1 John 2:28 – 3:10  And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!  This is the certainty and conviction of those who follow Jesus. We are children of God, claimed by Him, His name on us through Baptism, Jesus calling us brothers and sisters. This is the action God’s love has taken in our lives. This is our hope.

But there are some parts of this passage that can be confusing and easily misunderstood.

No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. … No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

There are those who maintain that those who come to faith in Jesus stop sinning. Nothing could be further from the truth. Read what the Apostle Paul says about himself in Romans 7. While we are admonished and encouraged to stop sinning, and we try to live that way with God’s help, we continue to fall short of the people God would have us be.

So what is John writing about here? It is a matter of who is in control of you. John is contrasting the Children of God with the children of the Devil. Those controlled by Satan continue to sin and make no effort to stop because they see no reason to live otherwise. But those who live by faith no longer want to sin. We still do it because of our weakness, but we don’t want to be controlled by our sinful desires. We want to do what is right. We want to live according to God’s Will. We want to keep His laws. We want Jesus to be in control of our lives.

Why? Because we know what He has already done for us. He kept the Law perfectly in our place. He paid for all our sin with that perfect life. He brings us into His family as dearly loved children who will live with Him forever. We strive to do what is right to thank our loving God for what He has already done for us.

We try not to sin, but when we do, we have the assurance that God will forgive us for Jesus sake. Just go back to what John shared at the beginning of chapter 2.

1 John 2:1–2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.