Few problems have been more troublesome for believers down through the centuries than worldliness. In an effort to be “relevant” and reach our culture, there is the very real danger that we will become just like the culture and lose our distinctiveness. The apostle Paul warned of the danger in Romans 12:2, when he wrote, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind….” J. B. Phillips (The New Testament in Modern English [Geoffrey Bles], p. 332) paraphrases it, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God re-mold your lives from within.”

Toward the end of his life, Paul sadly wrote to Timothy (2 Tim. 4:10), “For Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.” Even though he had once been a fellow-worker with the great apostle Paul (Philemon 24), Demas succumbed to the lure of the world.

I would argue that with the pervasive influence of modern media, the tug of the world is greater now than it ever has been. Daily we are bombarded with attractive people telling us that we can’t be happy unless we own the product that they are selling or adopt the lifestyle that they are pursuing. We thumb through magazines that lure us with beautiful homes, new cars, luxury items, or expensive vacations that all can be ours, if we just get enough money or go into enough debt. There are plenty of credit card offers that will help us get hopelessly in debt, if we’re not careful. It is lust for the things of the world that prompts Americans to spend billions on casino gambling and lottery tickets. Just one lucky hit and you will have it all!

Christian attempts to counter worldliness often have swung to the opposite direction: withdrawal from the world, along with extra rules to reign in the flesh. This is the method of the monastic movement and of isolationist groups, such as the Amish. An extreme example of the ascetic approach was Simon the Stylite (c. 390-459), who lived in extreme austerity for 36 years on top of a platform on a 60-foot pillar. Thousands of people flocked to see this “unworldly” man and listen to his preaching. I doubt that Simon is a model of what John had in mind when he warned us not to love the world!

I grew up in Fundamentalist circles that had lists of what constituted “worldly” behavior. It usually included the “filthy five”: drinking, smoking, attending movies, playing cards, and dancing. Many Christian colleges required their students to sign pledges not to participate in these “worldly” activities. But they often went farther than that. When my dad was a student at one such Bible institute, he could not hold hands with my mother on campus, even though they were married! A student who was near graduation was publicly dismissed from the school because he put his arm around his fiancée in the back of the Institute bus, and a supporter of the school saw this “worldly” behavior and reported him!

Concerning such manmade rules, Paul wrote (Col. 2:23), “These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.” The rules approach to the problem of worldliness doesn’t work!

Worldliness is, at its core, a matter of the heart. If your heart is captured by the world, you will love the things of the world. If your heart is captured by the love of God, you will be drawn to Him and to the things of God. The only way that our hearts can be transformed so that we love God is by the supernatural new birth.

John wrote this letter to churches that were being infected and confused by certain heretics. They claimed to have enlightenment, but John says that they were still in the darkness. They tried to draw people into their inner circle of knowledge, but their doctrine and their practice revealed that they did not truly know God. John gives three tests by which his readers could evaluate these teachers and by which they could tell whether their own faith was sound: the moral test (obedience); the relational test (love for others); and, the doctrinal test (believing the truth about Jesus Christ).

In 2:3-6, John applies the first test: authentic faith obeys God’s commandments. In 2:7-11, he applies the second test: authentic faith loves God’s people. Then he pauses (2:12-14) to give an assuring clarification, showing his confidence that his readers do have authentic faith. Now, he resumes his application of the tests by showing that authentic faith is not of the world (2:15-17), but rather it knows and believes the truth about Jesus Christ (2:18-27). John characteristically draws a sharp line, with no middle ground: If you love the world, you do not love the Father. He shows that…

You must choose your love and then maintain your choice: you love either the world or the Father, but not both.

He’s saying the same thing that Jesus said (Luke 16:13), “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” He did not say, “You should not serve God and Mammon,” but, “you cannot” serve them both. You must make a basic decision in life: Will you live to know God and His eternal love, or will you live for this world and its fleeting pleasures? You can’t take a little of both.

Once you’ve made that decision, you must fight to maintain your choice against the strong current of the world. “Do not love” is a present imperative, indicating that it is an ongoing battle. “Love” is the Greek agape, indicating that it is a commitment, not a feeling, that John is commanding. The only way that you can fight the love of the world is to maintain and grow in your love for the Father. The old Scottish preacher, Thomas Chalmers, has a sermon, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” where he argues that the only thing powerful enough to drive out our love for the world is our new love for the Father. We need to define the key term:

What is “the world” or “worldliness”?

The Greek word for “world,” cosmos, occurs 185 times in the New Testament. John uses it 105 of those times (78 in his Gospel, 24 in his epistles, and 3 in Revelation). It originally meant “order,” and it came to refer to the universe as the well-ordered ornament of God. (Our word “cosmetics” comes from the word. Applying cosmetics is an attempt to bring order!” It may refer to the physical world (John 1:10) or to the people of the world collectively (John 3:16; 1 John 2:2). In those senses, there is nothing wrong with loving the world. We should enjoy God’s creation and we should love sinful people who need to know the Savior.

But John also uses the word to refer to the evil, organized system under Satan, which operates through unbelieving people who are God’s enemies. He writes (1 John 5:19), “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” Jesus spoke of the world hating both Him and those who follow Him (John 15:18-19). It operates on the basis of ungodly thoughts, attitudes, motives, values, and goals (Isa. 55:8-9). It does not seek to promote God’s glory or to submit to His sovereign authority. It is in this sense that we must not love the world.

When John adds that we are not to love “the things of the world,” he does not mean that you must hate your house and your car, although I sometimes do hate my car! Rather, he elaborates on those “things” in 2:16 as, “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.” In other words, worldliness is primarily an attitude that is motivated by wrong desires and the wrongful promotion of self. A poor man who does not have many possessions may be very worldly because he desires those things as the key to happiness. But, a wealthy man may not be worldly in that he uses his possessions as a steward of God and as a means of promoting God’s purpose and glory.

So, to be worldly is to operate on the same principles as unregenerate people. It is to think and act out of selfishness, greed, pride, and personal ambition. It is to have a selfish desire for the things that you do not have and a sinful pride in the things that you do have. Rather than living to please God, who examines the heart, the worldly person tries to impress people, who look on things outwardly. For example, if you refrain from drinking alcoholic beverages because you want to impress others with how spiritual you are, and you take pride in your not drinking and look with contempt on those who do, you are actually being worldly by not drinking! I don’t say that to encourage anyone to drink! I’m only pointing out that worldliness is not a matter of keeping some list of dos and don’ts. It is a matter of your heart motives before God.

John makes two main points:

1. Choose your love: either the world or the Father, but not both (2:15).

John states the main command: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world.” Then, he gives the implication: “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” It is either/or, not both/and. “The love of the Father,” could mean His love for us. But to be parallel to the first half of the verse, it probably refers primarily to our love for God. John means that the one who loves the world does not love God. Or, conversely, our love for God should be the ruling principle of our lives. The only way that we can overcome the strong desires of the flesh and the world is to be consumed with loving God.

John uses “Father” to describe God in 2:15 & 16, as he did in 2:13, where he said that the children had come to know the Father. It focuses us on God’s tender love for us as His children (3:1). It is the Father’s first love for us that motivates us to love Him in response (1 John 4:19). In light of the Father’s great love in sending His own Son to be the propitiation for our sins and adopting us as His children, loving Him should be our great delight and joy.

It is significant that the Bible directs its commandments to our hearts or affections. The greatest commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). Solomon wrote (Prov. 4:23), “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” As Jonathan Edwards argued in his “Treatise on Religious Affections” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards [Banner of Truth], 1:236), “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” If your heart is cold toward the Father and captivated by the glitz of the world, you need to ask yourself, “Do I belong to the Father or to the world?”

So John’s commandment (2:15) challenges us: Choose your love. Either you love the world or you love the Father. You cannot straddle the line. The Father is a jealous lover who deserves and demands total allegiance. Loving the Father begins at the cross when you receive His supreme gift of love, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the substitute for your sins.

2. Maintain your love: Either the world or the Father, but not both (2:16-17).

Any love relationship must be maintained, and that is true of your relationship with the Father. It is especially true in that the enemy is trying to lure you from the Father’s love with all of the temptations of the world, as John shows in 2:16. If you yield to them, you will maintain love for the world. In 2:17 he shows how to maintain your love for the Father.

A. To yield to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life is to maintain love for the world (2:16).

Verse 16 is explanatory of verse 15 (“For”), showing how love for the things in the world does not come from the Father. Many have pointed out how the three aspects of temptation listed here parallel the way that Satan tempted Eve. She saw that the forbidden fruit was good for food (Gen. 3:6), which was an appeal to the lust of the flesh. She saw “that it was a delight to the eyes.” This appealed to the lust of the eyes. She also saw “that the tree was desirable to make one wise.” This appealed to the boastful pride of life.

The same pattern occurs in Satan’s temptation of Jesus (Luke 4:1-12). Satan urged Jesus to turn the stones into bread (the lust of the flesh). He showed Him all the kingdoms of the earth, offering to give them to Him (the lust of the eyes). He encouraged Him to jump off the pinnacle of the temple, which could have been a source of pride in this miraculous accomplishment. Let’s examine John’s three aspects of “all that is in the world”:

(1). To yield to the lust of the flesh is not to love the Father, but the world.

“Lust” refers to a strong desire or impulse. It is used almost always in a negative sense in the New Testament. “Flesh” refers to our fallen nature, which is not eradicated at salvation. “The lust of the flesh” includes any strong desire or inclination of our fallen nature, including sexual sins, but also all activity that stems from the self-seeking, godless nature that we are born with.

Many natural desires are legitimate if they are kept under control and used in the sphere for which God designed them. The desires for food, companionship, sex, and security are legitimate when we keep them within God’s limits and when we do not allow them to usurp His rightful place in our hearts. But they become sinful when we seek to fulfill them in selfish, ungodly ways.

(2). To yield to the lust of the eyes is not to love the Father, but the world.

This term points to the sinful desires of greed and covetousness, to want that which you do not have, but which others may have. It also refers to the desires that stem from false, superficial values. Through our eyes, the world appeals to us to find satisfaction in the superficial, which never can satisfy. “Buy this bigger, newer home and you will be happy!” “Find a beautiful woman (or a handsome man) and you will be satisfied.” “Get the perfect job and have plenty of money and your inner longings will be quenched.” But, as is evident by the lives of the rich and famous, none of these things deliver what they promise.

(3). To yield to the boastful pride of life is not to love the Father, but the world.

While the lust of the flesh and lust of the eyes refer to the desire to have what you do not have, the boastful pride of life refers to sinful pride over what you do have. It is the desire to be better than others so that you can glory in yourself and your accomplishments.

There is a proper sense, of course, of doing your best in school, athletics, or at work in order to be a good steward of God’s gifts and to bring glory to Him. But it’s easy to forget that He gave you everything that you have (1 Cor. 4:7) and to start boasting in your achievements and possessions as if you attained these things by your own intelligence or hard work. It’s easy to think like Nebuchadnezzar, who said (Dan. 4:30), “Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” God immediately drove him out into the fields to live as a wild beast until his heart was humbled!

We all battle these temptations daily, and we often fail. But John’s point is, if you go on yielding to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life as your way of life, you are not maintaining love for the Father. Rather, you are maintaining love for the world. Worldly people wallow in these things; God’s children fight them continually. How do we maintain our love for the Father?

B. To obey the Father with our eyes on eternity is to maintain our love for Him (2:17).

To obey the Father is to maintain your love for Him. The opposite of loving the world is not only loving the Father, but also obeying Him—“doing the will of God.” “The will of God” here does not refer to following His direction in your life. It refers to obeying His commandments as revealed in His Word. As Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). “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” (John 15:10).

A key reason to obey God’s commandments is the transitory nature of this world and its lusts, as contrasted with the eternal promise of heaven: “The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God abides [lit.] forever” (2:17; the original NASB correctly translates “abides,” not “lives”). If you love the world or the things in the world, you will lose them all at death. All that the worldly person lives for is gone in an instant and means nothing in light of eternity. Even if you have attained your worldly desires, what good are they at death? But, if you do God’s will, you will abide with Him in heaven throughout all eternity!

Conclusion

In 1989, Tom Sine wrote some insightful words that apply just as much now, as then (Christianity Today [3/17/89], p. 52):

Whatever commands our time, energy, and resources commands us. And if we are honest, we will admit that our lives really aren’t that different from those of our secular counterparts. I suspect that one of the reasons we are so ineffective in evangelism is that we are so much like the people around us that we have very little to which we can call them. We hang around church buildings a little more. We abstain from a few things. But we simply aren’t that different. We don’t even do hedonism as well as the folks around us … but we keep on trying.

As a result of this unfortunate accommodation, Christianity is reduced to little more than a spiritual crutch to help us through the minefields of the upwardly mobile life. God is there to help us get our promotions, our house in the suburbs, and our bills paid. Somehow God has become a co-conspirator in our agendas instead of our becoming a co-conspirator in His. Something is seriously amiss.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself, to evaluate whether you love the world or the Father (adapted from A. W. Pink, Exposition of 1 John [Associated Authors and Publishers], p. 126):

• Which do you seek with more fervor: the wealth and honors of the world, or the riches of grace and the approval of God?
• Which have the greater attraction: the pleasures of the world, which are only for a season, or those pleasures at God’s right hand, which are for eternity?
• Wherein lies your confidence: in the money you have in your bank account or investments, or in the living and faithful God, who has promised to supply all your needs?
• Which causes the deeper sorrow: a temporal loss, or a break in your fellowship with God?
• Upon which do you get more joy: spending money for personal comforts and luxuries, or spending money to further the gospel?
• What most dominates your mind: thoughts and schemes after worldly advancements, or resolutions and efforts to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord?

Some of you need to make the basic choice: Will you love the Father, or will you love the world? Most of us have made that choice, but we need to maintain it. Do not yield to the temptations of the world, but do the will of God. You will abide forever!

Do Not Love the World

2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. ^wIf anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Believers must love God (2:5) and love their brothers and sisters in Christ (2:10), but they must not love this evil world. John was writing to those in the church who had remained true to their faith. They had withstood false teaching and had remained unified together with other believers. But John warned against a secret spiritual danger that could still threaten them—loving this evil world. The “world,” as used here, does not refer to God’s creation that God declared good and that reveals his glory (see Psalms 8; 24:1). Nor does it refer to the “world” that God “so loved that he gave his only Son” to die for it (John 3:16). Instead, the term “world” here refers to the realm of Satan’s influence, the system made up of those who hate God and his will. Believers should love the people of the world enough to share God’s message with them, but they should not love the morally corrupt system in place in the world. Satan controls this evil world. His world opposes God and his followers and tempts those followers away from God and into sin (see James 4:4).

GOD VS. THE EVIL WORLD

John warned believers not lo love this world and its selfish pleasures. Christians stand in a war zone. The battle takes place here on earth as the spiritual forces of God battle against those of Satan. While God allows Satan to rule over the earth through the minds of those in rebellion against God, Satan’s kingdom will one day be destroyed. Christians live in this world but are not of it. Satan hates Christians’ detachment and attempts to make life as difficult as possible for Christ’s followers. To give in to the senseless lust for possessions and power, to spend money on selfish desires and foolish upgrades in cars, clothes, homes, and equipment while ignoring the needs of others is to lose the cosmic war to Satan. So, Christian, know that Satan wars against you, and remember that you represent the winning side.

Reference		Verse (quoted from )
Matthew 6:24	“ ‘No one can serve two masters: for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.You cannot serve God and wealth.’ ”
John 12:31	“ ‘Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.’ ”
John 14:30	“ ‘I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of world is coming. He has no power over me.’ ”
John 15:18	“ ‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.’ ”
Ephesians 6:11–12	“Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
James 4:4	“Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wish to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God
1 John 2:16	“For all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world.”
1 John 3:1	“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God: and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”
1 John 4:4	“Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
1 John 5:19	“We know that we are God’s children, and that the whole world lies under the power of the evil one.”

How do people “love” the world? They do so by greedily and selfishly loving all that it offers them, such as riches, power, and self-indulgence. People cannot love both God and the world—such “loves” are mutually exclusive. The word for “love” here does not mean the self-sacrificing love that believers are to have for God and others; instead, it means taking pleasure in something, in this case, taking pleasure in what is opposed to God. John wanted to show his readers that to attempt to love both God and the world would be as impossible as trying to combine light and darkness (1:5). Therefore, when you love the world, you show that you do not have the love of the Father in you. God and the sinful world are such opposites that it is impossible to love both at once (see chart on the previous page).

These words do not mean that believers are to remove themselves from all contact with the sinful world (that would be virtually impossible), nor are they to stoically refrain from anything pleasurable. They do mean that when contact with the sinful world and its worldly pleasures specifically disagrees with God’s Word, then Christians are to turn away from “the world” in order to obey God.

 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. ¹⁷ And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

2:16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.  John warned his readers against loving the world and all that it offers (2:15) because all that is in the world … is not of the Father. Jesus made clear this tension when he said, “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24 ). “World” refers here not to the creation—for that was most certainly “of the Father,” because the Bible records that God created everything. The “world” here, as in 2:15, is the present evil system that is ruled by Satan and opposed to God. This “world” has rebelled and fallen into sin. Nothing in this world system loves the Father or finds its source in him; “all” refers to Satan’s domain.

Taking “all that is in the world,” John made three basic categories. These three categories are subjective, for they speak of attitudes of the heart. Believers may look perfectly clean and serene on the outside but harbor any or all of these attitudes inside. John feared that this might happen, so he was warning the believers to restrain such desires.

1. The lust of the flesh. Jesus spoke of how adultery begins not with the act, but with the desire—with looking at another person with lust in one’s heart (Matthew 5:28). These words picture any kind of desire but especially the craze for sex. No doubt the people of ancient Ephesus understood this—the pagan religions of their city glorified sex. The world today has many similarities. Sex in all of its immoral and even grotesque forms becomes portrayed through movies, on television, in print, or on the computer. These appeal to the sinful nature. While this category seems to refer mostly to sexual lust, any sort of selfish or greedy cravings simply to satisfy one’s physical desires in rebellion against God could also be considered “lust of the flesh.” This would include anything purely physical, exploitive, and self-centered.
2. The lust of the eyes. Sins of craving and accumulating possessions (bowing to the god of materialism) could be placed in this category. While sex may also be included here, people’s “eyes” can lust after many things—Eve wanted the fruit that was “pleasing to the eye” (Genesis 3:6 ), Achan saw the beautiful robe from Babylon and the silver and gold (Joshua 7:21), and David saw a beautiful woman bathing and wanted her (2 Samuel 11:2–3). People would have to be blind not to see anything, but believers must not become obsessed with what they see.
3. The pride of life. Some versions translate this as “pride in possessions.” It refers to both the inward attitude and the outward boasting because of an obsession with one’s status or possessions. The word “pride” may carry a note of exaggeration here; this person brags in order to impress people, but the bragging may stretch the truth.

