We have finally come to the last message in the book of 1st John. I’m a little saddened by that. John has a unique style of writing, and a particular message which is absolutely essential to the Christian life. His whole epistle is a series of dogmatic declarations concerning how we may know that we have eternal life. And that theme is summarized here in these last verses by a series of doctrines which he says enables us to know that we are born of God.

The theme of the entire letter was summarized in vs 13, which says, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” We can know that we have eternal life, by faith in, by believing in the name of the Son of God. To believe in the name means that we believe in the entire ministry of Jesus Christ; that He is the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God, who came to earth to live without sin in order to be our Savior, who died for our sins upon the cross, so that we might have our sins forgiven, and be given His righteousness, and be born again of His Spirit who lives in us. That is what it means to believe in the name of Jesus.

Then John said that another way we know that we are born of God, is that He hears us when we pray, and He answers our prayers that are in accordance with His will. Being the children of God is evidenced by the fact that our Father listens to our prayers and answers them. That’s a particular privilege of being a child of God. The unsaved person does not have that assurance.

Now as we come in our message today to verse 18, John gives us yet another assurance, another principle by which we can know that we have eternal life. He says in vs18 “We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.” Greek scholars tell us that the proper translation of the word “sins” is to read it as continues in, or practices sin. John isn’t saying that a Christian never sins. He said back in chapter 1 vs 8 “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

So the point is not that we never sin, but that he who is born of God does not continue in sin. He doesn’t practice sin any longer. Sin no longer has dominion over him. He is not under the power of sin. Jesus died on the cross not only to purchase our pardon for the penalty of sin, but also to deliver us from the power of sin over us. In our natural state we were enslaved to sin, but in our new life we are set free from sin. So we no longer practice sin. As John said previously in chapter 3 vs 9 “No one who is born of God practices sin.”

In other words, the Christian life is incompatible with sin. A Christian has been given a new nature, the nature of the Spirit within him, and so he practices righteousness. He is no longer controlled by sin. As one theologian said, “A child of God may sin, but his normal condition is one of resistance to sin.” So we can know we are born of God because we have a new nature that does not practice sin any longer.

Now that is true because of the next phrase in vs 18, because as John says “He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.” He who was born or literally, begotten of God keeps him. John is speaking of Jesus Christ as the One who keeps the person who is born of God. Jesus prayed on the night before His crucifixion, in the gospel of John 17:12, 15 “While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled. … 15 “I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil [one.]”

So the Lord Jesus, the good Shepherd of the sheep, keeps His flock, and protects them from the evil one. The evil one is, of course, Satan. How does Christ keep us? What does that mean? It means that He keeps us from falling from grace. Jude says, in Jude 1:24-25 “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present [you] faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Savior, [be] glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.”

Jesus said in John 10:28-30 “and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given [them] to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch [them] out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” So you have a double guarantee that no one, not even the evil one, can snatch them out of the hand of God. Jesus keeps those who are His.

Jesus keeps us from the evil one. Satan cannot touch us without God’s permission. We need not fear the devil because greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world. Now for those of us studying Job on Wednesday nights, we know that God did give permission to Satan to touch Job, but God did not allow the devil to take his life. Satan had said to God, “Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side?” That is, I believe, the normal situation for the one who is born of God. God has a hedge of protection around us. Satan cannot touch him. He has to get permission.

You might remember that Jesus speaking to Peter said that Satan has demanded permission to sift him like wheat. And on that occasion God obviously gave the devil permission to tempt Peter. And Peter gave into that temptation and denied knowing Christ. But even though Peter fell, yet Christ sustained him. He kept him and came to him after His resurrection and restored Peter to full fellowship.

So Christ keeps us from the controlling power of sin, and the condemnation of sin, so that we who are born of God cannot continue in sin. We know that we are safe in the arms of Jesus from all attacks of Satan to try to take us from our position as a child of God.

John then states another thing we can know in vs 19, that we can be assured of. Vs19 “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in [the power of] the evil one.” John repeats a similar statement that he made back in chapter 3 vs 2, “Beloved, now we are children of God.” We have been given new life from God, born of His Spirit, so that we are now the children of God. We belong to His family. We belong to the kingdom of God. Such a tremendous privilege we have, to not only belong to the kingdom, but to be the children of the King. And we know that God is sovereign over all the affairs of men. We have the power and authority backing us of the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords and we are His representatives on earth. We belong to Christ.

But John contrasts our security in Christ with the fact that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. The world speaks of the opposing kingdom. The kingdom of this world, whose ruler is the evil one, Satan. Don’t misunderstand something, Satan does have a certain amount of power and authority. But its not equal to the power and authority of God. God has allowed him a degree of power and authority over the world for a limited time and in a limited capacity.

If you remember when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by the devil, the scripture says the devil took Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment’s time. And the devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.”
Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY.’”

Notice that Jesus didn’t rebuke the devil for lying when he said that the kingdoms of this world had been handed over to him. I think that is true. But Jesus, as the Son of God, knew that it was God who gave him that authority, and that the devil’s dominion was only for a short time. Jesus said in another place that the devil is the ruler of this world, but that one day he would be cast out. Paul in 2 Cor. 4:4 calls him the god of this world. From the account of Genesis 3, we know that by deception Satan took control over this world. So the whole world lies in his power. But Satan knows that his time is short before Jesus comes back to claim this world and vanquish him forever.

The world worships the devil, though they may not realize it. They bow before the idols that he has set up in the world system which seek to captivate people by empty promises of peace and prosperity and happiness. The devil has so orchestrated the course of this world as to take advantage of man by lies and deceit and enslave him to trying to find in satisfying the lusts of this world. And as such it is what the Bible calls the dominion of darkness. It’s populated by people who are attracted by the bright lights of this world, but the result is that they are blind and they cannot see that the real light of the world is Jesus.

But we are the children of God, and we belong to the kingdom of light. Paul said in Colossians 1:13-14 “For [God] rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

That leads us to the third thing that we know. Look at vs 20; “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.” This is the last time John writes, “we know.” I think there are 33 references to the word “know” in this little epistle.

This time, however, John wants to remind us that God became incarnate, became flesh, and dwelt among us that we might know God. God revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:1 says that “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

We could not know God unless God revealed Himself to us. And John and the other apostles teach that God revealed Himself perfectly in Jesus Christ. He is the radiance of God’s glory, and the exact representation of His power. If you want to know what God is like, then look at Jesus. As Jesus said to Philip, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.”

But in contrast, Satan doesn’t reveal himself as he really is, does he? He is a liar, and the father of lies. The Bible says he masquerades as an angel of light. He pretends. He deceives. But Jesus is the truth. And John says that He has given us understanding. How does that work? I will tell you how. It is through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our teacher. Back in chapter 2, John told us that the anointing, that is the Spirit, teaches us the truth. He says in vs 27 “As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.”

You know, there are a lot of misunderstandings concerning the Holy Spirit that are being taught in some of the churches out there. A lot of them teach that the purpose of the Spirit is to give us a feeling, an experience, by which we can validate our Christianity. And as a result they only seem to be concerned with the showy gifts of the Spirit.

But Jesus said that the Spirit’s primary purpose was to glorify Him. He said in John 16:13-14 “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose [it] to you.” So the Spirit’s primary function is to reveal the truth to us, and help us to understand the truth of Christ. The Spirit of God has inspired the word of God, so that we might know the truth. And then He gives understanding to the child of God, that they might grow in the knowledge of the truth.

John says that in addition to learning to know God, “we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ.” In other words, we have fellowship with Him through His Son Jesus Christ. We abide in Him, and He abides in us. As Jesus prayed in the upper room before His crucifixion, John 17:20-21 “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, [are] in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

Now practically, how do we experience this oneness with Christ? I believe it’s by the word of God and the Holy Spirit. We read the word, study the word, believe the word, and act in accordance with the word. And the Spirit of God in us helps us to understand the word, and to obey the word. That’s what it means to abide in Him, and He in us. To walk where He leads, to walk in the Spirit and by the Spirit. And it’s also how we grow in the knowledge of God. That’s why we place such a premium in this church on reading and studying the word of God. There is no other way by which we can grow in our relationship with God, and grow in maturity in our faith.

Notice in this closing statement, John declares the deity of Jesus Christ. He says “we are in Him who is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” This is the basis of the gospel, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Without faith that Jesus is God in the flesh, we cannot be saved. He can give eternal life only if He is eternal, if He is immortal, if He is God. There can be no atonement, no forgiveness, if Jesus was not God. Only God can forgive sins. Only God can make atonement for the sins of the world.

The other night at Bible study we had a discussion about what kind of faith do we have to have to be saved. What do we have to believe to be saved? Because the Bible says that the devils believe in God and tremble, yet they are not saved. People in Christ’s day believed that He was a living, breathing person and they saw Him die on the cross, yet they were not all saved. So what constitutes saving faith?

Well, I alluded to the answer earlier when we talked about believing in the name of Jesus. To believe in the name of Jesus is to believe all that His name represents. All that He taught. All that was prophesied of Him and which He fulfilled. We were talking about Job the other night, and what he believed about God, and how little revelation he had received, and yet how deep was his faith.

We have been given tremendous revelation. We have been given 66 books containing God’s word. Job had none. We have been given the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. He is the greatest revelation. And we have the testimony of many, many eyewitnesses to Him, and practically all that He did and said recorded for us. So we who are given much, much shall be required. But at the very least, to be saved we must believe that Jesus is the Christ, that is the Messiah, the fulfillment of all Old Testament pictures and symbols and prophecy. And that He is the Son of God. That is He is deity. He was in the beginning with God, and He was God.

Then we have to believe in the finished work of Christ in His ministry on earth. That He lived a perfect life, to be our example, and to be our Savior as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He came to earth to die for my sins. And by trusting in Him and all that He is, and all that He has done to redeem me, I have forgiveness of my sins, and receive the Spirit of God in me as a deposit on eternal life. We need to believe all that. Because all of that is incorporated in the fact that Jesus is God and eternal life is in Him.

There is one last sentence with which John closes this epistle, and at first glance it may seem out of place. It seems disconnected with all that has previously been said in this passage. But when you think about it, John has been making a contrast between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. He has been contrasting the kingdom of God’s Son, and the dominion of the evil one.

So now at the close, I believe he is merely extending that contrast by showing that while we worship Christ, the Son of God, the true God, yet the world worships idols, they worship false gods. And so John warns us to stay away from the idols of the world, because they are the means by which Satan controls the world.

Now what is an idol? Do people really bow down to idols today? Do they have little statues on their mantle that they light candles to, and say prayers to? Well, maybe some people do that sort of thing. But I believe most of the idols of the world we live in are a little more subtle than that. The devil is good about disguising his idols so that they don’t look like idols. Idols may look like a career. Idols may look like a savings account. Idols may look like a vacation home. Idols may look like a beautiful woman or a handsome man. Idols may look like sports or entertainment stars, or movie stars.

John lived in Ephesus, one of the worst cities in ancient history in regards to idol worship. There was the temple of Diana which sat on a hill overlooking the city, which employed prostitutes, priests, craftspeople, vendors, and all sorts of officials who promoted worship of the false god Diana. She promised fertility, prosperity and all the carnal pleasures of the world that were attractive to the people. And so John was well familiar with the evils of idol worship.

But today we can worship the false promises of our idols as well as the idols themselves. And the world system that Satan has orchestrated has an idol to fulfill every desire of the flesh and the mind. So we have to guard against that strategy of the devil which seeks to turn our affection away from God, and turn it to this world and the things of the world.

Paul identifies idolatry in Col. 3:5 “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.” I think he is saying that all of those things amounts to idolatry. Christians are susceptible to idolatry as well as the unsaved. So as Christians, Paul says we must mortify the flesh. Put to death the things of this world. Consider them as dead. And look to that which is life indeed.

But for the unsaved who may be hearing the gospel this morning, who are perhaps worshipping the god of this world, the things of this world, striving to find fulfillment in tangible, temporal things which are passing away, I would like to close by asking you a question from Mark 8;36 which records the words of Jesus saying, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Jesus gave His life so that you might be forgiven for your sins and receive everlasting life. Trust in Him as your Savior and Lord that you might be saved from the system of this world which seeks to keep you in bondage to sin and it’s penalty, which is eternal death. As John said in chapter 5 vs 13 “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Turn to Jesus today and receive eternal life.

As we enter this last section of chapter 5, John is summing up all that has been said up to this point in what you might call the epilogue.  John’s style of writing is one where he uses repetition to teach us certain doctrines and principles.  And each time he repeats a principle, he usually adds some new dimension to it.  But now that he has reached the conclusion, he makes his final statements regarding these reoccurring themes.

Probably the most frequently repeated principle that John makes is the assurance we can have of our salvation.  Not only has he explained the means by which we might know that we are saved, but he has shown the evidence of salvation, so that we might be fully assured.  And also the other aspect of that was to reveal those who were not really saved, but who may have claimed to be, but they were actually false prophets.

This has really been the central theme of the epistle – how to know that you are saved.  John states this concept of salvation several different ways.  For instance, in chapter one he referred to it as having fellowship with God.  In chapter two he said it was to know God. At the end of the chapter he refers to it as abiding in God.  In chapter three, John refers to salvation as being the children of God, or born of God. In chapter four he says we are from God, or of God.  And in chapter five he calls our salvation the life, or eternal life. All of those terms are used to describe  our salvation and he uses them interchangeably and repeatedly throughout the epistle.  All of them speak of some aspect of our salvation.

The other much repeated principle he teaches frequently is that we may know.  John uses the word know around 33 times in this epistle.  He wants us to have assurance of certain truths, certain principles.  And the most essential principle that he is concerned about is that of our salvation.  He wants us to have assurance of our salvation.  So repeatedly he has given us assurances or evidences or tests that we might know that we are saved.  John believes that we might know that we are children of God, not that we might hope we are, but that we might know it and have any doubts or uncertainty about our eternal life settled here and now.

So now as he concludes this epistle, he says in the 13th verse; “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”  I have referred to this verse at least a dozen or more times since we started studying this epistle. And yet like John, I realize that repetition is an aid to learning.  And furthermore, some of you may not have been here for some of our previous teaching.  So at the risk of repeating myself, I want to briefly expound on the major points of this verse, for the sake of greater assurance to those who have already heard, and the benefit of those hearing for the first time.

John’s summary statement says he has written these things.  These things refers to the entire letter up to this point.  But the main point that he is making is that faith in Jesus Christ, or to believe in Jesus Christ, is the essential key to the assurance of our salvation.  There is salvation in no one else.  Peter, preaching in Acts 4:12 said, ”And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

But when the apostles speak of the name of Jesus, they do not mean merely saying the name, or believing that simply repeating the name Jesus has some magical power.  But to believe in the name of Jesus Christ is to believe in the full revelation of the Son of God.  That full revelation then includes His deity, His work, His ministry, His teaching, His word, His work of atonement, His life and death and resurrection and ascension into heaven to sit at the right hand of the throne of God.  All that the gospel teaches concerning Christ is included in the name of Jesus Christ.

