The Evidence of Living in the Light (1 John 2:3-11)

PRAY

Father, thank you for the opportunity to learn about you and your Son in your Word.

This topic can be difficult, so I pray that you would open our hearts.

Make us teachable.

Use your Word to change us into the likeness of your Son.

I pray that you would speak through me to do all this because I can’t do it on my own.

I need you...

We all need you...

Show us Christ...

It’s in his name we pray. Amen.

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever doubted your salvation?

I think most, if not all of us have doubted our salvation at some point in our Christian lives.

Some of you may even be doubting right now.

When I first came to the Lord when I was 8 years old...

I thought it was too good to be true.

I thought it was too easy.

I thought there must be some tangible difference from before I came to Christ and after.

But I didn’t see a difference from the previous day.

Everything seemed to be the same.

I still had to go to school on Monday.

I still had the same relationship with my parents, my brother, and my friends.

I still had my sin.

I couldn’t see what was different in that moment.

So, for about a month after I came to the Lord, I kept praying that the Lord would save me over and over again

because I doubted the truth of it,

I doubted how easy it was,

I doubted that there was any change in me at all.

Answering that doubt is what the whole book of 1 John is about.

1 John 5:13 says, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.”

1 John is a sort of sequel to the gospel of John which was written so that those who read it would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and have life in his name (John 20:31).

So, assuming that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, John follows up his gospel with a letter to assure you that you really do have eternal life by believing in Jesus.

The point is to give us assurance of our salvation by pointing us to Christ and what he has done in our heart.

John wants to give assurance to those of us who have heard and believed the gospel that such a simple process actually secures the most powerful thing in the universe.

We might be tempted to think that this salvation is too good to be true, like I did back when I came to Christ.

I was reading the Wingfeather Saga to my girls a while back, and there was a point where one of the characters is confronted with evidence of a truth that he had only ever hoped was true without ever seeing any evidence. He said, “I hoped it was true, but it always seemed too good to be true.” And the one who gave him that evidence said, “Too good not to be true, you mean.”

This is what we are dealing with in our passage today, 1 John 2:3-11.

Our salvation sometimes seems too good to be true.

But after we see the evidence, “too good to be true” becomes “too good not to be true.”

The gospel is so good that it MUST be true.

Our salvation is so good that it MUST be true.

God’s love for us is so good that it MUST be true.

Our transfer from death to life is so good that it MUST be true.

Being adopted into God’s family is so good that it MUST be true.

Christ is so good that HE MUST BE TRUE!

In the passage leading up to this one, John points to Jesus as our cleansing, our forgiveness, and our advocate as we live in the light.

That’s the result of his work on the cross and his resurrection...

That’s how we can be saved at all.

But if salvation means that Christ is our cleansing, our forgiveness, and our advocate, then how can we be sure that we have those things?

How can we know that we are cleansed, forgiven, and spoken for?

How can we know that we are saved?

In 1 John 2:3-11 we are going to see the evidence of living in the light.

We are going to see three pieces of evidence that when all three are true they prove salvation to the heart of the believer.

We can have assurance of our salvation because we know Christ which results in obedience out of a heart of love.

1 John 2:3–11 ESV

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Evidence #1 Knowing Christ (3)

John says that we can know that we have salvation because we know the one by whom salvation is obtained.

John had just said that Jesus Christ is our advocate, so the “him” that we have come to know points back to Jesus as our advocate.

We have come to know Jesus Christ the righteous, our advocate and our propitiation

Propitiation means satisfaction.

Jesus is the one who satisfies the wrath of God against our sin on our behalf.

John here links living in the light with knowing Christ.

If you want assurance that you are living in the light, look to Christ, not yourself.

Assurance does not come from knowing yourself, or evaluating your life by some check-list.

It comes from getting your focus off of yourself, and onto Jesus.

Living in the light shines a spotlight on the cross and Christ’s blood which cleanses us from all our sin.

Assurance comes when we look to the one who has cleansed us.

