True community and connection with God provides freedom from the practice of sin...

At the church where I serve, we just came to the conclusion of a sermon series entitled Connect. During this series, we looked at a letter that is recorded for us in the New Testament of the Bible, called the book of 1 John. During this series, we are discovering the components that make for true connection and community, along with the landmines and roadblocks that keep us from true connection and community. And as we go through this series, our hope and our prayer has been that God would move by the power of the Holy Spirit in our heads, hearts, and hands, in a way that moves us to the place where we can experience the connection and community with God and one another that we were created and designed to experience.

This week I would like for us to spend our time together picking up where we left off last week. And as we jump into the final section of this letter that has been preserved and recorded for us in the New Testament of the Bible, called the book of 1 John, we will see John reveal for us another timeless truth when it comes to how we can experience the connection and community with God and one another that we were created and designed to experience. So let’s jump into the final section of this letter together, beginning in 1 John 5:18:

We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.

John begins this final section of his letter by making a seemingly impossible statement: “We know that no one who is born of God sins.” But what does that even mean? Is John saying that true Christians never sin? Because if John is saying that true Christians never sin, then is anyone truly a Christian? After all, we all know that, even after becoming followers of Jesus, are guilty of selfishly doing things that we should not do, or not doing things that we should do, that hurt God and others, which the Bible calls sin. So what is John’s point here?

To understand what John is communicating here, we first need to understand what John means when he uses the phrase born of God. As we discovered earlier in this series, when John uses the phrase “born of God”, this phrase is passive; it is something that God does to us. When we respond to Jesus making Himself known to us by placing our confident trust in Him and recognizing and acknowledging who He is by accepting Him as being large and in charge of our lives, we become a part of the family of God.

Becoming a part of the family of God as a child of God is solely the result of God’s transformational activity in our lives. It is only through God’s transformational activity in our lives that flows from His desire to bring us into an eternal relationship with Him that results in us becoming a child of God as a part of the family of God.

John’s point here is that it is God’s transforming work in our lives that results in a person becoming a child of God who is a part of the family of God also results in that person having a new heart and new desires by the power of the Holy Spirit to follow Jesus Christ that is revealed and demonstrated by our lifestyle, or practice of life. John is not saying that the person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God will never sin; John is saying that the person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God will not live a lifestyle that consistently practices sin.

The person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God does not live a lifestyle that is characterized by selfishness and rebellion against God and others. Instead, an act of selfishly doing things that we should not do, or not doing things that we should do, that hurts God and others, is out of character for the person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God. 

In addition, John states that for the person who is born of God, God keeps Him. In other words, the person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God is kept in that state of relationship and connection by God’s power. And because the person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God is kept in that state of relationship and connection by God’s power, John states that the evil one does not touch him.

As we discovered earlier in this series, when John refers to the evil one, he is referring to the Devil. In addition, when John uses the word touch here, this word literally means to make contact so as to harm or injure. John’s point is that God protects the person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God from the evil one causing harm or injuring the nature of that relationship and connection.

The person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God will remain for all eternity in that relationship and connection because of God’s transforming power in their lives that has brought them into that relationship. We see Jesus Himself reveal this reality in a prayer that John recorded for us as part of an account of Jesus life that bears his name. So let’s look at that prayer together, beginning in John 17:12-15:

"While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled. ¹³ "But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. ¹⁴ "I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. ¹⁵ "I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.

And it is here, in this final section of this letter, that we discover us a timeless truth when it comes to connecting in community. And that timeless truth is this: True community and connection with God provides freedom. Just as it was for followers of Jesus in John’s day; just as it has been for followers of Jesus throughout history; True community and connection with God provides freedom. And in 1 John 5:18-21, we see John reveal three different areas where true community and connection with God provides freedom.

First, in 1 John 5:18, we see John reveal for us the reality that true community and connection with God provides freedom from the practice of sin. True community and connection with God provides freedom from the practice of sin because God’s transforming work in our lives that results in a person becoming a child of God who is a part of the family of God also results in that person having a new heart and new desires by the power of the Holy Spirit to follow Jesus Christ that is revealed and demonstrated by our lifestyle, or practice of life.

And because of that reality, a person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God does not live a lifestyle that is characterized by selfishness and rebellion against God and others. Instead, an act of selfishly doing things that we should not do, or not doing things that we should do, that hurts God and those around us, is out of character for the person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God. 

True community and connection with God provides freedom from the practice of sin because the person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God is kept in that state of relationship and connection by God’s power. True community and connection with God provides freedom from the practice of sin because God protects the person who has a genuine and authentic relationship and connection with God from the evil one causing harm or injuring the nature of that relationship and connection.

As John continues this final section of his letter, we see John reveal a second area where true community and connection with God provides freedom. We will discover that second area tomorrow…