The universe abhors the Christian.

1 John 3.13-15.

3.13 [Καὶ] μὴ θαυμάζετε, ἀδελφοί,	Don’t make a big deal of it, Christians,α
εἰ μισεῖ ὑμᾶς ὁ κόσμος.	if the universe doesn’t tolerate you.
3.14 ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν	We’ve known this
ὅτι μεταβεβήκαμεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν ζωήν,	because we’ve moved on out of death into life;
ὅτι ἀγαπῶμεν τοὺς ἀδελφούς·	because we’ve loved fellow Christians.
ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν	Youβ who don’t love them
μένει ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ.	still live in death.
3.15 πᾶς ὁ μισῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ	All of youβ who hate yourβ fellow Christianα
ἀνθρωποκτόνος ἐστίν,	are murderers,
καὶ οἴδατε ὅτι πᾶς ἀνθρωποκτόνος	and you’ve known that any murderer
οὐκ ἔχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἐν αὐτῷ μένουσαν.	doesn’t have perpetual life within them.γ

There’s an interesting contradiction here when we compare the Cain and Abel story with this part of 1 John. But before I discuss that, I have to clear up a commonly held misconception that I find among many Christians.

Most Westerners tend to reject the idea of a sentient, conscious universe. It’s an idea that, they believe, comes from pantheism—the idea that everything, all together in combination, is God, making God kind of a collective sentience. Pagans who talk about “the universe’s plan for my life” or “my place in the universe” tend to mean this. And yeah, the scriptures teach that God and the universe are two different things; God created it and fills it, but don’t confuse Him with it.

At the same time, the scriptures also teach that the universe has a certain degree of consciousness within it. Hence the comments about, fr’instance, how the mountains shout and trees clap (Is 55.12) or stones cry out. (Ha 2:11) Westerners tend to dismiss all this as metaphors, but Easterners (and some Westerners, St. Francis of Assisi and C.S. Lewis in particular) realized that the pagans weren’t wrong to address nature as a separate, somewhat sentient, creation of God. We have no idea how much, or what it’s like. Hopefully we don’t go full-bore looney and try to talk to the universe, or try to determine its will. But we do know there’s something aware within it.

When sin entered humanity, it likewise entered the universe, and corrupted both. Both are now depraved. Not evil, per se, but messed up just enough to not work quite right. The universe still follows God somewhat, but every once in a while the universe spits up a tornado. The universe, in connection with John’s previous comment about Cain and Abel, rejected Cain because he murdered—the ground reacted to the righteous blood poured out on it and rejected the murderer. (Ge 4.11) Yet at the same time, the universe is in upheaval about us Christians, because we are helping Jesus to usher in a Kingdom that will inevitably overthrow the existing universe. The universe is fallen, just like humanity, and sometimes like humans doesn’t know what it wants.

So when the scriptures refer to the universe, to some degree it’s a concept referring to the people of the universe—at least, the fallen ones in our part of it—but to some degree it’s a concept referring to the created natural order that has since become the fallen, corrupt, needs-to-be-fixed disorder that we see around us. “The universe” doesn’t just refer to people. Or Earth.

Christians, who are abandoning the disorder for the order, who are leaving death and joining life, who are quitting darkness and moving into Light, should therefore not be surprised when the universe—which is largely disorder, death, and darkness—goes into upheaval against us as well. Of course, God is more mighty than nature and calms storms. He can bend nature to His will and bless us through it. But natural disasters happen to Christians too; diseases and hurricanes and avalanches and all sorts of things. We shouldn’t be surprised that nature has it in for us; we shouldn’t be so shocked when nature kills a Christian, then turn to God—as if God was going to magically protect us with an invisible hedge of angels, just like in the popular Christian incantation—and blame Him for killing the Christian.

Nature, like pagans, like darkness, abhors a Christian. Thus we’re warned about it. But we’re also taught that we have power over it, as demonstrated by anyone who plants a garden… or litters.

