When you hear someone speak of a doctor’s office, they often refer to it as a place where the physician practices medicine. And we understand what that means, don’t we? It doesn’t mean that the doctor is practicing medicine as a means of learning medicine. None of us would trust our health to someone who wasn’t already a doctor, but was just someone who was practicing to be a doctor. We understand that it means a doctor is practicing what he has already been trained to do. He practices what he is. The dictionary defines practice as the exercise of profession. I like that.

The application of practice to the church is that there are many that have professed to be Christian, but in practice, it is evident that they are not. The Apostle John, in essence says that very thing in verse 4, “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.” On the other side of the coin, the Apostle John says that the one who is truly saved, practices righteousness. Look at vs.7, “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.”

The distinction is plain. Those who are sinners, practice sin, and those who are righteous, practice righteousness. John is offering us a moral test of fellowship with God. If we are truly a child of God, if we are truly born of God, then we will exhibit God’s character, which is righteousness. If we are not truly born of God, then we are born of the devil, as he says in vs.8. “the one who practices sin is of the devil.”

Now that may sound like a harsh judgement, but John says that the children of God and the children of the devil are made quite obvious by their deeds. 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.”

Now that contrast should be convicting for all of us. It shows that if our behavior does not match our profession, then our faith is suspect. And we should examine ourselves as to whether we are truly a child of God not only by our profession, or by some past emotional experience, not only by our knowledge of doctrine, but by the evidence of our actions.

So let’s do that this morning. Let’s examine ourselves in the mirror of God’s word, to see if we are truly of the faith. Because as John indicates in vs.7, it’s possible to be deceived. It’s possible to think you are going to heaven, that you are a child of God, and yet you are not. Jesus said in Matthew 7, “by their fruit you shall know them.” In other words, you will know His disciples by the actions of their lives. Jesus went on to say in vs21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’” There is that word again, “practice.” If you practice lawlessness, you are a sinner.

John defines sin as lawlessness. Vs.4, “sin is lawlessness.” Sin is simply rebellion against God’s law. He is not speaking necessarily of just the 10 commandments. He is speaking of the will of God. The plan of God, the word of God. God’s word is law.

Human nature harbors an innate rebelliousness against the law of God. It’s natural. It’s common to all of us. Romans 3:10; “There is none righteous, no not one.” Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Sin is the endemic condition of the entire human race. We all have the sin nature as the default condition of our being. And all sin, any sin, breaks the chain of fellowship between God and man. It’s like a chain between God and man, and the failure of only one link ruins the whole chain.

Let me try to explain something that is important to understand about the law of God. God is not capricious. He didn’t make a bunch of rules and regulations just to be difficult. God is our Creator. He made us with a divine purpose; to be like Him, and to have fellowship with Him. That’s why He created us. And so when we go against His design, then it’s rebellion against our Creator and against His creation. God’s law, God’s word is the blueprint for our lives, it’s the laws by which our purpose can be fulfilled. We were not made to live independently from Him. But we were created to be in union with Him. And sin has broken that union. Sin breaks fellowship with God.

Sin is lawlessness, and lawlessness is rebellion against God. Rebellion doesn’t sound so bad, though does it? It doesn’t sound as bad as drunkeness, or addiction or immortality. Most of us would agree those are sins. But rebellion? Is it really so bad? Well, consider what God has to say about rebellion in 1 Samuel 15:23, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD.” God says rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. And stubbornness is as the sin of idolatry. That sounds pretty serious to me.

On that subject of idolatry, I read an interesting quote from RC Sproul the other day which says the following; “A god who is all love, all grace, all mercy, but no sovereignty, no justice, no holiness, and no wrath, is an idol.” Listen, God is not revealed in your imagination, but God is revealed in His Word. Be careful what you believe about God. Otherwise you may find yourself worshipping an idol of your own imagination, rather than the God of scripture. John says that Jesus is righteous, in vs 7. Righteous doesn’t just mean someone who does good, but it means holy, sinless, loving justice, doing the will of God, keeping the commandments of God.

So our condition is sinful, hopeless, separated from God who wants to be in fellowship with us but cannot because He cannot abide with sin. But John says in vs.5, that Jesus, the Righteous Holy One of God, manifested Himself to the world to take away sin. He came to restore fellowship with God, to reconcile us to God. John says He was able to do that, because in Him was no sin. He was sinless. He was as John the Baptist said, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

Now how does Jesus take away sins? Well, first of all He took away sins by removing the penalty of sin. And He did that by substitutionary atonement. That’s a $10 theological term that means He was God, He was sinless, and He took our sins upon Himself and paid the penalty for sin. Only God could atone for the sins of the world. And only His righteousness could outweigh the sins of the world.

To that end, Jesus paid the penalty for sin by dying on the cross. For those who believe and trust in Him as their Savior and Lord, His atonement redeems you from the penalty of sin. But not only does He take away the penalty, but He breaks the power of sin. And I think this is more the point of John makes here in this section. He is not just talking about past sins, but the present practice of sin. So Jesus came to take away the power of sin. Paul said in Romans 6:14 that sin will no longer master you. Sin no longer has control of you. When a person is born again, they give themselves as servants to a new master. That’s what the title “Lord” means. Master, Sovereign, Lord. We are now controlled by the Spirit of God. No longer under the master of sin. We serve Christ.

One day, He will come again in the clouds, and He will make all things new, a new heaven and new earth. And we will be given new bodies which are incorruptible. In that day, God will take away the third aspect of sin; the presence of sin. There will be no more sin, and consequently, no more death. But now we still live in the present, the penalty of sin has been removed, and the power of sin has been broken. It no longer controls those who have been born again.

So how does that work practically? How is the power of sin taken away in your life? Look at vs.6, “No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.” So if you know Christ, and abide in Him, then you will not sin. Abide has the same meaning as fellowship. If you know Christ as your Savior, and you abide in fellowship with Him, you will not sin. That is the secret to being set free from the power of sin. You abide in Christ. When we abide in Him we do not sin. When we break fellowship with Him we sin. Sin breaks fellowship with Him. We must abide in Him, commune with Him, live in Him, and He in me. We do so practically by reading His word, meditating on His word, and obeying His word. We do so practically by being in a constant state of prayer. Abiding in Him is constant communication with Him. Confessing, agreeing with God, that our sin is lawlessness. It is grieving to the Lord. Confessing and repenting so that it is forgiven and fellowship remains unbroken.

Maybe the idea of abiding is one that needs explanation. It means that we recognize that we are His, that He is in us, and that He is with us. And so knowing that He is with us, we do not want to sin, to bring shame upon Him. An illustration of that is in my natural state I like to speed when I drive. I don’t naturally like driving the speed limit. But going the speed limit gets a lot easier when I see a Highway Patrol car tailgating me while going down the freeway. I have no trouble staying in the speed limit when they are around. So it is with our walk. We may not always feel like being obedient, being loving, being faithful. But if we really believe that He is right here with us, watching us, it becomes a lot easier doesn’t it? I guess the problem is that we don’t really believe He is with us. But He is. And He is not there to bash us over the head with a baseball bat when we step out of line, but He is there to encourage us, to strengthen us and help us. And if we fall anyway, He is right there to pick us up and wash us off and help us get back on our way.

Now verse 6 needs some further explanation, because it says that “No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.” Yet John said in chapter 1 vs 8 that “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” So that sounds like John is contradicting himself. But the original language makes a distinction that isn’t readily apparent in English. In English, there are three tenses, past, present and future. But in the original language there were more than three tenses. What this tense that John uses indicates is a present and habitually continuing action. John is speaking of a settled, continual sin. It’s a lifestyle of sin.

As 1John 1:8 indicates, we all sin occasionally. But there has been a change of nature in those people who have been born again. We now have a new nature, a new guiding principle of life. We have new desires, what the Bible describes a new heart. This is what is meant by being born again. God describes this conversion in Ezekiel 36:26 “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.” Now to one who has this change of heart, he no longer continues in sin, no longer takes pleasure in lawlessness, but his desire is to do the will of God. So imputed righteousness results in practical righteousness. What’s inside comes out.

This is the secret of salvation. Being born anew. Having a new heart. It is not mustering up the willpower to be a better person, to go to church, to try to stop doing bad things. That’s simply willpower. But inwardly you are still a sinner, and though you may try to be good, it can never be good enough to meet the standard of God’s righteousness. But when you by faith accept the righteousness of Jesus Christ in exchange for your sins, and you receive a new heart, and a new spirit within you, now you are truly changed on the inside. And what is on the inside will work it’s way out externally in the way you behave. So as we examine ourselves in light of God’s word, we must ask ourselves if we have been born again? If there is evidence of a change of heart, evidence of the Spirit of God working in us that which is pleasing to Him.

Now John reaffirms this by saying that God is righteous, and if we are born of God, then we will be righteous. Vs.7, “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.” Listen, it is possible to be deceived, as I warned you earlier. There are a whole host of false prophets on television and in churches today that never talk about sin, that will not classify anything as sinful, and that basically tell you that you can live anyway you want and God will still love you just as you are. But that is not the God of the Bible. That’s an idol. The God of the Bible is righteous, holy and true and there is no unrighteousness in Him. If you have been born of Him, then you will practice righteousness, because He is righteous and you have received His righteousness in you. There is going to be an outward expression of what is transpired inwardly. And that is expressed in doing God’s will. That’s what righteousness is; doing the will of God. It’s the opposite of lawlessness.

So the contrast to righteousness is lawlessness. If you are born of God, then you will practice righteousness. But if you are practicing lawlessness, John says you are born of the devil. Vs.8, “the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.” 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.” 

How do you know a child of the devil? Just as a Christian will exhibit the character of Christ, an unbeliever will exhibit the character of Satan. He has the same nature as the devil. He has submitted his will to the devil. He is controlled by the theology of the world. I’m not talking about demon possession. I’m talking about rejecting the word of God for a lie of Satan. I’m talking about rebelling against the will of God and doing your own will. Being hateful, selfish, lying, cheating, immoral, etc, all which are the works of darkness.

The good news is though that according to the last half of vs 8, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” Notice how vs8 is an elaboration of vs.5, “He appeared in order to take away sins.” And now John says, He appeared to destroy the works of the devil. There is a progression there. His intercessory work has made it possible for us to overcome the evil one. We are able to destroy the power of sin through the abiding presence of the Spirit of God in us. John will go on to say in 1John 4:4, “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.”

I want to tell you some good news, which is the gospel. If you truly give your heart to the Lord and are born again, sin shall no longer have dominion over you. You that are addicted to drugs, you can be set free. You can destroy the works of Satan. You that are living a life ravaged by alcohol, God can free you from it and restore your life. You that have been suffering from pornography, or from hatred, or jealousy or from stealing or immorality, or any sin, no matter how grievous it may be, Christ has appeared to break the power of sin in your life. You can be set free, to live a new life in Christ. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil and set you free. The work of the devil is to make sin a snare which will capture you and destroy you. But Christ can destroy sin’s power, if you will come to Him and ask Him to save you. Many of us here today are a living testimony to the power of God to set one free from sin. Many of us lived lives previously in addiction, in immorality, in rebellion towards God and were trapped in our sin, destroying our lives, and we stand here today set free by the death of Jesus Christ and faith in Him. We are not perfect yet, but we have been set free from the power of sin. And you can be as well.

If you will be born again, you can be set free. John says in the next verse, 9, “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.” When you are born again, the Spirit of God abides in you. The tenses here in this verse are the same as the previous verses. You cannot live in habitual sin. Jesus will break that habit. He will change your heart. He will transform you into a child of God and no longer will you be a child of the devil. Consequently, like father like son. As God is righteous, we practice righteousness.

This seed of God abiding in us is authored by the Holy Spirit, and it is the Word of God. 1 Peter 1:23 “for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.” You cannot separate the work of the Holy Spirit from the word of God. Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth. He implants the word of God in our hearts, which produces the fruit of righteousness. James says it this way in James 1:18 “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.”

The obvious conclusion then to John’s argument in this section comes 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.” Well, that’s the test of our relationship with God. Do we practice righteousness? Do we love our brother? Do we love God by being obedient to His will? John says it’s obvious to others what the condition of your heart is. But even if you are skillful at hiding your sin from others, God knows your heart. He knows those that are His children. Not those that are religious. Not those that are good people on some superficial level or another. But those that have been born again by the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and have a changed heart and a new nature.

I trust that you will examine yourself today and honestly look at the evidence for your salvation. Don’t leave your eternal destiny to chance. Don’t continue to waste this life being mired in the muck and mud of sin, which will destroy you. Christ came to deliver us from sin, and destroy the works of the devil. You can know that freedom and forgiveness in Christ today if you will just call on Him in faith and confess that you are a sinner and need to be changed. He will save you. He will not turn away from your call if you call upon Him today. Do it today.

As we pick up again where we left off in our study of 1 John this week, it’s important that we are reminded who John is writing to. And he tells us in 1John 5:13; “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.” So he is writing to Christians, that they might have the encouragement and assurance of their salvation and sure hope of eternal life.

And in that context, we should look back at vs.29 of the last chapter, and read that the evidence of our salvation is that we are born again. 2:29, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”

How are you made righteous? We are not saved by our righteousness; Titus 3:4 “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, 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.” So we are born again by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, as we receive Christ by faith. 1John 5:1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. We are made righteous by faith. Whoever believes in Him is born again by the Holy Spirit. By faith, our sins are transferred to Christ, and His righteousness is transferred to us. Then being made righteous by faith, our righteous acts are evidence of being righteous within. We practice what we have become.

Born again is one of those phrases that has fallen out of fashion in religious circles. It’s more fashionable to talk about accepting Jesus, or loving Jesus, or believing in Jesus and that’s ok, but the phrase born again is a Biblical phrase. Jesus told Nicodemus that you must be born again. That is, you must receive a new nature. Your old nature is inherently sinful. In your natural state you cannot be righteous. You cannot please God. Your attempts at righteousness cannot outweigh your sin.

