1 JOHN - Chapter 3 - Children of God
1 JOHN – Chapter 3 – Children of God
Tuesday, November 6, 2018, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
The purpose of God’s love is that we should become his children.
Monday night I ministered on W.A.T.B. radio. I was greatly blessed by all of the ministers who delivered intercession and prophetic declarations of the Word of the LORD over our nation and the election. It was powerful and very well monitored by Dr. June Knight.
My message was to declare: victory has been won. I declared the raising of the banner of the Lord prophetically as a prophetic sign of taking possession. Raising the flag of the United States is a prophetic symbol of the LORD’S covenant with the nation’s founders. In God we trust is a banner over this nation.
I believe the LORD has released his angel armies on the earth to deliver our nation through the prayers and declarations of the army of the sanctified on earth. I declared the Mid-Term elections of 2018 have been won by the glorious church as an army with banners (Song 6:4; 10) in concert with the Host of Heaven’s Armies.
6:10: “Who is she that looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun and terrible as an army with banners?”
The Bride is an awe-inspiring, bannered host. The Shulamite is as Mahanaim, the place where God camps or dwells! “Two Armies” = #4624 = Mahanaim; two camps, two hosts, armies, encampments”. The Bride is dancing between the armies of Heaven and the armies of the earth. The dance of Mahanaim is the dance of Victory over all enemies (Rom. 10: 14-15)
“Who is she that looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?... Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return that we may look upon you. What will you see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies.”
This is the lightning and bright shining of Jesus appearing in his Church. “The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord binds up the breach of his people, and heals the stroke of their wound.” (Isaiah 30:26)
Isa. 13-3-5: I have commanded my sanctified ones (Saints), I have also called my mighty ones (Angels) for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness. The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together; the LORD of hosts musters the host of the battle. They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the LORD, and the weapons of his indignation…
(Isaiah was taken by vision to the end of heaven, the realm of the host of Heaven’s Armies.)
We are to ever press onward fighting the good fight of faith. We are surrounded by the Host – Heaven’s armies, which are under the command of the Archangel, Michael. Today I was studying Luke 2:13 in preparation for another meeting. “suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.” I did some research on heavenly host (stratia): “Troops of angels; an army, band of soldiers, in the New Testament, the hosts of heaven.” This has the same meaning in the Old Testament.
Neh. 9:6: You alone are the LORD; You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host. The earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.
1 Ki. 22:19: then Micaiah (the Lord’s Prophet)said, “Hear the word of the LORD; I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by on His right hand and on His left.
Today we (the church) like Micaiah are facing down the false prophets. If we listen to the media, they are declaring the defeat of the army of God. The liberal media is the mouth of the beast, the mouth of the false prophet and the mouth of the dragon.
We, like the prophet Micaiah; and Elijah in the face of the prophets of Ahab and the prophets of Baal must declare the Word of the LORD over the United States of America. We have the authority to call down the fire of God on the altars of the false prophets and the mouth of the beast.
Fire fell Wednesday on the mouth of the beast in the President’s news conference.
Tuesday Bible Study Message - 1 JOHN – Chapter 3
1 John 3:1-2: Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; the world does not know us, because it did not know him. Beloved now we are the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
The divine nature is manifested on the children of God through the love of the Father. I want to honor Prophet Kerry McMahon who was our guest speaker this past Sunday. I saw the true Father’s heart in his love and humility. It is rare to see that measure of selfless love for the brethren. The divine nature of the sons of God is manifest through the fruit of the Holy Spirit:
Gal. 5:22-23: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law.
Eph. 5:9: For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.
We have nothing to commend us to divine favor. We are altogether an unclean thing; even our righteousness is as filthy rags. In the heavenly adoption we are made partakers, not merely given an adopted name, but we are given a new nature. We are transformed by the renewing of our minds, after the image of Him who has created us in righteousness and true holiness.
Our names are recorded in the Lamb’s book of life forever. Born from above, the royal blood of heaven runs through our veins. We possess unsearchable riches.