Meanwhile, those folks who are still attempting to justify murder to themselves: The universe still abhors murderers, but the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Both of you are on the wrong side. Nature is passing away; sin is passing away; murderers—those who embrace sin, and justify it to themselves, and figure the grace of God is there to cover those who don’t try to follow God, rather than those who try—murderers are passing away. There is no perpetual life for anyone who embraces or excuses sin. There is only perpetual death. Don’t excuse sin. Repent.

α. Lit. “brothers [and sisters].”

β. Lit. third person.

γ. Lit. “[as a] dweller within him.”

How hate leads to murder.

1 John 3.11-12.

3.11 Ὅτι αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ ἀγγελία	This is the information
ἣν ἠκούσατε ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς,	we heard that’s from the beginning:
ἵνα ἀγαπῶμεν ἀλλήλους,	We should love one another.
3.12 οὐ καθὼς Κάϊν	Not like Ca’in:α
ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ ἦν	He was acting out of evilβ
καὶ ἔσφαξεν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ·	and cut his brother’s throat.γ
καὶ χάριν τίνος ἔσφαξεν αὐτόν;	For what did he cut his throat?γ
ὅτι τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ πονηρὰ ἦν	Because his works were evil,δ
τὰ δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ δίκαια.	while those of his brother were fair.

Previously I dealt with the Cain and Abel story, in which Cain murders his brother and God attempts to rehabilitate him. (Ge 4.1-16) John refers to primal story of the first murder because this is what hating one’s brother leads us to: Fratricide.

The writers of the scriptures frequently point out that hate leads to murder. (Mk 7.21, Ro 1.29, Jm 2.11, 4.2, 1Jn 3.15) In our century, most murders are illegal, and prosecuted. In the first century, murder was illegal, but some murders weren’t: infanticide, some forms of euthanasia, certain acts of vengeance, and suicide were both legal and socially acceptable. As for the murders that weren’t legal, there were no such things as district attorneys. Murderers weren’t prosecuted unless the victim’s family had influence with the courts. It is only in the Christian era that the idea of prosecuting every criminal was attempted, and murder became, in the eyes of many, the worst of all crimes, rather than the most common.

Among murderers, because it is so very heinous a crime, the reasons for murder have largely been justified in their minds. Usually the victim “got what was coming to him” or otherwise deserved it, and the murderer was simply restoring balance to the universe. Pretty much the only way that murder restores balance is a life for a life, (Dt 19.21) but murderers extend this balance to justify murdering people who insult or slight or otherwise commit crimes against them, people who owe them, people who have taken the wrong side in a dispute, or even people who might later exact revenge upon a murderer. Any mobster has a “code” that essentially says it’s okay to murder all sorts of people. And even the most civilized among us would have little trouble justifying the killing a burglar or a rapist.

Because of how frequently murder took place in the first century, the commands against murder aren’t just hypothetical worst-case scenarios. They aren’t just subtle reminders that hate and murder are connected, (Mt 5.21-22) so don’t hate. It’s because in some countries—like the Roman Empire then, and many other countries even today—people still truly do murder one another, and get away with it, and believe themselves perfectly justified in exacting revenge or reestablishing honor or whatever other excuse they prefer… and need to be reminded of how inappropriate it is for Christians to murder. Particularly one another.

I tend to hear the anti-murder commands reinterpreted to mean “don’t hate”—or don’t gossip (and thus murder a reputation), don’t shun (and thus murder a relationship), and don’t do a lot of things. It’s a bit of a stretch. The general teaching of the scriptures is that hate leads to murder. That’s not an extreme, worst-case scenario. That’s human nature. You may not consider yourself to be a murderer, or the murdering type, or someone ever capable of doing such a thing. So did many folks who, in a heat of passion, exactly like Cain, murder someone. We are all capable of this. Don’t delude yourself. It’s the self-deluded who usually wind up becoming, to their great surprise and horror, murderers. Those who know they have a temper—who know they’re easily capable, if they’re not careful, of awful things—take steps to make sure they don’t. Those who tell themselves they’re inherently good take no such steps, and are the folks who “snap,” of whom everyone later says, “I never knew he had it in him.”

