Several readers have asked me what I'm referring to when I tell people in my evangelistic encounters to examine themselves in light of the tests for true salvation found in 1st John. Below is what I take them through or tell them to go through:
- Those who are born of God keep His commandments:
By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. 4 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; (1 John 2:3-4 NAU)
The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. (1 John 3:24 NAU)
- Those who are born of God walk as Christ walked.
but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: 6 the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. (1 John 2:5-6 NAU)
- Those who are born of God don't hate other believers, but love them.
The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. (1 John 2:9 NAU)
We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. (1 John 3:14 NAU)
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8 ESV)
- Those who are born of God don't love the world.
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15 NAU)
- Those who are born of God confess the Son and receive (have) Him.
Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. (1 John 2:23 NAU)
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. (1 John 4:15 NAU)
He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. (1 John 5:12 NAU)
- Those who are born of God practice righteousness.
If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. (1 John 2:29 ESV)
- Those who are born of God don't make a practice of sinning.
No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. (1 John 3:6 NAU)
No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:9-10 ESV)
We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. (1 John 5:18 ESV)
- Those who are born of God possess the Spirit of God.
The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. (1 John 3:24 NAU)
By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. (1 John 4:13 NAU)
- Those who are born of God listen submissively to the apostolic word.
We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:6 NAU)
- Those who are born of God believe that Jesus is the Christ.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. (1 John 5:1 ESV)
- Those who are born of God overcome the world.
For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith. (1 John 5:4 ESV)
Taken from John Piper, Finally Alive, (Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2009), 125-128.
11. Those who are born of God are baptized and receive the Lord's Supper for the spiritual nourishment, health and comfort of the elect.
ReplyDelete12. Those who are born of God are brought into the church and are fed by word, sacrament and discipline.
13. Those who are born of God seek to bring all areas of life into conformity with the Gospel.
13. Those who are born of God bring their covenant children into the visible church through baptism.
14. Those who are born of God observe -- and delight in – the Lord’s Day.
15. Those who are born of God worship God according to Scripture.
16. Those who are born of God sing the Psalms in private, family, and public worship.
17. Those who are born of God distinguish between law and gospel, works and grace, justification and sanctification.
"13. Those who are born of God bring their covenant children into the visible church through baptism."
ReplyDeleteAre you seriously intending to mean all Baptists are not born of God?
Dusman:
ReplyDeleteFirst point:
1.) As for not being born of God, Piper says "those who are born of God don't make a practice of sinning." Well, guess what? You and I make a practice of sinning. Even our good works are mortal sins. That is inescapable.
2.) While there is certainly wisdom in self-examination, one must be careful in doing so. Looking for "external evidences" like this can drive you to morbidity. We are all horrible, wretched creatures outside of God's grace.
4.) At a certain point, we can only cling to the Cross. Luther would shout "I am baptized and I believe in Christ crucified." While we may not agree with Luther on everything, he has a point. My assurance is ultimately rooted in what Christ has done.
Second point:
1.) The Bible says the covenant is to us and our children. Children are to be baptized and not to do is indeed sin. True Christians are expected to have their babies baptized.
2.) If the Bible commands something and you don't do it, that is a sin. By denying infant baptism, you hold to a serious error. It harms you and children, as well as creating havoc in the church.
3.) So, yes, you ought to repent of your baptist beliefs. (I have done so myself.) Does this mean that none of the elect are Baptist? No.
4.) By comparison, those born of God should rejoice in irresistible grace. That doesn't mean there are no elect Arminians.
RVDS said:
ReplyDelete"As for not being born of God, Piper says "those who are born of God don't make a practice of sinning." Well, guess what? You and I make a practice of sinning. Even our good works are mortal sins. That is inescapable."
Me:
Um, actually "not [making] a practice of sinning" IS one of the conditions given by John in his first epistle (e.g. 1 John 3:4-10), and examining ourselves to make sure of our election is exactly what the NT teaches (e.g. 2 Corinthians 13:5; 2 Peter 1:10).
RVDS said:
"Even our good works are mortal sins. That is inescapable."
Me:
That's a commonly misused verse (Isaiah 64:6) in historic Protestantism. The context is that the Israelites were being hypocrites: what commandments they did obey they did as lip-service or intentioned as self-serving. These were not genuine good works.
RVDS said:
"The Bible says the covenant is to us and our children."
Me:
You've horribly misused Acts 2:39. The covenant is not what is promised; rather it is the forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit. Verse 39 is epexegetic to verse 38. "You and your children" are all those who REPENT and are baptized (v.38).
S&S:
ReplyDelete1.) You don't have a practice of sinning? You've committed no sins today, right?
KJV renders the text: "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin." By your reading, how is anyone saved?
2.) Certainly examining yourself is wise. Yet even in evangelical obedience, which is certainly commanded, there are stains of sin. Our motives are never pure in this life.
3.) If I can't look at Isaiah 64:6 ["filthy rags"] and not see myself, then I certainly do need to begin self-examination!
