1-3 John - 1st John 5:16-17 Confidence and Certainties of Believers 2

Well, we're up early, ready to roll. Had some tough verses this morning. You know, after one of these verses, I forgot how tough these are. You know, I was reading Luis's book on this subject. Yeah, don't read his book. He throws his hands up. I was reading that to Leslie, my wife. It's interesting that the Greek scholar that we go to for help on these things says, the author claims no knowledge of what to make of this.

I'll tell you what, we're going to just trust the Lord to give us some clarity here. And there are some challenges with 1 John 5. 16 and 17, which is what we're going to be looking at today. Just to kind of get us back into the theme of this section, Bob mentioned last week that we've titled this Confidence and Certainties of Believers, and there's a real reason why that title was chosen, I think. Today might in some way step in the middle of that, but just looking at the larger context, the first John here, we'll take a running start at the big picture, and then get back into the confidence and certainties that Bob touched on last week, and then specifically our challenging verses of this morning. But on the larger context of 1 John, again, just getting the big picture in mind here, the first epistle of John is an intensely practical letter addressed to Christian readers. And we talked about how John, as an author, says this is how it is because you are a believer. He states it matter-of-fact. He doesn't give a lot of explanation. He doesn't give a lot of doctrinal background like Paul does.

And that's why we might call it a practical letter because it just goes straight to the matter of what it is that is a responsibility for us as believers towards the brethren or towards the Lord. And so we call it a practical letter addressed to the Christian readers.

It warns against the dangers of false teaching, those Antichrists that had the Gnostic doctrines that were infiltrating the church that John was addressing. And so we have the false teaching warnings that were there, and he also exhorts believers to live in obedience, or to walk by faith, and live in obedience to God, and to love their brothers and sisters.

It's the controlling theme of this entire letter, as we've said, is fellowship with God, the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And so I've underlined the three areas that I feel that 1 John has really been nailing down from a practical standpoint. warning against false teaching, obedience to God, obedient living, and then the love of brothers and sisters which comes out of fellowship with one another that John talks about in the very first chapter, having fellowship with us and also having fellowship with God. So, false teaching, obedience, and fellowship. So most all of our verses that we cover would be seen in one of these three controlling themes and a larger theme of being loved towards God or fellowship with God.

So that's the larger context. Just a reminder, just to kind of get a running start into it. Let's get a little bit more perspective on that. Oh, I did include the verse on fellowship here. 1 John 1, 3, What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father. and with His Son Jesus Christ. And so we have used that verse as a thematic one for the overriding epistle there as far as the theme goes.

In terms of immediate context here, so we've got the big picture. Let's go back down to chapter 5. What have we been talking about the last several weeks? Specifically verse 13 we looked at with Bob. What John had just written about God's testimony in chapter 5, 9-12 aims to give confidence and certainty to his readers that despite anything the Antichrists have said, believers do indeed possess eternal life. Can someone read verse 5-13 for me? These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. And Bob covered these verses last week and we had some really interesting discussions and I thought we had, he brought some real insight into this. One of the things that we didn't talk about in great depth was the knowing part of verse 13 there. And just to kind of rehash that for a few seconds here, there's a really huge amount of confidence in that verse that we just read for the believer.

Because you don't have to wonder if you have eternal life. You don't have to walk around wondering if there's going to be the loss of eternal life. That word, know, there is a word that stands in light of these themes that we've labeled these verses. Confidence and certainty. You can know that you have eternal life. Not that you think, not that you wonder, not that it's in and then you're out, you know, you kind of are unsure. There's a specific confidence that can be claimed there in that verse.

And we as believers, and John intended that verse to be a confidence builder. For us as believers because when you are at rest about your eternal salvation is it is it natural to then focus on the love of others is a natural focus on the love of God when you're not wondering if you have Salvation in the first place if you're wondering about your eternal life that confidence if you don't have that everything about the Christian life kind of starts to fall apart and We've all known, and maybe we've even been in situations ourselves where we haven't been quite sure about our salvation. I know that I went through a period when I first began to explore the scripture where I was like, oh, how does this work? And it wasn't until I got the confidence from the Word of God that my eternal security is safe in the hands of my Creator. and the one who saved me, that all the other aspects of my Christian living began to start to come to life.

