Sermon Synopsis
This sermon calls believers to “know Him” by practicing righteousness, not as a way to earn identity, but as the outward evidence of being born of God. It unfolds righteousness in three aspects—God’s perfect righteousness, righteousness imputed to us through faith in Christ, and the practical righteousness we pursue in daily living. Practicing righteousness is shown through growing awe at the Father’s love, living in the light of Christ’s return, and approaching God with a clear conscience—confessing real sin and rejecting Satan’s false accusations. The aim is a life of confident, worshipful holiness that longs for Christ’s appearing rather than shrinking back in shame.
Note: Due to a technical issue, the audio is choppy between approximately 35:17 and 36:00, with some words affected. The overall message remains clear.
Please note: This transcript is provided as close to verbatim record of the sermon.
Day 4 — Knowing Him by Practicing Righteousness
Text: 1 John 2:28–29; 3:7–8, 10; 3:1–3; (also 3:20–22)
Opening
All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to day four. Can’t believe we are already on day four this week. I’ve just been really, really enjoying your singing here. You guys sing like this all the time, or just because Daniel and I are here this week—and this is amazing. Yeah, that’s what I thought—especially when you sang What a Friend We Have in Jesus. That was so nice.
All right, so today—day four—because it is day four, what I thought was: let’s do a pop quiz.
Well, thanks for moving to the front. So, you might be the targets here, right? [laughter]
Pop Quiz Review
All right. Let’s do some review of the things we have learned so far.
You all pass the pop quiz.
Oh—one more question, sorry, my bad. We talked about “Do not love the world.” And there are four things we looked at to be able to not love the world. What’s number one?
Keep His commandments. Very good.
Second: abiding in Him.
Third—someone in the back: Growing in Him. Excellent.
And fourth: Doing His will.
Today’s Theme
So today we’ll be looking at: Knowing Him by practicing righteousness.
If you can turn your Bibles to 1 John chapter 2, we’ll read a few verses.
1) The Call to Practice Righteousness
Before we read, how many of you know there’s going to be a Winter Olympics next year? Yes. Okay. How many of you know where it’s going to be held? Somebody said it. You don’t know? Okay. Well, I didn’t know either before I searched it on Google. [laughter] It’s in this place called Milano Cortina in Italy.
The Olympics is a big deal. In terms of participating in the Olympics, not every person can do that. It’s not just because I have a certain amount of talent or certain talents in me that I go for Olympics. It’s way beyond just talents. It’s practicing.
How many of you know this lady—this athlete—Simone Biles? That’s right. One of the greatest athletes of all time. And she trains about 7 hours a day, 6 days a week. These athletes go through very rigorous training day in and day out. Her morning starts at 7:00 a.m. with three and a half hours of training, and then afternoon from 2 to 5:15 p.m., a second session focusing on apparatus work, tumbling, strength and conditioning, cross training. She also swims and bikes as part of her strength and endurance work. A lot of training.
And even more famous is this guy—Michael Phelps—probably the greatest athlete of all time, as they say, at least in terms of the number of medals that he has. Every day, listen to these statistics: he swims 5 to 6 hours, six or seven days a week, supplemented by at least three weekly dry land workouts. Phelps swam 13 kilometers a day, six or seven days a week—at least 80,000 meters every week—even on Sundays and birthdays. And when there was time in the gym, he did functional training with weights and so on. Simone Biles won 11 Olympic medals and Phelps won 28 Olympic medals. A lot of medals.
But I’ll tell you what: these people worked for something that was not going to last for a very long time. Five years from now, if I were to show that picture, maybe people might know, or may not know. Ten years from now, there’s a good chance they’ll have to go back to ChatGPT and say, “Who’s this guy?” or Google and find who this guy is. People forget. These are not lasting achievements.
Who remembers where the 2022 Winter Olympics was? In Beijing? That’s right. Who remembers where 2018 was? I think it was in South Korea. Yeah. You go back just like six years and you still are struggling, and just four years and I need to go back to my notes to find where the exact location was. We forget. These things are going to be forgotten.
But what we have in the Lord is not going to be forgotten at all—what we practice. So today we’re going to talk about practicing something that is going to remain in you for the rest of your life and in eternity as well. God is not going to forget it, and you’re going to be rewarded for practicing righteousness.