The Christian, on the other hand, concentrates on loving one another, on loving everyone, and on shunning hate in all its forms. Sin is forbidden to us; hate is almost always the product of sin. Cain’s works were evil because he refused to admit he had sin in him, even though God warned him that sin “has stretched out for you.” (Ge 4.7) The consequences of this denial were terrible. The consequences of our own denial can be equally terrible. Sin stretches out for all of us. Therefore we should love one another, and cling to that love tightly.

α. Cain.

β. Usu. “He was from the Evil One,” lit. “He is being out of evil.”

γ. Usu. “slay,” but this is how you slay an animal for sacrifice—by cutting its throat.

δ. Lit. “are being evil.”

God hasn’t granted His kids the freedom to sin.

1 John 3.9-10.

3.9 Πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ	All of youα who’ve been born by God
ἁμαρτίαν οὐ ποιεῖ,	are not to commit a sin,
ὅτι σπέρμα αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ μένει,	because His seed lives in you.α
καὶ οὐ δύναται ἁμαρτάνειν,	Youα aren’t able to sin
ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ γεγέννηται.	because you’veα been born by God.
3.10 ἐν τούτῳ φανερά ἐστιν τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ	In this, God’s child is obvious.
καὶ τὰ τέκνα τοῦ διαβόλου·	As is the devil’s child:
πᾶς ὁ μὴ ποιῶν δικαιοσύνην	All of you not doing what’s fair
οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ,	aren’t from God,
καὶ ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ.	as well as the one not loving his fellow Christian.β

More hard sayings from 1 John. These sayings tend to get the letter accused of being gnostic. Gnostic religions are basically first century cults; you join the religion, pay a bunch of money, and learn all this secret knowledge—usually a mishmash of Eastern and Middle Eastern religions—that will supposedly allow you to travel to a higher plane of consciousness. The claim is that the writer of 1 John was the leader of one of these cults—because here he actually says that Christians don’t sin. Now, we all know that Christians do sin—either we’re Christians who have sinned, or we definitely know Christians who have sinned—so to say this is either looney, or the writer of 1 John has this weird gnostic definition of Christianity. You know, like “After you’ve been properly audited, your physical body is separated from your spiritual body, and every ‘sin’ you commit is committed by your physical body, but your spiritual body remains pure.” Gnostics actually taught this crap. Still do.

So because this—and other bits of 1 John—appear to be impossible for your ordinary average Christian to truly live out, the excuse for not even trying is a pretty simple one: 1 John doesn’t count. It’s not really written by John; it’s a fake letter by some second-century gnostic who was pretending to be John; it successfully fooled the early Christians and they unwittingly put it into their bible; don’t worry about it. That’s one popular theory. A variation is that verses like this were added by gnostics, and likewise slipped through the Holy Spirit’s filter and got into the bible.

The second, and more popular theory, is that these verses are not meant to be interpreted literally. They reflect God’s ideal expectations in Christianity; or reflect how God would want us Christians to behave once Jesus finally returns, resurrects us, and instigates the Kingdom of God. Since the Kingdom is currently becoming-but-isn’t-here-yet, we’re all to be in some transitional stage between sloppy sinners and perfect children of God; we can’t fulfill this verse yet, so again, don’t worry about it.

All of them are looking at these verses wrong. These are not statements about what Christians aren‘t capable of doing; these are statements about what Christians aren’t allowed to do. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one. We are Jesus’s slaves, so we are forbidden to sin, and that is why we aren’t able to sin. Yeah, physically and intellectually, we can sin; of course. John says as much in 2.1-2. But God’s kids are gonna try our damnedest to not sin… unlike the devil’s kids, who couldn’t care one way or the other.