So to believe then does not merely mean that we believe that Jesus lived and died 2000 years ago. Or that He was a good teacher, or a rabbi, or a prophet.  But as Peter said in Matt.16:16 in answer to Jesus’s question, “whom do men say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the Christ the Son of the living God.” To believe that He was the Way, the Truth and the Life.  And that the words He spoke were truth and life.  To believe that He bore our sins on the cross and died in our place, that we might receive forgiveness of our sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

That belief is the means by which John says we may know that we have eternal life.  And as I have said almost every week, eternal life is not just life that never ends, but it’s the life of God in us.  It’s spiritual life. It’s fellowship with God.  As the wages of sin is death, so righteousness is life.  And the righteousness we receive from Christ gives a life that will never pass away.  This body will one day pass away, but our soul and spirit will not pass away, and at the resurrection will be joined to a glorified body just as Christ has, an immortal body that will be forever with God. Life with God is eternal life.

And we can be assured of eternal life because of His promise to us.  John said back in chapter 2 vs 25 “This is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life.”  Jesus promised eternal life to those who believe in Him.  For instance, Jesus said in John 11:26 “and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”  Jesus promised eternal life, and we can have assurance because of His promise.  God cannot lie.  His word endures forever.  His promises never fail.  And He gives us the Holy Spirit as a deposit on the fullness of that promise.

Now that leads John to assure us of another promise we have from Christ.  And that promise is that He hears us when we pray, and He will answer our prayers.  The fact that God answers our prayers is another assurance by which we know that we have the life of God.  John said back in chapter 3 vs 21 “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;  and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.”  Notice John says we have confidence when we ask of God.

So building upon that principle John reassures us of our salvation by the promise that God will answer our prayers.  He says in chapter 5 vs 14 “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.  And if we know that He hears us [in] whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.”  Notice, John uses the same word, “confidence” in regard to prayer in this verse as he did back in chapter 3 vs 21 which we just read concerning receiving what we ask of God.

What he mens is that because we have eternal life, the life of God in us, we have the confidence, literally, the freedom, to approach the throne of God in prayer at anytime.  I remember a famous photo of the President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office.  The Oval Office is probably one of the most restricted areas in the world, and yet in this photograph you could see the President’s young son playing under the desk.  That young boy had the privilege of being the President’s child, and so he had unrestricted access to his father.  We have that kind of confidence with our Heavenly Father, to come to Him in prayer at anytime.  That freedom to come in prayer to the Father is an assurance that we are a child of God.

Not only do we have the privilege, we have the freedom to ask for whatever it is that concerns us, because we know that our Father hears us. John says if we ask anything according to His will He hears us.  To hear us, means that He will grant our request.  But notice that there is one caveat.  The caveat is that we ask according to His will.  So this is not a blanket promise that if we ask anything at all, we will get what we ask for.  Many of the false teachers on television teach a name it and claim it type of so called faith that is based on a wrong understanding of this verse and others like it. They teach that if you have enough faith, God is obligated to answer your petitions in the way that you want them answered.  The only condition in their minds, is your faith, or lack of faith.  They teach that if you aren’t healed, or you didn’t get that new job, or whatever,  it’s due to your lack of faith.

But John is clearly saying that the condition for a child of God receiving what you ask for is not faith, but is whether or not it’s God’s will.  Even Jesus, the Son of God, understood that His prayers were contingent upon it being God’s will. When He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed, “not My will, but Thy will be done.”  And we know that God did not answer His prayer to let the suffering of the cross pass from Him.  So if God didn’t answer even Jesus’s prayer, then we should know that God will not answer every prayer we make if it is not according to His will.

Jesus, when He taught the disciples to pray,  said pray in this way, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  The Father knows what is best, not us.  We often pray not knowing what God’s will is.  We cannot possibly know what God’s will is in every situation.  So as much as possible, we study the word of God that we might know the will of God, and then we can know how to pray in accordance with His will.  But there are some things we can’t always discern from scripture as to whether or not it’s God’s will.  So we pray anyhow, “if it be your will, then grant me this thing.” And then we need to be satisfied with the answer that we get.  

Not every prayer that we pray receives the response that we want. So we should be ready to accept a negative answer and understand that God knows that which is good for us and good for the kingdom of God, much more than we do with our limited understanding.  Even what sometimes seems to us to be not so good in the short run, may be good for the purposes of the  kingdom of God from an eternal perspective.  And that also means that timing is God’s prerogative.  God will answer us in His timing.  So we need to be content not only with His answer, but with His timing. 

Now having said that, I don’t want to negate the confidence that we are to have in regards to our prayers being answered.  The principle is that a further assurance of our salvation is that we have our prayers answered.  So God wants to answer our prayers.  The problem usually  isn’t that God doesn’t want to answer them, but the problem is our prayers are asking for the wrong kind of things.  We aren’t asking for things to advance the kingdom of God, to further the purpose and will of God, but instead we are asking for things to satisfy our selfish pleasures.  James said in James 4:3 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend [it] on your pleasures.”  He says in that passage that we are too consumed with the lusts of the world, rather than being concerned about the kingdom of God, and so our prayers are not answered because they are not things concerning the purposes of God.

So we are not to pray just for our personal needs or desires, but we should pray for the kingdom of God.  And one of the things we should be concerned about is the spiritual life of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.  That’s been a prime subject of John throughout most of this book, that we should love one another.  And there is hardly any measure of love greater than to pray for one another.  To pray for one another is an act of love.  

John then says that as members of the family of God, we should pray for one another.  And especially we should pray when we see a brother or sister committing a sin. So he gives specific instructions to that regard in vs 16; “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not [leading] to death, he shall ask and [God] will for him give life to those who commit sin not [leading] to death. There is a sin [leading] to death; I do not say that he should make request for this.”

John has had much to say on the subject of sin in this epistle. He has spoken of it in every chapter. He’s made it clear that sin and the life of Christ are not compatible.  Sin has to be dealt with, it has to be confessed, we need to be cleansed from sin. John said in chapter 1 vs 9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  

But there will be times when a Christian, who is known by the fact that he doesn’t practice sin, does indeed fall into some sin.  John says in the verse immediately following 1:9 that “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”  But there is a way to deal with sin in the life of a Christian, and that is to confess it, and be cleansed from it. 

But John speaks here of a sin which is practiced, which is not confessed, which is held onto, which is cherished, which is rebellion against God.  And he speaks in that context of a sin unto death. Now understand that he is not talking about the so called “unpardonable sin.” That’s a different subject for a different sermon.  But he’s speaking of unconfessed sin in the life of a brother. In other words, a Christian who has fallen into sin and refuses to ask for forgiveness. 

Notice first of all we are instructed to pray for a brother that sins.  We often do not know the extent of the sin.  We don’t know the heart of the brother who sins.  We can’t be the judge and jury of someone who has fallen into sin.  Our first instinct should be compassion.  It should be fear.  We should pray for that person who has fallen into sin.  And according to the template for prayer previously given, God will answer our prayers.  John says if he has not sinned a sin unto death then God will give him life.

Now this life that God gives him is not eternal life.  It’s not “the life.”  If this man is a brother, then he already possesses that life from God and that life is eternal.  It cannot pass away.  But what John is referring to is not spiritual life, but his physical life.  John is saying that there is a sin not unto death, and a sin unto death.  There may be a point when God decides to take that person’s life because they continue in persistent, rebellious sin and they are unrepentant. And so we pray that God will give them life.

But in the case where God has decided to take such a person, then John says that it’s not going to do any good for us to pray for that person’s life, because it’s the will of God to take his life. Now for a lot of you here this morning, this is perhaps a shocking, upsetting principle that you would maybe rather not believe is true.  But nevertheless, John is laying out a Biblical principle of how God sometimes deals with erring Christians.

I say it’s Biblical, because there are a number of examples in scripture that we can see God doing that very thing.  The most famous of course is that of Ananias and Sapphira, whom God struck dead in the middle of the church service. Their sin was they lied to the Holy Spirit by claiming to give an offering that they really did not fully give.  They wanted to be seen to be generous and giving, but in fact had lied about how much they had received  for their property. Now that sin of lying about their offering doesn’t seem nearly bad enough in my estimation to be worthy of death.  But I believe God wanted to set an example right at the beginning of the church, that the gifts and the offering given to God are holy unto the Lord. So God took them because He wanted to make the church realize that He was holy and He was not to be lied to. 

The Apostle Paul also referenced a severe punishment leading to death for those who willfully sin against God and do not repent.  He spoke of judgment for coming to the Lord’s Supper with unrepentant sin.  Paul said in 1Cor. 11:29-32 “For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.  For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. (sleep there is a way of speaking of death for a Christian) But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged.  But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.”

One last reference I’ll give to that principle is found in the statement of Paul concerning a person in the church who had unrepentant sin.  He said, in 1Cor. 5:5 “[I have decided] to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” In other words, the man was saved, but his flesh was destroyed, yet in his spirit is saved.

I want to stress though what I said when I began this subject, that is that God sometimes brings judgment to the point of death for the unrepentant believer.  I happen to think that for the most part, mercy triumphs over judgment.  Thankfully, God doesn’t always strike dead the Ananias’s and Sapphira’s in the church, but rather, He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.  I think if God struck down Christians every time they sinned, then it would be no time at all till we had no Christians left in the church. 

But I will say that in the wisdom of God, there are times when it seems that His will is to remove a person who is willfully sinning for reasons that we don’t always understand.  One possible reason might be that such a person is putting a stumbling block before to other Christians.  For the protection of the greater church, God might take one away who is being a stumbling block. 

I will say this, by the mercy of God, most of us don’t get what we deserve. You know, there was a time in my life when I was a young man that I had stopped living for the Lord and started living to fulfill the lusts of my flesh.  Over the course of several years, I went further and further from the Lord.  It was not apparent to anyone that I was a Christian, and I will confess that after a few years I started doubting my own salvation.  

I had a close friend that I had gone to Christian high school with.  He had grown up in a Christian household like me.  And like me, he too had gone astray from the Lord.  His name was Ivan.  He was from a wealthy family, I was not.  But otherwise, we were pretty much the same.  He was no worse a sinner than I was. I was no angel.  I remember one night we were driving back from a vacation at the beach, and he began to unburden his soul.  He talked about how guilty he felt about things, and how he sometimes wondered if he was even saved.  I was so far away from God I didn’t feel comfortable even talking to him about it too much.  Eventually, I managed to change the conversation and we talked about how he was going to start a new job in a couple of weeks as an airline pilot, and how cool his new job was going to be. 

That night we each went our own ways. I went back to Atlanta and continued living a life of partying and living in sin. Ivan started his new airline job.  And then a couple of weeks later, I got a phone call from another friend who told me to turn on the television.  There was a new story on tv about a terrible plane crash.  Ivan had been on a training flight at his new job, and for reasons that are still unknown, there was an explosion in mid air and  the entire flight crew were killed in the crash. 

I’ve often wondered if maybe God took Ivan in order to turn me back to the Lord.  I don’t really know. I know that Ivan wasn’t any worse than I was.  But God in His wisdom gave me mercy and yet took my friend. I  believe that tragedy did eventually serve to turn me back to God.  But we don’t always understand God’s ways of accomplishing His purposes.

What John is saying is that when it comes to answered prayer, there are times when God won’t answer our prayers, even when it seems like He should. We have to trust God in such situations, and pray not my will be done, but thine.  And then John reiterates the principle of sin.  He says in vs 17, “All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not [leading] to death.”  And I think that’s the prevailing principle. Yes there will be times, I think rare times, when God will take the life of someone who is persisting in sin.  So there is a sin unto death.  But the prevailing principle is that  all unrighteousness is sin and there is a sin not leading to death. God does’t strike dead everyone that sins. But yet at the same time we recognize that He is able to do so, and He is justified in doing so.

We have a recourse for sin, which does not lead to death, but leads to life.  And that recourse is found in 1 John 1:9 which we quoted earlier.  Let me restate it again in closing;  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Listen, I can assure you that the prayer of repentance is a prayer that God always answers.  He hears our confession and forgives us, and cleanses our unrighteousness so that we might be restored to full fellowship with Him. 

As the Apostle John is bringing his epistle to a close he is bringing to a conclusion various streams of arguments that he has made concerning how you may know that you have eternal life. The purpose of this epistle is found in vs 13, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” In that statement, John is saying this is how you may know how to be saved, and this is how you may be assured that you are saved, and this is how you may know that others are saved. All three of those elements are expressed in that statement, and have been argued previously in the epistle. Now John is bringing that argument to it’s conclusion.

The means by which John says you may know you have eternal life is believing in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. He said in the previous section, in vs 1, that “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” And in vs11 he said, “Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” To be an overcomer is another aspect of being born of God. They essentially both speak of the same thing, which John also refers to as eternal life. But the means of eternal life is believing.

So what John makes clear, which we have talked about extensively, is that believing in Jesus Christ is not simply believing that a man named Jesus really lived 2000 years ago and He said some great things, He taught about God. But as the titles Messiah and Son of God indicate, it’s believing in who Jesus is, that He is God in the flesh, and as the Messiah He was sent to the world to be our Savior, which He accomplished by taking our place in death as the punishment for our sins, so that we might be given eternal life.

It’s also important to understand what is meant by eternal life. Eternal life does not mean simply a long, long, long life. It’s not even talking necessarily about going to heaven when you die. But it’s speaking of spiritual life from God, which is given to those who have faith in Jesus Christ and what He accomplished, so that they now have the life from God, spiritual life, which is eternal, which is righteous and holy. It’s eternal life, but notice that in vs 12 John just refers to it as “the life”. He says, “He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.” Jesus is the source of the life, which is the life from God. It’s spiritual life, it’s everlasting life, it’s the life of God in us. So we must have the Son of God in order to have the life. We must have received Him, believed in Him, trusted in Him as our Savior. He is the way to life, the only way to life. John wants to make that crystal clear.

So to support the statement that he made which is that we have to believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God, he is going to give us some further evidence that will help us to know all that is involved in believing. And so what he gives us here i this passage is three strains of testimony about who Jesus is. Just like in a court case, when you want to present evidence of something, there is no more powerful evidence than to bring forth testimony from eyewitnesses, or some credible witness who can provide testimony as to the truth of the claim, so John gives three testimonies that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who fulfilled His Messianic ministry on earth, so that we might know that we have eternal life.

John says in vs 6, “This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.”

