Obedience to His Commandments
1st John 2:3-6
Jeff Hughes
I. Introduction
a. By way of introduction, let’s briefly look at the five verses we studied last time.
b. First, we looked at the deception of sin, we looked at the deception of saying we don’t have a sin nature, and the deception of saying we don’t commit sin after conversion. We looked at these two verses (8 and 10) and how they paralleled each other, and server to highlight verse 10.
c. Second, we looked at Confession and Forgiveness in verse 9. We looked at how that verse is a cornerstone of our faith. It speaks of God’s faithfulness, and how we can be sure God forgives our sins, no matter how grievous or numerous.
d. Third, we looked at The Advocate. We learned that we have an Advocate at the right had of the Father to defend us against our accuser, Satan. But, that this does not give us a license to sin. Also, we learned John’s second reason given as to why he wrote the epistle – That we might not sin.
e. Last, we looked at the concept of Jesus as the propitiation or atonement for our sins, and how this is in addition to His role as Advocate. We also saw in this verse that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, and not just a select few, as some teach.
f. Tonight we are going to look at the idea of Obedience to God’s Commands. Our text comes from 1 John 2, verses 3-6.
II. Text
a. 3 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. 4 He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. 6 He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.
b. Tonight, we’ll look at four points from this text: Obedience (3), Disobedience (4), Keeping (5), and Abiding (6)
III. Illustration:
a. Our Captain
b. Where our Captain bids us go,
‘Tis not ours to murmur no;
He that gives the sword and shield
Chooses too the battlefield.
Where we are to fight the foe. – Anonymous
IV. Study
a. First Topic - Obedience
i. Text - 3 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.
ii. We gain more understanding of this verse if we look at the original text.
iii. Know that we know – Both instances are different tenses of the Greek word ghin-oce’-ko first is the present tense “we know” second, it is the perfect tense of the verb meaning “once-and-for-all we have known”. Now this is important that it is in the perfect tense, because we see here that John is putting the topic to rest with the readers.
iv. Keep – Greek word tay reh-o
1. meaning to attend to carefully, take care of
a. to guard
b. metaph. to keep, one in the state in which he is
c. to observe
d. to reserve: to undergo something
2. One of John’s favorite words, used mainly by John in the NT. He uses it instead of the Greek word for “do”, implying that the thing kept is special, something to be guarded.
v. Commandments – Greek word en’-tol-lay, meaning injunction, precept, or command. Note that this is different from the law, mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, what I draw from this is that we are under the new covenant of grace rather than the law.
vi. Wrap up –
1. Drawing this altogether, we find that this verse means “We know that we know, once-and-for-all, that we know Him meaning Jesus, if we keep or guard carefully His commandments.”
2. This is a re-iteration of what Jesus told the Disciples while giving them instruction before His crucifixion in John 14:22 - He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
vii. Historical Application – Remember John was writing this to combat Gnosticism. One of the main precepts of Gnosticism was that because they had this “special knowledge” or revelation, they being Spirit, did not have to obey the law. This verse directly contradicts this.
b. Disobedience
i. Text - 4 He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
ii. Now, this verse is emphasizing the previous verse. In the original Greek, John uses the same words again, in the same tenses, but in the negative.
1. The I know in “I know Him” is once again in the perfect tense, just like in verse 3, and commandments is the same word.
iii. The negative not is the Greek word “May” and it is a negative qualifier for the statement.
iv. The word liar in Greek is from the root word “Pseudo maiee”. We get our prefix pseudo, which means false or fake from this today.
v. The word truth here is the same word John used in 1 John 1:6 and 1 John 1:8.
vi. What John is doing here is laying a foundation for the church he is writing to. In chapter 1 he dealt with the Gnostic misconceptions about sin. Now he is using the same terms to reveal the Gnostic heresies concerning Jesus.
c. Keeping
i. Text - 5 But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.
ii. Here again John uses the same word for keep that we covered in verse 3, tay-reh-o, meaning to guard over.
iii. What is a little confusing in this verse is the phrase “truly the love of God is perfected in Him.
1. Does this mean that God’s love towards us is perfected in us?
2. I don’t think so. Scripture tells us in 1 John 4:8 and again in 1 John 4:16 that God is Love. We have also studied earlier in 1st John that God is perfect (no darkness at all).
3. So if God’s love toward us is not being made better what is?
4. I think we get some insight by looking at more scripture. Jesus says in Mark 12:30 “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.”
5. The first three commandments God gave Moses were concerning our relationship to Him.
6. I think what John is talking about is our love toward God. If you look at the original Greek, and I am no Greek scholar, there is a definite article that is not translated here, that I would guess let the original readers know whose love is to be perfected.
7. Is this right on? Do we grow in Christ? We should.
8. Phillipians 1:6 tells us “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;”
d. Last Topic – Abiding
i. 6 He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.
ii. Let’s start by looking at the word abiding in the Greek it means to wait, remain in, continue in, and endure. Something that we have to be patient with. God is most likely not going to change us overnight. He is still working in and on each of us.
iii. If we tie this into the context verse above, we find that we have to be patient for our love toward God to be perfected in us.
iv. But what the verse is saying is that if we are to strive to walk as he walked. Now the word walk here, meant just to go someplace to the average person of the day, but to the Jew, your walk is how you conduct yourself. We say today – if you are going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. It means the same thing here.
v. If we claim to be Christians, we need to strive to be like Christ.
vi. We see this in scripture in several places: Paul tells us in Corinthians 11:1 “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” In Galatians 3:27 “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
vii. It is a tall order, but it is what is expected of us. It’s not a formula you can work out, you just have to yield and just like John said “let His love be perfected in you”
V. Conclusion
a. Company President
b. Imagine if you will, that you work for a company whose president found it necessary to travel out of the country and spend an extended period of time abroad. So he says to you and the other trusted employees, “Look, I’m going to leave. And while I’m gone, I want you to pay close attention to the business. You manage things while I’m away. I will write you regularly. When I do, I will instruct you in what you should do from now until I return from this trip.” Everyone agrees. He leaves and stays gone for a couple of years. During that time he writes often, communicating his desires and concerns. Finally he returns. He walks up to the front door of the company and immediately discovers everything is in a mess--weeds flourishing in the flower beds, windows broken across the front of the building, the gal at the front desk dozing, loud music roaring from several offices, two or three people engaged in horseplay in the back room. Instead of making a profit, the business has suffered a great loss. Without hesitation he calls everyone together and with a frown asks, “What happened? Didn’t you get my letters?” You say, “Oh, yeah, sure. We got all your letters. We’ve even bound them in a book. And some of us have memorized them. In fact, we have ‘letter study’ every Sunday. You know, those were really great letters.” I think the president would then ask, “But what did you do about my instructions?” And, no doubt the employees would respond, “Do? Well, nothing. But we read every one!” Charles Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p. 242
c. Would to God that each one of us at Calvary Chapel Houston would as James said, “be doers of the word and not hearers only”.
