I John, 3:4-6
Roger Henderson · Feb 5, 2006
1 John, No. 18
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826234326874

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so let's read 1 John from verse 1 through verse 6 in chapter 3. Yes, thank you. See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God, as such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it does not know Him. Now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him just as he is.

And everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself, just as he is pure. Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins. No one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. What Ben, I think, referred to early on is that he was going to be anxious to be at these classes. He's teaching next week. Yeah, I thought that was on the schedule too. He's going to teach next week. Well, the Lord is good.

I come to some of these verses and I look up and I say, I don't know whether I understand what's being said here. Hopefully, we'll be able to sort it out. But there's a couple of key words, I think, in here that need to be pointed out. This word, everyone, and actually everyone occurs, again, as no one and no one. And as we go through that, I hope I'll be able to show you that everyone's going to talk about a people group, if you will. And that's going to help us out, I think, in understanding what's being said here. Because properly interpreting the everyone and the no one, what what people group are we talking about is going to be helpful.

The other word that's going to be kind of critical is practice. It actually occurs twice. The King James renders it commits, or actually, it actually translates it two different ways, I think. One time it translates it commit, commit sin. Other time it says unrighteousness, I think, or something like that.

So we're going to kind of go through, and there's actually an A, if you look at these verses, an A and a B part. We're going to kind of break them down as that. And actually, in some verses, it looks like there's almost a contrast between the A and the B part. And when you get into it, you're going to see, well, how can he kind of change in the middle of verse?

He'll change the people group he's talking about. I mean, I didn't see that at first. OK, so let's just kind of dive into it here and we'll see if we can make some sense out of this. OK. All right, so I'm going to look at the first part of verse four.

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness. And then we'll cover the last part, and sin is lawlessness. And this almost is like, as Vern's been pointing out, a poetry pattern. Because it seems like he says one thing, he makes a statement in the first part of the verse, and then he says it another way in the last part of the verse. He's basically talking about the lawlessness of sin.

And if you were to look at this first clause, the clause is in English or in Greek or whatever, it has a subject and a verb, that's a minimal requirement, and it can have objects and things like that. So actually the first clause, the subject of that is everyone who practices sin. And it's actually something called a participle, and I don't really want to go into that because I'm not really that good at it myself, so I'm not going to try to expound on Vonnie's good. But what's interesting to recognize is that the phrase, everyone who practices, is actually the subject of this clause. So it's everyone who's practicing, and actually the tense is, it's present active, participles are verbal, they have verbal aspects and they can have other aspects too. So it actually has a present active aspect. And the verb also is present active.

And the object of this, which receives the action of the verb, is lawlessness. So it says everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness. And the reason I have the also in brackets is because it modifies the verb practice. Okay, so basically that says the results of practicing sin is lawlessness. So we need to understand a couple of things. Everyone, what's that all about? Practice, which occurs twice, and lawlessness.

So through the words we now need to understand what are they talking about here. I think to properly understand this clause. So let's go on here. Okay, everyone, is this word pas in the Greek. And it means, and it occurs a lot. I haven't actually, I'm not sure, Josiah probably has a count in this. He's done a great job. I'm not sure. This one in scripture occurs a tremendous, as you might guess, a tremendous amount of times. And actually, It's an all-inclusive, all, any, every, the whole. And it's a complete whole without exclusion. It's all-inclusive. So what this is talking about is everyone, this class of people, practices sin, basically.

Practices is poeo. It's spoken of as a course of action or conduct. It can be translated to do or does. And some versions, actually, in the verb part, has everyone who practices sin does lawlessness, which makes it possibly a little bit clearer. And what I found is interesting. I started looking at this word poeo, and actually, The King James has rendered it, this verse, commits.

And a lot of people had a problem with that, because they felt that, if you notice back in the other, the tense here is present tense. So you could say, basically, it's a continual action. It's practicing, continually practicing. So they were kind of saying the idea of commit is more of a, a point action kind of thing. I have a couple of verses here that use the same word, poeo, but it's translated in the American Standard, commits. And this tense here, Jesus said, Jesus answered them, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. And actually the tense here is present active.