It's that one factor that if there's no confidence in eternal life, everything else just gets put on hold. Because I don't know if I'm in or if I'm out. And we know people that are juggling that confidence, and because of it, they can't really grow in any other area of their life. They're kind of in gridlock.

And so John really nails home the confidence that we have in the Son of God for eternal security, for eternal life there. So we have that verse 13. And then we also have the next verse, if someone can read verse 14 for me. So, one who believes in the name of Jesus Christ has a confidence and certainty. That's the Greek word for that confidence there.

Parisia. Parisia. How would you say that? Parisia? Parisia. I'm not the best. Me either. And this is, when I start pronouncing Greek words, that's when my Texas accent actually comes out. Parisia. I don't have any practice saying that word differently. Anyway, we have this confidence in approaching God in prayer. Requests made in accordance with God's will are heard by Him and a believer can be certain of receiving answers to them.

So, in verse 13 we have the confidence of being secure in our eternal salvation. God has given us eternal life. In verse 14 and 15 we have the confidence that He hears us when we pray. So once we have that knowledge of secure salvation, then John says, not only that, you've also got the confidence that he hears you when you pray.

And so when we title these verses, The Confidence and Certainty of the Believers, these are two areas where that really comes out. Now we jump into the verses that we have today. is a continuation of what John's already going into here. He's talked about, you know that you have eternal life, you know that the Lord hears you when you pray, now I'm going to tell you specifically something that you need to be praying about. And I think that that's really one of the things that we need to run into these verses with in our minds.

Because if we just set verses 16 and 17 aside, we're going to get off on some really huge tangents here. Why are we talking about fellowship with the believer? Why are we talking about the certainty of eternal security? Why are we talking about the certainty that God hears us in our prayer? Okay, because that's part of what John is continuing on as he wraps up the end of this letter. So, let's look at the next one here.

If anyone, and I'm reading the verses here that we're studying today, if anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death. I do not say that he should make requests for this. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not leading to death. Why did John go into this all of a sudden?

And I don't have an answer for you. except that it fits with the theme of prayer. And we're going to look at these themes. What are the themes specifically mentioned here? What are the topics? We have the brotherhood, a responsibility from one brother to another brother. So the Christian brotherhood topic is introduced.

The issue or topic of sin is introduced in these verses. Death is introduced. Life and prayer. So let's just go back and look at these. So if anyone sees his brother doing something, we'll talk about what that is. He shall ask God prayer. So we've got the responsibility of the brethren. We've got prayer here. And we'll give life. We've got life and then we've got death and then we've got sin. And that's pretty much the themes or the topics that these verses talk about. So we've got to nail these things down.

How do these lay out in the context of 1 John? And then we can think about it from a bigger perspective of Christian doctrine, but I think we need to try to stick as much as we can in this letter first, and then see how it might affect us on a larger scale. Okay, so, 1 John 5, 16a, the first portion of it. If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death. Okay, so, anyone. fellow brother or sister, it's a Christian. So is this talking to you? And it was talking to John's audience as well.

He was talking to a church. not like us in the same sense that we've been dealing with the Antichrist doctrine and had to see them leave and come, and we were infiltrated with that. I don't think that that's quite happened in our midst, at least since I've been here. But nonetheless, that was what was happening, and by putting ourselves in their shoes, we would be thinking of the perspective of, if you're seeing your brother doing something, but think about what's been going on in their church. They've been seeing a lot of stuff going on, and they've been hearing a lot of stuff going on. A lot of this, well, Jesus isn't really, you know, He's not, the incarnation is not true. You know, they've been hearing this stuff, and their buddies, their friends have been talking about this stuff, okay? And so, you can imagine yourself in that situation, and John says, if you, or if anyone, if any believer sees another brother, okay?

So that brings us to the next part of the verse. I will mention that the word seize here is a single act of seeing. It's not like you're sitting there watching it over and over and over. And what I'm not saying though is that, and we're talking about a brother that's going to be committing a sin, we'll get into that in a minute, but the sin portion of it may have been ongoing. In fact, the committing a sin, as we'll look at, I'll just go ahead and move that into the, his brother, we know what that means, and then committing a sin. So the act, the committing a sin portion here is a continuing thing. It's a present, continuing present, committing a sin.

