Abiding in Life

1 John 2:24-25 ESV

24 Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.

One thing that I have learned throughout life is that if something works, if something is effective, if something is good, I need to leave it alone and not try to change it. Because for one thing, it’s already good and effective, so there is no need to change it, and even more importantly, if I do change something that is already good and effective, there is a good chance that I may mess it up somehow.

A good example of this is famous, delicious family recipes that have been passed down for generations. Let’s say that you have grown up eating great-grandma’s famous pot roast. Now, you may have never even met great-grandma, she may have passed on years before you were even born, but it is called “great-grandma’s pot roast” because it was great-grandma who originally made the pot roast using the ingredients that she used.

Then, great-grandma was kind enough to write her recipe down on paper. It said, use this kind of meat, these particular vegetables, this much butter, a teaspoon of garlic, and a pinch of salt, and cook it in the crockpot at this temperature, for this amount of time, not one minute less or one minute more.

Then for generations, the recipe is passed down. The paper gets worn out and the ink starts to fade, and so a new generation writes the exact same recipe down on a new piece of paper. But though it is rewritten, the recipe always remains the same. And you may not know why great-grandma used the specific ingredients that she used or why she cooked it the way that she cooked it, but one thing that you do know is that it is delicious.

And so, while you may question great-grandma’s choice of ingredients or her techniques, you can’t deny that following her instructions results in a mean pot roast.

But one day, you may host a family dinner, and you say, “It doesn’t make a lot of sense that great-grandma would use one pinch of salt and one teaspoon of garlic in her recipe. The pot roast is great and all, but it would be even greater if I used two pinches of salt and a half teaspoon of garlic! So, that’s what I’m going to do! And when I do, everyone is going to enjoy it so much more and then we can call the new recipe: “great-grandma’s pot roast, improved by me!””.

That sounds harmless enough; an extra pinch of salt and a half of a teaspoon less of garlic; it can’t be too much different. But when you follow through with your idea, it’s not the same. It doesn’t have that famous great-grandma taste and everyone you serve it to at the family dinner immediately notices the difference… Why would you change something that already worked? If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it!

This is what was happening in the churches that John was writing this epistle to. There were false teachers that had infiltrated these churches, teaching doctrines that were not of God. They were taking the pure, undefiled gospel and defiling it by adding to and taking away from its message; and in so doing, they changed what the gospel communicated. And having changed what it communicated, the result was the eternal condemnation of those who believed this false gospel.

If you change what is true, then the result is something other than the truth, it’s a lie.

In our reading from last week, John had stressed to his readers that he does not need to write to them in order to teach them the truth, because they already know the truth. The truth has already been communicated to them. There is nothing new to be added to truth and there is nothing that needs to be taken away from the truth. So, he says that if he were to write to them something other than what they already knew, then what he would be communicating to them would not be true.

But, as we’ve said, there were false teachers who had infiltrated their ranks and told them that something other than what they knew as the truth was actually the truth. And this resulted in a great many being seduced and leaving off from their fellowship with legitimate believers, making plain to all that they were not and had never been legitimate believers.

In light of this, after the damage had been done, John now, in our reading for today, exhorts those who remain, the legitimate believers.

We see this exhortation at the beginning of our reading for today, the first half of verse twenty-four, which reads:

1 John 2:24a ESV

24a Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.

This is key, this is essential. John speaks of “what you heard from the beginning”. What had they heard? And when was the beginning?

What they had heard was the undefiled gospel. It was the gospel that truly saves. It was the gospel which has heavenly origins, which was communicated by the very Apostles of Jesus Christ, those whom He had commissioned to spread the gospel.

So, John, who himself was an apostle, indeed, one of Jesus’ most dearly loved apostles, received the contents of the gospel from Jesus Himself! You can’t get any higher than that! And so, John says, “You want to know what is true? I was taught by the very One Who is the truth!”.

It is truth, John says, that these who he writes to had heard “from the beginning”. In other words, these had heard the truth and believed on the truth, and the truth had not changed. It’s not as though these believed something false and now needed to be brought to the truth. No, the gospel which they had received from the beginning remained the same.

And so, having received the legitimate gospel, John exhorts his readers to “abide” in the gospel. To abide in something means to confidently, peacefully remain in something. And as John tells his readers to “abide” in the gospel, the message that was originally brought to them, what he tells them to do is to confidently remain in belief, trust, and obedience to the contents of the gospel and to the object of its contents, the Lord Jesus Himself.

Now, it would seem obvious to maintain believing that what is true is in fact true; that’s obvious. For example, from a very young age, I was told that the sky is blue. And I have maintained that belief throughout my life, it’s an obvious fact.

And so, it might be kind of silly for you to tell me, “Nick, you have to keep on believing that the sky is blue!” I would probably say, “Not a problem; I have no issue with continuing to believe that the sky is blue”.