WORLDLINESS

John’s key message was that Christians should avoid sinful desires. Today, Christians have the same struggle. Some Christians define worldliness by a certain set of overt behaviors. Refrain from this list of questionable activities, the reasoning goes, and you avoid worldliness. Note, however, that John’s description of what it means to “love the world” targets attitudes. “Cravings,” “lusts,” “pride”—these terms describe internal heart attitudes that can easily go undetected. One may appear to be free of worldly activities and yet be filled with sinful desires. For example, it’s possible to avoid dirty videos or books and still harbor illicit sexual desires. A person can live simply, even while greedily desiring possessions. A person can feign humility and still secretly clamor for recognition and honor. The lesson? Don’t buy into simplistic views of worldliness. It is a deep-seated condition. With God’s help, renounce worldliness and keep your sinful cravings under his control

TEMPTATIONS

	Temptation of Eve (Genesis 3:4–6)		Temptation of Christ (Matthew 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13)	Temptation of Christians Today
Lust of the flesh The desire to fulfill pleasures, physical desires		The fruit looked delicious and would be good to eat.	Turn the stones into  bread	Take what is easier or more pleasurable—rather than God’s will
Lust of the eyes The constant craving for more		The fruit was a pleasure to look at.	Gain all the kingdoms of the world, as far as the eye can see	Respond impulsively, without restraint or self-control
The pride of life The desire for power or possessions		The fruit was desirable for gaining wisdom, Eve wanted to “be like God.”	Throw yourself down and angels will rescue you, for God will not allow you to be hurt	Accumulate things rather than seek to serve others

All three categories show selfishness and greed. People who focus on possessions, want whatever they see, and boast about what they have show that they are of the world and not of God. Yet these sins, so subtle as to begin almost unnoticed within the heart, become the temptations that lead to the sin’s outworkings in people’s lives. And believers are not immune. John warned his readers to “stop loving this evil world” (2:15). We must not have divided or halfhearted loyalty to God.

By contrast, God values self-control, a spirit of generosity, and a commitment to humble service. Believers can give the impression of avoiding worldly pleasures while still harboring worldly attitudes in their hearts. However, they can do as Jesus did—love sinners and spend time with them while maintaining a commitment to the values of God’s kingdom.

2:17 And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.  The people who live in rebellion to God with their transient, unfulfilling desires (2:16) are focusing on a world that is already passing away. The workaholic will die unfulfilled. The greedy politician will die in despair. The pleasure-mad partygoers will find their lives ruined by drugs or alcohol. Indulgence never satisfies; it only whets the appetite for more. Christians, however, understand that the world will not last forever and that no one lives on this planet forever. Because they are believers, however, they know that those who do the will of God live forever. How can this be? “Those who do the will of God” refers to believers who will remain forever united with God. It is foolish to hang on to the world and whatever fulfillment it offers because this world is passing away. But to turn away from the sinful world and hold on to God means to hold on to the eternal. Those who do so will “live forever” with him. Every person will die and then must forever let go of the possessions and pleasures of this world. Those who trust in God have already begun a life everlasting.

LET IT GO

When the desire for possessions and sinful pleasures feels so intense, we probably doubt that these objects of desire will all one day pass away. It may be even more difficult to believe that the person who does the will of God will live forever. But this was John’s conviction based on the facts of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and promises. Knowing that this evil world will end can give you the courage to deny yourself temporary pleasures in this world in order to enjoy what God has promised us for eternity.

^w See James 4:4

Years ago, a “Dear Abby” (Arizona Daily Sun [1/10/99]) column ran a story by a retired schoolteacher. One day she had her students take out two sheets of paper and list the names of the other students in the room. Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down by their names.

She took the papers home that weekend and compiled a list for each student of what the others had said about him or her. On Monday she gave each student his or her list.

Before long, everyone was smiling. “Really?” one whispered. “I never knew that meant anything to anyone.” “I didn’t know anyone liked me that much!”

Years later, the teacher went to the funeral of one of her former students, who had been killed in Vietnam. Many who had been in that class years before were there. After the service, the young man’s parents approached the teacher and said, “We want to show you something. Mark was carrying this when he was killed.” The father pulled out of a wallet the list of all the good things Mark’s classmates had said about him. “Thank you so much for doing that,” Mark’s mother said. “As you can see, Mark treasured it.”

A group of Mark’s classmates overheard the exchange. One smiled sheepishly and said, “I still have my list. It’s in my top desk drawer at home.” Another said, “I have mine, too. It’s in my diary.” “I put mine in our wedding album,” said a third. “I bet we all saved them,” said a fourth. “I carry mine with me at all times.” At that point, the teacher sat down and cried. And, she used that assignment in every class for the rest of her teaching career.

That story shows how much we all need encouragement. The apostle John has been dishing out some strong words as he warns the flock about the false teachers who were trying to deceive them.

John was writing to every believer in the church—his dear children who had experienced forgiveness through Jesus. Some were mature in the faith and had a long-standing relationship with Christ. Others had struggled with Satan’s temptations and had won. Still others had learned about Christ and were just beginning their spiritual journey.

Every person in the church needs to grow in Christ and to love every other person in the church. As children learn about Christ, they grow in their ability to win battles over temptation. As young adults move from victory to victory, they grow in their relationship with Christ. Older adults, having known Christ for years, have developed the wisdom needed to teach young people and start the cycle all over again.

John then warned the believers against worldliness, for one cannot love God and also love the world.

He has just said (2:11) that if you don’t love your brother, you’re in the darkness—not saved! He is about to say that if you love the world, you don’t have the Father’s love in you (2:15). But before he says that, he inserts this short section to encourage those who may have been troubled by what he had written.

John wants his readers, at whatever stage in the Christian life they are at, to consider what God has done in their lives. He wants them to know that they have authentic faith. (John inserts other similar assuring clarifications in 3:19-22 and 4:17-18.)

John Calvin put it (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 182), “having faithfully spoken of good works, lest he should seem to give them more importance than he ought to have done, he carefully calls us back to contemplate the grace of Christ.”

Six times John uses the perfect tense in the explanatory (“because”) clauses. It describes action completed in the past with ongoing results.

John Stott (The Epistles of John [Eerdmans], p. 98) explains, “John is laying emphasis on the assured standing into which every Christian has come, whatever his stage of spiritual development.” To grow, we must be assured and encouraged about what God has done and is doing in our lives.

John’s main application is,

Wherever you’re at in your Christian walk, God wants you to be encouraged by His grace so that you will grow more.

1. There are stages of growth in the Christian life: Don’t be content with where you’re at, but seek to grow.

Others, however, argue that John is addressing three groups in terms of spiritual maturity (not chronological age). The odd order may be explained as his taking both ends of the spectrum first, and then showing the means of getting from the one end to the other.

I am comfortable with this three-fold breakdown, as long as we keep in mind that what John writes to the little children also applies to every stage of the Christian life.

Even mature believers need to remember that our sins have been forgiven and that we know God as our Father.

Also, the little children in the faith and the young men need to see clearly the goal of becoming spiritual fathers, who “know Him who has been from the beginning.”

And the children need to be prepared for the battles against the enemy that they must win in order to grow to maturity.

But the point is clear, both here and in other Scriptures, that we should never be complacent with where we’re at in our Christian walk, but should daily strive to know Christ better in order to grow to maturity.

Physical growth is normal for children, and it’s always abnormal when children do not grow and mature. Even spiritual adults should always press on toward the goal of knowing Jesus Christ better and growing in godliness:

Philippians 3:7–16 (ESV) — 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Hebrews 5:11–6:3 (ESV) — 11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. 1 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits.

Hosea 6:3 (ESV) — 3 Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

If you become spiritually complacent, you will not remain neutral; you will go backwards.

I’m convinced that God’s grace as shown to us on the cross is the greatest motivator to keep growing.

2. God wants us to be encouraged by His grace so that we will be motivated to grow.

Frankly, often it is more difficult for those of us from Christian homes to appreciate God’s grace as the motivator to grow. Those who have been saved from a difficult past know where they would be if God had not intervened in their lives. They are more likely to see that they have been forgiven much, and thus to love Christ much (Luke 7:36-50).

Those of us who grew up in the church are prone to think pharisaically that we didn’t need as much forgiveness as the person with a sordid past. We need to see how wretchedly sinful our hearts really are.

If God had let me go, I’d be enslaved to a multitude of terrible sins. With the hymn writer, we need to sing often, “O to grace, how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be; let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee” (Robert Robinson, “Come Thou Fount”). God’s grace encourages me to grow in my walk with Him. John presents three stages of growth:

A. The foundation of the Christian life is to know that your sins are forgiven and to know the Father.

Here we’re focusing on John’s twofold address to the “little children” (2:12) and the “children” (2:13). If there is a nuance of difference between the two terms, “little children” (from a Greek word meaning, to beget or bring forth) points to the relationship by birth between a child and his parents. “Children” (from a Greek word emphasizing training) points to children under discipline or training.

By using both terms, John shows his authority as an apostle and his affection as a spiritual father to his family.

(1). As God’s little children, we need to be encouraged by the truth that our sins are forgiven for His name’s sake.

2:12 “I’m writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake” (2:12).

The next three verses contain two sets of triplets that describe John’s readers as children (2:12), fathers (2:13), and young people (2:13). There are three main views about the meaning of these classifications:

The term “dear children” has no reference to age; rather, it was a term of endearment that John used for all those to whom he was writing. Christ used the same words when speaking to his disciples (John 13:33). All who have believed in Jesus Christ as Savior become God’s children. Many had come to Jesus through John’s ministry, so he called them his own “children.” These true followers have in common the fact that their sins have been forgiven because of Jesus. They have accepted the fact of their sinfulness, have confessed their sins, and have been forgiven because of Jesus’ death on the cross.

It seems, therefore, that each group has qualities that bear resemblance to all John’s readers. For example, viewed as little children, people knew their sins were forgiven. Viewed as fathers, they not only had a relationship with God, but they also had knowledge of God that comes from obedience to his commandments. Viewed as young people, they are strong. These qualities ought to be true of all believers. All Christians should know that their sins are forgiven, should be strong against the evil one, and should have mature knowledge of God and his Word. The repetition of the categories provides stylistic difference and poetic emphasis and allows additional comments on two of the categories.^[1]

Don’t ever allow yourself to read a verse like that and think, “Ho hum!” The forgiveness of all of your sins for His name’s sake is the greatest blessing in the whole world! Never get over the amazing truth that although you were a rebel who deserved God’s wrath, He graciously sent His Son to bear the penalty in your place!

As David exclaims (Ps. 32:1-2), “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, ….”

After rehearsing the sins of Israel in the wilderness, Nehemiah (9:17b) proclaims, “But You are a God of forgiveness, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.”

Jesus’ last words to the disciples before He ascended into heaven were (Luke 24:47), “that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

John Bunyan has a wonderful book, “The Jerusalem Sinner Saved,” where he expounds on the fact that the good news of forgiveness of sins be proclaimed first in the very city that crucified the Savior.

When John tells the little children in the faith that their sins are forgiven “for His name’s sake,” he means that their sins are forgiven on account of the person and work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Our sins are not forgiven because of anything that we do. We cannot do penance to work off our debt of sin, because Jesus paid the debt in full. We cannot add good works to atone for our sins, because Jesus atoned for them fully through His blood.

Maybe you’re thinking, “But you don’t know all the terrible things that I have done. Doesn’t a really bad sinner have to do something to qualify for God’s forgiveness?”

Learn from the apostle Paul, who calls himself the foremost of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). In Ephesians 1:7-8, he writes, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.”

Forgiveness of sins is for His name’s sake, not for anything you have done or can do. All you can do is receive it by faith.

Notice, too, that forgiveness of sins is something that the youngest child of God can and should experience. It is foundational to your Christian walk that you know that your sins are forgiven, not because of anything in you, but solely because of what Jesus did for you on the cross.

The enemy will repeatedly come to accuse and condemn you for your sins. Answer him every time, not with your performance, but with the name and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

2:14 I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young people, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. 

This verse repeats the message of 2:13 to fathers and then amplifies the message to young people. The overlap of the advice can be seen here where John wrote to you, children, because you know the Father. The phrase refers to experiential knowledge. All Christians ought to have personal knowledge of God the Father through Jesus Christ his Son; otherwise, they cannot be believers. The fathers … know him who is from the beginning. Again, “him” refers to Jesus Christ, who is eternal. To the young people, John wrote that they are strong and the word of God abides in them, and he repeated that they have overcome the evil one. This strength is not the natural physical vigor of young people but the power of God’s Word in them through the Holy Spirit. Isaiah wrote, “Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:30–31 ). God’s people can enjoy this power and can be victorious over Satan, John went on to affirm, only by freeing themselves from the grasp of the evil things of the world (2:15). Since Satan controls the minds of those in revolt against God (the world, see 5:19), believers must constantly guard against his assaults by becoming saturated with God’s Word. They can remain strong only as the word of God abides in them.

(2). As God’s children, we need to be encouraged by the fact that we have come to know the Father.

Believers have been set free from Satan’s authority and have been given power over him. Yet the battle rages as spiritual warfare continue between Satan’s forces and God’s forces. Satan battles against anyone who loves the Lord. But believers are promised power in times of intense spiritual battle. The following steps will help you if you sense that you a fighting a spiritual battle:

1.  Realize that the battle is not against “flesh and blood” but against the spirit world and evil forces.	Ephesians 6:12
2. Trust that Satan’s power can be broken in any specific area of his domain, and utilize the powerful spiritual weapons given to you by God for the destruction of Satan’s power.	Acts 26:18, 2 Corinthians 10:4–5; Ephesians 6:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:8
3.  Challenge Satan and his power by believing in Jesus’ name, using God’s Word, praying in the Spirit, and fasting.	Matthew 6:16; Acts 16:16–18; Ephesians 6:17–18
4.  Stay fervently committed to God’s truth and righteousness….	Romans 12:1–2; Ephesians 6:14
5.  Proclaim the gospel of the kingdom in the fullness of the Spirit.	Matthew 4:23; Acts 1:18; Romans 1:16: Ephesians 6:15
6.  Pray especially for the Holy Spirit to convict the lost.	John 16:7–11
7.  Keep morally fit by loving God, not the temptations of this world.	1 Corinthians 10:13; 1 John 2:15–17

As with the forgiveness of sins, so knowing God as your Father is foundational to your Christian walk. In his classic book, Knowing God ([IVP], p. 182), J. I. Packer wrote, You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator.

In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.

From the earliest stage of our Christian life, we should know God as our Father. He loves us and cares for us far more than any earthly father ever could. As John will go on to say (3:1), “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.” Knowing that God has forgiven all your sins and that He is your Father are foundational to your Christian life. Never forget these precious truths!

B. The goal of the Christian life is to be spiritual fathers, who know Him who has been from the beginning.

John jumps from the beginning to the end, before going back to the means of getting from one to the other. Both times, for emphasis, he repeats exactly the same thing, that the fathers “know Him who has been from the beginning.” The verb, know, is in the perfect tense, meaning, you have come to know Him and still know Him. The Greek verb means to know by experience.

But, why does John refer to God as “Him who has been from the beginning”? Why is this a distinctive of those who are spiritually mature? I suggest three reasons:

(1). The phrase focuses on the eternality of God, and spiritual maturity involves developing an eternal perspective on life.

This phrase prepares us for the next section, where John says (2:17), “For the world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives [lit., abides] forever.” The older you get, the more you realize how short and uncertain this life really is. As you grow older, you see more clearly that all of the things that people strive to attain—riches, recognition, pleasure, adventure, or whatever—fade away in the face of death and eternity. The earlier in your Christian life that you can learn that the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal One, who was with the Father in the beginning, and that you will quickly step out of time and into eternity, the more you will grow spiritually. That eternal perspective will help you not to get enamored by the world and the things in the world.

(2). The phrase points us to God’s eternal purpose in Christ, and to the wonderful fact that it included us by His sovereign choice.

Paul wrote (Eph. 1:8b-12), In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.

Babes in Christ often stumble over the doctrine of God’s sovereign election, but spiritual fathers submit to it and, as Jesus did, they rejoice in it (see Luke 10:21-22). We rejoice in it because it means that salvation is not a matter of our feeble human will, but rather of God’s mighty will and purpose. All praise goes to Him for the wonder that “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4)!

(3). The phrase points us to Jesus Christ as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, of our Christian experience.

(See Rev. 1:8, 17.) All of God’s riches are ours in Christ. We will spend all eternity plumbing the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge (Eph. 3:18-19). And so the goal of the Christian life is to grow into spiritual fathers, who “know Him who has been from the beginning.” Of course, that process never is complete, and so we should always be pressing on to know Him better. But, how do we grow from spiritual children to be fathers in the faith?

C. The means of attaining the goal is to be strong young men who overcome the evil one through God’s Word.

John writes to the young men, “because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (2:14). These words show us that the Christian life is not a perpetual Sunday School picnic! It is an intense battle with the enemy of our souls, who seeks to devour us (1 Pet. 5:8).

While we can and should experience victories over the temptations that the enemy puts in our path, there is another sense in which such victories are never complete or final. He doesn’t give up! So we must understand the victories of these spiritually strong young men in a relative sense. Also, even when we win such victories, we are never strong in ourselves, but only in the Lord, and in the strength of His might (Eph. 6:10). Often the weapons that the enemy brings against us are not frontal, but rather deceptive. As Paul wrote (2 Cor. 11:3), “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” So we must always be alert to his schemes (2 Cor. 2:11).

It is only when you allow the Word of God to abide in you that you will overcome the enemy’s schemes. The Lord Jesus overcame the tempter every time by citing Scripture (Matt. 4:4, 7, 10). The only way that you will grow strong spiritually and overcome the evil one is to let the Word of God dwell in your heart by meditating on it day and night (Ps. 1:2) and treasuring it in your heart (Ps. 119:9, 11).

Conclusion

Most of us probably can remember our defeats much more easily than we can remember our victories. God doesn’t want your defeats to sabotage your Christian walk. His grace means that your sins are forgiven and that you are now His child. Knowing that should not lead you to sin more, but rather to be encouraged to grow more.

The German poet, Goethe, said, “Correction does much, but encouragement does more.” The Bible has both, of course, in proportion to what we need. Here, John wants to encourage us, no matter where we’re at in our level of maturity. But to be effective, encouragement must be true, not mere flattery. The truest thing about you is what God says in His Word. If you have trusted in Jesus Christ, God says that your sins are forgiven for His name’s sake. He says that you have come to know Him as Father. He wants you to grow strong through His Word, so that you will overcome the evil one. As you do, you will grow into a mature believer, who knows Him who is from the beginning. That’s why John wrote these encouraging words.

 

ENCOURAGEMENT: “An Essential Part of Christian Life”

 INTRODUCTION: Today’s lesson is on encouragement.  I thought that it would be beneficial for everyone to appreciate more fully why we all need it and why it is important.  It seems in the present times we live in there is little place or time for encouragement. The news media focuses on tragedy and the latest crisis but seldom on human interest stories that provide hope and encouragement.   Think of a time when you were encouraged and what a difference that made. I remember, when running the NYC Marathon many years ago, that encouragement from a friend made all the difference (I was experiencing dehydration at the 14 mile mark and was considering quitting) that enabled me to continue the race to the finish line.