However, the seeing is only a particular instance. So you may see a person do something that they are habitually involved with, but you may have only seen it once. And in that case, this is what this verse is saying, that you saw a particular instance of a Christian who may have been doing something quite habitually. In fact, what sin isn't habitual? I mean, especially in light of what we're about to talk about. I'm not saying that somebody, all of a sudden you see one unique instance of the first ever occasion that this believer does something and you caught it.

You know, you were the first case witness. Yeah, you got it. But this is saying that you only have needed to have seen it at one point in time in order to find what your responsibility is to that brother. And we need to know, first of all, what are we looking for? Because we're supposed to be seeing something here. If anyone sees or witnesses something going on, there's a responsibility you have to it. Okay, so those are the things that we're going to try to unravel this morning. But those are some of the definitions that we need to kind of get in mind as we look at this first portion of the verse. So committing a sin, the act of sinning and continuing in the sin, it's a present situation. So let's paint the picture again.

You're in a church where the doctrine of the incarnation, that is Christ's humanity and divinity are being heretically tossed around and those that you have sat next to and read portions of other New Testament letters with are saying, no, this isn't the case. This is not who Jesus really is. Because that's what John has said in the letter that's going on. They've been denying this incarnation. And they went out. They left them. You can imagine the empty seats now. Sitting in the midst of your church.

And then he goes into this issue, if anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, what does that mean? Let's ask some questions because I think that seeing a brother doing a sin brings up some pretty modern problems in church setting that probably existed in John's time as well. When you're told to watch for a brother's sin, what does that do to you? If you don't have the controlling understanding of other New Testament doctrine in your mind, what might you run away with this if we just pulled this thing out? Anyone sees a brother committing sin not leading to death? Oh, fruit inspection. Yeah? You become very judgmental. You're looking at the people, not the Lord. You're focusing on people and their actions, not the Lord. This is not coming across as a command.

It's saying if anyone sees, in other words, being the case of possibility, if the possibility arises where you see a brother committing a sin, where you see it in one instance, and they may have been doing it in many cases, and presently are involved in that committing a sin, if you run across an instance where this is the case, and it's not leading to death, then you have responsibility. So that's what's going on in the first part of this verse. But we hit kind of grease. when we run into this not leading to death part. And I hit Greece when I hit it. Whoa! I don't know what to do about this. Yeah, because doesn't it say that the wages of sin is death?

Well, there's some challenges that we're going to face here. The first thing I wanted to do before we hit these exact words is say, this isn't advocating fruit inspection. This is saying, John is going to begin distinguishing one type of sin to some degree. Now whether or not we can nail it down with pinpoint accuracy, I don't think that we can. But he is making a distinction between types of sin. And he's asking that you be aware of it so that you can follow through with your responsibility of fellowship with the believer and loving them through prayer, that you can have confidence that God hears you about, verses 14 and 15. So that's what's going on.

So what I don't want to do is I don't want to get more specific than John's going to allow us to get, and I want to stay on the controlling principle of what our responsibility is towards our believing brethren. Notice that I'm not saying that this brother is a professing Christian who does not have salvation. And I'm not also saying that this is potentially a brother who lost his salvation and needs to regain it. At this particular point in time, I'm understanding the brother here to be a believer who is sinning, a certain type of sin.

I do have some I do have to wrestle with some challenging interpretation when it comes to this verse, but I do think that whether we go specifically with one direction or the other, we end up with the same set of responsibilities here, and that is prayer to the Lord about someone. But what I'm seeing at this point in time in my study, and I welcome any additional insight to these verses, that this is a believer who is committing a sin that's not leading to death. Not leading to death.

So, here's an instance where we have the word death and we also have the word life introduced. And in the context of 1 John, death and life have been spiritual life and spiritual death. and brother has always been a believer. But in this instance, it appears that John goes into a physical life and a physical death scenario, which is difficult to me because I see the context as being continually spiritual life and spiritual death. However, if you take this, and I'm just going to give you some of my own challenges as I work this. If you go into the perspective, because death and life, the antithesis needs to stick together. You can't have one being spiritual life and one being physical death. They need to be either physical, both physical or both spiritual.

That's the way the grammar works with that antithesis of life and death. So, how does John use death and how does John use life throughout the rest of his epistle and then throughout his gospel? Well, in almost every instance it's spiritual life and spiritual death. These words.

