As anyone who has attended college or even just read a handful of good books can attest, education can be a very disorienting experience. This is because it is difficult to be exposed to enough material to actually expand one's knowledge without also expanding one's knowledge of how much one does not yet know. So during my freshman year in college, as I studied philosophy, I also realized the breadth of that field, vast planes of thought yet unexplored. As I studied theology, I realized how many issues of faith I had never thought through, far more than I was able to think through during my college years. With every great book I read, a perusal through the bibliography revealed how many others I had not yet read. And so, with each bit of knowledge gained, I lost confidence in the measure of my own knowledge. And this is not the result of attending a particular type of school that was somehow degrading or where the teachers tried to make us feel lost in the sea of the knowable. Rather, there is something about true education that is self-perpetuating; the more one learns, the more one realizes how much there is to learn.
Virtue is the same way. The closer one comes to the ideal, the clearer is one's understanding of the distance between him/herself and that ideal. There is a clearing of the vision that occurs as one attains to virtue, and what is revealed is the endlessness of that attainment. A man who sets out to be truthful begins by ceasing to tell blatant lies. As long as he is telling lies, ceasing to do so seems to him to be the meaning of truthfulness. But as soon as he has mastered this basic idea, he will find that he has still a long way to go; for without his previous falsehood to obscure his view, he can now see deeper within his own heart, to the lies of omission, the lies of subtle deception, and eventually the lies that he is telling even himself.
A woman may begin by deciding not to shoplift anymore, but as soon as she has seen her way clear of that pit, she is able to look ahead on the road a bit; and she begins to question whether checking her facebook at work might in fact also be stealing. When she has decided that it is in fact stealing and has mastered that temptation as well, she may realize that withholding her money from someone in need is for her a form a stealing. How far she has come from deciding not to shoplift! But still she is not done. The road to virtue goes ever onward and ever inward.
This becomes even more true when a person's view of righteousness is not only philosophical but also relational, that is, defined in part by their faithfulness to God. When I hear God beckoning me to the secret place to spend time quiet before God, and I choose over and over to read a novel or watch a movie instead - escaping rather than engaging - I know in my heart that I have sinned. When I feel God gently nudging me to help a stranger or a friend and I do not respond, I know that I have sinned. As it says in James 4:17, "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins" (NIV). These decisions do not stand condemned by any objective moral framework. In fact, for many other people who are at different places in their relationship with God, they would not be issues at all, just as there are many levels of faithfulness that I know nothing about.
The point is that saintliness is never experienced by a saint. I may look at the life of Mother Theresa and describe it as saintly because it so far surpasses the level of faithfulness that is common among men and women; but I am sure that in her own perception, there was always another frontier of holiness and faithfulness to a holy and faithful God, one which she as often as not, I am sure, knew that she had fallen short of.
This line of thinking is the only way I have yet been able to make sense of John's teaching in 1 John 3. He says:
"Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
"Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God." (1 John 3:4-9, NIV, emphasis mine)
These are hard words, the kind of writing that could make one question his/her own conversion. I gave my life to Christ years ago, but I still struggle with sin! Am I a child of the devil? Have I not been born of God like I thought? Maybe my baptism just didn't take....
In the past, I have dealt with it by talking about how John is using hyperbole here as a rhetorical device to add emphasis. He is emphasizing the need for purity in the bride of Christ and drawing a clear line between righteousness and wickedness. His concern is to exhort his listeners to godliness, to make them stop and question whether their choices honor God or honor the enemy of God. There is a time and place for grace as well, but right at this point in the letter, he is trying to get them to straighten up and honor God.
That well may be. He may be speaking hyperbolically. He may be speaking with a greater concern for effecting a certain action than for making every statement theologically and soteriologically accurate.
As I read through this passage most recently, however, I noticed a paradox that got me thinking. Consider the lines above: "No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him." But as we have already seen, the pursuit of virtue is an endless task. As we become virtuous, we realize how much farther we have to go. As we find freedom from this sin or that sin, our sight is no longer clouded by it, and we can see more clearly our other faults.
To put this in a different way, the God who "purifies us from all sin," calls us to more and more the closer to him we get. And everything to which he calls us becomes a point of decision: we can choose God's will or our will. To choose our will is sinful.
The paradox is that for certain sins to even be a struggle for us is evidence that we have seen God and known God. We are sinful insofar as we choose not to submit to his will and his way, which are revealed to us in the context of our sanctification. Therefore that sinfulness is evidence of our ongoing sanctification.
So then, there are two types of sin: 1) Sin as lawlessness: the violation of a moral code. This sin is verifiable, observable to anyone who might see me commit it. I stole that shirt. I slept with my neighbor's wife. I clearly told a lie. I sacrificed to an idol. This sin is the devil's work, evidence of a life not submitted to God. 2) Sin as weakness and imperfection. During the process of sanctification, God is constantly leading us to areas of our will that are not fully given to him. He is calling us to higher and higher ground, holier and holier lives. As Switchfoot puts it, "The shadow proves the sunshine." As John puts it, "But if we walk in the light...the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." Failure and forgiveness are part of this purification.
I think that John, in verses 4-10 is talking about sin as lawlessness (see v. 4). It is clear from his statement of purpose in 2:1 that he fully expects that we will still violate the revealed moral code (sin as lawlessness) after our conversion. We must read the phrases in v. 6 ("keeps on sinning" and "continues to sin") with this context in mind. These phrases could be read as "anyone who breaks the revealed moral code again after trusting in Jesus did not actually trust in Him," or they could be read as "anyone for whom violation of God's commands continues to be normative and unrepentant did not actually trust in God."
This makes sense in light of verses 11-20:
"This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. Do not be surprised my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.
"This is how we know what love is; Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything." (1 John 3:11-20, NIV, emphasis mine)
John switches suddenly to focus on real, tangible love for one's neighbor as the measure of conversion. "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers." Rather than his previous assessment that was black and white with no shades of gray, this measure for judging one's own conversion leaves a lot more wiggle room. Just ask the simple question: Is my life marked by love for my neighbor the way the Jesus' life was marked by love for me (and my neighbor)?
In the final assessment, our confidence that we are in the truth does not come from a perfect track record of the "do nots." This is important, John would say, and if the do nots are still normative for your life, you may want to see if you are on the path you think you're on. And more importantly, if the do nots or normative for your teacher, it is a good indication that he may be "leading you astray." But for disciples of Jesus, who, during the painful process of sanctification, sometimes feel like failures, sometimes fight the same battles over and over (in good company with most saints throughout history), our confidence - rest for our hearts in God's presence - comes when we, weak and frail though we are, actively participate in a life full of tangible acts of love (v. 18).
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