Whoever…

We are talking about a very important topic today, having to do with the gospel and the fact that there are basically two kinds of people in this world: the children of God and the children of the devil. It's a challenging reality. How do we determine who they are? Open with us to First John, chapter 3.

Good morning, Cross Connection Church, on this wonderful hot Sunday morning! This Sunday is actually an important date. This church was originally planted as Christian Chapel of Escondido on the Sunday before the Fourth of July, thirty-eight years ago today, in 1981. Praise the Lord! We are grateful for all that God has done in the last thirty-eight years, and we are looking forward to God doing even more, should He tarry. As long as He continues to have us here, we are expecting that He is going to do great things. Thank you for being a part of the work that God is doing here at Cross Connection Church. He truly is working in a great way.

We also have another special thing that we are doing this morning. As you well know, back at the end of January, we brought a new staff member onto our team here to lead us in worship. Anthony joined us at the end of January, and today we want to invite him up. The pastors and some of our elders are going to lay hands on him, and we are licensing him as a pastor in the work of the gospel ministry.

Of course, Paul said in Ephesians, chapter 4, that it is God who gave some apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry. We believe that God is the one who calls, equips, and ordains a person to the ministry and the leadership of the church. We are just acknowledging and ratifying what God is doing.

Then Peter, in First Peter, chapter 5, writes this as it relates to the work of the ministry of elders and pastors overseeing the work: "To the others who are among you, I exhort, who am also a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed." Here is his exhortation to pastors and leaders in the church: Shepherd the flock.

Of God, which is among you, serving as overseers not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly, nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being an example to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away. This is the Lord's exhortation to you, Anthony, to shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as an example. I believe that’s exactly what you’re doing.

We'd like to invite Anthony up, and our pastors are going to come up as well. We have this thing that makes it official here, really, and some of our elders as well. Ken, do you want to come up? I saw Mike Sauve and some of the other guys. Ryan, do you want to jump up here too? You can come and pray with us as well. We just want to lay holy hands on him.

This cross connection, you know, we are grateful to the Lord for what He has done in bringing you to be a part of our team. Would you pray with us? Would you stand and pray with us, actually?

Father God, truly we are grateful. As a leadership team of pastors and elders, we have prayed for a long time that You would direct us to the person You had called to help lead in worship here at this church. We are absolutely convinced that Anthony is that guy, and we thank You for Your call upon his life and his yielding to that call. For many years, he has been following You in this, and Lord, You have gifted him, giving him talents and abilities with music and leading in worship.

But Lord, You have also gifted him as a pastor to see the needs of others and to minister to those needs as a shepherd, just as the Scriptures say. We pray, God, that You would continue to pour out Your Spirit upon him, that You would bless him, and that You would fill he and his family to overflowing with that blessing of Your Spirit. We thank You for his wife, Alma, and we thank You for their little guy, Zander. We pray for Your blessing upon them as they serve You here in North County.

So God, we commit him to You, as You are the one who ultimately ordains. We just recognize Your call upon his life, and we ask You to bless him in the work that You set before him. In Jesus' name, and all God's church said, "Let's go!" Don't sit down! Come on, you know the routine. Stand up, stand up! Take out your Bibles, if you would. If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand.

One of our ushers will bring you one. We are making our way through John's first letter. First John, chapter 3, is where we are today, so open your Bibles right near the end of your Bible to First John, chapter 3. We will begin reading today at verse 4.

If I can find it... there we go. Well, I'm in Second John. My goodness, I'm all out of sorts here. Okay, First John, chapter 3, verse 4. There John writes, "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of Man was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifested. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother."

Father, as we consider this text of Scripture, it's a challenging one. I pray, God, that You would give us ears that are open and hearts that are ready to receive Your word. As we receive Your word, I ask that You would do a work by Your Spirit in our lives, continuing to transform us by the renewing of our minds. May our lives on Monday and Tuesday of this week be a demonstration of Your work in us.

So, God, do work in us, we pray. We ask this in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, "Amen." You may be seated.

