These rebellious actions—called sin—forever stained us and smudged the image of God that we bore. We were corrupted and the spirit of man died under the curse of disobedience!
Jesus Christ came to restore us to our rightful place. John states in verse 2, ”Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
It is so hard for us to keep focused on who we are because we so easily forget whose we are! If we are to know who we are and why we exist, then we have to start by knowing whose we are!
We cannot turn to the world to teach us who we are or whose we are because the world did not recognize Jesus Christ as God. In this life, we do not see clearly because sin has smeared our view. The Apostle Paul explained this in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
God is pointing us to the reality of whose we are as the Children of God so that we can have assurance here and now by receiving God’s lavish love in Jesus Christ. But, God further directs our attention to the future Parousia (the second coming of Christ as emphasized in our previous section of 1 John) because it is so easy to feel insecure in this promise of God because we have so little evidence of this reality in personal experience!
But, this is not wishful thinking; this is the promise of God. John points us to the implications of living as Christians of hope stating in verse 3,”Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.”
We must fix our eyes on the truth and hope that when we see Jesus Christ face to face then we will know fully, just as we already are known fully by the Father. We will be like Him, not that we will become gods, but the privileges as Children of God that we partially enjoy now will be fully ours in Heaven. We will receive the full inheritance with imperishable glorified bodies: perfect fellowship with God and one another!
Paul declares in Philippians 3:20-21, "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body."
If we are to see God then we must be pure as God is pure. In the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew 5:8, Jesus Christ blesses, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."
Verse 2 promises that when we see Jesus Christ we will be like Him because we will see Him just as He is. We will experience the Vision of God! It is this hope that shapes our life; it is this promise that directs our steps; it is the reality of knowing whose I am that allows us to then live lives that reflect the life of Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, we must look long enough at Jesus Christ to become like Him. We must experience the Vision of God before we can experience the glorification that will be ours when we stand before Him face to face. Our motivation for living differently, for living a life in the Light, for living a life in obedience to God is because we are Children of God! If you want to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ and live a life that will allow you to see the Vision of God, then you must fix your eyes on this one hope: that Jesus Christ will return to complete the work that God has started in you!
The most important question is not Who am I; it is “Whose am I?”
Have you asked Jesus Christ into your life and become a child of God? This decision will reshape your world!
I have a confession to make: so often I wish God would have just take me Home to Heaven! I pray, “Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!”
It’s selfish because there is a reason why I am still here; why you are still here! That purpose is the Mission of God!
The Mission of God drives the church; that is the purpose of the church; and should be the ordering principle behind every decision we make in our personal lives and in our corporate life as the body of Christ here on Earth! That leads us into our last point and the rest of our text…WE ARE ADOPTED INTO LOVE...FOR A MISSION! (1 John 3:4-10)
When we know whose we are and why God went to such a great lengths to lavish His love upon us, then we should be motivated to live our lives in gratitude to God for sending His Son Jesus Christ to rescue and redeem us so that we have the right to be called Children of God! God rescued us so that we can be restored as the Image Bearers of God for the purpose of mission! To live with any other motive is sin; any other motive misses the mark on God’s intended purpose for your life! This section talks about how then we should live according to this reality.
John continues in verse 4,”Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.”
Again in First John, the Holy Spirit is directly confronting us on sin! We have just been exhorted that anyone who fixes their eyes on the hope of Jesus’ second coming will purify themselves as He is pure. That means we will focus ourselves on our mission and live righteous lives that embody the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we at First Baptist Church are to be a part of God’s redeeming mission to Henry County and beyond, then we need to live obedient lives to the commandments of Jesus Christ.
John states clearly, if you sin then you are not being obedient to the commandments of Jesus Christ. And if you are not being obedient to the commandments of Jesus Christ then you sin! In fact, when we read this in context from last week’s teaching, then we know that sinning puts us in opposition to God and in partnership with the Antichrist who is doing everything he can to send his spirit amongst us to deceive and tempt us to be disobedient.
We see this connection confirmed through the Greek word for lawlessness. It is not a common word and is used again in reference to the Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, Paul emphasizes, "Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for (that day will not come) until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God."
Sin is no small matter and one of the lies of the Antichrist pervasive in and out of the church is that sin is not a big deal…we all do it…don’t worry about it…grace! God had to go to great lengths to bring us back from the dead so that we could truly have life and life to the fullest! Grace is not cheap!
Friends, I want to correct a common misconception that I hear in our conversations as Christians. Jesus Christ is not a self-help guru! Jesus Christ did not come into the world to die for the world so that we can be better than we were before; so that we can be happier than we were before; so that we can be successful in our own dreams and plans. Christianity is not a self-help plan!
Here is the reality of our state apart from God. Paul states in Ephesians 2:1-2, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient."
We are not sick with sin prior to Christ! WE ARE DEAD IN OUR SIN!!!! DEAD! There is no life in us; our spirit (the part of us that is eternal) is dead and when God lavishes His great love onto us in Jesus Christ and we receive this love with all of our being, then we are born again!
How does this happen?
John states in verse 5, “But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.”