So you could actually put practices in. It seems like it would be consistent with what was done in 1 John. But when you come down to 2 Corinthians passage, Paul says here, Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you without charge? So this is Arist here, so it's a point fact, so a point in time. He says, should I humble myself?

So it seems like that, and actually Josiah's going to have to wrestle with that as we get on later on, this word poeo, in 1 John, it seems the better rendering is a practice because it's, in fact, I looked, let's just look for a second here, and actually I don't have overhead for this, but look in your Bibles here just for a second. At 1 John chapter, look at verse 4. In the American Standard, it occurs twice in verse 4, and then if you look down, in verse... I'm going to lose my place here.

Thank you. Actually, it occurs in 7. Little children, make sure that no one deceives you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous. And then in 8, the one who practices sin is of the devil. And then in 9, no one who is born of God practices sin.

And I looked through that list, and all of those are either verbs or participles, and they're all present active. So it seems like that the translators with a conscious intent to render this poeo as an ongoing habit of a life. And I think that's going to be kind of critical as we go through these verses to see is this, this is just not a single one-time thing that might happen. This is an ongoing practice, and that's what happens in practice. Well, the verb is right that it's spoken of as a course of action. The verb has an idea, but the tense is critical. I mean, if you do it, if you render this, hence it's run to commit in these other verses here, because most likely that they wanted to emphasize it's a single action, a point of time. But it seems like First John. is actually talking about continual action.

So this is going to be an important word as we go through 4 through 10. But I kind of want to lay the groundwork here that in 1 John, it seems like it's speaking of a course of action, continual course of action. We surrenders this right here, John 8, 34, as everyone who habitually commits sin is a slave of sin. I think in the in the John 834 passage, it kind of is similar to the passage in 1st John and 2nd Corinthians passage.

It's kind of a case where the tense is such that it's a point action. All right, so let's go on. So we looked at POS for everyone, all inclusive practices. And now we're going to look at the next one. The object here is Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness.

And lawlessness is basically a compound word. It's nomos, which is law, and then the negative of that, which is the A. So it's basically the idea of no law, no law or without law. And actually, it's translated in a variety of ways in scripture. The King James are under, at many times, iniquity or unrighteousness. But the core meaning is without law or no law. How about if someone read in Romans chapter 6, this 619 for us, maybe read the whole context here.

I am speaking in human terms because of the weak people of his flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. All right. Thanks. So in this verse, it uses the same word. No law. So do you see here, does something strike you about this verse? Is he making a contrast here?

It says, as you presented your members as slaves to impurity. So you presented your members as slaves to impurity. So when do you think that happened? And Paul's addressing his readers. When did that happen in their lives, do you think? Because he contrasts that with resulting in full lawlessness. So now present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification. So I kind of saw a contrast, exactly. So it seems like that lawlessness is a characteristic of an unbeliever's life. And we know that's true because his sin nature is prevailing in his life. He has no other choice but to do the dealings of a sin nature. So one of the things that we're going to find here is that it seems like the word lawlessness is used many times as referring to an action of the unbeliever.

And then actually here is a contrast in 2 Corinthians 6.14. It says, do not be bound together with unbelievers for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness. So it kind of identifies the unbeliever and lawlessness. And that's going to be important, I think, as we look through here, that lawlessness is a term that Not that the believer can't, for a point in time, abide in his own man and be lawless and commit sin, in a sense, but it seems like in the context here, many times it's going to be used for the unbeliever describing his lifestyle, his practice. There's another verse that's really good, too, in 1 Corinthians 9. I'm going to have somebody read that one, too. 1 Corinthians 9, verses 20 and 21.

The Jews are became like a Jew to win the Jews. To those under the law, I became like one under the law, though I myself am not under the law, so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law, I became like one not having the law, though I am not free from God's law, but am under Christ's law, so as to win those not having the law.

OK, so it's interesting here in 21. So the Lumerian Standard has it without law. It has it both places. To those who are without law, as without law. So actually, it's picking up the idea that since this word is lawlessness, the unbeliever is without law. By his very nature, he's without law. His characteristic is without law.

So Paul wants to reach both the Jew who has the law, and those who are without the law. OK. All right. So the point of this, I just try to show you that in this context that, let's go on here to the next part, that, let me just go back for a second here.