It is the last day of June, which means that there is something big happening here in our nation this week, and I'm not talking about the 4th of July.

In July, I'm talking about Netflix releasing "Stranger Things" Season 3 on Thursday. This is big news! It's going to drop all eight hours at once. Some people are going to watch all eight hours on Thursday. Last year, there were a whole bunch of people who did not go to work the following day after Season 2 of "Stranger Things" came out because they watched nine hours straight and just couldn't function the next day.

There are some people who are really excited about what's going to happen with Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, and Eleven. If this means nothing to you, you are so far outside of the loop. You have 17 hours of catching up to do this week with previous episodes to find out what on earth is going on in this whole series.

I get it; for some people, this means absolutely nothing. Maybe you've been distracted from the important things, like "Stranger Things." I received an email this week that has me excited. It’s from Abogados, a Spanish lawyer. He previously sent me a message regarding a transaction worth ten and a half million dollars that his client had before his tragic death. It's available, and I just need to reach out to contact them, and half of it will be mine. I'm very excited about that! Don't worry; I will tithe on the gross.

There are a lot of distracting things going on. Maybe you have been distracted as well. It’s easy for us to be distracted; we live in a time and culture that is constantly bombarded by notifications. A lot of people have been distracted this week by the political theater in our nation, which is chaotic and crazy.

I find it so important to come back to that which is not temporary, but that which is eternal. We need to return to the Scriptures because I am easily distracted by all these things. Our culture is geared in such a way that it constantly spins us up into a distracted frenzy, causing us to be stressed by many things. In that, I want to encourage you, as your pastor, to make sure that you set aside time on a daily basis, preferably in the morning, before all the chaos of the day gets going.

Spend some time looking at what God says in His eternal Word. There are a lot of things vying for our attention, and most of those things are not ultimately as important as we might think. You can judge whether or not something is truly valuable by considering what it will mean in five years. Most of the things that stir us up will mean very little, if you can even remember them in five years. They certainly will mean nothing when we have been with Him in eternity for ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun. It won't mean anything.

It is so important for us to come back to the Eternal Word. I want to suggest that what is before us in this text, which we just read, is a challenging passage of Scripture. I want to say at the front end that most of what John writes in First John has been very challenging. However, what we have here is exceedingly important because it reveals to us what sin is and our condition as sinners. It also reveals to us why Jesus came and what He accomplished in His coming, which is more important than any of the things happening in the news or on Netflix right now.

Now, John, in this section of Scripture, as we read through it, you may have noticed that there is a word he repeats a number of times. This word is translated in the text we just read as "whoever," and it shows up five times in those verses. He uses it twice before in the previous section that we looked at over the past two weeks. In that section, the translators chose to translate it a little differently, but it is still the same Greek word. This was originally written in the Greek language.

In Greek, it is a very small word, "pas," which means "all." In this passage, it is translated as "everyone" and "whoever," but it really means all. If we look back a little bit, just jump back a few verses to First John chapter two, the last verse. In First John chapter two, at verse 29, about halfway through the verse, John writes, "You know that everyone"—you can read that as "all"—"who practices righteousness is born of Him." Everyone who practices righteousness...

Righteousness is born of Him. We have those who practice righteousness. In Chapter 3, Verse 3, he uses it again, translated as "everyone" in the New King James Version. Everyone who has this hope purifies himself just as He is pure. So, we have those who purify themselves, those who are walking in righteousness.

Then, in Verse 4 of First John, Chapter 3, which we just read a moment ago, it states that whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness. We have those who are born of God and walk in righteousness, and we have those who commit sin and walk in lawlessness.

In Verse 6, First John 3:6 says that whoever abides in Him does not sin. Again, whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. We are presented with two different groups: either all of these people or all of these people.

In Verse 9, First John 3:9 states that whoever has been born of God does not sin. Finally, in Verse 10, it says that whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God. Very clearly, in these five or so verses, John uses this word seven different times to identify two groups of people into which all people fit.

