Alright I II III John for Beginners lesson number three
title of this lesson Abiding in Love. I'm going to be covering I John chapter 2:28-
3:24. As you know as we have studied, John
here is writing to Christians who have been influenced by false teachings
concerning the identity of Christ and the manner in which they are saved. These,
we call them Gnostic teachers, these Gnostic teachers are proposing that
Jesus was only a spirit and in order to be truly saved they must adhere to
special secret knowledge involving restrictions of foods and normal
relationships and marriage and so on and so forth. So these Gnostic teachers
come along and they're saying well you received the gospel
from the Apostles but that's not good enough, there's more, there's
the secret knowledge, there's this better knowledge that we have that will
guarantee your salvation. So basically that's what was taking
place. So John refutes these false ideas in
two ways, first of all he describes his eyewitness experience of Jesus to
demonstrate that Jesus was fully God and fully man at one time because as I
mentioned they were questioning the nature of Jesus' person, in other words
He wasn't really a human He was really just the spirit, He only
appeared as a human, He only had the Spirit of God for a time in other words
they were questioning His fully divine and fully human nature, the
combination of those two in one nature. So John responds by saying hey you guys
haven't seen Him, I've seen Him, I've lived with Him, I've
touched Him, I've heard Him speak, I've watched Him. So he offers that as one way
to refute their false ideas his own personal experience.
And then he explains three ways that a person can be certain of their salvation
without reference to or need of any special knowledge from these other
teachers. His idea is I'll show you how you can be sure that you're
saved without reference to any of this special knowledge the secret knowledge
that's being sold to you. The last week we examined John's
description of the real Jesus and the first of the ways that we can be certain
of our salvation. John said that we can be certain by observing our own behavior.
You want to be sure that you're saved observe your own behavior for starters.
And he called the behavior walking in the light. John taught that our behavior
in the areas of personal conduct where we are obeying Jesus' commands, in the
area of social relationships where we are loving our brothers and sisters, in
the area of our separation from the world in other words our focus on
heavenly things rather than our focus on earthly things, and then our adherence to
truth in other words what are we teaching what are we sharing as far as
the truth is concerned about Jesus Christ? So these four areas: observe
yourself in personal conduct, social relationships, separation from the world,
and adherence to truth and if you observe your conduct it will reflect
back to you what kind of person you are.
So it was a self-test if you wish to see if you're walking in the light and
walking in the light a term that John uses to mean several things: walking in
the light can mean you're a saved person, can mean that you know what the
truth is and you're living according to the truth; but he uses this one term to
kind of encompass all of these ideas together. So if you were walking in the
light in these various ways then it was proof of your salvation.
So in our lesson today we're going to look at another way that we can be certain
that we are saved another way that John teaches and that is knowing the
good from the bad. That's another way that we know we are these people who are
walking in the light. Now before we do this we need to review a passage which
we neglected last week, I said that the first way to assume certainty and
salvation was by walking in the light and John explains the four ways that one
behaves to prove that he is walking in the light. Now at the end of chapter 2
John makes a kind of a parenthetical statement about how to determine those
who truly belong to Christ and those who don't belong to Christ, how to do that.
Remember they were being seduced by false teachers and they were having
trouble telling the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, that was
the problem okay. So he's going to give them some information on how do you tell
the difference between the good and the bad. So in chapter 2:28-3:10
he provides them with a foolproof method of discerning the good from the
bad. So let's read 2:28-29 he says, "Now, little children, abide in
Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him
in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone
also who practices righteousness is born of Him." So he encourages them to be
faithful to Jesus so that when Jesus returns they will not be afraid or
ashamed of their unfaithfulness or sinfulness. Sow someone who's faithful to
the end has nothing to fear, actually looks forward to the return
of Christ. And then he makes a key statement that he's going to use in the
next 10 verses explaining everybody who does what
Jesus does belongs to Jesus, kind of self-evident isn't it? In other words
the people who do what Jesus would have done these are the good guys
he's saying, these are the ones you listen to, these are the ones you follow,
these are the ones you're supposed to learn from. So in 3:1 he
continues, "See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would
be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not
know us, because it did not know Him." So John goes on to comment on how wonderful
God is to make us His children, this is just another way of saying He saved us.