And there are a lot of that type mixed among the Christians, like weeds in the wheat. Popular practice has turned Christianity into a passive belief system, where it’s not about following Jesus, but about having the proper beliefs, even if you never once act upon them. God’s grace, instead of being made available to make up for the deficiencies of those people who are striving to follow God, is instead the basis by which many so-called “Christians” claim they’re God’s kids and saved, even though God’s kids don’t act in any way like these folks. The devil’s kids do.

If you aren’t striving to follow Jesus—if you’re passively sitting on your ass, demanding your rights as God’s kid simply because you believe He’s your dad, despite no proof of this relationship apart from you saying a prayer once, and no acts of faith since—you have no claim to God’s grace. If you can claim it, it’s not really grace! We can only claim what we deserve, and nobody deserves grace; again, if you deserve it, it’s not really grace. Grace is undeserved. Grace is unclaimable. Yet many Christians are “depending upon grace,” as if all they have to do to get it is to quote the scriptures that tell us God has such a thing available. It’s as if people believed all we had to do to get government grants was to tell the government, “I know you have grant money,” but never apply for it, nor show how we’d use it once awarded, but just sit there and expect the checks to magically arrive before the bills become due. That’s not how grants work. Nor grace.

God might extend grace to you anyway—He’s awesome like that—but most of us really have no evidence that we’re His kids. His kids don’t act like we do. We act like spoiled children, like trust fund babies, like fools and jerks and evil the devil itself.

The part that challenges me, of course, is John’s statement that the devil’s kids are the ones who don’t love their fellow Christians. Loving my neighbor is pretty easy; loving my enemy is harder, but I can do it. But loving my fellow Christians—who should know better than to do what they’re doing, but don’t; or do know better, but really don’t care, or who are taking God’s grace for granted—is a bit harder. I don’t put expectations on pagans like I do on Christians, and I get mightily annoyed with my fellow Christians when they act like fools and jerks and even the devil itself. It is hard to love people who are undermining everything my Master, whom I love, stands for. But I gotta; otherwise I am undermining these things right along with them.

α. Lit. third person.

β. Lit. “brother.”

The two sons in the vineyard.

Matthew 21.28-32.

21.28 Τί δὲ ὑμῖν δοκεῖ;	What do you think?α—
ἄνθρωπος εἶχεν τέκνα δύο.	A person has two children.
καὶ προσελθὼν τῷ πρώτῳ εἶπεν·	Coming to the first, he said,
τέκνον, ὕπαγε σήμερον ἐργάζου ἐν τῷ ἀμπελῶνι.	“Child: Today go work in the vineyard.”
21.29 ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν· οὐ θέλω,	The answering child said, “I don’t want to.”
ὕστερον δὲ μεταμεληθεὶς ἀπῆλθεν.	Later, the child, changing his mind, went.
21.30 προσελθὼν δὲ τῷ ἑτέρῳ εἶπεν ὡσαύτως.	Coming to the other, he said the same,
ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν· ἐγώ, κύριε,	and the answering child said, “Yes,β sir.”
καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν.	And he didn’t go.
21.31 τίς ἐκ τῶν δύο ἐποίησεν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ πατρός;	Which of the two did the will of the father?”
λέγουσιν· ὁ πρῶτος.	They said, “The first.”
λέγει αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι	Jesus said to them, “Amen. I tell you:
οἱ τελῶναι καὶ αἱ πόρναι	The publicani and the whores
προάγουσιν ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ.	go ahead of you into God’s kingdom.
21.32 ἦλθεν γὰρ Ἰωάννης πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἐν ὁδῷ δικαιοσύνης,	For Yochananγ came before you on the right road,
καὶ οὐκ ἐπιστεύσατε αὐτῷ,	and you didn’t trust him.
οἱ δὲ τελῶναι καὶ αἱ πόρναι ἐπίστευσαν αὐτῷ·	The publicani and whores trusted him.
ὑμεῖς δὲ ἰδόντες οὐδὲ μετεμελήθητε ὕστερον	You saw, and didn’t regret it later
τοῦ πιστεῦσαι αὐτῷ.	so that you would trust him.