Why does John keep returning to this word? I believe he is making an important distinction between the true followers of God and those who are not true followers of God, or who are following after the false teachers of John's day. It can be boiled down to this point: in the world, there are children of God and children of the devil. According to John, there are these two groups, and all people fit into one of these two categories: children of God and children of the devil.

He asserts in this text that it is easy to identify the children of God versus the children of the devil. Now, let's be very honest about the fact that this classification makes some people very uncomfortable. All people fit into a category called children of God or fit into the category of children of the devil. Many in our culture would tell us that this is a very narrow view of things, that there are so many in-between areas.

No, not according to the Scripture. Not according to John, one of the first followers of Jesus, an apostle. He says there are two groups of people, and the clarity of this makes some people very uncomfortable. John states that there are those who are born of God, who practice righteousness and endeavor to live in purity. Then, there are those who commit lawlessness and practice sin, what the Bible calls sin.

He says there are those who abide in God and do not remain in sin. Conversely, there are those who abide in sin and do not abide in God. There are those who are born of God who do not continue in sin, and there are those who do not practice righteousness because they are not born of God. Yes, that distinction, that clarity, makes many people uncomfortable. There are the children of God, and there are the children of the devil.

In 1 John 3:1, we considered this last week: "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God." In verse 2, John continues, "Now we are the children of God."

Skip down to verse 8 of 1 John chapter 3. He who sins is of the devil. It doesn't get any more confrontationally clear than that. He goes on to say, "He who sins is of the devil." In verse 10, he states, "In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are made clear." This is an important point of distinction because there were people in John's day who had made their way into the church, identifying themselves by their words as being of God or in fellowship with God, but their practice betrayed their words.

Skip back to 1 John chapter 1 and look at verse 6. John is dealing with a false Christian, really a false teacher. In 1 John 1:6, he says, "If we say with our mouths that we have fellowship with Him, with God, and we walk in darkness, there’s a falsehood there. We lie and do not practice the truth." Our words, our profession, need to align with our walk.

We understand that this is true, and we recognize that people often betray themselves by not walking in accordance with their profession. We call them hypocrites. There were those in John's day who were saying that they had fellowship with God, but they did not walk in the light; they walked in darkness, and they were lying by their lives. This was true in John's day, and it is clearly true in our day as well.

John gives us some helpful, clarifying, and important words here in First John, chapter three, verse four. Look at verse four: "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." We have here the clearest definition in the Bible of the concept of sin. We would not know sin apart from the revelation of Scripture. In fact, one of the other followers of Jesus, the Apostle Paul, says, "I would not have known sin unless the law said, 'Thou shalt not covet.'"

By nature, every one of us covets. From the littlest age, we see covetousness. What is covetousness? It is seeing something that somebody else has and wanting it for yourself. Nobody here ever does that, right? Some people we know, but none of us. From the time you and I were young, we were covetous; that is our nature. However, we would never have thought that to be a bad thing had the law not said, "Thou shalt not covet." That is actually the tenth commandment of the Ten Commandments. You know those ones—Charlton Heston and that whole thing. Or should I say Christian Bale? That reference is for a whole new generation—the Dark Knight on the mountain with Jesus. That's frightening.

Anyways, we have the clearest definition here of sin, especially as it relates to how we live and walk in this world. If we back up to the beginning of John's letter, this is an important definition because of what we see previously. In First John, chapter one, we already saw in verse six: "If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth." Then, skip down to First John, chapter one, verse eight. If we say... those three words again, because he is addressing the...

Statements about the professions of some people reveal a common tendency. If we say that we have no sin, which we are all inclined to do, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. This is highlighted in 1 John 1:10: "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." Both in John's day and in our day, many people do not recognize their sinfulness. I would suggest that we misdiagnose sinlessness; we think of ourselves as not being sinners because we misunderstand what sin actually is.

John makes it super clear: point number two is that I am a sinner if I break God's law. What makes me a sinner? The same thing that makes anybody a sinner: if they break God's law. Sin is lawlessness. What law? First and foremost, the law of conscience.