Living in the light exposes our sin in confession and the Father forgives us by virtue of Christ’s righteousness.

Assurance comes when we look to the one by whom we are forgiven.

Living in the light glories in Christ as our advocate before the Father.

Assurance comes when we look to the one who intercedes on our behalf when we sin.

Jesus said this very thing in John 17:3,

“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

To know the Father and to know Christ IS eternal life.

To know Christ is not simply to know things about him, it’s to know him by experience.

I can know lots of things about someone famous, let’s use Donald Trump as an example.

I can know everything there is to know about Donald Trump:

His age, where he was born, what his upbringing was like, which schools he went to, what his romantic relationships were like, what kinds of jobs he has had, how exactly he conducted business to gain his wealth, how much money he has, what he has done as the President.

This is not an exhaustive list of the things I can know about Donald Trump, but you get the idea.

All this knowledge about Donald Trump pales in comparison to actually developing a relationship with him and finding out what kind of a person he is.

Experiencing his likes and dislikes, his opinions, and his responses to different situations.

This experiential knowledge is the kind of knowledge we must have of Christ.

We can’t simply read our Bibles to gain information about Christ.

We've got to actually encounter him and come to know him by allowing his Word to make us more like him.

Yes, we come to know him through reading his Word, but it cannot stop at acquiring information about him, it must go all the way to our heart to change us into his likeness.

Don’t let God’s Word pass through you, and not affect you.

It’s important to know Christ because in knowing Christ he knows us,

and when the judgment comes at the end of days, you don’t want to hear the words, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

We are assured of our salvation by looking to and knowing Christ.

It’s a little abstract to speak of knowing someone you can’t see and touch and speak with in a normal sense.

So, how can we have assurance that we know Christ?

We can have assurance that we know Christ through...

Evidence #2 Obeying Christ’s commands. (3-6)

1 John 2:3–6 ESV

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Keeping Christ’s commands is the evidence of knowing him… evidence of salvation.

But what commands are we supposed to obey?

The commands that John is referring to here are the commands of Christ during his earthly ministry.

A lot of these commands are found in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, but there are others recorded in the rest of the gospel accounts.

The summary of these commands is loving God with everything you have, and loving, forgiving, and serving one another in all kinds of different circumstances.

We will look at this again a little later.

But, these are the very things that the Law of Moses taught in a basic way,

And these are the things that the Spirit now stirs up within us now that we are freed from the Law.

Surely this is not saying that we must obey the Law in order to be saved.

Paul’s whole letter to the Galatians refutes that idea.

Our salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone, and to the glory of God alone.

Salvation is not reserved for those who don’t sin anymore.

John had just said in 1 John 1:8–9 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

We all still disobey from time to time, and knowing Christ is the basis for our forgiveness,

so this cannot mean that obedience is the means to knowing Christ.

That’s actually backwards.

Obedience does not result in knowing Christ...

Knowing Christ results in obedience.

It would be a big mistake to think that you can come to know Christ by checking these boxes of obedience.

Let’s see… I want to know Christ so I must love God (check),

I must love others (check), 

I must forgive others (sort-of check),

and I must serve others (double check to make up for the forgiveness part)… I’M GOOD!

WRONG!

You do not seek to know Christ by first trying to obey, that’s legalism at its core.

You seek to know Christ by experiencing him in his Word, by being reminded that he is our cleansing, our forgiveness, and our advocate.

and the Holy Spirit convicts you of how you can become more like Christ,

and you follow the conviction of the Holy Spirit, not a set of rules or a list of check boxes, but as the natural result of knowing Christ.

Obedience to Christ is the evidence of knowing him, not the means by which we know him.

So, what if someone claims to be a Christian, but they completely ignore Christ’s commands and live in unrepentant sin?

The next verse tells us exactly the state of that scenario.

1 John 2:4 “Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,”

Again, this is not to say that believers don’t ever disobey.

True believers fight to obey all the time, and sometimes they fail.

