When I prepared my sermon on 1 John 5, I wrote out an overview of John’s argument in the first 4 chapters as a backdrop to his conclusions in chapter 5. In the end I had to take it out because the sermon was too long. However, the call to pray would make better sense when we understand the preceding argument and so I decided to reproduce it here.
We have come to the last chapter of John’s first letter with John telling us his core conclusion:
And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:11-13)
John began his letter telling us about Jesus as the Word of Life:
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. 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. (1 John 1:1-2)
He is not telling us how we may be saved through faith in Jesus; rather, he is telling us that Jesus is the life. There is no life separate from Jesus Christ. In order to have life, you must have Jesus. You cannot, for example, acknowledge Jesus and then live on without Jesus.
In modern Christianity we like to use the phrase “salvation through faith in Jesus” and this often misleads us because it is like a formula. Western thinking picks apart the Gospel to arrive at a simple easy-to-understand formulation: to be saved, meaning that you avoid death, you need to profess faith in Jesus, meaning you recite a confession of faith. The Gospel formula is not wrong but it is inadequate and misleading. It implies that the Gospel is an easy way to avoid death.
When you read John’s letter you will see that he is setting right the wrong ideas of the Gospel and their implications. He begins by asserting that the Gospel is Jesus. Jesus is the Word of Life. Jesus is life. To have life you need to have Jesus, a living relationship with Jesus; you need to have fellowship with Jesus and thus with God and, to complete the picture, you will also be having fellowship with others who are also having fellowship with God and Jesus.
To share the Gospel is then to invite others into this fellowship.
That fellowship with Jesus can only happen when you acknowledge who he is but acknowledging who he is is not a relationship; it is the beginning of one. John writes:
“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13).
John tells us that he is writing to those who believe in the name of the Son of God yet he wants to make sure that they have eternal life.
Believing is only the beginning of a relationship; life is when you have fellowship.
John goes on to point out that you cannot have fellowship with God while still determined to hold on to a life of sin. God is light and you cannot have fellowship with light while desiring a life of darkness. There is no darkness in God.
God is love and there is no way we can draw near to God when we harbour hatred. Sin, hatred, lust, envy, all these are the currency of the world and we cannot have fellowship with God while in love with the world. A person full of hate, lust, envy, selfishness and self-centredness cannot know God, because God is love. In fact it is when we love that we draw closer to him.
To have fellowship with God is to love him and to love all that he stands for. It is to obey his commands, to walk in righteousness and to love in truth and deed. It is to be like Jesus.
Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. (1 John 3:6)
If John had stopped here, then the Gospel is not good news because knowing that we must maintain a relationship with Jesus to have life is not the same as being able to do so. However, John reveals to us that those of us who do desire to maintain fellowship with God, who desire to obey his commands, to walk in righteousness and to love in truth and deed that Jesus our Lord will enable us to do so. Fellowship with God and Jesus does not begin with us loving him; rather it begins with him loving us. Let me draw your attention to some verses in chapter 3.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
(1 John 3)
Notice in all of these—love, righteousness, Spirit—the resource is from God. A simple, but true, way to understand what John is saying is that if we want to be able to have fellowship with God, God will make sure we will succeed. By the time Christ appears we shall be like him.
See what great love the Father has lavished on 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. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (I John 3:1-2)
You notice that I added the caveat “if we want”. John tells us in chapter 3:
“Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.” (3:7-10)
You can interpret this to say that when God’s seed is in you you will not be able to sin, or, you will have no desire to sin. However, if we cannot choose to do wrong, then at some point our ability to choose, our free will, is impeded. I do not think this is God’s solution. If God desires to take away our freedom Adam and Eve would not have sinned.
To me, it makes more sense to understand this to mean that if indeed we have chosen to fellowship with Jesus and with God then he will work with us to nullify the effects of sin in us. The children of God have rejected a life of sin and so whenever sin rears its ugly head, they will turn to God in repentance and will be forgiven and purified.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
Those who abuse the Gospel as a means to escape death while maintaining their fellowship with the world will learn that they remain children of the devil and condemned.
And so as we read John’s letter, what I characterise as Christian essentials for life become clear:
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. (I John 3:16) (We acknowledge and receive Jesus’ love for us)
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (I John 3:19-20) (As a result there is no condemnation and we are free.)
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. (I John 3:21-22) (God will answer our prayer when we seek him for forgiveness and freedom from sin as we seek to obey and please him.)
And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. (I John 3:23) (We seek to love one another as commanded.)
The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. (I John 3:24) (We have fellowship with God because he gives us his Holy Spirit.)
None of these are optional.
With these as the backdrop, let us examine John’s concluding words in his letter.
Please continue on to the rest of my sermon here: 1 John 5: Life and Death