It is an amazing thing that those who fully embrace the concept of biological evolution—believing we are all here by random chance and mutation over billions of years—have all kinds of processes to explain how this happened. However, they struggle with the concept of conscience. Most people in the biological sciences who believe in evolutionary biology won't even touch this topic. They simply say, "I'm in biology; I can't answer this."

What is conscience? How does it arise from just biology and brain chemistry? I suggest to you that it is not by random chance or mutation that we have a conscience. C.S. Lewis, a great author of the 20th century, referred to this as the basis for what we call mere Christianity. Why is it that every culture has a basic understanding of morality? Because there is a moral lawgiver who gave us a conscience, which either accuses us or excuses us, telling us what is right and what is wrong.

Not only do we have a conscience, but we also have the revealed law of God. When we go against that moral law—whether it is our conscience or the written law—we are lawless, and we are sinners. Sin is lawlessness, and people often do not like to think that they are sinners.

Sinners often do not recognize their own sinfulness, which reveals a lack of understanding of what sin actually is and the extent of God's law. In our culture, if you talk to ten people and ask them, "Hey, listen, if you died tonight, do you think you'd go to heaven?" most will respond with a confident "yes." They believe this because they consider themselves to be pretty good people. However, this perception stems from a misunderstanding of God's law.

The frightening reality, as Jesus teaches in one of His longest discourses, called the Sermon on the Mount, is that the extent of God's law is vast. It deals not just with our actions but also with our hearts. When you engage someone in conversation, you might hear them say, "I think I'm a pretty good person; I've never killed anyone." If that is the basis for morality, then by that standard, we might all seem to be doing well.

However, Jesus challenges this notion. He states, "You have heard that it has been said of old, 'You shall not kill.'" That is indeed in the law, the sixth commandment. But then He adds, "But I say to you, whoever is angry with someone without cause is guilty of murder." Many of us have experienced that anger too many times to count.

Similarly, someone might claim, "I haven't committed adultery." Jesus responds, "You have heard that it has been said of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you, whoever looks upon a woman or a man to lust after them has committed adultery with them in their heart." This teaching reveals the deeper implications of God's law.

Jesus concludes with a sobering statement: "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the most religious, you will by no means get into heaven." This presents a significant problem. Sin is lawlessness, and we must recognize the reality of our own lawlessness and sinfulness.

We learn the bad news, but this bad news prepares us for the good news. In 1 John 3:5, we read, "And you know that He, Jesus, was manifested, revealed; He came onto the stage of this world to take away our sin, and in Him is no sin." He came that He might take away my sin and your sin.

Jesus is the sinless sacrifice who came to take away my sin. This is exactly how Jesus was announced or identified in the Gospel of John. There’s this great guy named John the Baptist, and he was the one who came, sent by God, to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. On the day that he announced Him, when he identifies Him, John 1:29 states that John the Baptist looks at Jesus and says, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

This same concept is presented in 1 John 4:5, where it says He was manifested, revealed, to take away our sin. John the Baptist identifies Him as the Lamb of God, which meant something to the people who were hearing him in Judea at that time, two thousand years ago. Most of the people who were listening were Jewish and came from a background of living according to the Old Testament commands given by God through Moses fourteen hundred years before Jesus came. This established the way by which man could come before a holy God, and we could only approach a holy God through sacrifice—animal sacrifice.

For 1,400 years, the Jewish people would go to appear before God, and the way they would do this was by offering animal sacrifices. However, the author of the New Testament book of Hebrews says these sacrifices could only cover sin; they were only temporary. That is why they had to be offered again and again, every single day, every single week, and every single month for centuries. These sacrifices had to be provided until the perfect, spotless, sinless Lamb of God, Jesus, came to take away sin.

Only Jesus has the ability to do that, as stated in 1 John 3:5, which says that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin. He is the only sinless one, and therefore He has the ability to deal with my sin and your sin. This is why I emphasize that He is the sinless sacrifice who came to take away my sin. We need to realize it’s not someone else’s sin we should focus on. We are really good at identifying the sins of others—those things that other people do that tick you off and make you angry. Generally speaking, you are just seeing sin.