The problem with religion today is that it attempts to make light of your sin. But I am here to tell you that the only way to be born again, is to realize how desperately sinful you are. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” That means, we all have fallen short of the righteous standard of God. It’s as if the breadth of the ocean represents the distance between sinful man and God. And we all were to line up on the beach and take a running start, then jump as far as we could, to see who could get to the other side. Some may jump further than others, but I can assure you, no one will jump across to the other side. We all fall short in the same way of achieving the righteousness that God requires. The only one who is able to bridge that gap is the Lord Jesus Christ. He did for us, what we can never do. And only by faith in what He has done for us, are we able to be saved. The key to a transformed life is to realize how desperately lost you are, and appeal to God for forgiveness and a new life through Him. We must not merely settle for adding some religion to our lives, but we need a complete overhaul, a transformation, to be born anew.

Now when we are born again by the Holy Spirit, we receive a new nature. We receive the Spirit of God, we take on the nature of God, as we are taught by His word. So that we have new desires, what is called a new heart. This process is described in Ezekiel 36:25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 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.”

That new desire is what John is speaking of as the characteristic of being born again in 1John 2:29, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.” So when we are made righteous, when we are born again, then we practice righteousness, because we know Him, and we love Him, and we want to please Him. We want to keep His word. John 14:15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” 1John 2:3 “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.”

Only by being born again by the Spirit of God can we truly come to know Him, and come to love Him. Rom 8:14, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 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.”

This being born again as God’s children, this inheritance, this fellowship we have with God our Father, is what causes John to burst out in wonder and joy; “See,” he says, or “behold, how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.” Literally, the verse says, “what kind of love the Father has bestowed, or lavished upon us, that we would be called the children of God.” John says, “Behold! what manner of love is this? What do we make of this kind of love that God has towards us? What an amazing love. It was undeserved love. We were unlovely. We were sinners. We were enemies of God. Paul says in Ephesians 2:1, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”

The love of the Father was not a reciprocated love. In other words, we didn’t love God first, and then when He saw how wonderful and deserving we were, He then loved us back. No, God loved us while we were yet sinners, and sent Christ to die for us.

The answer to what kind of love it is then, is that it is a supernatural love. It is divine love. It is sacrificial love. It is all those things and more. It is amazing love, because by it He did not just forgive us of our sins, and give us eternal life. That in of itself is amazing that God would so love His enemies. But that He went even further, to the uttermost degree; He made us His children. And if children, then heirs of God. Romans 8:16, “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.”

Let me try to illustrate this love. Last week a man took our dog. He kept it for several days before we figured out who it was. When he finally brought her back Maggie’s eye was swollen and infected very badly. The man said we should take her to the vet and he would pay for it. The short end of it was he did not pay for it, and it cost us $150. So now he has stolen what wasn’t his, injured it, and defrauded us and lied to us. Now I had to force myself to try to forgive this man, even though he didn’t ask for forgiveness. I’m not sure that I was really able to do that. But imagine if I not only forgave him, but I invited him over to dinner at my house. Then imagine that I made him a part of my family. And imagine that I even gave this man an inheritance along with my children. You might think that I was insane to give so much to someone who had done so much to injure me. But that is exactly the kind of love that God has for us. We had stolen from Him, we wounded His Son, we defrauded Him and lied to Him again and again. And yet God forgave us, invited us to fellowship with Him, adopted us into His family, and gave us an inheritance with Christ.

That means that we have access to the Creator of the Universe, the Almighty God, as our Heavenly Father. The kind of intimacy and access that only a child can have with his father is what is bestowed upon us. And note that word bestowed. It means gifted, given, lavished upon us, without any merit of our own, or without our earning it in any way. It is a gift of grace, when we did not deserve it. We have become the children of God.

Then John adds, “and such we are.” MartinLuther was once asked, “Do you feel you are a child of God this morning?” He said, “I cannot say that I do, but I know I am.” Well, that’s a good Christian attitude. That is our feelings are subordinated to the word of God. Our experience does not alter theology. Our theology alters experience. So, “we are,” John says, and we are. But John says, though they see that we are different, the world does not recognize us, because they did not recognize Him. Vs.1, “For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.”

The world cannot recognize spiritual things. Thus they cannot recognize us, even as they did not recognize the visitation of the Holy One of God. 1Cor. 2:14, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” If you would understand the spiritual, then you must first be born of the Spirit. Jesus said in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” So God is the initiator of our salvation. He first loved us. He sought us when we were yet sinners, when we were lost, He found us and called us to Him and gave us life. But those who are not born again are spiritually blind and dead in their trespasses.

So our present state is we are the children of God. But there is an intermittent state in the life of a Christian as well, which John has already alluded to in chapter 2. It is what we are becoming. My mother used to says something like that: “you are what you have been becoming.” Let’s skip vs.2 for the moment and look at vs. 3, “And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” The intermittent state is the process of purification. It’s the process of sanctification. Where we become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

This is the middle phase of our salvation. We are justified by faith in the first phase, sanctified in the truth in the second, and glorified in the future with Christ. Justification, sanctification, and glorification; the 3 phases of salvation. We have already talked about justification by faith. Now John tells us we are to be purified, or sanctified as a result of being born of God. We are told in the word of God, that there is a constant sanctifying influence going on upon us. As we look in the mirror of the word of God, we are constantly being changed and conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. 2Cor. 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.”

The purpose of sanctification then is to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ. As He is righteous, we practice righteousness. As He is pure, we purify ourselves. As He was conformed to the Father’s will, so we are to be conformed to His will. As He was a light to the world, so we are to be lights on a hill, reflecting Jesus Christ to the world through our actions.

Let me tell you something; sanctification is simply spiritual maturity. As we grow in the Lord, we grow more like our Father. We are characterized by the nature of our Father. There is a stage of infancy, when we are born again. Then there is a process of maturing, as we grow up into the fullness of Christ. Paul spoke of this in Eph 4:11-15, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.”

So how do we purify yourselves? Well, James says it is to keep yourself unstained by the world. James 1:21 “Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” The word of God will keep you pure, if you are a doer of the word. Lot’s of people know some of the word of God. They love to cherry pick the Bible and use it as a means of exercising their freedom to sin. But those who are pure in heart are those who keep the word.

The last stage of our salvation is glorification. When we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. 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.”

There are a couple of things John is possibly referring to in this verse. First of all, notice he says we are now the children of God. That is already. We already have the spiritual new birth, the new life, the eternal life of God. We will never die. We will be with God forever. We are His children, and nothing can snatch us out of the Father’s hand. That is a present reality, and it is a future certainty.

But we are also going to be changed. Paul says in 1Cor. 15:51, “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.” Paul says it’s mystery. He doesn’t know how to describe this new glorified body which we will be given. John says here in our text that “we do not yet know what we shall be.” What we do know is this new body will be a heavenly body. It will be a spiritual body. It has no sin. It will not have any of the effects of sin which produce death or sickness. It will live forever.

But then John tells us something even better. This new body will be like the body of Jesus. “We will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” We will be like Him. In Genesis, we were made man and woman, in the likeness of God. But in the new creation, we are made children of God, co inheritors with Christ, made like Christ, to rule and reign on thrones with Christ. In the first creation God said it was good. In the new creation, God said “eye has not seen, AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.” We can’t imagine the glory that will be ours.

In the old creation, the Bible says that man cannot look at God. In the new creation, John says we shall see Him as He is. Let me tell you something. The transfiguration was just a glimpse of the glory of Christ, when the light shone through His countenance and His clothing. In the new creation all of heaven will be illuminated by His countenance. Rev. 22:3-5 “There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.”

There is a theological term we have talked about before that speaks of this illumination. It is called the beatific vision. It speaks of the aspect of our eternal glorification, when we see Jesus face to face, not in His humanness, but in the fullness of HIs Divinity. The Bible teaches that God “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has even seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16), but when God reveals Himself to us in heaven we will then see Him face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12).[7] This concept has been termed “the beatific vision of God” by theologians.

The treasure of heaven is not so much a place of gold and palaces and crowns and so forth, but it is the presence of God. It is when we are immersed in the physical, spiritual, all encompassing source of light and life. When we are in the presence of Holiness, Righteousness. When we are one with God, and He with us. When we are joined with Him in a way that can only be described by our limited minds as a consummation of our relationship with Christ as His bride. This is what theologians call the beatific vision. It is the all consuming, all encompassing light of God that gives us a life abundant, a life eternal, that cannot be quantified. And we shall be like HIM, for we shall see Him as He is. That is the glory of heaven. And that is what we have as our inheritance. To dwell in unapproachable, life giving light, the source of life, the source of all knowledge and wisdom, and to be able to do so because we are like Him and to share with Him all that He has.

Well, this is our inheritance. This is our hope. This is what Christ died on the cross to procure for us. Our fellowship with God now, and our glorification with God in eternity. I hope that this glimpse into the hope of heaven is a means of encouraging you as you are conformed into the image of Christ. Sometimes this process of sanctification is not entirely painless. Sometimes God has to chip away the dross to reveal the gold. But it will be worth it all, when we see Jesus.

Some of you here today though may be saying, I’m not sure that I qualify for this inheritance. I can’t say that I have been born again. I don’t see the evidence of the new life in the Spirit you were talking about. I would invite you today to receive the atonement of Jesus Christ for your sins today. It is a free gift of God, to all who call upon Him in repentance of their sins, and faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior. God loves you, and He has made it possible for you to be reconciled to Him. Call on Him today. Today is the acceptable day of salvation.

As we have learned so far in our study of 1 John, the Apostle John has been teaching us about the nature and essentiality of fellowship. That God did not send Jesus to die on the cross just to save us from hell, but to woo us to intimacy, fellowship, and communion with the living God. And so to this point we have studied the basis of fellowship, which is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And then we saw the proof and progress of fellowship, then the evidence of fellowship, and the process of fellowship, which is maturity.

Along the way, we noted that John gave us a series of tests, so that we might ascertain whether or not we were in fellowship. There was a moral test; if we are in fellowship with God we will keep His commandments. There was the social test; if we are in fellowship with God we will love one another. Now today we are looking at the doctrinal test; if we are in fellowship with God we will be united in certain essential doctrines. And negatively, if we are not in fellowship with God we will reject certain doctrinal truths.

John wants to make something clear. That truth is incompatible with false teaching. Truth and a lie cannot coexist. Light cannot coexist with darkness. There is sound doctrine, and there is false teaching. There is right, and there is wrong. There is no such thing as relevant truth. That is an oxymoron. Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”

You know, I buried my mother this last Thursday. And I had an opportunity to say some things at her funeral to honor her memory. And if I might add something today, being Mother’s Day, I would say that my Mom wasn’t perfect, but she did teach us kids right from wrong. If there was anything that she did well, it was to teach us right from wrong. In her mind, there was a right way to do something and a wrong way. There was the right way to make your bed or fold your clothes. There was the right way to iron a shirt. These were things that she knew were true and she wanted to pass them on to us. There was no middle ground. And in the same way she taught us that the Bible was unconditionally true. She taught us that correct doctrine mattered. Truth mattered. And to some extent, as she grew older perhaps she grew disconsolate about continuing on in this world, because the things that she had known to be true did not seem to be what the world considered true any more. And so she no longer felt at home in this world and wanted to go on to the next. She wanted to be where righteousness reigns. Where wrongs will be made right. But even though she is gone, the truth that she taught her children remains, because it was founded on the truth of God’s word. And in like manner, truth is essential to fellowship with God. The scripture says, “let God be true, though every man a liar.” If we would have fellowship with God, if we would worship God, it must be in truth.

So John presents three characteristics of false fellowship, and three characteristics of true fellowship. Let’s look first of all at the three characteristics of false fellowship. As an intro to this section, John says it’s the last hour. Now that may be as surprising to hear for you as it might have been for the church he was contemporaneously writing to. We all have this idea that the last days, or the last hour is still somewhere in the future. But it’s interesting, that this same writer wrote the book of Revelation, which most believe is all future events of the last days. And yet he writes sometime probably before Revelation that it was already the last hour. The last hour then refers to an age, and we are in the last age. It started with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and it will culminate in His return. But John was living in the last age, and we are living in the last age. It is the last hour.

The evidence that he gives for that pronouncement is that “just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.” So they already had heard that the antichrist was to come. And John says that already many antichrists had come. And from that they could recognize that they were in the last hour.

There are many popular theories out there, supported by Hollywood style movies, which present the antichrist as some sort of charismatic world figure that perhaps has already been born and who is going to head up a one world government. But what John seems to be saying is that the antichrist is many people, who are imbued with the same spirit; the spirit of antichrist.

The term antichrist simply refers to one who is not only against Christ, but one who is another Christ. He has another gospel. Another way. Another truth, so called. It’s a false teacher, or someone who seeks to influence others to another gospel. In chapter 4, John tells us to test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false spirits have gone into the world. And then he continues 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.” Confess by the way does not just mean saying the name of Jesus. To confess means to agree with. So what John is saying is that person who does not agree with the gospel of Jesus Christ, the word of Christ, then that person has the spirit of antichrist. And they are already at work in the world. They are already deceiving men and women. And they are in the church. More on that later.

So the first characteristic of these antichrists is that he says they departed from fellowship. All the things we have been talking about which constitute fellowship with God; keeping God’s commandments, loving one another, abiding in the truth, they have abandoned those things in favor of another gospel. They have opted for an easy believism that is more culturally palatable. Look at vs.19, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.”

I have found that it’s very seldom that as a church we would have to break fellowship with someone because of false belief. It usually works out that they leave us. And though the reasons they give sound plausible on the surface, the bottom line I think is that they cannot stand sound doctrine. They don’t really like preaching and teaching the whole counsel of the gospel. They like to camp out on certain themes, but discard others that don’t fit into their lifestyle. But I decided some time ago that I would preach the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. And I would not patronize people for the purpose of gaining popularity. The truth is incompatible with a lie, and so they eventually can’t stand it any more and they leave.

But what John is saying is don’t be dismayed by that; they were never really part of us. They were never really in fellowship with Christ, and so they will not be in fellowship with us. Don’t worry about it. God wants us to proclaim the truth without compromise. A lot of people confuse friendship with fellowship. Truth is foundational to fellowship, not friendship. Friendship with the world, James says in chapter 4vs4, is hostility towards God. So we aren’t to be as much concerned about friendship as we are about truth. When we are united in truth, then friendship, and even better – love, will follow.