So, in normal circumstances, it wouldn’t really be all that necessary to tell me that it is imperative to continue believing that the sky is blue.

But if my wife started to believe that the sky was some other color, like purple, I might start to question whether or not the sky really is blue. And then if, let’s say that George, someone who I respect and trust also starts saying that the sky is purple, I might really start questioning whether or not the sky really is blue.

It's at that point when someone needs to step in and say, “You have to know that they’re wrong! The sky really is blue, just like you’ve always believed it to be, so you need to keep on believing that it’s blue, no matter what anyone else may say!”.

Well, with a great many of those who John’s readers believed to be legitimate Christians abandoning the faith when they heard the false teachers, John finds it necessary to step in and say, “keep believing what you’ve believed since the beginning”.

Whenever they first heard the false gospel, they may have thought, “Well that’s not what I was told! Who would ever believe this?!” But when they saw their friends, those who they thought were fellow believers falling for this false gospel, it may have given them pause to ask themselves, “Well, maybe there is something to this message that these Gnostic teachers bring”.

That’s why John stands in and says, “No! What they are saying is false! Continue in what you already know is true, because the truth doesn’t change!”.

And concerning those who left, John already said back in verse nineteen of this chapter that they “went out from us” so “that it might become plain that they all are not of us”. And so, he tells his readers to abide in the truth, because the legitimacy of their salvation will be proved by their abiding in the truth.

This guarantee that abiding in the truth proves that you are saved is made even more manifest as John says in the second half of this twenty-fourth verse:

1 John 2:24b ESV

24b If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.

So, again, John tells his readers that if the truth abides in them, if they continue to hold to what they had heard from the beginning and don’t veer off into a false gospel as those who went out from them had done, then their abiding in the truth will in all reality be an abiding “in the Son and in the Father”.

In our sermon from last week, we had said that the Trinitarian God and our relation to Him is a package deal. We’ve heard that saying before, perhaps your spouse told you, “My family might be a little odd, but we are a package deal. If you want to love me, then you have to love them as well. But if you don’t love them, then you can’t have me”. And in an infinitely similar way, you cannot deny one Person of the Triune Godhead without denying the entirety of the Godhead; the Triune God is a package deal.

But we also said in our sermon from last week that if you confess the entire Triune Godhead, then you possess the entire Godhead. That is, you belong to the entire Godhead, you have been set apart by the entire Godhead, you have been saved by the entire Godhead. You abide, confidently, joyfully remain in the entire Godhead.

And John says here in our reading for today that this abiding in God remains only if you abide in the legitimate gospel, the gospel that they had heard from the beginning. So, John says, “If you are legitimate believers, you will abide in the truth and will thus, abide in God. But if you are not a legitimate believer, you will not abide in the truth and will prove that you never really abided in God”.

And so, verse twenty-four is the exhortation: “Abide in truth, and you will thus, abide in God, you will prove that you have been legitimately saved”. And verse twenty-five is the consequence of abiding in the truth and thus, abiding in God.

1 John 2:25 ESV

25 And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.

And so, John says that if you abide in what you heard from the beginning, if you abide in God, then you can know that you are eternally alive. All men are physically born spiritually dead, but the miracle of the surety of Jesus is that He stands in for those who believe, takes our punishment upon Himself and communicates spiritual, eternal life to us.

And the life that He communicates to you is no temporary life. It is not a life that can be lost, for all those who have legitimately been saved are eternally alive and thus, they remain alive forever! For eternity!

That is the legitimate truth, those who God makes alive, remain alive, because God causes them to remain alive. And those who may have appeared to be alive, but proved themselves to not be alive as they left off from the fellowship of believers were never spiritually alive to begin with and leaving off from the fellowship of believers proves that.

And so, the question may be “Well, if these who John writes to are eternally saved and kept secure by God Himself, then why is it that John exhorts them to abide in something that God Himself will cause them to abide in?” To this we say that yes, they are in fact maintained by God Himself but the means in which God uses to cause them to abide is the exhortation to abide in Him.

Beloved, the call before us is not to discover something new, but to remain in what is eternally true. The gospel that saved you is the gospel that keeps you. You do not grow beyond it, improve it, or graduate from it—you abide in it. And as you abide in the truth, you abide in the Son and in the Father, and in Them you possess the promise of eternal life.

So do not be shaken when others depart. Do not be unsettled when truth is questioned, diluted, or dressed up as wisdom. What you heard from the beginning is sufficient, saving, and sure. Cling to Christ as He is revealed in the gospel, not as the world would reshape Him.

And take comfort in this: your abiding does not rest on your strength, but on God Who keeps you. He exhorts you to remain because He is at work in you to do so. Therefore, remain—confidently, joyfully, faithfully—knowing that eternal life is not merely promised, but already yours in Christ.

Amen?