However, if that's the case, then brother is not a brother. Because now you have a brother committing a sin not leading to death. Meaning, if you took the perspective that in the Romans passage you mentioned, this is spiritual death. In other words, pray for them because the spiritual death is not what they're experiencing. They actually can have spiritual life. So pray that they would have spiritual life. And God will give it to them as we'll see in the next part of the verse.

That's tough because in other instances, in my mind it would have been practical, and I don't know if I can get this out of the grammar or not, I don't think I can, but it would have been practical for us to refer to a professing believer as a brother not knowing fully where they were. They could have later identified themselves as not being a believer. And specifically John's definition, not believing in the incarnation of Christ.

They could have sat here and been here for weeks and said, hey brother John, or Todd, or whatever. Probably not Todd. It's a modern example. I don't know any Todd's. And then they would have been faced with having to believe that Jesus was the incarnate son of God. And all of a sudden, boom, they said, nope, we can't have that. I'm with these guys over here.

And that quote unquote brother would have left. One second here, let me just wrap up this one thought because this is a tangled web of possibilities and you're not going to find me asking as many questions only because, well I will once I've finished my thought. I'm going to teach the perspective that this is a brother who was not a quote-unquote professing brother, although that interpretation is out there.

And what it lends itself to is those that would believe in a person can lose their salvation. In other words, this might have been someone that lost their salvation. We need to pray that he would receive it again, receive that spiritual life, because spiritual life and spiritual death are the case. And so that could be a brother that lost his salvation.

There are those camps of theology that teach that. Obviously that's not where we are. We know from other controlling scripture that that is not the case and therefore that cannot be the interpretation. There are other instances where in lordship camps and so forth, this was a professing believer that never had salvation. That is a possibility in my mind still. I haven't been convinced yet that that's not a possibility, but I don't see it as the likely interpretation here for the bigger picture of the doctrine that we have laid out for ourselves.

In the Lordship theme, that works really well, because they need this verse to say a certain thing in order to keep with the Lordship perspective. What does that mean? Lordship means that Lordship Salvation is the perspective that if If you are a believer, you will make Christ the Lord of your life, and you will not sway with any habitual sin ever.

Because you maintain a master relationship with the Lord, and that Lordship is a controlling factor in your life. And if you sway, and the definitions of all Lordship salvation teachers is always different, there's a certain amount of sin, or a certain type of sin, that will lead you to the perspective that, oh, well, this person was never actually a believer. So you go back and you start over. You ask the Lord into your heart and do all the things that they'll present to you. And at the end of the day, lordship salvation is what we would call commitment salvation.

You have to stay committed and not get caught in any habitual sin or else you were never really a believer to begin with. OK, so that really this verse works really well in that perspective. But you don't you don't have to view it that way and be a lordship salvation. believer or proponent.

Thank you. So those are some of the challenges that I face and I'm sharing them with you because I want you to think the more that I have my brethren thinking critically about these verses the better I think we will come out with an understanding and each of you are welcome to begin interacting with me here in just a minute. Let me wrap up this portion of this verse and then I'll ask you some questions.

I'm seeing that this is a brother who is saved and will never lose his salvation. At this stage in my understanding of this verse, that's what I'm seeing. I'm also seeing that the sin not leading to death is a sin that does not lead to a swift physical death. And in the life portion of the next aspect of the verse... Yeah, we're going to go into premature death. and that the life means that a person maintains a physical life, which we're going to get into in a minute.

If anyone sees a brother committing a sin not leading to death. So if you see a brother not committing a sin, or I'm sorry, if you see a brother committing a sin that doesn't lead to their physical, swift, premature death, how do you see that? Are you saying the Lord taking their life? That's what I'm about to go into, yeah. This is a physical death, and the reason I haven't brought in the whole sin unto death is because that's a term that's not actually here. It's sin not leading to death. Let's talk about premature death in the scripture. Can someone read for me Acts 5, 1-11? Not really. That's too long. What happens there?

Ananias and Sapphira, they go out and sell some property, make some money, They dare the Holy Spirit. And then they deceive, don't they? Deception is really their sin. They deceive when they're asked about, did they give all the money that they made off that property? Did they give it? The answer could have been no. But they said yeah, and attempted to deceive. And what happened?