Now the statement at first glance may seem a little obscure. But John didn’t deliberately try to be obscure. He wrote it, I’m sure, to be descriptive. To illustrate three ways in which God testifies of Jesus. And by the way, I don’t want to spend too much time on this particular point this morning, but those of you following along in a KJV or NKJV may have noticed that your version adds more to vs 8 than what I read. What the best scholars seem to be in agreement about is that while the extra text in vs 8 is not untrue, at the same time it does not seem to be original to the text. The shortest answer I can give you is that the earliest those words were found in a Greek text was about the 15th century. It seems as though before that it was found in the margin notes of a Latin text, and later was eventually added to the Textus Receptus, which is the manuscript that the KJV was translated from. But the earlier manuscripts do not contain that text. It doesn’t change anything theologically one way or the other, but it’s probably best not to recognize it as inspired. So we won’t read it that way.

But the main point is this; that there are three who testify of Jesus. And we need to understand what John is referring to. So it is believed that when John says that the three testimonies are the water, the blood and the Spirit, he is talking about Christ’s baptism, death, and Pentecost; all of which testify to who Jesus is, and what He accomplished.

If you will recall, the Mosaic law stated that in order to confirm something as true, it was to be on the basis of two or three witnesses.That goes back to Deuteronomy 19:15, that testimony had to be confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses. Jesus also emphasized that in Matthew 18 in regards to church discipline, that any charge brought against someone needed to have the affirmation of two or three witnesses. And also in 1 Timothy 5:19 it says that no one should bring an accusation against an elder or pastor in the church unless it’s confirmed by the mouth of two or three witnesses. We see this principle again and again in scripture. And so here God does the same thing in John’s closing argument. Verse 6, “This is the one who came by water and blood and not just water and blood, but” – and then in verse 7 – “it is the Spirit who bears witness.” God Himself has chosen the maximum of three testimonies – from water, blood and Spirit – in this summary to affirm His witness concerning Jesus Christ so that we might be assured of what we believe.

So first of all, let’s talk about the testimony of water. God gave testimony of Jesus Christ at His baptism. And as I said earlier, the testimony is that Jesus is the Christ, that is the Messiah, and that He is the Son of God. Now we find the record of Jesus’s baptism in Matthew 3:13, “Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him.” And then it says in vs16 “After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove [and] lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”

This event was the beginning of the ministry of Jesus Christ. The scripture says that following His baptism He went about in Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit. But very clearly here we see that God Himself gives testimony of who Jesus is. And we also see the testimony of the Holy Spirit, coming down out of heaven to rest upon Jesus.

You know, it’s interesting to think about that. We often see pictures that show a dove above Christ’s head or landing upon Him. But it doesn’t say that a dove rested upon Him. But it says that John the Baptist saw the Spirit of God descending upon Him like a dove. In other words, the Spirit of God descended in the manner of a dove. It does not say the Spirit of God was a dove. Notice John doesn’t see a dove, He sees the Spirit of God.

In the gospel of John, I always think it’s an interesting note, chapter 1 verse 32, “And John bore witness saying, ‘I beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven and He remained on Him.’”

“And I didn’t recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’” John had said, “There’s one coming. He’ll baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” So the water has a tremendous testimony of Jesus, that He is the Christ, and the Son of God.

So at the baptism of Jesus, at the beginning of His ministry, we see the testimony of water, with both God speaking and descending in Spirit upon Jesus. And God says clearly that “this is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

But John says there is more. He says, not the water only, but the water and the blood. And as I said previously, the blood speaks of the crucifixion of Christ. We can turn to Matthew 27 for an account of the crucifixion. If you look at the scene of the cross, in verse 44, the robbers have been crucified with Him. They are insulting Him. Then it says, “Now from the sixth hour” –that means twelve o’clock noon. “From the sixth hour, darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.” For three hours, in the middle of the day there is supernatural darkness. This is a divine miracle. This is God’s testimony concerning the atonement for sin which Jesus was accomplishing. And Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?,” which means ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’” Jesus understood the symbolism of the darkness was an indication of the wrath of God against sin. God was giving testimony to Jesus Christ His Son as the sin-bearing sacrifice in providing for our atonement.

And there is another testimony given by God in verse 51, “Behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” While Jesus is dying there on the cross, God rips the veil of the temple from top to bottom, which opens up the Holy of Holies, showing that Jesus through His supreme sacrifice has provided access to God, abolishing the system of priests and sacrifices. Can you imagine the shock to the priests and officers and scribes and so forth in the temple seeing this miracle of God just when Jesus is being put to death?

And then it says in verse 51, “And the earth shook” – God sent an earthquake – “and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs, after His resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.” The temple curtain is rent from top to bottom, darkness is over all the land, and an earthquake all at the time of Christ’s crucifixion and the dead were coming out of the tombs. What a tremendous testimony God makes that Jesus Christ was the Son of God that they were crucifying.

So vs 54 says, “Now the centurion and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became frightened and said truly this was the Son of God.” Not only did the centurion say it, but those who were with him said it. That’s the logical conclusion for anyone that wasn’t biased against Jesus. But from what we know the priests do not say that. They hold onto their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, despite the supernatural testimony of God.

I think it’s also possible to include in the testimony of the blood, the fulfillment of the scriptures which explicitly prophesied of the crucifixion. For example, in Psalm 22 it says, “All My bones are out of joint. My heart … is melted within Me … My tongue cleaves to My jaws … Dogs have surrounded Me. A band of evil doers has encompassed Me. They pierced My hands and my feet. I can count all My bones. They look, they stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.”

We also see the fulfillment of Isaiah 53, which says, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.”“He was pierced through for our transgressions.” “By His scourging we are healed.” “The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.

In vs 9 it even gives the details of His burial. “His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. And then it speaks of His atonement, the propitiation for our sins. “But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.” “As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities.”

All of those prophecies and many more in the Old Testament were fulfilled at the death of Jesus Christ. There is no other conclusion than this is the testimony of the Father, fulfilled prophecy, physical phenomena that’s so convincing that a Roman centurion says, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

Then the third testimony of our text in 1 John 5, is the testimony given by the Holy Spirit. John says in verse 6, “It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.” Jesus referred to the Spirit in HIs prayer in the Upper Room before His crucifixion as the Spirit of Truth. The ministry of the Spirit is to reveal the truth about Christ.

And then John says in vs 8, “There are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water and the blood, and the three are in agreement.” So all three of them are in agreement, testifying to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.

Now we have already seen that the Spirit was involved in testifying of Christ at His baptism. He became visible and rested upon Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit Jesus began His ministry. But it’s important to look at how the Holy Spirit testifies of Christ in other situations. I happen to believe that the greatest testimony of the Spirit concerning Christ was at Pentecost. If you look at Acts 2, you will see the disciples waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit which Jesus had told them to wait for.

I said a moment ago that Jesus referred to the Spirt as the Spirit of Truth. Jesus said in John 15:26 “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, [that is] the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.” Notice that Jesus says He will send the Spirit, and He will testify about Me. He says in another place, He (that is the Spirit) will bring to your remembrance the things that I said to you. So the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to testify of Jesus, and to teach the truth about Jesus.

And that’s exactly what happened at Pentecost. The Spirit of God came just as Jesus said He would, Jesus sent Him to testify of Himself. And when He came, He came with supernatural power; there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them.” That’s the baptism of fire that John the Baptist had said Jesus would baptize with.

“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” They spoke other languages, which just happened to be the languages of all the people who were from all different regions of the Roman Empire in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost, who gathered outside the house when they heard the noise of the wind. And so the disciples came out and started speaking of the mighty works of God and everyone who was there heard them speak in their own language. These disciples were eyewitnesses of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God. And over three thousand people heard them speaking by the power of the Holy Spirit in their native language so that they might believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved.

Peter, taking his stand before the multitude, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, preached a message to them boldly declaring that this Jesus whom they had crucified was the Messiah, the Son of God. And he concluded his message in vs 36 saying, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ–this Jesus whom you crucified.” And as a result three thousand people hearing that testimony believed in Jesus Christ and were saved that day.

So then, we have seen that God then gave His testimony in the water, the blood and the Spirit. The question then remains, “Why did He give it?” We find the answer in verse 11 – the purpose for God’s testimony. “The testimony is this, that on the basis of Jesus’s atonement for sin, God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son.” The reason that God gives this testimony is because God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. The only way to have eternal life is through believing in what Jesus Christ accomplished for us.

Notice John says, “This life is in His Son.” There is no salvation in any other. There’s no other name under heaven given among men whereby you might be saved. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me.” God’s desire for us is that we have life. But the only way to have the life of God is in believing in Jesus Christ. and in His finished work of atonement.

So then, what should be our response to God’s witness? We find the answer in verse 10, and then verse 12. What should be our response? Verse 10, “The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself. The one who does not believe God has made Him a liar because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son.”

When we believe in Christ, when we are saved, we receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So in us is the testimony that Jesus is the Christ. We receive the testimony, we believe it. John 1:12 says “As many as received Him to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” And I can assure you that when you receive the Lord Jesus as your Savior, then your eyes become opened, your heart becomes opened, and you know in your heart that which is true, that you have new life. You have the testimony in your own heart of the truth and the life.

But on the other hand, verse 10 says, “The one who does not believe God has made Him a liar because he has not believe the testimony that God has borne concerning His Son.” So if you don’t believe God’s testimony, you’ve made Him a liar. You are calling God a liar. How is it that you have made God a liar? “Because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son.”

The testimony of God concerning Jesus is supernatural, powerfully convincing testimony. The Holy Spirit also attests to that testimony in your heart by convicting you of it’s truth. But there are some who will refuse to believe, because like the priests who put Jesus to death, they do not want this man to rule over them. They don’t want to submit to God. They like their sin and don’t want to repent of it. And so they refuse the atonement which Christ died to accomplish.

John then in vs 12, restates the positive conclusion from all that has been said. We have already discussed it in detail. He is just restating it for emphasis. “He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.” Salvation is so simple that it sometimes seems like there has to be more. And there is more to our salvation as we grow in the Lord. But to be born of God, it must begin with faith in Jesus Christ. We cannot have the life of God until we believe in the giver of life, Jesus Christ.

Peter in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, concluded his message with this word, and I will conclude my message with it as well; Acts 2:38-39 Peter [said] to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” You have heard the testimony of God today concerning Christ Jesus. God is calling you to believe in Him that you may receive the life.

If you watch much television or listen to the radio, or even if you read very much, then you might think that the dominate theme of our culture today is the theme of love.  The world seems to be infatuated with the idea of love. It’s the theme of virtually every song you hear on the radio, and the theme of most books and movies.  If you were to talk to many people, it would seem that love is the supreme goal of life, and happiness and fulfillment are only possible if you experience true love.

Interestingly, this epistle of 1 John which we are studying in our Sunday morning services has often been called the epistle of love, and John it’s author has been called the apostle of love.  John has a lot to say about love. In his gospel of John, he speaks of love in 27 verses.  And in this epistle of 1 John, he talks about love in 17 verses. And the passage we are looking at today is considered by many to be one of the quintessential passages in the entire Bible on the subject of love.

Of course, if you’ve been studying this book with us for the last few months, you will know that love is only one of the themes which John is discussing.  In many cases, John indicates that love is evidence of our salvation.  In today’s passage that we are looking at, John is going to dig deeper into the doctrine of love to show us what he calls perfect love.

In vs 12, at the end of this passage, John says, “if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”  Now on the surface, that sounds like the goal of the world, to find perfect love. But I would suggest that perfect love as taught by John is somewhat different than what the world envisions as perfect love.  I can imagine for a lot of people who think of what would constitute perfect love, they would require some degree of perfection in their partner. They would imagine the perfect man or the perfect woman which would then make possible perfect love.

But the use of the English word “perfect” in the scriptures rarely indicates perfection, but rather the idea of completion.  Perfect love is completed love.  Agape is the Greek word which is used for love here in these verses.  And agape love as we have talked about many times is sacrificial love. It’s not a love which seeks reciprocation.  It’s a love that puts the other’s needs ahead of your own.  And so that’s divine love, that’s Christian love.

But in another sense, love that is not reciprocated is not perfect love. Completed love must be reciprocated.  It must be returned to be complete.  In studying this passage before us today, I have found what I think are eight aspects of love laid out for us in this chapter, that culminate in what John says is perfect, or complete love.  And I would like to work through these eight steps, so that our love might be perfected.

The first three steps are found in vs 7.  Number one, we see the command to love. John says, “Beloved, let us love one another.”  Now he may be stating that nicely, by calling us “beloved” and saying “let us” instead of “do this.”  But make no mistake, love is a command, not a suggestion.  Jesus said in the gospel of John 13:34  “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”  And also John himself said back in the previous chapter, 1John 3:23 “This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.” 

So as Christians, as disciples of Christ, we are commanded to love.  That illustrates an important aspect of love, by the way.  And that is that love is an act of the will.  It’s not something that you have to wait to feel before you do something.  But it’s an act of the will, a deliberate choice to love. Jesus said “if you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Love is always associated with an act of the will, not just a sentiment or a feeling, or even attraction.

The second aspect of love is also in vs 7, which is the source of love. The source of love is God.  John says “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.”  Perfect love is from God.  In other words, God initiates love. He is the initiator.  John says in vs 19, “We love, because He first loved us.”

God loved us before the world began. I believe the story of God’s love for us really is illustrated in the Garden of Eden during creation.  God said “let us make man in our image, in our likeness.”  And although God previously had spoken all of creation into existence, when He made man, He stooped to scoop up clay from the ground, and formed it with His hands into a form of His likeness, and then God bent His head to breath the breath of life into man’s nostrils. The very act of creation speaks of God’s love for us.

But we get further understanding of God’s love in the story of how God made a helpmate for Adam.  God said it is not good for man to be alone, and so He purposed to make Adam a helpmate who would be suitable to him.  That means who would be like him.  But after He said that, and before He made woman, there is an unusual interlude.  During this interlude the scripture says that God caused all the animals that had been created to pass before Adam, and Adam gave names to each of them.  Then it says an interesting thing, in Gen 2:20 “The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.”  Then God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and God brought forth the woman from Adam’s rib.

The analogy that I think can be made is that this was a picture of the situation with God before man was created.  God looked through all the heavens and all the galaxies, to see if there was found a helpmate suitable for Him, and He found none.  And so He brought forth man from the dust of the earth, in order to be a helpmate suitable for Him.  He created mankind to be the bride of Christ.  Man was made for God, to be loved by God, and to love God and have fellowship and communion with Him forever.

Now I think that illustrates that love is from God.  He is the source of love.  We love, because He first loved us.  Even though Satan deceived man and caused him to be cursed by death, to be separated from God forever because of sin, God’s love for mankind was so great that He gave His only begotten Son to die in their place, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life and might be reconciled to God.

