What Way Do You Walk?

1 John 2:3–6 ESV

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Prayer

Since we have started looking at the book of 1 John.

1 John 1:1-4 - John has been writing so that we really know who Jesus is, not a Jesus we made up, but the true Christ.

The Right Jesus Test

1 John 1:5-2:2 - We saw that John focused on removing barriers of our own sinfulness to find fellowship with God.

The Confession Test

That section from the last couple of weeks was more negative focusing on sin and how we should respond to sin in our lives.

But John begins to turn his focus in a more positive direction on what a Christian ought to be like.

John will now make clear how a Christian may have assurance that they have come to know that God is light.

He turns to the obligations of the Christian to love.

1 John 2:3-6 - The Moral Test

Sacred vs. Secular

One giant obstacle to what you’re going to hear today is this...

We live in a society that believes and pushes us to keep our faith in the margins.

“It’s okay to believe what you want on Sunday, but it shouldn’t affect the rest of the week in any meaningful way.”

“Why can’t you just be neutral and keep your religious ideas to yourself?”

This lie is so toxic because it fundamentally goes against the message of the New Testament.

For one, it’s a lie because has the ability to be neutral and objective because we are all creatures of belief.

We are all theologians,

meaning that we are all believers in something and there is no way to separate that from the rest of our life.

The second way this idea is a lie is what I want to address today.

“I am a Christian in my belief system but I lie on my time card at work.”

I’m a Christian in my belief system but I refuse to walk in love with my neighbor”

1 John 2:3 NKJV

Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.

That seems kind of redundant, “we know that we know Him”.

The ESV helpfully I think brings out what is being said here.

1 John 2:3 (ESV)

And by this we know that we have come to know him...

The knowing that John has in mind here is a present knowing.

The Assurance that Comes from Testing

You should test your life so that you can be assured that you know Him

1 John 2:3 (ESV)

And by this we know that we have come to know him

For John, he is extending to us the assurance of knowing.

“How do you know that you know?”

How does a person know that they have become a Christian?

How does a person come to be assured that they are actually a follower of Jesus?

These are extremely important questions to ask but before we answer that question

Before we answer this, we need to understand what John means by “know”.

This word is used over 40 times in this short book.

This word is used 4 times in this short section.

1 John 2:3–6 (ESV)

And by this we know that we have come to know him

Whoever says “I know him”...

By this we may know that we are in him....

When he uses the word “knowing”, he means more than simply understanding some specific truths

One definition said of the word knowing, “familiarity acquired through experience or association with persons or a thing.”

In the west, when we say knowing, we mean academically understanding some facts.

In our brain, hearing information, processing the information and then we know it.

In John’s day, there was great confidence in human reason.

They believed that they could come to accurate knowledge of all things, including God Himself.

That means that they believed they could come to KNOW God through a process of reasoning intellectually.

Youtube as a fix for everything

Similar in our own day to the way people would say, “do you know how to fix this?”

No, but if you give me youtube and about 20 minutes, I can figure it out.

To know something here is far different from just understanding in your mind.

There is an experiential and intimate understanding far beyond simply our cognition.

As we will see, it’s a knowing that changes how you live.

“How do you know that you know?”

1 John 2:3 (ESV)

And by this we know that we have come to know him...

What are we to know?

Or better,

Who are we to know?

We are first and foremost to know Him.

That is Jesus Christ.

Now when I say that, we are NOT just supposed to know facts about Christ.

He was born of a virgin in Bethlehem.

He is our Advocate in Heaven.

He is our propitiation.

Those are wonderful truths, but just knowing about them are NOT enough.

It brings back to mind what Jesus says in Matthew 7:23.

Matthew 7:23 ESV

And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

We see the same thing of the ten virgins...

Matthew 25:12 ESV

But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’

The same is true of those at the narrow door...

Luke 13:27 ESV

But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’

This knowing is not something we strive for, but we absolutely better test to see if we have really come to know Him.

Paul asks the Galatians something very simple about knowing God....

Galatians 4:8–9 ESV

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?

The question is, “Do we know Him?”

There’s the test.

It’s simple.

Plain enough.

It’s deliberately put as a condition for us to hold it out and examine if it is true or not.

How do we know if we know Him?

1 John 2:3 ESV

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.

Now like we have seen before, John gives us a test to see if we really know him or not.

The test should not scare us, it should bring us encouragement.

2 Corinthians 13:5 ESV

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!

The Test Failed

1 John 2:4 ESV

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,

The test failed, could most simply be called called “Profession without Obedience”

Profession without Obedience

This has been the failure of many people within our lives.

They profess to know God.

They profess to have a relationship with God.

But they are deceived because they do not keep the commands.

Child’s Need to Clean Their Room

Picture with me a mother telling a child of the need to clean their room.

But the child’s response is, “I will get to it, I am busy singing.”

The mother warns her child to clean their room

The mom comes back to find her child continually singing “Jesus loves me”

Or maybe

The Sheep That Never Listens

Jesus gave a parable in John 10:16

John 10:16 (ESV)

and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

Now picture with me if there was a sheep that could somehow learn to speak and all it did all it’s days was run around saying, “I am a sheep”

“I am a sheep! Look how sheep like I am.”

You should test your life so that you can be assured that you know Him and not be deceived!

Claim - “I have come to know him!”

The claim is that this person has come to know Him.

Now notice the next statement is a contradiction.

1 John 2:4 ESV

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,

Reality - Does Not Keep the Commandments

Here is a person who claims to know God but by his actions he does not.

Like we saw with the person who comes to Jesus at the day of judgment and says, Matthew 7:21

Matthew 7:21 ESV

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Notice how Jesus says that its not the one who says “Lord, Lord” but it is the one who “does the will of my Father”

Even Jesus is saying in Matthew 7 that it is not the one who says that he knows me, but the one who does the will of God.

