My kids are some of my greatest critics. If you have kids, then you know what I mean. Especially now that they are older, they have heard all my old stories again and again. And so now days, they never fail to let me know when I am repeating myself. We are usually driving in the car or something like that, having some sort of a discussion, and I start to launch into this story which I think illustrates the point, and they say something like, “Dad, you’ve told us this story before.” And I say, “I have?” with this real disappointed tone to my voice. And they say, “Yes, several times already.” And of course I’m crestfallen. But not always. Sometimes, if I feel really indignant about the subject, I’ll tell them I’m going to tell it again anyway, because you need to hear it again. After all, repetition, it is said, is the mother of all learning. Or, as the famous pirate quote goes, “The beatings will continue until the morale improves.” I like that one. So today some things may seem a bit repetitious, but its for your own good.

Now John is probably an old man when he is writing this epistle. And if you have been following along in our studies, then you will realize that also John has a tendency to repeat himself. But actually, John is deliberately repeating certain things over and over again. It’s part of his strategy. His teaching style is to cycle back over certain truths again and again, but if you will notice, each time he seems to add a new nuance, or a new perspective to each cycle, so that you learn more and more as you go through this book about these essential doctrines.

The primary principle that I believe John is presenting in this book is that of Christian fellowship. Fellowship is the goal of the Christian experience. Fellowship with God, and fellowship with Christ’s body, which is the church. Fellowship is the source of life, it’s the source of strength, it’s the source of love, and it’s the design of God for this new life in Christ.

Today in our study, we are going to hear John bring up many of the same themes regarding fellowship that he has talked about before many times. He talks about loving God, loving one another and keeping the commandments. All of which are essential to fellowship. But in today’s message as he cycles back through these now familiar topics, he adds another dimension that has not been fleshed out to the degree we see here in this text. And that new aspect of fellowship that he presents is faith. So I’ve titled today’s message The Faith of Fellowship. And as we examine this text, we are going to look at three aspects of faith, which are essential to our fellowship. First we see the family of faith, then the fidelity of faith, and finally the triumph of faith.

Let’s look first then at the family of faith. John says in vs 1, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.” The ultimate fellowship that man can have is to have fellowship with God. But Jesus said that God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The problem, according to the scriptures, is men and women are not alive spiritually. We are dead spiritually. We have a sin nature inherited from our forefathers, traceable back to Adam and Eve in the garden. When they sinned against the word of God the punishment for that sin was that they would die, and their spirit died immediately. Their body took a few years longer. Sin brought about death, first spiritual, then physical. And Adam passed on that sin nature to every human being born on this planet. As a result, Romans 3:23 says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

But God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to pay the penalty of our sins, that we might be restored and reconciled to God. Thus John says that those who believe that Jesus is the Christ, that is the promised Messiah, our Savior, then that person is born of God. That means that we who have faith in Christ have been born again, spiritually. We now are now spiritual like God, born into the family of God, and have the capacity to love God and worship God in spirit and in truth.

So if you would have fellowship with God, then it begins with faith in Christ. You must be born again. You cannot belong to Him, you cannot have fellowship with Him, you cannot have spiritual life through Him unless you have been born of the Spirit of God into the family of God.

The question is, how are you born of God? Well, John says in vs1, that it is by faith. By believing. Paul teaches the same principle in Romans 1:17 saying, “The righteous man shall live by faith.” Faith, or believing in Christ, is the basis for receiving righteousness. Paul explains this further in Galatians 3:6-7 “Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.” So there we see that faith and believing are the same thing, and that faith is the means of being granted the righteousness of Christ in exchange for our sins.

But let’s be clear. What constitutes faith/believing in God? Not just believing or hoping that He exists. The Bible says the devils believe and tremble, but they are not born again. Faith is trusting in Him as your Savior and Lord. Faith is believing in the ministry and the message of Christ. Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except through Me.” He was teaching not just three different aspects of His deity, but also He was teaching that these three aspects are synonymous; the way= the truth=the life. And I will warn you, that if you start to tamper with the truth, then you do so at your own peril. If you keep deleting ingredients from an antibiotic, soon you will be left with a placebo, and a placebo has no power to save. Jesus’ gospel is the truth, about life, about God, about righteousness, and that truth is the way to reconciliation with God, it’s the way to life, abundant life, spiritual life, and eternal life. Faith encompasses all of that truth as God has revealed in His word.

There is a word there which may need clarification, Christ is the Greek translation which means Messiah. You can see in vs 5 that John uses Messiah interchangeably with the Son of God. So the gospel is that Jesus is God, who became flesh, who suffered the penalty for sin upon the cross, who is risen and seated on the throne in heaven, and faith in Him and His work is the means of our righteousness, the means of spiritual life, the source of all truth. All of that encompasses believing in Jesus as your Messiah, which is the means of being born again.

And one other word which we should clarify is the word faith. Hebrews 11:1 gives us the Biblical definition of faith; “Now Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is trusting in the truth; what God has promised concerning Himself and the life which He gives. Faith is not mustering up some emotion, or a belief in something which isn’t true in order to make it true. Faith is believing in what God has declared is truth. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Natural man is spiritually dead. Jesus is the truth that sets us free from the bondage of death, He is the truth that gives life.

If we skip ahead to vs11-13 we read about this life; “And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. 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 we are born again spiritually by faith in Christ to new life. And now, having been born into the family of God, John says in vs 1 that we love God and love His children. This love for God and for one another should be a natural outcome of our new birth. Children automatically love their parents. They should automatically love their siblings as well. So our love for God should be the result of our new life. We love our heavenly Father, and we love those who are born of God, those who have the same Spirit as us.

The question arises though, who are the family of God? John answers that in vs.2, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.” Simply stated then, the family of God are those that love God and observe His commandments. This is how we recognize them. They exhibit the character and nature of God. If they say they love God, but they don’t exhibit the love of God towards others, and they don’t keep His commandments, then John tells us in 1 John chapter 1 that such men are liars. They are not born of God. But on a positive note, we know the family of God because they exhibit the nature and character of God dwelling in them.

Now there is also a love we are to have for those that are unsaved. There is a love we are to have for our neighbors. There is a love we are even to have for our enemies. All of that love is predicated on the realization that they need to know the truth to be saved, and we can show God’s love for them so that they might know the love which God has for them. The object or goal of our love is that they might be saved. But there is a special familial love that we are to have for the brethren. Those that are our brothers and sisters in the Lord are to have a special relationship with us. These family members make up the body of Christ. And how can we not show a special love for the body of Christ? There should be a closeness and a fellowship which is deeper than even the family ties of the natural man.

So we can know the family of God, as those who love God and keep His commandments. Jesus said in John 13:35 “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Now let’s move on to the second characteristic of faith, which is the fidelity of faith. Fidelity means faithfulness, trustworthiness, integrity, loyalty. We not only claim to believe, we not only claim saving faith, but we act in accordance to what we believe. Fidelity is often used in relation to a husband and wife. They keep their vows to one another. They love one another with an exclusive devotion. They love one another with a selfless, sacrificial love. The Bible teaches that marriage between a husband and a wife is a picture of Christ and the church. We submit to our husband, who is Christ. We honor and obey Him. This fidelity of our faith is realized in the faithfulness of our love, to honor and obey Him.

Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And so John urges us in this text to be faithful in our love by keeping His commandments. Vs.3, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.”

This idea of submission and obeying has fallen out of favor in marriages today. But in divine love, it remains true that if you love Him, you will obey Him, you will submit your will to do His will. The divine love that God has intended for us is sacrificial love. It’s the love of the will. And we are to love one another as Christ loved us. So we love with a sacrificial love, giving up our prerogatives so that we might do His will.

Now though that may sound oppressive or burdensome to the modern ear, yet it should not be. If you love someone, you should want to honor them, to please them, to serve them. It’s not a chore, it’s a labor of love. It reminds me of the story of a young man many years ago, long before the days when it was possible to get in your car and drive to school, and he was often seen carrying a little boy on his shoulder. And as one particular passerby noticed, the little boy that was being carried on his shoulder was lame. So he walked up to the young man who was carrying the lame boy and he said, “Do you carry him to school everyday?” And he said, “Yes sir, I carry him everyday.” “Well that’s a very heavy burden for you to carry,” said the stranger. And the young man replied, “He’s no a burden, he’s my brother.” His attitude illustrates what a difference love makes in carrying out the commandments of the Lord God.

And let me add, that HIs commandments are not a burden, because His commandments are for our benefit. God has made it possible for us to have new life, spiritual life, eternal life, abundant life, through faith in His Son. But He has also made a plan that we might know how we are to live. His commandments lead us in paths of righteousness. HIs commandments prevent us from going off into dangerous territory. His commandments are not meant to bind us up, but to free us to live a life that will be blessed. As someone once said, God’s commandments are not a wall to restrict us, but a guardrail to protect us. They are for our benefit. So then we should not find His commandments burdensome. If we love Him, we will want to please Him and we should realize His commandments are for our benefit.

Furthermore, Jesus has promised the Holy Spirit to be our Helper, so that we might be able to keep His commandments. When we have the Spirit of God working in us, He lightens the load and helps us. Jesus said in Matt. 11:28-30 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

On the contrary, when we go against His will, and disobey His commandments, we cause ourselves to be weighted down with sins, which come with consequences that can weigh heavily upon us. So the fidelity of faith is our willingness to submit to God’s will, to keep His commandments as a testament of our love for God.

Finally, let’s look at the last characteristic of faith in this text, and that I call the triumph of faith. Let’s read the text in vs 4, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”

I want you to notice something in this verse. John says whatever is born of God. Not whoever, but whatever. Now what does He mean by whatever? Well, he gives the answer at the end of the verse; our faith is the whatever. So then we must understand that our faith is born of God. Now I don’t want to get mired down in some deep doctrinal issue here, but I do think it’s important to realize that God gives us faith to believe. Eph. 2:8 says “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Now you may argue that can speak of either salvation or faith being a gift, but I think that the Bible teaches both are true.

For instance consider Heb. 12:2 “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” He is the author of our faith, and the completion of our faith. So faith originates with God.

So what I think John is getting at, is that the object of our faith is the important thing here. Some people get focused on the size of faith, as if we somehow can muster up enough faith to accomplish some great miracle or something. But the emphasis I think John is giving us is that it is the object of our faith, Jesus, is the victory that has overcome the world. It is not the size of our faith. Jesus said if we had as little of faith as the size of a tiny mustard seed then we could move mountains. The point is not the size of our faith, but the object of our faith. We can have faith in what God has promised and who Christ is.