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness. So we've looked at everyone, it's all inclusive, practices, habitual, habit of his life also practices lawlessness. And lawlessness is a characteristic, many times in scripture, of the unbeliever. Okay, part two, part B. Then it says, sort of like the Hebrew poetry pattern, it kind of says it another way, sin is lawlessness.

And in the construction, it's a very simple construction in the Greek. Sin is a me, and it's present active, Sin is and its subject complement, which don't get that bother you, basically it's a noun. In this case, it's a noun that identifies the subject.

So the sin is being identified or defined as lawlessness. So sin and lawlessness are, you know, sin, lawlessness defines sin, sin defines lawlessness. I mean, it's incredible. So this actually, this passage is one of the, passages in scripture that really nails down what sin is. We're going to look at the word itself for a second, but it really points out the nature of sin, its lawlessness. And actually, also the verb here, since it's present tense, Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness. And sin is continually lawlessness because of the construction, because of Amy. And law is identified sin. I kind of said that about 20 different ways now. So what can we summarize here? Sin is harmatia. And if you've been here at Holly Hills for any time, Hal's done a great job. And he has several overheads that just, he's a little bullseye.

Sin, by the word itself, Armatea, is a missing of the mark. So it's very definition is missing the mark. And the mark is God's righteousness. Well, lawlessness defines what sin is. It's a missing of the mark. And I have some things that Schaeffer said down here, but I'd like to just spend And there's a lot of verses here to look at, but a little bit of time looking at lawlessness in scripture. And the first thing you think of the law, you think of the law of Moses. But I think this is a bigger picture, and Schaeffer kind of alludes to that, a bigger picture of what is lawlessness. And I think we're going to see, and the source of lawlessness, the source of sin, And there's several passages in Ezekiel, in Isaiah, and in Genesis.

And these are pretty, some are familiar, some are not, maybe. But they talk about Satan and how he was lawless in his very action. Okay, let's look at Ezekiel. Okay, Ezekiel 28. I'll have to read 1 through 10 to start with, and then maybe I'll just summarize it from there on.

The word of the Lord came again to me, saying, Son of man, say to the leader of the tribe, Thou shalt fear God. Because your heart is lifted up, and you have said, I am God, I sit in the feet of God, in the heart of the feet. Yet you are a man and not God, although you make your heart like the heart of God.

Behold, you are wiser than Daniel. There is no secret that is in that for you. By your wisdom and understanding, you have acquired the truth for yourself, and have acquired gold and silver for your treasure. By your great wisdom, by your trade, you have increased your riches, and your heart is lifted up because of your riches. Therefore that says the Lord God.

Because you have made your heart like the heart of God, therefore, behold, I will bring strangers upon you, the most ruthless of the nations, and they will draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendor. They will bring you down to the pit, and you will die the death of those who are slain in the heart of the beast. Will you still say, I am God, in the presence of your slayers? Though you are a man and not God, in the hands of those who need you, you will die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers. For I have spoken the grace of the Lord God. Thanks, Anne Marie.

Okay, actually, if you look a little farther down, you'll see that, you know, at first thought you're saying, well, what, who's, what's being talked about here? You know, this is actually the, Mine says the leader of Tyre, or it could be the ruler of Tyre, or the prince of Tyre.

But if you go down to verse 13, it says, You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering, the ruby, the topaz, the diamond, and so on. And then actually in 14, you were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked in the midst of the stones. You were blameless in all your ways from the days you were created until unrighteousness was found in you.

So I think if you carefully study that, I think you'll come to the conclusion I was talking about Satan. And it's interesting, if you look here, I think this is depicting lawless behavior, because what Satan is saying, he says, I am God. He says, and it says many times, that you've made your heart like the heart of God. And I've, over here I've wrestled with that, I'm not sure what that means, but it's basically saying, I want to become like God. I want to be God. And basically it says, will you still say I am God?

So Satan's downfall, and actually in verse 17 kind of may summarize it a little bit, your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor. So Satan was so enthralled with himself that he wanted to be like God. I'm this wonderful creation. I'm going to be like God. He's exalting himself above God.

