Many Christians struggle with John’s words in this part of his letter. They know that John is writing to Christians; he is writing to them. And then they think they hear: “Whosoever abideth in Christ never sins” (verse 6). They think John says, “Whoever sins has never seen the Saviour; they do not know Him.” They look at verse 8 and read: “He that sins is still a child of the Devil.” And to them the end of verse 9 says, “Real Christians cannot sin because they are born again.” That may be what they think they hear, but John says none of these things.
Many Christians know that First John was written to Christians. In our previous 30 lessons we have said that this letter was not originally directed to the lost. John addresses: “My little children,” and “brethren.” He has told them and us, “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God.” And that particular statement was made only five verses before our text.
Many of those Christians who lose their minds over “whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not,” have forgotten some of the earlier things John said to those same Christians. For example, in chapter 2 he said: “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not…” Why are they told not to sin, if it is impossible for them to sin? God’s children not only have the ability to sin, they often do. That is not an excuse; it is a simple fact. In chapter 1, John said, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceived ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” When he used the pronoun “we,” he was talking about you, me and even himself. He said, “if we say that we have not sinned, we make (God) a liar, and his word is not in us.” John exhorted us not to love the world neither the things in the world. He gave us that exhortation because there is a constant temptation to love the world and its sin. He urged us to “abide in Christ,” because our flesh naturally wants to stray. I will come back to this, but Paul said in Romans 7: “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” The flesh, Christian flesh, even apostolic flesh, has a propensity to sin. It leans in that direction. As long as we live in the flesh we will have to fight the temptation to sin, because the flesh is prone to sinful behavior.
But what about I John 3:6-10? Before we get into the exegesis of these verses, let’s begin with an illustration. Before I try to explain and interpret these verses, let me try to paint a little picture.
The vine and the fruit.
Verse 6 begins with “whosoever ABIDETH in Him…” “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not.” The Greek word translated “abide” is used about a hundred times and about half the time it is John who has used it or quoted it. Six times that word comes up in this chapter, where it is translated “abideth,” “remaineth” and “dwelleth.” Notice verse 9: “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed REMAINETH (or abideth) in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”
Out of the hundred other scriptures, the first to come to my mind is John 15 where Christ is speaking about the vine and the branches. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. ABIDE in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it ABIDE in the vine; no more can ye, except ye ABIDE in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that ABIDETH in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man ABIDE NOT in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye ABIDE in me, and my words ABIDE in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.” I hope you can see the parallel between John 15 and our text.
Christ is the vine and His people are the branches. Or to be a bit more specific, we are, or we produce, His fruit. By abiding, or residing, in Christ we have life, strength and fruit. Abiding in Christ we have His life flowing through our veins. We are who we are because of our connection to the vine, the Son of God.
My Christian life began as a small flower on the vine of the Lord Jesus. I was ordained to exist by God, and I was pollinated by the Lord Himself; then I began to grow. Abiding in the vine, I was nurtured, shaded and protected by its leaves above, below and around me. And as the Lord ordained, I became a small grape; not a lemon, not a crab apple and not even a raisin. The longer and the more tightly I cling to the vine, the fatter and more pleasing to the husbandman I become.
Again, Christ is a GRAPE vine, not one of two dozen other kinds of vines. Attached to Christ, I have no choice but to be a grape; not a sweet pea, a green bean or clamatis flower. My character comes from Him. I derive my nature from my Saviour. But if I don’t abide in the vine as I should, I may become a dried up and useless raisin. It is not to say that raisins aren’t good, but they aren’t much good to a vintner, a winemaker. A raisin is a grape at heart; it is not a wisteria berry or a pea pod. But God has not ordained for us to be raisins; He wants us to be plump, juicy grapes.
With that, let’s return to I John.
Exegesis.
Verse 6: “Whosoever abideth in (Christ) sinneth not…” John is talking once again about those two varieties of people: the children of God and the children of Hell. But here he uses a different term to describe those who are saints: they are those who abide in Christ. Notice the “eth” at the end of that word: “abideth.” We see it also in “sinneth.” That suffix not only speaks of something in the present tense, but in an on-going and always present tense. “Whosoever abideth constantly in Christ does not constantly sin.”” Conversely, “Whoever continually sins hath not seen Christ or met Christ by faith, neither has known him.” The person who makes sin his business does not know the Saviour; they have never met. That person has not been grafted into the vine; He is not one of the Lord’s branches.
