The Incarnation and Knowing God

Introduction:

We began our investigation of love and the nature of God from 1 John 4:7-10. Today, we have made it back to those passages.

Hopefully, we will see their significance as we examine the context around them.

We have recently learned that we can live with assurance that we are God’s children through:

Purity of life

Consistent, righteous behavior, ie behavior consistent with God’s own nature.

Obedience

Knowledge of the truth and thus knowledge that our belief and behavior align with the truth.

The practice of love in imitation of God’s love for us.

As the thoughts progress today, we should be able to see with clarity that at stake in the message of the incarnation of Jesus is our knowledge of God’s own character.

A Key Contrast: You and Us versus Them and the World

Note the parallel statements in 1 John 4:4 “Ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστε” and 1 John 4:6 “ἡμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐσμεν.”

John is reasserting a statement of assurance.

We are out from God.

The apostles are out from God.

Those who hear the apostles are those who know God.

Those who know God are listening to the apostles.

Apparently, the false teachers who have gone out from the truth do not listen to the message of the apostles.

They do not speak from God or His spirit.

They are from the world, and it is for this reason they speak from the world and the world is hearing them.

The false teachers:

Are not from God, they are from the world.

Do not speak from his spirit.

Speak from the world, from the spirit of antichrist, then.

They deny that Jesus has come in the flesh.

They do not preach love. They preach the pursuit of pleasure.

The world, not believers, hears them.

Because the message of the false teachers is a disavowal of the apostolic message of Jesus:

We have a clear, dividing line between the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.

A Serious Reminder: Belief Leads to Behavior

John is sensitive to the fact that his audience could misunderstand or forget the significance of what is trying to teach them.

Genuine salvation is not merely holding the view that Jesus came in the flesh. The claim to believe in that fact is not self-substantiating. Neither was it the only purpose God had.

One cannot know God and be born of Him without it resulting in behavior consistent with his nature and his own actions.

John states this twice:

1 John 4:7.

1 John 4:11.

Through what happened while Jesus was here, we get insight into God’s very person.

The theological importance of 1 John 4:7-10 is as follows:

Rejecting Jesus as the one having come in the flesh would deprive any capacity for understanding the character and nature of God.

This is because God’s character, that is his love, is understood through that propitiatory event.

Denying Jesus, then, inevitably leads to a corrupt view of God.

One cannot have a wrong view of Jesus but a correct view of God.

A Summary of the Teaching

How has John structured the development of thought?

Through sending his son as propitiation for our sins, God has loved us (1 John 4:10).

This is love, and in this is love.

God, whom no one has ever seen, is thus known by us despite never having physically encountered him (1 John 4:12).

We have assurance, indeed even evidence, that God, whom we have not seen, abides in us, if we are loving one another.

Furthermore, if we are loving one another, God’s love has been completed in us. There is a maturity.

There is a second proof or body of evidence that allows us to know that we are abiding in him and he in us, namely, “he has given us from his spirit.”

The phrase “out from his spirit” appears to wear many hats now.

In the context, John has referred to the work of the spirit in the truth, the message of God. 1 John 4:14 also corresponds with this.

John also appears to have in mind the thought from chapters 2 and 3, especially chapter 3, that genuine believers have the “seed of God” in us, and thus we live in a manner consistent with his own nature.

A case could be made that one cannot separate out the work of the spirit that enables us to practice love for one another and its work in the truthful message of the apostles.

Conclusion

While we may be capable of living in as many ways as their are people, the inescapable reality is there is one way we ought to live.

God has enabled us to live in that way through the incarnation and substitutionary death of Jesus. He has also demonstrated what that is. We know Him and love.