Sometimes it seems that the Christian community is divided into two different camps. One camp views the Christian life as one of a constant challenge to do better, to try harder, to work to please God. And the other extreme tends to see the Christian life as basking in the warm glow of salvation without any concern for growth, for transformation, or for anything of an active type. It’s kind of like, "I’ve got my ticket punched. Now I just float to heaven in my rocking chair." And, it’s usual with extreme positions like this, the truth is found somewhere in the middle.
One might think that John would be in that first category of people who are always striving with a constant challenge to fulfill some kind of expectations. But the truth of the matter is that John’s real heart, as black and white as he is, and as action-oriented, and as intolerant as he seems to be of anything short of perfection, is revealed in the little passage that we have before us.. And in fact, his real heart is not as I have described it where we think that he’s constantly holding up, "This is what you’ve got to do to be saved." Rather, "This is what a saved person acts like." And he gets very pastoral, very fatherly in these verses that were read for us, verses 12-14, and what we really see here is a celebration of our salvation. At the same time, John is calling us and challenging us to greater maturity, to the outworking of what is going on inside of us. It is filled with enthusiastic encouragement for what John has already seen in the lives of these peoples.
This is a rather long quote from a man, but I’d like to read it to you from John Marshall’s commentary on this. He says, "It is good to remember that in the last analysis, our salvation depends on the promise and power of God so that we can boldly declare that we have peace with God and that we know whom we have believed. John’s statements here are meant to awaken such confidence among his readers, but the important of Christian assurance is one of the notes in this epistle which has aroused surprisingly little echo among expositors." (The Epistles of John, p.141)
It’s too easy to look at 1 John as a list of, "Here’s a bunch of stuff we have to do," and miss the fact that what John is describing is the Christian life and how wonderful it is to have experienced this transformation. Well, that’s what John does in these little verses, these three verses of chapter 2, because he celebrates who we are and what we have in Christ, and at the same time he lays out for us the life we have been called to lead. There are not two opposing ideas here. They are together forming a kind of synergism. Security in our salvation and consistent Christian living aren’t mutually exclusive, as though if you’re secure then you’ll never live a consistent Christian life. But, they are in fact complementary.
Let’s look at what John points out here about us. The first thing that he says, the first truth that he states is this: "Our sins are forgiven." That’s a very unusual style. I don’t know if you’ve got the NIV, but you’ll noticed that they’ve kind of got it in almost a poetic kind of a style, the way that it’s written. And it’s given commentators difficulty because there’s talking about these ’dear children,’ or ’infants,’ ’young men,’ and ’fathers.’ And of course there’s been a lot of ink expended trying to figure out who these guys are that John is referring to here. Sometimes people have seen this as stages of maturity, but that kind of breaks down when you see that the "fathers who have been known from the beginning" – that sounds like a real mature thing, then later on it says, in that same verse, "I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father," – same idea. So, the idea of these being stages of maturity kind of breaks down. My belief is that this is a family letter written by the leader of the family, written to the members of his family – men and women, not just fathers, young men and male children, but everybody. He’s just saying, "Brothers and sisters, the members of God’s family to whom I am writing. I am writing this to you, very personally." See, that can wake us up a little bit because whenever we get mail, we like to see who it’s from, don’t we? How many of you get email? How many of you like spam? No hands. What a surprise. And you recognize spam, don’t you? It’s from somebody you don’t know and then there’s some kind of a statement in the thing that gives you some idea sometimes about what’s involved. But, if you get an email and you recognize that name, you don’t delete it (well, I hope you don’t delete it) you go right to it and you open it up because it’s from someone you know. It’s the same thing with junk mail. You know you get all that stuff and you’re just dealing it right into the garbage can until you get one from someone you know. And then you open it.
Here’s John writing to the members of God’s family and he has laid out in chapters 1 and the first part of chapter 2 what characterizes people in that family. And he says, "Now to those of you who are characterized as being part of God’s family, I am writing this to you." "I write to you because your sins have been forgiven on account of His name." That sounds so basic, so foundational. We’ve heard it a million times, let’s move on. Well, let’s not move on, because if we don’t understand this, if we don’t grasp it and believe it, we might as well quit reading because the other things that John is going to speak about here are based on the fact that our sins have been forgiven. It’s very interesting that when John writes here he uses a verb tense, all the time through these verses (except for the end of verse 14) a verb tense called the perfect tense.
