Our righteous acts sign our attachment to Christ

Our righteous acts sign our attachment to Christ

Reminder

Romans 5:8
But God proves his love toward us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

As we have been reminded, this shows the greatness of God’s gift of Christ to call us His children (for all who accept Christ’s gift, considering their original state of sin).

I draw your attention to remark that this text is built on an opposition which we have already noticed in the epistle of John. The reality that God reminds us of in this epistle is that
either we are for God and express it by our devotion to Christ and with a life that shows all the gratitude for what Christ has done for us by having a right life ;

• or we are still children of the enemy of God, of Satan by thinking and acting as such, even if I blind my conscience by what could be found good in me.

There is no other state in which man, I, you find ourselves.
It’s one or the other.

Text

1 John Chapter 3 , verses 1 – 10
1 See what love the Father has shown us to be called children of God! [And we are!]
If the world doesn’t know you, it’s because it didn’t know him.
2 Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will one day be has not yet been revealed. [But] we know that when Christ appears we will be like him because we will see him as he is.
3 Anyone who has this hope in him purifies himself as he himself is pure.
4 All who practice sin violate the law, since sin is the breaking of the law.
5 Now you know that Jesus appeared to take away our sins and there is no sin in him.
6 Those who dwell in him do not sin; if anyone sins, he has not seen it and has not known it.
7 Little children, let no one mislead you. He who does justice is just as Christ himself is just.
8 He who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. Now, it was to destroy the works of the devil that the Son of God appeared.
9 Whoever is born of God does not practice sin, because the seed of God remains in him and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
10 This is how we recognize the children of God and the children of the devil: he who does not do justice is not of God, just like he who does not love his brother.

What this text tells us is that:
Inevitably those who are Christians sign their life with righteous actions.

A) First, I invite you to check if this is what the text tells us.
B) Then to see if this text gives us any leads to move towards this beautiful objective.
C) Then direct our hearts to focus on this goal to inspire our praise and worship

A) First, I invite you to check if this is what the text tells us:

Inevitably those who are Christians sign their life with righteous actions.

1) Why does the apostle John come to specify this obvious ###?

Christians were troubled by people, antichrists, false teachers who polluted their understandings, their faith, by suggesting that

one can have the “knowledge” of God and that is enough, no matter the behavior;
quite subtle, it let believe that one can be a child of God and have a life independent of God, live anyhow;
what this text shows us again is that independence does not exist, it is God or Satan.
2) I used the term “Christian”, although the text does not mention it.

Indeed, this text is addressed to the children of God through Christ their Saviour,
the Christians, as we commonly say.
We have been reminded of the last time that only the righteous Christ bore sin and overcame it by His resurrection.

Therefore, it is through Him that we can be found righteous by God, because He took on His account the sin, the injustice that separated us from God and that made us children of the enemy of God.

Christians, in biblical thought, are those who have chosen Christ as Savior and who live gratefully in the light of divine guidance.

3) An objection / question
This text is addressed to believers, to Christians, not to those who are not interested in God.

Good things don’t do justice, the believer or the Christian, it’s Christ.

If people who do not care about God do good things, it is the testimony in them that man was created in the image of God and that he has remnants of it. This testimony should push to seek the creator, not self-justify…

And what this morning’s text reminds us of is that transgression of God’s perfect law is sin. This transgression separates us from God. If I delude myself about my own righteousness for a single sin (you have to be puffed up enough to claim that), but even if I did, it defiles the whole thing.
If there’s just a hole in a boat’s hull, it still sinks!

In fact, it is in the face of this type of objections and this type of people that the apostle writes these lines because obviously he wanted to minimize or justify bad actions, while claiming to be of God.

We find the same ideas even now:

youth must pass;
the others do it well;
society has evolved;
my life has not been perfect but i have done good things…
But what God is showing clearly here is that it’s not us who evaluate, it’s not what I think that changes reality or gauges what is right or wrong.
The central problem of our relativistic Western society is that behind each person hides a moral concept of ethics of life, of vision of life, with the dictatorial obligation to accept, not to comment or question .

What the apostle John writes is very modern or maybe man just doesn’t change…

4) The problem of sin
God gave the law as a sieve to determine what is right.
Sin is anything outside the law.

Football is a game that is played with the whole body except the arms and hands for field players. If one of them dared to play by hand, it is a fault. It is the rule !

Sin is anything outside of the holiness of God that is against what He has established. Consequence: sin separates men from God eternally, relationally. This is why Christ came, Him without sin to take it away and overcome it.

Opposition
There is clearly an opposition between

• Christ without sin / the devil who sins from the beginning;
• he who is righteous does what is right, child of God / he who indulges in sin belongs to the devil;
• he who abides in Him does not sin / he who sins has not known Him.

1 John Chapter 3 , verses 4-8
4 All who practice sin break the law, since sin is the breaking of the law.
5 Now you know that Jesus appeared to take away our sins and there is no sin in him.
6 Those who dwell in him do not sin; if anyone sins, he has not seen it and has not known it.
7 Little children, let no one mislead you. He who does justice is just as Christ himself is just.
8 He who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. Now, it was to destroy the works of the devil that the Son of God appeared.