DEFINITION OF ENCOURAGEMENT: What does the word encouragement mean?  Webster’s Dictionary defines it as “…to inspire with courage, spirit or hope; spur on; give help or patronage to.”  In the biblical Greek there are many variations and tenses of the word “parakaleo,” however, it is generally translated as “to invite to come; to call upon for or upon someone as for aid, to invoke God, to beseech, entreat; to exhort, admonish as in calling upon someone to do something.”

WHAT IS THERE TO BE ENCOURAGED ABOUT? So what is there to be encouraged about?  Why does the Bible say that it is important to encourage one another? Let’s examine some scriptures that provide reasons to be encouraged.

God Has Overcome the World: We all know about the world we live in today and the ensuing chaos. In John 16:32-33, Jesus explains to his disciples the troubled reality that they will soon face yet reassures them that he has overcome the world: “A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home.  You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Jesus encouraged the disciples by reminding them of the reality they will face so that they would not be surprised or discouraged.  Despite their future predicament, Jesus reminds them that he is in control and that, despite his impending death, he will rise in victory and provide the lasting solution to sin.  Likewise, we should not be discouraged about our situation today because God is in control and that he has provided for our salvation through the cross!

God Has Prepared a Place for Us in Heaven:  In John 14:1-4, Jesus assures his disciples that he has prepared a place for them in heaven, where they will be with God for eternity. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.  My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

That assurance of a place in heaven with God applies to us as well!  We should be comforted and reassured about this great promise!

God Promises Us Eternal Life: Think about it—eternal life—in God’s presence.  Eternity is a very long time…really long—actually a never-ending length of time.  John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  If we remain faithful to him to the end, we can be assured that we will be with God for eternity.  Recall that John 6:40 states “For my Father’s will is that everyone who  looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

God Provides Salvation: In Romans 10:11-13, Paul reminds us that “…anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.  For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” We are assured of our salvation which is available for all—regardless of where we came from—is that not encouraging?

We Are Provided Forgiveness: Is it not encouraging to know that we are forgiven for our sins? In Numbers 14:18, the Lord is described as being “…slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.”  Likewise, in Ephesians 1:7-8, in Christ we “…have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us…” We are freed from the law of sin and death and that there is no condemnation for those in Christ.  In Psalms 103:10, God is described as one who does not “treat us as our sins deserve” or “repay us according to our iniquities.”

Encouragement By the Example of Others: The examples of faithful believers who have gone before us can also be a source of encouragement. The apostle Paul provides us with an example of faith    .

^[1] Bruce B. Barton and Grant R. Osborne, 1, 2 & 3 John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1998), 39–40.

I think that we all chuckle at the Peanuts cartoon strip because so often we see the truth about ourselves there. That is especially so when Linus protests, “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand!” Love in the abstract is a cinch. It’s loving those irritating people that I rub shoulders with that is not easy.

John’s letter has been compared to a spiral staircase because he keeps returning to the same three topics: love, obedience, and truth. Though these themes recur, it is not true that they are merely repetitious. Each time we return to a topic, we look at it from a different point of view and are taken more deeply into it.

We will learn about our love for other believers with the emphasis in 1 John 2 on fellowship. A believer who is “walking in the light” will evidence that fact by loving the brethren. We’ll also see in 1 John 3 that the emphasis is on his relationship with other believers. Christians love one another because they have all been born of God, which makes them all brothers and sisters in Christ.

1 John 2:7-11: “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. {8} Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. {9} Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. {10} Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. {11} But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.”

In 1 John 2:3-6, the apostle gives a test by which you can know that you truly know Jesus Christ, namely, if you walk in obedience to His word. In 2:6, he states, “The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.” Then, in 2:7-11, John goes on to apply this test of obedience more specifically to the area of love. If Jesus’ life and especially His death epitomized love, then those who claim to follow Him are obligated to live in love.

In the Upper Room, on the night He was betrayed, Jesus demonstrated His great love for the disciples by taking a towel and a basin of water and washing the disciples’ feet. After that unforgettable object lesson, He drove the point home (John 13:14-15), “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.” He was not instituting a ceremonial foot-washing service, where everyone comes with clean feet to be washed! He was saying something much more difficult to practice, that we who follow Jesus must set aside our rights and serve one another out of love.

In that same chapter (John 13:34-35), Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Obviously, those words of Jesus were behind John’s words about the old, new commandment. It may be that the heretics against whom John was writing claimed to have some “new” truths. Using an obvious play on words, John counters them by saying that we don’t need new truth, but rather the old truth that his readers learned early in their Christian experience. On the other hand, if you want “new” truth, John says that the old commandment is the new commandment, which Jesus gave to us. In short,

Loving one another is an essential mark of a true Christian.

Having said that, I must quickly add that that we must define “love” biblically, not culturally. Culturally, if you mention the word “love,” people think of “niceness.” They picture a loving person as always being nice and sweet towards everyone. He never confronts sin or error. He never gets angry about evil or says anything that might upset someone.

But if you are at all familiar with the four gospels, you will immediately see that by this cultural definition, Jesus was not a loving man! Jesus loved the Jewish religious leaders when He said to them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites” (Matt. 23:15). He loved Peter when He said to him, “Get behind Me, Satan” (Matt. 16:23). He loved the multitude when He said to them, “You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you?” (Matt. 17:17). The apostle Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit, whose first fruit is love, when he said to Elymas, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?” Then, he struck him blind (see Acts 13:9-11).

I’m not saying that we should go around blasting people, while claiming that we’re loving them! I’m only pointing out that our definition of love, in a practical sense, must encompass all that the Bible says about love, not what our worldly culture says. John makes two points in our text:

1. To love one another is to obey our Lord’s commandment (2:7-8).

In these two verses, John makes four points:

A. Jesus’ command to love one another is both old and new.

John never specifically identifies the old, new commandment in these verses, and he only mentions love once in this entire section (2:10). But his reference to the new commandment makes it obvious that he is referring to Jesus’ command to love one another.

This commandment was old in two senses. First, it was old in that Moses taught it in the Law, “… you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). Jesus identified this as the second greatest commandment, after the command to love God with all your being (Matt. 22:37-40). So in that sense, this command had been with God’s people for 1,400 years.

But the main sense in which this was an old commandment is that these believers had heard it from the very earliest days of their Christian experience (2:7): “… which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard.” John uses the phrase, “from the beginning,” in the same way in 1 John 3:11, “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (also, 2 John 5).

But, John says (2:8), the commandment is also new, in that Jesus had issued it as the new commandment (John 13:34). John Stott (The Epistles of John [Eerdmans], p. 93) suggests four ways that this old commandment became new when Jesus issued it. First, it was new in its emphasis, in that Jesus brought it together with the command to love God as the summation of the entire Law. Second, it was new in its quality, in that His own self-sacrifice on the cross became the standard. Third, it was new in its extent, in that in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus extended the definition of neighbor to go beyond race or religion. Anyone in need who crosses our path is our neighbor. He said that we should love even our enemies. Finally, it was new in the disciples’ continuing apprehension of it. The love of Jesus on the cross is inexhaustible. We can never plumb its depths. And so as we grow in our understanding of His great love, we will grow in our apprehension of how we must love one another. So Jesus’ command is both old and new.

B. From the beginning of your Christian walk, you should learn how to establish and maintain loving relationships.

John tells his readers that they have had this commandment “from the beginning,” and then identifies it as “the word which you have heard” (2:7). It was part and parcel with the gospel that they had believed at the outset of their Christian experience. When we hear and respond to the good news that Jesus Christ died for sinners, at that point the love of God is “poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5). The first fruit of the Spirit is love (Gal. 5:22). As I mentioned, the entire Bible may be summed up by the two great commandments, to love God and to love one another. So learning how to establish and maintain loving relationships is not “graduate level” Christianity. It is basic, beginning Christianity.

Many of you came into the faith from backgrounds where you did not experience love. Your parents abused you verbally or physically. Maybe you were in a series of abusive relationships with the opposite sex. You’ve had no models of how to love other people. It is urgent, once you trust in Christ as your Savior, to learn from God’s Word and from more mature believers how to love others in a practical, daily manner. You will need to unlearn many bad ways of relating to others that you brought with you from the past. You will need to relearn how to think and speak and act in loving ways, especially toward those who wrong you. If you do not learn to love others, you will fester with anger and bitterness, and your relationship with Christ will suffer.

It all begins with how you think about others. Instead of thinking first about yourself, your feelings, your rights, and your needs, you must learn to think first about others. How can I show this difficult person the love of Jesus Christ? How can I serve this person in love? Rather than thinking angry thoughts about how he wronged you and how you’ll get even, you begin to think about how Jesus wants you to think about the one who mistreated you. You begin to pray for this person, that he would come to know Jesus. You look for opportunities to return good instead of evil. I recommend that you write out Paul’s description of love (1 Cor. 13:4-7) on a card and read it over several times each morning, until you have in your mind how a loving person acts. Do the same with 1 Peter 3:8-12.

Then, love extends to your speech. You put off abusive speech that tears down the other person, and you put on speech that builds him up (Gal. 5:15; Eph. 4:29, 31-32; Col. 3:8). You stop lying or stretching the truth to your own advantage and begin speaking the truth in love (Eph. 4:15, 25). You cease from gossip and slander (2 Cor. 12:20).

Then, in your behavior you begin to practice loving deeds (Rom. 12:9-13; Eph. 5:2). You look for opportunities to serve others, beginning in your home. You become “zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14). Again, this is not advanced, graduate level Christianity. This is freshman Christianity 101. But, maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t have the strength to do what you’re saying.” Then,

C. Your new relationship with Jesus Christ is central to practicing biblical love towards others.

John says that this old, new commandment “is true in Him and in you” (2:8). It is true in Him because the Lord Jesus is the greatest example of love in the history of the world. He left the splendor and perfect holiness of heaven, where He enjoyed unbroken fellowship with the Father. He came to this cruddy, sin-stained world, not as the conquering King, but as a lowly servant. He was obedient to death on the cross at the hands of sinful men that He could have obliterated, if He had given the command. He did it all to save sinners who deserved His wrath. This new commandment is supremely true in Him.

But John also says that it is true in you. If you ask, “How so?” the answer is, “Because you are now in Him.” It is true in Him fundamentally and true in you derivatively because of your new relationship with Him. Paul often describes our new relationship as being “in Christ.” John uses the term, “abiding” in Him. The glorious truth of the New Testament is that we are joint-heirs with Christ of all His riches (Rom. 8:17; Eph. 1:19-20; 2:6)! So if you are lacking in love for a difficult person, pray, “Lord, You know that I am empty and unable to love this person. But, I am in You and You do not lack love, even for the unlovely. Please love this person through me!” Understanding your new relationship with Jesus Christ is central to practicing biblical love.

D. Growing in love for others is a lifelong process.

John adds (2:8), “… because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.” Primarily, John is referring to the dawning of the gospel through Jesus Christ (see Luke 1:78-79; John 1:9). His coming inaugurated a new era.

But in a secondary sense, what John says here applies to every person who has trusted in Christ. Paul put it (2 Cor. 4:6), “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (See also, Col. 1:12, 13.) Or, as Peter put it (1 Pet. 2:9), God saved us “so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” So becoming a Christian is a radical change from darkness to light, where God opens your blind eyes to see something of the glory of Jesus Christ.

Yet at the same time, there is a process involved that takes time. The darkness does not dissipate instantly, but rather it is gradually dispelled as the true Light of Jesus Christ and God’s word shines more and more into your heart. When it comes to the practicalities of learning to live in love, it is a lifelong process. You never arrive at the place where you can say, “I love everyone perfectly now! Let’s move on!” Paul put it this way (1 Thess. 4:9-10), “Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more, …” Or, as he prayed for the Philippians, “that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment” (Phil. 1:9).

So, don’t be like the husband who grudgingly accompanied his wife to the marriage counselor. She complained to the counselor that he never told her that he loved her. The counselor asked, “Is this true?” The man gruffly responded, “I told her that 25 years ago when we got married, and it hasn’t changed!” You’ve got to work at growing in love on a daily basis for the rest of your life. To love one another is to obey our Lord’s commandment.

2. Love is inseparable from the light, just as hatred is inseparable from the darkness (2:9-11).

The phrase, “The one who says,” tips us off that John again has the heretics in mind. They claimed to be enlightened, and yet, apparently, they were arrogant and self-centered. They did not love others in a sacrificial way. They were using people to build a following for themselves, rather than building people to follow Christ. So John gets out his black and white paint again, and without mixing them into shades of gray, he shows that these false teachers were not true believers. They do not love; they hate. They are not in the light; they are in the darkness until now (2:9).

But we should not only use John’s words to identify false teachers. We should also apply them honestly to our own lives. Sadly, there are many that profess to know Christ, but in their marriages and towards their children they do not practice biblical love. Many evangelical churches are torn apart by conflict because certain powerful members did not get their own way. Rather than acting in love, they viciously attack those who don’t agree with them. So John shows that love is inseparable from the light, just as hatred invariably is bound up with darkness. He does not allow for any middle ground, where you can be sort of loving, but sort of cantankerous, too! He makes three points:

A. Your profession of being in the light is exposed as false if you hate your brother (2:9).

You may be thinking, “Hate is a pretty strong word! While I may not love that difficult person, I wouldn’t say that I hate him.” But John doesn’t let us go there! You either love the other person, which requires sacrificing yourself for that person’s highest good, as Jesus did for us on the cross (John 13:34)—or, you hate him.

Writing to a Gentile church situation, Paul contrasts the new way in Christ with the old life before he met Christ (Titus 3:1-3):

Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men. For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.

He goes on to talk of how God’s kindness and love transformed us through salvation. The point is, no matter how pagan or unloving your background, if you continue in a lifestyle of hate rather than a lifestyle of love, your profession of faith is suspect.

B. If you love your brother, you abide in the light and have no cause for stumbling in you (2:10).

Whether “light” should be capitalized (NASB) to represent Christ or whether it refers to the truth of God’s Word, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter in that if you abide in Jesus Christ, you also abide in His Word, which sheds His light into your heart. To abide in the light means to live with your life exposed and open to God’s Word. You allow the Word to shine into the dark recesses of your mind, exposing and rooting out what is evil. John says that loving your brother is inseparable from abiding in the light.

If you love your brother and abide in the light, “there is no cause for stumbling” in you. This may mean that you do not cause others to stumble in their walk with God because, out of love for them, you only say and do that which builds them in Christ. Or, it may mean that the person who walks in the light will not stumble himself, because the light illumines his path (John 11:9-10).

In both senses, walking in love preserves you from sin. Failure to love often leads you into other sins. For example, lust and sexual immorality are serious sins, but both are rooted in a lack of love for others. To lust after a woman is to desire to use her to gratify your desires. It is a failure of love. Or, take the sins of greed, stealing, and murder. They all stem from a failure to love others. Invariably, those who commit these sins love themselves quite well! None of us need to work on loving ourselves, as the “Christian” psychologists repeatedly emphasize. The task is, to love others as we all in fact do love ourselves!

C. If you hate your brother, you are still in the darkness, you walk in the darkness, and you don’t know where you’re going because you’re spiritually blind (2:11).

I’m not making up these points. I’m merely summarizing each of these verses. The plain meaning of verse 11 is that if you live for yourself with no regard for others, no self-sacrifice or willingness to be inconvenienced to meet others’ needs, then you are not saved. John is not talking about occasional lapses into selfishness. We all fail in that at times. Rather, he’s talking about a lifestyle (“walks”). The person who lives for himself and is indifferent towards others (which is what hatred means) “does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (2:11). He is spiritually blind, groping through life without the light of God’s Word to guide him in God’s ways.

I have often counseled with people who profess to know Christ, but their relationships are marked by anger, abusive speech, bitterness, and self-centeredness. Invariably, they don’t have a clue as to why they keep experiencing broken relationships. While I do not know their hearts (only God does), their lives do not give evidence that they have experienced the love of God in Jesus Christ. Rather, they seem to be in spiritual darkness, blindly colliding from one broken relationship to the next. They do not practice biblical love, which is an essential mark of every true Christian.

THE NEW COMMANDMENT EMPHASIZED

The world of John’s day was plagued with a particularly nagging problem. False teaching was so great that it threatened the unity and growth of the early church. They believed that one’s true relationship with God was evidenced through the possession of a superior knowledge. John emphasizes in this text that good is seen through loving lives and purified hearts.

THE NEW COMMANDMENT DEFINED

Love as an emotion is as old as mankind. It is a part of almost every known religion. Love, however, as is taught by many, is an emotional type of relationship. The law of Moses com­manded that one should love his neighbor (Le­viticus 19:18). It was right not only for God to rise up against one’s enemies, but also for the individual to do so as well. The one who should be loved was the neighbor or one’s own family or people. Jesus expressed the spirit of the law when He said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43, 44).

Jesus introduced a new dimension of love. It was new in emphasis and example because of this “new” example of love.

THE NEW COMMANDMENT LIVED

It is possible for us to understand the mean­ing of this new type of love and never have it to influence our lives. What will true love cause us to do? How will our lives be changed as a result of possessing this new commandment in our lives? There are many ways that love will influ­ence our lives and change our conduct. We shall notice only three.

First, love (agape) will change our way of think­ing about life. The world is filled with people who are miserable; they are unhappy and have no real reason for living. The Christian is a most fortunate person. Christ gives the Christian a reason for living. He gives the Christian a pur­pose.  On the other hand, the Christian knows that love changes his life. The self is not nearly so important.

Second, love will cause us to obey God. We have noted that Jesus emphasized the importance of obedience as a demonstration of our love.

Third, love is God’s greatest healer. Love helps us to overcome all of the problems we face as Christians. As darkness and light cannot live together, so love and hate cannot dwell together. Love and hatred make for strange bedfellows. Misunderstandings, divisions, problems within God’s family—all of these can be solved with an ample dose of love.

THE NEW COMMANDMENT ILLUSTRATED  – Murder (1 John 3:11-12)

(1 John 3:11-12)  This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. {12} Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.

Murder, of course, is the lowest level on which one may live in relationship to someone else. It is the level on which Satan himself exists. The devil was a murderer from the beginning of his fallen career (John 8:44), but Christians have heard, from the beginning of their experience, that they are to “love one another.” John emphasizes origins: “Go back to the beginning.” If our spiritual experience originates with the Father, we must love one another. But if it originates with Satan, we will hate one another.

Cain is an example of a life of hatred; we find the record in Genesis 4:1-16. It is important to note that Cain and Abel, being brothers, had the same parents, and they both brought sacrifices to God. Cain is not presented as an atheist; he is presented as a worshiper. But these actions in themselves are not valid proof that a man is born of God. The real test is his love for the brethren—and here Cain failed.

The difference between Cain’s offering and Abel’s offering was faith (Heb. 11:4), and faith is always based on the revelation God has given (Rom. 10:17). It seems clear that God must have given definite instructions concerning how He was to be worshiped. Cain rejected God’s Word and decided to worship in his own way.

