Untitled Sermon (14)
CONFIDENCE AND ASSURANCE are important human attributes. To lack either opens the door to trouble in life. The same is true in the Christian life. Trying to live the Christian life while lacking assurance that you are truly a Christian is like driving a car with the brakes on. A common question Christians ask is, “Can I know that I really know God?” Or to put it in the common vernacular, “Can I know that I am saved?” Some people will tell you that you can never know. Many religious groups would tell you there is no way to know for sure whether you are going to Heaven or Hell (assuming they believe in Heaven or Hell). You just have to die and find out! Since Heaven or Hell awaits every human being when he or she dies, not to know where one will spend eternity is the worst form of ignorance and negligence! Your eternal destiny is not something about which you can afford to be ambivalent! There can be no more paramount issue in your life than the issue of whether or not your sins are forgiven and you are in a right relationship with God. If you don’t know, you are in a precarious position. The religion of “I don’t know” is the devil’s religion. When you come to die, you will regret not making sure of this crucial matter earlier.
John provides us with a test of assurance that we are indeed in the family of God. Most of us don’t like tests. Tests conjure up bad images in our minds: that horrible math final exam your senior year in high school, that stress test the doctor has ordered, or that dreaded driver’s license test with a dour instructor in the car with you demanding that you display expertise in parallel parking. But some tests are actually fun. You can go on Internet sites and take an IQ test or a 1960s test, and you get to answer a lot of fun questions. But some tests are absolutely vital to take. John’s test is that kind of test. John is going to give you an opportunity to test yourself as to whether you are truly a Christian.
Obedience to God’s Commandments as a Test for Genuine Salvation (vv. 3, 4)
John’s test in 2:3–6 is the test of obedience to God’s commandments. Notice how many times the word “know” occurs in this passage: four times in the ESV and in the Greek text. “By this we know that we have come to know him … Whoever who says ‘I know him’ … By this we may know that we are in him.…” God wants you to know something. Your salvation is not a matter of guesswork. You don’t have to worry and wonder if you are truly a believer or not. God actually wants you to have assurance of your salvation. The first “know” in verse 3 is in the present tense in Greek. The idea is a progressive knowledge that is gained by experience. The sense is, “we are continually being able to know that we have come to know God.” The second “know” is in the perfect tense, emphasizing that we have come to know him in a real, genuine, and complete way. Yarbrough captures the sense of the Greek verb tenses well: “This is how we maintain the awareness that we have come to know him fully.”
When any of the New Testament writers talk about knowing God, they are not referring merely to an intellectual apprehension of facts or truths. Knowledge of God is a robust concept that covers not only what you know about God, but also includes a personal relationship with God that begins with faith. It also includes an ever-deepening relationship and fellowship with God that is evidenced by love for him and obedience to him.
When John says, “by this we know that we have come to know him,” what does he mean by the word “this?” He refers to the following statement: “if we keep his commandments.” Notice that the word “keep” in verse 3 is also in the present tense and stresses continual, regular obedience to God’s commandments. One of the ways you know you are a Christian is if you desire to obey God. If you have no interest in doing what God says, if God’s principles and commandments are of little importance to you, that should be a red flag that you may not be a Christian. Assurance of your salvation is unattainable without obedience to God’s commands.
One question we need to address is, what does John mean by the word “commandments”? He could be using the word in a more restrictive sense meaning a directive that would apply to a specific situation. Or he could be using the word in the sense of a directive that would be broad enough to have potential application for every situation. From examples of how John uses this word in his Gospel, most likely the latter meaning is in focus. Another question is, just exactly what commandments is John referring to in verse 3? From the immediate context of 1 John and the broader context of the Gospel of John, the answer is clear. John is referring to Jesus’ command that Christians love one another (1 John 2:7–11; John 13:34; 15:12). But is this the extent of John’s meaning?
Notice that John uses “commandments” in verse 3 synonymously with Jesus’ “word” in verse 5. Furthermore, in verse 7, the beginning of the next paragraph specifically dealing with love for fellow believers, John uses “commandment” and “word” synonymously again. Basically anything that Jesus teaches (his “word”) is his “commandment” for us to obey. When the young ruler asked Jesus, “Which commandments?” Jesus answered him that the Ten Commandments are summed up in two: love God and love your neighbor. Thinking that was easy enough, the rich young ruler informed Jesus that he had kept all these commandments from his youth. To him, it was a simple, ordinary matter of keeping the commandments. When Jesus told him to sell all he had, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow him, it became apparent that the young ruler lacked a deeper understanding of the commandments and what it meant to keep them. In fact, he was breaking the first commandment by putting his wealth above God. He was an idolater and did not know it!