The third aspect of love is the evidence of love.  The evidence of love is stated positively at the end of vs 7 and negatively at the beginning of vs 8. “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God.”  That’s a point that John has been making sense the beginning of this epistle.  That if you are a child of God, then you will act like God, you will walk like God, you will love like God loves.  He said back in chapter 2:5-6  “but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”

In this book, John has been offering a series of tests that you might know that you are saved.   And here in vs 7 and 8 he says that the evidence that you have been born of God, that you are a child of God, is that you love like God, with a sacrificial love towards God and towards one another.  It takes a regenerated spirit to have the kind of love that God desires us to have.  Divine love cannot come from a fallen nature, but only from a regenerated nature.  And so to have that kind of love is evidence that you have been born again in the spirit.

The fourth aspect of love is the attribute of love.  This statement is probably one of the most famous lines in scripture.  It’s at the end of verse 8, “God is love.”  I could probably preach an entire sermon on this phrase.  It’s very often misunderstood and misapplied.  

Notice that I said it was the attribute of love. In this context, John is saying that love is the attribute of God.  God has many attributes.  He is not limited to only one.  It is possible to debate which attribute takes precedence.  Some may think the holiness of God is the primary attribute.  Some may think love is the primary attribute.  And there are others.  I believe the Bible teaches that all attributes of God coexist equally. All the attributes of God are in perfect balance with the others. God can be a God of justice and sentence people to Hell, and He can love so much that He saves people who were condemned to hell.  And one can be exercised without offending the other because He is perfect and His attributes are perfectly balanced.

But let me stress that God is love is not the definition of God, but rather that God defines love.  For instance, you can say, God is love, but you cannot say love is God.  This is where the world goes off track.  They want to define God by love, and particularly what they think constitutes love.  But God will not be put in a box by a one word definition. God defines love, not the other way around. Those that want to call God love, are in error.  God is the “I AM that I AM.” He is God Almighty, Jehovah.  He cannot be diminished to a one word attribute, though He personifies the attribute of love perfectly.

The problem with the statement “God is love” is how we interpret “love.” Our definition is not the same as God’s definition.  So rather than let us define God by our definition, God defines love for us. And we will look at that definition in a moment when we get to verse 10.  But before John defines love for us, he gives us an illustration of it.

So the next aspect of love is the manifestation of love.  We find that in vs 9, “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”  God demonstrated love by sending Jesus Christ into the world so that the world that was doomed to death might have life through Him.

God doesn’t just say He loves us, but He demonstrates His love for us. I can’t help but think of a mother’s love. I’m reminded of my own mother’s love when I was growing up.  I didn’t have a perfect mother.  I don’t think anyone has a perfect mother.  I would go so far as to say, there is no such thing as a perfect mother.  Maybe that will let a few of you mothers let go of some of your guilt.  There are no perfect mothers.  

But in spite of that, I remember my mother manifesting love for us. My mother’s love was evidenced in her keeping the house clean. It was evidenced in washing and folding and ironing our clothes.  It was manifested in making my lunch for school every morning.  And a million other things that she did, she did because she loved me.  Love for her wasn’t just a few  sentimental pats on the head or kisses on the cheek before I ran out of the house.  Love was sacrificially doing things for me to help me have a good life.  I would even say that when my mother gave me a paddling, she did it because of love.  I didn’t think so at the time, but now that I’m a parent, I know that it’s true.

God manifested His love for us by sending Jesus to die on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins, so that I might be declared righteous in His sight, and receive life through Jesus’s death. Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends.“ Jesus substitutionary death in my place manifests God’s love.  Love is action.  Love is sacrificial.  Love is not simply words or an emotion or an attraction. 

Then in vs 10 we find the sixth aspect of love, which is the definition of love. Here it is, the answer to the age old question, what is love? Vs10, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son [to be] the propitiation for our sins.”  Well, that sounds like a restatement of the last verse, which we said was the manifestation of love.  And you’re right.  The manifestation is the definition. Love is an act of God to us, which is the act of sending His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

I was kidding around with my son the other day in preparation for this message.  Sometimes I get some flack around my house because I preach a lot about sin. And sometimes they advise me that I need to balance the sin with more preaching on love.  So I said to my son the other day, “I’m preaching about love this Sunday.  You ought to be happy to hear that.”  And if I heard him right, he muttered something about how he bet that I would still find a way to speak about sin.  Well, he was right.  Right here in this verse, right in the middle of speaking on this great passage about love, is the word sin.  And so I get to preach on sin a little bit.

But seriously, the only reason that Jesus died on the cross was because we were sinners.  He didn’t die on the cross by mistake.  But He resolutely left His glory in heaven with the Father to humble Himself to become flesh like His creation, so that He could stand in our place and take the stripes which were meant for us, take the nails which we meant for us, and die the death which was meant for us. 

 And what John says here is so very important. Jesus died to satisfy the Father’s requirement that death be the punishment for sin.  Because we were sinners, Christ died for us.  Oh yes, He loved us.  Yes He died for us because He loved us.  But if we weren’t sinners He would not have had to die.  He died to satisfy the requirement of a holy, just God against those who had defied His law.

You and I who were sinners, are saved by faith in what Christ did on our behalf.  If you have not believed in the finished work of Jesus through His death and resurrection for the forgiveness of your sins, then you are not a child of God.  Jesus didn’t die to make you prosperous or healthy or happy or a myriad of other narcissistic desires that you might have.  He died so that a sinner condemned to eternal death might be given life in exchange for His life.  I hope you have trusted in Jesus as your Savior and Lord and that you have been forgiven and made righteous.  It’s by faith in what Jesus did on the cross.  And what He did is the definition of love. Love is sacrificial, it’s substitutionary. Love satisfies the requirement of God.  Love is believing in Christ.  Love is the product of regeneration.  Love comes as a result of being given new life.

The seventh aspect of love is the reason for love. Vs 11, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”  If you consider what we just said about the love of God in sending His Son to die in our place, if you really consider that and understand that, then how could you not love God in return?  And if you love God, then how could you not love His body on earth, which is the church? If you love God, then how could you not obey Him? 

Jesus said the foremost commandment was  “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.”

“The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’”

Paul tells us in 1Cor. 6:19-20 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?  For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”  The reason for love is that we want to bring glory to God with our life.  This life which we received through such a great sacrifice by Christ, we want to live for His glory.  That is how we love God, by living a life in service to Him.  And the way we serve Him and bring Him glory is we love one another.  We love His church and edify one another, and encourage one another, and help one another.  We serve Him by serving His body. And we do it gladly because of all that He has done for us.  If God was willing to suffer and die for us, we ought to be willing to suffer for one another’s benefit.

The last aspect of love we have already mentioned.  This is the culmination of love, this is what it has been building up to.  The perfection of love.  Vs.12, “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”  Now at first glance it would seem as if John copied and pasted the wrong phrase into the wrong sentence.  Maybe he was working on a revision and meant to paste in something else and instead he puts these two seemingly disparate phrases together. 

What does not seeing God at any time have to do with loving one another?  Well, I think after looking at it awhile I may have discovered the reason for what John did here.  I think he wanted to emphasize the fact that man can’t see God. But we can see other Christians who have the love of God in them.  That’s the point of this verse.  The world, the church, mankind in general cannot see God, but they can see you, and you have the Spirit of God abiding in you, so that you may do the works of God.  

That’s what the scripture is talking about when it says we are to be conformed to the image of Christ.  We are to be like Christ to the world, doing the works of God, reaching the lost for God ,sharing the word of God to the world, converting sinners to saints for the kingdom of God.  Building up the church, edifying the saints, serving one another.  Loving one another.  That’s how the world will see God. They see God in us, living out love through us. And that’s the testimony that changes the world, when they see the changes God has manifested in us. We don’t act selfishly anymore.  We love like Christ loves.  We forgive one another.  We serve one another.  We sacrifice for one another. Jesus said in John 13:35  “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

That love which comes from God now comes full circle. The love of God, which is of God, produces a love in us, which is poured out to one another.  That’s perfect love.  That’s completed love.  Love from God completes us, because we love one another.  That’s perfect love.  I hope you have received the love of God  which was manifested in Christ’s death on the cross, that you might receive forgiveness of sins, and the righteousness of God, so that the Spirit of God might abide in you, that the love of God may be perfected in you. 

We come today in our study of 1 John to a very important passage for the church, and one to which I have referred to in previous messages many times.  It teaches some important principles which were essential for the church of John’s day, and which has been essential for the church ever since, and no less so for the church today.  In John’s day, the church was battling with the teachings of Gnosticism, which professed a superior knowledge of God but which John calls false knowledge, proclaimed by false prophets.  He said they were the spirit of antichrist.  That is, they worked against Christ, against the truth of His teachings, His ministry, and purported to have another way to knowledge and fellowship with God rather than strictly through Christ.

Today, we have a similar spirit of error which is working in the church to undermine and distort the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is a spirit which seeks to diminish the authority of the gospel of Christ as the means by which we come to know God.  Modern false prophets seek to teach a way of knowledge and fellowship with God as being possible through experience, through signs and wonders, which can supersede that which may be found through the word of God.

So this passage is very pertinent to the church today.  The primary point that John is making, is that as Christians, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit.  But there are also deceiving spirits which are not of God, but of the devil, which seek to undermine and distort the truth of the gospel.  The devil is our adversary.  He is a deceiver.  He comes to steal, deceive and destroy. His kingdom is the kingdom of this world, and he works to overthrow the kingdom of God.  But his most effective strategy is not to outright oppose the truth to get people to stop believing, but to distort and deceive through false teaching, and thus lead people astray from the purity of the gospel.

Now John began this conversation in the last verse of the previous chapter saying, “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.”  So we know that God abides in us, by the Spirit of God whom He has given us.  Now how did John indicate that we know that God abides in us? By the Spirit of God in us.  And John says that indwelling of the Spirit is evidenced by the fact that we keep the commandments.

I said last time that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is not given that we might have some supernatural experience which then confirms that we know God.  But the Spirit is given that we might keep the commandments of God.  He is the power that works in us and empowers us that we might do the works of God. That’s the primary ministry of the Holy Spirit.  And in conjunction to that, the other primary work of the Holy Spirit is to enlighten our minds so that we might understand the word of God.  The Holy Spirit is the author of scripture, so He is able to open our minds to understand what He has written. 

And let me emphasize something to you about that which is very important. The Holy Spirit speaks to us primarily through God’s word.  That is how God speaks to us.  A lot of sincere Christians are going about seeking to hear from the Lord.  And so they think to do that they need to go into some sort of meditative state and empty their minds, and just let the Spirit speak to them.  They imagine that the Spirit of God is going to somehow, in a still small voice, hear God tell them what to do, or give them some message.  Listen, I know this is true, because I used to think that way.

But the truth is, that you cannot trust the little small voice in your head.  If I listened to the voices in my head sometimes I would probably be in prison today or in an insane asylum. No, the Spirit of God has spoken already, very clearly and very distinctly.  In fact, He wrote it down so that you can know for certain what He says.  And it’s found in the word of God.  And the Spirit of God in you says Amen when you read the word.  He confirms to you the truth as He speaks through the Word of God.  Now a lot of so called Christians don’t like to hear me say that. They want to think that God speaks to them audibly almost every day.  And they can tell you stories about how they heard God say this or that and something wonderful happened. And they don’t want to let go of that.  But I will tell you this.  If you can’t confirm what you heard by the word of God, then you didn’t hear from God.  Now I’m sorry if that offends you, or doesn’t fit this idea that you might have this special relationship with God where He speaks audibly to you about the most mundane things, like where to find a parking space at the mall. 

John affirms the truth of what I am saying in ch. 4 vs 1.  He says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”  We cannot see a spirit.  Spirit comes from the Greek word pneuma, which means air.  You can’t see the air, but you can feel the air, can’t you?  You can even hear the air.  Well, the same thing is true of a spirit.  You can’t see a spirit, but you can hear one.  And John indicates here that you should not believe everything you hear.  Now that applies not only to the voices in your head, but in the teaching that you hear from what John calls false prophets.

So first of all, John says don’t believe every spirit.  Don’t believe everything you hear. Just because someone comes to you dressed in the clothes of a minister, or a priest, or professes to be a prophet, don’t believe every spirit. I saw a lady the other day at a yard sale who I remember from years ago when I was taking a bunch of kids on a missions trip to Eleuthera in the Bahamas.  She called me a day or two before we flew out, to say that God had given her a dream that we had a plane crash on our missions trip and so obviously God was telling us not to go.  Well, I didn’t believe her and she happened to be wrong.  We had chartered a missionary plane for the trip which was an old WW2 Air Force plane used for dropping parachuters.  And  I will tell you that I would have been nervous enough just from the looks of the plane, not to mention having her dream prophecy to think about.  But I’m living proof that she was not speaking the truth, but whatever spirit she was of, it was not of God. In the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy chapter 13, Moses specifies the same kind of testing of the prophets, “If the things they say do not come to pass, they are false prophets.”

So just because something is spoken in a church, or in the name of God, or whatever, John says don’t blindly believe it.  Secondly, John says test the spirits to see if they are from God. Test them, examine them.  How do you test the spirits? I will tell you, there is only one definitive test for the Spirit of Truth or the spirit of error.  And that is the word of God.  The word of God is the revelation of God and it’s the only reliable standard for truth.  

2Tim. 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;  so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”  So every thing that a Christian needs to know can be found in the word of God.  And that means that it is the standard for truth.  That’s what this all comes down to, isn’t it? Look down at the end of verse 6, “By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” We know the word of God is truth.  Jesus said that He was truth.  And in the prayer of Jesus in the Upper Room He several times calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth.  Jesus said in that prayer to the Father, “Your word is truth.”  There is only one barometer of truth. And that’s the word of God. So it’s either the Spirit of Truth or the spirit of error. 

Heb 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” There is only one sure source of truth and that’s the word of God.  That’s the test. That’s the way we test to see if what we are being told is the truth.

What’s so important about this? Why the big fuss?  John says it’s important because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Jesus sent His disciples out in the world to preach the gospel and make disciples in every nation.  And guess what?  Satan sent out his disciples in all the world to make disciples in every nation.  He has his false prophets everywhere, infiltrating the church, broadcasting in every language in every nation on the radio airwaves, on the television, on you tube, using every available media.  I would say that if I had to guess there are far more false prophets than there are true prophets.  Jesus said that there were two ways, one was broad and there were many on it and one was narrow and there were but a few people on that way. But the broad way leads to destruction.  The narrow way leads to God. And Jesus added, “beware of false prophets.”  The false prophets proclaim popular doctrines which attract a lot of people, but it is the way to destruction. 

There are many false prophets in the world, and we need to be discerning.  By their deception they are intent on destroying the church.  And behind every false prophet is a false spirit, a spirit of anti christ.

Now the rest of the passage, vs 2 through vs 6, all speak of three specific tests of the spirits. Notice how John bookends the entire section with the words, “by this you know.” Vs.2, He begins with “by this you know,”  and then at the end of vs 6, “by this we know.”  So everything in between is a specific test that you apply through the word of God to test the spirits.