Each of them had their own opportunity, and both of them deceived, and both of them ended up being carried out on a stretcher, or in a coffin or whatever, however you want to refer to what they did. They wrapped the body up and buried them, because they died.

And that happened in the book of Acts, and so we're familiar with that aspect of a premature death, the Lord taking someone out of this world because of sin, early, potentially. 1 Corinthians 5.5, can someone grab that verse and then someone else grab 1 Corinthians 11.30? 5.5 says, hand this man over to Satan so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. And we're not going to try to interpret all these verses too because then I would be handing myself some really challenging content. However, I do think that if we were to sit and work through these verses, we'd come to the conclusion that these have to do with God's judgment of sin of a certain type to be deserving of premature death. Premature death from whose perspective? Our perspective.

And then 1 Corinthians 11.30? for this reason many among you are weak and sick in a number of sleep." Okay, sleep being dead, having died. So that was happening in the Corinthian church. There were sins that led to the death of these believers. And so some sins bring the swift judgment of God in the form of physical death.

Is that a scriptural and a doctrinal perspective that we get from the New Testament? Because we know it's in the Old Testament. We're familiar with what any kind of breaking the law, being off the mark at all, brought instant death in. But we even see God bringing premature Judgment of physical death in the New Testament as well and not just in transitional periods in the book of Acts We see it even in the Corinthian Church as well And so we have this And we and one of the questions I want to know is how do I tell the difference Of a person because we're given a responsibility if you see somebody committing a sin not leading to death and In other words, they haven't made that type of sin a part of their life yet.

If you see that person, then you're supposed to do something for that person. But if they're sinning in such a way that leads to physical death, you're not supposed to do anything. At least not from this verse. We know that there are other things that we're supposed to do, but we're not supposed to pray specifically that God will give them life. That's what it says.

So how can we tell the difference? Any thoughts? I think only God can judge the heart of that person and know are they humble and confessing or are they defiant. I don't know that you can know as an outside observer. But there is one thing you can do and the Lord may choose to do it through you Because you may not have all the answers either. That's right. Did you guys hear what he was saying there? I think that's a good perspective. Pray for wisdom that God would help you understand what your responsibility is to this believer. Now I want to come back to this question after we wrap up the verses because This is probably the biggest question that we have. How do we tell the difference between a believer that's committing a sin unto death and not unto death? Or not leading to death? So, next aspect of this verse. Is there a difference though?

Hebrews 6, 4-6. Someone read that one for me. For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucified to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open chains. Anybody else got a really tough verse you want to read? Okay, and I'm not going to attempt to interpret that except for to say that I believe that that is also an apostate believer, someone that has gone rogue and has yet at one point tasted.

I think it's pretty clear in the text that that's what that's in reference to. I'm not going to go into that verse today, but it is a part of this theme and that's why I got stuck with it and Roger didn't. The first thought when I looked at these verses was, why me? And then, having been here long enough, Last Sextant means she says, you need your needs. So, what's going on in my heart? I'm working through these too, and I think that we're all working through them together. But these are some tough verses to wrestle with. Let's also look at Hebrews 10, 26-29.

For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despises Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much more sore a punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who has trodden underfoot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done this spite unto the Spirit of grace?

So there's some passages in the book of Hebrews that talk about believers getting to a very, very extreme situation. And those verses are also used for loss of salvation and so forth, but that's not what I'm teaching here, and nor do I believe that's the interpretation of those verses. What I'm saying is that there's an extreme perspective of believers getting to a very, very awful place in their Christian life, where there's punishment where there's a certain perspective that we must have of them.

We even know of the elders' responsibilities towards those that are wolves in sheep's clothing, and that they're supposed to lead them out, fade away. And now those would not be necessary believers, but we recognize that these instances of having extreme cases are potentially all around us, and we're definitely a part of John's audience here. So this stuff's going on.

How do you tell the difference between someone that's quote-unquote willing to confess? If you were to take the sin pattern and put it into a diagram or something, you might have, how do we tell the difference between somebody who's up and down in their faith, Like, yeah, they fall into sin, and yeah, it's kind of habitual, but they have a willingness to get out of it, confess, and find the Lord's forgiveness experientially, and find themselves claiming and reckoning on the truths of who they are again, and they fall back down, and then they are reckoning and fall back down. And John says that that's very, very true, that sin is still part of the believer's life, we talked about in the first chapter.

