Part 3: I Know Relationship
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Don’t answer out loud: Have you ever seen God?
The reason I don’t want you to answer our loud is because your first answer is apt to be wrong.
Faith is not believing in something you cannot see. Faith is seeing something you believe.
Many religious people don’t really believe and so they don’t see. And they cannot share what they do not see, which is a tragedy because our world desperately needs God.
Transition
John wanted his audience to realize that they had seen Jesus just as surely as he had. Having seen Jesus, they shared in his responsibility of sharing Jesus with a world who rejected Him but needs Him.
Illumination
We Declare God
We Declare God
12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.
“No one has seen God at any time.” This is not the first time that John has written these words.
18 No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
While Jesus was on the earth, He declared God to the world around Him. But Jesus has returned to the Father. Now, it is we who declare God to the world.
How? In a strange way: unconditional love.
12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.
There are three words in this verse that help us see our responsibility to love others.
Love = agape (unconditional love) The covenantal love that God has for His people; people who have never reciprocated His love very well.
Abide = to have a place. We could literally read this as “God has a place in us.”
Perfected = Completed. God’s love has achieved its goal when we share it. God always means for us to be conduits of love, not containers of love.
We declare God when we share His love with others.
But, given our own struggle between faith and fear, is there a way for us to know we have anything to declare or share in the first place? Yes.
We Have A Relationship with God
We Have A Relationship with God
13 By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.
Literally, this is how we know that we have a place with God and God has a place with us—in other words, we have a relationship with God--because He gave us His Spirit.
And when we struggle to know that we have received His spirt, John gives us evidences of the Spirit working in our lives. It is by these evidences we know relationship.
14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
We have seen God. This refers to more than the Apostles who physically saw Jesus. The word translated “seen” is not the normal word that means to see with our eyes. This word means to see with our understanding. We see many non-material things this way (like love, for instance.) This is the seeing that results from observing and contemplating. The fact that we can see God in this way is an evidence of the Spirit’s work in us.
We have testified of God. The word translated testified is the martyroumen and is the word we get the word martyr from. The fact that we can’t ultimately deny our faith is an evidence of the Spirit’s work in us. What do we testify? That Jesus is the savior sent from God.
We have confessed Jesus is the Son of God. The Greek word translated confess is interesting (homologeo)
It comes from two Greek words: homo, meaning same, and logeo, meaning word. it literally means to use the same word, or call it the same thing.
When it comes to confessing our sin, we must call our sin the same thing that God calls is.
When we confess that Jesus is the Son of God and God the Son, we are calling Him the same thing God does.
The fact that we agree with God about who Jesus is is an evidence of the Spirit’s work in our lives.
We have received God’s love. “Know” in verse 16 is to know experientially. “Believe” in verse 16 is to accept. The fact that we have experienced and accepted God’s love is an evidence of the Spirt’s work in our lives.
Then John concludes the paragraph in verse 16 by reiterating that the Spirit’s work in our lives confirms the relationship we have with God, since God has a place in us and we have a place in Him.
Conclusion
If we have been born again and are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, then we can rightly say that we have seen God and have a relationship with Him. This allows us to declare Him to a world that has neither seen Him, nor known Him…but a world that needs Him.
Application
It may not seem like there is much to do with this fact. But there is. The fact that we know God and are in relationship should give us boldness in two very important areas:
Our relationship with God
Our reflection of God to people (which facilitates our direction of people to God)