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1 John: Liar

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Introduction

We should all know that it is a sin to lie. Perjury is, after all, prohibited by the ninth commandment (Ex. 20:16). The Colossians were told not to lie to one another, now that they had put off the old man with his deeds (Col. 3:9). And we are told that the lake of fire is reserved for liars, among a number of others (Rev. 21:8). So we know that lying is a sin. But it is less well known that lying is foundationally about sin.

The Text

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:8–10).

Summary of the Text

It is a lie to say that you mailed the check when you know good and well that you did not mail the check. That is a lie simpliciter. But there is another kind of lie, a deeper lie, a more foundational lie. And that is the prior lie that you have to tell yourself, convincing yourself that you are not sinning, that you are not lying. The truth is not in the person who lies to himself, even though part of him knows what the truth is.

A person who says he has no sin deceives himself (v. 8). Now how is it possible for one part of us to lie to another part of us, and, on top of that, to have us buy it? How do we dothat? Scripture teaches us about self-deception elsewhere, and we are taught that one way it happens is by copping a religious pose while not bridling your tongue (Jas. 1:26). Another way is through listening to good teaching without actually doing any of it (Jas. 1:22).

Now of course if we confess our sins (the opposite of lying about them), then God forgives us and cleanses us because He is faithful and just (v. 9). But if He says that we have sinned, and we claim that we have not sinned, then in effect we are accusing Him of being a liar (v. 10). If that is the case, then the truth is not in us.

Lying About Our Own Performance

Because we were created as God’s image-bearers, we have a deep need to believe ourselves to be righteous. But because we have, with our first parents, tumbled into the chaos of sin, we are notin fact righteous. Put those two realities together—a deep need to be righteous, to be in the right, coupled with the fact that we are profoundly unrighteous. What is the result? Self-deception is the result.

“He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4).

Bitterness Tells Lies as Well

If your internal dialog frequently starts out like this: “I am not bitter . . . I just want to . . .” then you almost certainly have a problem. The problem is called “going to Hell.”

“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20).

The Definition of Sin

Now if lying is fundamentally about our own sin, you can see why we would have an interest in tinkering with the definitions. Adjusting the definition of sin is a great way to tell yourself these pretty little lies.

Absolute righteousness is established by the way God is. “But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God” (John 3:21). “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The holiness of God’s character is itself the ultimate law, and any deviation from this character is what all sin actually is. “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4, ESV).

Remember that we have already defined worldliness as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:15-17). Remember also that when Eve was dazzled by these things, she was deceivedabout them. “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3, ESV).

The Unveiled Word

Sin is our problem, and Christ is our salvation from that problem. This means that it is not possible to be deceived about the nature of your sin without simultaneously being deceived about Christ.

“He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son” (1 John 5:10).

Sin is revealed whenever Christ is revealed. Sin lies hidden whenever Christ is veiled. And this is why so much of the Church lies in a mass of confusions, stupefied by the world’s lies. This is why so many Christians worship at Ichabod Memorial. The glory has departed from the Church, but it is in the interest of clerics and professional religionists to prevent awareness of this from getting around. So they take the correct-on-paper gospel and smother it with academic jargon, or with soothing therapeutic whispers. This is nothing but a veiling of the gospel, and it is done for the same reason Moses had to do it. But we are not called to this. “It is not for us to use veiled language, as Moses veiled his face” (2 Cor. 3:13, Knox).

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1 John: Lust

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Introduction

We are beginning a short series of sermons in 1 John, but of a topical nature. Although the messages will revolve around particular topics, I believe that when we are done, we will have apprehended the larger message of the book via a somewhat different route. So over the next few weeks I would like to ask you to read and reread this short letter, and with the following words in mind. As it happened, they all begin with the letter L, but thatwas more or less an accident. The words we will be considering are lust, liar, life, light, and love.

The Text

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 John 2:15–17).

