Articles
Children of God – 1 John 3
Children of God – 1 John 3
We are born of God (2:29, 3:9) and hence we are called children of God (3:1) because we ARE children of God (3:1, 2). As children of God we know that HE is righteous, He is light, in Him there is no darkness. Thus we begin seeing that privilege of being a child of God comes with responsibilities of behaving as children of God!
In order to emphasize this, John uses a Greek word that is translated by the ESV as ‘practice’. John uses this in the present tense verb form to emphasize even more that this a continuing act. Hence it describes a lifestyle and is a lifestyle that one must choose and willfully follow.
As children we purify ourselves from sin, unrighteousness, and lawlessness (3:3). As children we PRACTICE righteousness (2:29; 3:7), that is, we continually and habitually do that which is right.
We KNOW that sin is at the very core of our problem with God and is the reason that Jesus came (3:5) and died (1:7, 9). Hence the negative aspect of being a child of God is that we don’t ‘make a practice of sin’ (3:4, 6, 8, 9). Sin is of the devil for He ‘has been sinning from the beginning’. Thus, everyone who practices sin is NOT of God but is ‘of the devil’ (3:8).
It is unfortunate that so many people today take the very concept of sin so lightly. Some of this is due to the false teaching that a believer’s sins won’t cause him to lose his fellowship with God, but a greater part is simply because Satan has deceived so many (cp. 3:7).
While children of God do not practice sin, we do find that we occasionally sin. What a joy for us to know that we yet have the privilege of forgiveness. Jesus is our mediator and the propitiation for our sins (2:1-2). Such occasional sin MUST be confessed but when confessed we have the promise of a faithful God to forgive us and cleanse us (1:9).
We need to keep ourselves in balance here. We must not make light of sin and yet we must not despair when we sin. We must not practice sin but we cannot deny that we do sin. Being called children of God gives us the responsibility to live as children of God.
Hugh DeLong
