Is John teaching us in these verses that Christians never sin? Is he teaching us that the sure sign of a saint is sinlessness? If so, then John is contradicting himself. He has already clearly taught in this very epistle that anyone claiming to be without sin is guilty of self-deception and void of the truth (1 John 1:8.). In addition, John has said that all who deny their sin are making God out to be “a liar” by blatantly contradicting the Word of God (1 John 1:10).
Obviously, John is not contradicting in the third chapter of his first epistle what he taught in the first chapter. We all sin, Christians and non-Christians alike. As Christians, we may even struggle with a besetting sin, a sin that continually trips us in our Christian walk (Hebrews 12:1). Nevertheless, for a Christian to sin he has to go squarely against the grain of everything in him. It is this inward resistance to sin that is the sure sign of our salvation and the whole point John is trying to make in 1 John 3:4-10.
According to John, all of us who are “born of God” will abide in Christ and not in sin, because God’s “seed” abides in us. Who is God’s seed? God’s seed is His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ lives in every born again child of God. He lives in us in the person of the Holy Spirit.
As a result of being indwelt by God’s seed, we “cannot sin” unless we fight our way through the resistance of the indwelling Holy Spirit. If successful in fighting our way through to sin, despite the Spirit’s resistance, we’ll then find ourselves engaged in a whole new struggle. No longer will we be fighting against the Spirit so that we can sin, but now we’ll be fighting with a guilty conscience because we have sinned. Instead of the Holy Spirit restraining us from it, He’ll now be convicting us for it. In the face of all of this, the reborn child of God will think twice before sinning again.
This inward struggle with the Holy Spirit faces the reborn child of God every time he sins. Therefore, John writes, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin.” In other words, anyone continuing to live in sin cannot possibly be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. If he was, his inward struggle with God’s Spirit would be to great for sin’s continuance. This explains John’s confident assertion that anyone who is not being constrained from sin and compelled to do “righteousness” by God’s indwelling Spirit “is not of God.”
It is not a matter of sinning in our lives, which we all do, both sinners and saints, that John is addressing in this passage. Instead, it is a matter of living in sin. While all sinners will be found to do so, no saint will be able to. Any saint who tries, will be miserable. Anyone not miserable in sin, cannot possibly be a Christian; that is, someone within whom Jesus lives in the person of the Holy Spirit.