The first test is the test of the divinity of Christ. He says in vs 2, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the [spirit] of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.”

The spirit of error which is populated by the devil, is usually consistent in this one principle; which is denying the deity of Jesus Christ.  It’s not always evident in their teaching at first glance.  You may have to dig around a bit to discover it.  But a common theme is that they deny that Jesus is God who has come in the flesh. But all the gospel depends on that essential theology.  If Jesus was not deity, then He claimed to be something He was not.  He had no power to forgive sins.  He had no power to give life. So the doctrine of the incarnation is essential.

Notice John says, “Every spirit that confesses”.  To confess comes from the Greek word “homologeo” which means to agree with, to say the same thing.  In other words, everyone that is saying the same thing, who is in agreement with what the word of God says about Christ, that He is the Anointed One, God in the flesh, is confessing a truth taught by the Holy Spirit. 

I really think that John is using a type of short hand here when he speaks of confessing Jesus Christ as come in the flesh.  I think that he is referencing in an abbreviated style the ministry of Christ about which he wrote in expanded form in the gospel of John chapter one.  And in that gospel, in chapter 1vs1, John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.  In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.  The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. … vs 9 There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.  He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.  He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, [even] to those who believe in His name,  who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.  And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Now that’s the doctrine of Jesus Christ. John says the eternal Word which was God, which was in the beginning with God, became flesh and dwelt among men, and because He is God in flesh, He has the right to give life to those who believe in His name.  If a teaching or prophecy is in agreement with that, then it is of God.  If it does not, then it is not of God.

The second test John gives is the Spirit of God in you. He says in vs4, “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” Because we are children of God, because we have the Spirit of God indwelling us, we have the conviction of the Holy Spirit within us, who is greater than the spirt of deception that is in the world, the deception of the antichrist he spoke of in vs 3.

It’s a reference to what John said back in chapter 2:26-27 John says there, “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.  As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.”  

What John is saying there is because we are the children of God, because we have been born again in the spirit, by the Spirit, we have an anointing.  The anointing is the Holy Spirit who lives in us and has quickened us.  Quickened is a good old fashioned word which is found frequently in the KJV but not used too much in our newer versions.  But I like it because it speaks of being made alive spiritually. Being given life, given eyes to see and ears to hear what the Spirit says.  It speaks of being given discernment.  

So John isn’t saying in chapter 2 that we don’t need preachers, that we can know all truth all by ourselves, but he is saying that the indwelling, the quickening, the anointing of the Spirit gives us spiritual discernment as we abide in Him.  As we obey the truth, as we obey what we know so far, as we walk where He leads us to walk today, He will lead us in the truth tomorrow.  He will guide us.  

Perhaps ou’ve heard the expression,  “I had a check in my spirit.”  That’s a reference to a hesitation in your spirit when you hear something that doesn’t ring true with the word of God.  You can’t say “amen” because you have a check in your spirit.  And so, you do like the Berean’s, you examine the scriptures to see if these things are so.  And the Holy Spirit will guide you in all truth.

Jesus said in the gospel of John 16:13-14  “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose [it] to you.”  See that?  He will disclose the truth to you.  He will guide you into all the truth.  That’s the Holy Spirit’s job.  Not to  make you get goose bumps, or to cause you to run around squawking like a crow, but to lead you into the truth.  And back in our text, John says that the Spirit in us will serve to test the spirits.  The deception of the evil one is great, but the guidance of the Holy Spirit is greater, and we have someone greater in us, than he that is in the world.

The last test is the test of obedience. The test of obedience. Who do they obey? That’s found in vs5 and 6, “They are from the world; therefore they speak [as] from the world, and the world listens to them.  We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”

When John says “they are from the world, and the world listens to them,” he is referring to the false prophets back in vs 1. Their theology has it’s source in the evil one. There religion is informed by the evil one. And their ideas come out of the world, out of the world’s way of thinking.  The world refers to the system which is hostile to God. In opposition to the gospel. That’s the world system John says they are of and which they speak of.  You know if you listen to a lot of the false teachers out there on television and in many of the churches, they spout a lot of pop psychology.  They talk incessantly about relationships and so forth.  They rely upon psychology rather than the word of God, rather than the gospel.  And I don’t mean to disparage psychologists necessarily, but it’s a science of the world.  It’s man’s way of understanding and dealing with life, through human reasoning and human wisdom.  I think John is speaking of man’s wisdom when he says, they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them.

In other words, the world obeys them.  I’m just constantly amazed today to see how the world blindly follows the dictates and teaching of  scientists and psychologists and so called experts. But it seems everyone believes these people that are in some position of authority, whether or not the evidence really supports it.  John says the evidence that they are of the world is that the world listens to them and obeys them.  False teachers will be popular with the world.

But in contrast to that, John says “We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.”  When he says “we” he is speaking of himself and the other apostles.  He is speaking of what the Bible calls the apostles doctrine, which is the word of Christ.  The evidence that prophets are from God is that they submit to Biblical truth as delivered by the apostles in the word of God.

To listen is to obey.  If they are true ministers of God then they will obey the gospel as delivered by the apostles.  As John said earlier in chapter  2:3-5 “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.  The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;  but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him.”  

And John says that is how you know  the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.  To know means to discern.  This is how you discern the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.  False teachers don’t obey the commandments.  Examine their walk.  They say one thing and do another.  Their lives are often marked by living in excessive luxury.  Many false prophets have been discovered to be immoral in their private lives. But as a general test, you can tell if they are of the truth or of error by watching their lives and seeing if they follow the apostle’s teaching, or if they have devised an alternate gospel that allows them to live lives which fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

Jesus said you shall know them by their fruits.  We can test the spirits by their fruits.  And the test of whether or not they are children of God is by their fruit. We need to be careful who we listen to.  Because who we listen to we end up obeying.  Paul said in Romans 6:16-17  “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone [as] slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?  But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed.” 

I hope that you will obey the gospel. Romans 10:8-10 “But what does [the scripture] say? “THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART”–that is, the word of faith which we are preaching,  that if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;  for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ today, that He died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins, and the Holy Spirit will abide in you, that you may walk in the narrow way that leads to life.  

At the end of John’s first epistle, in chapter 5 vs 13  he writes that he has written these things “to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”   That’s the overarching reason for his letter, to assure the Christians in the early church of their salvation.  It would seem that the false teachers who were disturbing them by their false doctrine, were also inferring that they could lose their salvation, or just never be sure of it.  But John says that you can know that you have eternal life.  The essence of eternal life, if you think about it, means that it cannot end, or be lost.  It must be enduring if it is to be eternal.

So John has written this epistle to address the Christian’s assurance of salvation and many other concerns taught by these false teachers. But particularly in this passage his intention is to give them assurances of their salvation. Notice  how he brackets this passage with the phrase, “by this we know…” in vs 19 and then again in 24.  That shows us that all that’s within those brackets are dealing with the same principles.

We find six assurances that John lists here so that the believers might have confidence in their salvation. And of course, these assurances are applicable to us today as well. A common downside to a strict preaching of  the gospel is to sometimes cause Christians to doubt their salvation.  When we speak about sin and righteousness and the need for holiness, for a lot of sincere people it can make them wonder if in fact they are saved, because they don’t feel like they measure up in some way, or they know that they sometimes fall into sin.  So I think that the Apostle John wants to assure our hearts that we are in fact children of God and if that’s true, then it will never change.  God  will never renounce His children.  2Tim. 2:13 says, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”

So in this passage, John gives us six assurances of our salvation. The first assurance of our salvation John speaks of is because we love the brethren.  He says in vs 19, “We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him.”  Now translators have some difficulty with a few of these verses in this passage, but it’s safe to say that the word “this” refers both forwards and backwards.  In other words, “this” refers back to vs 18, and it also refers to what is going to follow vs19, which are the other five reasons for assurance.

So in vs 18 we are told, “let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” A sacrificial love for the brethren emanates from a new nature, which is the nature of Christ imparted to us in salvation.  The same nature that caused Christ to lay down His life, is the same nature that encourages us to lay down our lives for the brethren.

That nature that loves the brethren is not natural.  It’s spiritual.  And John says it’s indicative of a new birth.  So if you have an inclination to love the brethren with the same kind of love that Christ had for the church, it’s because you have been born again.  The presence of love in our hearts should serve to assure us of our salvation.

Now we talked last week a lot about love,  what it looks like, and how it operates from a Christian perspective.  So I don’t want to go over that again today.  However, I do want to stress one aspect of Christian love though that I don’t think I emphasized enough last week.  And that is this – Christian love wants to see souls saved and will do whatever they can, even to the point of sacrificing the priorities of their own lives, for the sake of seeing someone become complete in their salvation. If we really, truly love someone, then the condition of their soul is the most important thing to us.  Yes, Christian love also feeds the body, and clothes the body, and houses the body, and ministers to the physical needs of the body as much as is possible. But a greater priority is the spiritual condition of the soul.  As Jesus said, “what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” All those material things are necessary for this life, but our primary concern should be telling others about the importance of preparing for the next life, and showing them how they can know that they have eternal life.  That is by far the most important aspect of loving the brethren.

I see parents so often who obviously love their children, make the case that they want their children to be happy, and they want them to have a good education, to have a good job, to be able to buy a nice house and so forth.  They want them to be healthy.  And it sometimes seems like some Christian parents are willing to settle for that stuff, and neglect the most important thing of all – the condition of their soul.  Let us not love the way the world loves, but love the way Christ loved us, by bringing us to salvation.

So we have confidence in our own salvation because we love the brethren like Christ loved us.  And then secondly, John says we have assurance of our salvation because of a quickened conscience.  He says this in vs 19,20 and 21; “We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.”

God has given all men a conscience. The conscience is given to men to make them come to the realization that they are sinners, they they have done wrong,  that they’ve  transgressed against the commandment of God. But the conscience can become dulled.  The conscience can become calloused.

The Bible has a lot to say about the conscience.  Paul speaks of it in Romans as something that God gave to make men come to recognize they are sinning against God.  He says in Romans 2:15 “they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.”  So the conscience is something that theologians call a common grace, which means a gift of God that is given to all men for their benefit. 

However, the conscience can become defiled. It can became calloused.  And to some extent, it is informed by one’s environment.  1 Timothy says that the conscience can become seared. When something is seared, there forms a callous which makes it hard to feel what they are supposed to feel.  1Tim.4:2 “by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.”  And then Titus 1:15 speaks of defiling the conscience;  “To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.”  They believe a lie, and as such their conscience is defiled.  It no longer operates according to the truth.

But for those who have been born again spiritually, there is a quickening of the conscience, which is what I think John is referring to here.  Our conscience is quickened by the Holy Spirit, and informed by the word of God, so that it serves an important function in the life of the believer.  It serves to help us to walk in the truth, to conduct ourselves appropriately as followers of Christ.  It convicts us and causes us to repent if we sin.  And so it’s important that we do not sin against our conscience, because it is a tool that God uses to correct us and teach us. If we deliberately sin, our conscience becomes defiled and calloused, and then it does not work anymore as God intends it to work.

But when it is working properly, John says it is one of the means that God uses to assure us of our salvation. If you slip up and sin, and you feel the prick of your conscience, then that’s an indication that you are saved.  But if you sin and you have no guilty conscience, then that’s an indication that you are not saved. We have a conscience quickened by the Holy Spirit, and informed by the word of God.  And that’s a vastly improved conscience than what the unsaved person has. So we can be assured of our salvation by our conscience.

The third way John gives us that assures us of our salvation is because of answered prayer. John says, “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God” and then vs22 “and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.”

As a child of God, we have unrestricted access to the throne of God our Father. And if our conscience is clear, then we have confidence as we come before God.  Unconfessed sin hinders our relationship with God.  Adam and Eve tried to hide in the Garden of Eden because they had sinned. But as John says, God knows our heart.  We can’t hide our sin.  

David said in Psalm 66:18,  “If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear.”  But because we are children of God, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight, we can have confidence before God and whatever we ask we receive from Him.  I’m reminded that James says that the prayers of a righteous man accomplishes much.  There is a condition to answered prayer, which is a clear conscience, and a clean heart, and clean hands before the Lord. 

So then answered prayer is an assurance of our salvation.  Now when John says this, he is obviously repeating what Jesus said in John 14:13,  “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do [it.] If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”   

That statement that God will do what we ask of Him is always tied to the commandments.  Not only does that mean keeping the commandments is a condition for answered prayer, but also it indicates that our prayers must be in keeping with God’s commandments, they must be in accordance with His will. Jesus kept all the commandments  perfectly, yet when He earnestly prayed with tears and sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed “not My will, but Your will be done.” So the key to answered prayer is that they are in keeping with God’s will, His commandments, and our answered prayer is an assurance of our salvation.

Now that segues into the fourth assurance of our salvation, which is because we keep His commandments. Vs 22 “and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.” This isn’t a new point John is making, he’s been saying this since the beginning of his epistle. That you can know, you can prove who is a Christian, by the fact that they keep the commandments.  

Back in chapter 2, vs 3 John said, “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.  The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;  but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him.” 

As we have discussed in previous studies, the desire to keep the commandments comes from a new nature, a new heart.  In our natural state, we cannot keep the commandments.  We may make a stab at it from time to time, we may think we do enough good to outweigh what we do wrong, but in fact, the Bible says we fall far short of the standard of God.  

But as Ezekiel 36 tells us, when God gives us a new heart, we then have the ability to keep the commandments.  Ezekiel 36:26-27  “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

So, our desire to keep the commandments of God is evidence that we are the children of God. It’s evidence that we have been given a new heart from our Father, and so we want to do what is pleasing to Him.  And if that is true in you, then that’s another assurance that you have been born again.

The fifth assurance of our salvation is because of faith in Christ. This is so basic, and yet it’s  so often overlooked, perhaps because of it’s simplicity. He says in vs 23 “This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.” Jesus said in John 11:25 “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies.”  He also said ““I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”  He is saying He is the spiritual food that gives life,  the spiritual water that gives life.  He also said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”  He is the source of life.

Our assurance of salvation comes from just believing that what Jesus said is true.  That’s what it means to believe in Him, by the way.  It’s not just believing that He lived, or that He existed on earth 2000 years ago.  But to believe in Him, to believe in His name, is to believe all that He said, all that He was, all that He came to do, and all that He promised. And He promised that if you believe in Him, He would give you eternal life.

I want to emphasize though that to believe in Christ is to believe what He has said.  So many people today claim to be Christians, to believe in Christ, but yet they don’t believe in what He said, what He taught.  They don’t believe that He is the only way to God. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.”  But they say Jesus is not the only way to God. When questioned, a lot of professing Christians don’t believe in hell.  Yet Jesus preached more about the reality of hell than He did about heaven.  Many people today don’t believe in the commandments.  They don’t believe in the Biblical definition of sin and righteousness.  But yet Jesus said I did not come to nullify the law, but to fulfill it.” Many sophisticated so called Christians today don’t believe in the flood, or in creation as it is presented in the Bible, but yet Jesus spoke of both of those things authoritatively, basing HIs gospel upon them as facts.  The point is that a lot of professing Christians don’t really believe in Jesus Christ because they don’t believe what He said.  They don’t believe His word. And consequently, for such people, they should not have any assurance whatsoever of salvation. 

