Thoughts on I John 3: Sin in the Christian life

The third chapter of I John is perhaps one of the more challenging in the Bible, both from an interpretive and an applicative standpoint.

I'll deal with the interpretive issue first.  Verse 6 says, "Everyone who resides in him [Jesus] does not sin; everyone who sins has neither seen him nor known him."  Yikes.  From an interpretive standpoint, this gets even more complex because at the beginning of I John 2, the author makes very clear that Christians do sin.  I'm going to be honest and tell you that I'm not quite sure what to make of this passage.  My best educated guess is that it is referring to "living a life of sin"--that is, living a life in which committing sin is the norm and there is no guilt for it.  Here is a much better analysis of I John 3:6.

If this interpretation is correct, it still leads to a very difficult application.  I grew up in a church that essentially taught what is sometimes referred to as "easy believism".  Too often I hear something to the effect of, "If you ask Jesus into your heart, then you will go to heaven.  It doesn't matter what happens from here on out, you can be sure of your salvation."  Or, to put it differently, "Pray a prayer and you get your guaranteed ticket." (For the record, my church would have never actually stated the second version, but I have heard a more blunt pastor put it that way once.)  The problem is that I don't see any way for this theological position to square with today's passage or many other places in the Bible.  To read a much more thorough (yet still incomplete) analysis, check out John MacArthur's controversial The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith?.

This is a very dense chapter, but I want to bring out one final point.  (I have a feeling this post will be edited and added to quite a bit in the future.)  At the end of the chapter John summarizes what it means to  be righteous before God.  He says, "Now this is his commandment: that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he gave us the commandment."  My analysis of what "believe" means in the New Testament will have to wait for another day.  But, righteousness is summarized as having true faith in Christ and loving each other.  Very simple, but also very hard.

Thoughts on I John 2: The life of obedience

Something that strikes me as I read I John is the emphasis that John places on obedience to God.  To him, that is one of the core features of being a Christian.  If you don't believe me, just read verses 3-6.

So what does this life of obedience look like?  One component is that a Christian ought to love his "brother" (or, as I believe the NET translation correctly extrapolates it "fellow Christian").  Hating ones brother is akin to walking in darkness, which we know from the first chapter is a reference to being out of fellowship with God.  In other words, you cannot be in fellowship with God if you are not in Fellowship with his other followers.

What else does it mean to live a life of obedience?  Verses 15-17 talk about not loving the world.  What is meant by "the world"? "...the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the arrogance produced by material possessions..." (verse 16, NET). We aren't to love these things if we are to have fellowship with God.  These things take away our attention from God and God's family.

I tend to think of these as new problems in Western culture.  They aren't new.  John is talking about them in the 1st century, apparently because there were false teachers (verses 18-27) presenting these things as being the true way to God.  We still have these false teachers today, but I'm not sure there was ever a point in Church history where we didn't have them.  The problems are old, but the are still relevant and we need to keep our focus on continued fellowship with God to counteract these false desires.

Thoughts on I John 1: Turning darkness to light

For many of us who grew up in the Church, we memorized I John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  While it is a very good verse to learn, we might be missing part of it's meaning without the context.

Verse 3 makes reference to our fellowship with the Father and Son.  Verse 5 points out that the Father is light and in him is no darkness.  Verses 6, 8, and 10 point out that we do have darkness--we sin.  So verse 9 is the key that enables us, who have darkness, to still have fellowship with the Father who has no darkness.  He gave us a way to have our darkness cleansed (or "turned to light" if you are bothered by the mixed metaphor).

I would say that this is a powerful message about salvation, except that I'm not convinced that it's actually about salvation (at least not completely).  If you read the text completely, it is actually about continued fellowship.  The "confess" in verse 9 isn't the initial act of repentance in becoming a Christian, but rather a continual act of repentance to maintain fellowship with the Father.

Thoughts on Hebrews 13: Immitating our leaders

In the closing statements, the author of Hebrews throws out a lot of quick admonitions.  The two that stick out at me today while I am writing this are: 1) Help those in need, and 2) Obey your leaders/imitate them.

The list of those in need aren't necessarily those we might think of today.  Show hospitality.  Remember those in prison and who are otherwise being tormented.  Bear the abuse Christ suffered. Share what you have (while being content with what you have).  I've said this before, but I think Christians in the West today are spoiled.  We never have to interact with those in prison (or recognize they are there).  We don't personally encounter the tormented (at least that we know of). I'm not sure we have any concept of what it means to bear the abuse Christ suffered.  We're generally not content with what we have and not willing to share what we have with others.

The other thing that might sound odd to our modern Western ears is that we are to obey and imitate our leaders.  From the context I am fairly certain this references spiritual leaders (although Peter and Paul in their writings certainly make it clear that we are not exempt from obeying political leaders).  Even outside Protestant circles, Western Christians tend to have a post-Reformation mindset.  We pay so much attention to the malfeasance of a few bad leaders that we fail to recognize the good in most of them.  If we don't recognize that good, it becomes very hard to both obey and imitate.

