Love, Obedience and Faith

1 John 5:1–5 ESV

1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Do you have any distinguishing birthmarks? Somewhere on your body you will most likely have some identifying marks of trait that show who your parents are. I’ve talked before about parents and the traits I got from them. I bet you have similar birthmarks or traits about your physical appearance that show who your parents are.

What about adopted kids? My wife was adopted by her parents, and we love them dearly as Mom and Dad. And though she doesn’t look like them, she has picked up some identifying markers from her family. There are funny things she says, the way she gives a lot of details when telling stories, but my favorite is her sense of humor. I believe that she got this from her grandfather. He was always telling funny jokes but most notoriously he would put something in his teeth and smile at you in order to get a laugh. Melissa still does this frequently at the dinner table, and I have even seen my kids do it as well.

There was one time that we will never forget when it all back fired on Papa Cardinale. See, at one point he lost an eye and had to wear a glass eye in the last years of his life. He never let it stop him or slow him down, and he certainly wasn’t going to allow it to keep him from entertaining the great grandkids.

It being close to halloween, and on a Sunday evening dinner, we were all gathered around the table talking after dinner. Papa Cardinale stuck a couple pieces of candy corn in his teeth and wanted to pretend to be a funny looking monster by growling. Well he asked us to bring Greta over to him, she was only a couple years old at the time, and he put his hands up and growled at her with the candy corn in his teeth. But when he did he was laughing so much already in her expected response that his glass eye popped out! She began to scream because he had unintentionally traumatized her by trying to be funny. Everyone else in the room was dying laughing as he then got all upset that it had backfired.

If my wife has ever made you laugh, its because of her family that loves to laugh.

There are identifying markers in our lives that make us uniquely part of our family. In 1 John 5 I believe the Apostle John is showing us 3 birthmarks or identifying factors to knowing we belong to the family of God.

Love, Obedience and Faith. But before we see them lets see how this family works.

1 John 5:1 ESV

1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.

The gospel is the good news that is everywhere in al of scripture. and here we have it at the beginning of this chapter.

EVERYONE who BELIEVES that Jesus is the Christ HAS BEEN born of God...

We can sit and talk about our doctrine of how someone comes to believe this, we can tell of election according to the will of God, and even what the best methods of evangelism is to helping people hear this truth… But we can never skip over the beauty of knowing this truth.

It does not matter who you are, where you are from, or any other distinctive factor about your life… Because if you Believe that Jesus is the Christ, you have been born of God… Or you are part of His family. You are Saved!

To say the Christ, means God’s anointed one. It means to believe Jesus is divine, Fully God and fully man, and yet God the Father sent him as his anointed one to carry the cross and our sins for our forgiveness. Do you believe this? Or do you believe something close to this? there is a difference between believing in a historical person named Jesus and believing that Jesus is the Christ. The gospel would proclaim that God fully and freely paid for the sins of humanity in Jesus on the cross. He did it as a fore-ordained plan for your salvation. He now freely offers this reward of spending eternity with him to you, a broken sinner who could never earn that. Only God could accomplish this work and only God could offer this reward. It is his to give and he gave it to you in Jesus Christ.

And EVERYONE who believe this has been born of God.

Listen to John speak here. the language is specific. HAS BEEN born of God. Does that sound like something that will happen later or something that has already happened?

John is using an analogy of birth because it is something we all experience. We are all born into this world and we are born into a family. And once we grow up a little we can see the family resemblance in our birthmarks and character traits. But the one thing about being born, is that it cannot be undone. Once you have been born, you don’t go back to never being born. What am I trying to say here?

Some of us struggle with the idea of whether we are really saved or not because of the tension of sin in our lives. And yet scripture does not say, “you may have been born of God, I’m not really sure but you’ll have to wait to get to heaven to make sure,. So just in case you also better follow the rules real well because you don’t want God mad at you when you get there, if you make it...”

John declares the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ before he explains what our family birthmarks are going to be… Before he talks about Love, Obedience and Faith, he makes sure we hear this wonderful truth. EVERYONE who believes Jesu is the Christ HAS BEEN born of God!!!!!!