(Genesis 4:4-7 )  But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, {5} but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. {6} Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? {7} If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”

Instead of heeding God’s warning, Cain listened to Satan’s voice and plotted to kill his brother. His envy had turned to anger and hatred. He knew that he was evil and that his brother was righteous. Rather than repent, as God commanded him to do, he decided to destroy his brother.

Cain’s attitude represents the attitude of the present world system (1 John 3:13). The world hates Christ (John 15:18-25) for the same reason Cain hated Abel: Christ shows up the world’s sin and reveals its true nature. When the world, like Cain, comes face-to-face with reality and truth, it can make only one of two decisions: repent and change, or destroy the one who is exposing it.

Hatred (1 John 3:13-15)

Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. {14} We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. {15} Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

At this point, you are probably thinking, “But I have never murdered anyone!” And to this statement, God replies, “Yes, but remember that to a Christian hatred is the same as murder” (1 John 3:15; cf. Matt. 5:22). The only difference between Level 1 and Level 2 is the outward act of taking life. The inward intent is the same.

This does not mean, of course, that hatred in the heart does the same amount of damage, or involves the same degree of guilt, as actual murder. Your neighbor would rather you hate him than kill him! But in God’s sight, hatred is the moral equivalent of murder, and if left unbridled it leads to murder.

Notice another fact: we are not told that murderers cannot be saved. The Apostle Paul himself took a hand in the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:57-60) and admitted that his vote helped to put innocent people to death (Acts 26:9-11; 1 Tim. 1:12-15). But in His grace God saved Paul.

The issue here is not whether a murderer can become a Christian, but whether a man can continue being a murderer and still be a Christian. The answer is no. “And ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). The murderer did not once have eternal life and then lose it; he never had eternal life at all.

Indifference (1 John 3:16-17)

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. {17} If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?

But the test of Christian love is not simply failure to do evil to others. Love also involves doing them good. Christian love is both positive and negative.

Cain is our example of false love; Christ is the example of true Christian love. Jesus gave His life for us that we may experience truth. Every Christian knows John 3:16, but how many of us pay much attention to 1 John 3:16? It is wonderful to experience the blessing of John 3:16; but it is even more wonderful to share that experience by obeying 1 John 3:16: Christ laid down life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

Christian love involves sacrifice and service. Christ did not simply talk about His love; He died to prove it (Rom. 5:6-10). Jesus was not killed as a martyr; He willingly laid down His life (John 10:11-18; 15:13). “Self-preservation” is the first law of physical life, but “self-sacrifice” is the first law of spiritual life.

This is what Jesus had in mind in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). A lawyer wanted to talk about an abstract subject: “Who is my neighbor?” But Jesus focused attention on one man in need, and changed the question to, “To whom can I be a neighbor?”

A man does not have to murder in order to sin; hatred is murder in his heart. But a man need not even hate his brother to be guilty of sin. All he has to do is ignore him, or be indifferent toward his needs. A believer who has material goods and can relieve his brother’s needs ought to do it.

If I am going to help my brother, I must meet three conditions.  First, I must have the means necessary to meet his need. Second, I must know that the need exists. Third, I must be loving enough to want to share. In these days of multiplied social agencies, it is easy for Christians to forget their obligations. “So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith” (Gal. 6:10, nasb).

Conclusion

Again, none of us loves perfectly. When we fail, we need to repent and ask forgiveness of the one we wronged. It is a lifelong process of being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. But those who have met Him at the cross will be growing in love for others.

Also, note that love for others is a commandment, not a warm, gushy feeling. That should give you hope, because God’s commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5:3) and God’s Spirit gives us the grace and power to obey His commands, which are for our good. Biblical love is a self-sacrificing, caring commitment that shows itself in seeking the highest good of the one loved. You can obey the commandment to love others!

So if you’re thinking, “But I don’t love my mate any more,” or, “I just don’t like that difficult person,” the Bible is clear: Get to work obeying God’s commandment to love him or her. It’s not optional for the follower of Christ. It’s essential!

 

Christianity is the religion which offers the greatest privilege and brings with it the greatest obligation

1 John 2:3-6: “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. {4} The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. {5} But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: {6} Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”

2:3  We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.  While Jesus died for the sins of the whole world (2:2), only those who belong to him experience his forgiveness. Up to this point in the letter, John has been warning against the false teachers and those who left the church to follow them. The people who remained in the church, John’s readers, may have been wondering, “How can we be sure that we belong to Jesus Christ? How can we know that we have chosen the truth?” Today the question might be phrased, “How can I know that I’m a Christian?” This passage gives two ways to know: if you do what Christ says and live as Christ wants.

Throughout this letter, John used the phrase “we know” (the verb form of “know” occurs twenty times in the Greek). He repeated this phrase to encourage genuine Christians to be sure that their belief was not a matter for doubt but a fact that could be both known and experienced. All believers can be certain of their relationship with Christ and can be assured of his forgiveness.

People can know that they have come to know Jesus Christ if they obey his commands. This letter lists several proofs for how people can know Christ and belong to him. Obedience provides one clear indication. This does not mean that believers must follow a list of rules without one slip, nor does it mean that people must demonstrate obedience before they can come to know God. Instead, obedience comes as the natural outworking of a person’s faith and love for the Lord. True believers wholeheartedly accept and submit to God’s will as he has revealed it in his Word.

[John] does not mean that those who wholly satisfy the Law keep His commandments (and no such instance can be found in the world), but those who strive, according to the capacity of human infirmity, to form their life in obedience to God. John Calvin

2:4  Whoever says, “I have come to know him,” but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist.  This verse illustrates the principle John wrote in 2:3. If people do not obey Christ, they have not come to know him. Christ’s Great Commission stressed: “Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you” (Matthew 28:20 ). Since anyone can claim to know Christ, you can check his or her authenticity by seeing whether or not he or she obeys God’s Word. John used tough language to convey the truth. Someone who claims to know God, but does not obey his commandments, is a liar. In fact, the truth does not exist in that person in any form. People should not look for leaders in those who refuse to live by God’s commandments because those so-called “leaders” have no true teaching to give.

2:5–6           But whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection.  Here, obedience is linked not merely with knowing God but with loving him. There are three views on the meaning of the love of God. It may refer to (1) God’s love for people, (2) a godly kind of love, or (3) a person’s love for God. It could be that all three are included in John’s statement. For example: (1) As Christians obey God, they are showing their appreciation to God for what he has done; thus, they show that God’s love has “reached perfection” in them. (2) As Christians obey God’s Word, they continue to understand what God wants them to do; thus, they display his kind of love to others. Their ability to show this love has “reached perfection” because of their close relationship with him. (3) As Christians obey God, they are showing their love for God. By their constant obedience, they are “reaching perfection” in that love.

WHY OBEDIENCE MATTERS

This epistle mentions obedience extensively. For many people, “obey” is, in the worst possible sense, a four-letter word. It smacks of submission and humility. When we obey, we give up our own agenda, and we do the bidding of another. Obedience may not come naturally to proud people, and it may not be easy. But a lifestyle of complying with God’s will is very important, because

• it acknowledges God’s sovereignty over our lives (Leviticus 18:4);
• it leads to blessing (Deuteronomy 6:24; 12:28; 28:2; Joshua 1:7; 2 Chronicles 31:21);
• it demonstrates love for God (John 14:15, 23);
• it is how Christ lived (John 8:29; Hebrews 5:8);
• it results in fulfilling relationships (Ephesians 6:1, 5–6; Hebrews 13:17);
• it is evidence that we truly know God (1 John 2:3);
• it reveals our destiny (Romans 6:16);
• it fulfills the Great Commission (Matthew 28:20).

What steps of obedience do you sense God wants you to take today?

The words “reached perfection” here must be held up against John’s earlier statement that true believers will not claim to be without sin (1:8, 10). God considers believers to be “perfect” because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross on their behalf, yet they will not be completely perfect until Christ returns to take them into his eternal kingdom. Believers cannot reach perfection through their own efforts; only God can do this, working in and through them to help them become more perfect until the day, after this life, when he will make them completely perfect. So “reached perfection” refers to a continuing state of growing and maturing—not a final destination. This growing and maturing process reaches fulfillment, however, as the believers learn and practice obedience to God’s Word.

Faith and obedience are bound up in the same bundle. He that obeys God, trusts God; and he that trusts God, obeys God. Charles Spurgeon

EXPERIENCING LOVE

This passage (2:5–6) suggests that obedience to Christ leads to a full experience of his love. Perhaps this same phenomenon prompts marriage counselors to advise their clients to “do loving acts” in order to “regain loving feelings.” This seems to be putting the cart before the horse, yet many counselees report great success with this assignment. By living as God desires, we realize more fully the depths of God’s affection for us. The more we obey, the more fully we devote ourselves to pleasing the Father. By obeying, “the love of God has reached perfection” in us.

This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.  This describes the close relationship between God and believers by stating that they are in him. Again the phrase “we know” (2:3) is used. How can genuine believers be identified? Believers can “know” that they are “in him” by obedience (2:5), and that obedience is further defined as “walking as Jesus walked.” In John’s epistle, “walking” refers to how people conduct their lives and express their attitudes in their actions (see 1:7). Jesus portrayed in human terms absolute obedience to the Father. Anyone who wonders how to obey God can look at Jesus. Anyone who truly desires to live in him must walk as Jesus did. “In him” refers to abiding in him (see John 15:1–7; 17:21–23).

To “walk as Jesus did” doesn’t mean choosing twelve disciples, performing great miracles, and being crucified. People cannot merely copy Christ’s life. Much of what Jesus did had to do with his identity as God’s Son and his special role in dying for sin. Anyone’s claim to live in Christ must be backed up by following his example of complete obedience to God and loving service to people.^[1]

After one believes on Christ, things should be different as far as his involvement with sin is concerned. Having received a new life, he should abstain from evil with a desire to please the Lord. It is refreshing to meet a Christian who is open and sincere and is not trying to masquerade!

Several proofs are given whereby one who professes Christ may substantiate his relationship to Christ. If one has truly believed on the Lord, this fact will be demonstrated outwardly.  We come to the first of three ‘tests’ which John’s epistle will bring before us throughout the rest of this study. We’ll see each one of them presented in several ways, and we’ll let John do it in the order he chooses.

The first one is a moral test: do we obey the commandments?

In the original what is said here is, “by this we may know that we have known him [perfect tense — something done in the past], because we are now keeping his commandments [present tense].”

The present willingness to keep his commandments is a sign of a valid relationship. It is proof that an act of union with Christ has already occurred, you have been born again through baptism in order to receive remission of sins. Your actions have changed, and because they have changed and you do not behave as you once did; you now have a desire to obey him.

Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured in terms of obedience.  If you’ve ever been in the military, you know about traveling under sealed orders. Your orders say go to this point and fly to this place, or take the boat to this place. You open your orders, and they tell you where to go next. That’s the way Abraham lived. “Abraham believed God…and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

Failure to obey these teachings is to negate one’s profession of faith: for The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

It is obvious that such a person has never had a heart-experience with Christ, regardless of what he might say. A verbal claim of believing on Christ is not enough. Visible evidence must be given by obedience to the truth.

The Bible recognizes no faith that does not lead to obedience, nor does it recognize any obedience that does not spring from faith.  The two are at opposite sides of the same coin.    — A.W. Tozer.

God’s love does not end after one believes on Christ. It is at work in the believer’s life every step of the way. For what purpose? To enable us to obey the Word of God. Our obedience to the Word is an evidence of this fact: But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.

The word “perfected” is used in the older translations and is better rendered here “made complete.” It has to do with bringing to fruition. The intended purpose of God’s love is being fulfilled as the believer obeys God’s Word and does His will.

Think of the way we learned obedience when we were children. First, we obeyed because we had to. If we didn’t obey, we were spanked! But as we grew up, we discovered that obedience meant enjoyment and reward; so we started obeying because it met certain needs in our lives. And it was a mark of real maturity when we started obeying because of love.

“Baby Christians” must constantly be warned or rewarded. Mature Christians listen to God’s Word and obey it simply because they love Him.

Peter expresses a similar truth: “For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil” (I Peter 3: 12). The contrast is seen between the obedient and the disobedient. Those who obey God experience His love in His watchful care and provision through prayer. The disobedient, on the other hand, have not yet experienced the love of God.

“To obey is better than sacrifice,” we are told (l Samuel 15:22). God will not accept anything in lieu of obedience. Thus the question must be asked frequently, am I obeying God in every area of my Christian experience? Knowing what we should do is not enough: we must do it.

Our Lord said, (John 13:17 )  Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. Happiness is discovered only as we obey the Lord. It can be known in no other way. Knowledge of spiritual truth is not sufficient; it must be applied.

Let’s say you came to my house for a party and the cars were lined up along the street and you pulled in the empty driveway. A little girl came out and said, “Mr. Davenport has asked you not to park in the driveway because a caterer is coming later, and he wants the driveway free. Would you park in the street?” Even though physically you could overpower that girl, I suspect you would park in the street because of your respect for me. She is a delegated authority.  We show our respect for God by being obedient to his delegated authority.

To cling always to God and to the things of God–this must be our major effort, this must be the road that the heart follows.

A study was released by the Uersity of Southern California indicating that one-third of the medical patients in this country ignore what doctors tell them to do. Before the study was completed, the doctors didn’t think the figures would be quite that bad. Forty-two per cent estimated that almost all their patients were obeying orders, and forty-seven per cent thought that at least three-fourths were doing what they were told. The survey proved all of them wrong. Only fourteen per cent of the patients always obeyed the physicians and about forty nine per cent did so “most of the time.” Another twenty three per cent obeyed less than half the time. Nine per cent obeyed “very seldom,” and five per cent, “not at all.” Strange to say, persons with more severe illnesses were less likely to carry out orders.

The situation is not much different when it comes to the believer doing what God tells him to do. Believers listen to the Word of God preached and taught, but  many fail to do it. Indeed, the words of Hebrews 4:2 are most applicable: “But the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” What a mistake it is to hear God’s Word, or to read it, and yet refuse to obey.

A little girl misquoted the words of a familiar hymn: “If there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, then trust and obey.” If we fail to respond to the truth, it is evident that many of us would have to agree with those lines.

We should obey the Lord for three reasons: first, whatever our Lord commands us, He really means us to do; secondly, whatever He commands us is always for our good; and thirdly, whatever He commands us, He is able and willing to enable us to do. Thus, let us obey the Lord in everything, that the love of God may be perfected in us, for then we shall know “that we are in Him.”

When the heart’s wrong, there can’t be peace.  Selfishness is a gangrene, eating at the very vitals.  Sin is a cancer, poisoning the blood.  Peace is the rhythm of our wills with Jesus’ love-will. Disobedience breaks the music.  Failure to keep in touch makes discord.  The notes jar and grate.  We have broken off.  The peace can’t get in.  Jesus made peace by his blood.  We get it only by keeping in full touch with him.

Obedience or Performance?

• Obedience is seeking God with your whole heart. Performance is having a quiet time because you’ll feel guilty if you don’t.
• Obedience is finding ways to let the word of God dwell in you richly. Performance is quickly scanning a passage so you can check it off your Bible reading plan.
• Obedience is inviting guests to your home for dinner. Performance is feeling anxious about whether every detail of the meal will be perfect.
• Obedience is doing your best. Performance is wanting to be the best.
• Obedience is saying yes to whatever God asks of you. Performance is saying yes to whatever people ask of you.
• Obedience is following the promptings of God’s spirit. Performance is following a list of man-made requirements.
• Obedience springs from a fear of God. Performance springs from a fear of failure.

I like to story of the little boy,  who was riding his tricycle furiously around the block, over and over again.  Finally a policeman stopped and asked him why he was going around and around.  The boy said that he was running away from home.  Then the policeman asked why he kept going around the block.  The boy responded, “Because my mom said that I’m not allowed to cross the street.” The point is clear – obedience will keep you close to those you love.

Not only should the believer obey God, he should reveal Him in his life. Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”

Abiding in Christ has to do with more than our position in Him. It is true that anyone who abides in Christ has been born again by the Holy Spirit and has passed from death unto life. But it also has to do with one’s present relationship with his Saviour. Is he walking in harmony with his Lord, or does his manner of life betray his profession? The word “ought” comes from a word meaning “to owe to another,” referring to a debt that must be paid. Believers are in debt to God to walk in a manner that is well-pleasing in His sight.

How can Christians walk like Christ? The Bible tells us that He “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21); He “did no sin” (1 Peter 2:22); and “in Him is no sin” (1 John 3: 5). Can we live like Christ without sin? Of course not. “To walk, even as He walked,” does not infer perfection. It means that we should pattern our lives after Him.

What are some of the characteristics evidenced in Christ’s life?

1. He prayed for His enemies. Even though His persecutors climaxed their atrocities by nailing Him to a cross, He prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
2. Christ always pleased the Father. Never did He act in opposition to the divine will. His concern was “not My will, but Thine, be done” (Luke 22 :42).
3. Christ always showed love and kindness, regardless of what had been said or done against Him. It was He who said, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

These and many other characteristics of our Lord should be visible in the believer’s life. If they are not, we might wonder if the conversion experience was real. Jesus declared, “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7: 20). Are we walking like Christ, or are we bearing the characteristics of the ungodly? How we answer will give unquestionable evidence of our relationship to the Saviour.

The Lord tells us to walk like Christ, but He also gives us the necessary equipment to do this. Christ not only gives us a standard to live by, He gives us the power to live by the standard. In spite of all the hardships and afflictions Paul faced, he could say with confidence, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4: 13).

Paul knew full well that he was unable to do “all things,” but he also knew that as he relied upon Christ, “all things” were possible. Likewise, “all things” are possible for us. But there must be complete reliance on the Son of God. lie must be the Master of our lives. This demands unconditional surrender to Him. We must realize from the moment of our conversion until we meet Christ face to face that we are no longer our own but His to do what He wants.

Actually, this is what conversion is all about. Some “join church” and wonder why they do not feel any different. Others have a mere emotional experience, which simply stirs their feelings. These may satisfy for a time, but they do not last. Conversion has to do with a complete change: “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5: 1 7). When one has experienced conversion, he will walk like Christ. Many temptations will befall him, but he will keep his eyes fixed on the Son of God, and walk steadily, faithfully forward.

It will not always be easy to walk like Christ; there will be difficulties all along the way. But we can be faithful for “greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

Let’s settle for nothing less than for a walk that glorifies God. There can be no greater evidence to ourselves, as well as to the world, that we belong to Jesus.

When one is a follower of Christ and is saved, everyone around will know it. Not only because of what the new convert says, but by what he does. One thing he will do is to keep God’s commandments, the precepts of God which appear in both the Old and New Testaments.

Secondly, he will walk as Christ walked. In God’s strength, he will live like Christ. These two things will witness to the fact that he has really met the Lord. John offers a third evidence: “Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning” (1 John 2:7).

A man really wanted to help his son understand the importance of making right choices, obeying, and doing right.  So, if his son made a bad choice or a wrong decision, he’d give him a nail, send him to a post out in the back yard, and have him take a hammer and put the nail in the post.  And every day that he went through the whole day making good decisions, he’d let him go out and remove one of those nails.