And Jesus has promised in the gospel of John 16:33 “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” Listen, we have faith in God’s promises which are fulfilled in Christ. Not in wishful thinking, not in hoping for some miracle of my own design, but our faith is in the written word of God. We have faith in what Jesus has accomplished and has promised to accomplish. And He has overcome the world.

Please understand what is meant by the world. The world is the world system. It is under the dominion of the prince of this world; Satan. Though God created the world and all things in it, Satan has subjugated the world system to his plan, to sweep mankind along in the course of this world to their eventual destruction. To trap mankind in the mire and muck of this world so that they miss the life giving truth of God.

Paul speaks of this world system in Eph. 2:1-3 “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 course of this world then is the world system conspired by Satan to sweep mankind to destruction in their ignorance of the truth.

But thanks be to God, Christ has overcome the world. He overcame sin. He overcame the devil. He overcame death. He has overcome the world. And our faith in Him overcomes the world as well. By faith in Him we can overcome the world system. We can escape the trap of sin that leads to death. Christ has come so that we might know the truth, and the truth would set us free. So that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

That leads us to vs5, which says because of Christ, we who are born of God can overcome the world as well. “Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” Listen, as children of God, as children of the King, we have been given all the weapons necessary to overcome the world. We have been given the light of truth, we have been given the sword of the Lord, which is the word of God. We have been made righteous, we have been given the helmet of salvation, and the shield of faith. And through the Spirit of Christ working in us, we can be overcomers. We can overcome the world. I believe that means we can overcome the world system that is trying to trap our children. We can overcome the world system that has trapped sinners in it’s web. We can overcome through the blood of the Lamb.

Listen, we were made to be overcomers. The church is designed to overcome the world. The problem with the world system is that it is designed to look so enticing, that we feel we are missing out on all this fun stuff or exciting stuff that it offers. But the benefit to overcome the world is so much the better. The course of this world leads to death, but overcoming the world leads to life.

John wrote another book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. And in the first 3 chapters of Revelation Jesus gives John messages for 7 churches, which encompass not only 7 actual, historical churches, but also all the churches of the ages until He comes back. And in every one of those messages, Jesus says something about being an overcomer. To the church at Ephesus Jesus said, “To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.” To the church of Smyrna Jesus says, “He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.” To the church of Pergamum Jesus says, “To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.” To the church of Thyatira, Jesus says, “He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, TO HIM I WILL GIVE AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS; AND HE SHALL RULE THEM WITH A ROD OF IRON, AS THE VESSELS OF THE POTTER ARE BROKEN TO PIECES, as I also have received authority from My Father; and I will give him the morning star.” To the church of Sardis Jesus says, “He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” To the church of Philadelphia Jesus says, “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name.” And to the church of Laodecia Jesus says, “He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.”

Those are some wonderful promises, aren’t they? The greatest treasures of this earth at best are only temporary and cannot compare to the reward God has planned for those who love Him and who overcome this world. I pray that you by faith in Christ will be an overcomer. I pray that if you have never been born again that you would receive the faith that overcomes this world. That you would be given the righteousness of Christ and receive eternal life in Him. And I pray for you that have been born of God, that you would overcome the world through the testimony of your faith, by sharing the truth of God with others. I pray that you would find freedom from sin through your faith which overcomes the world.

And I will close by saying this; we overcome the world through our faith, and our faith produces love. Love is the way we will win the world to Christ. Love God, obey His commandments, and love one another even as Christ has loved you. Share the love of God towards sinners, that Christ has come to reconcile us to God, that we might be born of God, and have the everlasting life of God.

Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” And essentially what that means is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth of life. It is the source of life, and it’s the way of life. Belief in Christ’s gospel gives us life, and it teaches us how to live. You cannot truly live unless you have accepted this gospel as truth, and trusted in Christ as your Savior. Without that new life, the gospel teaches us that you are essentially dead in your sins.

Now a lot of people are attracted to religion for a variety of reasons. Far too many reasons to speculate on today. But John tells us in chapter 4 verse 1 that not everyone that claims Christianity is of the truth. He says there are many false spirits, deceiving spirits that have gone out into the world. So we are to test the spirits to see if they are from God. But John is writing this epistle primarily to people who are already supposed to have this new life in Christ. They are supposed to be born again, to be saved, to have become followers of the truth of Christ. They already have received the source of life that faith in the gospel provides.

So John isn’t primarily writing to people who are unsaved, to those who are still dead spiritually, but he is writing to people who have received this new life, and he is writing to make sure that they know the way to live. You understand the distinction? He’s not primarily teaching people how to become born again, how to have new life, (though the truths of salvation are evident in this epistle) but he is teaching believers how to live this new life.

And the major principle that John has been teaching is that if you are truly made alive in Christ, you are a new creation, then that new life will be characterized by fellowship with God. I believe that practically everything that John is presenting here in this book can be characterized as an aspect of fellowship. Fellowship is essential to this new life. This life cannot be lived as God designed it to be lived without fellowship. Now if you want to investigate this further, I would suggest that you go on our website and read some of the past sermons in 1John, and hopefully you will learn all the principles of fellowship and the benefits and blessings of it.

But as an introduction to today’s message, let me revisit one important principle of fellowship that John has stressed again and again. And that is that fellowship with God will produce love for God. The natural result of fellowship is love for God. You can illustrate that principle by looking at a couple that is dating. The more they hang out together, the more they learn about one another, the more they know the other person, the more they begin to love that person. So in like manner, fellowship is communing with God. Fellowship is spending time with God. John likes to use another word to indicate fellowship, and that is the word “abide.” To spend time with someone to the point that you never leave. And of course, in human love, that’s when the couple get married. They become one. They abide with one another. And their happiness and contentment comes from that abiding, or that fellowship. And that is the goal of our fellowship with God. That we would become one with God, that we have HIs Spirit abide in us, and we are in Him, that we communicate with Him through His word and through prayer, and the more we know Him the more we love Him, and the more we love Him the more we want to please Him. So the principle is that fellowship results in love.

The problem when we start talking about love is that the world’s concept of love falls far short of God’s definition of love. There is a tendency in the church today and in music and in teaching to present the word “love” as a euphemism for God. You hear this in contemporary Christian songs quite a bit, they talk about love coming down, or something to that effect, instead of using the name of Jesus. But the Bible never presents God and love as being synonymous. The Bible teaches that love is an attribute of God, it is defined by God, but God is not solely defined by love. And to attempt to reduce God to a one word description is to slight the name and character of God.

However, the possible basis for this misappropriation of God’s character is found right here in this chapter. Twice in this chapter it says “God is love.” Vs.8 and vs16. These are the only two places in the Bible where you find this statement in these exact words. But we need to understand that this statement does not limit God’s character to this one dimension. But rather John is just expounding this dimension of God’s nature, not excluding other essential attributes of God like He is holy, He is righteous, He is just, He is omnipotent, He is sovereign, He is light, He is Spirit, He is truth, He is light, and He is life.

But let me explain this attribute of God is love by saying that what John is teaching through this phrase“God is love”, is he is giving us a synopsis of the gospel. It is the gospel in shorthand. He isn’t talking about some sort of affectionate feeling from God. In fact, John himself interprets this statement for us in vs.10 which says, “Here is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” To say that God is love is to say that he sent the Lord Jesus Christ to be the propitiation for our sins. That’s the apostle’s definition of divine love.

Now to take that a step further, to fully comprehend “God is love” you must also understand what God hates. God hates sin. Sin is antiGod. In that it is the opposite of God’s nature and God’s intention and design in creation. Sin is death, God is life. Sin put the curse of death upon God’s creation. And God hates sin so much that He sent Jesus His Son to die on a cruel, horrible cross; beaten with a whip to within an inch of death, His head lacerated by a crown of thorns, HIs hands and feet pierced through with great iron nails. God put your sins and mine on Christ and let Him hang there naked and bleeding and hardly able to breathe and watched Him writhe in agony and torment and called it “love.” Now that is what “God is love” means.

Furthermore, God is love speaks of divine love. Not romantic love, not sentimental love, not sexual love – that’s how man speaks of love – but the love of God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. That divine sacrificial love is the type of love that God desires for us to have in this new life. And as a spiritual new creation, if we truly have the life of God, then we have been given the capacity to love like God loved us. And God wants us to love like He loves so that our fellowship may be complete. That’s the title of my message today; the perfection of fellowship, or the completion of fellowship. John uses the word perfection, or perfected four times, which in every case might be interpreted as complete. God’s design for us is that we might have our fellowship, our love, completed.

Now John gives us a few principles which will help us to see how that is accomplished. How we can have complete fellowship with God. First fellowship is completed through the Spirit of God abiding in us. Vs. 13 says, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.” Remember, John started this chapter by saying that we should test the spirits to see if they are from God, because not all are. So you test the spirits how? How do you test to see if a spirit is from God? Well, the answer is that you test the spirits by the word of God. Because the Holy Spirit is the author of scripture.

Peter said in 2Peter 1:21 “for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” So scripture is authored by the Holy Spirit, and since God cannot deny Himself, we can verify the spirits by the word of God. That’s the primary job of the Holy Spirit; to teach us through the word of God. Jesus said that “He will lead you and guide you into all truth.”

When you are born again, you are born by the Spirit of God. The Spirit lives in you. He abides in you, and you know this John says, because He has given us of His Spirit. That simply means that our spirit is reborn with God’s Spirit, so that our spirit has life, it has the interior witness of God’s truth as we read His word. We know that God is speaking to us. We are able to come to know God, to have communion with God. The Spirit of God in us is the foundation of our fellowship. He indwells us, so that we have communion with God. This is the first and foundational step of perfect fellowship with God. We must be born again by His Spirit and His Spirit must live in us.

Listen, don’t be deceived here by false spirits. Being born again by the Holy Spirit is not some supernatural or emotional or ecstatic experience by which we think we have come to know God. Being born again comes through faith; through believing in the truth of Christ’s propitiation for our sins. When we come to God as a sinner, and confess our sins, and call upon Christ to forgive us our sins and make us a new creation, to give us a new heart, then God answers that prayer and transfers our sins to Christ, and gives Christ’s righteousness to us, and once we are made holy and righteous He gives us a new spirit and the indwelling of His Spirit, so that we might be the children of God. We cannot have complete fellowship until we have the Spirit of God abiding in us.

So the Spirit in us is the internal witness to our fellowship. But there is an external witness as well which is closely correlated. We have already introduced it; it is the gospel of Christ, the word of God, which is the testimony of the apostles. Look at vs.14 “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.” John is speaking of the testimony of his fellow apostles. The apostles doctrine is the foundation of the church according to Ephesians chapter 2. So there is an external witness to our fellowship, and that is that we hold to the testimony of the apostles to Jesus being the Savior of the world.