Remember I've mentioned before there are many different ways to
describe a person's salvation and this is one of them that God made us his
children. Now he says because God has made us His children we're different
from people in the world. Have you ever tried to you know you get
an opportunity somebody asks you a question about religion who themselves
they're not people of faith or anything like that but you get an opening you
know to share your faith and to talk and you're talking to them and you're
sharing your faith and you're talking about Jesus and you're talking about you
know there is a God and you know God loves us He wants us to be saved and you're
doing all of that and it's like you're throwing a tennis ball against the wall
and it just keeps coming back to you and in your own mind it's so clear it's
crystal clear how could anybody miss it and yet your words just boom they fought
hit the wall and they just fall to the ground it says if you're it's you're
talking over here and they're over here you know you're you're talking over here
and they're way over here. Well this is what he's talking about
this is what he's talking about, you're the person who's
in the world but not of the world and because you're in the world and not of
the world many times people of the world don't get you, they see your faith as
something weird, they see it as a weakness, the best they can do sometimes
is well that's okay for you but I don't want any of that. And you're saying to
yourself how could someone not want to be with God? And John is explaining it
right here, he says this is the reason the world does not know us, they
don't get it not everybody doesn't get it obviously
because sometimes we do share our faith and people do respond and they want
to know more but that's not every time is it, it's not even the majority of the
times. So he's saying we're so different in our conduct that we are misunderstood
and sometimes persecuted in the same way Jesus was persecuted. So he keeps going to
verse 2, "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what
we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see
Him just as He is." So he reminds them that even though there has been a change
in them compared to their former lives there will be another change in us when
Jesus returns, that's the thing we're looking forward to. Our present condition
is painful to say the least because your eyes are opened our eyes are open and we
see ourselves for who we are: sinners. Never quite achieving the perfection
that we see there's always a spoiler there's always a fly in the ointment no
matter how pure the motives we want it's never quite.
That's painful, that's painful, psychic spiritual pain. And here he's saying one
day that pain's not going to be there anymore because what you see what that
perfection that you see you will have it.
Because what you see in Christ will also be in you, that's what we look forward to.
We don't know exactly how we will be changed,
the metaphysics of it whatever, how do you become a totally
spiritual being with consciousness you know, I mean we can talk about these
ideas but we don't fully grasp it yet. So we don't know exactly how will we be
changed in order to exist in heaven all we know is that we will be like Christ
how He is at His appearing. In the twinkling of an eye the Bible says.
All the stuff that happens at the end of the world and different people teach
well this is going to happen in a thousand years going to happen then fifty
years are going to happen then a hundred years going to happen, no, all the stuff
the Bible talks about that's happens at the end of the world like that, all of it
like that. You're here you're changed forever.
The faithful who are alive at His coming will know Him and see Him when He
returns and there will be no mistake, you won't miss it by accident if you're
afraid of oh I don't want to miss Jesus when He comes don't worry about that. He
continues and says, "And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself,
just as He is pure." So all this business of well what am I going to do with
my life and who am I and what's my work here what's my thing
here what should I do here? Well it's right there right in this
verse, this is your thing, this is what you're going to do, everyone who has this
hope. What hope? That I'll be like Jesus when He comes that I'll be faithful when
He comes, everybody who has that hope, what does He do? He purifies himself
what's my job what's my life about my life is about purifying my life. My life
is about straining out every dirty thing that I come across that I recognize.
That's what my life is about in preparation for the day that I will be
transformed, yeah I got to work I have the job got to mow my lawn all that
rain, sure I gotta do all of that stuff I actually enjoy doing that
stuff. But that's not what I'm doing here what I'm doing here is I am purifying my
life that's my spiritual work, not in order to be saved, in order to be ready
in order to begin tasting the fruit of eternal life that is coming. So if this
is so then we are to be ready and act properly in other words purifying
ourselves just as Jesus did. Our hope is that Jesus will return and take us to
heaven our lives and our actions are based squarely on this event and this
promise. Now John once he has established how
Christians are to act and why he describes the very opposite conduct and
what that means. So let's keep going this time
to verse 4 he says, "Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness;
and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and
in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him
or knows Him." Now the thing about this passage that you need to be careful of
is the word practices, that's the operation word in this passage here and
if you skip that, if you don't realize that you could be hurting yourself.
