1 John 2:12-14—Know Your Spiritual Status
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: 1 John 2:12-14
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Welcome
Welcome
Good morning, church family and guests, both here in person and online! My name is Bill Connors, and I am the senior pastor of the church body here at Eastern Hills. If you are a guest today, I’d like the opportunity to meet you at the close of service, so if you would plan on coming down to the front after our benediction, I’d appreciate that, and I’d like to give you a thank you gift for joining us this morning. Also, if you’re visiting in the room this morning, would you just grab the communication card out of the back of the pew in front of you, and fill it out during my message sometime? Then you can bring that down to me when we meet, so the staff can pray for you and send you a card thanking you for your visit today. If you’d rather complete an online card, just text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link to our digital communication card. That works if you’re online as well.
I’d like to thank Rich for filling in at the pulpit for me last week while I was with the Student Ministry on their annual Winter Retreat. I’m blessed to have all three of the other pastors on staff who can step in and fill the pulpit when needed, and who do such a great job pointing us to Christ.
I have just two announcements this morning before we get to our next message in 1 John:
Announcements
Announcements
Evangelism Conference at Sandia Baptist Church begins tomorrow:
Monday night 2/27 starting at 5:45; pie fellowship following
Tuesday 2/28 all day starting at 8:50 am; breakout sessions that afternoon beginning at 1:00 pm; praise & worship & preaching that night beginning at 5:45 pm.
The conference is free. Yesterday was the last day to register online though, as far as I know. You just have to register at the welcome desk at Sandia when you arrive.
This week is also our Week of Prayer for North American Missions. We will have several events throughout the week, in addition to the Evangelism Conference.
Monday from 10:00 am to 11:30 will be a prayer program in the Sanctuary.
Wednesday is our focused day of prayer here at the building, when we will pray all day beginning at 6:30 am and ending at 7:30 pm in the building. There may be a slot or two still left open for that. Check the Get Connected Table in the foyer or check with Donna Treece to see if there are any slots that need to be filled.
Then on Friday, March 3, at 7:00 pm, there will be three dessert fellowships to finish out the week of our prayer focus: the Flurys, Deanna Chadwick, and the Treeces. You can choose one to go to, but they’d appreciate it if you’d RSVP to the house you plan to visit that night.
There are half sheets with all of this information on the Get Connected table in the foyer.
Opening
Opening
We are going verse-by-verse through the book of 1 John in this series, which will last for 13 weeks. We’re referring to John’s first epistle as the “Letter of Life, Light & Love,” because these are three of the major themes that show up in this little letter to the churches. 1 John was likely a circular letter, one that was meant to be shared among many churches, passed along so that the believers throughout the Roman Empire might learn from this apostle whom Jesus loved (a self-designation from his Gospel). To this point, we have looked at all of chapter 1 and the first 11 verses of chapter 2. Most of our Bibles have the next three verses set out as if they were a poem, and because of the language and repetition in them, they are poetic in nature. Let’s stand as we are able and read our focal passage, 1 John 2:12-14:
12 I am writing to you, little children, since your sins have been forgiven on account of his name. 13 I am writing to you, fathers, because you have come to know the one who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have conquered the evil one. 14 I have written to you, children, because you have come to know the Father. I have written to you, fathers, because you have come to know the one who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, God’s word remains in you, and you have conquered the evil one.
PRAYER (Jemez Valley Baptist Church, Pastor Daniel Clymer)
In our last two passages in 1 John, we’ve seen John provide the church with a couple of tests: contrasts that he presents as a means of evaluating whether or not someone among them was truly a believer. He did this because the church was facing a heretical threat from within—possibly an early form of the heresy called “gnosticism”—and this group was breaking away from Christian faith, teaching, and fellowship.
In chapter 1, we saw John’s first test: what we will call “the test of light and darkness.” The central verse of this test is verse 6:
6 If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth.
Since God is light, if we walk in the darkness, we do not walk with God. Remember that “walking” is one’s “way of life” in this use.
John’s second test is found earlier in chapter 2, and Rich preached on this last week. The focal verses for this test are verses 4 and 9:
4 The one who says, “I have come to know him,” and yet doesn’t keep his commands, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
9 The one who says he is in the light but hates his brother or sister is in the darkness until now.
Obedience to Christ’s commands and loving our fellow believers is this second test.