You don’t get to pick and choose what you want to believe about Christ. You don’t get to define God according to your woke mentality.  That’s idolatry, that’s not worshiping God in spirit and in truth as Jesus said was necessary.

Furthermore, John makes it clear that to believe in Jesus Christ is a command. You want to keep the commandments?  Start with that one.  Believe in Him, in HIs word, in His ministry, in who He said He was.  So if you believe in Jesus Christ and all that means, then you can have assurance that you are a child of God, because Jesus said to believe in Him was the way to receive eternal life.  You can have confidence, because Jesus promised, and He keeps His promises.

The second part of that commandment is one that John has already given us.  To love one another. And we have already said how obeying that commandment is evidence that you have been born again.  So we won’t belabor that  point again.  But it’s important to notice that John ` ties these two commandments together, to believe and to obey.  So then to believe in Christ  means to obey His command to love one another.  And by keeping these commandments, we have confidence in our salvation. 

The last assurance which John gives us of our salvation is because of the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Vs 24, “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.”  It’s noteworthy that John ties so much doctrine to keeping of the commandments.  He has just said that to love one another is a commandment, to believe in Christ is a commandment, and now it seems that he is saying that we abide in Him by keeping the commandments, and the Holy Spirit is the means by which we keep the commandments.

That’s interesting because the church today doesn’t seem to teach that aspect of the Spirit’s ministry.  They don’t seem to recognize that the Spirit is given that we might have the power to do what Christ has commanded us to do.  A lot of churches seem to emphasize the Holy Spirit, but only as evidenced by some sort of feeling, some emotion, some ecstatic experience that they think verifies Jesus Christ as being real in their life.

But John is saying that the Spirit is given for much more practical purposes than that.  He is given to us that we might have the power to keep the commandments.  I’m not sure who said it, and exactly how they said it now, but it may have been Alistair Begg who I it from, but he said; the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant is that in the old covenant they were given the law but no means by which to keep it.  In the new covenant, we are given the Holy Spirit who enables us to keep the commandments of God. Now that’s not an exact quote, but I think I’m close enough to the thought. 

John is indicating that same principle here.  That we can know we are saved by the fact that we have the presence of the Holy Spirit in us and because we have His presence in us, we can keep His commandments. We are of God because we have His Spirit in us.  And so the presence of the Spirit is an assurance of our salvation.  But we know that we have the Spirit not because we believe we have experienced some gift of the Spirit, but because we keep His commandments.  Now I would hope that would be like a light bulb came on for some of you. Because there is this idea in modern churches today that to be Spirit led is the exact opposite of something as legalistic and archaic as keeping the commandments.  But we are given the power of the Holy Spirit so that we may do the works of God. 

 I hope you can read this text with the same understanding as I have. I believe the Spirit of God enables me to understand the scriptures.  That’s the other primary ministry of the Spirit of God.  He is the author of scripture, all scripture is inspired by the Spirit, so then an accurate interpretation of the scripture then comes from the power of the Holy Spirit to open my heart to understand what He wrote.  And that spiritual insight into the scriptures is a further assurance that I have the presence of the Spirit of God abiding in me.

You know, it is a wonderful thing to have the assurance and the confidence that you are a child of God.  It’s a knowledge that gives us peace and hope and joy.  It’s a knowledge that gives us the courage to face death, knowing that nothing can separate us from the love of God.  It’s a knowledge that my sins are forgiven, paid in full.  And that confidence in our salvation should be the source of our joy.  I hope that you have that assurance.  I hope that as you consider these six assurances you are given confidence in your salvation, and that your joy may be full. 

However, there may be someone here today that listened to this list of assurances, but they were not assured.  Perhaps they recognized that some of those things are not true in their life.  If that’s the case with you, I urge you to believe in the finished work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that purchased your salvation by His death on the cross and provided for you a new life through His resurrection.  I would urge you today to call upon Him as your Savior and Lord, that believing you might have life in His name.  Today is the acceptable day of salvation.  Don’t harden your heart against the conviction of the Holy Spirit, but believe the gospel of Jesus Christ and know the joy of knowing that you are truly a child of God.  

One of the Apostle John’s favorite instruments in teaching is the use of contrasts.  He also uses repetition as another major instrument for teaching in this epistle.  In the passage we are looking at today, John combines both of these instruments to help teach us concerning either the verification of a believer or the identification of a false believer, or a false teacher.

And the two principles that John is going to contrast here are love and hate. John presents love and hate as polar opposites, not only in emotion, but in thinking, and in action.  What John is going to teach us is that love and hate are the products of our hearts.  Not the heart as a muscle which pumps blood through our body, but hearts as used in the Bible, meaning the spiritual center of our soul. What is in the heart comes out – out of the mouth, out of our actions, and out in our attitudes.

Now as I said, John is going to contrast these two ways of thinking; love and hate.  And that’s where the repetition comes in.  John has already talked about the principles of love and hate in the previous chapter.  Yet by using repetition as a tool for learning, John brings them up again, but adding more elements to his original thoughts.  And he uses this instrument of repetition again and again as he deals with various themes in his epistle. Each time he repeats the principle that he wants to instruct us in, but adding more elements, or to say it in reverse, revealing more elements each time he revisits the theme.

So he begins in this passage with the theme of love, which as I said he has already spoken about.  For instance in chapter 2, John talked about the love of God being perfected or completed in us, so that we may walk as He walked.  We are to love as God loved. And then in vs10  he extrapolates the doctrine of love further saying “The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.”  So we learned that we are to love like God loves, and that means we should love our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Now in the passage we’re looking at today, chapter 3 vs 11, John reiterates and repeats that principle, saying, “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.”  When John speaks of hearing this message from the beginning, he isn’t talking about the beginning of this epistle, but the beginning of their conversion. To love one another is a fundamental principle of the gospel, and one that they would have heard at the beginning of their salvation.

Love was a central doctrine of the gospel which the apostles taught, because it had been taught to them by the Lord Jesus.  In John 13, Jesus identifies love as the distinguishing mark of the disciples. vs 35 “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” And He says in vs 34, “A new commandment I give you that you love one another, even as I have loved you.”  The commandment to love was not new, but was in fact prefaced in the Old Testament. But there was a new element to it, which was to love one another as Christ loved. That’s the new element, to love like Christ loved.

So we should ask, how did Christ love? He loved with a sacrificial love, laying down His life for His brothers.  He said in John 15:13  “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”  That’s the kind of love that Jesus had, which we are supposed to emulate.  It’s a sacrificial love.  That’s the meaning of agape, the Greek word for love.  It’s not an affection, a sentiment, or even an emotion.  It’s a commitment, a sacrifice of your life, your priorities, your desires, your needs, for the sake of your brother.

It reminds me of Romans 12: 2 where Paul says “I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God,  to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” That’s what love is, to be a living sacrifice for the sake of Christ, for the love of the brethren.  To lay aside your priorities to love another sacrificially.  I happen to believe that Paul in Romans 12 is speaking of presenting your body to the church as a living sacrifice.  A lot of people tend to think of going to church as something that is solely for their benefit.  So if they don’t really feel a need to go,  if everything’s good in their life, or so they think, then they can do without church. But one of the key reasons for going to church is to strengthen others, to share one another’s burdens, to teach others, to encourage one another, to help one another, ie, to love one another.  That exposes one of the major shortcomings of the pandemic live stream scenario we were caught up in during the last year.  You can’t love one another very effectively sitting in front of a computer screen or a television.  You need to physically present yourself as a living sacrifice, which Paul says is your spiritual service of worship. That’s what it means to worship the Lord, by sacrificially loving one another.

So John says the message is to love one another, that is those within the church.  And then he contrasts that love to hate.  And he illustrates hate by the life of Cain.  In John’s view, Cain is the representative of those who are not born of God, but are of the devil, whom he calls a child of the devil.  

He says in vs12, “not as Cain, [who] was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.”  Cain belonged to the evil one.  Now that’s a pretty significant statement.  But it’s based on what Jesus said to the Jews in John 8:44,  “You are of [your] father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own [nature,] for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  So Jesus says that the unconverted, the unsaved, are children of their father the devil.  They share in the nature of the devil. 

But Jesus’s statement causes me to ask, when was Satan a murderer?  I suggest that Jesus says that because Satan was the instigator for the first murder, the murder of Able by Cain.  The devil instigated it by inducing Cain to rebel, to sin, to hate his brother.  You will remember the story that Cain and Able came to worship the Lord, and Cain brought an offering from the fruit of the fields, and Able brought a lamb to be slain upon the alter.  And the scripture says that God honored Able’s offering, but he had no regard for the offering of Cain.  And Cain got very angry because God did not regard his offering. 

But Cain’s anger was the thing that was sinful, and Satan taking the opportunity through that sinful rebellion and anger, induced Cain to kill his brother.  NowI happen to think there was more going on there than meets the eye.  You should remember when God cursed the serpent in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve’s sin, God said in Gen 3:15 “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

Now that may sound like a riddle to us, but I think it became clear to Satan, whom someone has rightly called the first theologian, that God had a plan for the redemption of man, and their deliverance from sin and death, and by this seed, to crush the power of Satan.  The plan of God was from the seed of the woman to come the Messiah, who was to redeem man from the curse of sin and death and give him life. And so the enmity of Satan, the hatred of Satan towards the object of God’s love was to try to destroy that seed of the woman.

I believe it had become obvious through some means that we are not privy to, that the line was going to be through Able.  Cain’s heart was evil.  And Satan knew that.  And so he deduced that the line was through Able.  So Satan acted upon this sin of anger that arose in Cain when his offering was rejected, and induced Cain to rise up and slaughter his brother, the one in whom Satan supposed was the seed of the Messiah.  And by the way, the Greek word for murdered, which John uses in our text, indicates cutting someone’s throat. There are other words specific to murder, but John uses one which indicates cutting one’s throat.  Someone has suggested that Cain deliberately killed him that way as a rebuff to God for demanding a sacrifice such as Able made in slaying a lamb for the altar.

But the point I would like to make is that Satan hates the gospel.  And He hates those that embody the gospel.  And the gospel was going to be made manifest in the seed which would come through Eve.  And throughout the ages we have seen numerous attempts by Satan to destroy that seed, to annihilate the Jews in general as the seed of Abraham.  But God’s plan would not be thwarted.  That’s why when Eve conceived again and brought forth Seth, she said, “God has appointed me another seed in place of Abel, for Cain killed him.”

So the point is that Satan hates God’s people.  He hates the gospel.  And likewise those that are of the evil one hate those that are of God. That’s why John continues in vs 13, “Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.” The world hates righteousness. They are in rebellion against God.  But the irony is that Cain came to worship God.  Cain believed in God.  He was religious. But he was not willing to accept God’s plan for redemption.  He was not willing to accept God’s standard for righteousness. 

And I would suggest to you that there are many false prophets and false believers today who claim to have fellowship with God, and yet in reality they hate God and they hate those who love God, because they resent God’s standard for righteousness.  They want to believe that their life is acceptable, their sense of right and wrong is acceptable.  They don’t want to believe that what they are saying is acceptable, God says is sin.  And so they hate those who are righteous. And God says that hate is the moral equivalent of murder.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:21, “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing, shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” So Jesus said hate is enough to condemn you to hell, whether or not it ever becomes actual murder.  Because God looks at the heart. Prov.23:7 says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”

So John says the test of whether or not you are a child of God or a child of the evil one is whether you love or hate your brother. Vs.14 “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” 

What John is saying is that love is the manifestation of those who are born of God, who have received life from God. Notice the sentence construction he uses does not indicate that love is the means by which we are born of God.  But that love is the evidence that you’ve been born of God.  “We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.”  Love is the manifestation of a child of God.

And vice a versa, “everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”  The hallmark of an unbeliever is that they hate their brother.  Now does that mean that if someone has committed murder they can never be saved? No, there are some good examples in scripture of murderers that were saved. For instance, Paul was a murderer. Didn’t he persecute and kill Christians? He says, “I was a blasphemer and a murderer.” But he repented and was forgiven. All sinners can be saved, if they repent of their sin. But that reveals the danger of not recognizing your sin.  If you don’t consider yourself a sinner, then you obviously can’t repent and conseuently you cannot be saved. But any sin can be forgiven if you repent.

So John says hate is the moral equivalent to murder.  And murder is the physical manifestation of hatred, and hatred is in a person’s heart. But there is another manifestation of hate and that is indifference., Not all the children of the devil are equally evil in their actions. They all are characterized by some level of hatred of those who are righteous. But not all of them carry it out to its extremity and actually murder someone. But another way, and perhaps the more common way of manifesting hate is through indifference. They don’t love others, so they are indifferent towards others. They could really care less about others. Look at verses 16 and 17, “We know love by this, that He lay down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him. How does the love of God abide in him?” This is speaking of indifference. This is another evidence of the selfish, hateful heart. They have the world’s goods but they selfishly hold them for themselves, for their own pleasure and satisfaction. They are not willing to make any sacrifice for anyone else. They’re dominated by selfishness. If they do give away a little pittance here and there, it is to pacify their own conscience and have the appearance of philanthropy.  But the root of their deeds are pride.  To be seen as philanthropic.  But in general, the children of the evil one are consumed with themselves and they’re unconcerned and indifferent towards others.

But let’s consider for a moment what John said in vs16, “this is how we know what love is…” And then he goes on to state Christ’s sacrifice for us.  The part I want to emphasize is John says this is how we know what love is. We need to understand what love is.  You know, if there is one word or one doctrine that is completely mischaracterized today not only in the world but even in the church, it is the word love.

Love is not sex, ladies and gentlemen.  Sex was designed to be a product of love, when love operates as God designed it to be. But love is not sex.  When the Beatles sang “All you need is love…” they were really talking about sex.  The culture has so corrupted the true meaning of love that it is hardly a word that has any spiritual significance today. That’s why in the Greek there were four words for love.  John uses agape, meaning sacrificial love. There was another word eros, which corresponded to erotic love.  God’s love is agape, which is the love we are to have for one another.

 I think it’s also disingenuous to substitute the name of God with love.  John will go on to say that God is love, but what he means is that love is a characteristic of God.  But God is not love in that it is the only characteristic of God.  Love is held in tension with all the other characteristics of God’s nature, such as holiness, righteousness, truth  and justice. God is almighty, all knowing, all powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent. He is life, He is light, He is the source of all things, and the means by which all things hold together. God  said to Moses that His name was “I AM THAT I AM.”  To reduce the name of God to a single emotion which we’ve dumbed down to it’s lowest common denominator is practically sacrilege.

