Sermon outline

INTRODUCTION
The world is divided into two great families. On the one hand, there are those who are “called children of God” (3:1), while on the other hand are the “children of the devil” (3:10). The main distinguishing mark is conduct: Children of the devil practice sin, while children of God practice righteousness.

THE TEXT
“And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him . . . .” (1 John 2:28-3:12).

STRUCTURE
John begins to introduce the issue of practicing righteousness at the end of chapter 2, but after 3:12 the words “righteous” and “righteousness” don’t appear again in the book. The passage has a roughly chiastic structure:

A. “Little children”; practice righteousness; born of God, 2:28-29
B. Children of God; world doesn’t know Him, 3:1
C. When he appears, 3:2-3
D. Sin is lawlessness, 3:4
C’. He appeared to take away sin, 3:5
B’. No one who sins knows Him, 3:6
A’. “Little children”; practice righteousness; born of God, 3:7-12

Righteousness doesn’t simply refer to our individual conformity to God’s commandments, though it means that. To practice righteousness also means to pursue right relations with other people and to seek justice. The unrighteous are murderous like Cain; the righteous is generous (3:17).

HOPE
We are able to practice righteousness because we are “born of God” (2:28). John goes so far as to say that those who are born of God “cannot sin” (3:9). Earlier, he said that anyone who claims to be sinless is a liar and makes God a liar (1:8, 10). But John hasn’t contradicted himself. In 3:9, he’s talking about a way of life, and not saying that Christians achieve sinless perfection. Those who are born of God are characterized by righteous conduct, while those who are children of the devil are dominated by sin.

When we are born of God, we are born to hope. We look forward to God’s appearance, and to the transfiguration we’ll experience when He appears, a transfiguration that surpasses all we can imagine (3:2). This hope motivates us to purify ourselves, so that already now, before He appears, we can be pure as He is pure (3:3).

WARFARE
The two families within humanity are at war with one another. The children of the devil hate the righteous works of the children of God and, like Cain, persecute the righteous to death (3:12). But we shouldn’t fear or shrink back from these attacks. Jesus came to “take away sins” (3:5) not only in the sense of atoning for the guilt of our sins but also in the sense of liberating us from the power of sin. The seed of the serpent hates the seed of the woman (3:13), but we can be confident because Jesus “appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (3:8).