Secondly, the next characteristic of antichrists is they denied the faith. Vs.22, “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.” So these antichrists have denied the faith, which is to deny God. On the contrary, he says the true disciple confesses (again, that’s agreeing with) Christ. Now let’s consider what it means to deny the faith.

Romans 14:3 says, “whatever is not of faith is sin.” What Paul means there is when you consider what you can see and feel and measure as more credible than faith in what is not seen, faith in what God has said, then that is sinful. These antichrists deny the faith by living according to the flesh. They are carnal. Theologians have debated whether you can have such a thing as carnal Christians. I say you can. Paul accused the Christians at Corinth of being carnal. To be carnal is to be fleshly; it’s to be worldly, to use an old fashioned word. That was a word my mother used a lot. I used to hate it. Every thing fun I wanted to do as a kid seemed to fall under that category of being worldly. But there are some things that are worldly.

To deny the faith is a progressive falling away from the faith. You depart from fellowship with God, and that person eventually ends up denying the essential doctrines of the faith. It’s the progression from carnality to apostasy. Just as there is a progression in sanctification to maturity, which we talked about last week, there is a progression the other way as well. You go from bad to worse. From a little sin, to full blown corruption. From a little lie to apostasy. Eventually denying the essential doctrines of faith.

Thirdly, he says the characteristic of antichrists is they deceive the church. Back in verse 26, “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.” They are in the church, but they are not truly in the fellowship. But as they devolve into apostasy, there is a desire on their part to deceive others as well.

They aren’t happy to come into the church just to sit there in private and quiet denial. Their desire for validation means that they try to deceive others to participate in their rebellion. In Matthew 13, there is the parable of the tares and the wheat. And Jesus says in verse 26, “They are sown by the enemy in the field.” The enemy comes and sows tares in the field. That was a very devastating thing to do to your enemy if your enemy sowed wheat, and you had some men go in the middle of the night and sow weeds, tares in the ground alongside the wheat. The farmer would be watching his crop and when it finally came up, he would see the tares coming up along with his crop and the tares would destroy the entire crop. That was done in ancient times to destroy an enemy’s income, wealth, well-being. And that’s exactly what the enemy Satan does, he sends his false teachers in the church, alongside the furrows where God has planted the true seed and he sows deceivers. Satan is the deceiver and this is the trade that he plies through his antichrists. They come into the church, they go into seminaries, they go into colleges, they go into denominational headquarters, they go into church staffs, they go in as elders and leaders in the church. They often ascend to the leadership of the church and sometimes they come into the church even as the pastor, as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the false shepherd. These are the antichrists who deceive. And Jesus said in the parable, that at first the tares and the wheat look very similar so that you can’t tell them apart.

In 2 Peter chapter 2:1, Peter says, “False prophets arose among the people in the past, among the people of Israel, just as there will also be false teachers among you.” Note the important phrase; among the people, among you. These antichrists come from the church ranks. The greatest danger to the church is not the world’s agenda. It’s not the liberal left wing radicals. It’s often the smug, sanctimonious antichrists masquerading as elders or deacons or pastors in the church itself.

Now let’s move from the negative to the positive. John also presents three characteristics of true disciples. And notice that he calls them children in vs.1. This title refers to the fact that they have been born again by the Spirit of Christ. They are a child of God. And like children of every generation and family, they share the characteristics of their parents. That’s how you know someone’s children. They look like their parents. They share the same DNA. Well, as the children of God, we share the same Spirit. That’s how we can have fellowship with one another.

The first characteristic John presents is that they are not deceived. Verse 20, “You have an anointing from the Holy One and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth but because you do know it and because no lie is of the truth.” Verse 27, “You have no need for anyone to teach you because His anointing teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as it is taught you, you abide in Him.” So how can you tell a true Christian from an antichrist? A true Christian is not deceived. They may have doubt from time to time, they may question, they may even be temporarily led astray, but a true believer will not abandon the truth.

How do they know the truth? Well, they know the truth because they have the Spirit of Truth indwelling in them. That is the purpose of the Holy Spirit, ladies and gentlemen. The Holy Spirit isn’t given to give you a spiritual buzz. The Holy Spirit is given that you might know the truth. “You have an anointing from the Holy One and you all know.” Who is the Holy One? Well it’s Christ. Jesus is the Holy One of God.” And Jesus has gone to the Father so that He might send His Spirit to us that are saved. 1 Corinthians 12:13 says that we’ve all received the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:9 says, “If any man has not the Spirit, he is not Christ’s.” So if you are Christ’s, you possess the Holy Spirit. That is the anointing. It’s not a second blessing. It is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. He is given to guide us into all truth. In John 16:13, Jesus says, “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 He speaks the word of Christ. Not some new revelation, but He reveals the expressed Word of God through the Bible to God’s children.

And that is how we are not deceived. When we continually yield to the Spirit’s leading and conviction. But when we reject His leading, then we quench the Spirit, and that moves us into rebellion, which is the road to apostasy. But John says, the true believer, who has the anointing of Christ, will not be deceived if they have the Spirit of Christ operating in their life.

Secondly, the next characteristic of a child of God flows from the first, since they have the Spirit, they are not deceived, so they accept the faith. They hold fast to the doctrines once given to the saints. They have discernment. They can recognize truth from falsehood. The Holy Spirit in us is our teacher. Through His presence in us and through His inspired Word, the things of God are revealed to us. “We have not received,” it says in 1 Corinthians 2:12, “the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God that we might know the things freely given to us by God.” The Spirit then is ours as our teacher and as the author of the Scripture.

At the end of verse 21 John makes this statement. He says, “I have not written to you because you don’t know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie is of the truth.” In other words, something cannot be at the same time true and false. And he says, “I’m writing to you because you know the truth, and because you know the truth you reject lies. You have spiritual discernment.”

Let me tell you how that happens – discernment comes by careful study of the whole counsel of God. When you study the whole Bible, then a false teaching is not going to fit. It’s going to stand out. I had a great discussion with my son Roy yesterday about spiritual discernment. And he made a statement which I thought was good, I hadn’t heard it before. He said, and I paraphrase, “spiritual discernment is not just judging between right and wrong, but judging between truth and almost truth.” And that’s very true. Satan doesn’t often come with an outright lie, but he comes with a half truth, disguised as truth. But as in setting a course to sail across the ocean in a ship by compass, a little thing such as one degree off course will take you far from your destination. But completely yielding to the Spirit as you study the word will keep you in the faith. You will not stray from the truth as long as you yield completely to the Spirit’s conviction as you study the word. Don’t go into it with an agenda. Let the Lord reveal His truth to you so that you may rightly divide the word of truth.

Finally, one last characteristic of a true child of God is that they remain in fellowship. They abide, they remain faithful. V27 John says, “The anointing which you’ve received from Him,” that is the Holy Spirit from Christ, “abides in you. You have no need for anyone to teach you, His anointing teaches you about all things, is true and not a lie. And just as it is taught you, you abide in Him.” So because the Spirit abides in you, you abide in Him. You stay faithful to the truth. You are not deceived. You accept the faith and you remain faithful.

To abide means to have fellowship with God. That’s the goal of our salvation. To have unbroken, unbridled fellowship with God. That we might have the joy of communion with God. That we might know God intimately, even as we are known. That there are no secrets we keep from God. That we share everything with the Lord, and He shares all good things with us.

If we have that kind of fellowship, then we will not fear that He is coming soon, since it’s the last hour. So John says, “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.” I remember as a very small child laying on the floor of the living room so I could meet my dad when he came home late at night. I loved him so much and looked forward so much to seeing him that I would beg mom to let me sleep on the floor in front of the front door.

But as I got older, and into more trouble, I used to try to duck out when my dad came home. I knew I had done things that he wasn’t going to be happy about. So I would try to pretend I was already asleep in bed and hope he wouldn’t want to wake me up. John says, if we abide in fellowship with Him, we won’t be ashamed when Jesus comes.

And he reminds us how to make sure of that. Vs 29, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.” If we are HIs children, and we know that He is righteous, then we know we are His children because we practice righteousness. That’s the fruit of our lives; righteousness. That’s the evidence of our salvation. That we are truly disciples of Him, that we are in fellowship with Him. We love Him, so we keep His commandments. And because we love Him, we abide in Him, and He abides in us and we have perfect fellowship. We persevere in our faith. It isn’t always easy. It’s fraught with trials and temptations. But the joy of fellowship with God, of knowing He is our Father, and we are His children in a right relationship with Him, is worth it all.

I trust that you have come to know God through a relationship with Jesus Christ and an anointing of the Holy Spirit. And I pray you will stay and abide in fellowship with Him, for it is the last hour, and there are many antichrists in this world, but our Redeemer draweth nigh. Let us not shrink bank when He appears, but may we be righteous, even as He is righteous.

As we have seen in our study of 1 John so far, John has been writing to the church that they might not only know God, but that they might have fellowship with God. Fellowship is intimacy, it is communion, it is having the life of God and the light of God in you. Fellowship with God is the way to complete joy. It is the way to life, abundant life, even eternal life. And fellowship, John says, produces love for God. That is the result of fellowship; that we come to love God, even as He has loved us. And so to that end we love one another.

In chapter 2, John has shown us what love for God looks like. It looks like the same love that Christ has for us. In 2:6 he says we walk in the same manner as He walked. So Jesus Christ is our example of how to love. And the evidence that we have Christ’s kind of love, John says, is that we keep His commandments. We keep His word. Jesus manifested His perfect love by keeping the commandments of God and keeping the word of God perfectly. And so if we are His disciples, we too will keep His commandments and His word. If we do not keep His commandments, and yet we say we know God, then John says in vs 4 that we are a liar and the truth is not in us.

That love which produces obedience also produces spiritual maturity. As we obey Him, as we are trained by obedience to the word and His commandments, we grow in our faith. We grow in maturity. And that is the goal of discipleship. That we would come to maturity in Christ, that we might become reproducers. That we might shine the light of God to others, so that they would come to know God, as they see the life of Christ in us.

So John tells us that if we love God, we will love what He loves. We will love Him, we will love one another, we will love His commandments, and we will love His word. But in our text today, John says that on the other hand, if we love God, we will not love things that are opposed to God. If we love God’s truth, we will not love a lie. If we love God’s word, we will not love that which is opposed to His word.

So he shows us what love is not, by saying it this way; “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” What John is saying, is that the world system is opposed to God, it is not of God, and if you love the things of the world, God does not love you. “The love of the Father is not in him.” I take that to mean that God’s love is not completed in us, because our love is diverted from Him to the world. So loving the world is not loving God because the world is in opposition to God.

Now let’s make sure everyone is on the same page with what is meant by the world. The world does not mean Earth, or all that God has created to live on the earth, like animals and birds and trees or the ocean. One could have an ungodly love for those things too, so that they become sinful, if we worship the creature rather than the Creator. But I don’t think that’s primarily what John is talking about. And he isn’t necessarily talking about the individual people in the world. In John 3:16 it says, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

So God obviously loves the people of this world, and we also are told to love one another, to love our neighbor, and even love our enemies. But again it’s possible to love people, or a person, to the degree that you love them more than God, and that would be a sin. But again, I think that isn’t primarily what is spoken of here.

What we can deduce from scripture is that the “world” is a reference to the world system, which was orchestrated by Satan himself, to be in opposition to God, and designed to seduce people to believe a lie and reject the truth. This demonic system is described in Eph 2:1 which says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”

So it’s the world system, or age, which Paul speaks of is like a water course, which directs the flow of a river, like a channel cut through the landscape. It is directed, Paul says, by Satan, and works in mankind to produce disobedience to God. And John also tells us that this world system is opposed to God – it is opposed to what God has revealed in His word, so that if you love the world, then you are being equivalent to an adulterous wife or husband who is cheating on their mate.

In James 4:4 we see that very analogy of adultery used. James says, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” So to be a friend of the world, is to love the world system. And God is not pleased with that. He is opposed to that world system, Jesus suffered and died to take us out of that system, and so to return to it is to spurn the value of the shed blood of the Holy Son of God.

Now in vs.16, we see more detail in regards to what constitutes the world. Notice the phrase, “all that is in the world.” So all that is in the world, all that constitutes what he means by the words “in the world” is found in the next three phrases. Three things that make up what John refers to as the things of the world system which is in opposition to God.

The first thing John says is of the world, is the lust of the flesh. What is that? Well, lust means a carnal desire or forbidden desire. It is sinful desires. In John 8:44 Jesus said to the Pharisees, “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 it is sinful, it’s from your fallen nature, and it is of the devil.

Paul said in Romans 6:12, “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts.” Lusts then is a desire of the flesh, it is carnal, it is sinful, it is natural, it is devilish. It is wanting what Satan says is good, and rejecting what God says is good. It is selfish. Ultimately that is it: it is selfish impulses that are contrary to the spiritual truth God has given us. It can be a lust of the body, or a lust of the mind. But it is not spiritual, but carnal, and self centered, desiring self fulfillment, usually at the expense of others. It is loving me, more than loving God.

The second thing John identifies as of the world is the lust of the eyes. All of these are related, of course. They can be overlapping. But specifically, John says it is the things which are lusts of the eyes. Once again, lust means carnal desires. And many times those desires originate by what we see. What we look at excites our lusts. Now most of us instantly think of things like pornography, or looking at someone in a lustful way. And that certainly fits in this category. 

Jesus said in Matthew 5:28, “but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” So merely looking at a woman with lust is equivalent to adultery which is a grievous sin against God and man. David committed a horrible sin, the sin of adultery and murder, and it all started with looking at Bathsheba inappropriately. It started with a look, gave birth to sin, and it ended up in destruction.

But there is more to the lust of the eyes than looking at a woman. Lust of the eyes can include looking at your neighbors house and lusting after it. Looking at the nice clothes of people you meet and lusting after that. Or lusting after cars, or possessions of any kind. Anything that takes your eyes off of Christ and turns that kind of adoration to someone or something else is sinful. It’s seeking what isn’t yours. It’s seeking what God has not given you. It’s dissatisfaction with what God has given you. It’s of the world. And it’s in opposition to God.

