The book of First John contains some important information all
followers of Yeshua (Jesus) should know.
In the late first century, when John wrote this letter to the
assemblies of the faithful, there was a pitched battle going on with
false believers called gnostics, who split themselves away from the
true believers, yet deceitfully claimed to be believers themselves.
(See 1 John 2:18--19 which alludes to this juncture, calling it, "the
critical moment," or literally: the last or final hour).
The gnostics had a complex system of beliefs, the most extreme of
which were eliminated from the Church when the gnostics were said to
be "defeated". Actually, they were not truly defeated, but merely
became more subtle in insinuating their beliefs into the Church.
The gnostics hated the physical world (which they believed was created
by another "god"), and therefore focused on what they touted as
"spiritual" perfection. They rejected outward obedience to God's Law,
and argued for an invisible and impossible-to-prove inner perfection
instead. (This is what the Catholic Church teaches to this day
regarding "sanctification", which is said to be an inner process and
state of the "soul"---something which, of course, is not amenable to
objective verification.)
Thanks to gnostics, the Christian Church lost the true knowledge and
awareness of what, in reality, sin is. The majority of Christians
today are indeed hard pressed to explain what sin is, and will resort
to essentially stating that it is, "bad stuff," and they will give
examples like murder, theft, adultery, and so on. It is true that
those things are, in fact, sins, but the essential definition of sin
is lacking.
John the apostle tells us, instead, that sin is breaking God's Law,
just as the first man, Adam, did when he ate the fruit which God
forbade to eat. This simple fact was, and still is, in danger of being
lost, due to the battle being fought against gnostic heretics.
In 1 John 3:4, we are clearly told:
Everyone practicing sin also practices lawlessness, and
sin is lawlessness.
Lawlessness is rejecting, ignoring, negating, abolishing, or otherwise
turning a blind eye to and failing to practice the laws that God has
set forth in Torah, which is essentially the Pentateuch, or the first
five books of the Bible. Yeshua himself told us quite plainly that
this is the Law all of God's people must follow (see Matthew
5:17--20).
The Catholic and Protestant Churches have their own ideas about what
lawlessness is, but these ideas do not square with a plain reading of
Scripture and the very words of Messiah.