In verse 3, there are three things we can know. First, we know that it is possible to know God. While some people don’t believe it is possible to know God, the Bible is clear that God can be known because he has revealed himself to mankind in Jesus and in his written Word. Second, John says you can know that you know God. There is a difference between having salvation and being assured of the salvation you have. That’s why sometimes Christians have difficulty in the area of having assurance that they are saved. Sometimes they have doubts. My eternal destiny is not something I want to leave hanging in the air. I don’t want to guess about it; I want to know about it. That’s true of a number of things in life, isn’t it? I want to know whether I’m sick or well, whether the mortgage has been paid or not. If I want to know these kinds of things, how much more do I want to be certain about my eternal destiny! The third thing we can know is that obedience to the commandments of God becomes evidence that we know God. “Conduct is the best evidence of character. Conduct is to character what leaves and flowers and fruit are to a tree.”
John is fond of the word “know.” He uses it thirty times in his letters. How many ways are there to know something? You can know by learning, and you can know by experience. Some of the greatest lessons of all in life are taught by experience. It is that second way of knowing that is the primary emphasis in this passage. It is a progressive knowing that only comes through experience, through the experience of being obedient through the commands of the Lord Jesus. The difference between a rookie and a veteran in sports is the difference between experience and lots of experience. The veteran who has played for many years has accumulated knowledge of the game by virtue of experience. Experience can only be learned by actually being in the game. The rookie may have more raw talent than the veteran. But because he is a rookie and doesn’t have the kind of experience that the veteran has, he may not play as well. Why? Because he lacks the knowledge of the game that only comes by experience.
How is it we know that we know Christ? By keeping his commandments. The word “keep” literally means “to look upon something as your treasure and therefore to guard it as your treasure.” Your attitude toward God’s commandments should be that they are your treasure. You carefully guard a treasure. That’s the attitude we ought to have when it comes to obeying the Word of God. What does it mean to keep God’s commandments? I think it means to keep them in two ways. First, the outward act is involved. Second, the inner attitude is involved. Those two things are always vital in the Christian life. When you live the Christian life, your outward conduct should flow from an attitude that characterizes your inner motivation. It is possible to obey and yet do it from an improper motivation in your heart. Jesus had a great deal to say about religious people who do outward acts with no inward reality to motivate those outward acts. Jesus called them hypocrites. “The heresy of all heresies of which teachers and Churches have been guilty, has been the thrusting of religious opinions and religious observances into greater prominence than moral purity. But beliefs unexceptionally orthodox are compatible with the life of devils, who believe and tremble.”5 B. H. Carroll was right on target when he said,
A mere verbal orthodoxy is hypocrisy, and is more hateful to God and more hateful to man than avowed infidelity. I am quite sure that a strict application of this test would empty thousands of pulpits, hundreds of professors’ chairs in Christian schools, and deplete thousands of church rolls. This emptying and depleting would not be deplorable but helpful. It would amount to a great revival.
God puts the highest priority on obedience. This is clear throughout the Bible. Listen to Micah: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). Listen to Samuel: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). Listen to Hosea: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6). Hear Jeremiah: “I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice.…’ ” (Jeremiah 7:22, 23).
Hear Amos … Isaiah … Micah … John the Baptist … and James (“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only”). John is simply repeating the echo that has come down through the canyons of Scripture: obedience to God is paramount.
Look at verse 4. Here is somebody who claims in summary “I have come to know Jesus.” The one who says that and yet does not with some sense of regularity keep God’s commandments John calls a liar! Some may read this and think, “I don’t always keep the commandments of God. I wish I could, and I try, but sometimes I fail. In fact I failed just this week. Does that mean I’m not a Christian?” That’s not what John is saying. We should not take John’s statement and press it too far in either direction or we will get into something that is false that he is not trying to say. He doesn’t say, “If you keep God’s commandments perfectly and flawlessly, then you can know you’re saved.” Every Christian is going to fail to keep one of God’s commandments in word, thought, or deed at various points. No one has reached sinless perfection. John has already made it clear that we will commit sin along the way. When we do, we have to apply 1 John 1:9 to our lives.
