The Way That Men Walk Reveals Whose Children They Are (1 John 3:8-10).
‘Little children, let no man lead you astray. He who practises righteousness (carries righteousness into practise) is righteous, even as he is righteous, he who practises sin (deliberately carries sin into practise) is of the devil, for the devil sins from the beginning. To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.'
John wants to make sure that no one leads them astray and deceives them about the truth. Each man, says John, has one of two basic aims, either to carry righteousness into practise in every aspect of their lives, that is, by seeking to live as God has revealed in order to do His will, (including obedience to His Instruction or Law in the Scriptures), or to go on practising sin and thus demonstrating that they are careless about the will of God. Men are for God or against Him. The one puts righteousness into practise because he is seeking to please and be like the Righteous One, because there is a righteousness implanted within him. Such people are aiming to be like Him, because they are His. The other is of the Devil. Such people are lawless, just like the Devil has been, right from the beginning. They do not want God's laws or seek His will. ‘From the beginning' is probably a reference to Genesis 3-4. They set themselves against the will of God, just as he did.
Paul put it quite clearly. ‘I as I am in myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin' (Romans 7:25). The one was his choice, his option, his desire, his aim. The other his weakness, his curse, that from which he longed to be delivered.
‘To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the Devil.' Indeed this was why Jesus came into the world as the light of the world, so that what the Devil had achieved might be destroyed, so that what he had done might be nullified. Rebellion and lawlessness are the Devil's work. It was the Devil who first led man to rebel against God, and who stirred up Cain to kill Abel, and he has been doing it ever since. Jesus came to thwart him and to bring man back under the Kingly Rule of God. That was the purpose of His coming.
‘The works of the Devil.' The closest parallel to this in John is in John 8:41, where Jesus tells those who were seeking to kill him, ‘You are doing the deeds of your father,' and again in John 8:44, ‘You are of your father the Devil.' Those great ‘lawkeepers' were demonstrating their lawlessness, and thus that they had chosen to follow the Devil, to be ‘children of the Devil', behaving like him. Theirs was a set attitude of mind. All who choose the way of sin, says John, are like them.