1 John 2:4 ESV

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,

What does John mean by “commandments”?

Now Jesus used the word “will of my Father” and John uses the words “commandments”, but they really are expressing the same thing.

The commandments that John are referencing is the Word of God that is in our hands.

And God’s revealed will is expressed in the Bible.

John 12:49–50 ESV

For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”

Jesus is expressing here that He has done nothing of His own authority.

He is speaking only what He has been directed to speak.

He is speaking the authoritative Word on behalf of the God-head.

Even in His own day, people recognized that the Words Jesus was speaking were different.

Mark 1:27 ESV

And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

For John, what they mean by commandments are the authoritative Word of God.

1 John 2:4 ESV

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,

What does it mean “to keep”?

For John, keeping is more than just words.

It is words which are backed with a life.

To keep is to persist in obedience and to pay attention to the commandments spoken.

This is not just passively hearing but an active action.

John is not the only one urging us to keep the commandments, James says something similar.

James 1:22 ESV

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

James is saying that hearers would be much like what we understand in the west as those who “know”

Our “knowing” is actually better understood oftentimes as “hearing”

And what he says about this person is they are deceiving themselves.

Example of a man looking into a mirror

James 1:23–24 ESV

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

James tells us that this man studies really hard to remember his face in a mirror.

But the moment he walks away, he forgets what he looks like.

You should test your life so that you can be assured that you know Him and not be deceived!

Heres the evaluation of that person….

1 John 2:4 ESV

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,

Truth - He is a Liar

The truth about this person is he is a liar.

Now you’re probably wondering, “Didn’t John just make this evaluation of a person in the last chapter?”

What he talked about in chapter 1 focused on belief and what he is focusing on here is obedience.

1 John 1:8 ESV

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

He is liar because though he claims something with his mouth, his life tells a different story.

His life tells a TRUER story.

The true test of our Christianity is whether it produces a reflection of Jesus in our daily life.

If it fails this test, it is false.

John 15:10 ESV

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

What could be said of this man is that he does not actually love Jesus because the direction of his life is actually heading away from Christ.

Sacred vs. Secular

Now we are presented with a man who has passed the test.

The Test Passed

1 John 2:5–6 (ESV)

but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.

You should test your life so that you can be assured that you know Him and walk in His ways.

This is how you know that you know.

You know because you love what God loves.

The love which comes from God and flows through you to one another.

Obedience Flowing from Love

John 14:15 ESV

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

Our cultures love to get this the other way around.

They love to think that if they just obey enough then they will love God.

But the reality is that our love for Christ is expressed in our obedience to His commandments.

Picture with Me a Parent who Gives a Child a Car

The parent gives a child a car when they go off to college.

You know the typical speech the dad gives to the son as he gives him the car.

Check the brakes, make sure you keep it filled up with gas, check the oil.

But if the child decided to take the care of terrible terrain and never check the oil.

Would our estimation of that child be, “Oh he loves his parents!”

No way. We would say, that child hates his parents.

The same is true for us.

Notice the way that John does not highlight the claim nearly as much as the first person...

1 John 2:5–6 (ESV)

By this we may know that we are in him:

whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Now your notes in front of you should have claim and then evidence.

I want you to cross that out and put “Knowledge”

Knowledge - I abide in Him

This is how we know that we know.

This is how we are to be assured that we really are a Christian.

We know we are a Christian by the way we live.

Notice the one who is claiming that they are a Christian...

running around declaring to everyone and there brother that they are Christian, does not have the value as the one who knows.

The one who knows that they abide in the true vine.

John 15:1–5 ESV

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Hear that last part, “apart from me you can do NOTHING”

The assurance that John is extending to us is assurance for us to know that we really have come to know.

The testing of your life is NOT simply for you, it is also to encourage you to continue to walk in the way of our master.

Parents - Our Talk is Not as Important As Our Walk

You know this to be true.

You can tell your child to do something all day long and it will go in one ear and out the other.

But parents, your walk will influence your children significantly more than your talk.

With you talk you can be leading them to heaven, while your walk you are leading them to hell.

Consider your walk in that way.

1 John 2:5–6 (ESV)

By this we may know that we are in him:

whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Evidence - The Pattern of Christ’s Life

The thrust of this passage is simple: those who say they live in God must walk as Jesus walked.

We may have the feeling of awareness of God, of union with him, but how shall we know that such experience corresponds to reality? It is clear that no amount of clearness or strength in the experience itself can guarantee its validity, any more than the extreme vividness of a dream leads us to suppose that it is anything but a dream.

The way we know that our experience is actually lining up with reality is to examine the evidence.

That is keeping God’s commands.

The one who obeys God can rest assured that his love for God is being completed and that he is in God.

Because of this, everyone should assure their hearts and others by obeying him.

He Ought to Walk

John 10:14–16 ESV

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

The evidence of the Christian is that they are indeed listening to the shepherd.

That does NOT mean we wait to hear God audibly speak to us.

We open up the Scriptures and we hear God’s revealed will to His people.

Part of knowing the shepherd is listening to the shepherd.

“Now he calls us also to Christ, to imitate him. Yet he does not simply exhort us to the imitation of Christ, but, from the union we have with him, proves we should be like him.”

This is NOT with perfection.

To seek for perfectionism would go against what John just told us.

The Assurance that Comes from Testing

You should test your life so that you can be assured that you know Him.

The Test Failed

You should test your life so that you can be assured that you know Him and not be deceived!

The Test Passed

You should test your life so that you can be assured that you know Him and walk in His ways.