And we read in Scripture that Jesus came or was revealed to take away sins. (I John 3:5). Now that might be as exciting to some of you as the fact that Crest fights tartar build up, or that Pro V shampoo and conditioner puts an end to split ends, or that Honeycombs cereal is part of a complete breakfast. I know that when some of you hear that you say, “Yahoo, Crest has come to fight tartar build up!”

But there be some who say, “Who cares?” And there may be some who have the same reaction when they hear that Jesus has come to take away sins. Who cares? Big deal, you may say with a shrug.

O my friends, it is a big deal – because sin is the root cause of all our problems. Well, what is sin? What is does sin mean? The word sin means to miss the mark. It is a word used in archery. If you fire an arrow at a target and miss the target it is called sin. If you miss the target by half a centimeter you have sinned. If you miss the target by 5 feet you have sinned. If you miss the target by a mile you have sinned.

We often think of sin as the bad things that we do, and in some ways that it is true, but if sin is missing the mark, the truth is that sin is not a measurement of how bad we are - sin is a measurement of how good we are not. Do you understand the difference?

If you miss the go train by a minute you have missed it. If you miss it by 10 minutes you have missed it. If you miss it by an hour you have missed it. You don’t congratulate yourself saying, “Wow I only missed that train by one minute!”

There is a sense that God is not interested in how bad we are, He is interested in how good we’re not. Sin is missing a mark, whether it is by an inch or a mile. That means that sin is relative. We don’t know what sin is, unless we know what the mark is that we have missed.

John says in our text, verse 4, “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” In other words he says that anytime anyone sins, no matter the nature of the sin we know what they have done, they have broken the law of God. Or another way, the law is represents the target that we miss when we sin.

Sin is not being good enough. We are not good enough, we have missed the mark, we are missing the mark and will always miss the mark in and of ourselves. And this is serious because, as I said, sin is the cause of all our problems.

Sin is the reason why some feel that God is distant. This is the word that Isaiah spoke to the people of God he said, “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:2)

And again in Isaiah 64:7 “No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.”

You see God who is holy cannot be where sin is. His character won’t allow it, it’s like trying to mix oil with water, it simply can’t happen. Because we constantly miss the mark we cannot be with God.

Sin is the root of all our problems. I don’t know about you, but I want to be with God. If He is, as we discovered last week, revealed fully to us in Jesus Christ, then He is someone that I want to be with. He is someone I want to talk to, He is someone I want in my life. If He is as loving and as compassionate and powerful and almighty and wonderful and awesome as Scripture says, then He is someone I want in my life. But I can’t have Him and sin at the same time. Sin separates us from God. Sin is the root of all our problems.

Or consider the terrifying result of sin - we read in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death. That means that the payment for missing the mark is death. I don’t want to die, and I know I’m not alone in this. I read in last weeks paper an interview with Jack Nicholson. He says in that interview that he is petrified of dying. Imagine self-confident, strong Jack Nicholson afraid of death. He is. Why do we die? Because of sin, it is the natural result of sin. It’s the root of all our problems.

And then think of the total universality of sin. There isn’t one man, woman, boy, girl or child who does not sin. We have all missed the mark.

“Everyone has turned away; they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 53:3)

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6)

“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags, we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” (Isaiah 64:6)

“Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Or in I John 1:8

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

We have all missed the mark that God has set. Sin is the root of all our problems.

And then consider the fact that we can do nothing to rescue ourselves from sin. We always are missing the mark. We can try to be good, but it’s never good enough. We always are missing the mark. The mark has been set so high, the law is so perfect, that we cannot ever meet it. We cannot live it day after day after day. Never. You and I are corrupt. In myself I cannot be what God requires me to be. Do you remember Eddie Haskell in the "Leave it to Beaver" series? Eddie always appeared to be upright and good on the outside when he was around Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver. But when we see him behind closed doors we saw the true Eddie - conniving, self-centered – and so with us all. On the outside we may be okay - we haven’t broken any of the ten commandments. But on the inside, we are full of lust and greed and revenge, we are corrupt. The truth is that many of us don’t have the opportunity to act as we would.

And you say, "Hold on - this doesn’t seem fair. Why has God set the law so high, why has He set the standard so high that we will always be missing the mark? Why does God expose our failure like this?"

And the truth is that God exposes our failure, He is constantly telling us through Scripture that we have missed the mark – not to humiliate us, not to rub our noses in our failure, not so that our self-esteem is so low that we have to ask a snake to scratch it – it is that we would be moved out of our indifference to sin and see our absolute poverty – it is always that He might transform us and fill us with his life.

It is not because God has a thing against us, but that God has a thing for us!