The point is that those who practice, meaning it is a habit it's a way of life
it's a routine, those who practice a sinful lifestyle are not from God no
matter what they say. Practice, not perfection, practice. Now here in this
passage John contextually he may now be referring to that group of Gnostic
teachers who advocated a hedonistic or a libertine lifestyle as a way of
freeing the Spirit from the body. Remember their basic teaching was the
spirit wants to escape the body, the spirit is pure goodness the flesh is
pure evil. We had to separate these one way of
doing it was through asceticism, harsh treatment of the body and so on
and so forth; the other way was a complete abandonment. And so in this
passage he may be alluding to these false teachers who are promoting this
idea of immoral living as a way of spiritual development. As I said
some of the teachers said that since there is no connection between the soul
and the body, the body could do what it wanted without affecting the soul. I
don't know about you but that sounds like a pretty fun religion to me.
Anything you do in your body does not affect your spiritual life, really? Wow, I
can cheat I can still I can be sexually impure I can be mean and
selfish and self saying you know I can do all these things it doesn't affect my
soul I like that. My sinful flesh will go for
that, sign me up for that religion. So he's kind of
pointing to this idea and these false teachers
teachings. So this was a pretty attractive doctrine for those who had a
weakness for worldly behavior. So John is telling them that Jesus died to take
sinfulness away anyone who advocates or practices sin, that's what he's talking
about here, is not following the One who died for sin. How can you practice sin
openly and call yourself a Christian and follow Jesus who died for sin? The two
don't work together. So in verse 7 he says, "Little children, make sure no one
deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is
righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil for the devil; has sinned
from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the
works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed
abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children
of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice
righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother." So in
these final verses in this section John goes one step further by saying that not
only are those who practice sin not of God their behavior shows who they really
follow and that is of course the devil. The idea that a son of God doesn't sin
means that a Christian does not practice or advocate sin, he tries she tries with
various degrees of success to practice righteousness, that's what I'm trying to
do. Christians are trying to practice righteousness, differing
degrees of success depending on maturity and understanding and so on and so forth.
So now that John has explained how to spot the bad group:
watch their conduct, observe what they say, what they teach.
He gives another way that they can be certain of their salvation and that is
abiding in love. Now John's already mentioned this in the discussion
on walking in the light but in the next section he amplifies and explores the
true meaning of Christian love. So let's keep reading verse 11 he says, "For this
is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one
another; not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what
reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother's were
righteous. Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you." Before he said
the world doesn't understand you, which is true, now he says the world
hates you. So the world doesn't understand you when you're trying to
share your faith, the world hates you when they see you acting righteously
before God. So John reiterates the bottom line message of his gospel which is love
and he refers to Cain and Abel because this is the first example of the command
to love being violated. Lots of murders in the Old Testament but
this is the first time that the command to love one another was broken. He also
emphasizes the central theme of Christian doctrine to show how
off-center the teaching of the Gnostics were and he mentions the fact that the
reason for Cain's murderous rage was his jealousy over his brother's good deeds
which shone brightly alongside his own evil deeds and evil conduct. So John says
that this is also the reason behind the world's hatred of Christianity, their
goodness demonstrated the evilness of the world, there's a contrast. We
don't like somebody showing us up even as Christians if a brother or
sister really does the right thing in
comparison to what we're doing even that makes us kind of you know a little angry
a little jealous; who does he think he is, what you think
she's perfect, you know even we as believers have that attitude when a
brother or sister really shines forth in their love and their kindness their
generosity in comparison to what we're doing, maybe we're just pedaling along
you know what I'm saying pretty lukewarm as a Christian and all of a sudden
there's this great show of love and generosity and forgiveness we've seen
another person and it makes what we're doing look kind of dark. So
you can imagine if someone is not even in Christ how they feel about
those who are doing what is right and good. Verse 14 he says, "We know that we
have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does
not love abides and death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer;
and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. We know
loved by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our
lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother
in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and
truth." So John emphasizes the idea that you can't claim to be a disciple of
Jesus without loving as Jesus loved. Not loving to the degree that Jesus did I
don't know about you know laying down my life undergoing torture for someone else,
but loving as He did: He loved His enemies and so on and so forth.
His extreme example of course is Jesus Himself dying to save us, in like manner
we should be willing to love not in word only but in deed our brethren, and he says
our brethren. Yes we owe our love to the poor in the world to try to relieve the
suffering as we can of course but John is very specific about loving the
brethren, loving those who believe in Christ as a priority as a way of
demonstrating the strength of our faith.