We’ve talked about the perfect tense before. It is a tense that talks about a past event and that the effects of it continue to work out. Most of the people in here have been married. That means that you got married at some point in the past and you’re still married today. So, you are living examples of the perfect tense. That’s the tense that John uses here in verse 12, "because your sins have been forgiven," a completed event in the past when you put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, quit depending on your own works and instead trusted Christ for your salvation, for the forgiveness of your sins. At that point, your sins were forgiven and that fact continues to work out. There’s no sin you can commit that catches God by surprise. God’s forgiveness, based on the blood of Christ, on account of His name, continues to rule on in your life. Now we’re going to see later how Satan tries to gum this up. But, for now recognize the greatness of this statement.
This forgiveness cannot be for something we earned. Not only is this the perfect tense, but it is in the passive voice which means that this is something that has been done to us from the outside. We did not earn our forgiveness. We did not forgive ourselves. The forgiveness is something that has been done for us, to us, by someone else. And that someone else was clearly God, "on account of", because of the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
Forgiveness is a wonderful thing. It was predicted back in the Old Testament, in Jeremiah, "No longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man his brother saying ’No, Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, for I will forgive their wickedness [and I love this phrase] and I will remember their sins no more." If you take sins that you have committed, confessed, received forgiveness for and you keep bringing those back to God, do you know what He’s going to say to you? "I don’t remember that. I don’t remember that one. I’ve forgotten about that. I have, by an act of my divine will, put that one behind my back, buried it in the depths of the deepest sea, removed it as far as the east is from the west. It’s gone. It’s gone." This is where Satan really gets us. This is why he focuses on this particular factor in the life of a young Christian: If he can get that young Christian to question the reality of forgiveness, he’s got them right where he wants them – involved in an insecurity of their relationship. And so then they begin to try to work it so that they might somehow gain security through their own works when the whole time, God has been saying to them, "Your security, your forgiveness is based on account of His name, because of the person, the character of Christ. That’s the basis of your forgiveness; not how many tears you cry, not how many times you crawl, not how many lashes you give yourself with the whip. Forgiveness is a gift I have given you because of the person and the work of Jesus Christ."
"But I don’t feel forgiven. I’m not worthy." Of course you’re not worthy! That’s the whole point of grace. The whole point of grace is that we’re not worthy to receive this forgiveness. We have been granted this forgiveness as a free act of the grace of God. It costs us nothing. It cost God everything, but He was glad to do it. Do you realize how glad God is to forgive sin? Do you realize how glad He is to take the sledgehammer of Christ’s blood and knock down the wall of sin and destroy it, the wall that separated us from Him? We think somehow it’s sometime of a grudging forgiveness. It’s not. It is the grandest display of His grace there could ever be, and so He does it. Of course we’re not worthy. Ephesians says, "It is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is a gift of God, not by works, lest any man should boast." And Ephesians 2:10 goes on, "For we are God’s workmanship, created in Him for good works which God has prepared beforehand for us to do."
If you’re a member of God’s family, your sins have been forgiven. Period. If you want to be an effective, secure, joyful believer, believe it. Wrap yourself up in that cloak, so that when Satan comes to you and starts to pester you about past events, say, "You know what, Satan, thanks for reminding me to praise God for what He has given to me in the forgiveness through His Son. Thank you for reminding me that even that sin has been forgiven." You know what? I guarantee you something, if every time Satan comes to you and reminds you of a past sin and you use it as a spur to praise God and thank Him for forgiveness, Satan’s going to leave you alone. Don’t you think? Satan’s not stupid. If he figures out that when he pesters you about something, it causes you to praise God and to rejoice and exalt in the greatness of your forgiveness, he’ll come up with something else. But he figures that one has not only lost its effectiveness, but it’s counterproductive to what he really wants to do in your life.
Your sins are forgiven. It’s the beauty of that word ’justification.’ You have been declared to be righteous and not only have you, by faith in Christ, been freed from the guilt of your sins, but God has imputed the very righteousness of Christ to your account. How can you beat that? Not only aren’t you still involved in sin, but you have received from God the very righteousness of Christ who knew no sin. That’s the first thing that John wants us to remember and to live in.
Secondly, we have a secure relationship with God. Verse 13, "I write to you fathers because you have known Him who is from the beginning." Now, that phrase ’you have known Him’ is also in the perfect tense. It had a beginning when you began to know God, and it now continues on as a growing relationship. And as I mentioned before, you notice that the children also are included; "I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father." This is the same idea that John has been speaking about basically from the beginning of this book, that he has been saying we have this thing, and he has called it before, ’fellowship’, ’communion’. We are together with God in a relationship that doesn’t end. Notice that this does not say, "Now you know Him, now you don’t." It is that perfect idea that it’s a relationship that began and continues on. And neither is that knowing Him something only of a cerebral, mind nature, "Oh, okay, I know about God." Well, it’s part of it. Part of knowing God is knowing about Him, knowing who He is, knowing His character. But, knowing Him in this sense is deeper than that. It’s the application of that to know that "I’m in a relationship with this great and wonderful God."