This thing the world calls love, this emotional, sentimental, affection for someone or something that causes us to desire it, is a bastardization of what God calls love.  God says here is love; to lay down your life on behalf of someone else.  It’s sacrificial, total selflessness, a willingness to give up everything that we hold dear for the sake of a brother.  Love is being a living sacrifice to serve others, which is our spiritual service of worship to God.

Now then, if hatred is the moral equivalent of murder, then love is the moral imperative of the child of God. John says, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Ought is a moral imperative.  Love is a commandment. Jesus said “if you love Me you will keep My commandments.”  For a believer, love is a command.

So how does love look on a practical level?  John says love gives freely.  “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”

There used to be another song on the radio which had the line, “It’s so easy to fall in love.” It may be easy to fall into bed with someone, but it’s another thing to sacrifice my priorities for the sake of what’s best for someone else.  It’s so easy to say I love you.  But it’s another thing to actually love someone the way God loved us.  It’s another thing to sacrifice your will for someone else.  It’s so easy to say I love God.  But it’s another thing to obey God’s commandments.  But He says if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

John says don’t just give lip service to God.  He is saying that true believers don’t just give lip service to God.  I think a lot of people come to church on Sunday and sing “O how I love Jesus,” and then Monday through Saturday they live for the devil. They live for the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life.  John says don’t just say you love, but do the deeds of love. We are to be known not by our words, but by our deeds.

What John is sort of reiterating here is the principle that by their fruit you shall know them.  The life that has been born of God will be a life that is manifested by a love for the brethren.  The life that is still in their sins, that is still in the bonds of the evil one, will be manifested by hatred, indifference, selfishness.

The crux of the matter is this, that our human nature is inherently sinful.  Our human nature is inherently selfish.  Watch two little children play together and no matter how many toys they have scattered all around the room, sooner or later they will end up in a tug of war over one of them. One of the first words a child learns is “Mine.”  Selfishness and hatred is a natural attribute and we are naturally inclined to sin against God.  We are naturally sinners, naturally rebels towards God.  

But the love of God for us was manifested in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, that we might be forgiven of our sins and be given life through His death on our behalf. If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  We can be born again as a child of God through faith in what Jesus has accomplished for us at the cross. We can receive a new nature, the same nature that God has, by becoming a child of God.  I urge you today to accept and believe in the death of Jesus Christ as the payment for your sins, and in His resurrection as the means of life in Him, that you might be born spiritually as a child of God.  I pray that you will have the love of God completed in you today, as you turn to Him in faith.  

The section of scripture before us today is one of the most difficult in John’s epistles, if not in the entire New Testament.  Just a cursory reading of this text seems to cause all sorts of conflicting interpretations, and seemingly contradictory interpretations.  I heard someone quote John Knox as saying to Mary Queen of Scots that if you read the Bible and think you find a contradiction, then keep on reading and sooner or later you will find another passage that explains it quite satisfactorily.  So in dealing with some of these statements by John we must compare scripture with scripture, and usually as you continue to study you will find within John’s own writings a suitable explanation for the seeming contradiction.

However, I want to approach this text a little differently than that this morning.  I think it may be helpful to look at the big picture and then scroll down to the details, rather than just focus on the details and lose sight of the big picture.  So that is the attempt I would like to make this morning.  And to do that we are going to exposit the word in reverse, starting at vs 10 which I think gives us the big picture, and then work backwards in the text to discover the details.

To help explain the big picture  I am going to use the same pattern that John has used repeatedly throughout this book so far.  And that is, there are only two categories of people that John sees in existence; either being a child of God, or being a child of the devil. John sees everything in reference of these two absolutes; light or darkness, truth or a lie, God or the devil, life or death.  And now in this section – sin or righteousness.  And all of these absolutes are contingent upon one another.  They are all related.  For instance, darkness, child of the devil, the lie,  death and sin are all related.  And light, child of God, the truth, life and righteousness are all related to one another and dependent upon one another.

So I really think that in this passage John is drawing another contrast in a series of contrasts, this time between sin and righteousness.  And as I have repeatedly stressed in previous messages, he makes these contrasts because one of his primary goals in writing to the church is to protect them from those who are trying to deceive them. He says in ch.2vs26, “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.” Those people are described as false prophets, antichrists, deceivers, who have emerged from the ranks of the church, and yet they attempt to lie and twist the truth of the gospel and as such lead astray people unto destruction.

John is saying in providing these contrasts that a false prophet will have certain characteristics about his life that are in opposition to what Christ taught. In other words, they will live in sin and thus by the evidence of their lives show that they are not of God and consequently you should not believe their word or follow their teaching.

Now it’s interesting that in this context John has chosen to contrast sin and righteousness. These two distinctions are really the root cause of all things, whether life and death, truth or the lie, a child of God or a child of Satan.  Everything stems from either sin or righteousness.

For instance, at creation, God made man, and it was good.  Man did not know sin, and thus was righteous.  Being righteous he had fellowship with God.  Being righteous, he had life, all that righteous life entails.  But when man disobeyed God, and fell into sin, sin caused death, and death passed upon all their descendants, for all have sinned.  Romans 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

So man sinned, and death passed to all men.  But God had a plan from before creation to redeem man from sin and give him life again.  That plan was for Jesus to come to earth as a man, to become our substitute, and our Savior, dying on the cross for our sins.  He became sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor. 5:21)  Christ’s death on our behalf not only provided the sacrifice for our sins so that we might be forgiven, but it also provided for the grace of God to be given to us, which is the righteousness of Jesus Christ.  We received the benefit of His righteousness, which was imputed to our account.  And as a result of righteousness, we receive life.

So to make sure you understand the two options here – sin and death, as contrasted to righteousness and life.  And to extrapolate that out a bit further, we might say that sin is commensurate with being a child of the devil, and righteousness is commensurate with being a child of God. Now John makes that principle very clear in vs 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.”  So righteousness is the predominate characteristic of the children of God.  

Now the characteristic of the child of the devil, John says, is sin. That principle is stated in vs 8.  “the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.”  Now that’s a pretty clear contrast, is it not? Forget about all the theological mumbo jumbo for a moment and just accept these statements on their face value. Are they children of God? Then they practice righteousness.  They practice sin?  Then they are children of the devil.  John makes it a very simple equation, which should make obvious whether a person is of God or is not.

The NASB helps us to understand an important distinction here.  And that is the word translated as “practices.”  If you practice righteousness, then you are a child of God.  If you practice sin then you are a child of the devil.  The detail of note is “practice.”  Practice is habitual, continual, deliberate.  I talked about practicing in a previous message in reference to taking piano lessons as a kid.  I found practicing my piano to be hard work.  It’ took discipline.  I didn’t practice, so I failed at piano.  I found that I couldn’t accidentally practice.  It took conscientious, deliberate, dedicated practice.

That’s the idea behind the practicing of either righteousness or sinfulness.  Now granted, the impetus for doing either of those things comes out of our nature.   And what John tells us in the second part of vs 8 is that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil.  That is, He came to destroy the effects of the sin nature.  Vs 8b, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”

Now how did Jesus accomplish destroying the works of the devil?  By giving us a new nature.  By faith in what Christ accomplished through His substitutionary death on the cross, we are born again, that is born of God, born of the Spirit, and as a new creation we now have a new nature.  We have Christ’s nature.  We are given His righteousness in exchange for our sins.  We now have a righteous nature.  The sinful nature, our flesh, is crucified with Christ and we now live by the Spirit, in the righteousness of Christ.  

John states that principle in vs9, “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”   Now this statement “he cannot sin” is one of those that can really cause theologians to go into conniptions and false teachers to have a field day.  So let’s break it down one phrase at a time and work through it.  

“No one who is born of God practices sin…” We’ve really already dealt with this one.  It’s basically a restatement of vs 10.  The key to proper interpretation is “practice.”  And we explained what it means to practice.  It doesn’t mean, however, that we that are born of God can never sin.  Because John says in 1John 1:8, 10  “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. … 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”  So in every way possible, John makes it clear that you can sin, and you have sinned.  The difference of course is that as a child of God you will not practice, continually, habitually, deliberately practice sin. But that old nature is not completely done away with, because you are still in the flesh.  So it’s possible for a child of God to sin, but it’s not possible for a child of God to continually practice sin. 

Then John answers the question, why?  Why don’t we practice sin anymore? That’s answered in the next phrase; “because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”  When the Bible speaks of the seed of Abraham, it is talking about the child of Abraham, the descendants of Abraham.  The seed of Abraham is his DNA, it’s his reproductive life which is passed on to his son, or his child.  And that child that is born is of Abraham, in that he has the genes of Abraham, the DNA of Abraham, the characteristics of Abraham.  He is a man in the likeness of Abraham.

So in keeping with that analogy, when we are born of God we receive His seed, and that produces in us a new life, a new nature, new characteristics of our Father.  I would suggest that the seed is righteousness.  There are two verses that I think, while not directly speaking to this principle, do illustrate the connection between the seed and righteousness.  The first is in 2Cor. 9:10 “Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.”  And then James 3:18 “And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

And I think that the context here in 1John indicates that the seed is righteousness, because there are only two options given here, sin and righteousness.  And as I quoted while ago from 2 Cor. 5:21, God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”  We are made the righteousness of God.  The seed then that we are given by God is righteousness, which makes us righteous.  And John says that is why we cannot sin, because we are righteous.  We are like our Father in our new nature.  Our righteous nature cannot sin.  Our sinful nature can and will sin.  The distinction is which nature we are living in.  Whether or not we are walking in the spirit or walking according to the flesh. 

Paul speaks of this war within his body between the spirit and the flesh in Romans 7:21 “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.  For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:  But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.  O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?  I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”  So if we practice righteousness and walk in the Spirit then  we will not, we cannot sin, and thus fulfill the lusts of the flesh.  

Now we are working our way through this section backwards, if you haven’t been paying attention. As I said I think it’s helpful to our understanding to work from the greater to the lessor, or from the big picture to the details.  And so in vs 7 we get some more detail of how this principle works.  John says in vs7, “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.”  Now just imagine if you will that we have a giant chalkboard behind me, and at the top of the blackboard we have the headings for two columns.  The column on the right has the heading SIN, and the column on the right has the heading RIGHTEOUSNESS.   And what we are doing is detailing the characteristics of each of those headings.  

John says concerning righteousness, that don’t be deceived, the one who practice righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.  First of all, notice the warning; don’t be deceived.  This is the primary purpose of John’s writing, as I told you before.  The deceivers in the church are trying to give people a false gospel, a gospel that on the one hand doesn’t want to acknowledge sin, or wants to condone sin, or explain away sin, and in accordance with the devil’s strategy wants to keep people enslaved in sin, so they don’t preach repentance from sin, or that you can be cleansed from sin.  John says don’t be deceived.  There is sin, it is inviting, it’s pleasurable for a season, it’s alluring to the eyes, but it brings forth death and it’s of the devil.  So don’t be deceived. 

And secondly John restates the principle, that the one who practice righteousness is righteous, but then adds a very important caveat.  Because God is righteous.  If we are born of God then our new nature is righteousness.  We have Christ’s righteousness imputed unto us, we have the seed of righteousness that changes our DNA, that changes our heart, our desires, so that we are righteous, we do the works of righteousness.  That’s what Paul was saying in Eph. 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” We are made a new creation to be able to do the works of righteousness.

Next, John contrasts righteousness to sin.  And going backwards in our text, John states that sin cannot be the characteristic of a child of God.  Vs6 “No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.”  This is another statement that causes theologian’s heads to explode.  But let’s break it down and try to understand it in context with all that John has said.  “No one who abides in Him sins.”  The key to this statement is the word “abides.”  What does to “abide” mean?  It means to follow Him, to walk closely with Him, to listen to Him, to talk to Him, to have fellowship with Him.

To abide is to have what Revelation 3:20  talks about when Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” He’s talking about fellowship, obedience, walking in the Spirit and not according to the flesh.  So John is saying here in vs 6 that if you have fellowship with God you cannot sin, you will not sin.  The key to avoiding sin is to abide with Him.  To have fellowship with Him.  To abide in His word.  To walk according to the leading of the Spirit. To be in constant communication with God.  I have yet to fall into sin when I am in prayer.  It’s only when I forget to pray, or don’t want to pray that I find myself falling into sin.  It’s only when I neglect the reading of the word of God that I find myself straying from righteousness.  So abiding in Him is the key to knowing Him.  If you truly know Him, if you are in intimate fellowship with God, then you will not sin.

And then in vs 5, John says that’s the purpose that Christ came, to take away sin.  Vs5 “You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.”  This is almost an identical statement that John made in vs 8b: “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”  So to take away sins, and to destroy the works of the devil, are one and the same. Christ came to live a sinless life, to live a righteous life, and as the righteous One, to offer Himself as a substitute sacrifice for sinners, to take away the sins of the world.

Back in chapter 2 vs 2, we saw that John said, “and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for [those of] the whole world.”  Now remember, those of you who were here, what we said propitiation meant?  It means satisfaction.  Jesus is the satisfaction for our sins. and the sins of the world.  What exactly did He satisfy?  He satisfied the wrath of God against sin.  He satisfied the penalty for sins which is death.  He satisfied the justice of God, the righteousness of God, the holiness of God.

Christ amply, sufficiently paid the price of our sins, so that we might be made righteous. He appeared in order to take away sins, both the penalty, and the power of sin, which destroys the works of the devil.  The devil is a defeated enemy.  He was defeated at the cross and resurrection when Jesus triumphed over sin and hell.  Sin no longer has control over those who believe in Christ.  Sin no longer can condemn those who have trusted in Him as their Savior.  The devil’s power has been broken by the cross.  The very instrument of Satan’s plan to destroy the gospel, became the means by which he was broken.  We saw a good illustration of that in our study in Esther last week on Wednesday night.  Evil Haman was hung on the very gallows that he had planned to execute Mordecai upon.  God did the same thing in destroying the works of Satan through the cross, the very instrument Satan planned to use to kill Jesus.

So Christ having done away with the power of sin, that makes it possible for the practice of righteousness, which John has said is the evidence of a child of God. And in like manner, the practice of sin is the evidence of a child of the devil.  And that last principle is stated in vs 4, “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.”

This sounds like what John has already stated numerous times.  But there is a nuance here which he wants to emphasize and bring out.  And I think it’s important.  Notice that he says he who practices sin, (we have discussed that aspect already) but then he adds, he also practices lawlessness.  Now what does he mean by that?  

