One True God
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Illustration: You walk differently when you walk with confidence. Walking on ice vs. on solid dry ground, walking on something narrow and elevated, vs on the regular ground.
I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him.
If anyone sees a fellow believer committing a sin that doesn’t lead to death, he should ask, and God will give life to him—to those who commit sin that doesn’t lead to death. There is sin that leads to death. I am not saying he should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin that doesn’t lead to death.
We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the one who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one. 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.
Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
Now I don’t know about you, but I want to be a disciple who walks with confidence. I think we can do a lot more for the kingdom of God on earth if we walk with our chins up with assurance that we are who we say we are and that God is on our side. At the end of the day we believe that it’s God who works through us, but I think He tends to use more the ones who have confidence in their identity, God’s identity and in the power we have in prayer.
And that’s what this section of the letter is all about. Really the whole letter is about giving these disciples confidence. That’s what verse 13 says after all, that he wrote these things to them so that they would know they have eternal life. Not think they have eternal life, know they have eternal life. And Greek has multiple words for knowing, and this one means more than just surface level knowing, but a deeper level of knowing. John wants his readers to know deeply that they have eternal life through Jesus. So all along all these tests of how we know we are children of God were never meant to be guilt trips or reasons for doubt but reasons for assurance, for building our confidence in who we are.
Then in turn our confidence that we are in Christ should also give us confidence in prayer. After all if we truly are children of God as John says we are then why wouldn’t our gracious Father hear and answer our prayers. Not only does He hear our prayers that we pray for ourselves, but also the prayers we pray for our brothers who are struggling, even struggling with sin.
And saving the most important for last the letter closes with a confident assertion about who Jesus is, and who God is. In the face of a world that follows scores of false gods, John says boldly that Jesus and the Father are the one true God and eternal life. It’s that confidence in the identity of our God that forms the foundation for our confidence in everything else. After all what good is it to be children of God who He hears pray if that God is less than what we believe Him to be, if He is a god not worthy of worship. So then knowing that He is is what gives meaning to the rest.
Let us then look in turn at these three confidences we have in Jesus:
Confidence in our eternal life
Confidence in Prayer
Confidence in the One True God
Confidence in Eternal Life
Confidence in Eternal Life
Illustration: I was told you could get a year for every $1000 out of a car that you buy. What would be different if you would be confident your car would last forever?
I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the one who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.
What does it change for us to know that we will live forever? If we actually lived our day to day lives mindful of the eternity that is coming for us? What would we do differently? I’ve known people who’ve lived in fear, never sure of where they stand with Jesus. Who if you asked them if they knew where they were going when they died even though they were believers they would tell you they didn’t know, but they hoped. We don’t have to live like that. We don’t need to live in fear and doubt of who we are in Christ.
John says that he wrote to “you who believe.” So He isn’t trying to teach the gospel to new converts, but to reassure the Christians he is writing to that they have the eternal life promised to them. With this in mind John’s repeated explanation that we know we are in God by our righteousness and good deeds is not meant as a discouragement but as an encouragement to believers who are practicing the commands that they were taught and are loving their fellow believers. It’s not “so that you will have eternal life” but “that you know that you have eternal life.”
In this same letter John assured us that if we ask God to forgive us and cleanse us that He will, in 1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And Paul backs him up saying that we can have confidence that if God started working in us that He will finish what He started in Philippians 1:6
I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
And again that if we have the love of Jesus we will never lose it in Romans 8:35-39
Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
Because of you
we are being put to death all day long;
we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 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.
So when we put our faith and trust in Christ and are adopted as sons we can have confidence that He will never abandon us. We are His, and He said in John 6:39
This is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me but should raise them up on the last day.
So walk tall my fellow believers in Christ. If you have put your faith and trust in Jesus than you know that you are in Christ, and He will not leave you or forsake you. You know that you have eternal life, and that the evil one cannot touch you. And if you haven’t put your faith and trust in Jesus and you’re hearing me right now than it’s not too late. You can put your faith in Him and repent of your old ways and share in the same confidence that I have that when the day comes for the dead to rise we will be there!
Confidence in Prayer
Confidence in Prayer
Illustration: You don’t realize how much you use electricity until the power goes out. Imagine having power but not using it. That’s kind of like being a Christian that doesn’t pray.
And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him.
If anyone sees a fellow believer committing a sin that doesn’t lead to death, he should ask, and God will give life to him—to those who commit sin that doesn’t lead to death. There is sin that leads to death. I am not saying he should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin that doesn’t lead to death.
The benefits of confidence in prayer are enormous. For one prayer is how we build our relationship with God and grow closer to Him. That’s the whole goal of being a disciple, and we can only achieve it through prayer. For two, God promises to take care of our needs when we ask Him to. I can certainly testify to the truth of that promise in my own life, that God has taken great care of us and provided for us when we didn’t think there way a way. Finally prayer is the way that we grow the kingdom of God on this earth. So if we want to fulfill the great comission, than confidence in prayer is the most important ingredient in getting there. It’s the difference between trying to save people yourself and being a part of God saving people. One is impossible, one is essential.
John wants to reassure us about their our confidence in prayer. Because if in fact we are the children of God as he has repeatedly reassured us, then we should have the confidence to pray with boldness and know that the Father is listening. As Hebrews says this boldness is ours through the blood of Christ. Hebrews 4:16
Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.
However John gives us a condition placed on what sorts of prayers are answered favourably. Those prayers in which we ask for something which is “according to His will.” This is a reminder that God is a person, not a vending machine. He has His own will and plans, and won’t answer prayers positively which ask for things that are against His will. God won’t help you sin as the most extreme example, or get you out of suffering if He is using that suffering to help you grow for another possible example. Remember that Jesus prayed not to receive God’s judgment on the cross and was answered negatively. He seemed to know this would happen in the way He prays “not my will but yours be done.”