God pointed me to this passage for a devotional yesterday, and I began by translating it. I’m still not entirely sure how it applies to the people I spoke to, but I figure He knows better than me…

The context is the week Jesus was in the Jerusalem area for Passover, right before His arrest and execution. The local authorities—the head priests, who had jurisdiction over the Temple, and the elders, who had jurisdiction over the city—wanted to know the source of Jesus’s authority. His response was to ask them the source of John’s authority—which they refused to answer—then tell this story, then tell one of tenant farmers who behaved abominably towards their landlord, then conclude, “God’s kingdom will be taken away from you and given to Gentile doers of its works.” (v43)

Jesus doesn’t have too many kind words for the leaders of Jerusalem, and this tends to bother people who like to think of Jesus as kind and nice and meek (which He is, but people don’t understand the scriptural idea behind “meek”). Rather than patiently explain to them how they’re wrong, He tears into them like a ferret into a rat. What did they ever do to Him? Well… not so much to Him as it was to His herald, the prophet John. The Father had sent them John in order to get their attention, call them to repentance, and prepare them for Jesus; their response was to call him a nut and let Herod cage and kill him. These guys had nothing but contempt for Jesus, because ultimately their god was power, not Yahweh; the only reason they didn’t arrest Jesus here for the things He said was because they feared the power of the public.

This is not one of Jesus’s analogies that He’s left open to interpretation. I’ve heard it preached for all sorts of occasions—appropriate and inappropriate. Usually it’s used to point out that God doesn’t care so much about what we say as what we do. Which is perfectly legitimate. Most Christians are pretty big hypocrites when it comes to God’s expectations for His people. We preach about what God wants in our churches; we write books about it, and magazine articles, and blog entries, and talk it over in our small groups and among our friends—but we’re all talk; we don’t do a tenth of it. The few that do two tenths (or who sound the most impressive as they talk about it) are held up as our leaders, and the few that do half are giants of the faith… and those that do all are considered to be radicals, and not quite right in the head. Like John.

In the larger context—of Jesus critiquing the authorities—it’s Jesus’s way of not-so-subtly pointing out that they are the second child in the story: They’re the kids who say, “Yes, sir,” yet don’t do as the Father wants. Also within the larger context—and this is the part that probably pissed them off most—is that the Jews considered themselves to be God’s firstborn—the chosen people, the folks He puts special blessings upon—and while that’s true, Jesus here says they’re acting like the second-born, the irresponsible goyim that the Jews liked to look down upon as ignorant heathens. “The publicani and whores go ahead of you into God’s kingdom,” Jesus told them; the two classes of people that they really couldn’t have had less respect for, but unlike the leaders, they had listened to John.

Like children, the leaders weren’t interested in obedience. They wanted the illusion of it in order to maintain their power. Kids pretend to obey or be good for the very same reason: If adults think they’re good, they can get away with more. These leaders had got away with so much; even so, they were still eligible for the Kingdom, though at their current state, they’d get in after the publicani and whores. If they could put aside their pride that much. Hopefully some of them did.

α. Lit. “What thinks to you all?”

β. Lit. “I.”

γ. The prophet John.

The devil is behind the lawless Christians.

1 John 3.7-8.

3.7 Τεκνία, μηδεὶς πλανάτω ὑμᾶς·	Children, no one must deceive you:
ὁ ποιῶν τὴν δικαιοσύνην δίκαιός ἐστιν,	The doer of the right thing is fair,
καθὼς ἐκεῖνος δίκαιός ἐστιν·	just like thisα Torah is fair.
3.8 ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἐκ τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστίν,	The doer of sin is from the devil,
ὅτι ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς ὁ διάβολος ἁμαρτάνει.	because the devil sins first.β
εἰς τοῦτο ἐφανερώθη ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ,	God’s Son revealed for this reason:
ἵνα λύσῃ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ διαβόλου.	so He might destroy the devil’s works.