As the boy grew up from the age of about eight years until about fourteen or fifteen, there were always 2 or 3 nails in the post, and he’d be nailing them in and pulling them out.  But he got better, until finally all the nails were removed as he started to mature.  When all the nails were removed, he felt pretty good.

Then his dad took him out and said, “I want you to notice something about the post.”  The boy looked at it for a moment and realized that all the holes where the nails had been placed in the post were still there.  His dad said, “I want to tell you something, son, about bad choices.  You may be completely forgiven; there are no nails left — no problem there — but you do have the remaining effects.  That post will never be the same again.”

God, for this coming year Just one request I bring: I do not pray for happiness Or any earthly thing — I do not ask to understand The way Thou leadest me, But this I ask: Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth Thee. I want to know Thy guiding voice, To walk with thee each day. Dear Master make me swift to hear And ready to obey. And thus the year I now begin A happy year will be — If I am seeking just to do the thing that pleaseth Thee.

Some Strange People I Know

• People who talk about prayer but never pray.
• People who say tithing is right but never tithe.
• People who want to belong to the church but never attend.
• People who say the Bible is God’s Word to man but never read it.
• People who criticize others for things they do themselves.
• People who stay away from church for trivial reasons and sing, “Oh, How I Love Jesus.”
• People who continue in sin all their lives but expect to go to heave

He that hopes to find peace by trusting God must obey him.

It is not what we do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through us.

God doesn’t want our success; he wants us. He doesn’t demand our achievements; he demands our obedience.

Obedience means marching right on whether we feel like it or not. Many times we go against our feelings. Faith is one thing, feeling is another.

One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons. We learn more by five minutes’ obedience than by ten years’ study.

When we are obedient, God guides our steps and our stops.

^[1] Bruce B. Barton and Grant R. Osborne, 1, 2 & 3 John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1998), 31–33.

1 John 1:3-4 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. {4} We write this to make our joy complete.

Imagine that you have come on hard times. You’re homeless, penniless, and sleeping on the sidewalk. Your tattered clothes and an old, dirty blanket are barely enough to keep you from freezing at night. Your meals consist of whatever you can find in the dumpsters. You have lost contact with all family and friends.

As you sit on the sidewalk, suddenly the presidential limousine pulls up to the curb. The President gets out and invites you to join him. You get in and are whisked to the airport, where Air Force One is waiting. You fly to Washington, are driven in the presidential motorcade to the White House, where your own room is ready. There are new, clean clothes, all the food you can eat, and servants to meet your every need or whim. But, more than that, to your astonishment, the President treats you as his friend. He shares his heart with you and wants you to share your heart with him.

At first, you’re so dazzled with this incredible change of events that you’re only aware of the President himself. But after a while, you realize that you’re not there alone. There are many others who have experienced the same thing. You suddenly have a large family of brothers and sisters that care for you. As you exchange your stories and talk of how the President has helped each of you, your relationships deepen.

This is an unbelievable fable, right? No, if you’ve come to know Jesus Christ, it’s a true allegory. He found you in the gutter and brought you to His heavenly palace to live with Him and to get to know Him as a friend. You discover brothers and sisters all over the world who have had the same experience. You’re accepted in a huge, loving family where every member has a variation of the same story: “I was lost in sin when Jesus found me and rescued me.” All of the family spends its time enjoying the bounty of the King, and best of all, getting to know Him better and better.

That is the glorious theme that John presents in our text—the joy of fellowship with God and with one another. The greatest joys in life come from loving relationships. We all want such relationships. A credit card ad pictures a family gathered around the Thanksgiving table, with the word, “Priceless!” It’s true!

And yet as we all know, relationships may also be the source of much grief and pain. We’ve all experienced disappointing relationships. Some of you had abusive parents who did not love you. You may have had—or still have—an abusive mate. Perhaps your children have gone astray and are a source of heartache. At the root of all such disappointments is sin, which causes alienation from God and from one another. But in spite of the reality of such painful relationships, we all still know that true joy does not consist in the accumulation of wealth or fame. True joy consists in the experience of true fellowship.

Picture a man on his deathbed, all alone, except for the nurse. He says, “Bring me today’s Wall Street Journal so that I can see how my investments are doing. Get me a phone so that I can call my attorney to see how my lawsuit is going.” There is a poor man! Picture another man on his deathbed, who doesn’t own much. But he’s surrounded by caring family members, who are telling him how much they love him. He is a man who knows God and knows that soon the Savior who loved him and died for him will welcome him into heaven. There is a rich man! He is a man who enjoys fellowship with God and with others. John is telling us that…

True fellowship with one another and with God is the basis for true joy.

“Fellowship” means sharing in common, or sharing together. The idea that we, who were so defiled by sin, could have fellowship—could share together—with the holy God, not just for the few years on this earth, but forever, should overwhelm us! John Calvin captures this (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], on 1 John 1:4, p. 162):

True is that saying, “Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.” (Matt. 6:21.) Whosoever, then, really perceives what fellowship with God is, will be satisfied with it alone, and will no more burn with desires for other things. “The Lord is my cup,” says David, “and my heritage; the lines have fallen for me on an excellent lot.” (Ps. 16:5, 6.) In the same manner does Paul declare that all things were deemed by him as dung, in comparison with Christ alone. (Phil. 3:8.) He, therefore, has at length made a proficiency in the Gospel, who esteems himself happy in having communion with God, and acquiesces in that alone; and thus he prefers it to the whole world, so that he is ready for its sake to relinquish all other things.

John begins with fellowship with one another:

1. True fellowship with one another is based on true fellowship with God.

Why does John begin with our fellowship with one another before he proceeds to fellowship with God? I would have thought that first he would lay the foundation, then show the effect. My guess is that he begins with where most people begin. The thought of fellowship with the holy God is a bit more than we can fathom. But we do feel the love of others in the church, perhaps even before we come to know God personally. This is especially true of those who have suffered broken relationships all their lives. They meet a Christian or come to church, and they feel love and acceptance. It’s the first thing that they notice. It’s such a new experience that they are overwhelmed. Then they learn that the source of this love is not in the people, but in the fact that these people have come to know the love of God in Christ.

Note three things about this fellowship with one another:

A. Fellowship with one another not based on fellowship with God is not true Christian fellowship.

Although unbelievers who come in among us should be able to sense the love, they cannot know true fellowship with other believers until they personally come to faith in Jesus Christ and begin to walk with Him on a daily basis. In other words, knowing Christ personally and growing in that relationship is the basis for any true fellowship with others that know Christ. It is Christ Himself that we share in common. True Christian fellowship is when we share together about the riches of Christ and the treasures of His Word. Anything less is not genuine fellowship.

Sometimes we chat with one another about the weather, sports, or the news. While there’s nothing wrong with talking about such things, that isn’t true fellowship. J. Vernon McGee once spoke at a Rotary Club meeting, where a banner read, “Food, Fun, Fellowship.” He said that the food was nothing to brag about—embalmed chicken and peas. The fun was a few corny jokes. The fellowship consisted of one man patting the other on the back and saying, “Hi, Bill, how’s business?” Or, “how’s the wife?” That was their idea of fellowship (First John [Thomas Nelson], p. 21).

McGee goes on to say that what is called “Christian” fellowship often isn’t much different. We get together for a potluck supper and talk about everything under the sun, except that which would provide true fellowship, namely, all that we share together in Christ. True Christian fellowship centers on fellowship with God.

B. Fellowship with one another based on true fellowship with God is the core of true Christian unity.

John did not advocate “fellowship” with the heretics. These men, no doubt, still claimed to believe in Jesus, but just not in the same way that the apostles understood things. Even though John emphasizes love, he never encourages love and fellowship with these heretics. Quite the opposite, he makes it clear that we should not welcome them even with a warm greeting. To do so would be to participate in their evil deeds (2 John 10-11).

There is a lot of sloppy thinking in Christian circles about the subject of unity in Christ. Clearly, it is an important topic. Jesus prayed that His followers would be one, so that the world would know that the Father sent Him (John 17:23). Those trying to promote unity often say, “The world will know that we follow Jesus by our love, not by our doctrine.” So they say, “Let’s come together in areas where we agree, and set aside the matters where we disagree.” Such thinking leads men like Charles Colson and Max Lucado to urge Protestants to accept Roman Catholics as brothers in Christ.

I dare to say that John would be aghast! True Christian unity must be based on true fellowship with God, which must be based on faith in the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. I know that there are some Roman Catholics who believe the true gospel, but they believe it in spite of what their church teaches, not because of it. The official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church denies that we are saved by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. (See The Councils of Trent, Session 6, Canons 9, 12, 24, 30, cited in my sermon, “Justification by Faith Alone” [8/11/96].) They are committing the Galatian heresy, which added our works to faith in what Christ did on the cross. Paul bluntly says, “Let them be accursed” (see Gal. 1:8, 9).

In Ephesians 4, Paul mentions two kinds of unity. He says (4:3) that we should be “diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The unity of the Spirit already exists; it must be preserved. But he goes on to say (4:12) that the pastor-teachers are to equip the saints, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God…” (4:13). The unity of the faith does not yet exist. We attain to it as we grow to know Jesus Christ better through the study and teaching of the Word.

When you know Christ, you experience genuine unity and fellowship with other Christians, even though there may be significant differences in background, personality, social status, or race. Among the apostles, Simon the Zealot was from a radical political group whose hobby was killing tax collectors. Matthew was a tax collector! Jesus brought them together and said, “Love one another!” Paul emphasizes that in the church, there are no distinctions between slaves and freemen, or Jews and Gentiles, but “Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11).

So true Christian unity at the basic level consists in mutually knowing Christ through the gospel (Eph. 4:3). Such unity deepens as we grow to know Him better through His Word (Eph. 4:13).

C. True fellowship with God and with one another is the basis for laboring together in the gospel.

John was not advocating joining with the heretics in a crusade to win Ephesus for Christ! Far from it! We should not join together in evangelistic efforts with churches or organizations that blur the gospel. Paul commended the Philippians for their “participation [Greek = koinonea, “fellowship”] in the gospel” with him (Phil. 1:6). A few verses later, he exhorts them (1:27), “Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind [lit., “soul”] striving together for the faith of the gospel.”

If you want to experience true fellowship with other believers, join together in laboring for the gospel. Yes, there is increased potential for disagreements and conflict. Paul and Barnabas split up over their differences in how to go about their mission. But, there is also the potential for deeper fellowship. Just as soldiers who fought together and survived later feel a close bond, so those who labor together for Christ will know true fellowship.

2. True fellowship with God is based on the truth that God has revealed about His Son.

John says (1:3), “What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” As we saw in the introductory study, one of John’s main themes in all three epistles is, believing in the truth about Jesus Christ (see 2 John 1-4, where he uses “truth” five times, and 3 John 1-4, where he uses “truth” four times). This has three important implications:

A. Fellowship not based on the revealed truth about Jesus Christ is not true fellowship.

Often those who try to promote Christian unity will say, “Doctrine divides. We should set aside our doctrines and just love one another.” John would say, “Nonsense!” Sound doctrine unites, as Paul teaches in Ephesians 4:13. True fellowship centers on the truth of the apostolic testimony about Jesus Christ. If we depart from that, we have left the biblical foundation for unity.

This is why we cannot have true fellowship with liberals, who deny the deity of Jesus Christ. What do we share in common? Nothing! They supposedly believe in Jesus or His moral teachings. But the Jesus they believe in is not the Jesus of the apostles. This is also why a believer should not marry an unbeliever. Although in the context, Paul includes much more than marriage, it is certainly included when he writes (2 Cor. 6:14), “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” He goes on to ask (6:15), “or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?” If you don’t share the truth about Christ together, you do not have the basis for true Christian fellowship.

B. Fellowship with God exists only through the blood of His Son.

In the next section, John presents us with a serious dilemma. God is absolutely holy (1:5), but we are not. How can sinners have fellowship with such a holy God? John’s answer, in line with the whole Bible, is that the only way a sinner can draw near to the holy God is if his sin is atoned for. The only thing that can atone for our sin is the blood of God’s perfect Son, Jesus Christ. If someone claims to know God, but denies the need for the blood of Jesus Christ to atone for sin, in John’s language, he is a liar and deceiver. He does not know God and there is no basis for true fellowship.

C. Fellowship based on the truth about Jesus Christ is a matter of shared life in Him.

As we saw last week, John relays to us the message about “the Word of Life” (1:1), “the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us” (1:2). This means that fellowship with God and with one another is not just a matter of subscribing to correct doctrines about Jesus. It is a matter of receiving new life through the new birth. This new life leads to a growing, deepening fellowship with God and with His people.

Picture a new baby, born into a family. Life is not peripheral to his entering into fellowship with that family! It’s absolutely essential! Without new life, there cannot be any fellowship. But when there is new life, that child will grow and begin to communicate with his parents and with his brothers and sisters. It’s always such a joy as parents when your children begin to talk with you! As the child grows, he comes to understand more of how much his parents love and care for him. Even though I knew that my parents loved me, I didn’t know how much they loved me until I had my own children.

If you have experienced new life in Christ, then the Father lovingly cares for every aspect of your life. He has given you all that you need for life and godliness through the promises of His Word (2 Pet. 1:3-4). He encourages you to cast all your cares on Him, knowing that He cares for you (1 Pet. 5:7). He sympathizes with your weaknesses and invites you to come to His throne of grace to receive mercy and grace to help in your times of need (Heb. 4:14-16). So you can share every burden, every struggle, and every thought openly with Him and know that He welcomes you!

Such fellowship with God through Christ is not automatic or effortless. Relationships take time and effort. There is no such thing as a good marriage that just happens spontaneously. If you see a good marriage, it’s because the couple makes it a priority to spend time together and to work at being close. They are committed to work through any difficulties or hurt feelings. They work hard at communication and they avoid temptations that would create distance or divide them.

Fellowship with God is no different. You’ve got to work at it, make time for it, and turn away from things that would create distance between you and God. Of course, sin hinders fellowship, but so do other things. The enemy will try to get you to anything except spend time alone with God. It may be TV, the newspaper, work, hobbies, or time with your friends. But if you allow these things to crowd out consistent time in God’s Word and in prayer, you will not grow close to God in genuine fellowship.

As you grow in fellowship with God, you will find that increasingly, His purposes and desires become your purposes and desires. If His purpose is to be glorified by saving some from every tribe and tongue and people and nation (Rev. 5:9), then you will find great joy when you hear news of the gospel advancing around the world. If you don’t care about missions and you yawn when you hear of someone coming to Christ, but you hear of the score of a sports event and come alive with excitement, you may want to examine whether you enjoy true fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. This leads to John’s final point:

3. True fellowship with one another and with God is the source of true joy.

As we saw last time, the original text (1:4) probably read “our joy,” not “your joy.” But both are true. When a sinner comes to Christ, it brings great joy to those who already know Christ, but it also brings great joy to the sinner who is saved. And as our fellowship with God and with one another deepens, the joy deepens. In commenting on the fact that God has given us eternal life, Calvin exclaims (ibid., p. 157), “But if we consider how miserable and horrible a condition death is, and also what is the kingdom and the glory of immortality, we shall perceive that there is something here more magnificent than what can be expressed in any words.”

And so as God’s children we are obligated to seek our greatest joy in Him. If we seek joy in lesser things, we miss the greatest joy of all and we do not glorify the God who rescued us from the ravages of sin and death.

Conclusion

Fellowship with God and with one another really are just the two Great Commandments, to love God with all your being, and to love your neighbor as yourself (see Matt. 22:37-40). The aim of the entire Bible is to help us glorify God as we experience the deep joy of a close relationship with Him and close relationships with one another. As grow in obedience to these two Great Commandments, we will grow in great joy, not only in this life, but also for all eternity!

I encourage you, work on your relationship with God. Don’t settle for occasional, distant fellowship. Make time daily to spend with Him in His Word and in prayer. Read books that help you to know Him better. Cut out of your life anything that hinders fellowship with Him.

And, work at your relationships with other believers. In this sinful world, such relationships will never be perfect, but they can be good. But they won’t be good without effort! The payoff is that true fellowship with one another and true fellowship with God will bring you true joy.

John knew Christ personally. Having walked with Him, talked with Him, and worked with Him, he was motivated by a loving concern to declare to everyone possible “That which we have seen and heard.”  And once you have experienced this exciting life that is real, you will want to share it with other people, just as John wanted to “declare” it to all his readers in the first century.

Many people (including some Christians) have the idea that “witnessing” means wrangling over the differences in religious beliefs, or sitting down and comparing churches.

That isn’t what John had in mind! He tells us that witnessing means sharing our spiritual experiences with others—both by the lives that we live and by the words that we speak.

John wrote this letter to share Christ with us. This word fellowship is an important one in the vocabulary of a Christian.

( Greek Word: κοινωνία   Transliteration: koinōnia). The word means “to have in common.” As sinners, men have nothing in common with the holy God. But God in His grace sent Christ to have something in common with men. Christ took on Himself a human body and became a man. Then He went to the cross and took on that body the sins of the world. Because He paid the price for our sins, the way is open for God to forgive us and take us into His family.

When we trust Christ through baptism to receive forgiveness off sins, we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Greek Word: κοινωνός  Transliteration: koinōnos . The term translated “partakers” in Peter’s epistle is from the same Greek root that is translated “fellowship” in 1 John 1:3.

The Christian life begins with “seeing” and “hearing” Christ. As one realizes who Christ is and humbly submits to His lordship, untold blessing will result. This is our only approach to eternal life.

When God saves a person, He goes to the source of the problem, the sinful heart. The repentant believer is changed by the power of God from the inside out.

No human can change his sinful heart. He may change his outward appearance, but his heart will remain the same. Unlike the tree, however, God can change a person’s heart. When one trusts in Christ, God performs a mighty miracle and the heart of the repentant believer is transformed. The Lord is doing this constantly. Those who come to Him receive new motives, new desires, and new habits. Paul described this wonderful experience: (2 Corinthians 5:17 )  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

The new life is not merely for our enjoyment; it is to be shared with others. God never intended that redemption be kept a secret. Those who are truly saved find a joy such as they have never known before. But joy is not the basic purpose for which we are saved; it is simply one of the by-products of salvation. We are saved to tell others so they, too, might enter into the joys of everlasting life.

Who of us could receive an inheritance of a million dollars without sharing this news with our friends? Who would be unreasonable enough, after being cured of cancer, to refuse to reveal the name of the surgeon or remedy? Why is it that in the lesser experiences of life we are ready to talk for hours with gratitude and pleasure? Why do we not with the same enthusiasm share Christ with those who need Him? If “we have seen and heard” Christ, we should “declare” Him.

A worthy test of one’s personal experience with the Lord is what happens afterward. Is there an earnest desire to bring others to the light? Is the heart burdened to lead friends and neighbors to Christ? God says, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so” (Psalm 107: 2). The believer should grasp every opportunity to “declare” Christ.

One of the reasons why we should declare Christ is that the lost “may have fellowship with us.” What an amazing fellowship this is! No club, organization, or lodge is comparable to the fellowship of believers in Christ Jesus. Like everyone else, Christians have their weaknesses. They get tired and fussy. They become nervous and irritable at times. But when they are Spirit led and Spirit-controlled, their fellowship is unparalleled.

