1 John 3:6

STEADINESS OF GROWTH

‘Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him.’

1 John 3:6

Some time or another all of us have met professing, earnest Christians who said that they never sinned, who said, ‘My conversion was so real, so true, that I never sin.’ This verse seems to suggest that a true Christian, one who abides in Christ, never sins, but if we look beneath the surface we shall see its true meaning.

I. Duality of nature.—We have a duality of nature. We who have been baptized, who have put on Christ, have a Divine nature, and also, alas! a poor fallen nature, natures which are as different as white from black, natures which again and again are in bitter antagonism, in conflict. St. Paul, whose Christianity, whose conversion, whose sonship no one in the world could question, acknowledged this duality of natures when he said, ‘For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.’ Now, here it seems to me is the explanation of St. John’s words. We know that St. John never regarded a Christian as one who did not sin. He knew that the converted soul sinned, yet he also said that the converted, the regenerate man, the baptized, the son of God, as such in his Divine nature could not possibly sin. As long as a man abides in Christ sin is an impossibility. When he loses his temper, when he says that sharp thing about somebody else, when he is a little bit insincere, then he turns his back, he blots out his vision; for the moment he knows not Christ, he acts as a poor fallen man, not as a son of God, not as a regenerate being, not in his Divine nature, but as a child of Adam. Is not that true? Is not sin impossible so long as there is true communion with God? As long as I look at Christ, as long as I keep my eyes towards Him, as long as I am conscious of His presence in me, as long as I am true to Him and remember my Divine nature, I cannot sin. But the very word trespass means a leaving for the moment, a separation from God.

II. Steady growth in grace.—If our Churchmanship is real then there must be steady growth.

(a) The growth must be in power over our weaker self.—Step by step we should prove stronger in temptation within and without. Gradually our better nature—that is our Divine nature, the nature that we receive from the Father—should be gaining the mastery and pressing down the lower nature.

(b) The way to do this is to practise the presence of Christ. The way is by abiding in Him, not merely when we bow before the altar in His own great service of Holy Communion, not merely in that religious world of holy duties and holy things, but outside, amid the hard, busy, often cold, workaday world, in the city, in the hospital ward, in the workshop.

(c) The very purpose of our abiding in Christ at the Eucharist must be that we may carry that presence back into the world. We know how sometimes when we fix these natural eyes upon some object, and then we close our eyes or even look at other objects, still we see that object on which we have been intent. So should it be as we focus our spiritual vision upon Christ: we should carry back into the city, back into our homes, back into all our difficult world Christ Himself.

—Rev. D. G. Cowan.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

ABIDING IN CHRIST

What is true of all Christ’s followers? It is that they do not, cannot sin, in the sense of habitually indulging in sin; sinning without protest and struggle and sincere prayer against sin.

I. They that abide in Christ cannot be in opposition to the great end of His mission and work.—That was to destroy sin, to make all pure and wholesome and lovely.

II. They that abide in Christ cannot be at variance with His spirit and character.—Two cannot walk together except they be agreed. A man cannot live in that abode of perfect sinlessness, in the presence of that pure and holy being, and yet let the current of his life flow in the polluted channels of sin. He must quit sin or Christ.

III. The more intimately a man abides in Christ, the nearer will his actual life be brought into accordance with the ideal of Christian living.—‘Beholding as in a glass His glory, we shall be changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’

Illustration

‘To “abide in” Christ implies having come to Him in faith, having believed on Him to the saving of the soul. And all true coming has in it the intention of abiding. It is preparatory to abiding. It is no true coming at all if there is the underlying notion of simply coming to receive a boon and then going. We have not come if, in intention and desire and resolution in God’s strength, we have not taken up our abode. He that abides in Christ “sinneth not.” A little before the same writer says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” “Sinneth” means settling down in sin, living lives without struggle and declared war against sin.’