The apostle decides: if you are children of God, you are righteous, united to Christ, you do not sin. He who indulges in sin belongs to the devil.
There is an incompatibility between declaring oneself of God and indulging, justifying or self-justifying sin.

Yet sometimes we sin.
Of course, we are not blind and we know that today we have come together because we love Christ, have given ourselves to Him and are His children. Yet sometimes we sin.
This was the case of the apostle John who wrote this epistle and these verses and of the brothers and sisters of the time who were the first recipients of this epistle.

The apostle speaks of lives of which this is the characteristic: the antichrists, the false teachers. They had a sinful life, it was their trademark that reflected that they had not understood the work of Christ and that they did not know it.

Conversely,
necessarily those who are Christians must sign their lives with just actions.

It means two aspects of justice.
Christ makes us righteous in the eyes of God through the cross and resurrection. He brings us into the family of God, we are children of God, children of justice.

But we are called to live according to this new identity and fatherhood, following the example of Christ who by His justice brought us into the family of God.

We are righteous in the sight of God through Christ.
And called to align our lives with our new identity by doing what is right.
B) Then to see if this text gives us leads to move towards this beautiful objective.

To do this, this text points to what God does so that we get there and recalls the source of our motivation to be enduring.

1 John Chapter 3 , verse 9
9 Whoever is born of God does not practice sin,
because the seed of God remains in him and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

God planted a seed of life in all those who are attached to Him, His children. This text does not explicitly specify what this seed of life is.

Be the Word

James 1
21 Therefore, rejecting all filthiness and excess of malice, receive with meekness the word which has been planted in you, which can save your souls.
22 Practice the word, and do not just listen to it, deceiving yourselves with false reasonings.

1 Peter chapter 1
22 Having purified your souls by obeying the truth to have sincere brotherly love, love one another ardently with all your heart, 23 since
you have been regenerated, not by corruptible seed, but by an incorruptible seed, by the living and permanent word of God.

Be the Holy Spirit John 3
5 Jesus answered,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

The joint action of one and the other inspires and produces acts.
The Word is inspired by the Spirit of God who helps us to understand it and to implement it in our lives and the Spirit works in our life so that we are transformed into His image.

This seed must grow and grow more and more.
What do I put in place to let God act in my life?

• Influence,
• inspiration/ food,
• time,
• attendance.

This text also points to the source of our motivation

• to put everything in place to let the Spirit act more and more in me and that righteous acts flow from it.

A motivation to do what is right, to live in purity and to reject sin.

Two paths in this text:

• recognition,
• being ready for Christ’s return.

Gratitude for what God has done through ### Christ:

Liturgical
Gratitude for what God has done through Christ:
1 John Chapter 3 , verse 1
1 See what love the Father has shown us to be called children of God! [And we are!]
That’s what we do today:

• reading the Word,
• prayer,
• praise,
• offerings,
• loving fellowship among us
  is the answer!

By our lives
But our lives are a worship that expresses our gratitude. The least we can do is express our lives in righteous acts.

Christ’s Return
The other motivation points to Christ’s return: our hope is not here, is our motivation not to be found most like Him and to strive for that?

1 John Chapter 3 , verses 2-3
2 Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will one day be has not yet been revealed. [But] we know that when Christ appears we will be like him because we will see him as he is.
3 Anyone who has this hope in him purifies himself as he himself is pure.

Even if it is not perfect, let us direct our lives and our actions according to Christ, as a model, by gratitude, to prepare for this event, relying on the help of the Spirit and this what the Word tells us.

A news item has always marked me and summarizes what this text shows us:

Inevitably those who are Christians sign their lives with righteous actions

These events took place in Corsica. Fires, which have raged in a region that is difficult to access, have destroyed, ruined, killed and devastated a magnificent place.

Two suspected arsonists, who were arrested Monday a few hours apart in Corse-du-Sud, were volunteer firefighters.

The fire commander declared: “The decree has not yet been signed but they will be suspended on Tuesday morning”, the fire commander declared himself “appalled by this affair”: “They set fire while they were responsible, on the contrary, for fighting fires and protecting property and people. If the facts are proven, they deserve to be heavily condemned”.
The commander underlined that it was necessary to make the difference between the dedicated firefighters who fight and elements which correspond neither to the ethics, nor to the values ​​of the firefighters, whose motto, he recalled, is ” honor, courage and devotion”.

Logic
Indeed, we expect firefighters to put out fires, not to be arsonists!

Police are expected to enforce the law, not thieves!

A lawyer is expected to defend his client, not push him!

A doctor is expected to heal, not kill!

Otherwise, they are the shame of the corporation, or even, if this is the case, they are struck off for life!

What today’s passage tells us: a Christian is expected to do what is right, not to be notoriously known for his failings, his sins!

It is logical and finally the least of things!
This is one of the elements that expresses our adoration.