Friday, August 30, 2024

PT-3 "The Certainty of Sin" (1 John 1:6, 8, 10)

 

EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/30/2024 7:35 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                    Focus: PT-3 “The Certainty of Sin”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  1 John 1:6, 8, 10

 

            Message of the verses:  “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;…If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us….If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

 

            I want to begin by quoting the last short paragraph from my last SD:  Now in the next SD I will again pick up on what the apostle John faced, as he faced a similar situation in writing to his audience.”

 

            The things that the OT prophets faced the apostle John faced in a similar situation in the churches to whom he wrote this letter to.  The things that were flooding into Ephesus and other cities and churches of Asia Minor were deceitful, sin-denying false teachers.  MacArthur writes “In addition to the heresies of Docetism (that claimed that Christ’s ‘divine spirit’ descended upon the human Jesus at His baptism but departed just prior to His crucifixion), John had to contend with Greek philosophical dualism (the basis of Gnosticism)—a view that denied the reality of sin and evil.  Those who held to this mystical, elitist philosophy argued the spiritual was always good and the physical was always bad; they therefore created an artificial dichotomy between the spiritual realm and the physical world—contending that spiritual realities were all that mattered, and that what was done in the flesh (including sin) was a nonissue.  As John encountered this heresy, he had to unmask those who denied sin’s existence and thereby sidestepped their own responsibility for it and its consequences.”  I mentioned at the beginning of this study that it is important to study the letter to the Colossians because similar things are going on in the church today. 

 

            I want to now look at how John divided those who claimed to be in the fellowship but rejected the truth into three similar but also distinct categories: 1) those in darkness,  2) those in deception, and 3) those who defame God.  MacArthur writes about these:  “All three groups of people either willfully rejected or completely ignored the reality that true believers and sin are incompatible.  “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom. 6:2).  Later in that chapter he added, ‘But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness’ (vv. 17-18; cf. Eph. 2:1-5).  By refusing to repent, these sin-denying false professors revealed that they were outside of God’s plan of salvation, which begins with election (Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:4, 11); includes redemption (1 Cor. 1:30; Gal. 3:13; Heb 9:12), sanctification (1 Cor. 6:11, Eph. 5:26-27; Phil. 2:12-13), and spiritual growth (John 16:13; 17:17; cf. 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Tim. 3:15); and culminates with glorification (2 Cor. 3:18; 2 Thess. 2:14; 2 Tim. 2:10).”

 

            Lord willing in the next SD we will look at “Those in Darkness (1 John 1:6).

8/30/2024 7:59 PM

 

 

 

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