Reading the Text
Let’s pick it up in 1 John 2:28–29:
“Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.”
Now 1 John 3:7–8:
“Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
And verse 10:
“By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.”
Did you notice the repetition of those two words? What are the words? Practice righteousness.
One thing that needs to change in someone who was not a believer and has become a believer is his lifestyle. Lifestyle changes when a person is born again. There must be growth—there must be a growing change in every believer when he comes to know the Lord.
Lifestyle changes are an indicator that someone is born again. All right?
But make no mistake: a born-again person’s true identity is rooted in what he believes and revealed in how he lives. Your identity is not based on how you live. Your identity is not based on lifestyle changes. Your identity as a believer is because you’ve been born again—it’s because of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, because of the faith that you have put in the Lord Jesus Christ. But then it is also revealed in how the person lives—the lifestyle changes that we’ll be talking about.
John said this in 1 John 5:13: “These things I have written to you who believe… so that you may know that you have eternal life”—that you may know, you know, by what you believe, and what you have believed, and how you live.
So John talks about what characterizes the life of a believer.
2) What Is Righteousness?
Now practice what? Practice righteousness. Again, another big word. We’ve seen one or two big words so far—like propitiation. Today we’re talking about righteousness.
What is the meaning of righteousness? The meaning of righteousness is: the character or the quality of being right or just. Righteousness is to be impartial.
John uses it here as he talks about righteousness, and we’re going to look at a few things we need to understand clearly.
First, we need to understand God’s righteousness.
When we say God is righteous, what do we mean? We mean God is impartial. God is always right in what He does. That’s God—He has to be perfect. He has to be holy. And if He has to be holy, He has to be right in all that He does.
The Old Testament talks a lot about God’s righteousness:
And turn to Romans 1:16–17. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel…” Verse 17: “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed…”
What is the “it”? Look at the previous verse—“the gospel.”
So: In the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.
That’s an amazingly wonderful statement you have to think about: How does the gospel reveal the righteousness of God? Was God right in sending the Lord Jesus Christ to the cross?
Turn a couple pages to Romans 3, starting from verse 21. We read: the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed… and then it says God set Christ forth as propitiation by His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness… “so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
So in Romans 1 we saw righteousness revealed in the gospel. In Romans 3 we see God’s righteousness demonstrated on the cross.
Here is the thing: if God were to be right all the time, and you and I being sinners—if God is right all the time—where should we go? What should our destiny be? We should be condemned, right?
Now what has happened is: the righteousness of God is combined with the love of God. The righteousness of God and the love of God have come together—and that’s the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn’t that amazing?
Now the second thing: imputed righteousness. Turn to Romans 4.
Verse 3: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” If you have King James it probably says “imputed.”
The word “imputed” is an accounting term—logizomai—it means it was credited onto him.
So, if I say, most of you are teenagers—my guess is you probably don’t have a whole lot of money in your account. But tomorrow morning you get a ping on your phone and it says you have one million dollars credited onto your account. Wouldn’t that be amazing? [laughter]
That’s exactly what it means. When Abraham believed in God, the righteousness of God was credited onto him—onto his account.
This is earthshattering truth. And 2 Corinthians 5:21 says: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
This is the beauty of salvation—believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.
What is the need for the righteousness of God to be put on your account and my account? The need is: God is holy. There is no way you and I as sinners can get into the presence of God. There is only one way we can become part of God’s family: when God puts that righteousness in us. And that happens when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And those last two words—“in Him”—are so important. Take them out and the verse doesn’t make sense. We become the righteousness of God only in Him.
Now the third aspect: practical righteousness.
Because the righteousness of God has been imputed into our lives—put into our account—it does not mean we will do the righteous thing every moment of our lives, because we are in the flesh.
So practical righteousness means deciding to do things that are right in the sight of God.
Why should a believer practice righteousness? Because God is righteous and His seed abides in us. We ought to be like the Lord Jesus Christ. We practice righteousness because we don’t want to shrink away in shame at His coming.
And to practice means—to put on.
3) “Practice” Means “Put On”
Turn to Ephesians 6. Starting in verse 10: “Finally, be strong in the Lord…” Verse 11: “Put on the full armor of God…” And verse 14: “Stand firm… having put on the breastplate of righteousness.”
Practicing really means to put on.