The thing about us today though is that we are a little reluctant to call these “tests.” We don’t really want to look around and think about who is in and who is out of the kingdom of God. Note that we’re not declaring who is in and out. We’re just observing the fruit of someone’s life and evaluating that fruit. Of course, we want to give people the benefit of the doubt when doing this “fruit inspection,” but John doesn’t shy away from saying: “Here’s what someone who belongs to Jesus should look like.”
He doesn’t say this because our works save us. He says it because our salvation should work us, and we should work out our salvation, according to Paul in Philippians 2:
12 Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose.
John has already been pretty weighty in this letter, and he will get weightier still. So now in verse 12 of chapter 2, he takes a moment to encourage the believers who will be reading this letter by pointing out what is true about them because of their relationship with Jesus. He’s encouraging the faithful to consider all that they have received in Christ so that they will not lose heart, given the controversy they are facing in that moment. This encouragement is our focal passage, and it bridges the gap of the tests that he’s prescribed and the application that he’s going to make.
Commentators are wildly divergent about how to take the identities of the people that John addresses this poem to. The sections are addressed to “children (once “little children”),” “fathers,” and “young men.” We might see these as three groups, separated by chronological age or by spiritual maturity. Given that John uses the term “children” several times in this letter to reflect his own fatherly care for the churches (see 1 John 2:1, 2:18, 2:28, 3:7, 3:18, 4:4, and 5:21), another argument is that the “children” references are to the whole church, and then the “fathers” and “young men” are two sections of the church, defined again either by age or by spiritual maturity. I personally prefer this perspective.
However, one thing seems clear to me: regardless of how you look at the three group names, each of the four things that we see that he’s writing to point out to the faithful are things that all believers should see as common blessings that are ours because of our faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord!
But six times in this passage, John says that he is writing “because” (CSB has 1 time “since”, 5 times “because”, but the same Greek word in all 6) of some blessing that is the believer’s because of being in Christ. He’s writing to assure them of their place in the Kingdom of God in the face of the opposition they are experiencing from within. They can know that the belong to Christ because of these evidences in their lives, in contrast to those who fail to pass the tests. One thing to pause and consider for a moment here is that if we step back for a second and take stock of our own spiritual walks in light of the tests and now the encouragement that John gives, and we find ourselves convicted by the Word and by the Spirit that we don’t show evidence of belonging to Jesus, this is not a bad thing—it’s a good thing! That is the moment to repent because our need for Christ has been revealed to us!
So our consideration of this passage this morning will come from this perspective: that we can put ourselves in the place of those who first received this letter (as it is still being “circulated”), and see that we have received the same blessings from God because of belonging to Jesus, or the Spirit will reveal to us that we don’t actually belong to Jesus, convicting us to cry out to Him in repentance and faith.
Again, this passage lists four total blessings that the believer has:
1) Our sins have been forgiven.
1) Our sins have been forgiven.
In the first message of this series, I made the statement that our biggest problem is sin. Our sins are the things that we do or say or think that God doesn’t approve of, and the things that we refuse to do, say, or think that God does approve of. The reason that sin is our biggest problem is that it is sin that separates us from God, according to Scripture. But the wonder of the Gospel is that if we are in Christ, then because of what Jesus has done (not what we have done), because of His perfection (not our own righteousness), our sins have been forgiven.
12 I am writing to you, little children, since your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
The reality of this is something that I wonder if we take for granted. For our sins to be forgiven is to say that our sins are no longer applied to our account. But the Bible says that we earn death by our sin, as if sin were our jobs and death was our wages:
Romans 6:23a (CSB)
23 For the wages of sin is death...
In our sin, we are rebels. We deserve to be separated from our perfect, holy, righteous Creator forever because of our rebellion against Him and His rule. That is a just punishment. What a terrible position we were in apart from Christ!
But in His grace and mercy, God has provided the means of our forgiveness: Jesus’ substitutionary death on the cross, His willing sacrifice of Himself in our place:
Hebrews 9:26b (CSB)
26b But now he [Jesus] has appeared one time, at the end of the ages, for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself.
It is because of His sacrifice that the rest of verse 23 in Romans 6 can say:
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We went from being the guaranteed recipients of God’s wrath to being the now and forever recipients of God’s grace! We have been given a new kind of life—eternal life—which is both a now and forever thing because of the work and person of Jesus.