So that's lawless behavior, if you will. And actually, the other verses, and in fact, we're going to be coming to this pretty soon, Isaiah 14. I'm kind of excited. I'm not sure I'll cover these verses, but we'll see when he gets there. Isaiah 14, another just declaration by Satan, pretty incredible words from the most splendid being that God created. He says in 13, Isaiah 14, verse 13, I will send to heaven. And back in 12, he's called the star of the morning, which is basically the shining one, named for Lucifer. I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars. I will sit on the mountain of the assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High.

I mean, just very incredible words, incredible boastful words of lawlessness. And then, you know, if you go into Genesis, we won't go there, but he basically says, Has God really said that to you, Eve? Did He really say that? So it just continues on. So I like what Schaeffer kind of summarizes here. And this is in his theological, I think it's volume four.

He says, that is sin, in its essential character, a lawless departure from the purpose and will of God. And sin is lawlessness against God and all that His holy character demands. So I hope that I've kind of convinced you that lawlessness really defines what sin is. And lawlessness in the broad sense, not in the narrow sense of God's law that he gave to the nation of Israel.

And there's a whole bunch of stuff that pertains to that. But one thing really good here, let's look at Titus chapter 2. So what's my relationship to these lawless deeds? The believer, what's his relationship? Let's look in Titus chapter 2. Titus chapter 2 and verse 14.

In 2.14 in Titus it says, Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed, and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds. So the believer positionally has been purified from every lawless deed. So that's what's kind of interesting about this verse 4 is that he's making a statement about lawlessness and saying that everyone, a people group, that's committing sin also commits lawlessness.

So we'll kind of put that on the back burner for a second. We'll just kind of move on. We'll come back at the end of that. OK, let's go on to verse 5. So now he's going to make a statement about the Lord Jesus. And he's going to use one of Ben's favorite words, appeared. And you know that he appeared in order to take away sins.

So know here is oida, to have seen or perceived, hence to know, to have knowledge of. And it basically assumes that you have that knowledge, you understand that knowledge. Sometimes it's called absolute knowledge. So it says you know. This is something that John's audience would know, a believer would know.

You know that he appeared. And appeared is phanerao, to make visible, clear, manifest. And there's a synonym that has the true meaning is to uncover, or lay bare, or reveal. And with the tense here of appeared, it's in the aorist tense and indicative mood. So it's a past point occurrence. He appeared, that's a past point fact. He appeared in order to take away sin. So what I did here, I looked at slide 9 here.

You'll see that we've looked at, in 1 John, we've looked at, this is not all the occurrences, but we've looked at appeared or manifested, and this verse in 1 John 3.5, and then here in 1 John 1.2, the life was manifested, which was manifested with the Father, was manifested to us. And then we have the two in chapter 2, when He appears, when He appears, and then we have down in 3.8, the Son of God appeared for this purpose. So if you look through and look at the context, you'll see some refer to Christ coming to earth as a man and dying for our sins, and some seem to focus on his coming again.

And it's basically all by the tense of the verb, basically. And that's why they're rendered that way. These are all in the aorist tense in 1.2. Past point fact, he was manifested, was manifested. And then these here are actually When he appears, we don't know when it's going to happen, but when he does, we may have confidence. So some seem to be pointing to his future coming, and the others point that he's already come. And that's not all the occurrences.

I think there are nine times it appears in 1 John. So once again, I remember we were taking the Greek class with Hal. Context, context, context. I mean, what's the context of how it's used? Some context refers to his first coming. Some context refers to his second coming. I don't know if that's helpful. Is that helpful, Ben?

Good. All right. OK. So let's move on here. You know that he appeared in order to take away sin. Take away is I row. OK. And it's to lift to carry, carry to take away. A very beautiful word because it describes what Christ did with our sins. And notice here that it's sins plural. He didn't take away our sin nature. He took away our sins. He condemned our sin nature. He takes away our sins. So in the two verses I have on the chart here, the next day, he saw Jesus coming to him and said, behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

This might be a little troubling. And over the years, I've come to realize this is a collective term, talking about the collective sins of the world. And then, let's see here. Actually, I made a correction on your handout. That's actually Hebrews 9, 28. I corrected it by hand, if you noticed.