There’s a focus of security in that relationship. This relationship is only made possible, you recognize, by the removal of the sin barrier. If the sin barrier was still there, there would be no relationship. And from the beginning of the Bible, from the beginning of recorded history, which is the beginning of history, God has always made it His goal to be restored to relationship with His creatures, to make them His children.
When we have a relationship, we keep it up, don’t we? If you say, "My mate and I have a relationship," that means that there are certain things that go on in your life now that are consistent with the fact that you have a relationship with your husband or your wife. If you’re out of town, you call. If you’re at the office, maybe you call. When you call, you go find her. I go find my wife. I go whistling around the house and find my wife. My wife finds me, she found me just yesterday on the floor by my aquarium staring at the fish looking for my crab who’s once again disappeared. But when you have a relationship, you act on it, don’t you? That’s the part of the perfect tense that we need to realize here is a challenge. That we have this relationship, there’s a security. We have a close communion with God that John has been describing. "From the beginning, you have known the Father." This is the same word that Paul uses in Philippians 3:10 when he says, "I want to know Christ." We say to Paul, "Well, how can you write ’I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His suffering, becoming like Him in His death’?" We say, "Paul, it sounds like you don’t know Him, but you want to get to know Him." But that’s not what it means. It means that I do know Christ. I have a relationship with Christ, but I want to go deeper into it. I want to learn more. I want to know Christ so well and be in a relationship with Him that is so great that it’s even going to change my priorities and my perspectives, even wanting to know Him so badly that I’d like to become like Him in His death. There’s a lot more than knowing about Jesus in that statement. I want to be in such a relationship with God that it changes everything about me. It changes what I think is important. It changes what I live for. It changes what my goals in life. Salvation is worked out in a growing, deepening relationship with God.
You know what’s interesting? We’ve got this body. And you know, we think we’ve got this body and it grew up to adulthood and it quit growing. Well, you know that’s not true. The body continues to grow all the time. I’ve got some facts. Every hour 200 billion cells in your body die and are replaced by new ones. 200 billion. That’s almost as big as the national debt. Did you know that every ten years the cells of your skeleton are completely replaced. Every ten years those cells are replaced. We thought the bones were just there forever, but they’re constantly being replaced. And here’s a really great one. This will make you think. In your lifetime you will shed 40 pounds of skin. Think about that one for a while. 40 pounds of skin. And somebody said, maybe I didn’t write this one down, there’s something about 80 hairs, scalp hairs, falling out I think it’s every minute for some people. There’s this constant process. In other words, and I don’t know if this is true or not, I’m just speculating, that when you quit growing, you’re dead. You’re dead.
There is a growth, an ongoing nature to this perfect tense of knowing God. It is an ongoing event. "He is like a tree," the man who fears God. "He is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not whither. Whatever he does prospers." And a tree is growing all the time. It’s sinking down roots. It’s putting out new branches. It’s putting out leaves, all kinds of things. And all you have to do is be around here on this campus for a while, even with the few trees that we have, to know that they’re constantly putting out stuff. You cut off one branch and the next week there’s two second growths growing out of it. Constant.. Growth is part of life and when we quit growing, we’re dead. So, this statement here that John makes of, "You have known Him who is from the beginning," describes not only the security of a relationship with God, but the ongoing nature of it and the fact that it needs attention and it needs effort and it deserves energy. You are here this morning because you want to grow in Christ. You want to get to know God better. You want to be changed in your understanding of God. So, rejoice in the security of the relationship and recognize as well that there is an ongoing nature of it and a growing nature of it as well.
I had a seminary professor. His name was Angus McDonald. He was a Scotsman. He was my favorite professor. He was only there for one semester and he taught this class "God, Man and Christ." I think that we used to call him "Sparky" when he wasn’t listening. He used to say, (Now, I don’t agree with this theology personally. In fact, I think it’s pretty wacky.) But, he used to say, "I’m a bipolar theist. I’m a bipolar theist." He said, "That means that God has one part of Him that’s unchangeable, and one part of Him that’s changing." Well, I don’t think anybody in the class believed it. But I’ll use it as an illustration for this: In terms of your knowledge of God, it’s a bipolar experience. One, you have the security of knowing that your relationship with God is a fixed fact based on your faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing changes there. But on the other side, there are all kinds of changes taking place as that relationship works out in your life and you experience change.