So he says you can't say that or you're a liar. However, how do we tell, you know, we've got believers that look like this, And that's called commitment salvation because you never actually have a big dip. Because if you have a big dip in your life, you were never a believer in the first place.

You've got to go back, start over. Commitment. So, we've got this kind of thing, but what do you do with these kinds of believers? Or, what do you do with these kinds of believers? I think that Your perspective of praying for wisdom to know how to deal with it is a good perspective. But we are asked to pray for a certain type of believer. When we look at a believer and see that their sin is not leading to death, we're given a specific call to action.

I should mention though that all sin does lead to death, doesn't it? Isn't your sin going to lead to premature physical death? It's premature in the sense that that's not how God designed us originally. It's premature not in the perspective of God's sovereignty in light of the fall and all that. I'm not saying that that's the case, but all of our sin is leading to a physical death.

Even though we have spiritual life, eternal life, we do have to go through the separation. Remember, sin means separation here, or death means separation rather. So all sin leads to a separation, eventually from this body. So if a believer gets separated from this body earlier because of their sin, are they still saved? Are they still instantly in the presence of the Lord? Did Ananias and Sapphira experience all the joy that comes from being separated from this body and instantaneously face-to-face with the Lord? Yes, they did. In fact, in the book of Acts, when we studied that on Thursday nights, we talked a lot about Ananias and Sapphira's removal wasn't a bad thing for Ananias and Sapphira.

It was just bad for those that had love for them, parents and children. We don't want to see that, but there was a purpose for it. That their deception, potentially, would not reach the young early church in the same way. And there's a reason why, and I know Vern has an instance where he believes that sinning unto death occurred in his lifetime with a believer that he knew. And you guys may have your own instances. I don't have a particular instance for that, but nonetheless, the reasoning behind it You know, we've got to remember that God has a bigger picture play here with what's going on, and that our responsibility is to remain in fellowship, and that he may be removing believers out of the presence of the church in order that they may remain in fellowship and in doctrine, you know, in the solid, sound word of God, because that believer was potentially deceiving and leading them astray. But was it bad for them? We think, oh, that's so bad.

You don't want to sin unto death because then you're going to die. Well, you're going to die anyway, no matter what. And it's going to be because of sin, whether you like it or not. However, it's how your sin is potentially affecting the fellowship that it seems to, because there's a seeing it, There's deception that's involved in other instances in the New Testament.

And we know that there's some bookends as to how bad a sin can get. Here's the way I've landed on this thing. I'm not worrying as much about seeing a sin that's leading unto death. in the situation that you notice that, you observe that in a believer's life, we're going to pray for them irregardless. It's just that when you are able to see that Let me put a pause on my overall perspective of this, and let's finish out this verse, because we only have about 15 minutes. And I know that my tongue-tied and twisted perspective of how to judge this in our own life, I'm still working it out. So I think I might just get myself into a little bit of a tongue-tiedness here. But let's look at the rest of this verse, because this is what we need to know.

If anyone sees a believer committing a sin, not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death. So if a person is committing a sin leading to death, are we supposed to ask God for life for them? No. Only if a believer is committing a sin not leading him to death are you supposed to ask God for life for them. Physical life.

I think that we have a pretty good feeling about, here's where I'm landing on this right now. First of all, when you point a finger, you always got three pointing back at you type of thing, you've heard that. I think we need to first of all think about our own fellowship with the Lord and how we're walking before we ever attempt to try to understand where a believer is.

Second of all, are we ever gonna understand the heart fully? No. Only God can understand the heart. So is it possible that you are walking in the faith and you judge this incorrectly and pray for life for someone that you shouldn't necessarily ask for life for? Is that a possibility? Is it a sin? No, but John is asking that you be discerning about the sin that you see happening around you.

In 1 Timothy 2.1 it says, First of all then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men. All men. Government, authorities, believing, unbelieving.

So if you pray for anyone, are you following through with 1 Timothy 2.1?

Yeah. But if you're asking for life, physical life for them, you may not be asking in the will of God if you are not able to judge the sin correctly. What's the big deal about judging the sin correctly? Well, if you judge it correctly, then that may extend their physical life, because God will give life to those who commit the sin not leading to death. There you have it.