In the context of vv4-6, John is still talking about following Torah. The pronoun “this” in v7 has historically been interpreted to mean Jesus, but Greek grammar indicates that “this” refers to the prevailing concept in a logical argument, and that concept has been, since v4, the Torah, not Jesus. (But since Jesus gave us the Torah, it all eventually comes back to Him.) The idea that “this” refers to Jesus comes from people who pull verses out of their context, and presume since the whole of the bible is about Jesus, every loose pronoun refers to Him.

John starts by telling his readers no one must deceive them. We usually interpret this, “Let no one deceive you!” And certainly we should try to keep from being deceived, but the imperative is directed towards the deceivers—they need to keep from deceiving themselves, and us. The way in which they deceive connects back to vv4-6: If you’re anti-Torah, you’ve disconnected yourself from your relationship with God. You’re in no position to teach, lead, encourage, support, or serve; you’ve chosen sin, and have become toxic. John spells it out this way in v8: You’re of the devil, not Jesus; Jesus is trying to destroy the devil’s work, not incorporate it into His religion.

I find this part interesting: “The doer of sin is from the devil, because the devil sins first.” John uses the present tense. Translators tend to convert this into the past tense: “the devil has sinned from the beginning,” (NAS) or “has been sinning” (NIV, NRSV, NLT, ESV) or fudge around it by making it a noun: “has been a sinner.” (NJB, the Message) This is one of those bits where theology tweaks the interpretation, rather than the proper order where the interpretation tweaks the theology. The common Christian belief is that the devil fell at the beginning of history—before Adam was created, because the devil needed time to become evil, become the serpent, and tempt Adam out of Paradise. So your average translator has this idea in mind when they see “from the beginning,” and adjusts the verb-tense accordingly—and skips over a rather important idea when it comes to how sin works.

When people are following the devil—when they’ve rejected the Torah, and rejected rightness, and figure “once saved always saved” means sin is okay because grace is free—they don’t entirely act out of their own evil initiative. Most of the time, they honestly believe they’re doing the right thing; that they’re “not being legalistic,” or “not beating ourselves up with the Law,” or “not trying to achieve salvation through works,” or whatever excuse they prefer most. But these excuses are not new excuses. They’ve been around since John’s time; in some cases before John’s time. Each and every time someone embraces them, it’s because they were successfully tempted to embrace them. By, of course, a devil. (Maybe not the devil, but at least a devil.)

You see, when someone is deliberately and willfully being evil, temptation doesn’t really enter into it all that much. No one is tempted to do what they’d choose to do naturally. The devil doesn’t need to waste its time on such people. Addicts don’t need to be tempted to feed their addictions; they’ll do it regardless, so for such people, the devil treats them as if they’re on autopilot. No, the real temptation cases are those folks who have been subtly influenced into doing evil, while meanwhile they think they’re doing good. They’re the people who truly believe they’re being good, Jesus-following Christians by ignoring Torah because “Jesus saved me from all that.”

The bulk of the devil’s followers are not enthusiastic supporters. They’re dupes, suckers, marks, the easily confused, the inattentive, the apathetic, the shallow thinkers, the gullible. Those who do the right thing are fair, and achieving fairness involves a certain amount of brainpower—a level of thinking that you simply will not find among the devil’s crowd. I am always worried when I hear Christians repeat the mantra, “God said it—I believe it—that settles it.” While it appears to reflect strong faith, what it more often reflects is strong gullibility, and a person who is heavily influenced by winsome preachers who appeal to their prejudices.

The devil sins first: The devil ropes the sucker into believing that there’s some sort of Christian foundation for the evil to be done in Jesus’s name. The sucker sins second. Both bear responsibility for the sin. But here, John forewarns the Christian: No one must deceive you. Proper Christians follow the Torah. Bastard Christians don’t.

α. Usu. “he.”

β. Usu. “sinned from the beginning,” lit. “sins from the start.”

If you think it’s okay to ignore the Torah, you obviously don’t know God.