Summary of the Text

We are sometimes tempted to think that certain verbs are inherently virtuous. But the virtue or vice in any transitive verb is found first in the direct object, and secondly in the adverb. Take the verb love, for instance. Whatdo you love, and howare you loving? In our text here, we are directly commanded notto love the world. Not only so, but the verb is that world-famous Greek verb, agapao. Do not love the world, John say, or the things in the world (v. 15). This kind of prohibited love is exclusionary. If a man has it, then he does not have the love of the Father in him (v. 15). No man can serve two masters—one will expel the other. John then gives us a list of the things that are in the world, the things that he had in mind with his earlier prohibition. First is the lust of the flesh (v. 16), then the lust of the eyes (v. 16), and then third, the pride of life (v. 16). These are not of the Father, but rather of the world (v. 16). This is why the one excludes the other. The world is transient, it passes away. The lusts within the world are also transient, and they too pass away (v. 17). But the one who does the will of God abides forever (v. 17).

The Heart of Worldliness

So these three things are what characterize the world, in the sense John is using it here, and taken together, they are the very definition of worldliness. So in order to have worldliness, you do not need Times Square bedecked in neon, or downtown Babylon, or Vanity Fair. All you need is one prohibited tree. Please note the italics.

“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16).

“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Gen. 3:6).

Lust

When we use the word lust, we usually mean desire in the sexual sense. And while John would include that sense, he is not limiting it that way here.

The World We Are Not to Love

Now of course, we know from the most famous verse in the Bible that God loves the world (John 3:16). We see the same thing repeated in 1 John (1 John 2:2; 4:9). Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world.

But there is a world system, still sunk in sin, and that system of worldliness has certain characteristics. First, it passes away (1 John 2:17). The world does not recognize us as the sons of God, and they fail at this because they did not recognize the Lord for who He was (1 John 3:1; 4:17). The world hates genuine believers (1 John 3:13). The world is filled up with lying prophets (1 John 4:1). The world has the spirit of antichrist, which denies the Incarnation (1 John 4:3). The world listens to its own (1 John 4:5).

The world is overmastered by believers, who have the great God within them (1 John 4:4). And the world is overcome or conquered by us, using the instrumentality of faith (1 John 5:4).

The Great Sin of Worldliness

When it comes to moral theology, it is a commonplace to say that the cardinal sin is the sin of pride. And considered from a certain vantage point, I believe that this is certainly true. But if we zoom out, and consider our lot as interconnected individuals, I would want to say that the cardinal sin is that of worldliness. Worldliness is our mortal enemy because it pits one rule against another—the rule of God in Christ over against the rule of whatever is in fashion according to the regnant non-Christs. The biblical view of our view here is binary. There are two roads you can walk, and only two. There are two tables you may eat from, and only two. There are two houses where you may live, and only two. They are Christ and the world. And if you get to know Christ well, you will recognize the world in an instant, whatever get-up she put on this time.

“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4).

When John writes to us about turning away from lust, he is talking about a lust for respectability—and it is a respectability that always make room for a little sin on the side. Sin is included in the annual budget. Some of it is out in the open, some of it is tolerated with a wink and a nod.

The alternative is Christ. Always Christ, and only Christ.

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Dealing with Same-Sex Lust (Toby Sumpter)

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Introduction

The play of the devil from the beginning has been to redefine things such that God’s people come to believe that God’s word no longer applies. A few decades ago, the liberalizing faction tried to claim that the Bible condemned promiscuoushomosexuality but not committed, monogamous homosexual unions. Today our fearless and daring schemers are trying to redefine lust as “attraction” and they are trying to redefine homosexuallust as something entirely different than heterosexual lust. But lust is lust, and sexual sin really is a staircase people fall down not separate, unrelated doors various people enter. And this is good news because it means that the Bible actually prepares us to deal with these sins.

Leaving the Natural Use

The Bible teaches that homosexual sin is the judgment of God on a society (Rom. 1:24-26). Homosexual sin is something that God gives people over to. And we should not miss the fact that this consists of vain imaginations, foolish and dark hearts, and becoming fools (Rom. 1:21-22), which is to say that this sin (like all sin) doesn’t really make sense. So, there is a kind of randomness to it, in the sense that it makes no sense. But when sinners sin, they tend to find the same wicked grooves as generations before. When men sin sexually, they are not actually being creative, and their “heterosexual” promiscuity is already heading inevitably in a homosexual direction. Leaving “the natural use of women” is not merely speaking about intercourse. The “natural use” of women is one man marrying one woman and loving her faithfully “till death do us part.” While there are varying degrees of sexual confusion, fornication, prostitution, pornography are all unnatural uses of women. Sodomy and bestiality are the end of that road, but they are practiced by refusing to love one woman well. To the extent that a great deal of sexual promiscuity is driven by perverted masculine sexual impulses, manipulating women to serve the selfish desires of men, we should see homosexual lust as one of the likely results.