That’s what it means that our sins have been forgiven on account of His name. In ancient thought, a person’s name represented everything about that person. For an additional biblical example, in the book of Deuteronomy, the song of Moses is recorded in chapter 32. In it, he said:
3 For I will proclaim the Lord’s name. Declare the greatness of our God! 4 The Rock—his work is perfect; all his ways are just. A faithful God, without bias, he is righteous and true.
Proclaiming God’s name was to declare how great He was. Likewise, when John writes that we are forgiven on account of the name of Jesus, His name includes who He is and what He has done—the fact that He is the Son of God, yet fully man, who lived a sinless life and died a sacrificial death for us.
And now we bear the name (well, the title, actually) of Christ as “Christians.” This is because of the next blessing that John speaks of: that we have come to know Him.
2) We have come to know the Word of life.
2) We have come to know the Word of life.
Our salvation isn’t merely our becoming the recipients of forgiveness, and it’s not only a set of facts that we claim to believe. I mean, it includes those things, but it’s also much more than that. For our salvation is over and over again in Scripture called being “in Christ.” It’s being joined to Him in relationship—not that we have simply come to know about Him… We have come to know Him.
1 John 2:13a (CSB)
13a I am writing to you, fathers, because you have come to know the one who is from the beginning.
1 John 2:14b (CSB)
14b I have written to you, fathers, because you have come to know the one who is from the beginning.
The reason that I wrote this point the way I did (not verbatim to what John wrote in verses 13 and 14) is because of how he started this letter. Remember 1 John 1:1, which we looked at in the first message of this series:
1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—
Jesus is the Word of Life. And John was in a fairly unique position by the time he wrote this letter: He was one of the few eyewitnesses to Jesus’s earthly ministry (he may have been the ONLY one) left alive. He was likely writing in the last quarter of the first century, and the events of Jesus’s physical ministry were more than 40 years prior. Most of the other apostles had died or been martyred for their faith by this point (I say most because we don’t know what happened to all of them). John could write with authority because of his personal relationship with Jesus.
And John wrote that he remained in fellowship with Jesus, even though He had died, rose again, and ascended to heaven:
3 what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may also have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
And now, John writes that we “have come to know” Jesus. When he writes this (and in fact, all six of the “you have” statements in this little poem), the tense of the words he uses is the same: it means that something has occurred which is still in effect, and will remain in effect. It’s the same tense as Jesus’s last word on the cross:
30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.
On the cross, Jesus said that His work of redemption had been finished, and would remain finished.
Likewise, John said that the believers had come to know Jesus, and continued to know Jesus—the Word of life, the one who is from the beginning. Yes, we have come to know about Him, but we have also come to know Him in a personal way.
Last week, Rich mentioned that the word “know” was a key word in the passage just before this one (2:3-11). In fact, the word “know” is a key word through all of this letter. Over and over in this epistle, John writes about “knowing.” Here are just two examples:
3 This is how we know that we know him: if we keep his commands.
24 The one who keeps his commands remains in him, and he in him. And the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he has given us.
When we trust and surrender to Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we enter into a love relationship with Him. He takes up residence in our hearts by His Holy Spirit, and we experience His presence in our lives in an intimate, personal way. And according to Scripture, there’s a lot that follows along with that. We won’t read all of these verses, and this isn’t even an exhaustive list:
We are adopted into God’s household (Eph. 1:5)
Jesus is our advocate before the Father (1 John 2:1)
We are set free from sin and death (Rom. 8:2)
We have passed from death to life (John 5:24)
We have been washed clean, sanctified, and justified (1 Cor. 6:11)
We have peace with God (Rom. 5:1)
We have access to the Father through the Spirit (Eph. 5: 18)
We are part of the body and bride of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27, Rev. 21:9)
When we trust Christ, we are set on a new path of new life with new purpose and a new way of relating to God. We are made alive with Christ:
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, 5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! 6 He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
And since we have come to know the Word of life, we have victory over sin, death, and the evil one.
3) We have conquered the evil one.
3) We have conquered the evil one.
This is one of those points that we sometimes might struggle with believing. This is because we all know that we fail, every day. We choose sin over holiness, selfishness over sacrifice, and because of this, we often feel like we’ve been defeated instead of like we’re conquerers. But John is clear twice in this passage:
1 John 2:13b (CSB)
13b I am writing to you, young men, because you have conquered the evil one.