But I think there is a secondary problem as well.  In our post-Reformation mindset, we want to choose our own leaders.  As someone with a Ph.D. in Government, I can safely say that popularly choosing leaders is not always a good thing.  People tend to choose the most charismatic leaders, not those whose lives should be imitated.  A look at history shows the damage this can inflict (Hitler was popularly elected).  Why would we do this in the Church?  And we do we get up and find someplace else to worship if the leaders say something that makes us uncomfortable?

Again, these are just a few thoughts.  Take them for what they are.

Thoughts on Hebrews 12: God punishes us in love

It is entirely possible that I have written and taught more on this passage than any other passage in the Bible.  Having said that, I'm not sure my thoughts here are all that profound.  I think it's far more that this is a difficult passage to read and stomach.

When I was in college, I somehow was given the responsibility of writing a weekly devotional for the campus newspaper (it was a small, Christian college).  Every week I was supposed to meet with the chaplain to clear the devotional with him.  Things went fine until I wrote up a few thoughts on Hebrews 12.  He read what I wrote and wouldn't accept it, not because anything I said was wrong, but that "it might be too hard for college students to accept."  (I broke the rules and published it anyway.  I then didn't clear any others with him either.)

What makes this passage so hard?  Is it that we don't like to think about God punishing us?  Is it that punishment somehow is diametrically opposed to the concept of love in our minds?  Is it that we try to disavow a wrathful God from being part of the New Testament?

I think Hebrews 12 exposes us to some characteristics of God that don't match our sometimes "warm fuzzy" picture of Him.  We don't like to think of God as someone who still punishes.  "Didn't that all end with Christ's death on the cross?" we might like to think.  We tend to ignore that God is still holy.  That is one of the key themes throughout the book of Hebrews. He is completely set apart from sin and cannot stand to be in its presence.  We must come to Him on His terms.  He offered us a path.  The path won't be easy as He will still punish us as His children.  He won't accept us if we reject Him (thus violating the path He created).    Even when we follow the path, the path will be hard.

Maybe this is why so many of us have so much trouble with this passage.  We want the version of Christianity we might have heard as  a child, "God loves you and all you need is to accept Jesus into your heart and you can go to heaven."  While the words are true, the way they are presented might be misleading.  The "all you need to do" implies a simple, easy journey.  It isn't.  It is a hard, perilous journey.  This is why the author of Hebrews repeatedly warns his readers against falling away.  The warning is there because we need to hear it.

Thoughts on Hebrews 11: What does a faithful person look like in God's eyes?

Hebrews 11 has always been a humbling chapter for me to read.  This is for two reasons.  The first is the obvious that I look at the faith of some of the greats from the Old Testament and wonder if I could ever be like one of them.  This is particularly difficult for me over the past couple years as I've felt like I've been walking blind and the goals I thought God had laid out for me I don't see any path to achieving.  Looking at Noah and Abraham in particular is particularly humbling in this light.

The second reason that this chapter is always humbling to me is that I realize some of the things I focus on are not exactly God's.  I consider myself a "good person".  I authentically live a very clean life and don't commit the big, obvious sins that most people do.  This chapter reminds me that I should not be proud of that.  Take a look at the list of people applauded for their faith, especially in vv. 31-32.  Included in this list we have a prostitute, an adulterer, a murderer, someone led to do really stupid things by his sex drive, and someone who sacrificed his daughter after making a stupid vow.  That's a list of people who commit some sin whoppers that we should avoid.  Yet they got into the "Hall of Faith".  This shows me that God does not emphasize the same things that I do, and that I need to watch my attitude.

Thoughts on Hebrews 10: Living in repsonse to proper theology

Today, rather than writing more on the shadow of the old covenant in contrast with the reality of the new, I want to focus on the Christian response to these things, as highlighted in verses 19 to the end of the chapter.

The author of Hebrews is very concerned with living in response to proper theology (something I think most of us should probably do a better job with--either on the living side or on the proper theology side).  As a result of Christ as the high priest of the new covenant, we are able to draw near to God (v. 22) which at least partially happens through meeting together with other believers (vv. 24-25).  And why should we continue meeting together?  To prevent the warnings in verses 26-31.  In other words, we meet together to encourage each other from falling away so that we will be able to take advantage of the access granted to us through Christ's sacrifice.

In the modern West, not attending church tends to be an issue driven by laziness more than anything else.  However, the end of chapter 10 indicates that was not the problem for these readers.  They were being actively persecuted for meeting together and thereby identifying themselves as Christ followers.  For them, meeting together was a very serious matter.  Yet they were encouraged to meet together.  How much more so for us today when our biggest obstacles are sleeping in or catching the football game?