He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. 1 John 3:8
There exists in the world today countless divergences from the faith once delivered unto the saints. And the ultimate reason why these other gospels exist is because men love the world and its sin. To avoid conflict with worldly wisdom, literal truth has been substituted for allegorical interpretation. In its train has followed a careful avoidance by false shepherds to call out popular sin. While such may teach that virtue is better than vice, these prophets of Baal lull their congregations into a death sleep with the pleasing notion that they may be saved in their sins.
But said angel Gabriel when he appeared to Joseph: ‘thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from [and not in] their sins’ (Matthew 1:21). Hear the words of the beloved disciple, you who plead for Baal: ‘he that committeth sin is of the devil’ (1 John 3:8). It is to be understood that to choose to live in sin is to second the career of the great apostate and author of sin, 'for the devil sinneth from the beginning’. Said Jesus to those who were offended when he exposed their corrupt characters and lives: ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do’ (John 8:44).
Sin is never something the Bible speaks of lightly, but always with abhorrence. It is ‘fools [who] make a mock at sin’ (Proverbs 14:9). The true gospel does not merely offer ‘sin management’. The unpopular truth is that the gospel offers (and requires) the utter expulsion of sin from the life. To ‘destroy the works of the devil’ was the ‘purpose [for which] the Son of God was manifested’ (1 John 3:8). Satan has wrought through our members many evil works. The iniquity of our sins has so stained our hearts and characters that ‘they be red like crimson’. But the Lord’s promise is that ‘they shall be as wool’ (Isaiah 1:18).
A man whose son was grievously afflicted by an evil spirit asked Jesus: ‘if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us’. Jesus’ response put the onus on the man. Jesus asked him to make the choice to believe: ‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth’ (Mark 9:22-23).
When you look upon ‘the works of the devil’, those ‘wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores’ that have marred your character (Isaiah 1:6), remember that the very purpose Jesus for which was manifested was ‘that he might destroy the works of the devil’.
Christopher Sparks