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Lots of people claim to be Christians.
Not everyone that makes that claim truly is one.
Not everyone who professes faith in Jesus Christ truly knows Him.
Before we judge anyone else, it’s helpful to do some self-examination.
All of us have had an experience in the last two years that has caused us to question our own faith.
Our culture is being shaken.
People of faith are being shaken with it.
People are getting sorted out.
How can I know where I belong?
If I claim to be a Christian, what does that mean for my life in this time and place?
If I don’t live up to what I think a Christian should be in a moment of weakness, what do I do then?
John tests three claims people make in regard to being a Christian.
There have been a lot of tests this year.
What we will see as we go through this passage is that the results of these tests are more relevant than ever.
Claim 1, “I Know Jesus Christ”
John wants us to know that we know Jesus.
2:3, “we are coming to know that we have come to know” - this is a knowledge that is a growing experience.
We’re always in process, learning and growing in our knowledge of God.
How do we grow?
We “keep His commandments”, we “keep His word”.
The process is daily practice of God’s word.
God’s word is truth spoken in love to guide our steps, usually in the form of commandments.
Like a loving father gives his children simple instructions to follow, God gave us commandments.
And Jesus did not abolish God’s commandments.
He fulfilled them and taught us their ultimate meaning.
God’s word is truth, unchanging truth.
Jesus is the Truth incarnate.
If we truly know Him, we will keep God’s word.
But there are a lot of people claiming to know Jesus that use the truth as a weapon to beat and destroy others.
I was listening to a news story about the recent Supreme Court case about limiting abortions in Mississippi.
Obviously there were protesters.
And some showed up to holler and hold signs proclaiming that God hates people who support abortion.
Does this kind of behavior and attitude match the word of God I see in Jesus?
How do I know that my claim to know Jesus and walk in His commandments is a true claim?
2:5, “in him truly the love of God is perfected.”
As I keep the word of Christ, the love of God is perfected in me.
That’s quite a claim in and of itself.
The question is, what is the love of God that’s being perfected?
Is it my love for God or God’s love for me?
The answer is probably yes to both, kind of, but…Marvin Vincent:
Love, in its very essence, is reciprocal.
Its perfect ideal requires two parties.
It is not enough to tell us, as a bare, abstract truth, that God is love.
The truth must be rounded and filled out for us by the appreciable exertion of divine love upon an object, and by the response of the object.
The love of God is perfected or completed by the perfect establishment of the relation of love between God and man.
When man loves perfectly, his love is the love of God shed abroad in his heart.
His love owes both its origin and its nature to the love of God.
The love of God for me fills me so that I desire to keep His word, walk in His ways, and learn to love Him.
The way John pictures the love of God for us is like a place to dwell.
Jesus said,
Which brings us to our second claim.
Claim 2, “I Have a Deep, Personal Connection With Jesus”
2:6, “Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”
Jesus told His disciples that they should abide in Him, and He would abide in them, by faith.
This is a union of the believer with the person of Jesus, like a branch is in union with a vine or a tree.
This is a deeper level of intimacy and connection with Jesus.
This person really gets Him.
They’re on the inside, they understand His thoughts and teachings, and are united with His purposes and desires.
John says, if you’re going to claim to have a deep, personal connection with Jesus at this level, you ought to walk in the same way in which He walked.
What was that?
Jesus told His disciples that the world would know they were part of the Jesus movement if they loved one another in the way that He had loved them.
When we love as Jesus loved, we demonstrate that our fellowship, our personal connection, with Jesus is real.
Jesus loved, so we love.
Jesus spoke the truth even when it cost Him something.
We do the same.
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God and demonstrated it by healing the sick and casting out demons.
We fast and pray, and seek the healing of the sick.
Jesus came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
We serve others in Jesus’ name.
Jesus walked in self-denial and self-sacrifice, on the way of the cross.
Jesus loved, so we love.
2:7, “no new commandment, but an old commandment...”
2:8, “At the same time, it is a new commandment...” Is John contradicting himself again?
The old commandment to love God and love your neighbor had been lost, buried under a mountain of laws that were sucking the life out of people.
Jesus came to restore the old commandment in a new way.
Matthew 22:35–39 (ESV)
And...a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question to test him.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment.
And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
What is the new commandment here?
John 13:34 (ESV)
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
Jesus redefined this love.
This love comes from Jesus.
We love because He first loved us.
He demonstrated what God’s love is like.
The cross of Jesus, on which He took the guilt and shame of all our sin and put it to death once and for all that we may have life, that’s what God’s love is like.
This is what John means in verse 8 when he says, this is the new commandment that is “true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.”
Jesus is revealing the light of the knowledge of God to us.
The light of knowing God in and through Jesus is already overcoming the darkness in this world.
The process is not done, but it has begun.
As Jesus put it once,
Which brings us to the third claim,
Claim 3, “I Am Enlightened”
2:9, “Whoever says he is in the light...” This is a claim made by people even outside the Christian faith.
In fact, this is one of the main reasons many people never accept the Christian faith.
There is something in us that knows intuitively that being enlightened should make you more loving.
But I would argue the Christian faith is the only one that truly achieves that.
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