The final thing which John says is of the world is the pride of life. I really think this one is behind all the others because it’s the source of all sin. The pride of life is that which says, “I will get what I want because I need it, or because it’s my right to have it, or because it will make me happy.” And once again it’s origin is from Satan.

In Isaiah 14:13, we read what God said to Lucifer, “For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’” Notice, five times Satan says, “I will.” That is the hall mark of pride. It was the original sin, and it still is the origin of all sin. Pride. And God hates pride.

Jesus was anything but prideful. Phil. 2:6 says of Christ, “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” To humble yourself is to be like Christ, to be a servant, to be obedient even unto death. Christ put aside His rightful place in heaven on the throne, to take our place as a payment for our sin. He is the opposite of prideful. And so should we be even as He was. We should live for Him and no longer simply for ourselves.

So there are three gateways to sin that are identified here; the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. All sin finds it’s way into our hearts by at least one of those gates. And there are two examples in the Bible in which we see all three of those illustrated. The first one we will look at the person failed in their temptation. The second one we will look at the person was victorious in their temptation.

Now as you might have guessed, the first example is found in Genesis 3, when Eve was deceived by Satan to eat of the tree. Verse 6 says, “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food…” So what’s the first one? Lust of the flesh. She desired to eat what God had said was not good. It wasn’t related to hunger, she had all kinds of things to eat. It was the idea that there was something desirable being withheld from her. She thought it was something good. That there was something good outside of what God had said was good. The lust of the flesh.

Secondly, she saw also that it was a delight to the eyes. That’s the lust of the eyes. She went from thinking about it to looking at it. To gaze at it longingly.

And then she also saw that the tree was desirable to make one wise. That is the pride of life. The pride of life is arrogance to think you know better than God knows. Eve listened to the devil, then she believed the devil’s lie. She doubted God’s goodness and doubted His word. Then she wanted what the devil told her was good. She looked at it and it looked good to her. And so she ate it, and she got her husband to eat it as well. And because Adam partook of the sinful thing, the sin nature has passed down from him to every subsequent generation. We suffer the sin nature today because of the original sin of Adam.

But because God loved us, even when we were sinners, God sent forth the second Adam. And that second Adam is Jesus Christ. And Christ is my second illustration of dealing with the threefold temptation of sin, but unlike Adam and Eve, the second Adam was victorious over sin, that we too might have victory over sin.

This illustration is found in Luke 4. Jesus had just been baptized. God had spoken audibly to Him from heaven. It was the beginning of His earthly ministry. And God started it all off with 40 days of fasting in the wilderness and being tempted by the devil. That ought to be a lesson right there. You can have a mountain top experience with God, be doing everything right, and yet God decides you need to go through a period of fasting and temptation.

But Jesus was obedient because the Father willed that He do it. He was submitted completely to the will of the Father, He only did what the Father told Him to do. He operated only in the power of the Holy Spirit and here He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. But along comes Satan and Satan comes at Him with the three temptations of the world and says to Him, “You need to eat, why don’t you turn those stones into bread.” “Jesus said, ‘It is written man shall not live on bread alone.'” He didn’t give in to the lusts of the flesh.

So, Satan led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world. Satan went after Him by the lust of the eyes. “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.” This was an attempt to appear to help get Christ’s mission accomplished, but by Satan’s methods. We have that same temptation in ministry today, don’t we? We can get it done quicker, more efficiently if we do it the world’s way. We can have the admiration of the world if we only disregard what God says and do it the world’s way.

But Jesus answered and said to him, ‘It is written you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'” I can’t serve you. I will not worship you. Jesus will say later that you must worship God in spirit and in truth. There can’t be worship that isn’t true to God.

There is one more temptation left and that’s to the pride of life, so Satan led Him to Jerusalem, had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, probably a 400-foot drop to the valley below on that southeast corner of the temple ground. “If you are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.” You want these people to recognize You as the Messiah, the Son of God, remember the Old Testament says in Psalm 91, “He’ll give His angels charge concerning You to guard You, on their hands they’ll bear You up lest You strike Your foot against a stone.”

Satan has appealed to the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and now the pride of life, and Jesus said to him, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Three times now Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy. He quotes the law of God. He just met every temptation with Scripture. He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

And that’s how we overcome the world with it’s lusts of the flesh and eyes, and the pride of life. Every temptation can be overcome with scripture. We answer every temptation with the word. It’s the only way we can overcome temptation, when we remind ourselves of what God has said. We combat the lie with the truth.

So that’s what we are left with. A choice between the lie and the truth. The lie of the world, the lie of Satan, or the truth of God. And these two choices, John says, have two outcomes, two destinies. One leads to death, and one leads to life. He says in vs.17, “The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.” We have two different principles operating. In the world the principle of death is operating. In the people of God who have overcome the world the principle of life is operating. The world is corrupt and dying. It is fading away. It’s becoming worse and worse and the cancer that is sin is feeding upon itself, destroying itself. And one day, Peter said in 2 Peter 3, “ by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.” All that is in the world, all it’s lusts, all it’s pride, will be destroyed.

But, John says, “the one who does the will of God lives forever.” That which is physical, earthly, worldly will pass away. But that which is spiritual will live forever. Jesus taught this principle in Luke 12:30, saying, “For all these things (lusts of the world, pride of life) the nations of the world eagerly seek; but your Father knows that you need these things. But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves money belts which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near nor moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

I close today with that thought; set your affections on things above. Not on this world. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your soul, and with all your might. Love your neighbor as yourself. And love not the world, neither the things in the world. They are passing away, but He who does the will of God lives forever. Martin Luther wrote, “I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all. But the things I have placed in God’s hands I still possess.”

Have you completely surrendered your life to God? Or are there things of this world that have seduced your affection from God and cause you to sin against Him? I pray that today the eyes of your heart will be opened, and you will confess your sin, turn from that sin, and trust in His word to lead you and guide you in all truth, and into life everlasting. Let us pray.

We have been studying the doctrine of fellowship so far in our exposition of 1 John. We have seen that God designed us for fellowship with Him, and He desires fellowship with us. But as we have learned, before we can have fellowship with God, we must first have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus manifested Himself to the world so that we might come to know God. Hebrews 1:3 tells us that “[Jesus] is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of [God’s] nature.” But God desires more than just knowledge of Him. He desires fellowship with us, communion with us. He desires love with us. He loved us enough to punish Christ so that we might by faith become the children of God. And out of this relationship He desires our love for Him.

So we have seen various aspects of fellowship up to this point. We saw the basis of fellowship, the nature of fellowship, the proof and progression of fellowship. Today we are going to examine the test of fellowship. When we were in school as kids, we dreaded tests, didn’t we? The idea of a test always struck a chord of fear in my heart. Usually it was because I was not prepared. But the teacher understood that for us to really know the material she had been teaching, there must be a test of our knowledge. As students, we could protest all day long that we knew the subject matter, but the teacher knew that unless there was a test, our knowledge, or lack of it, would not be proven, it would not become evident.

So also John, as he teaches us this vital doctrine, knows that it is one thing to say you know Christ, but it’s another thing to actually have a relationship with Him. John says it’s one thing to say you have fellowship with God, but it’s another thing to actually walk with Him. And to illustrate that in chapter one we see John use again and again the phrase, “if we say.” “If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” And “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” All false professions of fellowship which are revealed by our walk. And we looked at the remedies to all those false professions. What we should do, as opposed to what we merely profess. We have to examine our worship to be certain we do not simply give lip service to God, but that our actions give testimony to the truth.

The next progression then in John’s letter is to define sin. And in chapter 2 vs 4, he defines sin as not keeping the 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.” So keeping His commandments, or obedience to God, is proof of fellowship with God.

Now today, John tells us what those commandments are. The commandment is love. John doesn’t explicitly spell out in these verses what the commandment is. But it’s clear from the context of the passage, especially vs 10, that the commandment is love. Love is the overarching theme of John’s epistle, and it’s the preeminent commandment of the Bible. But let’s look at our text to confirm this. Don’t just take my word for it. First of all, John says it’s an old commandment. Vs.7, “Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard.”

So he is saying, “I’m not writing to you a new commandment.” “I’m not coming up with some new thing, some new gospel, some new knowledge.” There were a lot of false teachers in John’s day that were trying to teach some new doctrine, as if they received it from some vision or revelation. And so John, as he is writing to combat a lot of the false teaching of Gnostics and Dualists and so forth, is emphasizing that this is not something new.

A lot of commentators debate what exactly is meant by his comment that the commandment was “from the beginning.” Some think it predates creation, speaking of the nature of God. Some think it speaks of Moses and the Levitical law. Some think that it means the beginning of one’s salvation. I think we can make the case that all are true. John uses this idea of in the beginning, or from the beginning on a couple of other occasions. John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Obviously in this passage, “in the beginning” refers to eternity past. Before creation, before the law, before the incarnation.

Another passage is found right here in 1John, chapter 1:1, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life—and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us.” There again, “from the beginning” refers to the eternal nature of Christ, who was manifested to man in His incarnation. So I believe it’s safe to say John’s speaking of the eternality of this commandment, which reflects the eternal nature of God.

Now we know that God has also declared Himself to man in His law, which He gave to Moses on Mt. Sinai. His Law declares His nature, His character, and His attributes. And if we are to have fellowship with Him, then we must share those characteristics. Thus God’s nature becomes God’s law. As God said to Moses in Leviticus 19:2, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.”

In the law, Jesus said there were two commandments which contained the whole law. Some rabbi added up all the laws in the Pentateuch and came up with 613, if I remember correctly. And Jesus, in Matt. 22:37 said in answer to what was the greatest commandment said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” So I think it’s fair to say that the old commandment, which was from the beginning, are these two which Jesus said contained all the law.

However, it can also be argued that it means the beginning of one’s salvation. John tells us in chapter 3 vs 11, “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” So it is a foundational message which is essential to the gospel. It’s old, it’s eternal, but it’s still vitally essential.

But notice then John seems to contradict himself in vs.8. “On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.”

Now John is indicating that on the other hand, this old commandment is, in some way, new. What does he mean, “On the other hand I am writing you a new commandment, which is true in him and in you …”? Well if you can remember back in our study of the gospel of John, you may recall that this is an echo of Christ’s words recorded in John 13:34, in the Upper Room Discourse. There Jesus said, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” That last phrase, “as I have loved you” is the key. To love one another is the old commandment, predating even creation. But “as I have loved you” is new application of it. The manner by which we love, the process by which this can occur is new.

I would suggest then that what is new is the manifestation of this law through Jesus Christ. He establishes the standard of love. And this is certainly new. Because Jesus showed through His life God’s standard for love that we are to emulate. We are to love one another as Christ loved us. The motive for our love is new. Before we loved because it was legislated in the law. It was required, and so the Jews in particular looked closely to see who they had to love and when. They limited love according to what the law specifically dictated. Christ though showed a different standard for love. He loved us when we were enemies of God. He loved us though we despised Him. He served those who should have been serving Him. And when we come to know that love, through a personal relationship with Him, we have now a new standard for love, and a new motivation.

So in the reference from the Upper Room Discourse, how did Jesus show He loved them? He loved them by washing their filthy feet. That’s what He did to illustrate His love for the disciples. And I think that’s sort of a metaphor summing up how Jesus had loved them all through His ministry. They always needed their feet washed spiritually. And as we have discussed here in this epistle, this continual cleansing is necessary if we are to have communion with God. But our love for God should motivate us to stay pure, to live as He lived, and love as He loved.

How important is love? John 13: 35, “By this all men will know that you’re My disciples.” How they going to know you’re a disciple of Christ? “If you have love for one another.” You’ll know because it’s a test that reveals your knowledge of God. Everybody else will know you are a Christian because of your love for one another. It’s a humble love. It’s a self-sacrificing love. It’s a bowing and serving love. That kind of love, sacrificial love, is what Jesus speaks of when He said “Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Now notice back in our text that John says this commandment is true in Him and in you. The word for true there means genuine. Genuine love is defined by Christ. Folks, I’m afraid the church has let the world co-opt Christian love. Love has been redefined by the world, and the church, unfortunately, has debased it’s definition as well to that of sentimentalism. The church must get back to the Biblical definition of love.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had a few words to say regarding the law of love. In Matt. 5:43 He said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

I just want to point out, that it’s human to love those who love you. It’s natural to love those that do good to you. But God’s standard of love is to love those who injure you. To love those who mistreat you. To love your enemies. Even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. Christian love is sacrificial love. It puts the other’s needs above your own. And this attribute, Jesus said, will be the defining characteristic, the defining test, to the world that is watching, that we truly are Christ’s disciples. And by the way, that’s God’s standard for marital love as well. The love between a husband and wife is not just sentimental, it’s not just romantic, but according to Ephesians 5 it is to be as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. Marital love is sacrificial love.

Now how do we love like Christ loved? Isn’t that a tall order? Is it even possible? Well, John says it’s true in Christ and it’s true in us if we are truly in fellowship with Him. So as we have already learned, this fellowship with God occurs when we walk in the light as He is in the light. When we walk in the light of truth. When we keep His commandments. When we confess our sins as they happen. We walk in fellowship. “Because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.” As we are conformed to His image, as we are sanctified in obedience to Him, there is less darkness and more light shining in us.

The Apostle Paul gives us some more insight in Romans 5:5, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us.” Notice that we have the love of God in our hearts because of the Holy Spirit within us. He is the source of our love, He is the power that governs our love. And through that same Spirit is also the way the Lord loved his disciples. The love of God was shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit who was given unto him without measure. That is the only way anyone loves another the way God loves. Only God can love that way. Therefore it is the same way for us. That is why John says, “which is true in him and in you.” It comes out of a shared life as we have communion with the Holy Spirit. He is our power to keep the commandments of God. As we yield to Him, and as we stay true to Him, we are filled with HIs presence and His power.
So finally, we see love not only as an old commandment and love as a new commandment, but love as a way of life as we walk in the Light. This isn’t just empty philosophy. This isn’t just pie in the sky liberal ideology. In verses 9 to 11 John gives some clear illustrations of what love looks like. Here the principle is applied. The test is given to the one who claims to be a Christian. Verse 9, “The one who says he’s in the light, yet hates his brother is still in the darkness until this moment.” Here is another false profession. “If we say, or the one who says he is in the light and eat hates his brother is still in darkness.”