Knowing Christ results in obeying his commands and claiming to know Christ while abandoning his commands and living in unrepentant sin proves that claim to be false.

I don’t want to belabor this point, and we are going to look at it again shortly, so we're going to move on for now and look at how John continues his evidence for knowing Christ.

1 John 2:5 says, “but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him:”

Here John talks about keeping Christ’s word, but Christ’s word and his commands are really same thing.

But John uses a conditional phrase here linking the keeping of Christ’s word to a perfected love of God within us.

This is another conditional phrase like John has used so much in chapter 1.

I’m going to give a brief grammar lesson here.

Conditional phrases say, “If A, then B.”

These conditional phrases are used in logic to prove basic principles that we often take for granted.

The part of the phrase on the “if” side is a variable that may be true or not true.

The part of the phrase on the “then” side represents reality in relation to the “if” side.

Here John argues if A is true, then B is also true. If A is not true, then B is also not true.

If it is true that I keep Christ’s word, then it is also true that my love for God is perfected.

Jesus said this very thing in John 14:15,

“If you love me you will keep my commandments.”

And here John is saying the same thing in reverse.

If you keep his commandments, then you know that you love him.

But how can John say that our love for God is perfected?

What does it mean that our love for God is perfected?

The only way that we will genuinely keep Christ’s commands is if the Holy Spirit perfects our love for the Father so that we will desire to obey Christ.

We can know that we know Christ because we have the Holy Spirit perfecting our love for God resulting in obedience to his commands.

John has been giving us evidence of knowing Christ, but here he says that by this we may know that we are IN HIM.

Being in Christ is a sort of short-hand for union with Christ.

But the proof of knowing Christ, the proof of our union with Christ is not just obedience to his commands, it is also looking to Christ as our model for how to live.

1 John 2:6 “whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”

“You can’t just talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.”

Yet another term that John uses here for knowing Christ and Union with Christ is Abiding in Christ.

If you claim that you have union with Christ, that you are abiding in Christ, then that claim must be accompanied by a life modeled after Christ’s life, or it’s a false claim.

So, how did Christ live?

What is it about Christ’s life that John tells us we ought to emulate?

John doesn’t really tell us the specifics, but we can see some implied parameters.

In the context of obedience, John probably has Christ’s obedience in view.

We are not able to be morally perfect like Christ,

but we are able strive for morality like Christ.

We are not commanded to go to the cross and bear the Father’s wrath,

but we are commanded take up our cross and follow Christ.

We cannot perfectly obey the Father like Christ did,

but we can have a heart that desires to obey and seeks forgiveness when we fail.

We can have assurance that we know Christ...

that we have union with him...

that we abide in him...

because the Holy Spirit stirs up in us a love for Christ so that when we read about his commands and character in his Word we desire to obey and live like Christ as much as we can.

So, where are we at so far in our list of evidence …

Evidence #1 We have assurance that we are living in the light when we know Christ, and

Evidence #2 We have assurance that we know Christ when we are keeping his commands.

Evidence #3 Loving Christ and each other. (7-11)

1 John 2:7–11 ESV

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

John says here in verse 7 that this command that he is writing is nothing new.

This is a command that has been around for a very long time.

John’s original audience would have been very familiar with it.

We are actually very familiar with it, too if we have read the gospel of John.

Earlier we addressed the question, “What commands are we to obey?”

We saw that the commands of Christ are to love God with everything we have, and to love, forgive, and serve one another.

John says that this commandment has been around from the beginning.

Deuteronomy 6:5 says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

Leviticus 19:18 says, “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

Jesus explained these commands in Matthew 22:37-40 when a lawyer wanted to test him by asking him what was the greatest commandment.

37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

John also goes on later in this letter to explain this old commandment in 1 John 3:11,

“For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.”

And he explains just a few verses after that, in verse 23, that this commandment is Jesus’ commandment.

“And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.”

But John says in our passage in verse 8 that this is also a new commandment.