We confess, we agree with the gospel as recorded by the apostles. His word abides in us, and that is evidence that He abides in us. Look at vs.15, “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” To confess means to agree with. So that’s the completion or perfection of fellowship. We have the Spirit of God in us through salvation, we confess, that is agree with that testimony of the apostles, and the word of God confirms that we have God abiding in us and that we abide with God.

Listen, God is love means God is truth. Love comes from faith, and Rom 10:17 says that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” And if there is not this relationship of faith, belief in the word of God, there cannot be the life of God and there cannot be the fellowship with God and there cannot be the love of God. So faith in God’s word confirms God abiding in us. As you read and study HIs word, the Spirit confirms your faith.

John states this principle succinctly in vs.16 once more; “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Now that is the perfection of fellowship. We have come to know the love of God because we have believed in the gospel by faith. As a result we have the abiding Spirit of God in us. And we abide in Him through obeying or abiding in His word.

This is how our love or our fellowship is perfected. We have faith in His gospel, we have His Spirit abide in us, and we abide in Him through obedience to His word. That is the perfection of fellowship says John in vs.17, “By this, love is perfected with us…” By this faith in the gospel, by this indwelling Spirit of God given to us as a result of our faith, and by our faith and obedience to His word. By this love is perfected within us. Now as a result of this love, this fellowship completed, John gives us three benefits or blessings of this perfect fellowship which are described in vs17 and 18, “By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”

The first benefit is that of no fear of judgment. Because we have this fellowship with God through the inner testimony of the Spirit and the external witness of the Word, we have confidence concerning the judgment that is coming upon the world. We know we have nothing to fear when Jesus comes back because we love Him and He loves us, we are His bride and He is our bridegroom. The rest of the world will mourn that they rejected Christ as their Savior, but we will rejoice as a bride rejoices to see her husband.

Further, John says we have confidence because as He is, so also are we in this world. We have confidence that we are as He is because we keep His word. Because we keep His commandments. Listen, if we disobey His commandments then we have reason to fear. But if we truly love God, then we want to please God, and Jesus said if you love Me you will keep My commandments. So if we are keeping His commandments then we have no reason to fear. As He was a light to the world, so are we lights to the world. As He did the Father’s will, so we do the Father’s will. As He kept the Father’s word, so we keep the Father’s word. As He ministered in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit, so we minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. And we are able to keep His commandments because we have His Spirit abiding in us. Jesus is not just our Savior, but He is our example for how to live as God would have us live. He is our pattern as Peter tells us 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.” So as He is, so are we in this world.

The third benefit is that we have no fear of punishment. We have no fear of punishment because we have the love of God perfected in us. When the love of God is completed in us, when we love God as we are loved, then we have confidence in judgment, because there can be no punishment for those who have been forgiven. Now I want to make a distinction between punishment and discipline. The author of Hebrews tells us that if God loves us, He will also discipline us. Heb. 12:6-7 “FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.” It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” So discipline is a necessary part of being a child of God, so that we might learn to walk as Christ walked.

But John isn’t taking about discipline here, he is talking about eternal punishment. The word punishment could also be translated as torment, as in eternal torment. I was speaking with a man in prison the other day, and during his incarceration he has become very knowledgeable about the law. And in the law is a principle called double jeopardy, which prevents a person being tried or punished twice for the same offense. I was telling this man that God has placed his punishment on Jesus. Christ has paid the penalty for our punishment. God being just and holy cannot punish twice for the same offense. So that is what John is getting at. We need not fear that God will punish us in eternal torment because God is love means that God has already punished Jesus for our crimes against Him.

Now there is one more point John makes concerning this completed fellowship, or the perfect love. And that is what we might call the expression of perfected love. The expression of love. In other words, the love of God does not stop with us. It is designed to flow through us, to be given out again to one another. Love is not just self directed, it is not selfish, love is self less. Love isn’t completed when it finds me, but when I love another as God loves me.

John declares this great principle in vs 19 “We love, because He first loved us.” Now this statement is so simple yet it is so profound. There are two major principles that are incorporated in this little statement. First is that our love for God is predicated on His love first finding us. As I said at the beginning, we cannot come to love God, to have fellowship with God without first coming to know the love of God towards us. That is the basis for our relationship. We have to first come to believe in God’s love for us that He sent His only Son into the world to save sinners by dying on the cross for our sins. That is how we are saved and how we are given the capacity to love.

But there is another application of this principle as well. Not that we are loved, but that we love others because He first loved us. Because we have the love of God in us, we are able to love like God loves. We are to love one another as we love God. There are two commandments Jesus said that are the foremost commandments of God. All the law could be contained in these two, which we read from Mark 12:30-31 “AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” So we are to love God and love one another in fulfillment or completion of the love of God towards us.

Now John illustrates these two commandments in the following verses. First, the commandment of loving God, John says, cannot be completed if you do not love others. Vs. 20, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

John doesn’t give us an easy out. If we say we love God, but don’t love our brother, then we are a liar. We don’t really love God. Because if we have the love of God, then we share the nature of God, and God’s nature is to love. And he gives us only two options; you either love your brother or you hate him. You are either one way or the other. You either exhibit the nature of God or you do not. We tend to measure our Christianity by degrees. “I may not be perfect, but I’m better than this guy, and I’m not so bad as that guy.” But God measures our Christianity by Christ. He is perfect, so we are to be perfect. Peter said it this way in 1Peter 1:15-16 “but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.” We either love our brother or our Christianity is a lie. That’s the options John gives us.

And the last illustration of this love of God, which is the love we are to have, is simply restating the commandment in vs.21, “And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.” I said last time that this is a mandate, it’s not a suggestion. Jesus said in John 14:15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And His commandment is exactly what John has just said; the one who loves God should love his brother also. Our love for God is evidenced by our love for one another. We love others not because they are lovable, not because they are loving towards us, not because they deserve it, but we love them because God first loved us even when we were sinners, even when we were in rebellion against God. So in like manner we love others in order to manifest the love of God towards them. God uses His people to reveal His love to people. It’s that simple.

If we love God then we will love the things God loves. We love God enough to love those that God loves. And when we exhibit this kind of love, then the circle of fellowship is complete. There is so much talk today about how much God loves me. And He does. Thank God for His love for me. But I don’t reciprocate that love by just singing it back to Him. Or by saying it back to Him. We reciprocate God’s love by being obedient, and if we are obeying Him, then we will love one another because that is His commandment to the church. This is the template for fellowship. This is the way of life which God has designed for us to live. This is the way to fulfillment, to joy and contentment. Love one another, even as God loved us, giving up His life for us, revealing God’s truth to us, that we might have life in Him and fellowship with Him.

I cannot help but wonder if today there is someone here who does not know the love of God. You cannot say you have fellowship with God. You cannot say that you have the abiding presence of His Spirit within you. But perhaps today the Holy Spirit has convicted you of your need for forgiveness, your need for new life. I am here to proclaim to you today the good news. God sent Jesus to take the punishment for your sins, so that by faith in Jesus Christ, you might be born again by His Spirit, that you might come to know the truth, and that the truth would make you free. Jesus has paid the price for your salvation, all that remains is for you to recognize that you are a sinner and that Christ has paid your penalty, and by faith in Him as your Savior you can receive eternal life right now. Call on Jesus today, and He will save you. Today is the acceptable day of salvation. Let’s pray.

If you have been studying with us for the last few months as we have been going through the epistle of 1 John, you will know that the theme of this book is fellowship. We were created for fellowship with God. Another way of saying that is we were made to be in union with God, to have communion with God. We were created in God’s image, according to His likeness, that we might be, as it were, the bride of God. That He would abide with us, and we would abide with Him. But sin broke that bond of fellowship. And without God as the source of life, we are spiritually dead, and condemned to eternal separation from God.

But though we were separated from God, God still loved us. So God sent Jesus to be our propitiation, which means our payment for sin, that we might be reconciled to God. Trusting in Christ’s atonement for our sins is the basis for our salvation, and is the basis for our relationship, being restored to God. But forgiveness is just the beginning. The goal is that we would have fellowship with God, both now and forever. Through Christ we are a new creation, and in this new creation we are remade in the likeness of God spiritually, able to have fellowship with Him, and one day we will be remade physically when we see Him, then we will be like Him completely and be with Him forever.

So all through this letter, John has been teaching us the basics of fellowship. He has told us how to have fellowship with God, how to be like God, and how to please God. And John has taught us that true fellowship with God naturally results in love for God and love for one another. Jesus said that is the foremost commandment; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second greatest commandment He said was like the first; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So if, we have fellowship with God, we will love God, and love one another.

Now as the once popular song goes, love may be a many splendored thing, but it is also something that although very much desired, is very little understood. Popular culture does it’s best to elevate love as the epitome of human experience through songs, movies and poetry. By far, love is what most people desire the most. But for many of us, love never quite measures up to our expectations. It is an ideal which is rarely ever met.

But even though the human ideal of love is a standard many fall short of, the apostles add insult to injury by saying that even if the ideal human love is experienced, it still falls short of God’s standard of love. They reserved a different Greek word just for God’s standard of love, the word agape. It means a sacrificial love. Human love is often self serving, or at it’s best a give and take kind of love, but God’s standard of love is more noble. It is the highest expression of love, the love of sacrificial giving, and that love is God’s design for us. That we would have the kind of sacrificial love that God has for us. True fellowship with God will produce this more noble love, in a love for Him and for one another, which is described by John in vs.12 as perfect love.

Now as we look at this text, we are going to see that John has given us 10 principles of this perfect divine love, so that we might know what it is and how to employ it. Ten principles of divine love that are the product of fellowship with God. There is a little overlap in some of them, but that is the method that John uses to teach us. He uses a certain cyclical method of teaching, which serves to add further details each time he references them again. So bear with me as we go quickly through this list, and hopefully it will serve to teach us more fully how love looks from God’s view point.

The first principle of love we see is in vs.7, is what I have called the mandate to love. The mandate to love. You know the New Testament is full of commandments. A lot of people think that in the new covenant there are no commandments anymore. We are just free people, we can do whatever we want, with no consequences, because we are under grace. Paul said in Romans 6:2 that is an abuse of grace. How can we who have died to sin still live in it? But though we are free from the penalty of sin by Christ’s propitiation, yet we still have commandments that we are to operate under. And John makes it clear in this epistle that if we love God we will keep His commandments. 1John 5:3 “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.”