Well, lawlessness, is someone without the law. It’s a disregard of the law.  It’s rebellion against God’s law. It doesn’t mean just breaking one of the 10 commandments, but complete disregard of the law of God, which encompasses all of the scriptures.  In short, lawlessness is rebellion against God. It’s saying there is no absolute truth, no authority in heaven.   You know, we are living today in a lawless age, aren’t we?  The things that are going on lately in our society are beyond the pale.  People are advocating, condoning, championing the grossest  immorality as something that should be celebrated.  And not just immorality, but there is a widespread lawlessness and rebellion against authority that pervades our society today that I think is unequaled since the time when Christ first appeared during the Roman Empire.  And actually, I’m convinced that the days we are living in are worse. 

There is quickly growing an attitude of hatred towards God, towards righteousness, towards good.  Men call evil good and good evil. I believe that when you consider the nature of sin, then you will conclude that the fundamental essence of sin is unbelief. The reason we are lawless, the reason we are rebellious, the reason we do not respond to the word of God is that we do not believe the word of God. We do not believe it is the word of God. 

Jesus said concerning the Holy Spirit, in John 16:8-9  “And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:  of sin, because they do not believe in Me.”  So the essence of sin is unbelief, and because they do not believe the word of God, unbelief causes lawlessness, which is rebellion against God, and an unwillingness to submit to what the word of God says, which is God’s law.

Well, I believe the contrast is clear, everyone who practices sin is not of God, and he who practices righteousness is born of God.  The evidence of whether one is born of God or not is a life that looks like the life of Christ, which is righteousness.  Those that practice sin do not know God.  By this we may know whether the preachers and teachers and priests and prophets are of God or of the devil.  Jesus said by their fruit you shall know them.

But there is also another important point being taught here, and that is that if you are going to have the life which God gives, if you are going to be righteous, then you have to be born of God.  And the only way to be born again is through faith in what Christ as your substitute and Savior did for you through His death and resurrection.  The question is whether or not you have been born again.  Have you received by faith the forgiveness for your sins, and the righteousness of Jesus Christ applied to your account?  That righteousness is a gift of God to those who believe in Jesus Christ.  I hope that no one leaves here today without receiving that gift of salvation.  You can be born again in the spirit today, right now, by trusting in Jesus Christ as your Savior.  I urge you to receive Him today.  

John has several reasons for writing this epistle, which is actually a letter, to the churches.  Back in chapter 2 vs 26, he mentions one of the most pressing reasons for writing them.  He said in vs 26 “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.”  Now we learned that “they” refers to false prophets and false teachers who John calls antichrists.  These are people who have come out of the ranks of the church, who claimed superior knowledge of spiritual things, but who are teaching doctrine which is the opposite of Christ’s gospel.

So what were they trying to deceive the church about?  I believe they were trying to deceive the church by presenting them another gospel, which was a fraudulent claim that you can have a relationship with God, that you can know God and receive life from God, but you don’t have to be concerned with the old fashioned ideas about sin and righteousness.  They taught that it was about an experience, a spiritual enlightening that doesn’t really have anything to do with morality or sin or the need for righteousness.  You could still be carnal and enjoy the lusts of the world and yet have salvation.

This skewed view of Christianity is still being taught today, by the way, in our modern culture.  There is very little concern today on the part of many false teachers in the church about sin and the need for righteousness.  A relationship with God is all that they teach, and when you examine their claims, you find that relationship is very one sided.  God sacrifices everything for us, but we sacrifice nothing in return. They teach that you can live in what the Bible calls sin and still be fine.  There is no need for repentance. There is no need to be righteous.  There is no need for a change in behavior.

But John says that cannot be true.  He says if you say you have fellowship with God and yet walk in the darkness, that means practice sin, then you lie and don’t practice the truth. He says if you love the world, then the love of the Father is not in you.  The point being that if you are truly a Christian, you will become like Christ.  If you really have fellowship with God, there is going to be a change in you, that results in looking more and more like Christ.  And John indicates that this is the test for how the church is to gauge the false prophets, how they are to test the spirits to see if they are from God.  If they claim to have fellowship with God, but their walk doesn’t bear witness of the fact that they have died to sin and walk after righteousness, then the church can know that these are false prophets and antichrists and they should not follow their teaching.

So John has been presenting a number of tests by which you can validate a person’’s Christianity.  And these tests also serve to assure you of your own salvation, or it should convict of your need of salvation should you fail the tests.

Today we are looking at another such test.  It’s kind of like the test we sometimes employ today in our society if there is a question about who is the father of a child. It’s called a paternity test.  They take a sample of the DNA of the child in question and a sample of the purported father, and they compare them to see if the child is really his or not. 

What John is proposing here is something akin to a paternity test.  The question is are they a child of God?  Are we a child of God? A lot of people claim to be children of God.  Some teach that everyone on earth is a child of God. But we don’t find that doctrine born out in the scriptures.  In fact, Jesus accused some Pharisees who confronted Him during His ministry of being children of their father the devil.  Paul in Ephesians 2 calls the world “children of wrath.” John in vs 10 of chapter three divides the world into two groups, children of God and children of the devil.  So not everyone then is a child of God.

To be a child of God, John says you have to be born of God. He mentions this necessity in vs 29 of the previous chapter, saying, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”  In other words, John is saying that the one who is born of God is like God in the sense that God’s DNA is righteousness, and if we are born of God then our DNA is righteousness.

But the question arises, what is meant by being born of God? The word John uses in vs29 is literally “begotten”.  That means they have had a birth experience.  It’s a second birth.  Jesus said in John chapter 3 vs 3 to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”  Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

So everyone on earth is born of their mother and father.  That’s the natural birth, what Jesus refers to as water birth.  But He says it’s necessary to be born again of the Spirit.  God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.  So we must be born again spiritually and that happens through the Holy Spirit.  

Now how does that work?  First a person must recognize that they are a sinner, and that they are dead in their sins.  Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death.  When Adam and Eve sinned against God He said that they would surely die.  What died immediately was their spirit. And as children of Adam we are born dead spiritually.  Romans 5 says “by the transgression of the one, (that is Adam), death reigned through the one.”  And “through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men.”  And “as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.”

So through the obedience of Christ, many will be made righteous.  There is the equation that produces new birth.  We are made righteous by Christ’s obedience to the Father to offer Himself as a sacrifice for sin, as our substitute on the cross, bearing our sins upon Him, so that we might receive His righteousness.  2 Cor. 5:21 says, “God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made righteous in Him.”

Listen, new birth is having your sins forgiven and having the righteousness of Jesus Christ applied to our account.  And because we are made righteous, the Holy Spirit is able to regenerate our spirit by His dwelling in us.  So we are born of God when we by faith receive what Christ did on our behalf.  John says back in John 1:12-13 “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name:  Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

That is what it means to be born of God. To be born again. By faith believing in Christ and HIs work on the cross and what He accomplished for us, we receive forgiveness of sins, the transference of His righteousness to our account, and the power to become sons of God.  That power is the Spirit of God that gives life to our spirit and gives us new life.  We are spiritually born not of man, nor by the will of man, but of God.

And John says what it means to be a child of God is a wonderful, tremendous privilege that can hardly be comprehended.  He says in chapter 3 vs 1, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God.”  I think in some ways the KJV gives us a better sense of the wonder that John feels as he considers how incredible it is to be called children of God.  In the KJV it says “Behold! What manner of  love the Father hath bestowed upon us…”

It’s a phrase that indicates astonishment, wonder, incredulity at God’s love towards us. John doesn’t just say that the Father loves us.  But that He lavishes His love upon us. It’s extravagant, overflowing, super abundant love towards us.  It shows an action taken by the Father towards us.  It’s not just a sentimental feeling God has for us, but a tremendous act of love.  And the action that God took was He sent His own, beloved Son to die in our place for our sins so that He might make us HIs children.  John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.” Greater love has no one than this, Jesus said, that a man lay down His life for His friends.  God loves us with an everlasting, sacrificial, lavish love that surpasses anything we can imagine. Because He loves us and sent Jesus to take away our sins, we receive the right to become children of God.

That we might be called children of God!  What an incredible thing!  God looked upon us, who were sinners, who were hostile towards Him, who were undeserving and unlovable, and He chose us to be the recipients of His love.  It’s as if prospective parents come to an orphanage, desiring to adopt a child.  And they pick the most unresponsive child, the child with all kinds of problems, that has no redeeming qualities, but they fall in love with this totally unlovable child, and adopt him and love him unconditionally.  And then not only do they adopt him, but they give him an inheritance of all that they have.  As children of God, we are adopted as His children, and we are made co heirs with Christ. Romans 8:16 says, “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,  and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with [Him] so that we may also be glorified with [Him.]”

So to this tremendous privilege we are called children of God, John adds, “and such we are!”  We are now the children of God. It’s not something that is off in the future, it’s a present reality.  We have all the benefits of being a child of God now.  We have the Spirit of God in us now. We receive His spiritual DNA now.  We have complete access to the throne of God now.  We have eternal life now.  We enjoy all the rights and privileges that our adoption entails, because we have come to know God as our Father.

Paul describes our spiritual status as a present reality, to the point of even now spiritually being seated in the heavenly places as recipients of all God’s blessings.  In Eph. 2:4-7  he says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,  even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),  and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly [places] in Christ Jesus,  so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

But John says, because we are born of God, we are known by our Father, we have the blessings of being  a child of God,  but the world does not know us.  At the end of vs 1 he says, “For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.”  Even as the world did not recognize Jesus as the Son of God, neither do they recognize us as being children of God.  They may recognize us as being crazy right wing nuts who call themselves Christians. But they don’t recognize that we are born of God, for the same reasons that they didn’t recognize Christ.  People don’t recognize Jesus Christ for who He is, they don’t believe in what Jesus Christ has done, because they are too enamored with this world. If they believed in Christ that would mean they would have to give up their love for this world, their love for themselves, and so it’s easier to just not believe in Christ.  That way they think they can hold on to their autonomy, their independence, and their sin.  But they don’t realize that they are enslaved to sin, and that they have within themselves the condemnation of their sin which is the sentence of death.

But because we know God, because we are born of God, we will come to know Him more, and we will become more like Him.  John says in vs 2, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.”   For a second time John emphasizes that we are now children of God.  What he wants to stress is that there is already a resemblance to the Father that should be seen in the children.  Children should look like their father.  They should share some of the characteristics of their father.  And as they mature, they look and act more and more like their fathers.  That’s a fact in the earthly realm, and it should be a fact in the heavenly realm. If we are God’s children, then we should act like God more and more as we mature.

That process of maturing is what the Bible calls sanctification.  It’s the natural progression of maturity that believers should express in their lives and in their behavior.  The last stage of that progression of maturity will occur when we see the Lord.  It’s brought about by what John referred to in the last chapter as the coming of the Lord.  He said in the previous chapter, vs 28 “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.”  The way to not be ashamed, John adds in the next verse, is to be righteous as He is righteous.

Now John says that  our maturity as children of God will be completed and  we will be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.  He again is speaking of the coming of the Lord, and what is called our glorification.  There are in theological terms three stages of our salvation.  There is justification, when our sins are forgiven and HIs righteousness is applied, which is when we are born again; then there is sanctification, when we become conformed to His image, when we exhibit the characteristics of our Father, and then there is glorification, when Christ returns and we receive a new, glorified body.  That glorified body is like Christ’s glorified body. That’s about all I can tell you about it as far as how it looks.  But most importantly, this new body will not have the old sin nature anymore.  Sin will be done away with in all it’s forms, in all of creation, all things will be made new.  A new heaven and a new earth.  A new Jerusalem, John calls it in Revelation, meaning the city of God.  And there will be no night there, no sin there, no sickness there, no tears there.  The Lord will be the light, and we will be in His glorified presence.  We will be in what theologians call the beatific vision.  When we shall see the Lord in all His glory.  The same glory that Moses only saw the backside of, and yet his face glowed so brightly that he had to veil his face so that men could look upon him.  To be in the beatific vision is to be in the presence of pure light, pure truth, pure holiness, pure righteousness, and pure life.  All things have their being in Him.  Eternal life emanates from Him. And to be in His presence will transform us into His likeness. That is what John means when he says we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.  

Paul said that is indescribable. As the apostle Paul put it, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.”  God told Moses that no man can see God and live. So God has to transform us into a creature that can see God. That can look upon Him as He is and live.  He has to make us holy, righteous.  That is the purpose of the process of sanctification that we are going through now. Through the word of God,  there is a constant sanctifying, cleansing influence going on in us. As we look intently at the word of God, we are constantly being changed and conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul states that in 2 Corinthians chapter 3:18 “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” So the process of sanctification is going on in the life of every child of God now,  being conformed more and more to the Son of God until finally the conformation will be made complete, when we see him as He is at His coming.

So that being God’s purpose in our sanctification, John says if we have that hope, then we purify ourselves, just as He is pure.  Vs.3, “And everyone who has this hope [fixed] on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” The self validating test of being a Christian is that you become like Christ.  You are a work in progress.  You may not be perfect yet, but you are being perfected.  Paul said in Phil. 1:6 “[For I am] confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

The more we learn of the Lord, the more we become like Him.  The more we know Him, the more we love Him. The more we love Him, the more we obey Him. The more we read His word, the more we have the mind of Christ, the more we imitate the life of Christ.  

Purity simply means being free from moral stain.  As Peter said in  1Peter 1:16 “because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.”  It’s restatement really of what John said in chapter 2:29, which is the verse we opened with, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”

And that returns us to our initial premise, the purpose of John’s writing.  That the way the church might know the true prophet of God from the false prophet of God is in whether or not they live like Jesus lived.  If they practice righteousness or practice sinfulness. That’s how John instructed the church to distinguish the spirits. 

But let’s make sure we are clear on this principle -that righteousness follows as a result of conversion.  Our righteousness is not the means of our being born again, but righteousness is the fruit of our salvation.  Our righteousness is not the cause of the new birth, but it is the consequence of it. But if we are children of God, then we will exhibit the behavior consistent with our Father.   You cannot claim to know God, to have fellowship with God, and walk in darkness.  But if you are a child of God, you purify yourself even as He is pure.

I trust today that you pass the test of the evidence of your salvation.  Some of you here today may be trying to obtain salvation through your good works.  You might be sincerely trying to be a better person.  You want to know God and to know that you know Him.  You want to know that you have eternal life.  But the scripture says that  by your own righteousness you cannot obtain salvation.  

Titus 3:5-7 says,  “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,  whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,  so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to [the] hope of eternal life.”

God saves us because of His great sacrificial love which He has for us.  He saved us on the basis of what Christ did for us on the cross.  Our sins are forgiven, and our righteousness is granted, by our faith in what Christ has done.  So that John may say, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, [even] to those who believe in His name,  who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Have you been born again?  Are you able to answer that question today?  Born again not by man, nor by the will of man, but born of God, that you might become the child of God.  God loves you so much that He has already done all that is required for you to be become His child.  The part that is your responsibility is to trust in Him, to receive Him as your Lord and Savior, confessing your need for Him.  And the promise of God is that if you will receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, God will give you the right to be a child of God.  Call upon Him today and be saved.