If you believe the gospel, your birth has been secured in Christ

You cannot be unborn into the family of God. And yes you will struggle with sin and have some very shameful moments along the way, but God will never abandon you once he adopts you into his family. If you believe you HAVE BEEN born of God.

And then he tells us what the first birth mark of your new family is… Look at this verse again.

1 John 5:1 ESV

1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.

Notice the everyone here. Everyone who believes AND everyone who Loves...

I would submit to you that these are not different groups of people but the same group of people that John is talking about. Everyone who believes is everyone who loves.

And it isn’t just a generic love either, but a love for God as your father and love for your new siblings in this family. When we don’t have this love we need to re-evaluate the genuine nature of our faith. What John is saying is that we cannot be loving God and hugging his neck and also sticking our tongues out at our siblings at the same time.

If this were your household and you had many kids, would you be OK with them loving you but hating each other? If you adopted a new child into your family, would you allow that child to love you and not their new brothers and sisters that you have already adopted? Of course not. You would want your kids, wherever they go, to be known as a loving family that you have saved from destruction. You would want them to display your love, and you would certainly expect that they would at least love each other.

The first birthmark of God’s family is Love

We have already talked about God is love, and John has said over and over how much we should love each other. Do you ever get the sense that John is just saying the same things over and over again, because that was the best way for people to not be lead astray by false teaching?

Do you love God? Do you love ALL those who have been born of God? All your new brothers and sisters?

When my kids were little and they would treat each other wrong, we would punish them in what seemed like reasonable ways, but then we started to do something that really used to annoy them. I can remember many times making my daughters hug each other and say that they loved each other and forgave each other before the punishment would be up. And we would want to hear it said right or else they would just have to stand there and hug each other. I desperately wish I could do the same with some of us in the church.

Stand there and look each other in eye and say, “I love you and I’m sorry, please forgive me.” And to hear, “I love and and I forgive you.”

See I believe my job as a parent is to discipline my children so that when they are out of my house they will discipline themselves. Discipline does not mean spanking always or some sort of punitive punishment. It could mean simple life tasks like making your bed and brushing your teeth. But more importantly it is Love each other because you are family.

Well, God’s word disciplines us to learn to love each other because we belong to his family. We cannot be unborn into his family and we cannot choose to not love, because it is now becoming part of our new nature.

1 Corinthians 13:1–7 ESV

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

In verse the greek translation is closer to - it does not count up wrongdoings. You may heard it said, “love holds no records of wrongs done to it.” But can you hear all the ways that Love is of the highest importance to us as believers? It is sad to me that this passage is something that we usually only hear at a wedding ceremony. The implications are not even for married couples exclusively, but for all Christians.

Because we all need to remember that we are in God’s family and Love should be a visible birthmark. And we need not remember wrongs done to us but choose to love, because that is what God has done for us in Christ. That is why, if someone wronged you last year, you should not bring it up again and again, but you should forgive and love them as if those things did not happen. And while I say that it is possible that people sin against each other and it is actually abuse, and I am not saying that we simply over look abuse and becoming someone who is ok with physical abuse or harm. And yet even those who have been abused must learn to love and forgive, as we ourselves are forgiven in Christ. And it is ok if that takes time… I just wanted to clarify.

It is not like God looks at us and says, “Hey I seem to remember last week when you did something very similar to this. I forgave you then, but now I think I’m not gonna forgive you now, because of what you have been doing as a pattern of sinful behavior. Sorry this deal just expired.”

I Love what Corrie Ten Boom said, “When God forgives us, our sins “are now cast in the deepest sea and a sign is then put up that says NO FISHING ALLOWED.”

The truth is that our only chance at being made new is to remember that we are forgiven and made new, not by keep dragging up the past and living in the same light we used to live and walk.

Does this minimize the offense of sin against a holy God? I should say not! It is a horrible offense to God every-time we sin. And yet that is what makes his love so profound, that he continues to forgive his people of their sin. This is part of the glorious nature of our God, and it is why there is good news.