In Colossians here, it says, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, he has taken it out of the way. Same word, airo, has taken it out of the way. having nailed it to the cross. It's just a beautiful picture of what the Lord has done with our sins. He's taken it out of the way. And then down here, these other verses I kind of offered. And let's just look at one here, the one of 1 Peter. 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 24.

And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. For by this wound you were healed. It seems like a closely related idea to taking away our sins or carrying them away is bearing our sins. They were taken away from us, and he bore them. We didn't have to bear them. So I made kind of a similar idea that bearing them in his own body on the tree is somewhat synonymous with the idea of taking them away.

And the Hebrews talks about that as well. And then actually what I found is this word literally means, actually I found in Mark, that when they talked about taking the Lord's body away, they came to inquire, who's taken his body? They didn't know where his body was at.

Let me be careful here. Let's look at, before I do this out of memory, let's look at Mark chapter 6. I'm going to start talking here and I'm going to say the wrong thing, I just realized. Mark chapter 6. And this is the same where Iroh. Mark chapter 6 and starting in verse 27.

And immediately the king sent an executor and commanded him to bring back his head. And he went and had him beheaded in prison. and brought his head on a platter. This is actually John the Baptist, so I'm a bad man. And he gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. And when his disciples heard about this, they came and took away his body and laid it in a tomb.

OK. The idea was not, it was more on the word. So the idea literally meant taking away, taking away his body. All right. So the second part of verse 5. And in him there is no sin. Very pivotal statement. I've had, you know, actually you would not believe. In him there is no sin. So if you rearrange that kind of, maybe a little bit differently, maybe for possibly better reading in my mind.

And there is not sin in him. a pretty definite and definitive statement, and it's A.M.E. again, the state in which someone or something continuously exists. He continuously exists without sin. Weist renders it, and sin in him does not exist. And then in 2nd Corinthians, we have a kind of a corollary verse. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. He knew no sin. That's Gnosko. He never experienced sin. Sin was not the experience of his life.

You know, a very important statement in scripture. We have a sinless Savior, but there are people that want to make Christ so human that they say, well, that can't be. To understand me, he has to experience sin. And I come across that in Bible studies with people. It is so hard. You think, well, wait a minute, you're missing something here. But I've got to make Jesus like me. Well, he wasn't in terms of sin. He suffered sin on our behalf, but he never knew sin. Just a key point. and looking at scripture. This is one of the pivotal verses. Sin does not exist in him.

So I don't know what, maybe you guys have had that experience or not, but people have a hard time in their desire to make God comfortable, whatever you want to say, they take scripture and kind of bend it. And somehow they get around it and say, well, he has to be like me. He wants to identify with me. Well, but not in terms of sin.

He had no sin. It did not exist in him. But he knows about sin, and it says right here. Exactly. He suffered the consequences of our sin. But sin did not exist in him. Key verse in terms of rightly abiding in God's Word. Okay. Now the verse you've all been waiting for. Verse 6.

No one who abides in him sins. Actually, if you don't believe the other part of this one, then you're going to have a tough time with this one. If sin doesn't exist in him and you're going to abide in him and he has sin, you've got a problem with this one. So, I mean, you can't do it. It's a sad thing when people go down that path.

No one who abides in him sins. And once again, no one I think it would be better to have it, you know, render it, it's pas again, it's an all-inclusive word, everyone abiding in him, and if you have the tense of the verb, it's present active, is not sinning. The not modifies is, is not sinning. Okay, so is this talking about our position or our condition? No one who abides in him sins, or everyone abiding in him is not sinning. Is that talking about our position or our condition? It has to be condition, right?

I mean, you're abiding in him. Now, I put some verses down here. There's one verse here, I believe, that talks about a positional one and one's another conditional one. Another conditional one in John, Actually, it's a command. Abide in me and I in you.

The Lord's desire, his command, is to abide in him. But then he makes a statement in 1 John, we'll get to this sometime in the future. Whoever confesses Jesus is a son of God. God abides in him and he in God. So there's an aspect of positional truth about abiding and conditional aspect. But here we're talking about No one who abides in him sins. Marvelous, wonderful truth.