How then do we know what is God’s will? In two ways. First by reading the Scriptures. The Bible tells us in multiple places things that we should pray for, like for the things we need, for those who are sick, for forgiveness of sins and so on. Second by the Holy Spirit, who we are told prays for us when we don’t know what we ought to pray.
Things get really interesting when John asks us to pray for our brothers who are struggling with sin in verse 16. We are assured that if we pray for them “God will give life to Him,” meaning that He will help him to overcome sin and live according to God’s will and possibly even forgive sins based on your prayer. This wouldn’t be the only place in Scripture that talks about praying for forgiveness for others. The part that troubles us perhaps on first reading is this business about “sin that leads to death.”
Now there are different theories on what this means. Does it mean blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, otherwise known as the unforgiveable sin, or does it mean sins for which you will be struck died like with Ananias and Sapphira, or something else? The most important thing I think is to remember that John isn’t saying we shouldn’t pray for someone who sins leading to death, but that he isn’t asking us to. Meaning there’s no harm in praying for a believer who’s sinning and we don’t need to worry about accidentaly praying for someone who we shouldn’t have or something like that. When in doubt pray. Even out of context that’s good advice. When in doubt, pray.
At the end of the day that’s really the application of this point. Pray. There is no reason not to and all the reason in the world that we should. Prayer is our connection to God, and He hears us when we pray and answers our prayers. Do we want to be powerless Christians or do we want to experience the power of prayer in our lives and in the church? The answer seems simple to me.
Confidence in the One True God
Confidence in the One True God
Illustration: Going into someone’s house to get furniture you bought off marketplace. The paranoid thought this could be anyone. Knowing who someone is builds your trust in them.
We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the one who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one. 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.
Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
Why is it important to know who God is? It’s important to know who we’re following, who we’re serving. And the identity of our God informs how we make decisions that aren’t clearly defined in Scripture. The character of God therefore impacts our character as His followers. That’s why I think John ends this letter by suddenly saying “guard yourselves from idols” despite having never directly talked about idols in this whole letter. Because being misinformed about who God is and who Jesus is is basically the same as serving an idol. If like the gnostics, who John has been refuting this whole letter, we say that Christ never came in the flesh than we’re serving a different Christ than the one who truly did come in the flesh and it has major implications for our day to day spiritual lives.
-Although Christ’s atoning death and resurrection are essential for our salvation Jesus also came to teach us about who God is and what His will is for our lives. That’s why He spent three years travelling Jerusalem and teaching the people. So then His words give us insight in order to help us better know God, who John here calls ‘the true one.’ Jesus so perfectly revealed who the Father that it is as if we have seen Him. John said in John 1:18
No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.
And what has He revealed about God to us? That God is love. That He cares for us and wants to be with us for eternity. That He is merciful, gracious, patient and so on. Reading the gospels tells us at least as much about the Father as it does about Jesus.
The final part of verse 20 has been the subject of debate amongst those who try to deny the deity of Christ. When it says that “this is the true God” or “He is the true God” what is the antecedent to that pronoun? Is it the true one meaning the Father, or Jesus? To me it seems apparent that John is once again using deliberately vague terms to leave the impression that the answer is both. The Father and the Son are both the true God and eternal life. Yet even if the antecedent is only the Father there are plenty more clear unassailable verses to support the deity of Jesus than just this one. So then I am completely unthreatened by the debate around this one small sentence.
John’s focus this whole time has been on the real identity of the Father as known through the Son. So here at the end His caution to guard themselves from idols implies that the God worshiped by the false teachers who’ve left the church isn’t just a deviation from correct theology about God, it’s worship of another God entirely. A false God. An idol. So then those who follow after these false teachers find themselves worshipping false Gods and therefore committing the sin of idolatry. Hence the importance of knowing God for who He truly is.
How do we make sure that we know God as He is? Well the best way to do that is through careful study of God’s word, the Bible. God Himself wrote it according to 2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
So it is God’s self-disclosure to the world about His nature and His will. But we don’t want to just know things about God, we want to know God. So a life of prayer is essential to truly relationally knowing God in a way that the Bible cannot accomplish alone. Truly the task of the preacher is to continually find new ways to call us to pray and read our Bibles.
Conclusion
Conclusion
FCC together today we have been looking at the final verses of John’s first Epistle with a focus on the call to confidence that John wants for his readers. We have explored the importance of living with confidence that we have eternal life, and that God will never leave us or forsake us, so that we do not need to live in doubt and wonder at what our status with God is. We have explored the importance of living with confidence in prayer so that we can experience the promises God made to us to answer our prayers and take care of our needs and draw us closer to Him. And we have explored the need to have confidence in the identity of who the one true God is through Jesus’ teachings in the Bible and through our prayer relationship with Him. With those things in mind let’s reread our passage for the day.
I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him.
If anyone sees a fellow believer committing a sin that doesn’t lead to death, he should ask, and God will give life to him—to those who commit sin that doesn’t lead to death. There is sin that leads to death. I am not saying he should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin that doesn’t lead to death.
We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the one who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one. 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.
Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
So then my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, my desire for all of us today is that we leave this place bursting with confidence in who we are, in what power we have access to through prayer, and who God is. So let us go in that confidence with renewed passion to build that confidence through our study of scripture and our active lives of prayer, so that we can make a huge impact on the world for Christ.
Let us pray.