EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/12/2025 8:13 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 "Sin Is Incompatible With The
Ministry of the Holy Spirit"
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 3:9-10
Message of the verses: “9 No one who is
born of God practices sin,
because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
10 By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious:
anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does
not love his brother.”
I want to begin by saying that the new birth is from imperishable seed, securing the believer’s salvation for eternity. MacArthur writes that “It enlightens the mind so one can discern spiritual realities (John 14:26; 1 Cor. 2:10, 13-14; cf. Isa 40:13-14). It gives believers the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16) so they can understand the thoughts of God. It liberates and energizes the enslaved will, previously unable to obey God but no freely able and willing to do so (John 6:44, 65; Col. 2:13; cf. John 5:21b). The new birth signals the end of the sinner’s old life; those who were hopelessly corrupt become new creatures in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), buried with Him and raised unto a new life of righteousness (Rom. 6:4; Eph. 4:24). Therefore he states again that believers cannot practice sin, because they are born of God.
“The new birth is also a monergistic operation, which
means God’s Spirit alone accomplishes it. (It is not synergistic, which means
that human effort would also play some part in the process.) Paul’s language in Ephesians 2:1-6 is
unmistakably clear in this regard:
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and
sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now
working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in
the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and
were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of
His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our
transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been
saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus. (cf. Titus 3:5; James 1:18)
Titus 3:5 “He saved us, not on the basis of
deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the
washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit”
James 1:18 “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.”
“Because unregenerate people are spiritually dead,
they are unable to respond to divine truth.”
Let me pause and give you a little story to illustrate this point that
MacArthur just made. I have a friend I
use to go to church with who is an undertaker and the story goes that the
undertaker was getting a corpse ready for burial and after putting his suit on
he asked him what color of tie he wanted to wear. Well I think you get the point as this dead
man could not answer which goes along with the point MacArthur just made. Spiritually dead people cannot respond to
spiritual questions correctly because they are spiritually dead. “This doctrine of total depravity—better stated,
total human inability—does not mean that the unredeemed are all as sinful as
they possibility could be. Rather, it
means that their fallen, sinful nature affect every area of life and render
them incapable of saving themselves.
Thus the spiritually dead person needs to be made alive by God alone
through His Spirit. That same power
energizes every aspect of Christian living (cf. Romans 6:11-13).”
“11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Romans 6:11-13).
Now
we look at John’s conclusion of this section with the summary statement, By this the children of God and the children of the devil
are obvious: anyone who does
not practice righteousness is not of God. By this we learn that there are only two
groups of people in the world. “The mind
of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps” (Pr. 15:9): the children
of God and the children of the devil. MacArthur
writes “The first exhibits God’s righteous character through obeying His law
(cf. Luke 1:6)” “They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking
blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord.” the second exhibits Satan’s sinful character
by disregarding the Word and habitually sinning (cf. Pss.36:3; 119:150; Rom.
2:8). No matter what people may prifess,
or what past religious ritual or experience they may point to, anyone who does
not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his
brother.
“The final phrase of this section, nor the one who
does not love his brother, reaffirms to readers another aspect of John’s moral
test to identify true believers, namely the test of love (cf. John
13:34-35). For the apostle, it was also
obvious that anyone claiming to be a Christian but not demonstrating brotherly
love could not really be in Christ. He develops this argument in the remaining
portion of chapter 3.”
Lord
willing in our next “Evening SD” we will begin to look at 1 John 3:11-18, and
MacArthur entitles this 12th chapter of his commentary “THE CHILDREN
OF THE DEVIL VERSUS THE CHILDREN OF GOD.”
Please be in prayer for John MacArthur
as he has had three operations on his heart and has not been able to preach for
a very long time. My prayer is that the
Lord will keep him around until the rapture of the church happens.
1/12/2025 8:50 PM
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