1 John 3:9-10 reads, "9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10 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 God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister."
In order to understand what the Apostle is trying to communicate we must consider 1 John 1:8, "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." So, it is obvious when John writes in 1 John 3:9, "No one who is born of God will continue to sin..." he did not mean that the Believer ceases to sin. What John is trying to convey is this: the Christian cannot persist in habitual, continual sin because he is born of God. The Christian's spiritual parents, so to speak, are the word of God and the Holy Spirit. Just as my children bear my image, so the Believer will bear God's image. Sin will no longer be natural for the Believer. His heart is set toward God because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life.
In these two verses we learn that the Believer has been given the Holy Spirit in order to lead him into the truth. If you are a Christian, have you ever wondered why you have been "born again" or made alive to God? John tells us in v.10 the answer to this question. John writes, "This is how we know who the children of God are..." This is how we know. Why would it be necessary for anyone to know that a person is a child of God, that he does what is right and loves his brother? 1 John 3:9 tells us the answer. The reason a Believer performs anything good is due to the fact that God's seed (The Holy Spirit) remains in him. Remains! This implies that the Believer can not lose the seed (the Holy Spirit). You see, you and I are here to point others to Him. He is the answer.
Now, v.10 clearly says that all people are either in God's kingdom or the kingdom of the Devil. John is bringing to mind the words of the Lord Jesus himself when he said, "You are of your father, the Devil, and the works of your father you are going to be doing," John 8:44).
This phrase, "children of the Devil" means that they reflect the nature and characteristics of the Devil. All of mankind was born children of the Devil because we are all part of the fallen race of Adam. We are children of Adam who sold himself to the Devil, and all his children are like him. It is only by new birth that we become children of God. That is why Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Unless you be born again, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God," (John 3:3). We are all here to declare that there is a way out of this bondage to the Devil. Every day, you and I are introduced to many opportunities to share the Gospel with the ultimate purpose of helping those who are children of the Devil to see the light of the free gift of God through the finished work of the Lord Jesus on the cross.
Finally, the ultimate question is this: will you seize those opportunities?
In 1982, just a few months after I was "born again", God began exercising my heart to share my newfound relationship with Him with a friend by the name of Tyler. Tyler worked with me at the local grocery store. One Sunday I went into work and was told that Tyler was in the hospital in a coma. I was devastated because I had resisted the Lord's urging to tell Tyler about Him. I was fairly sure that Tyler was not a Believer in the Lord Jesus. Well, to make a long story shorter, I visited Tyler in the hospital. I'm not sure that he heard my story. If he did, he had a chance to decide whether to receive God's free gift of forgiveness through the finished work of the Lord Jesus on the cross. This story has fueled my zeal to tell others about the love of God since.