In a double imputation by the Father we are justified in a blink of an eye by our faith in God through Jesus Christ! First, our sins are transferred (imputed) to Christ who bore them on the cross. And at the same time, Christ's righteousness is transferred (imputed) to believers. The blood of Jesus Christ—the Passover Lamb of God—covers a multitude of sin and God only sees the righteousness of Christ, rather than our sin.
John the Baptist proclaimed about Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John 1:29, "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!'”
Jesus Christ is the only one who can take away the sins of all humanity! He is God’s Passover Lamb! Grace is not Cheap!
John continues in verses 6-7,”No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.”
In First John, we have seen that Jesus Christ is the Righteous One (2:1) and He is the Pure One (3:3) in which He has no sin (3:5).
We have learned and we see in these verses that when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior by faith with all of our being than a double imputation occurs. In the eyes of God, who is the only true reality, Christ takes your sin so that when you come into relationship with God through Jesus Christ than you no longer have sin. But that is not enough for us to be justified, so in a second transference, the righteousness of Jesus Christ is transferred fully onto us.
We are not perfect, but the demand upon us is for an uncompromising life of holiness in a dynamic rhythm of confession and forgiveness only possible because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. AMEN!
So, humble yourself and experience grace because these verses are not about you being good enough. They are about Jesus Christ! They are about the LOVE OF GOD—this great love that the Father has lavished onto us so that we can be called Children of God, and not just called the Children of God; we are the Children of God.
John continues with verse 8, “He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.”
The devil has been defeated and he knows his days are numbered until Jesus Christ comes back to right every wrong. Until that time, the devil is on the loose seeking after his next victim to devour. But, we have a great God who is bigger than the devil and his deceptions and the spirit of the Antichrist!
The Apostle Paul emphasizes the objective (cosmic) and subjective (personal) victory of Jesus Christ in Colossians 2:13-15, "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."
Jesus Christ destroyed the works of the devil! The Victory has been won and this is not only a cosmic victory over the powers and principalities of this world, but it is also a personal victory when you personally ask Jesus Christ to take all of your sins upon Himself on the Cross of Calvary and to give His righteousness to you!
No matter what comes up against you in this world, no matter what it is, Paul triumphantly declares about you in Romans 8:37, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."
You have been bought with a price! That price was not a small one--the blood of the King for you and me! Grace is not cheap!
John proclaims in verse 9, “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.”
This reality in the eyes of God is not perfected in this life. John makes it clear that we are not glorified until we see Jesus Christ face to face. John also makes it clear in previous verses of First John that we are liars if we say we are without sin. The truth is that we are justified by faith and are now working out this reality with fear and trembling.
In these end times or last hour as John called it in the previous section, we are still subject to temptation, mortality, and imperfection! But, as we fix our eyes on the hope of Jesus Christ’s imminent return, then we focus on becoming what we are! We are focusing on being the Children of God we are!
We can’t do this by ourselves! We need God and that is why He plants in us His seed!
In 1 Peter 1:23, Peter teaches, "For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”
In James 1:18, James further explains, "He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created."
Once again, John is emphasizing the close relationship between receiving the Truth through the Word of Life which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Through the gospel we receive the promised eternal life sealed by the deposit of the Holy Spirit in our lives! This is the seed—God’s eternal fellowship planted in our hearts creating a first fruit of God’s redeemed humanity!
We are the first fruit as the Children of God and we have a mission that is only visible by the way we live our lives which is only possible by being in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This is why we can’t expect ‘not yet Christians’ to live according to God’s commandments. They don’t have the Holy Spirit so how could they!
John completes this section with verse 10, “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, God has not brought you or I Home to Glory for ONE PRIMARY PURPOSE: WE ARE TO BE IN MISSION!
Our fellowship is mission by the way we love one another! The world will know whether or not we are followers of Jesus Christ by the way we love our brother! Our worship services will be mission by the way we glorify God and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a unified community! Our learning and growing in Christ is mission in as much as we are obedient to the person and teachings of God through Jesus Christ! Our life of obedience to Christ is what reveals we are Children of God!
Jesus states in the Gospel of Matthew 7:16-18, "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit."
I have read this passage and focused my attention on self analysis—I don’t want to bear bad fruit in my life so I would be seen as a good tree. Rather I should focus my attention on GOD and not on myself or judging other people.
I challenge you today to allow God to uproot the bad tree that you are and plant an entirely new tree. It is not about you getting better or focusing on fruit…it is about you realizing that without Christ you are dead to sin and you cannot control whether you have good or bad fruit. Without Christ, it is impossible to bear good fruit! Try as you will, it is only in Jesus Christ that we can be born a good tree!
We each need Jesus Christ! This is life or death…we are dead without Him!
I encourage you today to respond to God and to reflect on this question: Is it visible by my life whose I am?
God wants all of you today! Fix your eyes on the Hope of Jesus Christ and allow this hope to purify you…
RESPONSE TIME: Pastor Ken and his team are now going to lead us in a time of response. As the piano plays, I am going to invite you to respond to this message. We are going to have a few of us available to pray with you if you want, but mostly I invite you to be free and respond to God through song and celebration and through prayer and committal.
Let's pray together. [Pray]
*For an accessible teaching on double imputation watch R.C. Sproul’s teaching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IapqqQ45Q4w]
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