So as we begin this text, we see this commandment spelled out in vs. 7. “Beloved, let us love one another.” John says it in a nice way, by calling us beloved. But don’t be fooled by his kindness. This is not a suggestion, but a command. For instance, in 1John 3:11 he says “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” And in 1John 3:23 he states it even more clearly: “This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.” Twice in the same verse John says it’s a command.

Now that’s the mandate, the law, the commandment. Next John is going to show us where this kind of love we are supposed to exhibit comes from. The second principle then is the origin of love. Where does one get this kind of divine love which we are supposed to show? It’s not a natural, human love. It’s another level of love than what we often think of, when we think of love. So we need to know where it comes from. Well, vs 7 again, tells us the origin of love; love is from God. “1John 4:7 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”

Skipping ahead a little bit, in vs19, we read, “We love, because He first loved us.” God is the originator of love. God loved us before the world was created. And He formed us out of that love, and formed us for love with Him. God desired fellowship with someone who would love Him in return. And so He created man in His likeness, in His image, that He might have fellowship and communion with us. God created in us that capacity to love, that desire for love, that we might find love’s fulfillment in Him. That innate desire for love in us can only find fulfillment in Him.

Some of you might be familiar with the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which asks a series of questions. And the first question speaks to this purpose of man. The question is; What is the chief end of man? And the answer; Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. Our life finds it’s fulfillment in love, which is the chief end of fellowship with God.

So God is the origin of love. Thirdly, that leads us to the fellowship of love. Now I have already alluded to the relationship between fellowship and love again and again in previous messages. But I want to expand upon it today this way; we can only have that fellowship of love if we are born of God. That is how we come to know God on an intimate level. Vs 7 again, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”

Listen, you cannot love God until you are born of God. You cannot know God until you are born of God. Jesus told Nicodemus who came to Him to enquire about God, Jesus said, “You must be born again.” Your spirit must be born again. When God created man, He made him in HIs image. God exists in three persons; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So He made man, spirit, soul and body. But when man sinned, his spirit died, and God’s order was overturned. The flesh now ruled over man’s soul. And his spirit; that part of man that was designed for fellowship with God was dead in his sins. So man is born the first time carnal, and he must be born again the second time so that he becomes spiritual. So when we are born again by faith in Christ’s propitiation, God gives new life to our spirit. Furthermore, His Spirit dwells with our spirit, and through this regeneration, God’s order is restored. This new man is now ruled by the Spirit, which governs his soul, and subjugates the flesh. Therefore, if you would know God intimately, if you would love like He loves, then you must be born again. In your present carnal nature it is impossible to please God. You must be born again by the Spirit of God, so that you die to your old nature of the flesh, and your mind, or soul, is regenerated and renewed. Only in that spiritual capacity can we love as God loves.

Fourthly, John tells us that natural kind of love falls short of God’s love. In vs.8, he gives us the antithesis of love. “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Here is the evidence of being born again, the evidence of truly knowing God intimately, we will love like God loves. And negatively, John says the one who does not love with this divine love, does not know God.

So many people place their confidence in heaven on the basis of things other than what God says is necessary. Some think they know God because they belong to a particular church. Some think it’s because they have participated in some rite or ceremony. Some place their confidence in some experience that they had. Some think that God will accept them because they are sincere in their efforts. Or because they are good people. But God says that the evidence of whether or not you are born again is you will love like God loves.

The fifth principle John gives us is the standard of love. What is that standard, you may ask? Vs.8 says, God is love. Love is an attribute of the essence of God, that He is love. But we must be careful with this verse. John does not say that God is only love. Furthermore, you cannot say this verse in reverse. It is not true to say love is God. God cannot be defined by one word. When Moses approached the burning bush, God told him to take off his sandals because the ground he was standing on was holy ground. And shortly thereafter, Moses asked God His name. But if you remember, God would not give His name. A name in Moses’ culture was a means of defining you. Moses was trying to put God in a box, by calling Him a name which would limit Him and thereby he might manipulate God. But God said, “I Am.” That is who God is. He is the great “I Am.” And as we examine God’s word by which He describes His nature and His characteristics, we see many attributes which are the nature of God; He is holy. He is righteous. He is just. He is merciful. He is Spirit. He is light. He is love. And we could go on with that list. But I want to make the point that God is love. But He is not only love. But His love is compatible with all His other attributes without contradiction.

In fact, all those attributes of God’s nature, His holiness, His righteousness, HIs justice, His mercy, even His judgment, were revealed in His great act of love, which was to send His Son to be our propitiation for sin, by dying on Calvary’s cross. We see all those characteristics revealed in God giving Christ for our sakes. Vs.9, “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” This is the standard of love; that God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16) This is supernatural love. This is giving, sacrificial love. This is love most noble, most divine. And this love is the standard for our love. The standard was that God loved us when we were unloveable. When we were not lovely. He loved us when we were yet sinners. He loved us when we were in rebellion. This is love, and this is the standard for love.

That brings us to the 6th principle, the life of love. Notice how the last phrase of vs.9 corresponds to the last phrase of John 3:16. Vs.9 says, “ so that we might live through Him.” And John 3:16 says, “whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” When we read the fairy tales they always end with “and they lived happily ever after.” We grow up hoping that will be the case when we find love. But as the divorce rate indicates, most of us don’t find that to be true.

But God’s love is perfect. God’s love is the real deal. When we love God, then God gives us not only joy and peace and blessings in this life, but He gives us eternal life, where we will forever be with the Lord. Jesus said we should comfort one another with those words. We will be forever with the Lord. There will never be separation. In this life, even if you have the best marriage you could ever hope for, one day there will be a separation. But in our marriage with Christ, we will be with Him forever. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He will love us till the end, to the uttermost.

But there is another implication in this 6th point, the life of love. And that is we can only live this life of love through Him. Notice what John says in vs. 9, “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. His love was revealed to us, and manifested in us, that we might live out this love through Him. Once again this reiterates the fact that we must be born again, so that He might live in us, and live through us by His Spirit. In our flesh we cannot love like God, but through His Spirit in us, we can love like God loved us, sacrificially loving one another.

So on to principle #7, we come to the definition of love. Let’s read vs.10, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” What John is saying, is that love is not defined by us, but it is defined by God. This is tremendously important in today’s culture that wants to redefine everything. One of the most popular statements today in modern culture is “love is love.” We think we can define love any way we want. Well I got news for you. The Bible says God is love. And love is defined by God sending Jesus to die for our sins.

Isaiah 53 says, “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. … But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, (that’s propitiation!) As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities.”

O ladies and gentlemen! That doesn’t sound like “if it feels good do it”, does it? That doesn’t sound like it’s my body, my choice. It’s my life. No, He bore our sins on the cross so that we might be reconciled to God. That is the definition of divine love, and that is the love which we are required to exhibit towards one another. Listen, those ridiculously high divorce rates which we spoke of earlier; those are true for Christians as well. Christians have just as high a divorce rate as the world. And yet if we would just learn to love as Christ loved the church and gave His life for her, then we could bring that divorce rate down to single digits in no time. Try loving your wife like Christ loved you. Try loving your husband as Christ loved you. It will change your marriage. And beyond marriage, try loving that rebellious teenager like Christ loved you. Try loving that hateful coworker the way Christ loved you. Try loving a stranger like Christ loved you. And I will guarantee that if we practiced sacrificial agape love for one another, we could change the world.

That leads us to number 8, the product of love. Look at vs.11, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” If God loved us when we were yet sinners, when we were hateful, when we were unlawful, rebellious, ungrateful, if He loved us when we were like that, then we ought to love one another, not because they deserve it, not because we are attracted to them, not because we can get something out of that relationship, but because God loved us when we were unloving, and we show our love for God by loving one another.

Eph. 5:1-2 says “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” Paul says our agape love for others is a way of offering sacrifices to God. Ephesians 5 is the passage that I often use when I preach at weddings. And the key point that Paul makes when he tells us to love someone is that he says we are to do it “as unto the Lord.” That’s the key to a successful love relationship. Love one another as unto the Lord.

Whenever I counsel married couples I always use the illustration of a triangle. Every human relationship is like a triangle. The two people in the relationship are at the base of the triangle, and God is at the top. As the two people draw closer to the top of the triangle, closer to God, they will also draw closer to one another. The triangle is a very strong engineering concept. That’s why it is used to support roofs or trusses. But a flat line is the weakest engineering principle. A marriage without Christ in the center is like a flat line. It cannot stand much pressure or stress without cracking, But weak relationships are made strong when both people draw close to the Lord!

The ninth principle is the manifestation of love. Look at vs.12, “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” Jesus said “God is Spirit.” He is unseen. No man has seen God the Father at any time. What man has seen was Jesus Christ who was the manifestation of God. Jesus told Philip in John 14:9, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.”

But if the Spirit of God abides in us, if we have fellowship with God, if we have the love of God, then John says that the world will see Christ in us. That is the manifestation of love. When we show that kind of divine, unnatural, sacrificial, noble love of God towards one another, then the world sees Christ in us. I have said it many times before, there is no greater testimony than the testimony of a transformed life. We can have our entire car covered with Christian stickers, we can carry a Bible as big as a suitcase, we can put Christian memes all over our Facebook page, but nothing will cause your friends to see Christ more than seeing you love like Christ loves us. Our love makes the invisible God visible to a watching world. Jesus said in John 13:35 “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

And when we do that, then we achieve the 10th principle; we have the perfection of love. Don’t get defensive over this word “perfected” that John uses. The word translated perfect is from the Greek word teleioō. It comes from the same root word as the word Christ cried out from the cross; “tetelestai!” It is finished! He completed His mission, He completed His work which He came to earth to do, to be the propitiation for our sins.

So this word perfected is better rendered completed. Now what does that mean in this context? Let’s read vs.12 again; “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” What he simply means is that when we love one another we have fellowship with one another. And when we love one another, He abides in us, that is we have fellowship with God. And when we love one another, HIs love is completed in us. That means that we complete the cycle. God loves us, then we love one another. We complete the cycle of God’s love when we love one another as God loves us. That’s perfect love, when we love others as Christ loved us. We complete love’s purpose.

Listen, let me remind you in closing of the first principle again. Let us love one another. It’s a mandate, not a suggestion. Let’s ask God to help us do it. God has given us of His Spirit that we might have the encouragement and strength of God, and the leading of God, the conviction of the Holy Spirit to help us to love one another. Let us love one another.