Do you carry the first birthmark of this family? Let’s continue.

1 John 5:2–3 ESV

2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

When ever I hear the word Commandment it remind me of a military term.

Think of a solider receiving orders from a superior officer. Does that officer care if the solider, knows the orders understands them, even studies them, if he does not execute them?

What good would that solider be if they didn’t do what they were told to do. It would be pointless for him to be a solider if he wasn’t going to do what his orders told him to do.

It is the same for us as Believers. We should not just memorize scripture, talk about it and understand it. We need to actually do what God’s word instructs us of doing. It is not enough to simply know the commandments of God, because God is more interested in seeing us carry them out.

The 10 commandments from the OT law were not written as, “you should not have other gods before me, you should not kill, you should not steal...” as if they were optional. But rather the language is emphatic, “you SHALL NOT kill, and Steal and make an idol for yourself and have other gods before me...”

God did not give his word to see if we had the mental capacity to remember it, but rather to show us we needed the heart capacity to desire to follow it. This is something he needed to create in us as broken sinful people do not have the ability to desire obedience to God’s word. And yet here we see that the highest credentials of love are to be found in obedience.

The second birthmark is obedience

Obedience is proof of your love. They go hand in hand. You have never heard of someone who says I love God but I do not do what he says.

If you children never obeyed you, it would not cause you as a parent to question your love for them, but it would cause you to question their love for you. Sometimes as kids we ask ourselves if our parents love us, but do we ever ask ourselves, do I love them? If we were to ask ourselves this and we could somehow show that we loved them tied to obeying them it would be a pretty shallow love. we would be left with things like, I gave them things or bought them gifts, but how could we say that and never say, I did as they asked of me and followed their rules because I loved them and desired to make them happy.

And right now you may think I’m dangerously teetering on legalism because people all too often obey because they think it will cause God to love them and accept them more than others. But that is not what I am saying at all. I am not saying, “now that you are saved, you might want to do all this stuff so God will love you more.” That would pervert the good news of God reconciling sinners to himself through the finished work of Christ that he freely applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Being obedient to God does not make him love you more and your good works are not needed for God to be God and to love you like only God can love you.

But yet it is simple to understand that if you love him you will obey him. And before anyone gets mad with me because those sound like my words I would point you to the gospel of John, same author...

John 14:15 ESV

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

I think people agree that Jesus spoke simple enough for al of us to understand him. IF we love him. That IF is not about our works but about his work. If God has granted us new life and saving faith by giving us the free gift of salvation, then we will keep his commandments, pure and simple.

That does not mean we will never fail to do so, or we will never sin… But it does mean that we will never see those who have been saved not keep his commandments.

Furthermore, God’s word informs us of the heart behind our works…

1 Samuel 15:22 ESV

22 And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.

TO OBEY IS BETTER THAN SACRIFICE!

To obey is better than any works and any gift and any service we could give or do. Listen, lets be real and bring this right into our own time. It is better to obey than for me to preach to obey. It is better to obey than for all of us to be together in one room singing about obeying. It is better to obey than for all of us to have a study on what it means to obey. It is better to obey than for you to give the biggest tithe check the church has ever recieved.

To obey is to do what God says. Ask yourself right now, “Am I doing what God says?” Do I carry this birthmark of his family in my life?

John goes on to say that his commandments are not burdensome. The world may be mortified by the idea of loving each other, especially when they cannot stop hating based off the color of skin. but it is not burdensome to us to Love other and even our enemies.

The world may think it is too hard to Holy according to the standards of scripture, but for us it is not burdensome. It is a pleasure to live differently because we know the Love of God and display this love because he has made us new. It is not a problem for us to exercise self control and say no to what may be harmful to us, even is we really want it, because we know that God is greater in than he who is the world.

We live in a world that is at odds with God and thinks that his commandments are burdensome and too difficult to keep. But for us it is a delight to attempt to keep all his words. It is especially delightful because we know that when we fail to keep his commandments, he still loves us and always forgives us. He does this because he paid such a price to redeem us. and that knowledge of his cost to love us will cause us to not desire to sin against him any longer. It will cause us to grieve when we do sin against him and even be the very thing that would draw us to repentance, his kindness towards us sinners.