A little girl stole a doll from a store and hid it under her jacket. Immediately she became unhappy. She walked around for a moment, then returned to the shelf from which she had taken the doll and put it back in its place. But she still felt guilty. She had tried to undo her wrong, but her conscience continued to bother her. She told her mother about it and then said, “I don’t think I broke one of the commandments, but I cracked one.” Christians are not immune from sometimes breaking God’s commandments. We are not immune from “cracking” one on occasion either! When we do, we need to practice 1 John 1:9. What John is talking about in verse 4 is a consistency of life and a direction of life that is characterized by obedience. If I fail to love my fellow Christian while claiming to love God, I am a liar, because it is not possible to do both at the same time.
The key to a proper understanding here is found in the verb tenses John uses. These present tense verbs describe habitual lifestyle. A Christian will have a trajectory of behavior that is characterized by obedience to God’s commands. The word “walk” in verse 6 signifies a pattern of behavior. Although there will be times when you stumble, the basic trajectory of your life will be one of obedience to God if you are a Christian. On the other hand, if the trajectory of your life is away from God, you may still do some good things along the way. You may get a little prickly in your conscience and go to church one Sunday. You may do a little good work here and there, but the problem is that the trajectory of your life is away from God. So the question is: what is the trajectory of your life? That is why John employs these present tense verbs. If the trajectory of your life is disobedience to God, yet you claim to know God, you are lying about it! You are self-deceived, and “the truth is not in [you].”
Some have winced at John’s forthright, hard-hitting language. To call someone “a liar” is not politically correct these days. Maybe we should say about a liar that he is someone who has had an integrity operation! Such language is not exactly the way to win friends and influence people.10 To this criticism I think I can hear John’s response: “Well, Jesus said it! He called people ‘liars,’ and I recorded it in my Gospel! (John 8:55).” Actually, John is doing just what a pastor should do: “reprove, rebuke, and exhort” (2 Timothy 4:2). Remember also that John may have been writing to combat an incipient Gnosticism or some other false teaching that was evident in the church at the time he wrote. One of the things evidently being taught was “antinomianism,” a fancy word that means “against law.” The antinomians made light of sin in a believer’s life. I am disturbed by the moral indifference of some professing Christians today. I’m not talking about the moral failures of Christians at certain points that are simply evidence of our sinful humanity. What I’m talking about is a mind-set and attitude in some people who seem to think that because they are eternally secure in their salvation, how they live does not matter much. This is the kind of thinking that John strongly refutes in verse 4.
Listen to F. W. Farrar practically apply verse 4 in his sermon on this passage:
You know God if you are keeping His commandments; if not, you know Him in nowise. If you be wise you will give heed to these things. Have you an enemy? Then this very day forgive him. Have you wronged, or are you wronging, another? Then this very day make him restitution. Are you slanderer or a systematic depreciator of your brethren? Then cease to speak evil, and fling your unhallowed pen into the fire. Are you in debt? Live on bread and water rather than continue in that dishonesty. Are you idle? Go home and earn your own bread by the sweat of your brow. Are you a swearer? Conquer at all costs that profane and senseless habit. Are you a better or a gambler? Tear up your betting-book, and abandon that brainless and degrading excitement. Are you getting fond of drink? Then loose the grip upon you of that devil’s hand of flame by taking the pledge. Are you living two lives, of which one is a mere self-deceiving hypocrisy? Then tear off your own mask, and in tears before Christ’s throne entreat Him to make you true. Are you stained through and through with impurity? Then come with that leprosy to Him whose answer to the leper’s cry, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean,” came like an echo, “I will, be thou made clean.”
If we were to modernize somewhat Farrar’s application, it might sound something like this:
Keeping God’s commandments is a key piece of evidence in the chain of proof of your love for God. If you have any spiritual smarts about you, you will pay attention. Do you have an enemy? Forgive him today! Have you wronged or are you wronging someone now? Make it right today! Are you a constantly bad-mouthing brothers in Christ? Then lay off your blog or Twitter account and turn off your computer and smart phone for a while. Are you maxed out with credit card debt? Then do some plastic surgery and live on soup and chicken pot pies for a while. (When I was in college in the 1970s, you could get chicken pot pies five for a dollar on sale.) Are you lazy? Quit lying around playing video games and look for a job. Do you struggle with cursing or crude language? Remember, we have to give an account for every idle word we speak, so clean out your mouth. Do you play the lottery or slink off to the casino? Quit trying to get something for nothing. For you to win, thousands of others have to lose. Are you a social drinker who thinks it’s cool or even necessary to fit in with contemporary culture? Then try abstinence. Are you a two-faced hypocrite? Then get right with God and yourself and stop the Jekyll/Hyde charade. Bring all the junk and broken pieces of your life to Jesus. He will forgive you, heal you, restore you, and set you free when you walk in obedience to his will.