As true friends, they are always ready and willing to help each other in any time of need. They pray for each other and share each other’s burdens. There is a common bond of love among them as the result of their relationship through Christ. Because of His blood, shed at Calvary, Christians are one in Him, regardless of race, social status, educational background, or ability.

A saintly woman lay dying. Her loved ones were gathered around her bed. Believing she was unable to hear, one of the relatives said quietly, “She’s sinking fast.” But the aged saint, half opening her eyes, shook her head feebly and whispered, “Oh, no, I’m not sinking. You can’t sink through a Rock.”

Christ is the believer’s Rock. If we know Him, we are secure. We may depend upon Him for everything. His sufficiency is adequate. We are His, and He is ours.

Jesus Christ came that men might have fellowship with God and with His Son Jesus Christ and with one another. This is the most wonderful declaration, for it means that God is not far off in outer space someplace. God is not disinterested and uncaring about what happens to man. God has not left us to fend for ourselves upon earth with nothing but death and the grave to look forward to.

The apostle is concerned that believers do more than enter into fellowship with Christ. He wants them to enjoy the fullness of the blessing of being children of God: “And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” There are some believers who possess the assurance of salvation, yet are devoid of the fullness of joy which is theirs in Christ. The fact that some believers possess more joy than others is not that God is more favorable to some. It is a matter of submission to the Lord’s control. The more yielded one is to Christ, the greater will be his enjoyment of the things of the Spirit.

God never intended that His people be of a sour or doleful disposition. He wants us to “rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (I Peter 1:8).

Fellowship is Christ’s answer to the loneliness of life. Joy is His answer to the emptiness, the hollowness of life.

There are many Christians who have never entered into this fullness of joy in Christ. They are saved but always struggling. Instead of living above their circumstances, they are bogged down by them. They are given to worry and frequent complaining. Occasionally they are joyful, but not very often. God would have us to understand that fullness of joy can be ours, regardless of our surroundings.

1:3 We are telling you about what we ourselves have actually seen and heard, so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.  The plural pronoun “we,” used throughout the prologue, refers, at times, to John and the other apostles (for whom John was acting as spokesman) and also to John and any other believers who had seen Jesus Christ in bodily form. These people had actually seen and heard Jesus Christ; they told about it so that others may have fellowship with them. The apostles’ testimony became the gospel, the truth about Jesus Christ. Accepting this truth was the “touchpoint” for believers in Christ. During his earthly ministry, Jesus introduced the Father to the disciples and initiated them into fellowship. The Greek word translated “fellowship” is koinonia. In the New Testament, this word refers to the life (spiritual and eternal) that all Christians share in a living relationship or partnership. This life became available to believers through Jesus Christ, who came as eternal life in a human body. In his Gospel, John wrote: “And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth” (John 17:3 ). Jesus was the source and substance of this eternal life. When the disciples were regenerated by the Holy Spirit, they actually entered into fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Having been brought into this living union, the apostles became the new initiators—introducing this fellowship to others and encouraging them to enter into fellowship with them. Whoever would enter into the fellowship with the apostles would actually be entering into their fellowship with the Father and the Son. John knew about fellowship with Jesus. In the last hours before his crucifixion, Jesus asked John, along with Peter and James, to pray with him at Gethsemane. In the supreme crisis of Jesus’ life, he asked for fellowship and prayer.

PERSONAL TESTIMONY

John testified to a personal, eyewitness experience with Christ. He did not build this relationship on wishful thinking, mystical mumbo jumbo, or a secondhand report. He and the other disciples had heard Christ speak. They had seen him with their eyes. They had looked at (continuously contemplated) and touched him. To underline the reality of this three-year encounter with the Son of God, John used even more sensory/experiential language in the next couple of verses. His point? Jesus Christ is a fact of history, and the lives of the disciples intersected with him in an objective, undeniable way.

What is your experience? You can know with certainty that Christ lives and that he lives in you. Meet Christ today in a personal and intimate way through the pages of the Gospels.

The first twelve disciples had private, personal fellowship with Jesus Christ. That fellowship did not stop when Jesus died, nor did it end with the Twelve. They shared the message of salvation in Jesus so that others could join this “fellowship” also. This corporate identity and relationship passed on from generation to generation. As believers fellowship with one another today, they participate in the same faith of the apostles and so “share the fellowship” with them and with the Father and the Son.

Four principles undergird true Christian fellowship:

1. Christian fellowship is grounded in the testimony of God’s Word. Without this underlying foundation, togetherness would be impossible.
2. Christian fellowship is mutual, depending on the unity of believers.
3. Christian fellowship is renewed daily through the Holy Spirit. True fellowship combines social and spiritual interaction and is made possible only through a living relationship with Christ.
4. Christian fellowship demands adherence to truth. In this case, it required loyalty to Jesus as the truth, rather than to the esoteric knowledge of the heretics.

As an eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry, John was qualified to teach the truth about him. The readers of this letter had not seen and heard Jesus themselves, but they could trust that what John wrote was accurate. Believers today are like those second- and third-generation Christians. Though they have not personally seen, heard, or touched Jesus, they have the New Testament record of his eyewitnesses, and they can trust that these eyewitnesses spoke the truth about him.

(1:4) Joy (chara): an inner gladness; a deep seated pleasure. It is a depth of assurance and confidence that ignites a cheerful heart. It is a cheerful heart that leads to cheerful behavior.

(1 John 1:5-7 )  This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. {6} If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. {7} But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

Obviously it is the antinomian heresy that is in mind here. The teaching that one could be a Christian while continuing to live in sin had become quite popular. The truth of God was being disregarded, which resulted in widespread disobedience among professed believers.

John sought to combat their error by describing God’s true nature: “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” Throughout the Scriptures, light is used as a symbol of purity and holiness while darkness represents sin and wickedness. It is not possible for the Lord Jehovah to be associated with sin, for “God is light.” This means that He is holy in every respect of His being.

If one professes Christ and does not live for the Lord, all his talk and activity for God are meaningless. God’s people are saved from the darkness of sin to walk in the light. It would be well for all who are in Christ to consider, “Is the life I am now living worth the price Christ paid for it?”

How important that we ask ourselves frequently, “Am I real, or am I only pretending?” Do we really know Christ? “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.”

Truth must not only be spoken, but lived.  They claim to “have fellowship with God,” but “walk in darkness.” John says they are lying. Of course, they are not deceiving God; they are deceiving themselves.

How does the believer sustain his fellowship with the Lord? John says, “Walk in the light, as He is in the light.”

It is easy to distinguish the devil’s way from God’s, for sin is always part of the devil’s way. Never is this the case when “we walk in the light, as He is in the light.” God’s way is without lying, cheating, immorality, unkindness, or sin of any kind.

It is without meaning to the hypocrite, but to the one who is sincere before God, there is continual forgiveness at any time and at any place. Christ’s blood keeps on cleansing from sin. It never stops.

It speaks to the “habit of the life.” And when sin does occur, what is the attitude toward it? Do we make light of it? Do we do something about it?

The real motive to “walk in the light, as [God] is in the light,” is that we might have fellowship with God. Some have thought erroneously that the reason Christians no longer do the things they used to do is because of the fear of being punished by God. Not only does one receive victory to refrain from former sins following conversion, even more, he has a desire to please the Lord. This is born out of love, not fear.

While refusing to do wrong, a little boy was taunted by his friend, “You are afraid that your dad will hurt you.” “Not really,” said the boy. “I am afraid that I will hurt him.”

Born-again believers are in fellowship with God Almighty. Because of this, they are not fearful of being punished by God; their punishment was absorbed by Christ at the cross. They “walk in the light” that they might please the Lord and do His will. True believers know the joy of obedience.

As an eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry, John was qualified to teach the truth about him. The readers of this letter had not seen and heard Jesus themselves, but they could trust that what John wrote was accurate. Believers today are like those second- and third-generation Christians. Though they have not personally seen, heard, or touched Jesus, they have the New Testament record of his eyewitnesses, and they can trust that these eyewitnesses spoke the truth about him.

1:4  We are writing these things so that our joy will be complete.  This is a rendering of a Greek variant reading found in several reliable manuscripts. Other manuscripts read “that your joy may be complete.” The reading “our joy” is preferred. John was most likely thinking of the mutual happiness of all believers. In other words, just as the proclamation of the gospel message was for others to join the fellowship (1:3), so he was writing these things so that [their] joy will be complete. John wrote this letter to encourage the readers’ participation in both the fellowship and the joy that he (John) and the other believers were experiencing. Proclamation produces fellowship; fellowship produces joy. John’s joy would be complete if his readers remained in the fellowship and did not wander off into false teaching. John, caretaker of the churches and “spiritual father” to many of the believers in and around Ephesus, would only be able to experience “complete joy” if his “children” were experiencing the blessings of fellowship with one another and with God.

GOOD NEWS IS FOR SHARING

John considered his encounter with Christ to have been a joyful experience—the best thing that ever happened to him. What do we do when good things happen to us? We immediately pick up the phone. Or we run down the street to a friend’s house. Something about good news practically demands that we share it. How much more the wonderful and marvelous truth that God sent Christ into the world to bring lost and empty people back into a rich relationship with himself?

Note in the introductory verses of this epistle the number of times and ways John mentions his passion to communicate the gospel to others. Have you lost the passion to tell the Good News? Identify someone who you feel is ready to hear about Christ. Plan to relate Christ’s love to that person in both word and action.

Jesus spoke about this joy. It is the constantly overflowing life expressed as “life in all its fullness” (John 10:10 ). It is the exuberance found in being near a loved one (John 3:29), or the joy of anticipation (John 15:11; see also 20:20). In a parable, Jesus portrayed joy as the gratification of workers who see the harvest. In his final words to the disciples, Jesus described to them the joy that they would experience (italics ours):

• “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15:11 )
• “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” (John 16:22–24)
• “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.” (John 17:13 )

In Galatians 5:22, joy is a fruit or by-product of the Holy Spirit’s work in believers’ lives. Joy also comes as the result of harmonious relationships among believers (Acts 13:52; Philippians 2:2).

 LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF GOD / 1:5–2:11

When Jesus was on earth, his divine life illuminated the inner lives of his followers. Everywhere he was present, he gave light. This light penetrated people—exposing their sin and revealing divine truth. No one could come into contact with Jesus without being enlightened.

So it is for the Christian who is indwelt by the Spirit of Christ. In his presence, we see our sin and his glory. Of course, a person can refuse to receive the light and can remain in darkness (a term John used to characterize the realm of Satan in the world). But whoever comes to Jesus will see his dazzling moral and spiritual excellence and purity.

1:5  This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  Just as Christ passed on the message he heard from the Father, so the apostles in turn were passing on the same message that they heard from the Son. John did not use the term “gospel,” but he did use such words as “witness,” “testimony,” “word,” “truth,” and “message.”

John’s message emphasized that God is light. Light enables people to do their work. It produces growth in crops; it reveals beauty and provides safety. Light represents what is good, pure, true, holy, and reliable. Light reveals; light shines. God is so completely “light” that in Him is no darkness at all. “Darkness” represents what is sinful and evil. The Greek could be translated literally as “darkness is not in him ever.” God is untainted by any evil or sin. Thus, “God is light” means that God is perfectly holy and true and that he alone can guide people out of the darkness of sin. Genesis 1:3 records God’s expression of his nature and will in the statement “Let there be light.” Jesus declared himself to be the “light of the world” (John 8:12). In 1 Timothy 6:16, Paul expressed that God “lives in light so brilliant that no human can approach him” (). This light signifies Christ’s moral excellence and purity. John was one of only three eyewitnesses to Jesus’ transfiguration (see Matthew 17:1–13) where Jesus was described as being “dazzling white.” The light reflected God’s essence.

LIGHT VS. DARKNESS

In many places in Scripture, the realm of God and the realm of evil are contrasted by the differences between light and darkness:

Darkness	Light	Reference
Despairing condition	Hopeful condition	Isaiah 9:2
Inability to recognize the light	Ability to enlighten the world	John 1:4–5, 9
The power of Satan	The power of God	Acts 26:18
Evil deeds	Good deeds	Romans 13:12–14
Natural heart condition	Gift from God	2 Corinthians 4:6
Fruitless works	Source of all that is good	Ephesians 5:8–11
Spiritual forces of evil	Armor of God	Ephesians 6:12–13
Powerful captivity	Kingdom of the Son, redemption, forgiveness	Colossians 1:12–14
Inability to exist in God’s presence	God’s presence, fellowship with God	1 John 1:5, 7
Transient nature	Permanent nature	1 John 2:8–11

Light also relates to truth because light exposes whatever exists, whether it is good or bad. In the dark, good and evil look alike; in the light, they can be clearly distinguished. Just as darkness cannot exist in the presence of light, sin cannot exist in the presence of a holy God. “Darkness” can also picture a certain hiddenness and secrecy. The false teachers claimed to have received special knowledge that God only gives to a certain few. The nature of light, however, is to flood and fill. That God has “no darkness” means that nothing is hiding in shadows or kept in secret.

1:6  So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness. We are not living in the truth.  “God is light” and there is no darkness at all in him (1:5). While “light” has many connotations, this reference points specifically to God’s purity. Therefore, those who claim to have fellowship with God are living in God’s light, trying to live holy and pure lives for him. To claim to belong to God but then to go out and live in sin is hypocritical. In fact, John says that people are lying if they claim fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness. Christ will expose and judge such deceit.

JOHN COUNTERS FALSE TEACHINGS

John countered two major false teachings of the heretics in this letter:

1:6, 8, 10	They denied the reality of sin. John wrote that those who continue in sin do not belong to God. Those who say they have no sin only fool themselves and refuse to accept the truth.
2:22:4:1–3	They denied that Jesus was the Messiah-God in the flesh. John said that those who believe that Jesus is God incarnate and trust him for salvation are children of God.

Here John was confronting the first of three claims (see also 1:8 and 1:10) of the false teachers: that people can have fellowship with God and still walk in sin. False teachers who thought that the physical body was evil or worthless taught one of two approaches to behavior: either they insisted on denying bodily desires through rigid discipline, or they approved of gratifying every physical lust because the body was going to be destroyed anyway. Here John was stating that no one can claim to be a Christian and still live in evil and immorality. The false teachers claimed to be living in God, but they failed to reflect God’s moral purity.

Those who claim to know God must also be living in the light, for darkness and light are incompatible. People cannot live both in the darkness of sin and in the light of fellowship with God, in whom is “no darkness at all” (1:5). John often used “darkness” to refer to sin (1:5, 6; 2:8, 9, 11). Thus, one cannot live a sinful life and simultaneously claim to be a Christian.

1:7  But if we are living in the light of God’s presence, just as Christ is, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from every sin. ^NLT Because “God is light” (1:5), the Son of God lives in pure light and contains the light of God in himself. Those who claim to follow the Son cannot live in spiritual darkness (see 1:6, meaning ignorance and immorality); instead, they must be living in the light of God’s presence. They must be illumined by the truth of God’s character. To “live in the light” requires constant contact with God and no tolerance for dishonesty, hypocrisy, or sin. Living in the light pictures a life of complete transparency, with no attempts to conceal anything from “the Light.” To “walk in the light” (as it is translated in  and ) cannot come from imitating other Christians; instead, it comes from continuous effort to take on Christ’s qualities. This involves complete transformation from within.

COMING OUT

John wanted his readers to understand how to discern between true and false teachers. Because some had left the congregations to follow false teachers and start their own churches, many of the believers had been left confused. John said, first of all, that they should look at whether a leader’s teaching and behavior were consistent with each other and then consider whether the teaching was consistent with the message the apostles had given them. It is a lie to claim to be a Christian but deny its moral foundation by living in sin and immorality. Today many Christians profess Christ but live so enmeshed in the values and attitudes of non-Christians that they are indistinguishable from them. If you love Christ, come out of the dark shadows and back alleys of sin and immorality. Stand in the light with all your imperfections and look to Christ, your perfect Light.

Walking in the light leads to fellowship with each other. This fellowship among believers results from each believer’s having fellowship with God. By living in the light, John did not intend that all Christians should be hermits or mystics, living in solitary contemplation of God. Instead, their fellowship with Christ should produce the desire to join others in loving devotion. John’s overall argument stresses this: True spirituality manifests itself in community fellowship. One cannot say that he or she communes with God and then refuse to commune with God’s people. Such was the case with some of the false teachers of John’s day, and this situation exists among false cults today. Often their followers and leaders claim to have special relationships with God, but they don’t affiliate with other believers. They stay isolated and withdraw from everyone else. John’s point is that the natural result of living in the light (in fellowship with God) should be joyful relationships with other Christians.

Another result of walking in the light is that the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from every sin. John emphasized that the death of Christ (“the blood of Jesus”) saves people, not the false teachers’ knowledge. The verb “cleanses” also means “purifies.” Sin is not only forgiven, it is erased. How does Jesus’ blood do that? In Old Testament times, believers would symbolically transfer their sins to an animal, which they then would sacrifice (see a description of this ceremony in Leviticus 4). The animal died in their place to pay for their sin and to allow them to continue living in God’s favor. God graciously forgave them because of their faith in him and because they obeyed his commandments concerning the sacrifice. Those sacrifices anticipated the day when Christ would completely remove sin. Real cleansing from sin came with Jesus, the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Sin, by its very nature, brings death—that is a fact as certain as the law of gravity. Jesus did not die for his own sins; he had none. Instead, by a transaction that humans may never fully understand, he died for the sins of all who will believe. When people commit their lives to Christ and thus identify themselves with him, his death becomes theirs. He has paid the penalty for their sins, and his blood has cleansed them.

THE FELLOWSHIP FACTOR

John’s letter is filled with references to “fellowship.” Fellowship means more than a superficial conversation after church or a midweek meal together. The biblical term conveys the idea of a deep sharing of life, partnership together in a common cause, and spiritual oneness. Remember that the intimacy and fulfillment of biblical fellowship (whether with God or with others) first require a relationship. This six-question test will help determine the quality of the fellowship within a relationship:

1. Are there any unresolved tensions or conflicts in the relationship? (If so, these must be addressed.)
2. Are we spending adequate time together? (If not, there can never be intimacy!)
3. Are we communicating openly and honestly? (The sharing of thoughts, concerns, feelings, plans—even motives—is indispensable to true fellowship.)
4. Do we share the same vision? (If we are going in two different directions, it will be impossible to be partners.)
5. Are we committed to this relationship? (If the relationship is not a priority, then fellowship will never be a reality!)
6. Are we laying aside our own agendas and looking out for the best interests of others? (Self-centeredness cannot coexist with fellowship).

Those who “walk in the light,” the true believers, will still find themselves at times in sin. Christians will not be made completely perfect until Jesus returns and brings them into his kingdom. Until then, however, they desire to walk in the light and so refuse to consciously harbor sin. When they do sin, however, God has already made provision to deal with those sins through the blood of his Son. He died, not just for their past sins, but for all their sins that will be committed until the day of his return. These also are taken care of by his blood. That provision allows God’s people to continue to walk in the light—dealing with sin through confession and receiving his forgiveness so that fellowship with God and with others can remain unhindered.^[1]

 Scripture quotations marked  are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

^[1] Bruce B. Barton and Grant R. Osborne, 1, 2 & 3 John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1998), 21–24.

