16th October, 2011

BRUCE C. WEARNE

Read I John 3: 4-12

Why, given what he has already told us, should John be reiterating this? Haven't we been told the gist? Why go into a difficult discussion about sin (what I translate as "offence") and what it all means? After all, is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Righteous One sufficient? Is it not the case that I John 1: 8-10 tells us all we need to know? Are we made any more righteous by simply going over and over the same old story, again and again?

PICTURE: Miguel Saavedra (www.sxc.hu) "The stupendous thing is this: God's eternal purposes are captured by us as we heed His word and live in love for one another. These purposes have not and will not be thwarted by sin."

"Were we say that we have no offence, we (simply) deceive ourselves, the truth (has departed and) is not in us. When we confess our offences, he being faithful and righteous, we do so in order that he may forgive us for our offences and make us clean from all offence. Were we to assert that we have not offended, we would make him out to be a liar, and (in that case) his word is (simply) not in us." - I John 3: 8-10

Well, actually, if we attend to what John tells us here, we note the urgency with which has written. To be "in Christ" is not only to be counted righteous but to be and to become righteous: to walk as He walked. This is why there is such urgency in John's letter; let there be no doubt about it (verse seven). To be "in Christ" is to be caught up in God's cosmic purposes, as a member of His family, from before the beginning!

It is not merely a matter that everything will become crystal clear once we heed his admonition and confess our offences before the Throne of Grace. There is always more to be said about the way God leads us in His creation according to His purposes; John wants to encourage his readers to see themselves in the ongoing redemptive process of the entire creation in the Son of God, a process that has been underway from before the beginning, and that renders them at this point, now, as the recipients of God's ongoing (eternal) purposes definitively but not exhaustively (see 3: 2). It isn't all there is to it because we can also be deceived (verse seven) and John knows it. John writes as a beneficiary of Christ's unbinding, the work that He put in His appearance to accomplish. He writes as one who also had to be unbound from devilish deceits.

That unbinding coincides with the bonds of love, the KOINONIA (1: 7) by which the Father binds Himself to those who are "in Christ".

To be deceived about Christ's righteousness, and our participation in that as practitioners of the same righteousness, is to remain bound, and to thereby depart from the way of life in which we are to freely love our brothers and sisters.

The stupendous thing is this: God's eternal purposes are captured by us as we heed His word and live in love for one another. These purposes have not and will not be thwarted by sin. Right living has a power to expose evil deeds, and because people have been bound by the ancient practitioner who lives to offend against God's laws, murder may even result. We should not be surprised by this. But that danger is for us groundless because its contempt for those who live righteously has been thoroughly undermined.

It is because of the unbinding of the devil's work in our lives, that our hope in Christ Jesus purifies us as we walk as He walked, expecting to see Him as He is (3: 2), one day soon. That is our walk - to be and become the practitioners of righteousness. We are the spiritual heirs of Abraham and Sarah, walking before Him to be and become complete!

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