The word for “conquered” here means to overcome, overpower, prevail against, triumph over, to be victorious. What a great picture! The deceiver, the devil, has been and remains conquered in the life of the Christian. He cannot defeat us because we are in Christ, according to Scripture. If we are submitted to God and resist Satan, he will flee from us:
7 Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Now, this doesn’t mean that we in our own strength are powerful enough to defeat the enemy, Satan. No, in verse 14, John expands on this blessing and explains how we conquer the evil one:
1 John 2:14c (CSB)
14c I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, God’s word remains in you, and you have conquered the evil one.
We have strength for the fight because of the abiding Word of God in our lives. Just as Jesus overcame the tempter in the wilderness after His baptism by clinging to the Word of God, so the Word of God is our strength for the battle. It is through the Spirit’s application of the Word to our lives that we are strengthened, and it is the Word that is our weapon against the temptations of the devil:
10 Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength. 11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens. 13 For this reason take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand.
16 In every situation take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit—which is the word of God.
We’re in a battle, but a battle that has already been declared to be won if we are in Christ, because we belong to the Lord. In Isaiah 54, the prophet wrote:
17 No weapon formed against you will succeed, and you will refute any accusation raised against you in court. This is the heritage of the Lord’s servants, and their vindication is from me.” This is the Lord’s declaration.
Nothing can separate us from His love, from the relationship that we have with Him through faith, and no accusation can tear us down because the price for our freedom has been fully paid by Jesus. Even in our supposed defeat, we stand as conquerors.
35 Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is why we can stand confidently for the truth of the Word of God—because we can never be defeated in an eternal sense. The enemy has been defeated, overcome, conquered, and we stand in the love of Christ victorious!
4) We have come to know the Father.
4) We have come to know the Father.
I almost put this last point with the second one, because they’re really closely related. However, given the fact that the message to “fathers” was in both places verbatim that we “have come to know the one who is from the beginning,” it seemed to me that there was a special reason that John put this one where he did, so it demanded a special consideration:
1 John 2:14a (CSB)
14a I have written to you, children, because you have come to know the Father.
The reason that I almost put those two together is because of how Jesus said that to know Him is to know the Father in John 14:7:
7 If you know me, you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
But when we read this statement from John in his letter, we find that he makes a connection here between our status as children and God’s position as Father. John wrote about this same connection in the prologue of his Gospel:
12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
If we are in Christ, then we are the children of God, something that we will look at in more detail when we get to chapter 3 of this letter in a few weeks:
1 See what great love the Father has given us that we should be called God’s children—and we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn’t know him. 2 Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is.
But for this morning, we consider the encouragement that comes from John saying this. Let the weight of his statement settle on you for just a second, because we say this so matter-of-factly, so almost in passing, that we miss the reality of it:
If you are in Christ, you have come to know the Father.
The Almighty. The Great I Am. The King of Kings. The Maker of Heaven and Earth. The Holy One. The Ruler of the cosmos. The Awesome and Mighty God.
20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one. We are in the true one—that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Closing
Closing
What an incredible blessing we have because we belong to Jesus! We stand justified because our sins have been forgiven on account of His name, we know and are known by Him in a loving relationship with Christ, we have been made strong through the Word of God by the Spirit of God and have overcome the devil, and we have also come to know God as His children. This should be an encouragement to us, just as it must have been for those who were struggling with the difficulties of their age.
Yes, the world is a mess right now. But the world is always a mess because of sin and lostness. Because of our standing in Jesus, we have a firm foundation, a solid ground to stand on as we face the brokenness of the world around us. We should take courage, according to Jesus:
33 I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”
Even if we suffer for the sake of the Gospel, we can never be defeated. Even if the world around us is in chaos, Jesus has given us peace. Even if people around us, even people who claim to be in Christ, turn away from us because of our stand on the truth, we will never be alone because of Jesus. Praise the Lord for this amazing gift!
But keep in mind that this passage speaks about the blessings that believers have. If you have never trusted Christ, none of this is yours. Jesus died to set you free from sin and the power of the devil. He wants to be in relationship with you, to fill you with His Spirit and His word so that you would have peace. He wants you to be a child of God, with access to all that an heir of the King has rights to. He rose from the grave so that you could have eternal life if you belong to Him. Surrender to Jesus this morning, even right now were you are, whether you’re here in the room or online. Stop rebelling against Him and submit in faith, trusting in what Jesus has done to save you.
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PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (1 John 3)
Pastor’s Study
Prayer Meeting
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength.