As you’re all aware, we’ve been following a sermon series on the first letter of John for many weeks now by exploring the great themes of John’s letter - truth and love; belief and behaviour.
In our passage for today, 1 John 5:1-12 on page 231 of the pew bibles, we find that John has left the primary and fundamental characteristic of a Christian until the last. Indeed, we’re at the climax of John’s letter as he addresses the subject of faith. We’re saved by faith - not by our own good deeds or our moral conduct, not by our own orthodoxy of belief but by faith.
"And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith" we are told in verse 4. And so I’ve entitled my sermon "Faith - the Key to Victory".
"Salvation by faith" isn’t a new idea for many of us. It is a familiar theme of the Book of James and indeed of the New Testament as a whole. Yet how often do we encounter people whose assurance of eternal salvation in heaven is not their faith but something else. It’s their good deeds for other people or their achievements in professional life or their financial success or the extent of their material possessions. Whatever they might profess, the life they lead clearly indicates a different understanding to that of salvation by faith.
We need to be clear what we mean and understand when we talk about faith. This is what John wants us to do and what I want us to do as we look at the answers to three questions:
* who is the focus of our faith?
* what is the source or evidence of our faith?
* what are the effects of our faith?
Who is the focus of our faith?
Firstly then "who is the focus of our faith?". Well verse 1 tell us that "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, has been born of God". The focus of our faith is, of course, none other than Jesus Christ. We are reminded of Peter’s wonderful declaration of faith after Jesus asked the disciples "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?". They answered that some say you are John the Baptist and others Elijah and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But when Jesus asked again "Who do you say that I am?", Peter answered "You are the Christ, the son of the living God". This is true faith focussed on the one who alone is worthy of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The emphasis in this first verse is on the word "born" which reminds us of that total transformation that comes from faith in Christ Jesus - the new life that is ours when we receive Christ as Lord and Saviour. The faith which John is talking about is an authentic faith in the complete Jesus whose mission started with his baptism in the Jordan when the Holy Spirit descended upon him and which culminated, not in his crucifixion but his resurrection to new life at God’s right hand in heaven.
These are Christian fundamentals, but as we will learn in a minute, John has a particular purpose in mind of speaking to those of his day who have lost sight of these fundamentals of the Christian Faith. "No-one comes to the Father but by me", said Jesus. Salvation is in the name of Jesus and in no other name. To be a child of God, one must believe Jesus is the Christ.
We should bear in mind that our faith is at God’s initiative, not our own. This can be a difficult concept for us to grasp. Our faith is an expression of God’s love for us. We are born of him.
Verse 1 makes clear that we cannot be in relationship with the Father without being in relationship with the Son and vice versa. The Father and the Son are inextricably linked in a relationship of love for each other and for the children of God. And so we begin to see that John’s subject of faith in this passage, is really yet another theme about love.
Let’s reflect for a minute on this message which John brings that Jesus alone is the object of faith. I wonder who instantly comes to mind in our own Christian experience as the one who most clearly pointed us to Jesus Christ as the true and only object of faith?
For many Japanese Christians in the first half of this century it was probably a little known person by the name of Toyohiko Kagawa. Toyohiko’s story was told in a recent edition of the Tear Australia magazine "Target" in a regular feature article entitled "People of Faith". I can thoroughly recommend this magazine as a good read.
Toyohiko was the son of a rich Japanese businessman and of one of his father’s many concubines. He was a Buddhist orphan by the age of 4 when he was brought up by some Presbyterian missionaries and through them learned of the love of Christ. He was baptised, studied theology and became a peace activist at a time when Japan was at war with Russia. He was found guilty of treason, beaten and imprisoned.
On Christmas Day 1909 at the age of 21 Toyohiko moved to the slums of Shinkawa just outside Tokyo where he served the poor for 15 years. He organised peasant unions and co-operatives and wrote treatises on the plight of the poor.
In 1923 when an earthquake wrecked Tokyo, the government turned to the incorruptible Toyohiko to supervise the relief and reconstruction of the city.
Toyohiko continued to be persecuted for his peace activism, being imprisoned several times and the subject of many calls for his execution as a traitor. He spent most of the Second World War in gaol.
But after the war was over, Toyohiko was appointed as adviser to the Prime Minister, was made Commissioner for National Social Welfare and led a campaign for national repentance.
Toyohiko is quoted as saying that:
"Christ alone can make all things new. The spirit of Christ must be the soul of all real social reconstruction."
It is said that Rabbi Israel Goldstein, the President of the America-Jewish Congress was asked if he could name a Christian who would work together with Jews for world peace. Without hesitation, he responded by nominating Toyohiko Kagawa, saying that his "religion is contagious".
Toyohiko was elected the President of the All Asian Congress for World Federation and the Vice-President of the Union for World Federal Government, before his death on 25 April 1960.
Clearly Toyohiko knew Jesus Christ to be the focus of an authentic faith, the one alone in whom all things can be made new. Do we share that same degree of confidence that this is the truth? I hope we do.
What is the source or evidence of our faith?
We have looked then at the first question of "Who is the focus of our faith?" We come now to look at the second question, "What is the source or evidence of our faith?"
The critics and the cynics will say that faith is irrational, illogical and foolish. That faith is blind faith - people walking around with their eyes closed.
Historical evidence
But if we jump to verse 6 we are told:
"This is the one who came by water and blood - Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood."
This is by no means an easy verse to understand and its meaning needs to be unravelled a little.
Commentators differ in their opinions as to the meaning of the reference to "water". It could refer to the waters of natural child birth. This would be consistent with John’s emphasis upon the humanity of Jesus - that Jesus came in the flesh.
The "water" might also be a reminder of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry when he was baptised by John in the River Jordan and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove.
The "blood" would seem to be a clear reference to Jesus’ death. Indeed, the combined references to "water" and "blood" in verse 6 remind us of the account in John’s Gospel at Christ’s crucifixion when we are told that one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and immediately there came out blood and water (John 19:34).
What John is emphasising here is the eye witness testimony to the real birth and the real death of a real man. The "water" and "blood" remind us of the historical evidence of Jesus’ existence - the objective elements of a rational Christian faith.
And yet John is at pains to stress that he did not come by water only but by water and blood. Take particular notice of how verse 6 is written:
"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."
What John is saying is that the one who came, the one whom Christians confess to be the Son of God, was as fully and thoroughly the eternal Son, at his death as he was at his birth and at his baptism. The Jesus who died on the Cross was not a man from whom the divine spirit had been withdrawn. He was nothing less than God.
The purpose of his coming as explained at his baptism, was fulfilled only in his sacrificial death and resurrection. The same Son of God became the atoning sacrifice for our sins. It is faith in him alone and in his completed work that brings eternal life, love for God, love for his children and victory over the world, as we shall see.
John is at pains to spell this out because, as I eluded to before, there were people of his day whose understanding of Jesus and his ministry was false. These are the Gnostics led by Cerinthus with whom it is said that John had an altercation in the Ephesian public baths, of all places! These Gnostics believed that the divine Christ came into Jesus at his baptism but left him sometime before his death. They denied the incarnation of Christ. No wonder that John was so emphatic that anybody who does not acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is of the antichrist.
But of what relevance is all of this for us today? Do we have the modern equivalent of the Gnostic? Well yes, I think we do.
On the one hand, think of those people today who are only too willing to sentimentalise about the Christmas story but have very little interest in Easter at all. A God who comes to us as a baby in stable is an attractive proposition, but as for a God who hangs naked, agonised and bloody, many would prefer not to think about this.
On the other hand, there are those who identify closely with Jesus’ humanity and his ability to suffer along side us and to sympathise with our human weaknesses, but who cannot accept a Jesus who claims to be the only begotten Son of God.
The point that John is making, is that unlike mystical Gnosticism, the Christian faith is anchored in concrete objective facts of history which are sufficiently well accredited by eye witnesses to make the Christian faith a perfectly reasonable one.
If our faith in Jesus is a genuine one, it must be one which embraces the Cross as well as the manger, the blood as well as the water.
The Witness of the Spirit
We come then to verses 6 and 7 where we are told that there is a third witness:
"And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree."
Here John is going behind his own role and that of the other apostles (as those who have seen and can testify to Jesus’ death and resurrection) and appeals to the ultimate authority, namely the Spirit who is the truth.
When the Holy Spirit is called to testify, the Spirit does not need to declare: "I swear by Almighty God that I will tell the truth and nothing but the truth." The Holy Spirit is God and is the truth. All our concepts of truth derive from God, as is still assumed in the practice of our law courts today which still use the form of words I just quoted.
The Spirit bears witness because the Spirit is the truth. There is no truth apart from God, for truth is grounded in God’s character alone. Truth is not the majority opinion in an election (as much as our State politicians might have us believe otherwise) or in an opinion poll or referendum. Truth is not feeling good about something. It is not an emotional encounter. All truth is God’s truth because only God is the ultimate reality. It is in this sense then that the function of the Spirit is to testify to the truth.
Faith is not ultimately a logical inference but a Spirit given sense or intuition. There’s nothing unusual or unwarranted about what John is saying. We are told in verse 9:
"If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son."
It’s common human experience to trust other people. We do this in everyday life when we sum up people in our own minds and form the view "Yes, I think I can trust him or her."
Fiona and I did just this in the last year with the builder we engaged to construct our house extension. We did what a good lawyer would always tell his clients never to do. We signed a building contract with our builder which had no completion date and no penalty clauses for delays. We decided that we trusted this builder and that if our relationship with him is going to work it needed to be built on trust. It did work and it worked well.
We can all relate to what John is arguing, that testimony is a credible ground for practical faith. If the testimony of men or women is good enough for us in every day life, then John is saying how much more sufficient is God’s testimony by his Spirit.
Verse 10 says:
"Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts."
and then in verse 11:
"And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life and this life is in his Son."
This "eternal life" is something we experience here and now in our own inner experience which confirms the truth of the gospel.
As one writer says:
"The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know."
The Spirit bears witness to faith in all sorts of ways, but especially through the Bible, which is God’s word of truth by which human minds are instructed and human wills are changed, as the Spirit brings Christ’s obedient followers increasingly into likeness to their Lord.
Toyohiko Kagawa was transformed by the Spirit from a young Buddhist orphan to an effective servant of God’s kingdom as he read God’s word with the Presbyterian missionaries who brought it to him.
When Peter confessed "You are the Christ, the son of the living God", Jesus didn’t respond "Well done, Peter, you did well to arrive at that conclusion". No, Jesus said:
"Blessed are you Simon, Son of Jonah. This was not revealed to you by man but by my Father in heaven."
In a similar way, 3,000 people were transformed on the day of Pentecost because of the work of the Spirit. It wasn’t that they had suddenly discovered some new evidence concerning the resurrection of Christ. No, that objective evidence had been there ever since Easter morning. It was the activity of the Spirit testifying to the truth and to the person of Jesus Christ that brought a multitude to faith as they repented, found forgiveness and were baptised (Acts 2:36-41). It’s still the same today.
The significance of three witnesses
So we have three witnesses says verses 7 and 8:
".... the Spirit, the water and the blood, and these three agree."
The three witnesses are in complete agreement. This is an important ingredient for the confidence we can have in the veracity of these three witnesses. It is because there are three witnesses so united that we can have certainty of truth.
The number of three witnesses would have had a particular relevance and significance for John’s contemporary readers because in any court of law at that time this was the strongest form of evidence of the truth. In Jewish law, it was necessary to have two or three witnesses for a case to be proven.
It’s clear from what John is saying that faith does not ultimately rest on human reason and argument. If it did, the intellectuals would have had the advantage long ago. And indeed many of Jesus’ disciples would not have been chosen. No, faith rests on the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit and the intuition of the heart, if you like, supported, defended and understood by our minds and consistent with our reasoning but nevertheless God given all the same.
As Frederick Buechner in his book "The Magnificent Defeat" wrote:
"It is not objective proof of God’s existence we want, but the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after - and that also, I think, is the miracle we really get."