He was manifested to take away my sin. John continues in verse six of 1 John 3, stating that whoever abides in Him does not sin. We talked a lot about this word "abiding" a few weeks ago. If you weren't here, you can get the message on our website. To abide in means to remain in or to be connected to. Jesus uses the illustration, the metaphor of the vine and the branches, and teaches about abiding in John chapter 15. He says, "I am the vine, and you are the branches." Every branch in Him bears fruit because it has the life of the vine going through it.

Now, here John says that whoever abides, all people who stay connected to Jesus, do not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. The person who sins reveals by their practice that they do not know Him or see Him. However, whoever does not sin is the person who abides in Him.

This verse has proven challenging for many in the church. There are those who live in a more charismatic, Pentecostal stream of Christianity who read this verse and say, "See, right there! We Christians never sin." That would seem to be what it is saying, but we need to recognize that this was originally written in the Greek language, which is a very technical, inflected language. There is a lot more meaning when you begin to look at the tense and the mood, and you start to understand what is being said. It doesn't come across in English.

When he says here in this passage that whoever abides remains and Jesus does not sin, those words "does not sin" indicate a present and ongoing action in Greek. What John is saying is that the person who abides in Jesus will not go on sinning perpetually; they will not practice sin. Remember what John said previously: there were those who were claiming, "If you say I have fellowship with God, I'm connected to Him, I'm abiding in Him," while perpetually walking in darkness. There is something not working out there. Why? Because the person who is plugged into Jesus will not continue to go on sinning. It is not possible, John says, for a branch plugged into the vine, Jesus, to continue practicing sin.

Whoever continues sinning, whoever sins, the end of verse 6 indicates this is a present active participle. They go on sinning and prove by their actions that they don't actually know God. When they say, "I have fellowship with God," but continue to walk in lawlessness against the moral law that God has given to them, against the revealed Word of God, that person proves by their actions that they actually do not know God. The one that is in Christ does not remain in sin. If you're abiding in Christ, you will not abide in sin, as John says.

This brings us to point number four: a child of God will not remain in unrepentant sin. Now, does that mean that a child of God, born again as Jesus says it, by trusting in Jesus for salvation, will never sin? There are some within the church that read this verse, "Whoever abides in Him does not sin." Does this mean that I will never fall short of God's glory, fail, or sin? No, that's not what he's saying. However, I will not perpetually practice ongoing unrepentant sin if I am in Christ.

How do we know that this is not saying we will never sin after putting our trust in Jesus? It is because of what John said previously; the word that he wrote previously cannot conflict with what he writes now. Look at 1 John 2:1. This is called the law of non-contradiction.

"My little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin. I want you to walk in righteousness, not in lawlessness. So I'm writing these words to you so that you may not sin, that you may walk in righteousness. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He Himself is the propitiation, the sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world."

So, we will fall short, but we will not perpetually walk in ongoing sin if we are plugged into the vine, if we are abiding in Jesus. John is saying there are children of God and there are children of the devil, and we can identify them by the way in which they live in an ongoing nature.

So, what do we do if we sin? Because, newsflash...

Very likely, you sinned this morning. Some of you are thinking, "Yeah, I did," while others might be wondering, "Wait, what?" Before you even leave this facility, someone might steal your jelly-filled donut, and you will be upset. We fall short of God's glory. If you have not done so yet, you need to memorize 1 John 1:9. You can look it up in the passage if you'd like, but you need to memorize this: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness." This is what God wants to do in your life and in my life as we trust in Him. He wants to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. He was manifested to take away our sin completely.

John continues in 1 John 3:7, "Little children, let no one deceive you." There is a lot of deception, both 2,000 years ago in John's day and here in the 21st century. There are many opinions about sin in our culture. Let no one deceive you: he who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He, God, is righteous.

So, what are we talking about here? We are discussing God's very nature. God is holy, holy, holy; He is perfectly righteous. There is no sin in God. If you are a Christian and have put your trust in Jesus, He has remade you. He has given you a new nature that is completely righteous. As it says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. All the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new."

