Daily Bread - Jan 16 2007

1 John 3:6 - "Everyone who abides in Him has no sin, everyone that sins has not seen Him nor known Him."

The power to overcome the thirst for sin is only found in knowing God. Jesus gave the woman at the well of Samaria the remedy for her sin. All she needed to do was to receive the gift of God and drink of the Spirit and she would never thirst for the things of the world again (John 4:10,14). Jesus gave us an allegory in John 15 to describe how He desires us to live our lives in Him. We are to abide in Him as a branch abides in the vine. This kind of relationship and dependence upon the life and power of God will result in our constant obedience and success.

We can be certain that by the time that John was addressing the church with this Epistle there were many who had never physically seen Jesus. Yet their was a fellowship that they had with Jesus that John included them in, "we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon" (1 John 1:1b). We know that as far as John was concerned this was literal for He had been with Jesus for at least three years and had many opportunities to do all of these things. But now about 60 years later there would be very few people who would have had and opportunity to literally do this. Therefore, when John uses this word for 'seen' or 'vision' he is using it in a spiritual sense. John is using this phrase to describe those who really know Jesus (1 John 2:4; 4:8).

To believe somehow that God does not expect us to walk in holiness and perfect obedience is nothing more than deception (1 John 3:7; Ephesians 5:6; 2 Timothy 3;13). If men are going to learn to walk in the perfect obedience to God then they are going to have to learn to walk in the Spirit and abide in Christ (Romans Galatians 5:16,25; Romans 8:1,4).

Blessings,

Pastor Mark Spitsbergen
abidingplace.org