By Matt O’Reilly
I speak with people about holiness a lot. People sometimes respond with skepticism (and sometimes antagonism), and they often quote 1 John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (KJV).
There it is, they say — everyone has sin. To think otherwise is to engage in self-deception. This is sometimes taken as obvious evidence that my view of holiness is plainly wrong.
The trouble with that approach is that the same person who wrote 1 John 1:8 also wrote 1 John 2:1, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin” (ESV). The two belong together and do not contradict one another.
For John, we all have sin, but we don’t have to sin. Everyone comes into the world in sin and with a sinful posture. If we claim otherwise, we lie to ourselves.
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“The work of Christ for us and the work of the Spirit in us make it possible for us to not sin, but they don’t make it impossible for us to sin.”
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But that damaged condition is exactly what Jesus came to restore. So John calls upon his readers to confess their sin and promises that Jesus is faithful and just and will cleanse believers of sin (1:9). He reiterates the point that anyone who thinks they’ve never had a sin problem is a liar and makes Jesus a liar (v. 10), but that doesn’t change this fact: Jesus came to cleanse us and free us from a life lived in the darkness of sin.
That’s exactly why Jesus came — to deal with our sin so that it no longer characterizes our lives. John writes to share this good news so that those who hear can stop sinning. That’s why Jesus came. That’s why John wrote.
So for John, the normal Christian life is not a life characterized by sin, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for Christians to sin. He acknowledges this in 1 John 2:1b, “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (ESV). This is important, because sometimes people grab on to the language of holiness (or entire sanctification) and go on to claim that they can’t sin ever again. They think it’s impossible for them to sin.
But Scripture doesn’t talk about it that way. For as long as we’re alive, it will be possible for us to sin against God. The work of Christ for us and the work of the Spirit in us make it possible for us to not sin, but they don’t make it impossible for us to sin. The possibility of sin will be with us the whole of our lives, even though the reality of sin is not to characterize our lives.
If we sin, we have Jesus, who loves us and pleads His own sacrifice in our place before His Father and ours. He is our advocate. He forgives us. He cleanses us. He enables us to live to please God. But this isn’t like flipping a switch such that it’s impossible to go back to a life of sin. It’s quite possible, but it need not be.
Instead of going back to a life of sin, John calls us to go forward in a life of obedience to God. John uses the image of walking with God to illustrate the point. If we abide in God, then we ought to walk as He walks (2:6). God’s life should be present in our lives. God’s character should shape our character. That’s what it means to walk with Him. We can say we walk with Him and still live in sin, but John says the person who does that is a liar. Walking with God means walking in obedience to God. Then John says this: “Whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection” (2:5 NRSV).
John, like other biblical authors, believes and writes that it is possible for God’s love to be perfected in us. That’s the life of obedience to God. It’s a life that is pleasing to God. It’s a life of holiness before God. And it’s supposed to be the normal Christian life.
Old and New Commandments
What does it look like “to walk just as He walked” (2:6 NKJV)? John fills in the picture for us in 2:7–17. He sets up two contrasting commandments — one is an old commandment (v. 7) and the other is a new commandment (v. 8). John doesn’t say explicitly what the old commandment is. But obedience to God that is embodied in love for God and others is a consistent theme of the letter, and, in the immediate context, he condemns those who hate their brothers and sisters while commending love for brothers and sisters.
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“Love for God and love for the world stand in opposition to one another.”
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It’s likely, therefore, that John has in mind the “new command of Jesus” in the Gospel of John 13:34 — “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another” (ESV). It was a new command when Jesus gave it; by the time 1 John was written, it’s “no new commandment,” but it’s still “the word that you have heard” (2:7 ESV).
But what is the new commandment that John now writes to believers? We get an answer to that question by looking for the first imperative to come after John declares his intent to write a new commandment in 2:8. That imperative comes in 2:15 — “Do not love the world or the things in the world” (NKJV). This is the new thing John writes.
To summarize, I’m suggesting that the old commandment John is thinking about is the commandment of Jesus to love one another (John 13:34), and the new commandment John is writing is the exhortation not to love the world and the things of the world (1 John 2:15). You can see how the two stand alongside one another and complement one another.
Love for God is obedience to Jesus embodied in love for others. This requires a resistance to loving the things of the world. John sees these as mutually exclusive. Love for God and love for the world stand in opposition to one another. We cannot offer our affections to both.
What does John mean when he speaks of the things of the world? He’s working in broad categories: “The desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches” (2:16 NRSV). The “desire of the flesh” likely involves self-oriented sexual lusts. The “desire of the eyes” evokes the notion of coveting things that are not ours. And “pride in riches” clearly addresses the human attempt to build up oneself with wealth that attempts to satisfy the longings of our hearts.
Lust, greed, and pride — what’s the common theme here? All involve desires and affections governed by self-interest. Like Paul in the letter to the Philippians, John recognizes that self-interest is antithetical to love for God. Love for the world and the things of the world reveal a human heart curved in on itself, not a human heart offered to God and neighbor. Don’t love the things of the world. Love the people God has placed around you.
The Question of Perfect Love
All that may seem quite straightforward. Of course, God wants us to love others. Do we really need a whole study to teach us that? Well, John isn’t quite finished. He also wants us to discover the beautiful reality that love for God and neighbor can be perfected in us. That’s the language he uses in 1 John 4:12. In just a moment, John will declare that “God is love” (4:16). This is the only conclusion that can be reached when we consider that “God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (4:9 ESV). John sees the sending of Jesus as an expression of the eternal perfect love that God the Father, Son, and Spirit have for one another.
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“God’s purpose for you and me is to make us participants in that perfect love, and we don’t have to wait for it.”
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It’s worth taking a moment to consider the claim that God is love. There are many ways to describe God: God is the creator; God is sovereign; God is the judge; God is the savior. But all those claims describe God in relation to us. God created us. God is sovereign over us. God is the judge of us. God is our savior.
What if we wanted to describe God, not with reference to us, but with reference to Himself? How would we do that? What word describes God apart from anything temporal or anything He has made? The word is love.
Consider this. Before God made anything, for eternity, the Father loved the Son and the Spirit; the Son loved the Father and the Spirit; the Spirit loved the Father and the Son. God is love because God is the Trinity — one God in three persons, three persons who exist in eternal relationships of perfect love. God’s purpose for you and me is to make us participants in that perfect love, and we don’t have to wait for it. He wants to do it now, and the Bible says He can do it now.
This is why Jesus came. He came to incorporate us into the perfect love of Father, Son, and Spirit. That love comes to perfection in us when we honor God with our lives by loving the people around us and remaining undistracted by the things of the world. Yes, Jesus came to forgive our sins, but He came for so much more than that. He came to fill us with His perfect love.
Remember that this is not about striving to obey a list of rules for the sake of the rules. This is about experiencing the love of God so fully that it fills us and overflows into the people around us. Yes, it requires self-denial, but it’s not a life of grueling struggle under sin.
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Matt O’Reilly, Ph.D., is an Alabama pastor who serves as the director of research at Wesley Biblical Seminary and as a fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians. He is the author of the new Seedbed book “Free to Be Holy: A Biblical Theology of Sanctification” from which this article is an adapted excerpt. His other books include “Paul and the Resurrected Body: Social Identity and Ethical Practice” (SBL Press) and “The Letters to the Thessalonians” (Seedbed).
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