Now these days we don’t necessarily use a breastplate. The closest we can come to is the police bulletproof vests. Do you know what material it’s made out of? Kevlar. Very good. Kevlar has a high strength-to-weight ratio—very strong, surprisingly very light.
Why is the breastplate important? Because the vital organs are here—heart, lungs, liver, stomach, and so on. Satan always wants to target our hearts, doesn’t he?
That’s why the breastplate of righteousness is very important.
Proverbs says, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”
And Matthew 15 says, “Out of the heart comes evil thoughts…” Satan wants to target the heart.
So embracing and putting on righteousness—doing what is right—is essential to the practical aspect of righteousness.
4) How Do You Practice Righteousness?
Now we move on: we talked about righteousness, the definition, the aspects. So how do you practice righteousness?
One of the things this passage talks about is growing in the admiration of the love of God.
Look at 1 John 3:1:
“See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are…”
When the New Testament books were written there were no chapters and verses. So you might think John was talking about practicing righteousness, and then all of a sudden he says, “See how great a love…” It does correlate. It does follow.
Because when he talks about righteousness—those born of Him—he steps back, amazed at the love of God, and he comes out with this beautiful verse.
If you have KJV, it says, “Behold what manner of love…” It’s like: take a step back. Look at the vastness of His love.
“What manner of love” is the Greek word potapos—from what country? This love is so foreign—where is it coming from? You have never heard of a love like this.
These are words of amazement. Like in Matthew 8:27: “What kind of man is this?” Or Mark 13: “Teacher, behold what wonderful stones…”
And the love of God is inexhaustible. It reveals depth every time we come back to it.
Does it excite you? Does it humble you when you think of the love of God—our theme for this camp?
Think of these lyrics:
“The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell…”
“Could we with ink the ocean fill… to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry…”
And:
“Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free…”
And we sang it. Thank you, brother.
It’s going to take eternity—and still we would not have scratched the surface of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is no religion in the world that talks about the love of God like this. Behold the manner of love—see what kind of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called what? The children of God.
There is no better identity that you need to have than this fact: you and I are called the children of God.
October 10th, 2004 and May 30th, 2009—I will never forget in my life, because the Lord gave me two boys. Those are the births of my boys. I remember Steven’s head popping out as I was in the surgery room when my wife had the C-section, and that moment changed my life. There is a life in this world that has come from my marriage with my wife. What an amazing truth that is.
You and I are the children of God.
It doesn’t matter whether you are the greatest orator, elder, deacon, commended worker, or you have the greatest musical ability, creative ability—none of that is the identity that should excite you to the grave. It is that you are a child of God.
This was Paul’s prayer as a mature believer: that you would comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to the fullness of God.
Application: Worship God for the love that He has bestowed on you. Are you a worshiper of the living God? Do you worship Him on a daily basis? In your quiet time, do you worship Him? You may not be able to fall before the Lord on Sunday morning, but in your room you can fall prostrate before God in worship, adoring Him and thanking Him for what He has done.
Let not the love of God grow cold in your life.
Secondly, you live in the light of Christ’s return.
Look at 1 John 3:2: “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be… but we know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.”
What does it mean: “it has not appeared as yet what we will be”? On one hand he says we don’t know; on the other he says we know. Is he contradicting himself? No.
There are things we know: being absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. If I drop dead now, I’ll be with the Lord in heaven—guaranteed—because I belong to the family of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But if the Lord were to come before this message ends—which would be a great thing—when the Lord comes we will all be transformed. We will be given glorified bodies. The details of what those bodies will be like—we don’t know. We can deduce some things from the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus, but outside of that we don’t have an idea.
But what we do know is: when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
Now verse 3: “And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
“He purifies himself”—present active indicative—something happening right now.
Do you believe in the return of the Lord Jesus? Do you know you’re going to have glorified bodies? Do you know you don’t belong here? If those things are true, then this has to be true: you will be purifying yourself.
You don’t want to be caught by the Lord in something you don’t want Him to see you do. You don’t want to be doing things you’ll be ashamed of at His return.
He’s not using the usual word for holy here—he’s using a word that speaks to the action of cleansing—how you wash yourself, how you confess sin, how you want to be holy before Him.
And it is sad that many young people today are caught up in pornography. Porn is stealing the best years of thousands of young Christians. We live in a pornified society.