What is the nature of this new creation? Paul talks about it in Ephesians 4:24 when he says that this new nature you receive when you put your trust in Jesus is a supernatural work that God, by His grace and by His Spirit, affects in you and in me. What does He do? He makes us anew. What is this new nature like? Ephesians 4:24 tells us it is created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. We grasp the weight of this: God has remade you to be.

Righteousness before God is so very important. Two thousand years ago, during the time of John, just as there are today, some were teaching that it was okay to continue in unconfessed, unrepentant sin after being born again, after receiving a new nature, after conversion. John did not believe or teach that.

In our day, there are those who teach that you are effectively a slave to your old nature and cannot walk in righteousness. John did not believe or teach that either. He says we have the children of God who are born again by the Spirit of God, by His grace through the gospel. They are completely remade and now possess the ability and power, given by God, to walk in righteousness.

On the other side, you have the children of the devil, who might say with their lips that they are the children of God in fellowship with Him, but their lives betray them. They do not walk in righteousness before God, having been empowered, if they have received the grace of God to do so.

In Christ, we have been saved, past tense, which we theologically call justification. What is that? Jesus, on the cross, when He died as our sin-bearing sacrifice, said, "It is finished." What was He doing? He was paying for the debt of my sin and your sin. Our punishment was placed upon Him, and we are declared righteous. We are saved, past tense.

However, the Scriptures also speak of a future event that God is going to accomplish by His grace. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, this corruption will put on incorruption; this mortal will put on immortality. We will be with God, and we will no longer be in the presence of sin. This is what we call glorification.

We talked about this in 1 John 3:1-2: "Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God." That is what justification did; it gave us a new identity. We are the children of God. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when we see Him, we shall be like Him, as stated in 1 John 3:2.

So, there are two ends of salvation: what He did in the past, justification, and what He will do in the future, glorification. Right now, there is a work going on. If you have been justified and have hope of being glorified, God is now doing a work called sanctification. What is that?

We are being saved as the righteousness of God begins to become our practice by the Spirit of God, by His grace, and by taking responsibility to walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh. We no longer have to be slaves to our old nature. We can, by the power of God working in Christ, walk according to the Spirit and not fulfill the desires of the old nature. This is good news.

In 1 John, chapter 3, verse 8, it states, "He who sins," and that word "sins" refers to present active sinning. He who goes on sinning, practicing this without confession or repentance, is of the devil. That is startling. Why is that person of the devil? Because the devil has sinned from the beginning. But for this purpose, the Son of God, Jesus, was manifested and revealed. Previously, it was said that He might take away our sins; now it is said that He might destroy the works of the devil. What are the works of the devil? Lawlessness and sin. God wants to destroy that working in my life so I don't walk in that anymore.

Whoever has been born of God does not sin; they do not continue in the perpetual practice of sin. Why? Because God's seed, the new creation, remains in that person, and they cannot sin because they are born of God. God has done something new in us. In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifested. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

Point number five: Jesus came to free me from sin's power in and over my life. I keep driving this point home because, once again, I was at a pastors' conference this last week. I heard a guy on the platform preaching about us being gospel-centered. He made the point that being gospel-centered means that you and I, because of total inability, will never be able to walk in righteousness and will always need the grace of God and forgiveness. I understand the theology of what he is saying, but it's just not going to work.

Far enough, Jesus died to take away sin and to give me the power in Christ to walk in righteousness. We can do this because we are the children of God. Now, does that mean we will never sin? No, we will sin. And then what? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. His aim is that my life would begin to be walked in righteousness before Him.

This is why Paul, in Philippians 2:12, says to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. God works salvation into you if you've trusted in Jesus. Now, He says to work it out. It's kind of like this: God created you with muscles, but they're practically invisible in most of us. Why? Because we don't work them out. If you want them to be visible, you have to do the work. None of us want to do that. Why? Because it takes discipline, and we don't like that. We'd much rather take a pill. You laugh because you're thinking, "Yeah, I would. I paid real money for that."