Obedience Illustrates Mature Love for God (vv. 5, 6)
In verse 5 John employs another one of his favorite terms: “love.” He turns from the negative expression of verse 4 to the positive of verse 5. “Whoever keeps his word” is a phrase that means “whoever is in the constant habit or lifestyle of keeping his word.” That word “keep” is a military term that means “to guard.” It means essentially to obey God’s word. Notice how John talks about God’s commandment and God’s word. Is there any difference at all between God’s commandments and his precepts, between his word and his promises? Not one iota. They are all from God. They are all the word of God. His positive commands, his negative commands, his precepts, anything that God teaches you from the Bible are all from God. Our responsibility is to obey.
John says, “whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.” What does the phrase “the love of God” mean? It can mean “God’s love for me,” or it can mean “my love for God.” In this case context helps us. The context here is about our obeying God’s commands because we love him. Therefore, the phrase “love of God” means our love for God. It is our love for God that is perfected.
The word “perfected” here in Greek means “brought to maturity.” It is important to notice that the phrase “is perfected” is in the passive voice and expresses the fact that it is God, not us, who perfects our love. Your love is a mature love when you love God, and your love for him is the ground for how you live. There are at least three possible reasons why people do what they do. Some people do things because they have to. Some people do things because they need to. Some people do things because they want to. A slave serves because he has to. A child at home obeys because he needs to—there are consequences if he does not obey. An adult goes to work on time because he needs to—he needs the paycheck. He may not particularly want to, but in order to get the paycheck he needs to. He has to follow the rules of the office, and he does that because he needs to. But neither of these is a mature reason for obedience. Mature obedience flows out of love.
For the Christian, it should not be “I need to,” but “I want to.” Listen to what Jesus says in John 14:15: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Do I keep God’s commandments because I’m afraid of God—that he’ll whack me if I don’t? That’s one reason to keep his commandments. Do students do what their parents tell them to do because they’re afraid that they’ll take away the keys to the car? If so, they don’t obey them out of love for them but because they need to. Do you do the things you do because you love the authority who tells you what you should do? This is what John is saying. He is simply repeating what he had heard Jesus say fifty or more years earlier in that upper room before the Last Supper. John was there as a young man, and he heard Jesus say, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Obedience to the Lord’s commands is the evidence of our love for him. External conformity to God’s commandments should be predicated on our internal desire of conformity based on love for the one who gave the commandments.
Don’t say that you love Jesus today if you are not obeying Jesus. If you do, John is going to look you square in the eye and say you are a liar. Don’t say that you love Jesus if you are deliberately living contrary to his principles. If Jesus gave you some command, positive or negative, no matter what it is, if you love Jesus that is reason enough to obey it. You don’t care who else does or doesn’t do it. You don’t care what other people think. Your number one goal is to please Jesus. You choose not to do something or you choose to do something based on what God says merely because God says it. That is the mature evidence of love in the life of a Christian. Some of us are obeying God’s commandments because we have to or we are doing it because we need to, but we are not doing it because we want to. Love that bears the fruit of obedience is mature love. If you don’t obey Jesus out of love, then whatever your love is, it is an immature kind of love. Most of the time when young people marry, their love is real, but it is not mature. Over time in the marriage, we learn how to mature in our love for our spouse. That is the way our relationship to Jesus should be. As we grow in our understanding of him and his love for us, and as we obey him, we grow in our own love for him. Our love for Jesus should be an ever-widening and ever-deepening love.
The principle of obedience can be used in the life of a Christian as evidence of genuine salvation. Obedience is not an avenue of salvation, for that would be a salvation by works, but obedience is certainly an evidence of genuine salvation, which is by grace. This does not mean that you can keep God’s commandments in your own way and receive perfect love from God as a reward for your obedience. Rather John is saying that when God’s love reaches you, it not only brings about your salvation, it enables your obedience. This love, as Leon Morris said, “does not leave people unchallenged or unchanged.”