That's how we live the Christian life. There's no other way. The Christian life is mission impossible, right? All you've got to do is live a perfect life. That's the Christian life. I didn't sign up for that. Well, you can't do it. It has to be Him. And the more we realize that, the more truth we see that it's His life, not our life. I mean, it has to be Him. It can't be us.

All right, so let's go on. Part B, no one who sins has seen him or knows him. Boy, you look at that and you say, wow, what am I going to do with this one? Has anyone here, has anyone in this room not sinned? Well, if you take that just the way it reads, you say, well, wait a minute, I've got a problem here.

I don't know, has not seen him or knows him. Man. I've witnessed this in the past. You shake your head and you walk away. How can this be? Okay, once again, it's this word pas. Everyone sinning. And I believe this is going to be very helpful. It's talking about an all-inclusive group. Every single member who's sinning has not seen him or known him. And basically, it's a compound verb. Not modifies has. Has not seen him. Has not known him.

Another really important key here. Does anybody remember the perfect tense in Greek? About the perfect tense. We don't have the chart here, but what the perfect tense means, you know, we talk about a lot around here, but I think it's really going to help us a lot in this verse. Excellent. You get a star for that, Ben. And I didn't take the Greek class. That's good. Well, that's good because that's good. Outstanding. You don't have to take the Greek class. You don't have to take the Greek class.

Past completed action with abiding results. There's a little picture that has a little timeline thing. It occurs in the past with results into the future. So, you could render the compound statement here, has not seen him in the past and continues not to see him now. Whoa. Has not known him in the past and continues not to know him now. Whoa. Now, Do you accept my transliteration? This is my words down here. I could have made a mistake. I don't believe I have, but have I read too much into it?

That's how I would, based upon the present indicative statement of fact, active voice, perfect tense, they didn't see him in the past and they continue not to see him now, they didn't know him in the past, they don't know him now. That's a pretty incredible statement. Okay, keep that in mind. Let's see if there's any information about the seen and knows that might help us. Try to look at the whole context here, because I'm going to probably come to the conclusion here, and maybe you'll run me out of town on the rail here after I finish. Okay,

14. Seen and knows, seen as hora'o, to see, to perceive with the eye, not the mere act of seeing, but the actual perception of some object, In John 14.9, Christ says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. It's a discernment kind of seeing. It's not blepo, it's the other Greek word, one of the other Greek words for see. This is hirao, to perceive. So it says, they're saying, you have not seen with perception in the past or now the Savior. Gnosko, to know by experience. You didn't know Him by experience in the past. You don't know Him by experience now. So I see a contrast in this verse between everyone abiding in Him. Who's that? What people group is being talked about there? Everyone abiding in Him. Who does it have to be? Believers. Believers. Okay. Everyone sinning. Who does that have to be? The Lord. Okay. I mean, to me, that helps. I mean, without that, without going through that, look at the perfect tense, look at what the words mean. That's inclusion I came to. It would make Josiah's birth easy.

And then one corollary to that, if you go back to the first verse, actually I can't go back without going through every single chart, but I won't do that. If you look back on page one of your handout, in verse four it says, everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

It seems to me that that is also speaking of unbelievers. So, I think we're going to see a pattern as we go into these verses here. Very tough verses. I mean, I've looked at these verses many times and I have rendered them totally differently when I'm presenting today because I didn't understand some of them. Because you think, well, let's see, the Apostle John's talking to believers, right? And you're trying to make these verses fit believers. I don't see how you can. That's my, I mean, with the tense of the verbs and what the words mean, very difficult to do that. So I think that we're going to see in this series, we're going to see contrast between people groups, everyone abiding, everyone sinning.

People groups, and John addresses both. He's talking about both. Questions? Other thoughts? When you say people, OK, I just wonder if I hear people and I may be using that improperly, possibly. Yeah, I probably think we're a source. OK. OK. That might be a better word. And in terms of right. Right. I don't know. Well, I was looking at the word, you know, POS, POS is this word I got back here. Yeah, POS, everyone. So it occurs three times in these three verses.