“Let others boast their ancient line,
In long succession great;
In the proud list let heroes shine,
And monarchs swell the state;
Descended from the King of Kings,
Each saint a nobler title brings.
Pronounce me, gracious God! Thy son;
Own me an heir divine;
I’ll pit princes on the throne,
When I can call thee mine;
Scepters and crowns unenvied rise,
And lose their luster in mine eyes.”
The central thoughts of this chapter echoes John 8: If God were your Father you would love me…you would want to carry out your father’s desire…you do not believe me…John continues to illuminate the three marks of eternal life beginning with our life in Christ: love, obedience and belief.
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us…most of us are so spoiled in Christ, we take that love for granted even feel entitled. We fail to express the same wonder and gratitude of the Apostle John.
The purpose of God’s love is that we should become his children.
Rev. 21:7: He that overcomes will inherit all things; and I will be his God and he shall be my son.
The reason the world does not know us to be God’s children, is it did not recognize Christ as God’s Son. The world continues to follow the course of willful blindness noted in Mat. 21:23-27: When he came into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted Him as He was teaching, and said, “By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority?”
The world will always ask you these questions.
On the account of radical disparity of nature, the world does not have the capacity to recognize that which is of God.
The now we are the sons of God and the not yet are both true, and express the tension which exists between the ideal holiness and glory belonging to men who have become God’s children, and our actual observable condition of failure and distress. It is not yet manifest to the world what we will be. We believe when Christ shall appear, we shall be like Him.
1 John 3: 3-6: Every man that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as He is pure. Whoever commits sin transgresses also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law. You know that He was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin. Whoever abides in him sins not; whosoever sins has not seen him, neither knows him.
This hope of ultimate conformity to the moral likeness of Christ is a powerful motive to diligent moral cleansing here and now. For me the fear of God keeps me straight. Christ is the antithesis of all sin. He appeared so that he might take away our sin. John is clearly saying that everyone who sins is a rebel against God by refusing submission to His law. John’s point is clearly taken: the work of Christ is directed to the removal of sins and the character of Christ is that of the Holy One of God.
It is above my pay grade to imply that anyone is sinless. So---what is the intended conclusion of the reasoning? No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. We could water this down that sin in this sense means a continual and habitual action. No Christian can continue in disobedience as his way of life. I don’t believe this is a license to make occasional excursions into sin provided that we do not become domiciled there. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God; yet the intent of heart is to do the best we can. If we knowingly and intentionally sin, then we have backslid from fellowship in Christ. If we unknowingly sin out of ignorance or error in judgment but our heart was to seek and please Jesus, we are under Grace.
1 John 3: 7-10: Little children let no man deceive you; he that does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that commits sin is of the devil; for the devil sins from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for his seed remains in him and he cannot sin; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Whoever, who does not righteousness is not of God, neither he that does not love his brother.
John’s clear purpose in this letter is to identify the children of God from the children of the devil. He continues to explain the discernment that will separate the false teachers from those who are truly of God.
John clearly states that no one who is born of God will continue to sin. The verb is in the present tense. It seems strong. It is strong. If the verb had been aorist it would be even stronger. It would have read, No one born of God commits a sin…and he cannot commit a sin because he is born of God. This, of course, would absolutely be contrary to experience. I am not qualified to preach or teach from the realm of eternal life from which John wrote this. I can only tell you what it says. John saw through the Blood of Jesus redeemed humanity in our eternal state.
In this….In what? His seed. (the Greek word for seed is sperma which means male seed.) Dake concludes this to mean the seed of the Word of God (who is Christ Jesus). That if we obey the Word of God, and stay in harmony with the word, we will not sin. C. H. Dodd suggests the word seed introduces the analogy of human begetting. A divine seed remains in us through being Born Again by Faith. The reason that Christians cannot live a life of sin is that the principle of divine life through rebirth has been implanted within us by God, and life develops according to that principle. God is our Father and our true nature accords with this seed.