I'm thinking that if Dr. Eccles is there instead of you, that's okay. But I'm just thinking because of his background he would say, you know what, if somehow miraculously, or what you would think of as miraculously, you get a flash of insight, I was there once too.

And God caught it early. Gently tap me on the shoulder and say, do you know what you're doing? And do you know what it is? And can you recognize it for what it really is? If you catch it early enough, it won't lead to physical death. Yeah, if Bob were here, he might have said that.

I just keep thinking of Galatians 6.1. Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently, but watch yourself. or you also may be tempted. So that brings in the aspect that you... That is a very good verse. I think that's very appropriate to what we're saying here. What verse is that?

Galatians 6.1.

So I mean that could be like the first step and then they might choose to not be restored and then that would be the sin that would lead to death. There's definitely a coming alongside but being but not being tempted with it as well, as you just read for us.

And I think that's about as far as a person can go without falling into the church leadership perspective. That's about as far as we as believers can go for one another when we see the sin happening in our presence. But the instance here is not so much sitting around looking for the sin and worrying about that, but simply having confidence that you can pray for them and that you still have responsibility and fellowship with them. So there's a responsibility to pray for believers that we see here and a confidence that God's going to hear us. Those are the things that I'm hanging my hat on. So if there's a sin that leads unto death, it seems to me, and I don't know, maybe I'm stretching here but like there's a an issue with them being in the fellowship and affecting like almost like a virus the fellowship about doctrine and and and here we're hearing in Galatians that you just read discernment and cautiousness and gentleness Tom mentioned you know gentle taps and And so there's how you're dealing or how you're discerning what is a sin that leads on to death and what isn't. And it seems like it's a safety for the fellowship all around.

And the thing is, if you can't identify sin leading to death, then this verse applies to you. If you can identify it, then this verse applies to you in that you don't pray for that person for life. So, if you don't recognize that, hey, so-and-so is caught up in such-and-such, I don't know if that's leading to death. Well, then this verse says to pray that God will give him life. It's when you don't see a sin that's leading to death that you pray for them that God will give them life. When you do see a sin that's leading to death, it's in God's hands. It's in God's hands. It's like it isn't anyway. Let's wrap up the second part. Right. He shall ask prayer. We just talked about that in the previous verse.

And God will for him give life in the way we're understanding is that God would work to change his heart and potentially spare him of being caught in the sin unto death or sinning that leads to death. So this is prevention from sinning to death. OK. Premature, physical, swift judgment by God. of your body being separated from your spirit.

So, Lord, this person's caught in a sin. We've seen it. We've seen this sin. It says, if anyone sees it, then pray. If you see a sin that's not leading to death, well, I can tell you this, most of the sins I see are not leading to death as far as I understand them. So what am I supposed to do? Lord, give him life. That's what it's saying. Give life to those who commit sin not leading to death.

If a person's gone extremely rogue, and especially from a doctrinal perspective, we're trying to mislead the body, That might be the only instance where I could say, okay, I won't pray for, it would probably be, in my limited human perspective, a good thing if that person weren't physically present. And he was just, go be with the Lord, because you're just causing all kinds of havoc around here. Or you're causing all kinds of havoc for your family. You're ripping this stuff apart.

And we could potentially, in the wisdom of the Lord, walking with the Lord, identify whether or not it would be better for that person to be here or not. Do we know ultimately? No. But we all have an instance where we say, you know, it may just be better if that person was not physically here and just go, if he could just be with the Lord, the situation around him would be at much, much more peace and rest potentially. Maybe if that occasion happens for you, then you may not pray in this exact way.

That's about as close as I can get for you with trying to apply and understand these verses. So those who commit sin not leading to death, a restatement of the type of sin of sinning Christian. So here's that type. And I'm running on short time here. Let's look at the last part of the verse.

He says, there is a sin leading to death, and I do not say that he should make requests for this. So if you, in your ability to judge this by walking with the Lord, recognize that this person is sinning unto death, then he says, don't make the request. Yes, Tom. It may even be that it would be pointless to two requests that he's taken out, because it may be, God's willing, you know what, this guy needs to switch to a different fellowship, and I'm working out the details, just to keep it clear.