I’m not sure if darkness is ignorance or an indication of a unbeliever. I would like to think it’s ignorance, or willful selfishness. Some commentators think it speaks of a unbeliever. Well, they would certainly fit the bill. But remember, we’re talking about fellowship here. And we have seen it’s possible to be a Christian and walk in darkness. So I would argue this is a condition of selfishness, or ignorance. But either way, it’s a sin. Ignorance of the law is still breaking the law, it’s still sin.

But the remedy comes in verse 10. “The one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.” Now that’s a pretty obvious illustration. If you’re walking in the light, you’re not going to trip over something. He who is in the light sees where he’s going. He’s not like somebody bumping around in the darkness. When you love and obey the Law of God, when you express the love of God, the love of Christ to others, you’re walking in the light, you’re not going to stumble, you’re not going to fall into sin.

But their is also a sense in which this is saying if you love your brother, you won’t do something to cause him to stumble. Paul had a lot to say about this in Rom 14:21, “It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine, or to do anything by which your brother stumbles.” And again in
1Cor. 8:9, “But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died. And so, by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.” So then, if we love our brother, there will be no cause for stumbling in him. We will not despise our brother for the sake of our liberty or our rights. But we put his needs above our own.

And then John closes with a comment on the absence of love in verse 11. “But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” Sin is darkness, it is ignorance, and it is blindness. One who is walking in darkness is one who is blinded by sin. Are they saved? I don’t know, God knows. Or are they just backslidden? Again, I don’t know. But I do know the remedy. The remedy to the darkness is light. 1John 1:5, “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”

The answer is that we receive the light. The answer is we do not put a basket over the light. The answer is that we walk in the light as He is in the light. And if we are to stay in the light, we must love our brother. And the result will be that we shine the light of God to others. We reflect Jesus Christ to the world through our behavior. So that the world may know that we are His disciples. The manifestation of that test is that we love one another as Christ has loved us. This is difficult, I know. Human nature is opposed to it. Human nature talks about love, but only loves oneself. But through the knowledge of Christ, and through walking with Christ, we will adopt His nature, and what is true in Him will become true in us, because the darkness is fading, and the light is shining. Walk in the Light, even as He is in the Light. 1John 1:7 “but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

So this is a test of your fellowship; do you love one another as Christ loved you? Paul said in 2Corinthians 13:5, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” Are you manifesting your faith? It’s one thing to claim it, it’s another thing to live it. We are called to live out our faith as a testimony to the world, and in obedience to Christ. I pray that you do not fail the test of fellowship, the test of loving one another as Christ loved you.

If you are a regular here at the Beach Fellowship, then you will know that I do not normally try to accommodate the holidays with topical messages. It is our practice to preach verse by verse, and we are in 1John 2 today by the providence of God. So I hope that will not be discouraging for any visitors that might have come expecting a normal “Easter” message.

That being said, however, I do want to make one association from our text at the outset, which has to do with the theme of Easter – that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The resurrection is the purpose of Easter, of course, and not an Easter bunny, or a Easter eggs. We celebrate Christ’s resurrection this Sunday as we do every Sunday throughout the year. That is why the Sabbath was changed to Sunday, the first day of the week, to commemorate the resurrection of Christ.

However, what is significant about the resurrection from our perspective here this morning is that it’s because of the resurrection that we worship a living person. John speaks here of knowing Jesus, of coming to know Him. Present tense. If I were to speak of the fact that I know George Washington, you would think I was either delusional or that I misspoke. It would be more correct to say “I know of him,” or if I were alive in the early 19th century I might have said, “I knew George Washington.” When someone has died, it is not proper to say “I know him.” But “I knew him.”

But because of the resurrection, John who witnessed Jesus crucified and dead and buried can say, “I know Him.” Present tense. Because John and 500 other people witnessed the appearance of the resurrected Lord on several occasions prior to His ascension. And because John knew that Jesus was alive, and that He is eternally alive having ascended bodily into heaven, and hence he is able to say to us that we too might know Him.

So today, rather than focusing on the facts of a historical event 2000 years ago, we are going to focus on the present reality of knowing the resurrected, living Jesus Christ. Christianity’s whole premise, is that we can have a vital relationship, and personal fellowship, with the living, Lord Jesus Christ. We can know Him, not just intellectually, or theologically, but we can know Him personally, and even intimately. In fact, that is John’s goal in this gospel; that we might come to know Jesus personally and intimately, so that we might have fellowship and communion with Him.

Just having a relationship with Christ is not the end goal of the gospel, but that we might have fellowship. Fellowship is the same word in the Greek we translate communion. It means the living, resurrected Christ lives in us and through us so that we might have the power of new life. The death and resurrection of Christ is not just an historical fact to celebrate, but a present reality to duplicate. His death is an example to be reproduced in us, dying to the old man, dying to the world. And His resurrection is to be reproduced in us, living a new life, conformed to the image of Christ, living in His power and for God’s glory. As Paul said in Phil.3:10, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”

Now to establish the doctrine of fellowship, John has in chapter one presented the basis of our fellowship, which is a relationship with Jesus Christ. In vs.1-4 John teaches the necessity of a relationship with Christ before you can have fellowship with God. Jesus Christ, says John in ch.1vs 1, was from the beginning. He is the eternal God who existed from the beginning. In the beginning, Christ already existed. Then He was manifested in the flesh. The invisible became visible. And by coming to know Him, to believe in Him and who He said He was, to believe in what He did for us by dying on the cross for our sins, God grants us salvation on the basis of Christ’s atonement. So we begin our relationship with God through faith, by the grace of God, by which we are made a part of the family of God. Through accepting and believing and trusting in Christ, we are made the children of God. That is the basis of our relationship. That is the only way you can have a relationship with God, it’s only through faith in Jesus Christ. Not through our good works, but through His good work. That’s why they call it “good Friday.” Because of what He did on the cross. Not by works of righteousness which we have done.

So faith in His atonement for our sins gives us a relationship with God. We become a child of God. But it is possible to have a relationship with God and not have fellowship with Him. There is a distinction between union (relationship) with Christ and communion (fellowship) with Christ. The goal is not to just have a relationship, but to have fellowship. In relationship we come to know God, but in fellowship we come to experience God. God designed us for fellowship. So John presented that principle by saying in chapter one that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.

He goes on to say in chapter one that a person can have a relationship with God and yet not have fellowship, when a person walks in darkness. And in order to illustrate that broken fellowship, he gives us three false professions of fellowship, all of which start with the phrase, “If we say.” He says, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” Then “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” And finally, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” Three false professions of fellowship. Three ways in which our fellowship with God is broken; if we walk in the darkness, if we deny our sin, or if we rationalize our sin. Now I don’t want to re-preach the last two sermons, so I will leave it to you to go on our website if you like at www.thebeachfellowship.com and you can read them there if you like.

But as we come to chapter 2, John is continuing to teach this doctrine of fellowship, and in today’s passage he gives us two other principles of fellowship with God. First we will look at the proofs of fellowship, and then the progression of fellowship. Let’s start with the proofs of fellowship with God, or another way of saying it is the evidence of fellowship with God.

Vs.3, “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” Here is proof number one that you have fellowship with God. You will keep His commandments. John states this both positively and negatively. Vs 4 is the negative; “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.”

The willingness to keep His commandments, says John, is a sign of true fellowship. It is proof that an act of union with Christ has already occurred, you have been born again. Your actions have changed, and because they have changed and you do not behave as you once did but you now have a desire to obey him, you can know you have indeed been born again.

But you cannot reverse this order! You cannot come to know God by attempting to keep His commandments. That is impossible. Titus 3:5 says, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.” You can never come to know God by trying to keep his commandments, for a relationship with God comes by faith in Jesus Christ. That must come first, and then the keeping of the commandments is evidence that your relationship is real, and that it is producing fellowship with God.

There is an aspect of the negative principle of proof that I must mention, however. And that is that John makes it clear that it’s possible to claim you know God, to claim a relationship with God, to even claim fellowship with God, and yet be a liar because the evidence of your works speaks louder than your words.

Jesus gave a warning about such people in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”

So then the first proof of fellowship is that you will keep the commandments. No one is able to keep the commandments perfectly. But the result of new birth is that you get a new heart, which gives you new desires, resulting in a desire to keep the commandments of God. If you sin though, God has given us a way to restore that fellowship. Chapter 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Confess means to agree with God, that His commandments are good, and that we agree they are right, but to admit it when we fall short. And if we confess our sins, Jesus Christ the Righteous (chapter 2:1,2) is able to cleanse us and restore us to fellowship.

The second proof of fellowship is found in vs. 5, “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 second evidence of fellowship is that we keep the word of God. The idea behind the word keep is that of a sentinel. It means to guard, to observe, to watch. A proof of your fellowship with God is that you observe His word, and you come to love His word. David was a man after God’s own heart, the Bible tells us. And though David fell into sin, he constantly proclaimed his love for God’s word. Psalm 119:11 says, “Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You.” It goes on to describe the love of the psalmist for the word of God; “I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, I shall delight in Your statutes; Your testimonies also are my delight; Behold, I long for Your precepts; I shall delight in Your commandments, Which I love.” I could go on and on. Psalm 119 alone has 176 verses, practically all of which extol his love for the word of God.

Let’s not forget that Jesus Himself was introduced by John in his gospel as the Word made flesh. So if we are going to claim fellowship with the Word, then we must keep the Word, and treasure it in our hearts. And that love of God’s word will be a proof of our fellowship. This is how God talks to us, how He communes with us. Fellowship is communication.

The third proof of fellowship is found in vs.6, “the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.” You can exchange the word “abides” for “fellowship”. It means the same thing. So read it again, “the one who say he has fellowship with Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”

That simply means that we go where He goes, we do what He does, we say what He says, we walk where He walks. We follow His leading. We follow His example. Peter, who was adept at missteps in his walk as a disciple, in his later years wrote in 1Peter 2:21, “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.” The Greek word for “example” used there is “hypogrammos”, which means a writing copy, including all the letters of the alphabet, given to beginners as an aid in learning to draw them. Remember those when we were in elementary school? You traced over the dotted lines to learn how to write the letters. This is what Peter says about Christ’s example. We walk as He walked. We walk in the same manner as He did. And when we walk in His steps, we have fellowship with Him.

And the good news is that now that we are born again by faith in Christ, we have been given the Spirit of Christ within us to help us walk as He walked. To give us the power to live the life that He wants us to live.

Now let’s look at the last point John makes concerning fellowship, and that is what I call the progression of fellowship. If you know Christ, if you have a relationship with Christ, then not only will there be the evidences or proofs of your relationship as we just mentioned, but there will also be a progression in your fellowship. I’ve often stated the principle that Christianity is progressive. It’s a walk, a journey of faith. Jesus called it the Way, the Way of truth. And as you walk with the Lord, as you have fellowship with the Lord, there will be a progression that gets better and better.

And to illustrate that I just want to point out three words regarding this progression of fellowship that John uses in this text. He says fellowship begins with knowing, it becomes loving, and it ends with abiding. I said earlier that we were designed for fellowship with God. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that “He has also set eternity in their heart.” Some have likened that to a God sized hole in your heart that cannot be filled with anything else but fellowship with God. God designed us, made us for fellowship with Him. Genesis 1 says that we were made in His likeness, according to His image. 2 Cor.11:2 says we were made to be the bride of Christ.

All the other things God made in creation, He spoke into existence. But God formed man out of the dust of the earth like an artist lovingly shapes a sculpture. And then it says that God put His lips to man’s lips and breathed into Him the breath of life, and man became a living soul. God made man for His pleasure, to be His bride, to have communion and intimacy with Him forever. But Satan sold man a bill of lies, promising a better life, a higher knowledge of good and evil if they would just obey him. And so man exchanged the glory of life with God for the temporary pleasure of this world, not fully comprehending that sin would bring about death and separation from God. But thanks be to God, Jesus made it possible for us to be reconciled to Him, to have life in His name and through His righteousness be restored to fellowship with God forever.

Now this notion of communion with one you love should be familiar to all of us. A young man sees a young lady, and he wants to know who she is. He is interested in her. He finds out her name. He introduces himself. He asks her out on a date. He wants to come to know her. And that knowledge of her produces a relationship. They become friends. They aren’t just acquaintances. They begin a relationship. And of course, that produces dating. It doesn’t really matter what they do, as long as they do it together. They want fellowship. They talk on the phone all the time. They have communication. They go on long walks together. And before you know it, they are in love. Their love is reciprocal. It’s not going to work if he loves her, but she doesn’t love him. They both love one another. And the progression continues as it has for thousands of years. That fellowship, that love, desires full time commitment. John calls it abiding. We call it getting married and setting up house together. Till death do us part. For better or for worse. Forsaking all others, I will cling only to you. That’s the idea of abiding.

Well, that’s the progression that John shows us in this text. Vs.3, we have come to know Him, Vs5, the love of God has truly been completed, and Vs 6, he abides in Him. Let’s look real quickly at those three stages. To know, in vs.3, we have already established as a relationship with Christ. The first stage of our fellowship is relationship with Jesus Christ. And John tells us that relationship is evidenced by obedience. We do what He tells us to do. We keep His commandments.

I want to point out something here. In the first chapter and the first two verses of chapter 2, John is talking about sin being the thing that breaks our fellowship with God. Now in vs.3, he starts talking about keeping the commandments of God. The point I want to make is that John is now defining sin. He said in the last chapter, “if we say we have not sinned, we lie.” Now John defines sin; it’s not keeping God’s commandments. God’s commandments define sin. Without the law, we would not know sin. Paul said in Romans 7:7, “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.”

Christ did not come to abolish the law, but He came to fulfill it. And furthermore, He came to explain it, expand upon it. He said that all of the law was contained in this; “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your might. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Those two commandments encompassed all the law. So a right relationship with God will be evidenced by obedience.