8 At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

Now, how can this be both old and new at the same time?

Well, he tells us.

This command is new and true in Christ and in us because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

The darkness of sin is passing away because the true light of Christ in the new covenant has already come and illuminated the truth of God’s grace in Christ.

This is the same commandment from the old covenant reiterated by Christ in the new covenant...

But now we can actually obey it , we can actually fight against sin effectively because his law has been written on our hearts, and we’ve been given hearts of flesh instead of hearts of stone.

Jeremiah 31:33 says,

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Where the Law used to be written down on stone tablets, now the law is written on our hearts.

And Ezekiel 36:26 says,

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

This means that instead of simply following a list of rules, now we simply love because of how much he loves us, and obedience naturally follows because our changed heart now wants to love.

This old commandment to love God and others is new because now I can obey out of love rather than duty.

The commandment is true in Christ and in you because Christ is in you, and the darkness is continually being overtaken by the true light of Christ.

This is our sanctification.

The verb translated “passing away” is a present verb which means it is continually happening.

This is not a one time change from total darkness to total light, it is a process.

And this process will not be complete until we are absent from the body and present with the Lord.

The darkness of our sin is continually being overtaken by the light of Christ.

Now the time between when we sin and when we seek forgiveness gets shorter and shorter, and our love for Christ grows and our love for sin diminishes.

This process is learning how to love Christ and love others more and more and learning how to love sin less and less.

This learning process also gives us assurance of our salvation because we couldn’t possibly sanctify ourselves in our own strength.

Sanctification has to be done in the power of Christ or it won’t happen.

So, when it does happen, we can be sure that the power of Christ is working in us.

Next John gives us the clear implications of this old-new commandment and how obedience to this commandment is evidence of living in the light, and disobedience to this commandment is evidence to the contrary.

1 John 2:9–11 ESV

Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Loving your brothers and sisters in Christ is a very tangible way have assurance of salvation, assurance of eternal life.

A lack of love is also a very tangible way to see if we are just deceiving ourselves and not really saved.

We see here evidence of living in the light as well as evidence of living in the darkness.

Jesus said in John 12:35-36,

“The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become children of light.”

Jesus was referring to his crucifixion which happened only a few days after he said this.

The point was to get the people to see their need for a savior and be reconciled to the God of light through faith in the Savior of light thus becoming children of light.

Children of light live in the light,

Living in the light results in love, and

Love illuminates the stumbling blocks of sin.

Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

Living in the light of God’s love means that we can identify the ways that we may be tempted to sin so that we can take steps to avoid stumbling.

We’re all tempted to sin in different ways, but the heart behind all sin is a lack of love for God and others.

And living in the light of God’s love is so different from these temptations that they stand out as something that doesn’t belong.

It is absolutely NOT a sin to be tempted,

even Jesus was tempted in the wilderness,

but it is sin to obey those temptations.

The best way to fight back against your temptations is to flood them out with love for God and love for your brothers and sisters in Christ.

The very thing that alerts us to the temptation in the first place is the thing that will fight the temptations off.

This love is not just a warm fuzzy feeling.

Warm fuzzy feelings will never survive going toe-to-toe with your temptations.

This love is a conscious effort to DO things that will please God and truly care for your brothers and sisters in Christ.

This love has real power to do battle against your temptations because it’s empowered by the Holy Spirit.

We’ve got to weaponize our love against our temptations.

When we see temptations entering our life (you know what they are specifically for you)

When we see them rear their ugly head… we need to do three things to avoid stumbling.

First, pray and ask God to show you ways to love your brothers and sisters in Christ that directly oppose that temptation.

This shows a love for God that you would seek his help to please him in avoiding sin.

Second, be real with your brothers and sisters, and let them know that the temptation exists and that they can help by joining you in our effort to love.

This also shows a love for others that you would seek their help to please God in avoiding sin.

Third, actually do the loving things that we and our brothers and sisters in Christ come up with to fight the temptation.

Too often we get good counsel and just don’t do it.