You gave statistics, and the point was clear: this sin affects the local churches, and it’s tied directly to impurity.
Hebrews says: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” Why does it say that? It’s like saying: you have not gone to the extreme—even to the point of shedding blood—for the reason of being holy because God wants you holy.
If your phone is a hindrance, “shedding blood” might look like throwing it away, locking it up, or giving it to someone you can be accountable to. You won’t imagine the people I’ve talked to—advised them—get rid of the smartphone, go back to the flip phone. People wanted to do that because they wanted to strive, resist to the point of shedding blood. I have the passwords for a couple people in our chapel because they are striving.
So what is your “shedding blood” in order for you to be pure before the Lord? The Lord is coming—He’s going to come—He may be coming today. You want to be striving. You want to be as holy as you can be in your walk with Him.
If you are practicing righteousness, you must be living in the light of the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thirdly: approaching Him with a clear conscience.
Look at 1 John 3:20–22 (the idea is the same across translations; the NET uses “conscience”): if our conscience condemns us, God is greater than our conscience and knows all things. If our conscience does not condemn us, we have confidence in the presence of God—and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing to Him.
So there’s a relationship between conscience—condemning or not condemning—and our prayer life.
What is conscience? It’s a faculty, power, or principle that steers toward what is right and away from what is wrong. It’s the inner moral compass God has placed within every person which responds to God’s moral law and urges us toward what is right. It functions properly only when shaped by Scripture and kept sensitive through obedience.
It’s like the warning mechanism—warning light—the ability to sense guilt. It’s a tremendous gift.
The Greek word is suneidēsis—core knowledge.
You told the story of coming home from work: your boys were little, they would run and hug you, but one day your younger one—two or three—was standing in a corner. You asked if your wife put him there; she said no. He put himself there because he did something wrong and she said, “When daddy comes home, I’m going to tell him.” That was enough for him.
Why? Because conscience is in everybody’s life.
Now, when we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, conscience is cleansed—Hebrews talks about drawing near with hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. But even after we’re saved, we sin, and conscience can condemn us.
So John is talking about two possibilities.
1) Conscience condemns rightly because of real sin
How can conscience condemn a believer? Because a believer sins. That’s true condemning. When conscience condemns you, you won’t have confidence going into the presence of God. You feel guilty.
So what do you do? You confess your sins. You repent. You seek God’s forgiveness. That’s the way you go to His presence with confidence.
2) Conscience condemns falsely because of Satan’s accusations
But there are times when conscience condemns us even though we already confessed our sins to the Lord. Why? Because of the accuser of the brethren—Satan.
Revelation 12:10 calls him the accuser who accuses day and night. And he’s very good at it. After you confess, he comes back: “You remember what you did yesterday… you’re still guilty.”
And then you can start thinking, “I’m still guilty.” But that means you’re not believing in the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus Christ—you’re not taking Him at His word.
There’s a word for this: scrupulosity—a form of spiritual or moral anxiety where a person becomes excessively worried about sin, guilt, or whether they have truly pleased God.
And when that kind of condemning happens, John says: God is greater than our heart. If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things.
You have to put your faith in the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel not only saved us from the penalty of sins—the gospel continues to save us in the sense that you can go to God with confidence when you have confessed. You don’t have to shy away. You don’t have to feel guilty all the more. God has forgiven you.
This has got to be one of the “wow” verses in the Bible: if my heart condemns me in a false way, God is greater than my heart. I can go to the Lord and freely express myself with confidence because He accepts me.
You brought up Peter—he denied the Lord three times, wept bitterly, and then in John 21, the Lord restored him. Peter had gone back fishing—like, “I can’t be in this anymore.” He even took others with him. But the Lord restored him: “Do you love Me?” three times.
When Satan wants to take your life away because of confessed sins, God wants to restore. God wants you to approach His throne with confidence and humility.
Conclusion
So we looked at three things today in terms of practicing righteousness:
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, for the teachings of the Scriptures. Your word is so deep, so deep and wonderful. Lord, we pray you will give us the grace and the wisdom and the knowledge to be able to appreciate the depth of your word today. Thank you for this group and for their dedication and their commitment to study God’s word and be able to sit under the sound of God’s word for an hour, which is so admirable. Lord, we pray that you’ll bless them with the word of God and the blessings that come from it. We give you thanks now in Jesus’ name. Amen.