Verse 8: “He that committeth sin is of the Devil.” Again we have that suffix “eth.” The person who constantly sins, not only has never met Christ, but he is of the Devil. The perpetual sinner is as much of the Devil as the grape or the grape branch is of the vine. “For the devil sinneth from the beginning.” Satan was not just the first sinner and man’s first tempter, Satan has been sinning constantly ever since. It is the nature of the Devil to sin. It is his character to fight God. He cannot do any but sin. Even toward the end, after years of defeat before God and a millennium of incarceration, Satan’s nature will not have changed, and he will come out of the bottomless pit as wretched as ever before. And the man whose character is as incorrigibly sinful as Satan proves himself to be a child of the Devil.
Verse 7: “Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as Christ is righteous.” “Let no man deceive you.” What is it that must we not confuse? “He who performs righteous works is, at heart, righteous.” Don’t let anyone try to deceive you into thinking that if you do righteous things, you will become righteous. That is not how it works. No one can of their own initiative join himself to the vine. Be not deceived, he who lives a generally righteous life, does so because he has already been made righteous. Even as the vine is righteous so are the branches and the grapes.
Verse 9: “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” “Doth not commit sin.” “Doth” may not have the suffix “eth,” but it could have. He who has been born again does not live in constant sin, because the righteous nature of Christ is in him. Since Christ cannot sin, neither can the child of God live in constant sin. He will not be characterized by sin, because the “seed” of the Saviour abides in him.
The germ of the divine life has been implanted in our souls, and by nature it grows; that is what life does. It is a gradual growth and often experiences periods of stagnation and perhaps even regression. That isn’t the vine’s fault; it is the fault of the foolish grape. But it is guaranteed that the grape will grow, eventually reaching its full fruition. It might permit the weather to slow its growth, and it may invite bugs to bother and hinder it, but it grows. It may even temporarily stop growing, but it will soon begin again, because it has the life of vine within it. And again, it will grow into a grape, not a sour or bitter lemon. “Whosoever is born of God… cannot habitually sin.”
Application:
No one is surprised when an unbeliever sins, because that is his nature. A sinner is a sinner intrinsically, both inside his soul, and outside, through his body or flesh. He isn’t a sinner because of his environment, or because his human father taught him to sin He is a sinner because his father passed his sin nature into that child’s soul.
But once the Lord implants His life in that sinfully dead spirit, a huge change takes place. The nature of that sinner becomes the nature of Christ. II Corinthians 5:17: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” That newness is internal; it is within us. The sinful soul is made new. II Peter 1:3: “According as (God’s) divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness… whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be PARTAKER of the DIVINE NATURE…” Brethren, the divine nature cannot sin; Christ, the vine to which we are attached cannot sin. By nature, the grape will be all that it was intended to be by the Lord.
But our new birth and new life doesn’t include the flesh in which we still live. The flesh cannot NOT sin; it is the nature of our fleshly nature to sin. The skin surrounding the meat of the grape may be tough and even bitter. But the inside… the nature of Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit in us are pure. This is what Paul was discussing in Romans 7:16: “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Someone might think I’m trying to make excuses for our sins: yours and mine. I am not. In fact, my purpose is entirely the opposite. Please remember with what words John began chapter 2. “My little children these things write I unto you, that ye SIN NOT.” The Lord Jesus said to one of the men He cured, “Behold, thou art made whole; (now) sin no more…” Paul said in Romans 6: “What shall se say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein.” We are dead to sin in our inner man, but unfortunately our outer man is still prone to transgress the law.
What I am trying to suggest is that as new creatures in Christ, we have Christ’s life in our spirits and souls. We are attached to the vine, and as such we are to produce righteous fruit for His glory. But we cannot do what grapes are intended to do – to grow and flourish – if we don’t abide in the vine. Saints will never again be children of the Devil; they ARE the children of God. But they will not be all that they should be, if they don’t abide in the vine. In other words: don’t become a shriveled up old raisin.