Jesus emphasized that obedience in John 14:15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And in Verse 21, “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me.” And so we see that obedience segues into the next stage of our fellowship; obedience to Christ produces the next stage which is love for Christ. In him who is obedient to the commands of Christ the love of Christ has truly been perfected. Perfected means completed.

We love God because He first loved us. God initiated this fellowship. He loved us, He sought us and wooed us to Him. He introduced Himself to us in the scriptures. He manifested Himself to us through Jesus Christ. And as a result we come to know the love of God experientially, and we reciprocate by loving others as He loves us. That’s what it means to be perfected or completed. We love others as He loves us. We love His church because it is HIs body.

And then lastly, that love desires to abide with Him permanently. One day that will result in Jesus coming again to take us to His home, to the place He has been preparing for us. But for now that means that His Spirit takes up residence in us, so that we might have communication with Him through His word and through prayer and assembling together with His people. But abiding means even more that that. Abiding produces fruitfulness. John 14:4 ”As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” You can be in Christ, as a member of the vine, and only bear dry leaves. That is mere relationship. But if you want fruitfulness in your life, there must be that further attitude of abiding in him, living in Him and He living in you. That, he says, is what produces significant results in this new life in Christ. Without Him, “you can do nothing,” (John 5:5)

Well, we must close. Let me just conclude by saying that Christianity is not a bunch of formulas or rituals, it’s not an intellectual assent to God, nor even an emotional attachment to God. Christianity is a personal relationship and communion with the very Creator of the Universe, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is alive, and He wants to come in and have fellowship with His bride, that we might know the power of the resurrection life that He died to purchase for us. Jesus said to His church in Rev 3:20, “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.” That is what He wants. Fellowship with us. I trust that you will desire fellowship with Him. You can have this communion with God, when you come to know Christ, and to love Him, and abide with Him.

The theme of the first chapter of 1John is how we can have fellowship with God. Last time we saw the basis of fellowship starts with a relationship with Jesus Christ. Without the basis of a relationship, there can be no fellowship. Basically, that means that you must be born again by faith in Christ, trusting Him as your Savior and Lord for the forgiveness of your sins. That relationship is the basis by which you can have fellowship with God.

As we turn now to the remainder of the passage, we are going to look further at this principle of fellowship, particularly the nature of fellowship. Fellowship, by the way of reminder, is from the Greek word koininea, which means communion, intimacy, fellowship, communication. Some one has said it well that relationship is accepting Christ; fellowship is experiencing Him. You can never have fellowship until you have established relationship, but you can certainly have relationship without fellowship. It is possible to be a believer, a born again Christian, and be out of fellowship with God. We have seen several examples of that in Christ’s letters to the churches of Revelation. It’s possible to have lost your first love for God, to even commit adultery against God, all of which hurts your fellowship with God. So though you may have a relationship, you do not have fellowship, because of sin in your life. And as a consequence you may feel far from God, you may feel distant from God, or feel like you can’t talk to God. Such is the nature of fellowship, or broken fellowship with God. It causes separation.

An illustration can be found in your family. Your children are yours by relationship. Nothing is going to change that. But when they come to the dinner table with dirty hands and feet they are not going to have communion with you until they get cleaned up. That’s a simple illustration of fellowship. We are God’s children by relationship, but we lose fellowship with Him when we are stained by sin, when we pick up the muck and mire from being in the world. And to be restored to fellowship we must be cleansed from our unrighteousness.

Now John is addressing that problem. The Christian mired in sin is not the life that God has designed for us. That kind of life is not going to produce the joy of salvation that God intended, nor will it produce fruitfulness, nor the blessings of our salvation. If you are truly saved, living in sin will produce misery and heartache, and it can even require God’s discipline in order to turn you around to keep you from hurting yourself, or others, or the church. Paul, speaking about the Lord’s Supper, said for this reason, for the reason of unconfessed sin, many of you are sick and a number sleep. Some had even died as a result of living in sin. God is jealous for church and will act to keep it pure and to do away with stumbling blocks.

So now that John has established in vs1-4 the basis of our relationship with Christ, which gives us fellowship with God, he moves on to show us the nature of fellowship. And he starts with a message from Christ to the church. He says in vs.5; “This is the message we have heard from Him (that is Christ) and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” He said, I have been with Christ, touched Him, lived with Him, walked with Him and heard His teaching. He is the Son of God who was in the flesh. Now here is His message, “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”

Well, at first glance that seems a strange way to summarize the gospel. But if you really think about it, it is a brilliant synopsis of the nature of God and our relationship to Him. It states the nature of God, and the nature of our fellowship with Him.

If I were an eloquent speaker, scientifically minded, I would probably try to give you an entire sermon today on the nature of light and how vs.5 illustrates it. But I’m not scientifically minded. However, I don’t think that John is making a sweeping theological treatise here which is meant to stand alone, but I think instead it is particularly pertinent to his theme of fellowship. For instance, John records in John 4:24 Jesus as saying that God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Now he records Jesus saying that God is Light. Does that mean that God is actually Light? Or is it perhaps an allegorical reference to God? I would suggest that it may be both to some extent. But perhaps it is better to understand it as God has manifested Himself as Light, both literally and figuratively.

Now I do not have time to spend this morning showing you all the ways in which God has manifested Himself as light in the Bible. But let me just show you one, which I think is illustrative. It’s found in Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”

Notice a couple of things here real quickly; one is that God commanded light to appear on the first day, before He made the sun, moon and stars. Secondly, notice, the Spirit of God was moving before the Light appeared. So God existed as Spirit before light was manifested to the world. Thirdly, notice that the world was in darkness and then God said, “let there be light.”

Cross reference that to John 1. And you will see that the Word was in the beginning with God and was God. The Word became Light in vs4. And in vs.5, the Light shined in darkness and the darkness did not overpower it, or understand it. It’s pretty cool to see the correlation between Genesis 1 and John 1. Now in 1John1, we see the Message, that is the Word, manifested in the flesh, and the message is that God is light and there is no darkness in Him at all. So we can say that as light is manifested to the world, it is a picture of God manifesting Himself to the world as the Word of God, the Truth.

So what is light, what does it figuratively represent about God? Well, I would suggest from the scriptures we just looked at and others that it represents purity, holiness, truth and life. Light represents the attributes of God; He is holy, pure, He is truth, and life.

John goes on to say that “in Him there is no darkness at all.” This speaks of God’s holiness. Darkness throughout the scriptures represents evil, i.e., the kingdom of darkness being the kingdom of Satan. When the scriptures speak of the world being in darkness it’s speaking of the sinful nature of the world, the blindness of the world in regards to spiritual truth. So God being without sin, being holy and pure, He cannot tolerate sin, or have fellowship with sin. Thus man when he sinned was kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and lost fellowship with God.

So the message from Christ states the principle that God is light and cannot have fellowship with darkness because He is without darkness, being holy. So we can say that Christians can have a relationship with God, and yet be out of fellowship with Him because we have sin in our lives. God cannot have fellowship with sin.

So now John presents three ways by which Christians lose fellowship with God. If you look at the first chapter of John’s letter, you will see three times he uses the phrase, “if we say”. Verse 6, “If we say we have fellowship,” Verse 8, “If we say we have no sin,” and Verse 10, “If we say we have not sinned.” Three times a false profession is made, but the condition that follows belies the profession. There are three false professions of man that are contrary to fellowship with God; the man who walks in darkness, the man who denies his sin, and the man who rationalizes his sin.

Let’s look at the first one in vs6; “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” Now the most common way of interpreting this verse is to say that to walk in darkness is to walk in the world, according to the lusts of the world, which is to walk in sin. And that is true. James 4:4 says, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” So walking in darkness can be correlated with friendship with the enemies of God. Hardly conducive to fellowship.

Yet there is another dimension to walking in the darkness which is another possible interpretation. It is possible to be a Christian and yet walk in darkness by turning God off. To stop coming to a Bible teaching church, to stop reading the Word. To become attuned to the world, and out of tune towards God. In other words, to turn off the Light. If the Light is Truth, then to turn it off is to simply stop listening to the truth, to stop hearing the truth, and then to stop practicing the truth. The opposite of the truth is a lie. Listening to the lie of the devil is a sure fire way of walking in darkness. And when you start listening to a lie, you will start practicing evil and stop practicing the truth.

Now in each false profession John presents for us, he also gives us a remedy. And in this case, the remedy is simple; rather than walking in darkness, walk in the light as He is in the light. Walk in the truth. Listen to the truth, practice the truth.To walk in the light is to walk according to what God reveals in the Word. Psalm 119:105 says, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

And one more aspect of walking in the light, is to let the light of God’s word shine in you and reveal in you all that is darkness, to examine yourself in the light of His word, and then you will have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

The second false profession that men make is to deny their sin. Vs.8, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” There is an anecdote about the late D.L. Moody which illustrates this principle. Someone attending one of his services came up afterwards and told him that he had reached the place where he no longer sinned. Mr. Moody said, “Well, I’d like to ask your wife about that.”

If we say we have no ability to sin at all, we are only deceiving ourselves. Others are quite aware that we are lying to and deceiving ourselves. They are not fooled, it is we who are fooled. The first man who had a relationship with God but didn’t walk in the light may deceive others, but seldom himself. He knows that he is not living as he ought, he knows he is ignoring the truth. But this man deceives himself. He actually believes that he can no longer sin, that there is no longer any possibility of evil in him. I’ve heard some people in that camp describe it by saying that God no longer sees their sin as sin, so therefore it isn’t sin. They are perfect and cannot sin.

This self righteousness goes by a lot of names and has found it’s way into a lot of churches and false teaching. Ironically, many call themselves “holiness” practitioners. Some think that salvation eliminates the penalty of sin, which it does, but then think that a subsequent spiritual baptism eliminates the presence of sin, irregardless of their actions. But whenever this self righteousness occurs, the one who makes this false claim loses immediately that fellowship which gives Christianity it’s life. He loses his power, his influence, his vitality, and his effectiveness as a Christian.

John once again gives a remedy for this broken fellowship with God. Vs.9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Now the word confess does not necessarily mean to ask for forgiveness. Christ’s work for us upon the cross has already done all that is necessary to forgive us. What God wants us to do is to look at the sin before us and call it what he calls it. That means to agree with God about it, and that is what the word confess means: Fess comes from a root which means “to say,” and con means “with.” “To say with” God what he says about this thing, that is confessing sin.

When we confess our sin, it says He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We are forgiven for our sins by faith in what Christ has done on the cross to atone for our sins. There He removed the penalty of our sin. To cleanse us is to wash us. And here Jesus cleanses us from the practice of our sin. Jesus illustrated this washing in the Last Supper, on the night He was betrayed.

Gathered with his disciples in the Upper Room, he took a basin and a towel and girded himself and set about to wash the feet of the disciples. You recall, as he came to Peter, Peter shook his head and said, “No, Lord, you will never wash my feet,” (John 13:8). Jesus then said these significant words, “If I wash do not wash you, you can have no part with me.” Peter, always going overboard, said, “Lord, if that’s the case, then wash me all over.” Again the Lord has to correct him. “No, Peter, he that is bathed does not need to wash again.” That first cleansing of redemption, that coming to Christ which washes away the guilt of the past, that is “bathing all over.” Jesus said he that is so bathed does not need to wash all over again, but he does need to wash his feet. This is what John is talking about — this repeated washing of the feet. Being cleansed from traipsing in sin as we walk in this world. It is illustrated in the ancient practice of washing at a public bath, then when walking back to your home, your feet get soiled. So though you have been bathed, you need to have your feet washed. We have been made righteous by faith, but in practice we grow soiled in this world we live in. To retain fellowship with God, we need to confess it as sin, and be cleansed.

The third false profession is found in vs.10, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” This false profession is of the man who rationalizes his sin. Once again, it results in breaking fellowship with God. In this third case, the person is saying, “Of course, I know I can sin as a Christian. I know I need the light of the truth. But when I stop to look at my life, and examine myself, what I see is not sin. Weakness and failure perhaps, but not sin. I may have to admit that I have been weak, but I have not sinned.” This what John means: “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

This is the exercise of the human mind which we call rationalization, the tendency to categorize wrong so that it sounds better, and evil so that it looks good. We redefine sin according to our definition, rather than according to God’s. We relabel sin as something that doesn’t sound so bad. We hold our sin to a different standard. We have no problem usually seeing sin in other people, just not in ourselves. Others have prejudices; we have convictions. Others are prideful; but we have self-respect. Someone else may be lazy, but when we do not want to do something, we say we are too busy. When someone else goes ahead and acts on his own, we say he is presumptuous; when we do the same thing, we have initiative. When someone else gets angry and blows up, we say he has lost his temper; but when we do that, we are merely showing righteous indignation. And as long as we can find a nicer label we never will treat the thing like the sinful cancer that it is.

We make excuses for our sin due to our circumstances. But the truth is, we do not like our circumstances. We don”t like where God has put us. We don’t like the people or the pressures we have to live under, we don’t like the circumstances that surround us, and we refuse to accept them. That is the real problem. Therefore, we are not interested in Christ’s power to live in the circumstances we find ourselves in. But Romans 14:23 says that whatever is not of faith is sin. Therefore, when we refuse to see our sin as sin, we make God a liar and His word is not in us. We call our sin ok, so that means God is a liar because He says sin requires death. We are back in the darkness again, His word is not in us. We create our own standard for sin.

But thank God there is a remedy which John gives us in the second chapter. Vs.1, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” The solution is to come back to the word, the things which John has written, so that we may see sin for what it is, that you will see God’s standard for sin, that having a love for God you will not sin. When you come to know God and love God as we should, then we won’t want to sin, to bring shame upon the name of God. When we have fellowship with Him, we don’t have a desire to sin.

But if we do sin, and no one on this side of heaven is free from sin, then we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Advocate is from the Greek word “parakletos”. It means to come alongside. Jesus comes alongside us to help us get back up on our feet and walk with the Lord again. He is a faithful friend who sticks closer than a brother. He is our Helper, our Shepherd. He walks with us, and is there to pick us up and clean us up when we fall.