You see God is not so interested in what you do as much as who you are, and the fact is that you and I are sinners. The core of our hearts is sin.

Well what are we to do? I want to be close to God, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to be continually missing the mark. Here’s the good news. Jesus Christ came to take away your sin.

Now you see why this is more exciting than the fact that Crest fights tartar buildup? Because Jesus Christ has come to deal with the root of our problem. He has come to bring us close to God, He has come to release us from death. He has come to take away our sin.

How does He do that? Well you notice that the rest of that verse adds, “In Him there is no sin.”

That means that in Him there was no missing of the mark. He came and lived among us and there was no lawlessness in Him. In fact we read in Matthew that He came to fulfill the law. That means that all the requirements of the law that we are not able to fulfill He has fulfilled; all the stipulations of the law that we simply cannot keep, He kept. All the moral obligations that we failed to meet, Jesus Christ met. There is no missing of the mark in Him.

Well, how does that help us?

This is the good part! Verse 6 – No one who abides in Him sins.

Understand that – no one who lives in Him, no one who believes in Jesus Christ misses the target! Jesus is our representative. He is our substitute, a perfect substitute, a perfect representative - He is the one who hits the target and He takes away our sins. No one who abides in Him, that is no one who trusts Him, no one who places their faith in Him no longer misses the mark.

Do you know that in the Old Testament there is a picture of the priest taking the sins of the people and placing them on the head of a goat. It’s all very symbolic. He lays his hands on the goat and he sets that goat out into the wilderness, so with that goat all the sins of the people were gone – out into the wilderness. So we have the phrase, a scapegoat – he is the one who takes all the sins, all the blame for the people.

And so with us, we place our sins on Christ - He takes them from us and we are now sinless. That’s what it says in verse 6 “No one who abides in Him sins.” No one who trusts in Him now sins. We are forgiven. We are made new.

So that is the good news – Jesus came to take away sin and no one who lives in Him sins.

And you may say, that’s ridiculous. I know lots of Christians who sin. And that’s true. But here’s the wonderful truth – when we believe in Jesus Christ to be our Saviour, our substitute, the one who hits the target for us – well He comes and lives in us. And now when God looks at us what does He see? Does He see our sin and filth and our inability to hit the mark? No, He sees Jesus Christ in us. He sees His son. We are new creations, the old has gone and the new has come. When God looks at us now He sees a reflection of His Son living in us.

That’s what verse 9 means – those who have been born of God do not sin, they no longer miss the mark because God’s seed, that is Jesus Christ, lives in them. They cannot sin, they cannot miss the mark because they have been born of God. They have God’s life in them. They have Jesus Christ living in them now.

But, you do have a lingering question – What about the last part of verse 6 and verses 7 and 8. They seem to imply that if I ever sin then I am a child of the devil. No I don’t think that’s what these verses are saying, remember the context. The context is telling us about what Christ has done for us, He has come to take away our sin. And now with Christ living in us God sees Him.

I think verses 7 and 8 are saying, if that’s what has happened to you, then make it a reality in your life. If you are a child of God – then live like it, don’t continue in sin, but live purely (verse 3), live holy, live a life that reflects what Jesus Christ has done for you. He has taken away your sin, so that you no longer need to live in it or be enslaved by the master of sin, Satan.

Yes, I will fail; yes, I will stumble into to sin but now I know that if I confess my sins He is faithful and just and will forgive me of all unrighteousness.

I compare it to this. When I was a teenager I worked for my dad in his business. And I remember being very conscious of the fact that I was the owner's son. I was my father’s son. And because of that I always sought to be 15 minutes earlier than every one else. I made sure that my lunch break was 30 minutes, no longer and maybe a little shorter. And I was particular about punching out at 5 or just a little bit after that. Why? Because I was my father’s son. I enjoyed the work, it wasn’t something that I had to do, but it was because of who I was – I was the boss' son. So there was a desire to reflect that relationship in what I did. So I set to do my work diligently. If someone else did it sloppily, I tried to do it the best I could.

And this is what John is saying - all those who have been born of God now seek to do what is right, not because we want to win God’s favour, not because we have this obligation, but because of God is our Father who has showered us with love and so we stay a little longer, we work a little harder, we seek to be pure and holy and righteous in all our words and actions.

John is not speaking about sinless perfection. He is speaking about to whom you belong. In verse 8 he says you can tell who belongs to the devil he says. But those who are children of God seek to do what is right.

Because Christ has changed who we are He has given us the power to change what we do.

My friends, Jesus Christ has come to take away sins. That’s not boring news, it’s not dull news – it’s the best news we have ever heard for now – now - we can live with God, now we have life, not death, now we are freed from the power of sin and can live a life that does right. Because Jesus Christ has hit the mark for us.