But let me also remind you that you cannot do this in your natural flesh. You must be born again. You must receive the love of God to love like God. You must be born of God to be able to love like God loves. That salvation has already been paid for through the atonement of Christ, but you must receive it. You must confess that you are a sinner in need of being forgiven, in need of transformation. And when you accept by faith Christ’s propitiation for your sins, you receive new life through His Spirit. So now you can be the person that God designed you to be. But first you must be born again. If you are here today and you cannot say for certain that you have been born again by the Spirit of God, then I urge you to trust Christ for your salvation today. Call on Him right now, ask Him for forgiveness, receive Him as your Lord and Savior, and be born again. Christ came for this purpose, to reconcile you to God. That you might have fellowship with God forever. Today is the acceptable day of salvation.

If you have been in attendance at any point during our study of 1 John, then you will be aware that the theme of 1 John is fellowship. Fellowship with God and fellowship with His church. This is what we were saved for; fellowship, or communion with God and with His body. Fellowship is one of those old fashioned words perhaps. It is part of the proper name of our church. And we chose that name because it encompasses the full spectrum of the purpose of the church better than simply the word church, which in most people’s mind today indicates a building. Fellowship is about a relationship, communion, loving God and loving one another. It has nothing whatsoever to do with a building.

So we were made for fellowship with God and with His body. We were made to love God and love one another. That’s the outcome of fellowship. And throughout this epistle, John has been giving us a series of tests as evidence of whether or not we have fellowship with God. Now I don’t want to review months of messages this morning in order to remind you of all the various tests of fellowship John gives us. So if you don’t remember these tests, then I would encourage you to go to our website and review some of the messages posted there which will help refresh your memory. But suffice it to say, that John has provided certain moral, social and doctrinal tests which give evidence as to whether or not you are in fellowship with God.

John makes it clear from the very outset, that many people claim to have fellowship with God, and yet they are not, because they do things which are contrary to God’s commandments and His nature. So it’s important that we examine ourselves and our faith in light of this epistle, that we might know that we have fellowship with God, that He abides in us, and we abide in Him.

Now as we finished the last chapter, John gives us another test, or another evidence that we have this fellowship. In chapter 3 vs 24 he tells us what this evidence of fellowship is; “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.” Now actually it sounds as if John is giving two evidences; he who keeps the commandments abides (or has fellowship) with Him, and then secondly, we know He abides in us by the Spirit whom He has given us. But we have already looked comprehensively at the first evidence in previous studies. Today we are going to look more closely at the second evidence; that of the Spirit of God. We can know we have fellowship with God by the Holy Spirit who abides in us. Our inner conviction of the Spirit of God is evidence that we have fellowship with Him.

Now this thought introduces one of the most simple and yet most important principles in Christianity, and one that is especially apropos to the modern church. In vs 1 of our text, John declares that there are many spirits at work in the world which are not of God, so consequently we need to test the spirits. Now this is very important because the devil is a deceiver, first and foremost. The Bible says that he goes around pretending to be an angel of light. He is described in many places as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is in his nature a liar, a false prophet. And again and again in scripture, from the ministry of Jesus to that of the apostles, we are warned repeatedly that there will come false prophets who will ravage the church, and lead people astray.

John says that already, just a generation removed from Jesus, many false prophets had gone into the world. From the very beginning of the church, there was a battle for the hearts and minds of the church against the deceit of Satan. And the thing about deception, is that it doesn’t have to be a major doctrinal issue to be effective and ultimately destructive. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. A one degree mistake in setting your compass will put you far off course eventually. So the devil is adept at deception, mixing a lot of truth with a little lie, and if we are not on guard against it we can end up in spiritual shipwreck.

Let me tell you something that is taught right at the beginning of Creation. Satan comes as a beguiler, as a deceiver. He comes as someone who seems to be a citizen of Paradise. He comes not so much to deny God, as to deceive by twisting the truth, and subtly denying the word of God so as to get man to rely upon his own judgement more so than God’s word. In the third chapter of Genesis we see Satan come to Eve, first of all disguised as someone beautiful, someone wise, some great thing of God’s creation. And notice how he tempts Eve: he tempts her by saying if she disobeys God’s commands, she will be wise like God. He tempts Eve to sin by telling her she will be like God. Isn’t that what we are supposed to want to do? Aren’t we supposed to be like God? Yes, the Bible teaches we are to follow in Christ’s footsteps, we are to be conformed to His image. So this temptation doesn’t even sound like a temptation. It sounds like higher knowledge. It sounds like it is beneficial to godliness. Except that you have to deny God’s word in order to be like God. That’s a contradiction, and God does not contradict His word, and neither can we without subjecting ourselves to peril. And of course we know what disastrous consequences came from Eve’s seduction.

So John is warning us that though we have fellowship with God through His Spirit, we must be wary, we must be wise, we must examine the spirits because not all that claim to be of God, are of God. Vs.1, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

You know, one of the most well known verses in the Bible quoted by unbelievers as well as believers is “judge not lest you be judged.” We hear that all the time whenever we question some doctrine, or teacher or principle. The “Bible says not to judge!” But actually, right here in vs1 John he is telling us essentially to judge between that which is of God and that which is from the devil. Don’t believe every spirit.

I remember one time many years ago when I was in my 20’ss, I had a neighbor who was half deranged from taking some serious drugs, and he came knocking at my door late one night. And when I answered the door I could see that he was really messed up. He looked as if he was possessed or something, half crying and half laughing, and he said to me, “God told me to kill you.” Well, though I was a Christian, I wasn’t living for the Lord at that time. But I can tell you I was suddenly very interested in renewing my relationship with the Lord again. However, though I was startled, I had the presence of mind to answer him by saying, “Well, I don’t know what God you are talking about. Because the God of the Bible would never tell you to kill someone.” Now this guy was obviously under the influence of drugs. But it’s also evident that he was under the influence of a false spirit. Just because he thought it was God did not mean that it was of God. By the way, the Bible uses a Greek word for sorcery which is pharmakea. It’s the same word we get pharmacy from. The drug store. And the Bible translates that as sorcery. So there is a connection between drugs and the spiritual world. But as John says, we should not believe every spirit, because not all spirits are from God.

In fact, scripture encourages us to put teachers and doctrines to the test. In the Old Testament, we find counsel in the law of Deut. 13 that if someone prophecies and that prophecy does not come true they were to put such a person to death. That shows how severely God considered false teachers.

Jesus said in Luke 12:57 that we should judge what is right. The Bereans in Acts 17 were called more noble minded because after being taught, they searched the scriptures to see if those things were so. That’s an important point we will come to later; they compared prophecy with scripture to prove whether or not the prophecy was true. Paul said in 1Cor. 14:29
“Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment.” And John quoted Jesus speaking in Rev. 2:2 “I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false.”

So it is abundantly clear that we are to examine or judge prophets and teachers. We are not to give attention to those who are false teachers, and we recognize that many false teachers have gone out into the world. Jesus said in Matt. 7:15-16 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?” And also Peter warns in 2Peter 2:1 “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.”

So these false teachers obviously are of another spirit. They are not of the Spirit of God. And if we are to judge our fellowship with God by the Spirit who abides in us, then we must be certain that it is the Spirit of God. Now that sounds simple enough, but the problem many times is that people encounter something “spiritual” or supernatural, and don’t examine it but accept that because it is spiritual, it must be of God. We see this happen in a church setting quite often. Someone makes a prophecy; “The Lord told me so and so…” or someone has some sort of experience and the automatic assumption is that it is from God because it happened in the church, or in a religious context. Or we simply believe it because the person who had the word of prophecy, or who exhibited the spiritual experience, claims to be of God. And so we don’t examine it. We blindly accept it as the truth, when in fact many times it is a deception from the devil. As Dr. SL Johnson said, “to identify the supernatural with the divine necessarily is a perilous mistake.” Just because it is supernatural, or spiritual, does not mean it’s necessarily of God. Don’t forget, that when Moses caused some supernatural event to come about, Pharaoh called his magicians and sorcerers who also replicated the same supernatural event. Just because it is supernatural, does not make it of God.

Now John tells us to test the spirits, and he gives the means of testing. First he gives us the means by which we can know the Spirit of God and then he gives the test by which you can know the spirit that is not from God. First the positive; vs2, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”

I want to remind you of something here. John is speaking to believers. He isn’t giving a definition of salvation. He is giving a general principle for recognizing the Holy Spirit. And the key is not simply saying the name Jesus. But it’s confessing Jesus Christ. The key is the word confess. It comes from the Greek word homologeō, which means to say the same thing as another, i.e. to agree with, assent. In other words, to say the same thing as Jesus Christ. To agree with His doctrine, His teaching, His word, is to confess Jesus. It’s not just to acknowledge that He existed. But to agree with all the doctrine of Christ. The teachings of Christ.

You will find this principle again and again in scripture. Phrases like “believe in the name of Jesus, and confess Jesus as Lord, and so forth, are all phrases which were intended to comprehend all that the name of Jesus signifies, all that Jesus claimed to be and all that He taught. Satan certainly knows who God is, He knows who Jesus is. The demons cried out that He was the Holy One of God. They know who He is. They may say His name. The devils believe in God. But they do not confess Him, they do not agree with His teaching and with His doctrine. They have rebelled against His word.

So that’s the positive test; to confess, or agree that Jesus is the Messiah, and as John 1 tells us, that the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. To confess then is to agree with His word, agree with His teaching. Then John gives us the negative side. Vs.3, “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.”

See, here in this negative test, it is a little more clear. The emphasis is not on His coming in the flesh, but on confessing Jesus. These believers John was writing to knew what it meant to confess Jesus. They knew the gospel. They were already believers. So when he said, those who do not confess Jesus, they knew it meant those who do not agree with the gospel. They have a different gospel. They may believe Jesus lived, and died in the flesh, but they do not agree with what He taught.

And John uses the word antichrist to emphasize that. Antichristos, the opponent, or opposite of Christ. The adversary of Christ’s gospel. The spirit that does not confess Christ is the antichrist. Now it’s interesting in light of all the attention of the media and eschatology books out there, that 1 and 2nd John is the only place the Bible that the word antichrist is found. It’s not found in Daniel, it’s not found in Revelation. It’s only found 4 times in these two little epistles. And note that John says that the antichrist is not singular but plural, and are already in the world. That was 2000 years ago. Look at chapter 2:18, “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.”

He goes on to say who the antichrists are in ch.2 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.” Once again, that means those that deny the word of the Father and the Son. Not the existence, but the word. The devils believe in the existence of both the Father and the Son. But to confess them, is to believe in their word.