Is Homosexual Sin Worse than Other Sin?

This question is often playing on ambiguity rather than actually trying to be theologically or pastorally helpful. The Bible is very clear that some sins are worse than others. David prays: “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, And I shall be innocent of great transgression” (Ps. 19:12-13). The Westminster Catechism agrees: “QUESTION 83. Are all transgressions of the law equally heinous?ANSWER: Some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than others.” Ezekiel speaks of “greater abominations” (Ez. 8:6, 13, 15), and Jesus speaks of the greater culpability of those who reject Him than cities that were judged for their sins (e.g. Mt. 10:15). Likewise, those who cause little ones to sin are clearly deserving of greater judgment (Mt. 18:6). Even the image of removing the log from your own eye before addressing the speck in your brother’s eye presupposes different degrees of sin. Of course, all sin is sufficient to separate one from God and merits eternal death (Rom. 6:23). All sin is equally damning eternally, but not all sin is equally damaging temporally. Some sins do more harm than others. And homosexual lust is a “vile affection” (Rom. 1:26), and if heterosexual lust is heart-adultery, then homosexual lust is a shameful, debased abomination of the heart (Lev. 20:13, Rom. 1:27-28).

Father Hunger

At the root of so much of our cultural confusion and corruption is the plague of fatherlessness. Sometimes absent or limp or abusive fathers cultivate harsh and domineering women and lost, confused, and starving children result. Fatherlessness creates holes that frequently drive kids to look for happiness and love and acceptance in all the wrong places. The “LGBT community” offers a superficial version of love and family. But the corruption of sin (unchecked) also seeks to corrupt others (witness sodomite parades, drag queen story hours, pornography, etc.). Faithful fathers normalize masculinity, family, marriage, work, etc., but the goal of these public displays of corruption is to corrupt the naïve, ignorant, bitter, and lost. “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage” (2 Pet. 2:19). In the absence of fathers, hurt feelings, loneliness, bitterness, puberty, and curiosity combine to create flammable situations, and if the wrong image, video, thought, situation can get lodged into mind and body, ruts of sexual sin can quickly seem like identities.

Applications

Use biblical language unapologetically: Call lust “lust” not “attraction” or “orientation.” The only “orientation” the Bible gives us is either male or female. And that is created by God and established by biology. In the very rare instances of biological/chromosomal ambiguity, parents/pastors/doctors should do their best to understand and receive what God has created as either male or female. And those sex assignments are general callings to be oriented to the world in certain ways and not others. Even a “eunuch” should live as a man/woman even if marriage and/or children is not possible. Failure or refusal to accept those assignments, to long for others, to pretend others is envy, lust, bitterness, rebellion, perversion, corrupting, and shameful.

Call sinners to repentance through the blood of Christ: The point of biblical clarity is to call people to the simplicity of repentance. Sin is a tangled web of confusion. But the blood of Christ simplifies everything. We want to call sin sinbecause the blood of Christ washes away all sin. Apart from the gospel, we have nothing. All the schemes and machinations of men amount to various forms of alchemy, salvation by psychoanalysis, medications, free health care, etc. But our culture is increasingly like the woman in the gospels, who the more she was treated by the physicians the worse she got. Jesus is the great physician, and He bled and died for these sins (1 Cor. 6:9-11). Homosexual lust should not surprise us or make us panic. The consequences may be more severe, but where sin has abounded, God’s grace abounds still more.

Cut off the hands, pluck out the eyes: After sin has been recognized, confessed, and forgiven, the same steps of repentance apply across the board: put off the old man and put on the new man (Eph. 4:22-24ff). Where are you tempted, where are there weak points? Do you need to get rid of your smart phone, cancel your internet, stop spending time with those friends? Do you need to get into the Word, join a Bible study, get a second job, tithe, learn to be a man/woman?

Pursue Christian marriage and family: “But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn” (1 Cor. 7:9). Critics want to claim that Paul was here only speaking about heterosexuals who cannot contain their passion, but this is to assume distinctions where the Bible speaks of none. In the vast majority of cases, someone tempted to homosexuality is fully capable of heterosexual marriage. And with careful discipleship and monitoring should be pastored toward that goal.

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