You said,
ReplyDelete"2.) If the Bible commands something and you don't do it, that is a sin. By denying infant baptism, you hold to a serious error. It harms you and children, as well as creating havoc in the church."
That makes more sense from a Lutheran standpoint than a Presbyterian standpoint since Lutherans believe in baptismal regeneration though Presbyterians do not.
So it's not clear, even on Presbyterian grounds, how withholding infant baptism creates "havoc in the church".
Also, to my knowledge, Presbyterian theology regards the sacraments as means of grace for the elect, not the reprobate. So unless every baptized child is elect, including all those who live to maturity, then reprobate children aren't receiving grace through the sacrament, even on Presbyterian grounds.
You also said,
"1.) As for not being born of God, Piper says "those who are born of God don't make a practice of sinning." Well, guess what? You and I make a practice of sinning."
Piper was taking his cue from the phraseology of 1st John 3:9. Most Reformed commentators I have studied on this passage have indicated that this verse (and others like it in 1st John) are not referring to *complete* sinless perfection, but instead, this refers to a person that lives in a state of ongoing habitual, unrepentant sin. This interpretation also seems to best comport with the present tense use of the Greek verb poieo in said passage.
If this or another similar interpretation is not the correct understanding of 1st John 3:9-10 and other similar passages like it, then John is contradicting himself because in 1st John 1:8 he says, "If we say that we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us." However, if we hold to the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture and recognize the harmony therein, John is not teaching absolute sinlessness as a necessary fruit of having been born of God, but he's really saying that one born of God will live a life of habitual walking with Christ, repenting and confessing sins as necessary, and daily cross bearing wherein the desires of the flesh are being put to death by the power of the Spirit. These are those who don't "make a practice of sinning."
RVDS said:
ReplyDelete"You don't have a practice of sinning? You've committed no sins today, right?"
Me:
The rendering of most Bible translations is interpretive. The context of 1 John 3 is not whether someone sins everyday but whether someone sins in an egregious and habitual manner that disproves that they have ever been born of God. John makes the distinction between sins not leading to death and sins leading to death (5:16-17). The "making a practice of sinning" would apply to the latter (5:18).
RVDS said:
"Certainly examining yourself is wise. Yet even in evangelical obedience, which is certainly commanded, there are stains of sin. Our motives are never pure in this life."
Me:
While that's true, the only tests of assurance that Scripture ever commends to us are ones of self-examination.
RVDS said:
"If I can't look at Isaiah 64:6 ["filthy rags"] and not see myself, then I certainly do need to begin self-examination!"
Me:
While the statement that our good deeds can never live up to God's perfect standards is true, the specific historical context of the passage in question has nothing to do with that.
Thanks Dusman for the list.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I have a distinct preference for credo-baptism; doesn't bother me that there's ecclesial division between credo-baptists and paedo-baptists, and am unwilling to call paedo-baptists gross heretics.
Randall van der Sterren said:
ReplyDelete4.) At a certain point, we can only cling to the Cross. Luther would shout "I am baptized and I believe in Christ crucified." While we may not agree with Luther on everything, he has a point. My assurance is ultimately rooted in what Christ has done.
BTW, we got into a debate with a Lutheran over the assurance of salvation not too long ago.
Dusman wrote, " Most Reformed commentators I have studied on this passage have indicated that this verse (and others like it in 1st John) are not referring to *complete* sinless perfection, but instead, this refers to a person that lives in a state of ongoing habitual, unrepentant sin."
ReplyDeleteFor what it is worth, it seems as though commentators are moving away from the “practices” sin idea based on the verb tense.
For example, Yarbrough writes regarding 3:6, “Nor is it advisable to resort to the understandable but unsatisfactory expedient of stressing the alleged continual nature of the sinning John has in mind (e.g., NIV/TNIV: ‘No one who live in him keeps on sinning’). This may be true, but ‘keeps on sinning’ (adopted also be the ESV) probably overreads the verb tense (cf. Wallace 1996: 524-25; contra Kruse 2000: 120 and many other commentators).
Another commentator writes, “It is small wonder the ‘tense solution’ in 1 John 3:9 is in the process of imploding in the current literature. It was shrewdly questioned by C.H. Dodd in his commentary in 1946 and dealt a major blow by S. Kubo in an article entitled, ‘1 John 3:9: Absolute or Habitual?’ published in 1969. It has since been given up by three major critical commentaries published since Kubo’s article; namely I. Howard Marshall (1978), Raymond Brown (1982); and Stephen Smalley (1984).”
Hi Verily,
ReplyDeleteI am aware that many commentators are moving away from this view. I am not entirely convinced by what I have read from them, but I did however find Daniel Wallace's interpretation convincing in his Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 524-25 which I think is best summed up in his final comments on 1 John 3:6,9:
"Thus, the author states in an absolute manner truths that are not yet true, because he is speaking within the context of eschatological hope (2:28-3:3) and eschatological judgment (2:18-19)."