Now John is going to take the principle of these two opposing spirits and unpack them further. He does so by assigning people as belonging to either one of two groups. You are either of the Spirit of God, or you are of the spirit of antichrist. And notice that he equates the antichrist with the world. The world system is under the dominion of Satan, the supreme adversary of Christ. And so the world system is working against the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is superior, it is above all power in heaven and in earth, but as the author of Hebrews said in chapter 2:8, “we do not yet see all things subjected to Him.” The world is still in rebellion against the Lord. But in the last days, when Christ comes the second time in judgment, it says in Revelation 11:15 “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become [the kingdoms] of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.” That is at the end of the age when the Lord comes in judgment. But for now, the Lord has come in love to win the world to Him. But one day He will come again, and this time He will come in judgment, and subject all the world to Him and rule them with a rod of iron.

But for now, we do not yet see everything subjected to Him. The world is still under the dominion of the prince of this world, the devil. So once again, John gives us the characteristics of the people who belong to the Spirit of God. Look at vs.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.” The children of God have overcome the world because they have the Spirit of God in them. He is able to deliver us, to help us, to lead us, to guide us and comfort us. He is able to teach us the truth, and that is the means by which we overcome the captivity of the world. Jesus said in John 8:32 “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” That is the way we overcome the snare of the devil and overcome the captivity of the world forces – through the truth, taught us by the Spirit of Truth through the word of God. He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world. Satan and God are not equal. Satan is a created being, who has been given some authority for a while, but whose power is overcome by the Spirit of God who is in us.

Now look at the opposite side. Vs.5, “They (that is, those of the antichrist, those of the false spirit) are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them.” So what John is saying is that these false teachers are not from God, they are of the dominion of Satan. They are worldly, they are from the world, and so the world is attracted to their words. Paul warns of this very thing in 2Timothy 4:3-4 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, [because] they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn [their] ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”

Listen, the devil knows your nature better than you do. He knows what men want, how to appeal to their flesh, to their pride, to their lusts. And so his false prophets prophesy what people want to hear, in order to satisfy their lusts, the pride of life. And those that preach such false doctrines get great crowds, they get a great response because they are telling people what they want to hear. And yet how often do we qualify whether or not something is of the Lord because it has a great crowd. I have news for you, a great crowd is often a reason for concern, not for boasting. If you are pleasing everyone, then chances are you aren’t preaching the truth, you’re preaching health, wealth and prosperity. That’s the doctrine of the world. That’s the doctrine of demons.

Well, once again, John emphasizes the positive. He closes this argument by characterizing the Spirit of God. Look at vs.6: “We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” Remember John is speaking to believers, and he says, we are from God; he who knows God listens to us.

Now it’s important to realize who he is speaking to; that is the church, but also who he is speaking about. When John says, “we” and “us”, most conservative commentators believe that he is speaking of the apostles. The church was built on the apostles word and doctrine. The apostles were eyewitnesses of Christ’s ministry. They were given the words of Christ. And as such, those words were later brought to mind under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit so that they might write the New Testament scriptures. So when John says, “he who knows God listens to us, and he who is not from God does not listen to us,” he is referring to the scriptures. They don’t regard scripture as authoritative. They are guilty of the same sin as Eve. They disregard the word of God for the sake of their own wisdom. They consider themselves as equal to God in determining right from wrong. I can’t tell you how many people I hear go against the plain meaning of scripture and say something to the effect that “I think it’s ok to do this,” or “I don’t think that is applicable today in our culture.” Their excuses may be different, they may sound sincere, but in effect they are putting themselves above God and saying that they know better than He does.

And that’s the same thing false prophets do as well. They are basically putting their word above God’s word. But we are to test the spirits to see if they are from God. So John says, by this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. What does he mean by “this”? He means that those that are of God hear the truth of the apostles. They listen to the truth of scripture. They obey the word of God. They submit to the word. John says we can discern the spirit of truth and the spirit of error by the scriptures. The Spirit of Truth is the title that Jesus gave His Holy Spirit which He was sending to the world. We know the Holy Spirit because He is in union with the word of God. God will not contradict Himself. We test spirits by scripture. We test experiences by scripture. We test prophesy by scripture. God has written His word so that we might know the truth and that the truth would make us free.

Finally, notice how John characterizes the spirit that is not from God. In vs.1, he says it is the spirit of false prophets. In vs.3 he says it is the spirit of antichrist. In vs.5 it is the spirit of the world. And in vs.6 it is the spirit of error. There it is. The spirit of antichrist is not necessarily this giant red dragon that appears at the end of the world breathing fire and smoke. No, it is the spirit of error. Just a little leaven which leavens the whole lump. Just a little taking away here, and a little adding there. Just a slight course correction that sets the ship on a perilous course, and that little error ends up costing shipwreck of souls.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are of the Spirit of God, then God has given you the gift of discernment through the Spirit, that nothing would defraud you from fellowship with God. Eph. 1:18-23 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” Let nothing defraud you of your prize. Let nothing separate you from the fellowship of the Spirit. Test the spirits by the scripture, to see if they are of God. And may the Holy Spirit lead you and guide you into all truth, and may the truth set you free.

I think it was last Sunday that I kind of threw out a surprise question to the congregation. The question concerned whether or not you could say that your life was a living testimony to the transforming power of the gospel. I don’t often ask for a raising of hands in our services, so perhaps I caught everyone off guard. Because the response was from just a half a dozen people or so, until I said that I expected a lot more affirmations, and then a few more people belatedly raised their hands.

Now my purpose this morning is not to embarrass anyone. I’m not going to ask for another raising of hands or anything. But I would like to come back to the question of whether or not you can testify to having been made a new creature? Can you say that there has been a transformation in your life? To use the church expressions of yesteryear, have you been born again? Have you received a new heart? This is the essential question of Christianity. Not trying to be a better person, or a religious person, but having become a new person through a radical transformation within your heart and soul.

Now John has been circling this question in this entire epistle. His main theme, as I have repeatedly emphasized, is that of fellowship. Fellowship with God, and fellowship with the church of Christ. Fellowship is the goal of our salvation. We are to become one with Christ, as He abides in us through His Spirit, and we abide with Him in obedience and love.

Now obedience can sound legalistic. It can sound as if we are trying to earn our way to heaven by good works. But that is not what John is teaching here. For one thing, he is speaking to people who are already supposed to be born again. They are already Christians, they are a new creation in Christ. They are the body of Christ. So what he is assuming is that we already have a relationship with Christ, and now he is giving a series of evidences or tests that we are in fellowship with God.

And the only way that is going to happen, is not by perfectly keeping every commandment and doing every work perfectly, though we should aspire to be perfect, even as He is perfect. But the only way we can be in fellowship with God is if we have first been born again. We have to have a transformed heart. We have to have a new nature which is given to us by God. We then have to act in obedience to God’s word to maintain that fellowship, but new life must first come as a gift from God in response to our faith in Christ.

So if we have this new heart, then that simply means that we will have new desires. We will want to please the Lord. We will love the Lord, and consequently love His law, or His word. We will love His church. We will love one another. But we will not have those new desires unless you have first been radically transformed by faith in Christ and receiving salvation from Him.

So, don’t raise your hands. This is a rhetorical question. Do you know that you have been radically transformed in your heart, you have been born again and are a new creature? That is the starting point. There can be no talk of fellowship until you have first this relationship with Christ which results in a transformed heart. And if you can’t honestly say that, then you need to call upon the Lord and confess your need of a Savior. You need to be changed. You need to repent of your sinful nature and ask for the righteousness which comes from the Lord. And when you receive that forgiveness and Christ’s righteousness is applied to your account, God works a transaction in your soul. He puts your sins upon Christ, and He puts Christ’s righteousness upon you, and He gives you a new heart, new desires, and He gives you the Holy Spirit to indwell you to help you and lead you into paths of righteousness. The divine transaction results in a divine transformation.

Now if that is already your experience, you have been born again, you have a new heart, and are a new creature, then John tells us in these last verses of chapter 3 that you can have the assurance of fellowship with God. You can have confidence that you are a child of God, and that He loves you, and is with you, and will never leave you. You can have confidence in fellowship with God because now that you are born of God, you exhibit the nature of God in your new life. So in keeping with this theme of fellowship, our title of this message today is the assurance of fellowship. And there are four points, or four evidences of fellowship which gives the Christian assurance.

First, there is the assurance of love. Love is the normal result of fellowship. When a man meets a woman, they initially form a relationship. If it’s the right fit, that relationship usually initiates the dating process. They start going on long walks together, hanging out together, talking to one another, listening to one another, finding out about one another. All of that is what the Bible calls fellowship. Fellowship is communion with God, walking with God, abiding with God and He abiding with you. And what is the typical result of this couple’s dating or felllowship? They fall in love. And love is this blissful, contented, happy existence where you are satisfied with each other. He or she is the most important person in your life. You want to spend eternity with one another. You want to be together all the time. That is love. And that is the love which we have with Christ when our fellowship is all that it should be.

Now the problem with this kind of love that the Apostle John is talking about, is that we don’t really understand Christian love. When we think of love, we think of amore, we think of feelings, of sexual love, or sentimental love. The problem is that we have one word for love, and it covers every thing from loving ice cream to loving my dog, or loving my wife. But in the Greek language there were primarily three different words that were used for love. Eros is a word for love which refers to erotic love. It includes romantic love. Sexual love. All of that is included in eros. Phileo, another Greek word, means brotherly love. It’s the root of the word Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. It includes familial love; love of family. Neither of those words are the one that John uses here. That word John uses is agape love, which refers to a sacrificial love. In some of the old English versions, it was sometimes rendered as charity. That wasn’t a bad idea, because it is a love which involves giving. It’s an active love that is more concerned with others needs than your own.

Now John wants to make sure he sets the right standard of love at the very outset. So he gives us the Biblical definition of love in vs 16; “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Christ laid down His life for us, that is the Christian definition of love. Now ladies and gentlemen, that is not a natural love, is it? Not many of us would die for someone else so that they might live. It’s possible that we might do that for our wife, or for our children, but not for a stranger, or better yet, not for our enemies. That would be unnatural would it not? But that is what Christ did for us. Rom. 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were enemies of God, rebelling towards God, Christ died for us. And that love sets the standard for Christian love on our part. We love one another as Christ loved us.

That’s why I said at the outset that this kind of fellowship is not possible unless you first receive a new heart. Unless you have been transformed from the natural man to a new man in Christ, having received the nature of Christ, then you cannot, you will not, love like Christ loved us.