James Boice said this, “The life of God within makes obedience to the commands possible, and the love which the Christian has for God and for other Christians makes this obedience desirable.”

We are certainly not like the world, we love and obey, but there is one more thing.

1 John 5:4–5 ESV

4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

OUR FAITH.

Why Does it matter? Because of the unseen battle that we are in. The forces of God against the forces of Satan in a real spiritual battle. We may not always think of it this way, but it is true none the less. We are soldiers in an army where our commander is the Captain of our Salvation, and he orders us to live and breath and move for his Glory in this world that is no longer our true home.

We are now citizen of heaven that hold an earthly dwelling until he would take us home or come back for us. And while we are here there is always a battle that rages on. You can see it in the world around us and it is always trying to get us to participate with its rules on its terms in its system in order to take us out of our home court advantage. The world does not play fair and they do not have the same rules as we would be instructed to play by… But as a believer we are supposed to know something that will help all this tension. It the 3rd birthmark of this family...

The third birthmark is our Faith

We are known by our faith in Christ.

We are those who overcome this world because we believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

This is not a fancy title that means god has a family and any boy in that family is a son of God. It is a title that holds a divine nature to it, it means Jesus is God the Son. He is not created as we were, and he was conceived of the Holy Spirit to Virgin’s womb in order for us to always know, he is divine, he is God.

When we believe this, it cause everything else that would seem important to us to pale in comparison and fade away. And treasure that we would seek is nothing compared to eternal life with God. And prestige we would desire is nothing compared to being allowed to stand in Jesus’ place receiving a righteous reward from the Father.

Nothing is greater or more important than believing that Jesus is the Son of God. This is a divine revelation that only God by His spirit can show you. And the Faith that is in question here is a free gift that he gives according to his will.

Ephesians 2:8 ESV

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

Your salvation which comes by grace and produces faith is a free gift from God. This saving faith that God grants to you is the very thing thatJohn says for believers “overcomes” and “has overcome” this world.

Now that may seem like the same thing but I want you to think about it… One speaks of a process that has a future orientation and the other speaks of a past event that sustains us in the present. Let me show you...

1 John 5:4 ESV

4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.

Everyone who has been born of God OVERCOMES… that didn’t say they already overcame the world, but that they will overcome the world. It is a future oriented promise. Right now days may be dark and you may be struggling. You may be battling addiction and you may be struggling with the right kinds of thoughts. You may be daily fighting the flesh and constantly in a tug of war with sin… But there is a day coming in which we as God’s people will look at everything and know that we have overcome this world… That this world threw everything it had at as and it could not separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!

If you are a believer, you will overcome this world

Sin will not defeat you, death will not keep you and people will no longer rule over you. There is coming a day when all this will be no more and what is left is the kingdom of God and his people that he has eternally secured to worship him forever and ever and ever.

But that isn’t all that John says here.. because this isn’t a message of great we are. In the mean time we long for that day but there is hope in these days too… Why Because of our Faith that HAS OVERCOME the world.

While we will overcome the world, he also said our Faith HAS OVERCOME and it is the victory. Meaning the battle was won already and has overcome. This is speaking of the cross, where Jesus defeated Sin, so it will not defeat you, and Jesus Broke free from death so it will not keep you, and he proved that He rules and reigns over all so that we would not be forever under man’s authority.

Our Faith is in Jesus Christ the Son of God and he has overcome this world. And he told us as much, but perhaps that is what we need to hear in these days and be reminded of more and more during these times. We will have trouble, these days will be distressing and full of hate and anxiety and fear… And yet He… Jesus has Overcome this world. ANd we who bleong to him will overcome this world too.

Let this be a birthmark we show proudly to the world. We Love and We Obey and We will Overcome!

John 16:25–33 ESV

25 “I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. 26 In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; 27 for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. 28 I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” 29 His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! 30 Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.” 31 Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? 32 Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. 33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Let’s pray!