Tonight we are going to dive right into our lesson for tonight. We’re continuing to look at John’s guides for answering the question, “How do you know if you are a Christian?” Rather than refresh our memories with what we have talked about the last couple of weeks now I want to wait and sum everything up together at the end.
To start off our conversation, I want to throw a question out at you guys that one of my college professors asked our class to write a paper on. It was probably one of the most difficult papers I had to write in college and the question just blew my mind. I had a lot of really challenging conversations with my classmates about this question and it seemed like there were so many different sides and opinions about it. So, I want to know what you guys think as the question will apply to the last guide that John lays out. The question is, “Do Christians and Jews worship the same God?”
***Give time to debate and discuss this question***
The reason that this question fits into our discussion for tonight is because the final guide that John lays out is what we will call The Doctrine Test. What does doctrine mean? According to dictionary.com, a doctrine is “a particular principle, position, or policy taught or advocated, as of a religion or government.” In other words, it is information, data, details, etc. So therefore, without even getting into the text yet, John is talking about having certain information, and in a sense, the right answers.
To take it a little deeper and to explore more specifically what John is talking about, let’s open our Bibles to 1 John 2:19-23.
***Read 1 John 2:19-23***
In order to understand The Doctrine Test we need to start by looking at verse 19 and understand what John is talking about. John writes, “These people left our churches, but they never really belonged with us; otherwise they would have stayed with us. When they left, it proved that they did not belong with us.” Does anyone have any ideas about what John is talking about?
If you remember back to when we first started looking at 1 John, we talked about that a big reason that John was writing was to speak against a group of people known as Gnostics that were rising up and causing conflicts with the church. They believed that they could get to heaven solely by having this special knowledge and that morals and loving one another didn’t matter at all. They also believed that all matter was evil and that only spirit was good. Therefore, Jesus could not have been God and man. These were the men and women who were leaving their churches and John indicates that they never really belonged there.
One of the reasons that they didn’t belong there was because of the doctrine and beliefs that they held. John quickly turns the corner though from them to focus on those who are still involved in the church and calling themselves Christians. Listen to verses 20-21 again. “But you are not like that, for the Holy One has given you his Spirit, and all of you know the truth. So I am writing to you not because you don’t know the truth but because you know the difference between truth and lies.”
John here gets more specific and says that hose who call themselves Christians “know the truth” and “know the difference between truth and lies.” I think that it’s really important the way that John writes this. He implies that there is ONE truth, singularly, and that there is a difference between that one truth and everything else, which he calls lies.
Culturally, this is something that is really contradictory to what the world around us says about truth. Today, the world says that there is no such thing as absolute truth, that truth is relative and determined by each individual. What’s ok for you is ok for you and what’s ok for me is ok for me. Another way this is communicated is that all paths lead up the same mountain and to the same god. Well, the problem with this view is that it is completely, intellectually impossible. There can only be one truth. Take this for example…if I told you that inside this bag that I have is an apple, would you believe me? If I showed you the outline of what was in the bag and said it was an apple, would you believe me? Regardless of how many different things I did and regardless of what you believed, the apple in the bag would still be an apple. That is the truth of the situation. See, our world wants to be able to have you say that it is a banana and me say it is an apple and both be right. The problem is that it can’t be both, only one person can be right.
The problem with having a buffet table of religions and beliefs is this same issue. Some of them over lap and have pieces of truth in them but when you actually take time to study the different world religions, you will find that they all end of at different places and that most of them contradict one another in major areas. You can not say that Islam and Christianity are the same thing. This brings us back to our opening question and deeper into our conversation as we will try to figure out then what the truth that John claims is.
John goes on in verse 22-23 and says, “And who is a liar? Anyone who says that Jesus is not the Christ. Anyone who denies the Father and the Son is an antichrist. Anyone who denies the Son doesn’t have the Father, either. But anyone who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.” In light of these verses, how would John answer our opening question about whether Jews and Christians worship the same God? His answer would be no because Jews don’t believe that Jesus was not the Christ or Messiah that the Old Testament had prophesied about.
So then, what is the truth, the doctrine that John is expressing that all Christians should share? The truth is that Jesus is the Christ! In his Gospel, John quotes Jesus as saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” In the book of Acts, Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples said this about Jesus, “There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”
What is it about Jesus that we must believe in order to be a Christian? Well, this is actually what the theme of our retreat is going to be and we’ll spend the whole weekend trying to figure out exactly who this Jesus guy is. But to summarize it briefly now, Jesus is God’s son, who came to earth as a man but yet was fully God. He was beaten, suffered, and died on the cross for our sins but then three days later rose from the dead. He then ascended into heaven and now offers us forgiveness for our sins and eternal life through a relationship with Him. That is Christianity 101 in a nutshell.
Now, where I want to end here is, what if there is a part of this doctrine or a part of the guides or tests that we have talked about – living morally or loving others – which I don’t believe in or struggle believing or practicing? Does that mean that God hates me? Absolutely not! Part of having a relationship with Christ is that it is a process in us all that takes time. If there is part of who Jesus is that you don’t understand or that you are struggling to believe, just be honest about it, keep searching, thinking, studying, talking, praying and I am confident you will find truth if your heart and mind are open.
Especially when it comes to the first two tests – obeying God’s commands and loving one another – those are things that will never be perfect but will take your entire life to perfect. Just in these past couple of weeks I have had conversations about both of these issues in my own life. I had a long talk with my wife the other night about how I have been kind of selfish and self absorbed lately – I have not loved her well or others because I have been caught up in my own world! As far as morals, there has been a huge debate about playing Halo and whether or not it is appropriate because it encourages violence and aggression…
These three tests, the Moral Test, the Social Test, and the Doctrine Test, are not going to be perfected and are not going to be easy to believe or put into practice. The importance though is your heart, in that that you are trying the best you can and really thinking about your life, actions, words, and thoughts. Debates are going to continuously arise about all three of these issues as we learn, grow and change in our way of thinking and believing. The issue is not that we are perfect at them but how we walk on a daily basis towards the light of Christ.