Now that is the principle; that we should love one another as Christ loved us, laying down, or laying aside our lives for the brethren. It’s tempting to think of this in heroic terms, and overlook the mundane, everyday ways in which this principle can be fulfilled. We are like Walter Mitty, and imagine dying gloriously on the battlefield or something heroic like that. But while it may possibly mean going to that extreme, it also means laying aside your prerogatives, laying aside your rights, laying aside your priorities, in order to serve one another.

So John gives us the principle and then tells us how to practice it in vs17, “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” That’s practical Christian love; not just dying on a battlefield or on the mission field, but unselfishly giving what your brother needs. Opening your heart up to others and putting them before yourself.

Now if you have that kind of love, if you are practicing that kind of love, then you can be assured that you have fellowship with God, because that is not a natural thing. It is a divine love, and evidence that God dwells with you and you with Him.

The second assurance of fellowship John tells us in vs 18, is that of obedience. “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” The word tongue there is the Greek word glossa, which means language. So our love is not merely lip service, not just in flowery speech, but it is evidenced in deeds and in truth. We can say that we love the Lord, but if it is true then we will love one another with a sacrificial love evidenced in deeds. What that means is that as the truth of God is revealed to us, as Christ is an example to us, we should be conformed to that truth in obedience. Jesus said, “if you love Me, keep My commandments.” God isn’t bowled over by your praise and worship, if it is not in accordance with His truth. We must worship Him in spirit and in truth, Jesus said.

Now obedience is the principle, and again John makes the practical application whereby we can know the assurance of fellowship. He first states it negatively in vs.19, We will know by this (that is that we love in deed and truth) that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” The meaning of this verse is not immediately clear, but I think the Geneva Study Bible explains it well in this way; “If an evil conscience convicts us, much more ought the judgment of God condemn us, who knows our hearts better than we ourselves do.” In other words, if we are hypocritical by professing love but not being obedient to love others as Christ, our conscience will be stricken by God who knows our hearts. So that is the negative assurance of fellowship.

Then the positive assurance is found in vs.21, “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” So obedience to the truth produces assurance of fellowship. It’s similar to the boyfriend/girlfriend example I gave you earlier. If you are true to one another, then you will have confidence in your relationship. But if you are running around behind her back seeing old girlfriends and so forth, then you will not have confidence in your relationship. But when you know that you love one another fully and completely, then you are confident in your relationship. And that is similar to what happens in Christian fellowship. When you know you have fully obeyed with all your heart, then you will have an inward assurance of fellowship and all the blessings that come from such communion with God.

That assurance leads to the next evidence of fellowship, which is answered prayer. This is an area which can either be a great assurance or a means of great discouragement and even the possibility of coming to the point of despairing in your walk with God. And that is the subject of prayer. But what we see here, is that John ties our prayer life with the previous point of obedience in deeds and truth. So in context, we must read vs21 again as a pretext to vs22. “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.”

The problem with most people’s prayer life is that they key in on one part of the promise, but disregard the conditions of the promise. They see “whatever we ask we receive from Him.” And that’s all they focus on. They are off to the races. “Lord, give me this.” “Lord, give me that. In Jesus name Amen!” I will confess that I can be as guilty as anyone else in this regard. I want what I want, and want God to give me what I want when I want it. And when He doesn’t do it the way I want, then I accuse Him of not loving me. But that kind of master/genie “your wish is my command” situation isn’t what is promised here.

Look closely at what John says. First, he ties answered prayer back to not having a guilty conscience. When we know we are obedient, we know we are loving in deed and in truth, then we can have confidence that whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are right. Now if the truth be known, if we truly examined ourselves in light of these verses, we would recognize that we don’t deserve to have any of our prayers answered. Every prayer God answers is really a gift of grace. But again, God knows the hearts, John says. He knows those hearts that love Him, and those that are in rebellion against Him. He knows those that desire to do His will, and those that are stingy and selfish.

James said it this way; “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” (James 4:3) But a heart that is right with God, knows the heart of God, and asks according to the will of God, and not just according to his own selfish desires, sees his prayers answered.

James has a lot to say about prayer, and one of the best sections is found in James 5:14-18 “Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.”

Now I believe in the power of prayer. But there have been a lot of times in my life when I have prayed for years and not seen an answer. And during such times I come to this passage again and again looking for power to my prayers. And I have examined those verses from one side to the other, backwards and forwards, trying to make sense of what it says. But one day it hit me, and my eyes were opened when I read vs 16, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.” I noticed that at the beginning the verse emphasized confession of sins. And it ended with a righteous man. And connecting the two is effective prayer. The point being that the secret to effective prayer is being a righteous man. Which is predicated by confessing your sins. Praying for one another. And that is exactly what John is saying. You want your prayers answered? Then “keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.” Then you will have power with God. And when you have prayers answered, it will give you this tremendous assurance of fellowship with God like practically nothing else.

Perhaps someone out there is saying, “Well, what does he mean by keep His commandments? Which commandments? Thou shalt not kill? I haven’t killed anyone.” So John once again reiterates what the commandments are. Look at vs 23; “This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.” To believe in the name of Jesus means to believe in all that name implies. That He was in the beginning with God, and He was God, and He became man to become sin for us, and paid our penalty of sin by dying on the cross and was resurrected and now sits on the right hand of the throne of God above all rule and authority, and no man comes to the Father except through Him. There is more, but that’s the main things that the name of Jesus signifies. So believing in His name is to honor Him as your Lord God and Savior, Jesus the Messiah. Believing in His name is trusting in His sacrifice as an atonement for your sins, trusting that He is the way, the truth and the life. Trusting in His word enough to obey Him as God, which equates to loving Him with all your heart, your soul, your mind and strength. And then to love your neighbor as yourself. To love one another, even as Christ loved the church and laid down His life for her. To love others like Christ loved us, sacrificially. In those two commandments are encapsulated all the commandments. Keeping those commandments is the way to answered prayer, and the way to continued fellowship with God.

Now John gives us one final assurance of fellowship in vs.24, “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.” There are two parts to this assurance. First, if we keep His commandments we abide in Him. Secondly, and as a consequence of the first, we have assurance that He abides in us by the Holy Spirit who He has given us.

Now these two parts sound unrelated at first, but actually they are contingent upon one another. You cannot keep His commandments apart from the help of the Holy Spirit. He is the author of our new hearts. We are born again by the Spirit of God. That’s why I said at the outset that if there has not be a transformation resulting in a new creature, a new heart, and a new person, then you cannot have fellowship which requires obedience. It starts with a new heart, which is the product of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit upon conversion.

And that new life, which is as apparent to you as it is to others, is proof of the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells in you. Furthermore, if you do not keep His commandments, then you will not have that assurance of the Holy Spirit, because you are quenching the Spirit through disobedience. I recently talked to a former drug user who had just been radically transformed by God and he said that the peace he now felt was the peace he had been seeking for in drugs but could never find. But now he had this peace through Christ. That is the evidence of the Holy Spirit abiding in you. When you know you are right with God, and He loves you, and you love God and one another, then you know the joy of your salvation. You know the comfort of the Holy Spirit. You know the assurance of your fellowship with the Almighty God.

There may be someone here today that says, “Man, Roy, that sounds good. I want that fellowship with God. I want forgivingness. I want that peace you are talking about. But I can’t say that is really my experience. I don’t really see these evidences in my life that I have real fellowship with God. Then I would ask you today to consider and examine whether or not you have ever been born again by the Spirit of God. You should be able to remember the time when God came into your heart and changed you by the Spirit to become a new creature. When old things passed away, and all things became new. You should be able to vividly recall the time when God changed your heart and your desires and you fell in love with the Lord and His word. But if you cannot, then I would suggest you consider coming to the Lord today in repentance and faith, asking for forgiveness, asking for a new heart, that new desires and a new spirit be given to you, that you might keep His ordinances and His statues. Today is the acceptable day of salvation. God will not turn you away if you come to Him with a broken and contrite heart, He will give you a new heart, and a new life.

Or perhaps there is someone here today that says, I remember when I fell in love with the Lord. I remember the day I called upon the Lord and He answered me and changed me and made me a new man. But I have to admit that my love has grown cold. I don’t have fellowship with God the way you have described it today. But I would like to get that corrected this morning. I would like to have the assurance of fellowship with God. Listen, God has provided a way for your fellowship with Him to be restored like it was brand new. 1John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Pray the prayer of David, from Psalm 51, O Lord, “Hide Your face from my sins And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit. … The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” Amen.

As we have studied 1 John, we have looked at various aspects of Christian fellowship. We have discovered that God created man for fellowship with Him. But as we progress in our fellowship with Christ, the natural result that is going to develop will be love. Love is the natural progression of fellowship. Just as in human relationships, when a man and woman come to know one another, and they have a relationship, the natural development of their continued dating, or fellowship, will be that they fall in love. So it is in our relationship with Christ. We come to know Him as our Savior, and then we have fellowship with Him, and as a result of fellowship, we learn to love Him. And John is going to tell us in these next couple of chapters what that love looks like.

Now as we look at this section, John says when someone becomes a Christian, when someone has fellowship with God and union with Jesus Christ, we can see two characteristics as evidence of that fellowship. Christians who are genuinely born of God manifest the fact that they are born of God by means of righteousness and love. Those are the two basic characteristics of fellowship with God. vs10, “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God,” and then comes the next characteristic in verse 10, “nor the one who does not love his brother.”

Last week we looked at righteousness as the first characteristic. We were told in vs.4-10, that he who practices righteousness is righteous. That he who is righteous is born of God. This week we will look at the other characteristic of fellowship, which is love.

We tend to think of these two characteristics as opposite ends of the spectrum. Righteousness and love almost seem to be diametrically opposed, and yet perhaps John is saying we somehow need to have both characteristics, as if they will balance one another out. Our legalism will be mitigated by love, or vis a versa. But the fact is, John is saying that they are correlating virtues. They are not only compatible, they are complimentary. In fact, I will go even further than that and say that one will be incomplete without the other. In other words, you cannot have righteousness without love, and you cannot have love without righteousness.

A Christian who is all about love, but not about righteousness is not truly loving. For Jesus said, “if you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And one who would claim to be righteous, but does not exhibit love, cannot be righteous, because Jesus said in Matt. 22:37 “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 foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

So both characteristics must be working conjointly and are dependent upon one another. Now let’s look at vs. 11; “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” Notice first of all, that this statement is repetitive. John uses this type of statement again and again in this letter, to emphasize that this is not some new thing he is teaching, but it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which was the gospel from the beginning. Look at chapter 1:1, He says we are proclaiming “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.”