Yeah, we really don't ultimately know what all is going on in the life of a sinning believer. But we know that we can pray for them and their family, but in terms of praying for physical life, that they don't die premature, this is the passage that you go to. And you wrap your mind around it. as well as you can and I obviously am not probably and I you know I hesitate to say this but I'm still working here through this verse and I welcome additional insight from you guys even after the lesson here but let's wrap up with verse 17 all in righteousness is sin and there is a sin not leading to death all in righteousness is sin Okay, so John's giving us the big picture. It's all sin. However, he says there is a specific type of sin, needing prayer, of this type.

And I've tried to give you instances where I feel that that falls in line with other New Testament doctrine that we have. And that's about as close as I can get. And I think that I don't think we could sit around at a table and decide together ever that this is a sin unto death. I think the Lord's going to lay on your heart. Either of these cases and your responsibility personally to pray for the life of that person or not pray. And that's about as accurate as I feel I can get with these verses. So I've got five minutes here.

All wrongdoing is sin. There is a sin not leading to death. What is our responsibility? In conclusion, the general subject of this verse is prayer, showing brotherly love by presenting requests on behalf of your brethren for a sinning Christian of a certain type not leading to death. What are we supposed to do? Pray. That's probably the most specific and direct part of this verse that I can get to.

Thoughts? Questions? Concerns? Frustrations? Interpretations? Oh boy. What's that? Oh boy. I think you did good too. I think you did really fantastic. Just one thought, and this kind of occurred to me as you were talking. since this verse kind of points it out, all, although it's 17 there, that all sin is unrighteousness, could he be saying possibly that we should be aware of any sin in our brother's life, no matter what it is, and that's a sin not leading to death.

That's all sin, and we should pray for it, which is something that there's plenty of other support in the New Testament for. And then he said, but there is a sin, a more severe sin that does lead, and maybe that's a distinction. I mean, that's not a whole lot more than what you've said, saying that I'm not looking for the biggies, I'm just looking at any sin. That's a really good point. I'm going to restate that for my own benefit and for the recording of this anyway. This verse, our responsibility to see or recognize sin here actually encapsulates much more than it doesn't.

So the sinning unto death is what we might call a rare instance, where you're not supposed to pray for life for that person. So what that means is, if you haven't been aware of this verse previously, or before today, and maybe you have heard of a sin, or seen, actually this verse says that you've seen a particular sin, an instance, of a believer, and you see it, pray for the life of that person, and God will give it to him. I mean, that means that any sin not leading unto death, you should be praying for life for that person. So we should be praying for life for each other when we encounter a sin in one of our lives. Yes, Tom? I guess one sidebar is don't think of yourself as Mr. Know-it-all Bullwinkle and saying, yep, that's a sin unto death. for us in discerning and being in fellowship with God and praying and us recognizing our own sin.

1 John 4, 7-8 says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. So we're told to love God and love one another. And I think this is a specific piece to that larger command that we have in First John.

We've been talking about loving one another and praying and being willing to recognize a sin and pray for that person is something that we need to be aware of. And how do we do it? In grace and love and gentleness. We read that too. Fellowship, love, that's what John's been talking about. He's still talking about it. We got into some tough issues with these verses, but at the end of the day, it's back to prayer and love for the brethren.

So we can't go wrong by camping out with Christ living through us and showing in brotherly love and in prayer. Let's pray. It seems to me we can't go wrong in praying for each other or for anyone if we pray that we would continue to have and that whoever else would come to the point of having a hungry heart where they really need the Lord. And we'll turn to Him because I think if our hearts are hungry and we're going to Him, it will keep us from sin. The feel isn't a good word here, but it feels to me more productive than saying, oh, I'm afraid so-and-so is going to die. Or, Lord, please don't let that happen. Don't let him do a sin. You know, asking, those kinds of things. But saying, Lord, help all of us when we pray for each other, continue to have hungry hearts and continue to go to you.

Long for the pure milk of the Word of God, right? We can definitely pray for that. And in that thought, let's do pray. Father, we thank you that we can gather together and sharpen one another and learn from your word. We thank you for these verses, as difficult as they are, you intended for us to work through them and be specifically aware of these issues. I just pray that you would help us to grow in our understanding here and continue to learn. And as we just experience the love that you've given to us and that we are now able to give to others, Lord, I pray that we would recognize that it is all for you and your glory. And we thank you so much for the grace of being able to experience it all. And I just pray that we would enjoy learning together in church and enjoy being around one another and encouraging one another. In your name we pray. Amen.