This brings us to what one commentator has referred to as a "fourth witness or dimension", which is really just a further development of the witness of the Spirit within us, that is the personal or subjective dimension of our faith. Verse 10 says:
"Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart." (Verse 10)
John is confirming that this testimony is in the Christian because he or she believes in the Son of God. In the Greek, the emphasis, as I understand it, is on a permanent and continuous action. "Believes" is much more than simply understanding and accepting what Christ says, it is committing oneself on a daily basis to Christ as fully as one knows how in faithful reliance on Him.
It is as we meet the historical Jesus through the testimony of the "water" and the "blood" and the Spirit, that the objective realities of all that Jesus has accomplished for us in his death and resurrection, become part of our own experience.
With a spiritual new birth comes the growing inner conviction that these objective realities of Christian faith are true and are true in us and for us as individuals.
This is not to say that it is our subjective experience of Christ that saves us, but rather our believing in Him, which is then confirmed and deepened by the inner witness of the Spirit.
What are the effects of our faith?
This brings us to our third and final question of "What are the effects of our faith?
If we rightly understand faith in Jesus as a sign of new birth, then the evidences or effects of faith which John lists, are likewise confirmation of the new relationship which exists between the new born child of God and the Heavenly Father.
Love
As we come to faith in Jesus, our response is one of gratitude and love to our Heavenly Father. He has become our Father and we are members of a new family and so our love for God is expressed in our love for our new brothers and sisters in Christ. Verse 1 says:
".... everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well."
We are familiar with the idea of the love of God being shown through the love of Christian brothers and sisters. This is an idea which many of us will have been brought up with.
But here John reverses this idea by saying in verse 2:
"This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands."
John’s point, I think, is that faith and love are inextricably linked - a love of God and the love of one another.
Obedience
Love leads to obedience, the second effect of faith. We are told in verse 3:
"For the love of God is this: that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome".
But love not only leads to obedience. Obedience is actually the way in which we express our love of God. Love and obedience are not to be separated as if one were an emotion and the other an intellectual exercise. They go hand in hand. To profess love for God but to fail to obey His Commandments, is as much a nonsense as the reverse - to obey him without love.
"His commandments are not burdensome", because they are the means by which we live in freedom and fulfilment as God intended us to do.
Victory
This brings us to the third and last characteristic of true faith in Christ Jesus -"victory". We are told in verse 4:
"... for whatever is born of God conquers the World. And this is the victory that conquers the World, our faith."
And what is the means of this victory? It is not our belief in Jesus Christ. No, it is our new birth from God which conquers all.
In the New International Version, the expression is "the victory that has overcome the world".
The emphasis is upon "has overcome". The victory is in the past. It was accomplished with the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The victory is already ours in Christ. All that Jesus has already done for his people, is the substance of our faith.
But this victory has to be appropriated in our daily experience and that can only occur as we exercise our faith. This is not to say that life won’t be without its struggles, its pains and its problems. Jesus has told us that we must expect this. The victory will not be without its cost, but it is a certain victory which has already been won.
And so verse 5 moves into the present tense and the daily experience of Christ’s victory in our own discipleship.
"Who is it who overcomes the World? Only he who believes that Jesus is the son of God?".
In outlining these three effects of faith, John is not saying that these are how Christians ought to behave. He is saying that this is how Christians do behave. These are the realities of the Christian faith for those who are truly born of God. And so John’s words are a great source of reassurance and encouragement for us.
Challenge
What, then, is the challenge for us as we look back over this passage?
Well, I think, it’s clear that God has called us to a life of faith based on:-
* a clear understanding that Jesus Christ is the focus of our faith;
* on a sound appreciation of the historical evidence of our faith; and
* on the personal experience and witness in our own lives of the Holy Spirit.
This faith is to be demonstrated by:-
* a love for God;
* a love for one another;
* an obedience to His Commandments; and
* victory over the World.
It is only as we exercise this faith that we find that it works and we find that we are already embarked upon a life long course of maturing in faith that will bring its eternal rewards.
Let us be encouraged and be stirred up in faith and let us make this commitment to God in prayer now.
For more sermons from this source go to www.sttheos.org.au