1 John 3.4-6.

3.4 Πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν καὶ τὴν ἀνομίαν ποιεῖ,	Every sinnerα works against Torah as well.
καὶ ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ ἀνομία.	Sin is against Torah.
3.5 καὶ οἴδατε ὅτι ἐκεῖνος ἐφανερώθη,	You’ve known that thisβ was revealed
ἵνα τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἄρῃ,	so that He’d take up sins,
καὶ ἁμαρτία ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἔστιν.	and sin isn’t in Him.
3.6 πᾶς ὁ ἐν αὐτῷ μένων οὐχ ἁμαρτάνει·	Everyone currently dwelling in Him doesn’t sin.
πᾶς ὁ ἁμαρτάνων οὐχ ἑώρακεν αὐτὸν οὐδὲ ἔγνωκεν αὐτόν.	Everyone currently sinning hasn’t seen Him, nor knows Him.

Here we get to the parts of 1 John that bug people.

“Against Torah” is my translation of ἀνομία/anomía, which literally means not-law. This is not a reference to the laws of the land—the Roman Empire back then, and our various homelands now—but the Torah, the teaching and commands of God found in Genesis through Deuteronomy. The “Jewish Law,” as many people call it. It is the foundation of the bible, the Hebrew culture, the Pharisee denomination that Jesus regularly critiqued, the commands and interpretations that Jesus Himself presented to His students, and the Christian religion that we practice in order to facilitate our relationship with Jesus.

The Pharisees believed that they were saved if they kept the Torah. Paul pointed out elsewhere that this idea was ridiculous. When we violate any of it, we violate the whole thing. Consequently we’ve all violated all of it and—if it’s only the Torah that saves—we’re all doomed. But the Torah doesn’t save; God does. The Torah points to God, and trusting in the Torah instead of God is like revering a roadmap instead of using it to get somewhere.

However, just because people misuse the roadmap, it doesn’t mean we toss it out and fumble around through the woods.

While it’s true that God, not Torah, saves, the outright rejection of Torah has nothing to do with this realization. It is not accurate to say that Christians reject Torah because it doesn’t save. Christians reject Torah because we are sinners. We don’t want to follow Torah. We want to sin, and take advantage of God’s grace in order to be saved regardless of our laziness and hedonism.

The purpose of Torah is to make our laziness and hedonism obvious, so that we’d recognize we need to turn to God and allow Him to forgive us. But the Torah is still meant to be followed. We might not do it perfectly or well, but we are expected to at least make the effort. It is God’s minimum expectation for humanity. And despite what people tell you about it being impossible to follow, once you subtract all the commands that have to do with ritual and sacrifice, it’s not as hard as most people make it out to be. Read it sometime. Its difficulty has been exaggerated so that we’d have another excuse to ignore it.

Christians react strongly against those statements, and especially against what John says here: If you’re against Torah, you’re a sinner, and ultimately against God. I have heard so many Christians give so many harebrained excuses why they can’t follow God’s commands, or why they even shouldn’t. We teach that to follow them is legalism, or denies Jesus’s sacrifice, or insults God’s grace, or is only for the Jews whereas we Gentile Christians don’t have to follow their covenant in order to share their Messiah. We take Peter’s comment, “Why are you challenging God to add a yoke to the disciples’ necks, which neither our fathers nor we were forced to carry?” (Ac 15.10) and reinterpret it to mean the “yoke” was Torah. We take the idea that Jesus fulfilled it, and twist it to mean that Jesus nullified it.

1 John and its author have been accused of gnosticism, or ignored altogether. But those who feel they can’t ignore it twist its meaning away. Presumably it’s about how impossible God’s standard is, in order to show how much we need grace… except John doesn’t say that. He does talk about grace, (2.1-2) but still within the context of “Don’t sin.” (2.1) Thus I’ve known Christians to be simply horrified when I read 1 John 3 to them. They wait for me to offer an explanation. They want to hear that we don’t really have to deal with the facts John spell out for us—that “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven,”—that we don’t really need to actually follow Torah. But God’s grace is not a loophole. He wants us to obey. Those who don’t may make it into the Kingdom, but they will be the least of the people in it. (Mt 5.19)

One common excuse is that all have sinned, so there’s no point in trying to behave now; it’s too late, for we’ve all sinned. But John, here, is speaking in the present tense. He refers to everyone who is sinning now, not previous sinful behavior. I tell people, “Are you sinning right now?… No? Good; keep it up.” That’s why I inserted the word “currently” in my translation. The idea is that we must not be currently sinning. No, it’s not easy. But that’s why we remain in God. When we stay in the Light it is easier to keep away from sin.

