GET REAL
Part 6
Chapter 8
“Obedience”
1 John 3:9 “Whoever has been born of God does not commit sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin because he has been born of God.” Born of God means “he who has received the divine nature, or divine life.”
2 Peter 1:4 “By which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature.”
The phrase “Does not commit sin” here is in the present active verb tense, meaning “does not habitually sin.”
The phrase “His seed” is from the word sperma, which refers to the principle of spiritual life as imparted to the believer which abides in him without the possibility of removal or extinction.
1 Pet 1:23 “Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the Word of God which lives and abides forever.”
It is this principle of divine life that makes it impossible for a Christian to live habitually in sin, for the divine nature causes the child of God to hate sin and love righteousness and gives him both the desire and power to do God’s will. Paul said:
Phil 2:13 “God is the one who is constantly putting forth energy in you, giving you both the desire and power to do His good pleasure.”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon writes, “The germ of the divine life has been implanted in our souls, and it grows—a gradual process and subject to occasional retardation, yet still it is certain, attaining at length to full fruition. The believer’s lapses into sin are like the mischances of the weather which hinder the seed’s growth.” It may be temporarily hindered, but if there is no growth at all, there is no life to begin with.”
1 John 3:10 “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: Anyone who does not practice righteousness [habitually] is not of [sourced out of] God, nor the one who does not love his brother.”
The Greek word for love in this verse is the word agapao or agape, and refers to the divine love which is self-sacrificial in its nature. Children is the word tekna, which we already saw means “born one.” If you are not born from above, you are “born ones” of the devil in the sense that you inherited from Adam a totally depraved nature, after the pattern of the devil.
Vs. 11-12 “For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous.”
Wicked one here is from the Greek poneros, which we discovered earlier means “a pernicious person who seeks to drag everyone else down with him into the corruption and destruction that awaits him.” That is, by definition, the devil.
And Murdered is from a word meaning “to slay by violence, slaughter, butcher, by cutting the throat.” It was widely used in classical Greek to refer to the slaughter of sacrificial victims by cutting the throat or to any slaughter by knife or sword.
This indicates that John is going out of his way to describe the murder of Abel by Cain. The clear inference is that Cain cut his brother’s throat which is why God asked Cain:
Gen 4:10 “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood (bloods) cries to me from the ground.”
Interestingly, the word “blood” is in the plural. Why? It intimates that when you take a life, particularly a younger person that would have procreated, you have also killed all the descendants that would have been.
And those descendants that would have been somehow cry out to God for vengeance!
Targum: “Whoever destroys a life, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”
Whatever method Cain employed to murder his brother caused the shedding of much blood, which cutting the jugular vein in the throat would do. Cain would have learned this method of killing when God taught humans to sacrifice an animal when approaching a Holy God (see Genesis 3:21).
A more literal translation of this verse, then would be:
“Because this is the message which you heard from the beginning, to the effect that we should habitually be loving one another with a divine love; not even as Cain was out of the evil one, and killed his brother by severing his jugular vein. And why did he kill him? Because his works were evil and those of his brother were righteous.”
Vs 13-14 “Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.”
John tells believers to quit being shocked if the world hates them because they are children of God.
Then the phrase passed from death to life is in the perfect verb tense, which refers to a past action that carries permanent results. So, this could be better translated, “we have passed over permanently.”
Just as the Hebrews could not turn around and make the Red Sea part again so that they could pass back over into Egypt, our salvation is permanent.
In the Greek, this phrase from death to life reads, Ek [out of] tou [the] thanatou [death]. All believers in Jesus have passed “out of the death” caused by sin, into the life given us by Jesus! Human beings have only two choices: either abide in the death of separation from God or in the life that exists in Jesus Christ. There is no middle ground.
Vs 15 “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”
Whoever does not love his brothers and sisters with a love that impels him to deny himself for their benefit is abiding in death. John identifies the person in whom the agape love of God is not found.
The term hate comes from a word meaning “malicious and unjustifiable feelings toward others, whether it be the innocent or mutual hatred between parties.”
Murderer literally means “manslayer”. Hating someone makes one a murderer because hatred is the inward emotion that leads to the outward act. Jesus said:
Matt 5:21-22 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ [empty head] shall be in danger of the court. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ [a stronger term] shall be in danger of hell fire.”
The reason someone would be in danger of hellfire here is because when, in hatred, they say to a brother “You fool!,’ they are a step away from murder.
We need to consider what John already told us a few verses earlier:
2:11 “But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”
Remember that the term blinded is used in the aorist verb tense, meaning “a completed action in the past.” When the darkness of hatred took over, it blinded the person’s reason and thinking. A person who can’t see will stumble into anything, and so is in danger of sin that leads to hell.
In summary, love, not giftings, charisma, wealth, or talent, is the true test of whether we are habitually abiding in Christ!