So, love helps us to see temptations coming and when we see temptations coming:

1) love God by asking for his help,

2) love others by asking for their help, and

3) actually do love.

And don’t forget verse 8, we can only fight these temptations with love because the true light of Christ is shining in our hearts and flooding out the darkness.

It is in the power of Christ that we overcome sin, not in our own power.

And when we see Christ gain the victory over our sin that should be assurance in itself that we are saved.

We saw how we can have assurance of salvation by knowing Christ,

and then we saw that we can have assurance that we truly know Christ by obeying his commands,

and we just saw how obeying Christs commands means loving him and others.

We can have assurance of our salvation because we know Christ which results in obedience out of a heart of love.

These individual pieces of evidence do not prove our salvation.

They must be together to give assurance of eternal life.

CONCLUSION

I hope that seeing this evidence has caused you to go from hoping that your salvation is true but maybe doubting it a bit to seeing it as too good NOT to be true.

Assurance of salvation does not come from looking to yourself to see how loving you have been to people.

Assurance of salvation does not come from looking to your actions to see how obedient you have been to the ten commandments.

Assurance of salvation does not come from looking to your knowledge of Scripture or even your knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ specifically.

Assurance comes from looking away from yourself and gazing upon the glory of Christ, reveling in your union with him, and finding yourself obeying because you love him rather than out of duty.

If you want assurance that makes the I hope it’s true become too good not to be true, then look to Christ.

He is all the evidence you need because he did everything to save you in the first place.

Back when I first came to the Lord, I didn’t have assurance that I was saved because I was looking in the wrong place for that assurance.

I was looking at my immediate behavior, my thoughts, my relationships, and none of those things had changed significantly yet.

But what did change was how I knew Christ where he was a stranger before.

And that intimate knowing of Christ would later result in obedience out of a heart of love for him.

Now, it may be that this evidence is not true in your life.

If you listened to all this and you are still in doubt, it may be that you’re not saved, that you’re not yet reconciled to God.

If that’s you, then I beg you now, be reconciled to God.

It doesn’t require payment because Christ already paid for it.

All you have to do is believe that Jesus is God’s Son who came to earth and died on the cross for your sins.

Trust in him that he loves you, that he paid the price for your sins, and that he rose on the third day and is seated at the right hand of the throne in heaven pleading the sufficiency of his blood for your sins even now.

Romans 10:9 says, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Confessing with your mouth is a public declaration that Jesus is the ruler of your life where sin used to be.

Believing in your heart is a faith and trust in Christ as the risen savior whose death and resurrection are the perfect payment to reconcile us to God.

And that faith permeates your whole being so that your thoughts, actions, and desires are now running toward God rather than away from him.

This is how you begin knowing Christ and the rest of the evidence will follow.

It’s so simple, but it’s so significant.

If you have this faith in Christ, proclaim it.

Tell someone, anyone, everyone that Jesus bought you with his blood and brought you from death to life so that we can all rejoice and praise God together.

This is too good to keep silent!

It’s too good NOT to be true!

PRAY

Father, thank you for showing us the glory of your Son, Jesus.

Thank you for the assurance we can have that we really do have eternal life by looking to Christ.

I pray that when we sin, and we will… that you would remind us to look to Christ, the anchor of our souls.

And when others sin, Lord, I pray that we would not be judgmental, but forgiving, and longing to see victory over sin in our brother or sister’s heart.

It’s so amazing, Lord, that you love us this much.

So much that you would give up your best, your Son, to die in our place so that we can be forgiven, reconciled back to you, and adopted into your family.

And Lord, it’s equally amazing that you would raise Jesus from the dead as a guarantee of our eternal life.

We get to spend eternity in your loving presence...

It’s beyond anything we could ever think or imagine.

Father, I pray that you would save those of us here who have not yet put their faith in Christ.

I pray that you would write your law on their heart, and give them a heart of flesh.

Give them new life through faith in your Son.

We ask all of this in his glorious name. Amen.