(1 John 1:1-4 )  That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched–this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. {2} The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

Once upon a time. . . .” Remember how exciting those words used to be? They were the open door into an exciting world of make-believe, a dream world that helped you forget all the problems of childhood.

Then—pow! You turned a corner one day, and “Once upon a time” became kid stuff. You discovered that life is a battleground, not a playground, and fairy stories were no longer meaningful. You wanted something real.

The search for something real is not new. It has been going on since the beginning of history. Men have looked for reality and satisfaction in wealth, thrills, conquest, power, learning, and even in religion.

There is nothing really wrong with these experiences, except that by themselves they never really satisfy. Wanting something real and finding something real are two different things. Like a child eating cotton candy at the circus, many people who expect to bite into something real end up with a mouthful of nothing. They waste priceless years on empty substitutes for reality.

This is where the Apostle John’s first epistle comes in. Written centuries ago, this letter deals with a theme that is forever up-to-date: the life that is real.

John had discovered that satisfying reality is not to be found in things or thrills, but in a Person—Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Without wasting any time, he tells us about this “living reality” in the first paragraph of his letter.

When John was called he was found mending his nets. John is a mender. His written ministry comes in after the church has been in existence for several decades, and at a time when apostasy had begun to creep in. There was need of a voice to call people back to the original foundations and that is the ministry of the Apostle John. He calls men back to truth. When we begin to drift, when some false concept creeps into our thinking or into our actions, it is John who is ordained of the Lord to call us back, to mend the nets and to set things straight.

If you were to go into the streets and ask, “What is Christianity?” you’d probably get a wide range of answers. Some might say that it is a system of thought or morality. Others might call it a religious organization. Those who are bitter against the church may say that it’s an evil system of repression. Even if you were to limit your question to those who make a claim to be some sort of Christian, I’d guess that you would get a wide range of answers.

The same would be true if you asked, “Who do you think Jesus Christ is?” Many would say that He was a great religious teacher or a good man. Some may identify Him as the founder of Christianity. Some may even say, correctly, that He is the Son of God, but they would be hard pressed to explain what that means.

It’s no accident that there is such confusion on the essence of true Christianity and the person of Jesus Christ. These are foundational issues. If you have a shaky foundation, it does not matter if the rest of the building is impressive—you’ve got a shaky building! And so Satan has tried to confuse people about true Christianity.

He’s been at it for centuries. Before the first century church was sixty years old, Satan had moved in to cause confusion. As we saw last week, many false teachers had arisen in the churches of Asia Minor, where the aged apostle John labored. They had left the churches and taken followers with them (1 John 2:19). They claimed to have the real truth about Christ and Christianity. So the apostle John wrote to his little children in the faith, to make sure that they were clear on the essence of true Christianity. He wanted them to spot and resist error and to grow in true fellowship with Jesus Christ.

The enemy is no less active today in stirring up such confusion. There are the cults, of course, with their blatant deviations from the faith. But, also, there are many errors that keep worming their way into Christian circles. Currently, the “new perspective on Paul” seeks to redefine the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The unity movement sets aside the gospel for the sake of unity between Roman Catholics and Protestants. “Open Theism” challenges God’s omniscience and absolute sovereignty. Arminianism in effect makes man sovereign over God in the matter of salvation. “Christian” psychology has introduced many errors, including the concept of self-esteem. The list could go on!

John begins his letter by getting right down to business. Except for Hebrews, John’s letters are the only New Testament epistles that begin without an opening salutation. Instead, John begins with a section that is similar to the prologue of his Gospel. Here he begins to counter the false teachers. He shows that…

True Christianity is Jesus Christ—revealed, experienced, and proclaimed with joy.

Christianity is not essentially a system of thought. Rather, it is a person—Jesus Christ—who was historically validated, personally experienced, and authoritatively proclaimed by the apostles. That is the foundation that John lays in these opening verses.

1. True Christianity is Jesus Christ revealed.

The main foundation of Christianity is not the speculations of men about God, but rather that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. The prime way that He did that is in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, who is the eternal God in human flesh. The only way that we can come to God or know Him is through Jesus Christ. As Jesus said (John 14:6), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Or, again Jesus said (John 17:3), “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

A. The revelation of Jesus Christ is historically validated.

John begins (1:1) by listing five ways that the revelation of Jesus Christ is historically validated. After the first, the last four are in a progression from the least (heard) to the most definite (touched).

(1). Jesus Christ is validated by the historic message about Him.

Conservative scholars are divided over the interpretation of the first phrase, “what was from the beginning.” Some note the parallel with John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This parallels Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” So they interpret this as a reference to the eternality of the Son of God. They argue that this is supported by the phrase in 1 John 1:2, “was with the Father,” and by 2:13, 14, which refers to Jesus as existing “from the beginning.” (John Stott argues for this, The Epistles of John [Eerdmans], pp. 58-59.)

Others, however, while not denying the eternality of the Son, argue that that is not John’s meaning here. They would argue that instead the phrase means what it later means in 1 John 2:7, 2:24, and 3:11, namely, the beginning of the gospel. They point out that John’s emphasis here, to counter the recent message of the false teachers, is that the apostolic message has not changed. It is the same message that has been proclaimed from the earliest days of the gospel. Also, the emphasis of the rest of verse 1 is on Christ’s humanity. So John’s point would be that his message is not the new message of the Gnostics. Rather, it is the old message, which has been proclaimed from the earliest days of Christ’s ministry. It is the same message that his readers had heard and believed from the beginning of their Christian experience. (F. F. Bruce, The Epistles of John [Eerdmans], p. 35; A. W. Pink, Exposition of 1 John [Associated Publishers & Authors], pp. 7-8; and Robert Law, The Tests of Life [Baker], p. 369, argue for this view.)

It is difficult to decide between these two views, but I lean toward the second view, in that John here seems to be appealing to his apostolic authority, and the fact that he had been with Jesus from the beginning of His earthly ministry. Thus the records of the four Gospels bear witness to the person of Jesus Christ.

(2). Jesus Christ is validated by His teaching.

“What we have heard” (1:1). John and the other apostles (the “we” of 1:1-4) had heard the very words of Jesus, and what amazing words they were! Even His enemies testified (John 7:46), “Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks.” How true! If you are trying to bear witness to someone who has never read the Gospels, direct him to do that. The words of Jesus bear witness of who He is.

(3). Jesus Christ is validated by His life and miracles.

“What we have seen with our eyes.” The addition of the phrase, “with our eyes,” shows that John is not talking about a mystical “vision” of Christ, but of actually watching Jesus as He lived before them. The apostles saw Jesus turn the water into wine, feed the 5,000, walk on water, heal the multitudes, and raise the dead. The 35 miracles recorded in the four gospels are only a fraction of those that the apostles witnessed. John (21:25) ends his gospel by stating that if all the things that Jesus did were written in detail, the whole world couldn’t contain the books. Jesus’ sinless life and the powerful miracles He performed validate that He is the unique Son of God.

(4). Jesus Christ is validated by the glory of His person.

“What we have looked at.” This is not just a repetition of “what we have seen with our eyes,” but a step further. The Greek verb means, “careful and deliberate vision which interprets its object” (G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament [Scribner’s], p. 203). We derive our English word “theater” from it. It is the word that John (1:14) uses in his gospel, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John was especially referring to his experience on the Mount of Transfiguration, when he and Peter and James saw Jesus’ glory unveiled. Peter refers to that event when he states (2 Pet. 1:16), “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”

(5). Jesus Christ is validated by His bodily resurrection.

What we have … “touched with our hands.” This is the same word that Jesus used after His resurrection, when He appeared to the disciples. He said (Luke 24:39), “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (see also, John 20:27).

So John is saying that Jesus Christ was revealed and that He was historically validated by the apostles in all of these objective ways, both before and after the resurrection. But, also, …

B. The revelation of Jesus Christ is spiritually manifested.

John states (1:1) that he is writing “concerning the Word of Life,” and then adds (1:2), “and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us.” In verse 1, the emphasis is on the humanity of Jesus Christ as He came in the flesh. In verse 2, John’s focus shifts to Jesus Christ as the one who both embodies and imparts eternal life. By stating that this Eternal Life (it should be capitalized) was “with the Father,” he uses the same preposition as in John 1:1, “the Word was with God.” But there the focus is on Jesus as the Word. Here the emphasis is on Jesus as the Life. This has two important implications:

(1). The message about Jesus Christ is not only about knowledge—it’s also about life.

The false teachers emphasized secret knowledge. While proper knowledge is vital—you cannot believe the gospel without knowing certain facts—there is more. The gospel is about dead sinners being raised to new life. Nicodemus was a teacher of the Jews (he had knowledge), but before he met with Jesus, he did not understand that he needed new life through the new birth (John 3:1-16). The apostle Paul told the Ephesians that they were dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1-3). Then he adds the wonderful words (2:4-5), “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ….”

So the gospel is not just a matter of knowing and assenting to the facts about Jesus Christ, although it includes that. It’s also a matter of Christ raising you from spiritual death to life.

(2). The message about Jesus Christ must be revealed to us so that we can see Christ as our life.

John states (1:2), “the life was manifested,” and then repeats that this eternal life “was manifested to us” (the apostles). In other words, the apostles not only had Jesus Christ revealed to them in an objective, historical way; but also, He was manifested to them in a spiritual way as “the life, the eternal one” (literal translation of the Greek). God opened their eyes to see that the man, Jesus, was not just a godly man or a great teacher. It was revealed to them that He is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16-17).

Why didn’t the multitudes that heard the same teaching and saw the same miracles as the apostles also see and believe in Christ as the life-giving Savior? Jesus explained (Luke 10:21) that the Father had hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to infants (see also, Matt. 13:10-17). Then (10:22) He added, “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” In a similar vein, Paul explained (2 Cor. 4:4), “… the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Unless God shines into our hearts to give sight (2 Cor. 4:6), we cannot and will not see the truth about who Jesus Christ really is. At its core, true Christianity is Jesus Christ revealed.

2. True Christianity is Jesus Christ experienced.

Our experience of Jesus Christ must be based on the biblical revelation of Him. It is both personal and corporate. The personal aspect is evident in the repetition of “we” and “our” in these verses. The apostles knew Christ individually, but also they shared together in the experience. And the experience was progressive, or growing. We can see this here in three ways (I need to be brief now, but I hope to come back to this next week):

A. The experience of Jesus Christ begins with reliable information about Him (1:1).

This is the historical validation that we’ve already seen. Christianity is not a mystical experience or someone’s subjective ideas about God. Rather, it is an experience rooted in history. God sent His Son at a point in history, in fulfillment of promises that He had made in earlier history. Our experience must be biblically based.

B. The information leads to eternal life (1:2).

This is the spiritual manifestation of Jesus Christ. At some point in discovering the historical facts, God opens a person’s eyes to see who Jesus truly is. He sees that Jesus is Life, eternal life (John 14:6). As John later states (1 John 5:20), “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.”

C. The eternal life leads to deepening fellowship with God and with other believers (1:3).

“Fellowship” means, literally, to share in common. The fellowship that we share when we come to know Jesus Christ as our life is two-dimensional: it is with God and with one another. John begins on the human plane, stating that he is proclaiming these truths about Jesus Christ “so that you too may have fellowship with us” (the apostolic circle). Then he adds, “and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” John Stott (ibid., pp. 63-64) explains, “John does not here mention the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, which is a characteristic expression in the Pauline Epistles (2 Cor. 13:14; Phil. 2:1), no doubt because the false teachers against whom he is writing make him concentrate on the Son, whom their heresy dishonored, and the Father whom they thereby forfeited.”

I’ll say more about this fellowship next time, but for now let me say that true Christianity is an experience rooted in revelation and realized in relationship—with God and with other believers. This two-dimensional fellowship should always be deepening in both directions. If you’ve been a Christian for a while, you should know and enjoy fellowship with God better than before. And, you should be deepening your relationships with God’s people. This is to say that unless you are in solitary confinement, you cannot be a growing Christian in isolation from other Christians. True Christianity is an experience of fellowship with God and with His people.

3. True Christianity is Jesus Christ proclaimed.

The Gnostics claimed that the truth about Christ was a deep mystery or secret, known only by the few. They were deliberately exclusive. But John counters their error by showing that true Christianity is not exclusive and hidden. Rather, it is a message that by its very nature must be proclaimed. He uses three words to describe how the apostles communicated the gospel:

A. We proclaim Jesus Christ on the authority of eyewitness testimony (“testify”).

“Testify” is a legal term meaning, “to bear witness.” When you testify in court, you swear to tell the truth about what you saw or heard. John Stott (p. 61) calls this “the authority of experience.” The apostles spoke the truth about what they had seen and heard during their time with Jesus.

B. We proclaim Jesus Christ on the authority of commission (“proclaim”).

This word means to report or announce as a messenger. Stott calls it “the authority of commission,” in that it implies that Jesus Christ appointed the apostles to proclaim the good news about His life, teaching, death, and resurrection. They did not launch the church because they were a bunch of religious entrepreneurs or franchisers, promoting their business. They were under orders from Jesus Christ and they weren’t free to change the message to fit the customers. They had to proclaim the message that the King had commanded them. That message hasn’t changed!

C. We proclaim Jesus Christ on the authority of written revelation (“write”).

John (and some of the other apostles) wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit the words that God wanted us to receive. Through these writings (our New Testament), we can enter into the same fellowship with God that the apostles enjoyed!

If John and the other apostles had not proclaimed the message, we wouldn’t know Christ today. The Great Commission that Jesus gave to them applies to us, also. If we don’t proclaim to others the authoritative message of the King, how will they know and believe (see Rom. 10:14-15)? God’s method of imparting eternal life to those who are dead in their sins is through the proclamation of the word of life, the gospel. If you’re not proclaiming God’s revelation about Jesus Christ by your life and words, you’re not experiencing the fullness of true Christianity. One final note:

4. True Christianity is great joy in Jesus Christ.

John says that he writes these things “so that our joy may be made complete.” Some later manuscripts change “our” to “your,” and certainly that is true. But the original reading was probably “our” joy, referring to the joy of the apostolic circle that knew Christ firsthand. John was by this point the only surviving apostle. But, how was his joy made complete in writing these things? In the sense of 3 John 4, “I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth” (see also, 2 John 4). If John’s little children would read these letters and not be carried away by the false teachers, but continue in the truth, he was a happy man.

You may think that joy in the Lord is a nice extra, but not essential. But as John Piper often points out, we cannot glorify God properly unless we enjoy Him thoroughly. A. W. Pink (ibid., p. 28) observed, “Now this joy is not to be regarded as a luxury, but rather as a spiritual necessity. We are obligated to be glad in God.” He goes on to cite several Scriptures that command us to be glad and rejoice in the Lord. Then he points out that we will not glorify God apart from such genuine joy in Him. Our aim in proclaiming the gospel to others should be that they, too, would come to share our joy in Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

James Boice sums up (The Epistles of John [Zondervan], p. 30),

This then is the way in which the gospel has come to us and must be passed on. The apostles bore witness to what they had seen and heard of Jesus, proclaimed it authoritatively on His commission, and finally preserved it in the writings which have since become our New Testament. Today believers are to take their writings and, having through them entered into the experience of the apostles, proclaim the Christ of the apostles to the world.

Many people believe in a Jesus of their own imagination and have an emotional experience that they call being born again. But when their problems are not all magically solved, or they go through difficult trials, they conclude that “Jesus didn’t work,” and they go back to the world. The problem is, they didn’t believe in the Jesus revealed by the apostles in the New Testament. Their experience was not that of true fellowship with God and with others who know God. And so any witness about their supposed conversion is lost when they abandon the faith. It’s likely that they never experienced true Christianity.

True Christianity is essentially Jesus Christ—revealed in Scripture, experienced in new life and fellowship, and proclaimed with joy. Make sure that you’ve got the real deal!

Three things are highlighted for us in this introduction: A relationship, a fellowship, and a joy that follows. But it must all begin with this matter of relationship, for John is concerned first about the family of God.

In all probability, John had been released from his imprisonment on the Isle of Patmos and was residing in Ephesus, where he wrote this Epistle. His first statement is extremely meaningful. As the elder statesman of believers, he had seen the diabolical effects of unbelief and heresy in the church. Due to the false teachers, much misunderstanding had resulted, especially among the young believers.

Frequently the illusion was heard, “What shall we believe?” There is only one message to believe: “That which was from the beginning” (1:1).

This is the message that proclaims Christ and all that pertains to Him: His miraculous birth, His spotless life, His divine power, His death, and His glorious resurrection.

This is what one must believe if he is to experience eternal life and all of its benefits. God’s message must never be changed. While some believers are “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness” (Ephesians 4: 14), those who would experience peace, blessing, and assurance must hold to “that which was from the beginning.”

1:1  That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  This letter is attributed to John, one of Jesus’ original twelve disciples. He was “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20), and, along with Peter and James, he had a special relationship with Jesus. This letter was written between a.d. 85 and 90 from Ephesus, before John’s exile to the island of Patmos (see Revelation 1:9). Jerusalem had been destroyed in a.d. 70, and Christians had been scattered throughout the empire.

Unlike the style of most letters at this time, this letter does not give the name of its writer at the beginning. Both 2 and 3 John begin with “the elder” and follow with the name of the addressee. This letter, however, includes no author’s name, except the understanding that this is an elder of the church writing to his “dear children” (2:1). (The “Author” section in the introduction offers more information about this letter’s authorship.) This unaddressed, unsigned letter was probably more of a written sermon or treatise sent to several of the churches in and around Ephesus that were under John’s care. As the oldest living apostle, John was the “elder statesman” of Christianity; he had watched the church deal with conflict from within and persecution from without. Plentiful false teachers were accelerating the downward slide of many away from the Christian faith. John wrote this letter to put believers back on track. John directly confronted the false teachings, called them lies, and refocused the readers back to the truth of the foundational gospel message.

John’s first letter to the churches opens by emphasizing Christ’s eternal nature. The words “that which was from the beginning” seem odd because, since John was writing about Jesus, he might be expected to have written, “He who was from the beginning.” But the relative pronoun (“that which”) was more inclusive—it encompassed everything about “the Word of life” that the apostles had come to know and experience. “The Word of life” describes the Son of God as the personal expression of the invisible God and the giver of divine, eternal life to the believers. John opened his Gospel with the same thought (see John 1:1).

God came into the world as a human, and he, John, had been an eyewitness to Jesus’ life. In both the Gospel and this letter, John revealed that he (with the apostles) had heard, seen, and even touched God (John 1:14). When the Son entered into time, his fellowship with the Father also entered into time. Thus, to have heard Jesus was to have heard the Father speaking in the Son (John 14:10, 24), to have seen Jesus was to have seen the Father (John 14:8–10), and to have known Jesus was to have known him who was one with the Father (John 10:30, 38).