Chapter 1vs5, “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you…” Chapter 2vs7, “Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning.” And now in chapter 3 vs.11; “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.”

Now in saying this, he is saying that his message is the same as from the beginning of their faith, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ which leads to salvation. And the reason he makes this point is because as the church matured the message of the gospel had been diluted, it had been altered, and things had been left out. False teachers had crept into the church in John’s day, just as there are today, who had twisted the truth of the gospel. Just like very often is the case today, the message had become that if you simply professed Christianity, if you merely had some sort of “religious” experience, or if you simply named the name of Christ, you were good to go. They were teaching that you could have Christianity and still have the world. You could claim to love God, and yet still love the world. Nothing had to really change. But John says that isn’t the true faith. That is not real fellowship with God.

So he reiterates the original message of the gospel; that we should love one another. Now remember what I said earlier; John is saying love and righteousness go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. Now let’s break this down for a moment, because I am afraid that the world has co-opted the word love and the church has taken it’s definition from the world instead of from the scriptures. And so it needs some explanation.

Christian love is loving God first with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. The second part of that is that you love your neighbor as yourself. These are the two foremost commandments in the Bible. Some of the commandments we are no longer under obligation to keep, primarily ceremonial in nature, which have been fulfilled in Christ. We no longer have to offer animal sacrifices for instance, because they are fulfilled in the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But the moral law of God still stands. Though we have been justified from the penalty of the law, we still are to keep the commandments, because they express the will of God, and they establish righteousness. So if we are to practice righteousness, as John says in vs.7, then we must keep these commandments which delineate righteousness. Righteousness has to be defined by the law. Thus if we practice righteousness according to vs.7, then we keep His commandments.

When a person is born of God by faith in Christ it produces a right relationship with God, based on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who was righteous. That relationship in which we are declared righteous, provides the basis for our fellowship with God. Now we can abide with Him, we can obey Him, we follow Him, we walk in the light as He is in the light. That is fellowship. Fellowship is growing to know Him, to walk with Him, to become like Him. And that fellowship with God produces as the outcome our love for God and for His body.

Now as I alluded to earlier, when a man and a woman are dating, they are getting to know one another. They have a relationship, but now they have fellowship. They spend time together, getting to know one another. And in the process they develop a love for one another. And when that love is really developed, it is characterized by a surrendering of themselves to one another. They give everything and everyone else up, and surrender completely to one another. That is the zenith of romantic love. When you reach that point in your relationship, there is a joy that cannot be described. There is nothing you want more than to be with that person. It doesn’t matter what you have or don’t have, it doesn’t matter if you have any money to go out to dinner with or not. You can eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches together on a beach towel and be blissfully happy and content.

Well, that’s a picture of fellowship with the Lord, which produces our love for the Lord. And when we surrender everything to Him, we can have that joy of our salvation that exceeds anything that this world can offer. But we know that God is Spirit. Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and sits at the throne of God. We love spiritually as Christians, but we also desire a physical element to love. And so God has designed His church to be His body. His Spirit occupies His people. So as we express our love spiritually to Him, we also express our love physically to His body, which is the church. This is why we love one another. It is the way we show our love for Him.

Now as I said, John is confronting false teaching in the church, and so he gives us a series of tests, or evidences of real Christianity. We have been looking at them in detail for several weeks now. But once again, as he reiterates this basic doctrine of love which is the result of real fellowship with God, he says this is not a new message, it’s the same message from God which is from the beginning.

And to illustrate that, he goes back not just to the beginning of Christ’s ministry, or even the beginning of their salvation, but he goes back to the beginning of the Bible, to the beginning of the human race. He gives us an illustration from the first two men born after creation, who are Cain and Abel. Now John is going to give us an illustration in the negative to prove a positive. He is illustrating what love is not, what is not righteous and so he shows us a negative contrast to love which is when Cain murdered his brother. John loves to use contrasts in his gospel; the contrast of light and darkness, truth and a lie, righteousness and lawlessness, and love and hate. These contrasts he uses as a literary technique to show us the difference between those born of God and those who are born of the devil.

John makes it clear that one who is born of God will exhibit the characteristics of God. And those born of the devil, exhibit the character of their father the devil. If the devil is a liar, then they will lie. If the devil is a murderer, then they will be murderers. Jesus said to the Jews in John 8:44 ”You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” So this is the language of Christ, it’s not some new thing that John has conjured up. It’s not the language that I would necessarily have the courage to confront someone with. It’s very strong language. But it is the language of Christ, and thus it is the language of God. It is the message of God which is from the beginning.

This nature of the devil which is that of a liar and a murderer, was instilled in Adam and Eve when they spurned the word of God and did what was right in their own eyes. Romans 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” And so when Adam and Eve had children, that sin nature became their nature, and as such it has passed down to all men and women. And John tells us here that Cain “was of the evil one”, that is, he had the nature of the devil, he was born of the devil, and he slew his brother.

Now why did Cain slay Abel, his brother? The answer is in vs.12, “Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.” You remember the story in Genesis 4, Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruits of his labor. He was a farmer, and he brought the fruit of his farming as an offering to the Lord. Listen, we can never achieve righteousness on the basis of our own merits, on the basis of our labor. Our own efforts are inculcated with pride in our accomplishments. Righteousness derived from our own labor can never be acceptable to God. And so God did not regard Cain’s offering.

Cain evidently thought he would gain merit by his deed of bringing his good works to God. He’s indicative of the kind of person who thinks God must be pleased with however I choose to worship Him. But Jesus told us that those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And truth is revealed in God’s word, not according to your cultural template, or according to your imagination.

Abel brought an offering as well. He was a herdsman, and so he brought a lamb from his flock. He slaughtered the lamb and offered it upon an altar. And God had regard for Abel’s offering, because it was an offering of faith. Abel exhibited saving faith in that he offered a spotless lamb as an offering for sin, which was a prototype of the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. And God credited Abel’s faith as righteousness, but He did not regard Cain’s offering.

That message is as pertinent today as it was then. God will not accept our works and our labors as righteousness. The righteousness God accepts is the righteousness of our substitute, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who was slain for our sins. By that death, we are made righteous, and so we now practice what we have become by faith, we practice righteousness.

But when God did not accept Cain’s offering, Cain became angry with his brother. In effect, he was angry with God but he took it out on his brother. He hated him, and that led him to murder his brother. Rather than repent of his sin, and do what was right, Cain acted like his father the devil and hated his brother, which resulted in murdering him.

So in light of that illustration, John says we should not be surprised if the world hates us that are believers. If we are practicing righteousness, then don’t be surprised if the world, who is practicing evil deeds, hates us. Because true righteousness makes them feel convicted. But rather than repent at their conviction of their sins, they love their sin and hate that which condemns it as sin.

Listen, the world hates righteousness. Because the natural state of man is selfishness. To love righteousness is contrary to their nature, and their natural condition is to love themselves more than others. Love in our fallen nature is always twisted and distorted and centered upon self. Therefore, the love of an unbeliever is really a love of ourselves. We love our children because they are extensions of us. We love our father or mother because our life is related to theirs. We love those who please us, we love those who help us, we love those who somehow fulfill us. If you observe human nature you will see how true this is. Love from a human standpoint is always based on reciprocality. What someone can do for me. Thus human love is self-centered. And their hatred is for anything or anyone that threatens their goal of self fulfillment.

So John restates this contrast between the children of God and the children of the devil once again. He says those who are born again of God love the brethren. But those who are born of the devil hates his brother. Look at vs. 14 “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”

The phrase, “we have passed out of death into life, is another way of saying you are born again. You have passed from the old man, the way that leads to death, the nature of the evil one, you have passed out of that, and have been given new life, a new nature, and new characteristics of your Father in heaven. But if you do not love your brother, then it is evident that you are still dead in your sins. You abide in death. You are still dead spiritually.

Listen, what John is reiterating is that there will be a transformation when you are born again. You will not be perfect, but you will have a desire to be perfect, because Christ is perfect. You will want to be like Christ, because you want to be with Christ. You desire fellowship with Christ. And so this new nature which is born of the Spirit of Christ works in you that which is pleasing to God. But those that don’t have that kind of transformation in their hearts, will show it by their selfish, sinful nature, which actually results in hatred for their brethren. In fact, he says those that hate their brother do not have eternal life abiding in him. They are not born again. They are still dead in their sins.

And notice one other thing. John equates hatred with murder. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.” Jesus said the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount. Listen to how Jesus qualifies this kind of hateful nature. Jesus said in Matt. 5:21-22 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” In other words, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. If he hates his brother, even if he is angry with his brother, he is as guilty as if he committed the sin of murder.

Listen, this is how the Lord can say that love for God and your neighbor is the basis for all the law, the summation of all the law. If you love your neighbor, you will not steal from him. If you love your neighbor you will not bear false witness against him. If you love your neighbor, you will not covet his stuff, you will not commit adultery with his wife, and you certainly will not kill him. All of the law is based on the two overarching principles of loving God and loving your neighbor.

However, Christian love is correlated with righteousness and obedience, and not just sentimentality. We are called to a higher standard of love as Christians than what the world considers love. We are called to a sacrificial love, not a selfish love. We are to love one another as Christ has loved us. He humbled Himself to serve our needs. He laid aside His glory so that we might be glorified. He took upon Himself our punishment that we might be set free. And that is the standard of love we are to have for our brother.

Now as we progress in the next few weeks in this study we will look at practical ways in which we express that love for our brothers. But let me just give you a couple as a preview. This Christian love is the standard of love which we are to have in marriage. We are to love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. Wives are to love their husbands as unto the Lord. Marital love is to be a picture of Christ’s love for the church. We don’t love our wives as long as she treats me right, but the moment she takes me for granted I’m out of here. How many times have we taken our Lord’s love for us for granted? Love seeks not it’s own. We love one another sacrificially, even as Christ laid down His life for the church.

One more practical application of this principle and I’m done. How do you love your brethren? You love the body of Christ. You love His church. You love His people. You serve one another. You support the body of Christ. You share time with His body. You join to His body. You belong to His church. You fellowship with His body. You pray for His body. If you love your brother you will share the gospel with them. And when you do that, you will find joy in your salvation. Joy comes through serving, not being served. Church is not just a place to be served, but it is a place to serve one another and edify the kingdom of God which is the people of God.

On the other hand, hate for your brother may just be ignoring Christ’s body. Turning your back on his church. Not caring about His people. That constitutes hatred according to vs.17.
“But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” Just ignoring Christ’s body is a form of self love and hatred of others. Well, we will talk more of that next week. Until then, let us love God by loving one another and practicing righteousness.

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.