Gal. 3:16: Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He did not say, and to seeds, as of many, but as one, and to your seed, which is Christ.
All mankind is God’s children by creation; as regards this a creature can have no choice. But a creature endowed with free will can choose his own parent in the moral world. The Father offers him the right to become a child of God, but he can refuse this and become a child of the devil instead. There is no third alternative.
Our attitudes and actions betray the DNA of the seed of our spiritual nature.
1 John 3: 11-12: For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.
In this one short reference to Cain, John gives us a full sermon. Adam had been warned that in the day of disobedience he would die; yet in fact it seemed that the serpent’s word was true: he lived a long life and became the father of humanity. He gave to his wife the name of Eve, the mother of all living. In their first-born, Cain, was manifested the nature of that life of rebellion against God. Cain was not a master but a slave of passion. His very worship was unacceptable to God. In Cain is seen the horrifying nature of hatred: he murdered his brother. Why did he murder him? John doesn’t presume it takes two to make a quarrel. He declares that the sin was Cain’s. Cain could not bear the contrast of his brother’s righteous actions with his own actions which were evil.
The spirit of Cain is the murderous and violet nature of hate which is over our country in opposition to the seed of Christ and the righteousness of His Kingdom.
The first murder became a monument to self-love, as the cross was to become the demonstration of divine love.
Not only the world is shown in the story of Cain, but in a sense the Church too. The seed of Seth was the appointed representative of the slain, Abel---and if we understand the first two verses of Genesis Six (6) correctly, the two seeds are actually called the children of God and the children of men. Such is the Old Testament background to the apostle’s thought as he moves from the righteous brother (with no doubt the every present consciousness of the Son of Man slain out of envy by the children of men.)
1 John 3:13-15: Do not marvel my brethren if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
Hatred is the realm of death; love the realm of life; and assurance that we have passed from death. The unregenerate man remains in death. This state of being is incompatible with eternal life. There are other verses in the Bible which indicate a murderer can be saved. Mt. 12:31. 1 Jn. 1:7.
1 John 3:16 is the counterpart of John 3:16. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
We know what love in its lower meanings is: physical attraction, natural affection, and friendship but we would be totally unacquainted with agape, the divine love, if Christ had not become flesh and died for our sake. That love which has made us rich has also made us debtors to lay down our lives, as our Lord laid down His . To lay down one’s life for the sake of another is to set oneself to seek the good of that person at all cost, even at the cost of life itself. One might perhaps expect that the indwelling divine love would constrain us to die for His sake; but what would be remarkable in our loving Him who has done us nothing but good? Divine love goes further; it is love to the undeserving, the unthankful, even the rebellious.
If we cannot love foolish and sinful weakness in our Christian family, how shall it prove to be that divine love which reaches out to the lost world?
1 John 3: 17-19: whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother has need, and shuts up his bowels of compassion from him, how does the love of God dwell in him? My little children let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. By this we know that we are of the truth, and assure our hearts before him.
This is the acid test of Christian love. It separates us from the lust of the world and the love of God. Love with the tongue consists with hypocritical utterances.
1 John 3: 20-22: If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart condemns us not, then we have confidence toward God. Whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.
Let conscience be heard, be well-informed, and diligently attended to. Those who have a good conscience toward God have interest in heaven; and our prayers are heard there. Obedient souls are prepared for blessing, and they have promise here of audience and a voice in Heaven.
John gives us three blessings of genuine love:
- Confirmation that we are of the truth.
- Assurance of a clean heart before God.
- Freedom from condemnation.
- Faith and confidence in God,
- Answers to prayers.
Also five secrets of Answered prayer:
- Freedom from condemnation.
- Confidence in God.
- Asking.
- Keeping commandments.
- Pleasing God.
1 John 3: 23-24: This is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of His son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. He that keeps his commandments dwells in him, and he in him. Hereby we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us.
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries Church