If it does come, watch out! Christ makes this reality possible. You have a new nature, a new identity in Christ. Therefore, as new creations in Christ, we are to live out this new righteousness given to us according to God's grace and power by His Spirit in very practical ways.

What sort of practical ways? I read in Ephesians 4:24 that we have a new nature that is created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. In that same passage, Paul makes it very practical. He says, "All right, you're a new creation if you've trusted in Jesus. You're a child of God. You have a new nature, a new identity, and now you need to walk in that new identity."

What's that look like? Let's make it practical. He says in Ephesians 4:22, "You, Christian, put off concerning your former conduct the old man and put on the new man. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind." Putting on the new man—what does that look like? It sounds very ethereal and spiritual. "Put off the old man, put on the new man"—what is this metaphor? He explains further.

Ephesians 4:25 states, "Put away lying and speak truth." This is very practical. If you are a new creation in Christ, as a Christian, you need to stop lying. If you are a liar, stop it. Instead, speak the truth. God will enable you to do that. It is going to be hard, yes, because you have practiced being a liar for a long time. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness," which I believe is the eighth commandment. In our old nature, we were slaves to lying, but in our new nature, we are instructed not to lie.

In verse 26 of Ephesians chapter 4, it says, "Be angry." Many of you might think, "I can absolutely do that!" However, it continues, "and do not sin." This presents a challenge. What does that even mean? It means to be angry for the right reasons and to respond in the right way. Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath. If you are angry with someone, deal with it in a proper way before the sun sets.

Moving on to verse 27, it says, "Let him who stole steal no longer." If you are a thief, stop it. This is where it gets really practical. If you are a thief, do not steal anymore. Instead, get a job. The verse continues, "But rather let him labor, working with his hands, so that he may have something to give."

Let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth. If you have a foul mouth, stop it by the power of God. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but speak that which is good for the necessary edification of those who are hearing, that it may impart grace to them.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Do you realize that when you, as a follower of God with the Spirit of God dwelling in you, speak with crass or foul language, it grieves the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is working on you, so let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. This is a real challenge.

In verse 31 of Ephesians chapter 4, it says, "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice." Instead, be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children.

What does it mean to let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking with malice be put away? You might say, "I don't think I do any of those things." Let me put it like this: Someone did something to you last week, last month, or even ten years ago.

Years ago, you might still feel angry about certain things, holding onto bitterness. But because you are a good person, a nice person—one of those individuals who has a "You’re Gonna Cross Connections" sticker on your car—you might not express that anger outwardly. Instead, you might fester in bitterness. Sometimes, you may even find yourself speaking evil about others. You might talk about that person to other people, saying, "That stupid jerk."

But we are called to put that away with malice. What is malice? Malice is wishing harm on someone. It’s like this: most people hear that someone has cancer and think, "Oh man, that just breaks my heart." But there’s that one person you might secretly wish would hear that news. That’s malice.

We are instructed to put that away and instead be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Jesus came to free me from sin's power in my life so that I could walk in righteousness before God. The result of this is true fellowship with God and true fellowship with one another. It is a light to the world.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden." Don’t hide that light; let it shine so that the world may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. May it be that God could work these things into our lives because He has called us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, as He works in us to will and to do His good pleasure.

I think this is a good point for us to pray and ask for God's help. Would you stand with me?

Father God, I thank You for Your Word. It is quick and powerful, living and powerful, and convicting. It reveals to us where we really are at this very moment. Lord, my desire is to walk in righteousness before You. I believe that is the desire of my brothers and sisters here today; otherwise, why would we gather in this place?

So God, we want to walk in righteousness. We recognize that there are areas in our lives that are not in line with Your nature or Your Word. We confess those to You now, and we are thankful that You are faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. We pray that that cleansing work would continue as we prepare to go from this place, and God, that You would shine Your light through us.

Light through us, because only You, the perfect, sinless Sacrifice, are able to take away our sin. We can't do that by our own strength or by our own religious efforts.

O God, cleanse and purify us. We pray that we would shine brightly in this world. We ask this in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, "Amen."