He repeats the idea that if you don't love or help your brethren
you don't belong to God regardless of what you say because you don't reflect
His basic character. "We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure
our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater
than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us,
we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him,
because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His
sight." A wonderful benefit and defining characteristic of those who
love their brethren is the fact that they have confidence in their salvation,
they're not walking around feeling guilty all the time. I've
mentioned that before you know Satan may not be able to tempt us to go rob a bank,
kill somebody, yeah the big sins, he may not be able to
tempt us to do something like that but he can sure take away any joy that we
have in our faith, so that we can't enjoy what God has legitimately
given to us to enjoy, he just sucks that dry out of our life.
And John I think is referring to this, you don't have to have a guilty
conscience, you don't have to wonder about am I saved or am I not saved,
if you're acting in love towards your brethren it fills you with the love
of God.
So he repeats the idea that if you don't love and help your brethren you don't
belong to God because you don't reflect his basic character and as I read here
in 19-22, a benefit defining characteristic of those who love their
brethren is that they have among other things confidence in their salvation a
clear conscience and a powerful prayer life because the prayers of the
righteous are heard and answered. The best way to dissipate guilt and
fear is obeying the Lord and loving your brethren. I mean I know intellectually
we know in our minds you know oh yeah wait a minute
in November 1977 I confess that I believed in Jesus and so-and-so buried
me in the waters of baptism and my sins were forgiven I remember that night it
was cold the heater wasn't on in the baptistry it was Montreal it's cold in
Montreal in November the water is cold I still remember that. Sometimes
intellectually we remember the process of our salvation we get it but many
times the attack is not against our intellect it's against our heart.
The Bible calls the devil the accuser of the brethren, day and night he
accuses us before God of this and that this sin in this old sin and that and
this imperfection and this failing it never stops it always goes on and on and
on. This is what he's talking about here, how to get rid of that
that quote negative self-talk I call a devil talk in your brain.
In verse 23 he says, "This is His commandment, that we believe in the name
of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one
who keeps His Commandments abides in Him, and He and him. We know by this that He
abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us."
They've been seduced into thinking that extreme denial of the flesh or extreme
worldliness will somehow elevate them to some state of spiritual awareness or
freedom that they have not reached yet. And John says that neither these
extremes will produce this effect. In the end a quiet heart, peace in the face of
death, confidence before God and true spirituality are the result of two basic
things: number one, faith in Jesus as the divine Savior. You want to know your if
you're still saved 30 years after your baptism ask yourself the question do I
still believe that Jesus is the divine Son of God, yes or no? And am I still
depending on His cross to make restitution for every single sin that I
have and will commit? And if the answer to those two things is yes then it
doesn't matter how your heart feels shaky nervous God is the one that
protects our salvation not us. I'm not saved based on the degree of confidence
I have in my own salvation I'm safe because God saves me. He's the one that
has the power to save me and I entrust that to Him not to myself. That's
terrible I don't depend on me for anything like that I depend on Him for
that. And then the sincere love of the brethren who share your faith.
These two things will identify us as the ones who belong to God and those who
possess His Spirit. So our lesson today has included a kind of a transitional
section where John qualifies who are the good and who are the bad. Those who obey
Christ they're the truly good and those who disobey Christ by teaching another
gospel or by living not according to His precepts, those are the
bad guys, should be obvious. Note that it's not their politics or
their personality or their position or what they say that determines this, it's
a decision based on one's obedience to Christ. There are
lots of popular likeable people who disobey Jesus, don't be fooled John says.
Those who act like the Lord those are the good guys
those are the good guys. And then John gives another way that a person can be
certain that they are saved: if they love like Jesus loved. If they love the ones
that Jesus loved, who do you love, do you love the people in the world or do you
love the people in the kingdom? These people he says belong to God and they
are the ones who are saved. All right so our next lesson in John be our last one
in his first epistle, we said this covers I II III John and we're
going to look at the final way that he says we can assure ourselves of our place
with God, one more section and then we'll continue II John
III John, we'll do those letters. Again little reading assignment if you wish to read
ahead: I John 4:1-5:21 and we'll tackle that next
week. Alright thank you very much for your attention appreciated.