Sinning: Incidental, Not Pathological

"Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother." (1 John 3:4-10, emphasis added)

"For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved." (2 Thessalonians 2:7-10, emphasis added)

"By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory." (1 Timothy 3:16, emphasis added)

"This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous 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. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, 'I have come to know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked." (1 John 1:5-10; 2:1-6, emphasis added)

"I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification." (Rom. 6:19)

"So also it is written, 'The first man, Adam, became a living soul.' The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven." (1 Cor. 15:45-47)

No one metaphor can adequately capture the reality of our union with Christ but this may be the boldest one of all (and John is not afraid to use it): "No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed ["divine sperm", Amplified] abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God" (1 John 3:9).

We know from the Scriptures that the Holy Spirit, God's Spirit, impregnated the virgin Mary so that she conceived the Son of God: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). With such a unique conception the human Jesus would have the heredity that derived from the male part of that overshadowing, i.e., God's heredity.

Our new birth is by the selfsame Spirit: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). Peter puts it this way: ". . . for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God" (1 Pet. 1:23).

So it is no exaggeration to say that we have God's heredity, that we derive our identity from Him, in fact this is what we were created with the capacity for--this is who we were designed to be. Since He is our identity we will naturally exhibit His characteristics, which are expressed through a life lived for others, for this is His very nature: not a convenient Savior for me but a necessary Savior for the whole world.

There is an odd verse in the Scriptures where it refers to God as One "who cannot lie" (Titus 1:2). What! God unable to do something? Why, I thought He could do anything! Well, we understand this phrase to mean not that God doesn't have the ability to lie but that by a fixed and set purpose He will never lie. It is not His nature. He has a propensity so much in the other direction that it negates its opposite.

In the same way we understand what John means when he says that we cannot sin because we are born of God (1 John 3:9). He means that we have inherited God's propensity--but this is where the metaphor breaks down because the reality is that we derive our life continually (not merely historically) by our union with Him as a branch does from the vine (John 15:4-5) because we are eternally in union. We abide where we have been placed in Christ by God (1 Cor. 1:30), which is why John introduces the metaphor of God's seed abiding in us with, "No one who abides in Him sins" (1 John 3:6)--which is another way of saying the same thing ("I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may [continually] believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me", John 17:20-23).

John is stressing the union as best he knows how--moved by the Holy Spirit, yet in human terms because of the weakness of our flesh even as Paul did (Rom. 6:19)--but he is emphasizing a divine reality.

When we see ourselves in union with Christ, with Him as our very identity, then the reality of not sinning loses its sense of absurdity for we realize that we have not been given an ability but a Person, and that Person will always act consistent with Himself. When we realize that a branch always exhibits the fruit of the vine to which it is attached we sigh a great sigh of relief. We realize that we can rest in the reality behind that divine statement. We can abide in Him and He will exhibit His own nature through the capacity that He has given us for Himself.

Norman Grubb had this poignant observation to make about our preoccupation with sins and our failure to rest in the fact of who we are in Christ. We see ourselves as independent rather than in union with Christ. We exchange the truth for the lie. He said:

". . . when you do a thing right, you're not fussing about the wrong very much. If you know your job, you're not fussing about doing it wrongly, you're occupied in doing it rightly. The difference is how it's used. If you're a trained carpenter you don't say, 'Am I doing it wrong, am I doing it wrong?' You take it pretty well for granted you're doing it right. You live on the right level, not the wrong level. You live on the positive, not the negative. Of course I'm doing my job. I know how to do my carpentry and I do it. I don't say, 'Is it wrong, is it wrong, is it wrong?' There might be occasional moments when I say, 'Well, it might not be this way', but that's just a minor. But we Christians are far more concerned with 'Are we wrong' than we are with 'Are we right'? Which shows where you stand. We ask the question, 'Are we wrong?' because we think we're still just ourselves and then we're afraid. When you're not yourself but Christ, you don't ask it any more than the carpenter asks how he does his carpentry. He just does it.

"And, the temptations that come, they're just good exercise. Your temptations become your adventure because your temptations give you new proofs of what God is. The pullings tempt you to act as if you're not God. See, when I'm in the union I'm not I but Christ. Precisely how Paul says it, 'I don't live, Christ lives.' My human self is just a branch expressing the Vine. The Vine's the point. My human self is a body which is expressing the head which is Christ. The body's just the agency of the head. The head's what matters. The Vine's what matters. See, when you do that and you're living like that, you live free."

Faith has been given to us spiritually like the arm has been given to us physically. Let us use it to appropriate all that has been provided for us in Christ.