John made a point of saying that not only had they heard and seen Christ, they had “touched” him. In other words, Jesus had been a completely physical being. Some false teachers denied the Incarnation, claiming that God did not—indeed could not—become human. They taught that Jesus merely had assumed the guise of humanity but had not been truly human. The truth of Jesus’ humanity, however, is vital to Christianity and to salvation.

John called Jesus the Word of life. In his Gospel, John had written, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1–2 ). As the “Word,” the Son of God fully conveys and communicates God. What kind of “Word” was this? The Greek term is logos, and theologians and philosophers, both Jews and Greeks, used the term “word” in a variety of ways.

In the Hebrew language of the Old Testament, “the word” was an agent of creation (Psalm 33:6), the source of God’s message to his people through the prophets (Hosea 1:2), and God’s law, his standard of holiness (Psalm 119:11). The Greeks used “the word” to refer to a person’s thoughts or reason or to a person’s speech expressing his or her thoughts. As a philosophical term, logos was the rational principle governing the uerse. For both Jews and Greeks, the term logos signified beginnings. Jesus Christ, the logos, is from the beginning because he is God (Genesis 1:1). John’s use of logos is a good title for the Son who both created the uerse with God and then came to earth to be the perfect expression of God to humanity. Jesus, the logos, reveals God’s mind to human beings. Jesus Christ, the logos, is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), the express image of God’s substance (Hebrews 1:3), the revealer of God, and the reality of God.

Not only is Jesus Christ “the Word,” he is the Word of life—of spiritual life. People may be physically alive but spiritually dead. Jesus, however, as the express image of God himself, gives both spiritual life and eternal life to all who believe in him (1:2).^[1]

“The beginning” spoken of here is the same time referred to in John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2).

This is the beginning of creation, not the beginning of Christ, for He, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are without beginning. When God’s creation began, Christ, with all of His attributes, was existent. In fact, the creation we enjoy is the work of the Son of God who existed eternally before the uuerse was created.

(Genesis 1:1-2 )  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. {2} Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

(Colossians 1:15-20 )  He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. {16} For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. {17} He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. {18} And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. {19} For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, {20} and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Thus, what we believe, as followers of Christ, is not new, or even several hundred years old. It is the age-old message of truth which had its derivation in “the beginning.” It will continue to exist even after the heavens and the earth pass away.

The Apostle Paul had something to say about this message in his valuable treatise on the resurrection:

(1 Corinthians 15:1-5 )  Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. {2} By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. {3} For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, {4} that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, {5} and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.

Nothing could be clearer; we “are saved” by believing in the crucified and resurrected Christ.

“That which was from the beginning” pointed to a Person. This he substantiated by actual experience: “We have heard… we have seen. . . we have looked upon. . . and our hands have handled, of the Word of life.”

Doubtless this was written to refute the teachings of a group in the church known as Gnostics. The Gnostics were divided among the Docetics and the Cerinthians.

The errors they taught dealt primarily with the person of the Lord Jesus. The Docetic Gnostics denied the humanity of Christ, saying that He did not have an actual body; He only seemed to have a body.

The Cerinthian Gnostics denied the virgin birth, teaching that Jesus was born of human parents, but at His baptism Christ descended upon Him in the form of a dove, at which time He began to do the works of the Father until the cross, when the Christ departed again from Jesus.

Directed by the Holy Spirit, the apostle sought to combat these errors in his first Epistle. His initial argument is one that cannot be disproved easily, that of a personal relationship and experience. John “heard” Christ speak, not once, but innumerable times. Much of what he heard has been recorded for our benefit in the fourth Gospel.

Not only was it by his auditory nerves that John was made aware of the fact of Christ’s humanity, but through his sense of vision, as well. He heard Christ speak many, many times, and he also saw Him. What John wrote was not the result of dreams or hallucinations. He actually saw the body of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The word used for “seeing” embodies more than a visual impression; it has to do with a mental perception.

John thoroughly understood what he saw. He realized without question that he looked upon the Son of God. In addition to hearing and sight, John had physical contact with Christ, having touched His actual body. What greater proof does one need?

One may believe that Jesus was simply a good man, while attempting to pattern his life after Christ’s example. This will tend to lift one toward Heaven, but only as he submits to the Son of God as Savior and Lord will he be allowed to enter Heaven. We don’t have the option that “Jesus was just a good man” because if that is all that is true, then He was the biggest phony and liar who has ever walked upon the face of the earth!

• That which was from the beginning” is the message every human in the world needs to hear, for it is the message that provides deliverance from all the frustrations and fears of life resulting from the mixed up and chaotic world in which we live. How consoling is the truth that “if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).
• It is the message that molds families together and keeps couples from the divorce court as they submit “one to another in the fear of God” (Ephesians 5:21).
• It is the message that can stabilize our educational system and train our youth for respectability and worthwhile endeavors, for “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9: 10).
• It is the message that can solve the economic problems of the world, enabling us to recognize where the true values of life really are.
• It will help us to understand that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12: 15).
• It is the message that could bring warmth and value to the churches proclaiming the social gospel which is no gospel at all. God warns, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7: 15).
• It is the message that could change the course of our civilization from its downward path of destruction to one of prosperity and blessing. It is axiomatic that “righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).
• Of course, to be effective, this message must be believed. To be believed, Christ must be received. To receive Christ is to respond to Him through faith with the desire ultimately to be immersed in water in order to receive forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).

Nothing else will do. There are no substitutes. It is Christ we need; only as we heed the truth “which was from the beginning” can we know life, peace, and happiness.

Recall how Thomas laughed at the report he received from the other disciples of the resurrected Christ. Boldly he affirmed, “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe” (John 20: 25).

Eight days later, as Christ appeared to him in the presence of the other disciples, he was invited by our Lord to reach out his hand and touch the scars. But for Thomas, this was not necessary; seeing was believing; he needed nothing beyond this. Convinced, he cried out, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

John went further than Thomas. Not only did he hear and see Christ, he touched Him. There was no question in the apostle’s mind about the Son of God being an actual human when He was on this earth.

What is so important about the humanity of Christ?

Is it not enough that He is the Son of God? The humanity of Christ is of extreme importance to the child of God. Consider the consoling truths of Hebrews 4: 15-16: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”  Because of His humanity, our Lord understands all about temptation. We have been tempted and have yielded many times. Always, when Christ faced temptation, He emerged victorious. As believers, we too can be victorious. As we unload our cares upon Him and trust Him for His power, we can be “more than conquerors through Him” (Romans 8:37).

1:2  This one who is life from God was shown to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and announce to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was shown to us.  The Greek word for “life” is zoe. In classical Greek, it refers to life in general. There are a few examples of this meaning in the New Testament (Acts 17:25; James 4:14; Revelation 16:3), but in all other instances, the word was used to designate the divine, eternal life—the life of God (see, for example, Ephesians 4:18; Philippians 2:16; 1 Timothy 6:12). This “life” resided in Christ, so John described Jesus Christ as this one who is life from God and repeated the fact that we have seen him. He, the other disciples, and thousands of other people had indeed “seen” Jesus. He was more than just a human being. “Was shown to us” literally means “was revealed or manifested.” The phrase has four emphases—life from God was shown (1) through Jesus’ earthly ministry (3:5, 8); (2) through Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection (John 21:1, 14); (3) through his appearing when he returns in full glory (2:28; Colossians 3:4; 1 Peter 5:4); and (4) through the Incarnation when all of his nature became present in the person of Jesus.

John’s work during the many years since Jesus’ ascension had been to testify and announce to everyone that [Jesus] is the one who is eternal life. Because Christ is eternal life, those who trust in him also have eternal life.

In Greek, the phrase “he was with the Father” suggests that the Word was face-to-face with the Father. This common Greek expression indicated a personal relationship. By using this expression, John was saying that the Word (the Son) and God (the Father) enjoyed an intimate, personal relationship from the beginning. In Jesus’ intercessory prayer, recorded in John 17, he revealed that the Father had loved him before the foundation of the world (John 17:24). The words “then he was shown to us” refer to the revelation of the Son of God in human form. Several times, Jesus explained that he was God himself, in human form:

• “Then they asked him, ‘Where is your father?’ ‘You do not know me or my Father,’ Jesus replied. ‘If you knew me, you would know my Father also.’ ” (John 8:19 )
• “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30 )
• “‘If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’ Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.’ ” (John 14:7–10 )^[2]

^[1] Bruce B. Barton and Grant R. Osborne, 1, 2 & 3 John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1998), 12–15.

^[2] Bruce B. Barton and Grant R. Osborne, 1, 2 & 3 John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1998), 15–16.

Hardly a month goes by when I do not delete numerous spam emails trying to get me to purchase a fake Rolex watch or college diploma. Other emails promise that I will receive millions of dollars from a total stranger, usually in Africa.

Most of these phony deals are easy to spot. But far more serious than losing some money to con artists would be to lose your soul because you bought into a false religion. Satan always has made sure that numerous spiritual con artists thrive at their trade

. Paul warned the Corinthians (2 Cor. 11:13-15), For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

It’s not easy to spot an angel of light or servant of righteousness in disguise! That’s why the New Testament abounds with warnings about false teachers. It’s easy to be led astray.

In his final words to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:29-30), Paul predicted, “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”

In what are to me the most frightening words in the New Testament, Jesus warned (Matt. 7:21-23), “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

These repeated warnings mean that we must be very careful to make sure that our Christian faith is true, both objectively and personally.

We need to know that Christianity is objectively true, that the testimony about Jesus Christ is genuine and not the work of spiritual con artists.

And, we need to know that our personal faith in Christ is genuine faith, not the false faith that results in hearing on judgment day, “I never knew you; depart from Me….” Since our eternal destiny is at stake, we need to know that we have the real deal, not a phony substitute!

The aged apostle John wrote First John against the backdrop of influential false teachers to help his readers know that their faith was genuine and that they possessed eternal life in Jesus Christ.

John Stott writes (The Epistles of John, Tyndale Bible Commentaries [Eerdmans], p. 42), “His great emphasis is on the differences between the genuine Christian and the spurious, and how to discern between the two. The predominant theme of these Epistles is Christian certainty.”

Stott points out that the Greek verb (ginosko) that means, “to know by observation and experience” occurs 15 times and the word (oida) meaning, “to know by reflection” is used 25 times. The verb (phaneroo), “to make known” is used nine times (and the noun once), and the noun (parresia), “confidence” is used four times. John wants us to know some things with certainty!

Historical Setting and Background:

I agree with the consensus of scholars that the apostle John wrote these three epistles late in his life near the end of the first century. John had moved to Ephesus, on the west coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey).

Perhaps Paul’s warning to the Ephesian elders some thirty years before had come to pass. A number of false teachers had arisen in the churches of that area. John uses strong terms to describe these men, showing that they were not true Christians who merely had different opinions on some minor matters.

He calls them “false prophets” (4:1), “antichrists” (2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7), “liars” (2:22), and “deceivers” (2 John 7; 1 John 2:26 [verb]).

He repeatedly implies or states that they are not of God (4:6), but are from the devil (3:8, 10); they are from the world (4:5); and, they do not know God (3:6; 4:6).

Their purpose was to deceive the Christians on important matters of doctrine and practice.

He states (2:26), “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you” (see also, 2 John 7). They had at one time been in the church, but they had left to form their own churches, based on their supposedly “enlightened” view of things.

John writes (2:19), “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.”

Probably they had taken a number of church members with them and they were actively recruiting from those who had not left with them. They probably said, “We used to believe just as you do, but we’ve moved to something better. We have deeper knowledge than we used to have. Come and check it out!”

Whenever that sort of thing happens, it creates a lot of confusion and disruption in the church. Those who remain in the church begin to wonder, “Could those people be right? Am I missing something? How can we know that we’re right?”

Those who leave are critical of the church leaders and point out imperfections in the church. Those who stay behind begin to notice these flaws. Pretty soon, the entire church is engulfed in turmoil.

Although John never identifies himself by name or calls himself an apostle, he writes with strong apostolic authority. He was the “apostle of love” and he was pushing ninety, but he confronts the false teachers and their errors head on!

He begins by asserting that he knows what he is talking about, because he was there with Jesus from the start. He had heard Him, seen Him, and even touched Him (1:1), and the message that he was proclaiming was none other than that which he and his fellow apostles had received directly from Jesus Christ (1:2-3, 5).

John does not paint in subtle tones, but in bold black and white. He makes many exclusive, either-or statements.

Note 1:6: “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”

Or (1:8), “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Or (2:4), “The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

• He says that either you love the world or you love the Father, but not both (2:15).
• Either you have the Father and the Son or you don’t (2:22-23).
• Either you are born of God and do not practice sin or you are not born of God and do practice sin (3:6-9).
• Either you are a child of God and love your brother or you’re a child of the devil and hate your brother (3:10-12).

There are other examples, but they all add up to show that John isn’t subtle. He paints the two options in bold relief so that if anyone is in the middle, he will be forced to commit himself to the truth or walk knowingly into error. He was not in favor of modifying foundational truths to fit the times (see 2:24).

Just who were these false teachers and what was the heart of their error? We cannot know for certain, but we can make some educated guesses based on John’s direct references to their teaching, as well as the positive emphasis that he feels is necessary to counteract it.

It’s kind of like we’re listening to one side of a phone conversation and trying to figure out what the other party was saying based on what we hear. Here’s what we can figure out:

1. These false teachers were propagating a three-fold error. First, there was a doctrinal error regarding the person of Jesus Christ. They denied that Jesus was the Christ (2:22). This probably did not mean that they denied that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, but rather that they denied His divine Sonship (2:23; 4:15). Also, they denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh.

John warns (4:2), “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (see also, 2 John 7).

In other words, they denied that Jesus was God in human flesh.

These heretics also claimed to be more progressive than the apostles, and that they had the Father without the Son  (2 John 9; 1 John 2:22-23). Most theological errors go astray on the person and/or work of Christ, because these subjects are essential to the Christian faith.

The second main error of these heretics was ethical or moral. As we saw in James 5:19-20, theological errors usually go hand in hand with moral errors. These heretics either denied that sin exists in our nature and practice or they said that sin does not matter since it does not interfere with our fellowship with God.

John soundly refutes this in 1:5-10. These teachers were antinomian (“against the law”), saying, “We know Christ, but we aren’t hung up with all of these commandments! We’re free in Christ and don’t worry about mere rules!”

But, as F. F. Bruce points out (The Epistles of John [Eerdmans], p. 26), “Christians stand on the brink of disaster when they begin to modify the adjective ‘ethical’ with the adverb ‘merely.’” John soundly refutes this moral error, beginning in 2:3-6.

The third error of the heretics was relational or social test: while undoubtedly they claimed to be loving (who would not?), in practice they did not demonstrate genuine, biblical love for others.

Probably their claim to special, deeper knowledge caused them to come across with arrogance. They were hostile and intolerant of those who didn’t agree with them. Greed caused them to not care for the needy in practical ways (3:16-18).

Who were these men (historically)? While there is much debate, many scholars identify them as Cerinthian Gnostics. Gnosticism was the philosophical blend of various pagan, Jewish, and semi-Christian systems of thought.

Its two main tenets were dualism and illumination. Dualism meant that all matter is evil and spirit is good. Since matter is evil, a good God could not have created the material universe. Hence the Gnostics posited a series of emanations from the Supreme Being, each a bit more removed, until one who was sufficiently remote created the world.

Since matter is evil, they could not conceive of how God could take on a human body subject to pain, suffering, and death. Thus they denied the incarnation.

Cerinthus was a Gnostic living in Ephesus. The early church father, Polycarp, who knew John, told a story about the apostle going to bathe at the public bathhouse in Ephesus, when he learned that Cerinthus was inside. John rushed out without bathing, exclaiming, “Let us fly, lest even the bathhouse fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within” (in Stott, p. 46).

Cerinthus taught that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was the natural son of Joseph and Mary. He was a very good and righteous man.

At His baptism, “the Christ” descended on him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler. Jesus then proclaimed the unknown Father and performed miracles.

At last, the Christ departed from Jesus and the human Jesus suffered, died, and rose again, while the Christ remained untouched, since He is a spirit being. So Cerinthus separated the man Jesus from the divine Christ.

It would seem that John wrote the doctrinal part of his letter against these pernicious errors. This is especially in focus in 5:6, “This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood.”

John is asserting that the Christ came not only through His baptism (water), but also through His death (blood). You cannot separate the humanity of Jesus from His deity.

The Gnostic dualism also led to some moral aberrations. On the one hand, since they thought that matter is evil, some Gnostics practiced strict asceticism, which is the attempt to be righteous by harsh treatment of the body.

Others reasoned that since the enlightened spirit is separate from the evil body, morality does not matter. So they claimed to be righteous in spirit even while they indulged the flesh. John repeatedly confronts this error.

The other main feature of Gnosticism was illumination. They claimed that the way to salvation was through secret enlightenment. Only the initiated, who knew their secret theories, were in the light.

This exclusive mentality led them to despise unenlightened outsiders. It produced an arrogant lack of love. John repeatedly shows that genuine love is the mark of all who believe in the Savior who gave Himself for us on the cross.

John’s purpose:

Thus John had a two-fold purpose in writing: First, he had a polemical purpose, to attack and refute the errors of Cerinthian Gnosticism. He exposes and refutes their doctrinal errors about the person of Christ. He refutes their ethical error (that obedience doesn’t matter) by showing that the one who says he abides in Christ must walk as Christ walked (2:6). And, he attacks the loveless arrogance of the false teachers by showing that true believers must love one another as Christ has loved us.

John’s second purpose was pastoral. He wanted to cultivate assurance of who Jesus Christ is, assurance of salvation and genuine fellowship with God and with one another among his “little children” (he uses this term 7 times out of 8 in the New Testament; John 13:33 is the only exception). Regarding Jesus Christ, John wants his flock to know with assurance who Jesus Christ is and why He came. He is the eternal Son of God, sent by the Father to be the Savior of the world (not just of the exclusive, enlightened few; 2:2; 4:14).

He assures them of this truth through three witnesses.

First, the historical events witness to Jesus Christ. He was sent (4:9, 10, 14), He came (5:20), and He was manifested in the flesh (1:2; 3:5, 8; 4:2).

Second, the apostolic testimony witnesses to Jesus Christ. The apostles had firsthand, eyewitness evidence of His reality (1:1-3; 4:14).

Third, the Holy Spirit gives inner witness of the truth about Jesus Christ to every believer, corroborating the external witness (2:20, 27; 3:24; 4:13; 5:7, 8). John wants his children to be assured about the truth of Jesus Christ.

John also wants to cultivate assurance about eternal life. He wants his children to know that they have eternal life. This includes knowing that they know Jesus Christ (2:3; 5:20) and that they are in Him (2:5-6; 4:13; 5:20).

They can know that they are of the truth (3:19) and are of God (5:19). They can know that they have passed out of death into life (3:14).

John sums up his purpose (5:13), “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

John’s third pastoral purpose was to cultivate genuine fellowship with God and with other believers. He wants to bring his readers into the circle of apostolic fellowship, which is with the Father and the Son (1:3-4, 6). And, he wants them genuinely to love one another (2:3-11).