And note that John says He is Jesus Christ the righteous. His righteousness is so expansive, so great, that it is more than enough to cover our sins. When we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, because His righteousness is more than enough, not only for our sins, John says, but for the sins of the whole world. That shows us the magnitude of Christ’s righteousness. He is God, and is eternal, the maker of life, so that His righteousness is more than equal to the sins of the world. That is a tremendous thing, beyond our comprehension. But it is given to us as a comfort to those who fall into sin, that God’s mercy and grace are more than sufficient to forgive even the worst of sinners, because Jesus Christ is the Righteous One who is able to atone for all the sins of the world and still have an unlimited supply left over.

Listen, God made us for fellowship with Him. In walking with Him, in fellowship with Him, we have life more abundantly. In fellowship with Him we have joy and peace and hope. But Satan as the god of this world has devised a strategy to lure you back to the darkness, to cause you to turn off the light, to redefine sin, to rationalize sin. Whatever lie he has to make he will make it. But his strategy is always to lie. Notice that in each of the remedies John identifies a lie as part of the problem. In vs.6 he says, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” In vs.8 he says, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” In vs. 10, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” That’s the progression of the lie of the devil. We lie to others, we lie to ourselves, and then we even get to the place where we call God a liar. How can we have fellowship with God when we live a lie? God is light/truth, and in Him is no darkness at all.

But thanks be to God that His love for us is so great, His desire for fellowship with us is so great, that He has made a way for us to be reconciled to Him, to restore that fellowship with Him. We confess our sins, we are forgiven and cleansed of our sin, and we have His presence with us to help us when we sin to get back up and come back into fellowship. But it starts with walking in the truth, the light, even as He is in the light. When we walk with Him, we follow Him, stay close to Him. We may not understand everything. We may not know why we have to deal with some things, or go through some things, but we continue to walk with Him, to follow Him, to pattern our lives according to the example we see in Him. Because He is Light, and when we walk with Him we walk in the Light. I pray that you will walk in the Light this week. And if you sin, you have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, confess your sins to Him that you can be restored to fellowship. There is no other way to joy. Don’t believe the lie. Believe the truth and walk in it. Walk in the truth, and you will have fellowship with God, that your joy may be complete.

I don’t feel that we need to spend too much time introducing the first epistle of John. Obviously, we have just finished the gospel of John which has taken us over a year and a half, and totaled some 70 sermons. Additionally, we are studying Revelation on Wednesday nights, which of course is written by the Apostle John as well. So we should be well versed with John by now and not need much introduction. But what I want to do is to fill in a few months before the summer season with a short book, and 1John seemed to be a good fit for a number of reasons. Other than the two I just mentioned, there is a principle which states that in the gospels the good news is proclaimed, and in the epistles the gospel is explained. So while John’s gospel was still fresh in our minds, I thought it a good idea to study John’s epistle, which might give us additional insight into both what we have learned from his gospel, and what we are still learning in Revelation.

John writes this letter possibly to the Ephesians, where he spent his later years. He writes as a father-like figure, probably due to the fact that he was quite old by this time. But as you study this letter, you recognize that he is very concerned about authentic Christianity. That the walk of Christians match the talk of Christians. He makes it clear you cannot have one without the other.

He was writing in an age when false teaching had crept into the church. Merely 50 years or so after Christ, and already the church was being corrupted by false teaching. In particular, there was the teaching known as Gnosticism. This false doctrine taught that the spirit and the body were independent of one another. Gnosticism taught that matter is evil and spirit is good. Therefore, the spirit of man is imprisoned in an evil body. The purpose of their teaching was to say it was possible to have a spiritual experience which was not dependent upon your physical actions. So the result was, they claimed to be spiritual, to be Christian, and yet lived in sin because they said the body was carnal. So there was this disconnect between what they believed and how they acted. And they had taken this idea to the point of even denying that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh. In their doctrine, He was a phantom, a spirit which took on the form of a man, but wasn’t really a man at all. So it was a very deceptive doctrine, which seduced men and women to resign themselves to living in the flesh in sin, and yet claim a spiritual experience which was acceptable to God.

John however, wants to establish the distinctions of the reality of the Christian faith. The gospel not just producing a spiritual life irrespective of how one lives, but an authentic spiritual life which is manifested in the physical. There is spiritual life, but it is revealed in the physical and flows from the spiritual and consequently your physical life is illustrative of the spiritual reality within. Gnosticism said that they were two planes of existence which did not connect. John makes the case that which is of the spirit will have a physical component, and if there is no physical component, then there must be no spiritual. The physical is evidence of the spiritual.

A good illustration of that is Jesus said in Matthew 9 it is easy to say your sins are forgiven. That’s the spiritual component. Who can argue with that since it cannot be verified with the eyes or the ears. But He said it is another thing to say to a paraplegic, take up your bed and walk. Jesus said so that you may know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” The gospel has then not only the power to forgive the penalty of sin, but to provide the power over sin, so that we might live sanctified, authentic Christian lives. It provides not only the spiritual benefit, but it’s manifested in physical deliverance as well.

So John is concerned with authentic Christianity. Authentic Christianity is living in truth, righteousness and love which we will see John develop as we go through this epistle. But as he begins this letter, he is careful to establish the basis for authentic Christianity, and that is a relationship with God. Without the basis of a right relationship, your life will not produce truth, or righteousness or love.

The most important things in life are not really things at all- they are the relationships we have. God has put a desire for relationship in every one of us, a desire He intended to be met with relationships with other people, but most of all, to be met by a relationship with Him. Unfortunately, people are always trying to fill this God sized hole in our hearts with everything else. But nothing can fill that emptiness but Jesus Christ. So John wants to establish right from the beginning of this letter that authentic Christianity is founded on a right relationship with God.

We are going to use the words relationship and fellowship somewhat interchangeably in this study today. But fellowship is the word John uses in vs 3,6, and 7. Fellowship is the primary subject of the whole chapter. The Greek word for fellowship is probably familiar to you all, which is koinonia. It means sharing, communion, participation, fellowship, or communication. You cannot have fellowship with God unless you have a right relationship with God. You cannot share in God’s life, unless you have as the basis a right relationship with Him. Fellowship is salvation in its widest embrace; includes justification, includes holiness, it includes being in the church of the believers.

So John’s prologue starts with establishing the basis of fellowship. Our basis of fellowship with God is a relationship with Jesus Christ. And John introduces Him in vs.1 as the Word of Life, “that which was from the beginning.” This is an obvious parallel to his gospel, in John 1:1 where we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made which was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of man.”

In a sense, John condenses that broader statement concerning the origin of Jesus Christ, and just says “That which was from the beginning, the Word of Life.” It includes of course, all that he has said in John 1:1. John is referring to the eternal nature of Jesus Christ. He was in the beginning, which is before anything was created. Jesus was with God, and He was God. He was the Word made flesh. He was the Life, by which all was created. He is the source of all life, even eternal life because He is God. He is the Way to God, the Truth of God and the Life of God.

But what he adds to those divine qualities is yet another dimension of Jesus Christ; that He was not only fully God, but fully man. He says, “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands.” John speaks now of the physical nature of Jesus, born a man, born of a virgin, suffered in the flesh, made like us in every respect, and yet without sin. In John 1:14 we see the parallel statement, “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.”

This is a tremendous concept, that the eternal God of the universe became man and dwelt among us here on Earth. And these disciples such as John were eyewitnesses to His glory, and they talked with Him, touched Him, saw Him, ate with Him and lived with Him. They knew Him fully as a man. And yet He was also fully God and they recognized that He was God. Peter said in 2Peter 1:16, “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” They were eyewitnesses. Did you ever consider that a man could be sentenced to death on the basis of two eyewitnesses? Jesus had over 500 eyewitnesses to His resurrection. So the basis for our fellowship with God is our relationship with Jesus Christ. We believe in Him, that He is God who came in the flesh, and offered Himself as a propitiation for sin, and on the basis of our faith in Him, we are given justification. We have imputed righteousness by which we can be accepted by God, and have fellowship with God.

This desire for fellowship was initiated by God. He desired fellowship with us. So in order that we might have fellowship God sent Jesus to take away our sins. So John adds in vs.2, “and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us.” As John just indicated, Jesus existed prior to His incarnation in the flesh. He was from the beginning. He was the Word of Life, speaking all things into being. But the Word of Life became flesh and dwelt among us. He manifested Himself to the world, because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have eternal life.

Manifested means that He made what was invisible, visible. The Way to God was hidden, but He became visible. The truth of God was manifested to man. Jesus, who existed eternally, became visible to man. The Light of God became visible. And we beheld His glory. And I submit to you it was because God desired fellowship with us. He loved us. We could not climb to heaven, so God descended unto man. He came down to our level, so that we might know the way to God. So we might have a relationship with God, and fellowship with God. He desired a relationship to us. Someone said, it is no surprise that men seek to have a relationship with God, but it is amazing that God should stoop to have a relationship with man.

And John witnessing this manifestation has to proclaim it. So next we see the communication of fellowship. This is the good news of the gospel. These disciples, these ordinary fishermen that Jesus revealed Himself to, are commissioned to be His apostles, to communicate the invitation of the gospel to the world, so that all who receive it are made part of this fellowship, even His church. Vs.2, “and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” This is the mandate and the mission of disciples, both then and now. To proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. To communicate the good news, that God has made it possible to have fellowship with Him, to have a relationship with Him. It is not just “for us four and no more.” But it is good news to all people, to all nations of the earth. We are His ambassadors, proclaiming that fellowship with God is available to all who believe.

Fellowship is salvation in its widest embrace; it includes justification, includes sanctification, or holiness, it includes being in the church of the believers. First John talks of having fellowship with us, then with God. Because you first became friends with someone who knew Jesus, and they introduced Him to you. John is introducing you to Jesus, inviting you to have a relationship with Him. And that is indicative of authentic Christianity; if you belong to Christ, you cannot help but to witness for Christ. To become friends with us, means you must become friends with Jesus. I cannot separate my Christianity from my relationships. I must say I find suspect those Christians who seem to maintain close friendships with those who are agnostic, or who are antagonistic towards Christianity. I don’t see how light can have fellowship with darkness. But be that as it may, our relationships should mirror our relationship with God. There should not be any disconnect between what we profess on Sunday and our profession on Monday.

There is another aspect of fellowship I think John is presenting here; a bit understated perhaps, but certainly implied. And that is the fellowship of family. Our relationship with Christ makes us children of God. Being born again of the Spirit He then becomes our Heavenly Father. That is the basis for our fellowship. We are the family of God. Vs.3, “and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” Someone said that Peter portrayed our relationship in the New Testament as the Kingdom of God, Paul presented it as the church of God, and John portrays it as the family of God. All speak of the same thing; the same fellowship. But John presents us as being born of God, becoming sons and daughters of God, and having that fellowship based on adoption as children, we have a special relationship of family, by which we can cry “Abba, Father.”

All of us are related to someone. We live in families. Children are related to their parents, and parents to their children. Why? Because they share the same life, the same characteristics and nature. And that is what makes a Christian, to share the life of God by relationship to a Person, the only Person who has that life, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. At the close of this letter John tells us, “He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life,” (1 John 5:12). It is that simple. No matter how religious you may be, you must be born again. You do not have life if you do not have the Son, you are not a Christian. John makes this crystal clear at the beginning of his letter, calling us back to these fundamental things.

Lastly, let us look at the joy of fellowship. Vs.4, John writes, “These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.” Don’t misunderstand this; John isn’t talking about happiness, but he is talking about joy. There is a fundamental difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is based on circumstances which constantly change. Happiness is temporary. Joy is eternal. God never changes. The devil tries to seduce you with happiness. God woos you with the promise of joy. The result of fellowship with God is fullness of joy. This joy is an abiding sense of hope and contentment and satisfaction based on God, as opposed to happiness, which is a temporary cheerfulness based on circumstances.

I am constantly dismayed by the popular demand for happiness. Ask any parent what they want most for their children, and they will usually say, “I just want them to be happy.” Folks, I want to urge you to set the bar a little higher than that. A lot higher actually. Because sin will make you happy for a season. Alcohol or drugs will make you happy for a few hours. Immorality may make you happy for a few minutes. Money can make you happy temporarily. Actually, I think it is more true to say that the lack of money can make you unhappy. But irregardless, circumstances can make you happy for a while, but joy is an enduring condition despite circumstances.

Psalm 30:5 says, “Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning.” In other words, happiness and sadness are emotions that rise and fall with various circumstances. Sometimes you can experience both almost simultaneously, or at least one right after the other. But joy comes when you consider the future you have in Christ. Hebrews 12:2 says we are to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Joy is confidence in tomorrow; hope that is set before us, when God will make all things right, when God will answer every question, when God will wipe away every tear, when God will reward good and punish evil. And although our circumstances will change, and our emotions may rise and fall here on this earth, our joy is set before us, and it offers us contentment and satisfaction, and joy in knowing that we are known, and part of the family of God. Joy in knowing God has set His love upon us, and it will never change or fade away. Joy in knowing that He is keeping track. Joy in having fellowship, intimacy with God, being able to talk to Him 24/7, about anything, and knowing that He still loves me. He considers me righteous. He considers me His son.

This invitation to fellowship is open to all who will receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. It is open to all who want to have a relationship with God. It is made possible through faith in Jesus Christ. On behalf of God, I offer that relationship to everyone here today who will confess their sin and trust in Jesus Christ to forgive them of their sin. By faith in what Christ did on the cross you can be made righteous before God, and being made righteous, you are adopted into the family of God, that you may have fellowship with your heavenly Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ, and with His church. Examine yourselves this morning, and see if that fellowship is a reality in your life. Is it a fellowship based on a relationship? That relationship with God is possible through faith in Jesus Christ to all who confess their need for a Savior and trust in Him.

This is the last message I will preach in the book of John. I think, if I counted correctly, today’s sermon is number 70. I didn’t plan it that way, but if it’s true, I think it’s pretty cool we ended up with 70 exactly. The number 70 indicates perfection, by the way. (ha, ha)

But seriously, it is with a certain sadness that we finish this book today. There is no more satisfying sermon series in my estimation, than studying one of the gospels. I think we will be beginning the gospel of Mark sometime near the beginning of summer. That is the only gospel, in fact the only book in the New Testament, that I have not preached through.