This becomes our litmus test. When we’re sinning, we’re not living in the Light, we’re not God’s. If we claim to have a relationship with Him, but violate Torah and sin, and excuse it—whether with the bumper-sticker excuse of “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven,” or the most passionate Calvinistic argument for our powerlessness in the face of total depravity—it makes no damned difference. We lie. We’re not God’s. Our theology doesn’t make up for our behavior, and our behavior proves we’re out of relationship and right standing with God. We need to cut the crap and follow Him. Repent. Repent daily, or hourly, or a minute at a time, but repent, and stay in the Light, and fight sin instead of excusing it.

α. Lit. “[one] who is doing sin.”

β. Usu. “He,” meaning Jesus.

Trying to be pure like Jesus.

1 John 3.3.

3.3 καὶ πᾶς ὁ ἔχων τὴν ἐλπίδα ταύτην ἐπ᾿ αὐτῷ	Every one of youα having this hope in Him
ἁγνίζει ἑαυτόν,	are making yourselvesα ritually clean,
καθὼς ἐκεῖνος ἁγνός ἐστιν.	as pure as He is.

Too often I have to explain to Christians what ritual purification is. It’s a pretty standard concept in Judaism, and in first-century Phariseeism, but among Christians it’s dismissed as another form of legalism. Legalism, folks, is (1) when you make other people obey God’s rules, or (2) when you think your salvation comes from God’s rules rather than God’s grace. Dismissing God’s laws—including the commands to purify yourself—isn’t anti-legalism; it’s lawlessness. And lawlessness is sin. (v4)

Ritual purification is included in the laws in order to give the Hebrews an adequate sense of how holy God is. You don’t just go to worship Him wearing the same grubby clothes you’ve worn all week; you wash them. (This is not the same thing as wearing your Sunday best. Ironically, a lot of folks don’t wash their Sunday best, ’cause it’s dry-clean or something, and they don’t wanna dry-clean it till it’s funky. Nope; all God wants is clean clothing.) For that matter, you wash yourself, and don’t do anything before worship that dirties yourself—no touching dead things, nor having sex your spouse, and try to avoid bleeding (or doing any activity that would result in bleeding) if at all possible. Be presentable before God. He is your King, you know.

But the purpose of ritual cleanliness is not to be clean. Just as John used ritual washing as a representation of how we’re to repent from sin, (Mk 1.5) ritual cleanliness is a sacrament: It’s a physical act that represents a spiritual truth. We get baptized to represent a newness of life in Christ. We ritually clean ourselves to represent a holy life in God’s presence. Jesus pointed out that the exterior of the person has little to do with the interior corruption of the person, (Mt 15.16-20) which is more important. It’s not about having clean clothes, but having a clean heart.

Ritual cleanliness isn’t the same as sin. I pointed this out when I wrote about how even Jesus, who didn’t sin, was ritually unclean from time to time. (Mk 1.9) Even so, ritual cleanliness is representative of rejecting sin; and the following verses in 1 John have to do with rejecting sin. So in this context, John is referring here to sin, and to our rejection of it, as followers of Jesus, as people who do as He does (2.29) and look forward to His invasion. (v2)

The legalist misses the point, and over-focuses on the ritual. The lawless reject both the ritual and the holy lifestyle. Both are wrong. If our hope is in Jesus, we will put no hope in the ritual, and we will not live a lifestyle that implies we don’t expect Him to return or to be offended by our vile behavior. We are, instead, making ourselves pure, and prepared to cheer Him on at His coming.

α. Lit. third person.