Therefore John says in the latter part of verse 5, “by this we may know that we are in him”; that is, we know that we are related to Jesus. When John speaks of being “in him,” he means to be in a state of salvation brought about by Christ coupled with being in a relationship with God (and Christ) that is based on faith and expresses itself in a right attitude toward sin and a right attitude toward other believers (love). What does the “this” refer to? It points to the rest of the statement in verse 6: “whoever says he [regularly] abides in him [Christ] ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” What you don’t need to do is to put your religion on a bumper sticker or a wristband. Instead you need to put it in your life. John is saying that if you are a true believer, it ought to be reflected in how you live. Your life should be like Jesus’. You should pattern your life after him. Someone might say, “If I don’t do some of the things they want me to do in my business, I may not be able to advance.” Whom do you fear more—God, the supreme judge of the universe, or your boss? Who do you love more—your boss or God? You see, it all comes down to the issue of, is God real, is Jesus your Savior, and do you love him supremely? Ultimately everything comes down to that. It is not an issue of rules and regulations. It is an issue of love for Jesus.
In verse 6 John speaks about our pattern of obedience. Jesus, by his words and his life, teaches us how we should conduct ourselves as Christians in this world. When John uses the word “walked,” he uses it as a metaphor for our conduct and lifestyle. How did Jesus walk? I think about the Savior’s walk during childhood. He always obeyed his parents, the Bible says. As a man he always lived in obedience to his heavenly Father. His love for people, his unswerving faithfulness to Scripture, his moral purity, his selflessness, his servant heart—all this and much more illustrate for us how we should live. Jesus’ obedience to the Father was voluntary, universal, complete, and based upon his love for the Father (“I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father,” John 14:31). Paul said in Romans 13:10, “love is the fulfilling of the law.”
When John speaks of being “in him,” he is using the language of union with Christ. The test of abiding union with Christ is imitation. In all conditions of life we are to conduct ourselves as Jesus lived: controlling our temper, curbing our caustic tongues, dealing with our corrupt desires, serving others, feeding and clothing the poor, standing up for the rights of the disenfranchised—humble, not domineering, a heart of sympathy for others, not one corroded with envies, monopolized by petty interests, or ruffled with small offenses, trustworthy in word, not one who stoops to professional tricks. To live as Jesus lived is to abide in him, keep his commandments, and thus walk as he walked.
How do our lives measure up? Who is your pattern for Christian living? Some people want to pattern their lives after their favorite movie star or entertainer or musician or successful businessman or sports hero or parent, pastor, Bible study teacher, or other Christian. Certainly other Christians can furnish a good example for us, but ultimately our pattern for living must be Jesus. We should seek to imitate Jesus first and not other Christians for the simple reason that they are mere men themselves with frailties that may at any moment lead us astray. Where even the best of Christians “differ from Christ, it is our duty to differ from them. We may not pin our faith to any man’s sleeve, for we know not where he will carry it.” As the author of Hebrews said, we must look to (keep our eyes fixed on) “Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).
To live as Jesus lived means to commit ourselves to follow him in full discipleship. Though we as Christians cannot duplicate the purity of the life of Christ, yet we can and should intentionally endeavor to imitate him in all walks of life. We don’t have the option of choosing to act according to our own will. To do so “would be the highest invasion of the divine prerogative that could be imagined.” We lack the wisdom to live for Christ on our own strength. That is why we should abide in him and walk as he walked.
One of the popular Christian novels of yesteryear was Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps. It tells the story of the unusual event that occurred one Sunday morning in a traditional upscale downtown church. The morning service was abruptly interrupted by a shabbily dressed man who entered the door and made his way down the aisle. Eyes filled with disdain followed the unwelcome visitor. He got to the middle of the aisle, and the preacher stopped his sermon. The unknown visitor began to speak and said he needed someone to love him and take care of him. There was a moment of silence; then the man collapsed in the aisle and died. A few weeks elapsed when one Sunday the pastor got up and confessed he was ashamed by his own attitude toward the man who had so abruptly interrupted the service. One by one some of the members stood and said the same thing. After some discussion the people of the church covenanted together that before they did anything in their daily life, they would ask themselves the simple question, “What would Jesus do?” When they really began to take that question seriously, it changed their attitudes about life, others, and how they conducted themselves at their jobs and schools. The entire community was impacted by the transformation in the lives of these church people who simply began to ask in every situation, “What would Jesus do?” Wristbands and bumper stickers aside, in essence that is what John is telling us to do in verse 6.
Okay, now it’s time to see how you did on John’s test of right living based on obedience. Grade your own paper, that is, your own life. Did you pass? May God deliver us all from trafficking in unlived truth (as Howard Hendricks, distinguished professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, was fond of saying).