John however, ends his gospel a little differently than some of the others. He doesn’t focus on the Savior ascending into heaven as one might expect, but rather he ends with a focus on Peter, the fallen disciple. He spends this last passage showing us Christ’s compassion and grace towards that disciple that needed restoration.

And I think that John chooses to focus on Peter’s restoration because restoration is really the purpose of the gospel. And to that purpose Peter is emblematic of all of us. He is the prototypical disciple. He is in this portrait a failed disciple. He has fallen, he has failed to live up to his promises, he has denied Christ on three separate occasions. Yet Peter is beloved by all of us because he is so much like us. He has all the failures that we are so familiar with in our own lives. He overestimates his strengths and underestimates temptation. He thinks he’s more committed than he is. He thinks he loves the Lord more than he does. He thinks he can face any trial triumphantly; but he finds out he can’t. By the time we get to this point, even though he has seen the risen Christ, he is really a broken man. In fact, it’s possible that even the triumph of Christ’s resurrection has accentuated Peter’s despondency at failing Him in some way.

So John focuses on Peter’s reconciliation as the last message of his gospel, perhaps because he knows that it will prove invaluable in the ages to come to so many other disciples, who like Peter, find themselves at some point in their lives having failed in their Christian life. And John wants us to know, that just like Peter, we can find forgiveness, reconciliation and usefulness again through Jesus Christ.

I don’t want to take the time to recap all the events that has brought them to this beach on this particular morning. But I would like to pick up where we left off last time, with Jesus appearing on the beach after a long night of fruitless fishing, and having breakfast waiting for His disciples, after instructing them how to catch 153 large fish.

Verse 15 picks it up after they have finished eating breakfast, probably lounging on the beach, talking with one another. And suddenly, Jesus speaks to Peter publicly, in a way to produce a public restoration, so that the other disciples would know that Peter was reconciled to Christ again. And this is important. Luke tells us that Jesus had already appeared earlier to Peter privately. So this is not just for Peter’s benefit, but for the disciples benefit as well, as Peter was their leader. And furthermore, it is for our benefit, that we might know the desire God has for us to be reconciled with Him, and to restore our usefulness to Him.

We see in this exchange between Peter and the Lord, three questions, three affirmations of love, and three exhortations. Three as a number, indicates divine completeness. But more importantly, I believe, three corresponds with the number of times Peter denied the Lord. I think what Jesus is doing here is purposefully asking Peter three times, in order to completely expunge the three denials. Christ isn’t so much rubbing Peter’s nose in it, as He is giving Peter a chance to fully repent. True repentance is essential to restoration. Partial or half hearted repentance will leave a bitter taste in the mouth that if not dealt with, will produce eventual bitterness. God wants full repentance so there can be full restoration.

Remember, Judas was also sorry for his betrayal of Christ. And that betrayal and Peter’s denial are only a handbreadth apart. The difference is that Judas was sorry and wept bitterly. Peter was sorry and repented. One was destroyed, and the other was restored.

I also think that there is an echo of a principle here that Jesus taught in Matthew 18. Where if a brother sins against you, you speak to him privately. If he rejects that, you take another person and go to him a second time. And if he rejects that, you take him before the church. Three opportunities for repentance. Because the purpose of church discipline is reconciliation, not punishment.

So Jesus has the opportunity to take Peter to task for his failures. He has the right to disqualify Peter from further office. But He doesn’t do that. Instead of asking Peter if he is really, really sorry, if he is willing to pay the penalty to be allowed back in good standing, instead of demanding that Peter do some sort of penance, Jesus just wants Peter to come to love Him more than anything else. That is really the full extent of the law, isn’t it? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, your mind and your strength. Jesus said in Matt.22 that is the whole law. So if sin is breaking God’s law, then the solution is to love God more, in order that we might fulfill the law.

So Jesus wants to bring that principle to bear in order to produce restoration. So He asks Peter, “Simon, son of Jonas, do you love Me more than these?” Jesus calls Peter by his old name, Simon, which meant shaky. Jesus had renamed him Peter, which meant Rocky, or the Rock. But now He calls him by his given name, his full name, Simon, son of Jonas. He called him by the name that signified his actions. Peter had gone back on his commitment to the Lord, he had even gone back on his ministry. He had gone back to his old career. And so the Lord calls him out in a subtle kind of way, “Simon, do you love me more than these?”

There is a lot of debate as to what is meant by “these.” I think the most straightforward answer is “more than these” represents the 153 fish laying on the shore. It was a mountain of fish. The other disciples were probably oohing and ah-ing over them, counting up how much a haul like that might be worth at the market. It probably represented a lot of money. So do you love Me more than these fish, more than your career, more than your the self sufficiency represented by his boat and nets and the large catch of fish.

But Jesus has also subtly used another word in His question, “do you love Me,” and that is the Greek word agapao, which means the highest degree of love. It means a sacrificial love – a love of the will. Simon, are you willing to love me sacrificially, even to the point of giving up this career, this source of income, this self reliance?

Well, Peter is still smarting from the fact that he had failed miserably to measure up to that kind of love as he had boasted of in the Upper Room on the night of Christ’s betrayal. So his answer, I think, reflects this new found humility. He says, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” Peter, however, uses a different word for love, the Greek word “phileo” which means brotherly love, or a familial type of love. It’s less strident than the sacrificial love Jesus is asking for. And I believe it’s because Peter has lost his confidence in the strength of his love. He knows that his love failed and so he offers a less strident promise of love.

But Jesus is gracious, and He accepts Peter’s response without rebuke, and gives him an exhortation. “Tend My lambs.” The emphasis of the word translated lambs indicates a little lamb. I tend to think it has the quality of helplessness, or innocence. Feed or tend, my little ones. The exhortation is to take on the job of a shepherd. Rather than be a fisherman, it’s a calling to be a shepherd. That’s what a pastor is, by the way. He is an under shepherd.

Peter will say to the elders of the church later on in his epistle in 1Peter 5:2, “shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock.”

I will say this without any sense of arrogance, the shepherd is not a sheep. He is given responsibility for the feeding and tending and care of the sheep. He is given responsibility for the safety of the sheep. It is a serious charge, and one that should not be taken lightly. God will hold the shepherd to a stricter standard, and a greater condemnation. “Let not many of you become teachers knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.”… says James 3:1.

But what is amazing here is that Jesus takes this broken, failed disciple, and He restores him, not just to reconciliation, but to usefulness. Not just to some behind the scenes position, but Jesus puts Peter at the fore front of His church, to be the leader again, not just as leader of this motley group of 11 disciples, but of the first church in Jerusalem. God uses the weak things, and the the foolish things, to shame the wise and the strong.

That offers hope for all of us broken disciples here today. God has a plan to restore you, to be reconciled to God, and to be used by Him for His kingdom. No matter how many times you have fallen, or how many times you have failed Him, Jesus stands ready to forgive and restore you. God loves you so much, He has already punished His own Son so that He might restore you to usefulness. Isaiah 53:5 says, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Whatever sin you have committed, Jesus paid for with His life, that you might have everlasting, abundant life, knowing that He loves you and wants to be reconciled to you. And if you will submit to that, He will use you and give you a purpose that has eternal rewards.

Well, you know the story. Jesus asks Simon Peter the same question again. ““Simon, son of Jonas, do you love Me?” Though Jesus accepted Peter’s answer the first time, He isn’t satisfied with Peter’s lesser degree of love. So He asks again if Peter agapao’s Him. Does he sacrificially love Him. Christ wants Peter to love Him with all His heart, all His soul, all His mind and all His strength. He isn’t satisfied with a sentimental love. He isn’t even satisfied with a passionate love. But He wants a love of the will. A committed love that will endure no matter the cost.

Why does Jesus make such a big deal out of love? Because love is the ultimate motivator. The motivation of money just makes you a marketeer. The motivation of popularity makes you an entertainer. But the motivation of love for Christ makes you leave everything, sacrifice anything, for His sake. And that is what God wants from us. He wants an unwavering love from His bride that will endure through sickness or in health, in poverty or in wealth, unto death us do part. He doesn’t want to guilt trip us into serving Him. He doesn’t want to legally require us to serve Him. He doesn’t want to force us to love Him. That isn’t real love. But real love is it’s own motivation. It’s a change of heart, a change of desires, and that is to please Him because we love Him. To die before we bring shame upon Him.

Maybe this time Peter tries to say it with more conviction in his voice, but he ends up saying the same thing. I am fond of You. I love you like a brother. You’re like family. “Yes Lord, You know that I love you.”

Once again, Jesus accepts Peter’s lesser response and says virtually the same thing He said before; “Shepherd My sheep.” Perhaps the emphasis on the commandment is somewhat stronger in this second command of Christ because you will remember that Jesus said if you love me you will keep My commandments. So maybe Jesus is saying, “Ok, Peter. You SAY you love Me, then keep My commandments, and that command is to shepherd My sheep.

It’s like Paul said in 1Cor, 9:16, “For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward; but if against my will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me.” True shepherds are not hirelings. They have a stewardship, and the love of Christ compels me to fulfill it. And I think that is what was being impressed on Peter.

A third time Jesus asks the question, ““Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” This time though, Jesus changed the word for love to that which Peter had been using. Jesus used “phileo”. He came down to Peter’s level. God knows that we can’t meet the level of commitment that we should meet. And so rather than making us climb up to heaven, God comes down to the level of man. But John says that Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you phileo Me?” Peter is grieved, because He knows that Jesus knows his heart – that he is less committed than he should be. And yet Jesus is merciful and gracious and comes to accommodate his weakness so that he might be reconciled to God.

Peter’s response shows that grief, saying, ““Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.” He still confesses a phileo love for Christ, but he confesses something more important than that; “You know all things.” The Lord knows our hearts. He knows our weaknesses. He knows if we really measure up to what we claim to be. The Lord knows our hearts and yet He still loves us.

Peter’s response is an echo of Jeremiah 17:9 which says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Well, we don’t really know our hearts, I’m afraid. We think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. But the Lord knows our hearts, and yet He still loves us. We are like Hosea’s wife of whoredom; lusting after the world and the things of the world. Never ceasing to have eyes of adultery. And yet God loves us, even sometimes from afar, taking us back and caring for us even when we are all used up and spent and no longer much good for anything anymore. Yet He still loves us, and reconciles us and restores us to usefulness.

Jesus repeats for the third time; “Tend My sheep.” Take care of that which I love. If you love Me, you will love your neighbor as yourself. Tend My sheep. Whether you are tasked with being a pastor, or a teacher, or just a disciple within the flock, we are all tasked with tending to His sheep. To love one another. Love is manifested in service to His church. Jesus said they will know you are My disciples by your love for one another, as you care for one another, and tend to one another.

Well, we could just stop there. But John makes two quick final points. Jesus not only calls us to love Him, but secondly He calls us to sacrifice and then finally He calls us to obey. The second point then is found in the exchange starting in vs 18, “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.” Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He *said to him, “Follow Me!”

Peter had boasted before the crucifixion that he would follow Jesus to the death if necessary. He would die before denial. But of course, he failed that test when it came and he denied the Lord three times. Now after Peter’s confession of love three times, Jesus tells him that he will be called upon to sacrifice his life for the Lord.

Tradition tells us that Peter was crucified upside down on a cross, at his own request, so that he would not share the same type of death as Christ. He didn’t feel that he was worthy to die as Christ had died. But whether or not that is true, we aren’t sure. But we do know from what Jesus prophesied that Peter would die a martyrs death when he became old. And I read someone last week that said that he felt Peter would have been glad to hear that. To know that he would be given another opportunity to sacrifice everything for the Lord. I was sort of taken back by that statement, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see it as a possibility. Peter did love the Lord. And I believe that he had meant it when he said he would die for Christ. But when the moment of truth came he failed to follow through. And I’m sure that he wished he could go back and do it again, this time gladly offering himself as a sacrifice for the sake of the gospel. Now, Jesus was offering him the chance to make that sacrifice after all. To claim the victory over fear and selfishness. So I think perhaps it was a more encouraging statement to Peter than what we might think.

I don’t think that martyrdom is something most of us will ever be called on to do. But I do know that being willing to take up our cross and follow Jesus, regardless of how great the cost, is something all disciples are called to do. In fact, three times in the gospels it is recorded that Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” Matt.16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23. That’s what agapao love is, sacrificial love. Willing to lay down your life for HIs sake.

Paul defines such love in Romans 12:1, 2, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The final point John indicates in this passage is that we are called to obey. Regardless of what we see other’s doing. Regardless if it seems we are all alone in suffering, or how great the sacrifice. Just obey. If you love the Lord, you will obey.

Vs.20, “Peter, turning around, *saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; the one who also had leaned back on His bosom at the supper and said, “Lord, who is the one who betrays You?” So Peter seeing him *said to Jesus, “Lord, and what about this man?” Jesus *said to him, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!”

A life that is truly dedicated to the Lord is compelled by love for Christ, characterized by sacrifice for Christ, and content with following Christ in obedience. To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. (1Sam.15:22) Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” (John 14:15) Follow Me. That’s a pretty simple directive, isn’t it? Just keep on keeping on. Satan may get you to stumble, you may be a weak disciple, but if you fall, get up, brush yourself off, repent and keep on following Jesus. You may not have all the love that you know you ought to have for God. Just love Him with the love you have. Follow Him with the strength that you have. Jesus will take care of your sin, He will pick you up when you fall, but just keep on following Jesus until Jesus comes back or you go to Him. He is the way, the truth, and the life. Follow Him.

This is how you show that you love the Lord. This is how you grow your love for the Lord. You do as He did. You go where He went. You love as He loved. You imitate Him. You emulate Him. You follow in His footsteps. Peter said as much in 1Peter 2:21 saying, “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.” You pattern your life as He lived His. Follow Him. That’s what produces agapao love. Not conjuring up some sort of passion or sentimentality. But just follow Him. Don’t quit. Never stop. No matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice. Just follow Jesus.