Sermon for May 3rd

The first letter of John can be a very difficult letter to read because there often seems to be a disconnect between what he is saying about Christians and what we see and experience in our lives as Christians. When we translate John’s letter into English from the original Greek language, the statements can seem so cut and dried that we are either driven to pride or despair. I’m going to read a few verses to help explain this point and I want you to consider how they make you feel, “No one who abides in Jesus sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil”; “Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God.” According to these descriptions, it might be very easy for you or I to fall into despair for, we sin, no doubt about it.

But in the original language, John’s statements were a bit more nuanced than they are translated. In the language of Greek, verbs, action words like “to love” or “to sin” or “to abide”, are classified into three basic types of action: a competed action, a onetime snapshot of an action and a repeated or continuing action. In John’s letter, he often uses the kind of verb that means a repeated or continuing action which, by translating it a little differently, might help us understand what he’s getting at much better.

For instance, using the same verse I read before from 1st John chapter 3 see if you can hear the difference, “No one who continues to abide in Jesus sins; no one who sins and sins and keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.” “Everyone who keeps on committing sin is a child of the devil.” Or finally, “Those who have been born of God do not sin and sin and sin, because God’s seed continues abiding and abiding and abiding in them; they cannot continue sinning, because they have been born of God.” In other words, John isn’t saying that Christians don’t sin. In fact, in the first chapter of his letter, he says that, “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and his word is not in us.” However, John is saying that a life lived by faith in Jesus Christ looks different than a life lived apart from Christ, and if it doesn’t, well, maybe you need to hear the message again until it takes hold of you in a new way.

But here we run into another problem many of us have with reading these verses from John’s letter: we read a description and hear it as a commandment. This can become a big misunderstanding. For example, let me describe a bird for you. One characteristic of a bird is that it flies. A bird flies. If you wanted to become a bird, you might try flying. But just because you got in an airplane and flew cross-country doesn’t make you a bird does it?

In today’s reading we hear this, “All who obey God’s commandments abide in him, and he abides in them.” You might start thinking that, if you obeyed all the commandments, you would be saved, you would be a full-fledged Christian. Do enough good works and you will be loved by God. But that would contradict much of what scripture tells us, wouldn’t it? What about the part that says we are saved by faith apart from works? Just because you obey God’s commandments, do the right things, doesn’t prove that you have faith in Jesus.

But John isn’t commanding you to be a Christian, he is describing the Christian life for you, and a Christian obeys commandments, not through their own power but, as he puts it later, because God has given them his Spirit.” John says, “We love because God first loved us.” He’s not giving you a commandment saying that you MUST love because God loved you first. He’s describing the life of a Christian.

The gospel of Matthew puts this in a different way. “A good tree produces good fruit. A bad tree produces bad fruit.” You don’t have to tell a good tree to produce good fruit, it just does it because that how it was made. Sometimes we think about trusting in God as a decision we make with our minds, or with our hearts or by understanding it enough. But that’s not how John talks about it. God takes your old creation, the one that sins and hates and steals and murders, and creates a new you—you are “born again” as so many Christians put it—and this NEW you doesn’t sin because it can’t, not because you are strong enough to fight temptation. God makes you into a good tree. And when you find yourself living in a new way, not because you know you are supposed to, but because you naturally do, John says that this can reassure you can trust that God is truly doing something amazing through you instead of trusting in your own efforts.

But you may ask, then how can it be that I believe in Jesus Christ, something only the Holy Spirit can get you to do, but I still find myself sinning, something only a child of the Devil would do according to John? Because you are both. Because, as Martin Luther put it, you are simul Eustis et peccator, you are simultaneously a sinner and a saint. A sinner, in the eyes of this old world. A saint in the eyes of God. Not fifty-fifty. Not part sinner and part saint. You aren’t split down the middle. You are 100% sinner and 100% saint. For now, when you look in the mirror, you’ll often see only a sinner. But, through the eyes of faith, when you hear the forgiveness of yours sins for example, you might catch a glimpse of the saint you have become. The same picture you will see reflected in the eyes of Jesus Christ when you see him one day face to face.

This last week on NPR, I heard an interview about a man who had written a book called, “Losing my Religion.” It’s about a man who became a born-again Christian after a traumatic part of his life and got involved whole heartedly with his faith and his whole life changed. His job was writing for the Religion section of the LA Times and, in his work and research, he had to cover a lot of pretty distressing stories about Christians. Bogus faith healers, Christian hypocrites, and, if you remember, the big sexual molestation scandal and cover-up involving some Roman Catholic priests several years ago. He kept asking himself, “Why don’t Christians act any more loving than non-Christians?” “Why do they sometimes act worse?” “Why do Christians pray and still get sick or, at least, not get dramatically better every time they ask?” Eventually, he “lost his faith” as the book puts it, left the church and is now an atheist.

This is the danger in hearing the law as the final word, rather than the gospel. As John puts it at the beginning of today’s reading, “We know love by this, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” That’s the promise. John continues by saying that “therefore, we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Yes, we should. But, our act of love is always secondary to Jesus’. Our act of love is never on par with his. Every person on this Earth could follow all the commandments written in the Bible and every law on this Earth and that wouldn’t prove God’s existence. It wouldn’t mean that everyone would be saved. You are not saved because of what you do, but because of what Jesus has done for you.

By faith we believe that we are saints even though all the evidence often points to the contrary. We hear that our sins, though many, are forgiven and, when we believe it, you might notice that you don’t want to go right back to those sins. By faith we believe that whatever we ask from God we will receive, even though, in this life, we may not always see the fruits of those prayers when we want them. An old professor of mine put it this way, “When we pray for healing, we are actually praying against ourselves—we are praying for our own deaths.” For only then will that broken leg be completely healed, will we finally find peace from our anxieties and will a sick child actually live apart from suffering. Even if we pray for healing and it happens right before our eyes, at that very moment, the one that has been healed will need healing again and again and again until they live with the healer himself up in heaven.

Martin Luther once explained that it would be better for us if God never healed us, or eased our suffering, or blessed us so richly so that our hearts and minds and, most importantly, our faith, wouldn’t rest on visions of glory, but would rest on the power of the cross. Yet, in his divine grace, he cannot help but shower us with love and peace and joy and so, we thank him and trust that all the troubles of the world will only finally be ended in heaven once and for all. But, for now, we will live as both sinners and saints. Praying that God would change our lives and our actions through the power of his Holy Spirit so that we might love one another and do what pleases him. Not just with words, but with actions. Not just once in a while, but always. Not because you are being told to, but because that is how God created you. Amen.