It's an all-inclusive, all, any, every, the whole. It's a whole group of everyone's. It's probably poor English. It's saying everyone that's doing this, you know, abiding in Him. So it's talking about a group of people, a group of believers. That's what I was trying to get across. Everyone's sinning. Which would include everyone. That came out of Adam. Right. Everyone coming out of Adam that didn't come to faith in Christ.

So there's only two classes of people. In this context it's only two classes of people. He's talking about everyone sinning that came out of Adam. I guess the people implies there's many. Well, and there's only two. There's actually only two. Right. In this world, right, there's only two. I mean, there are people, we know there are three.

I understand. But in terms of in terms of eternal redemption, I agree. I know we have Israel, the church, you know, and the Gentiles. I'm not diminishing that. I'm just saying that God looks at mankind, the redeemed. and the unredeemed. They're the believers, only two.

And it seems like John's addressing both in these passages. And we're going to go on. There's going to be other ones that he's going to do the same thing. It actually talks about, later on, those who are of the devil, practice the sin of the devil, and some are of God, some are of the devil. So it makes that contrast. We're going to see that contrast as we go through here.

So hopefully that's helped. Actually, once I convinced myself of the tense of the verbs, that was the beginning of the... Whoa, wait a minute. Now, what do the words mean? Boy, these words talk about an intimate understanding of a person. You see him and know him. It's not just a casual, you know him by experience, and you've seen him with perception.

Boy, and that was in the past, and it hasn't improved. It didn't get better. It can't describe a believer. That's not to say a believer doesn't sin, but it just says that that's not the practice of his life. Well, the other thing I thought you pointed out briefly was the law aspect of it. And that's the other kind of stumbling block, because you think mosaic law or something like that. Exactly, and people read that and think, well, if I don't live under the law, then I get this category called lawlessness. Right. Lawlessness occurred back with Satan. He proclaimed himself to be God. Lawless actions. Denying the holiness of God and who He is. And saying, I can be like Him. I can do it. I have a question. Sure.

Is that, um, no one who's been 15 minutes, is that, is that, no one who's been, is that, has that been the principle or is that... OK, so you're asking no one who sins that actually is. There's no there's no participle in here. Yes, it is. Well, yeah, actually, it's present active. Yeah. Actually, can we render everyone sinning? So I have no sinning as a participle. She's talking right here. This another participle. You know, it has verb aspects, it's present active. And that's why everyone sinning, everyone content right now has not seen him and has not known him. Roger? Sure. We first got us first child. Roger stated that this is not a salvation book, it's fellowship. How does this fit in with the fellowship?

Well, okay, excellent point. Some people, it seemed like in John's time, thought they were Christians. And what he's saying is, hey, I'm going to paint black and white. Here it is. You can't say you're having fellowship with God and you're sinning. It doesn't match. So I think that's a good point. Good point. John, as we know, is very black and white. A or B. Walking with me or not walking with me. Light or darkness.

It's just all these contrasts. And it just continues on. And that's what makes it a challenge, because you look at that and you, wow, is this applying to believers, unbelievers? What's going on here? It's tough. But you're right. I think that's what the audience was addressing. People there that were saying, hey, I'm a Christian. Well, we have it today. Hey, I'm a Christian. Don't give me a hard time. Don't tell me about this. I go to church. I'm a good person.

I went to a funeral on Friday. A 17-year-old kid who was out on Smoky Hill, driving too fast, head-on collision. You probably saw it in the paper, maybe. The guy at work was his dad. And really a sad situation. And other teenagers got up, and they had a service, and they had a minister. I guess it might have been a Catholic priest, possibly.

But he didn't give any hope. He said, I know you guys are hurting. I know this is a really hurtful thing. He never gave any hope. It just was so sad. No hope. I mean, you're hurting. Everybody get around. We're all going to have a group hug, and we're going to help each other get through this. It's just a sad thing. Whereas God, He wants to be alive. He wants to recognize who He is. So it's a sad thing.

Okay, let's just close. Dear Father, we thank You so much, Lord. We thank You for Your love and Your goodness, Lord. We thank You for Your Word, the preciseness of it, Lord. We thank You that we can We can dig into it and understand it, Father. And we pray that as we do that, Lord, it would honor and glorify you. Lord, you get the glory. And Lord, we thank you for that. In Christ's name, amen.