Thirdly, not only are we forgiven and not only do we have this secure relationship with God (and both of those things have their ongoing reality), but we also live a victorious life. Now this may be the hardest part of this passage to accept for us. But John writes here, "I write to you, young men," halfway through verse 13 and then again at the end of 14, "I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one." Now, again, that is in the perfect tense. It is a past event that has continuing effect. "…because you have overcome the evil one." The word here, the word means ’to prevail, to conquer, to overcome, to defeat an opponent,’ and specifically, the opponent in this regard is the evil one.
Now, as I was preparing this, I thought, "What is the goal of the evil one?" When we talk about overcoming him, does that mean we’ve pinned him or we’ve shot him? What does that mean ’we’ve overcome him?" Well, let’s look at it in terms of goals. What is the goal of Satan? If we go right back to the first chapter of Genesis, we’ll find what the goal of Satan was. The goal of Satan was to separate us from God and to use sin as the tool to accomplish that separation. Knowing God as he does, Satan realized that if he could bring sin, rebellion against God, into the mix, that that would cause separation between God and man. And that’s what he did. That’s what he accomplished. Now, look at what God did. God’s response to that separation wasn’t to say, "Well, I guess that’s the end of that. Maybe I’ll go make a new world and make some other people and start again." No, His statement was, "I’m separated from these people now and what has caused that separation is sin and so now I’m going to go back and I’m going to deal with that sin problem. And if I deal with that sin problem, that separation problem will be history." And that’s exactly what He did.
We have received, as we have already seen, forgiveness through the person of Jesus Christ. And since it was our sin that broke our fellowship with God, and now that sin has been removed, Satan has no more power. You see? God has removed the power source from Satan. Satan used to always say, (because he is after all the accuser of the brethren) "Lok at all that sin that is between you and God. God hates you. God doesn’t want anything to do with you. You might just as well turn around and walk away from Him because He’s actually a pretty mean person after all. And I’ve got some toys over here that you can play with and they will substitute for God." But that has all changed.
Your sin has been removed. You have been forgiven. That means that you have and I have overcome the goal of the evil one, which was to separate us from God. And now because we have that relationship restored with God, Satan’s work in our lives, Satan’s goal in our lives, has been defeated. And again, it’s a perfect tense. So, we have overcome the evil one and we continue to live in a life of overcoming the evil one.
Now, this is where it gets a little bit difficult. Because we look at our lives and we see our propensity to sin. We see that we still make mistakes, that we aren’t always as kind as we should be. We aren’t loving, etc., etc. We get out the whip and start to beat ourselves up. The battle rages on, doesn’t it? The battle rages on. Here’s the bottom line, brothers and sisters, according to this passage – Satan will continue to fight. Satan will continue to tempt. Satan will continue to seek to discourage. Satan will continue to do all the things that he does to try to make you believe that your relationship with God is over. He will always seek to drive a wedge of separation. Can he do it?
Romans 8 says this, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written, ’For your sake we face death all day long. We’re considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No! In all these things we are more than conquerors." Same word as “overcome” in our passage "… we are more than conquerors. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation [that’s an exhaustive list] will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus." We are conquerors. We may not always feel like conquerors. We may not always act like conquerors. But, we are. We have power over sin. The sin, the strings that Satan used to pull to make us do things have been cut.
We have a choice. We have a powerful helper who enables us to make the right choice. We have ultimate victory. We are free from the dominion of Satan. "Consider yourselves dead to sin," Romans says, "but alive to God in Christ Jesus." Satan will come and he’ll point out particular sins and say, "Oh, see, that means [and he’ll make all kinds of extrapolations] that means that your fellowship with God is broken. That means you’ve lost your salvation. That means, that means…." It doesn’t mean anything. All it means is that you’ve failed. All that means is that Satan got one little bullet through. And he’s going to keep trying and he’s going to make the biggest deal to get you to believe that your relationship with God is over. We are, the Bible says, victors. We cannot be separated from the love of Christ, the love of God.
And so, "Young men," according to verse 14, "I write to you because you’re strong in the power of the Spirit and the Word of God lives in you." Those two statements are instructive. They are instructive. To live this life out on a daily basis, to practice the victory we have means that we find our strength in those things that are strengthening – in the Word of God, in prayer, in building the relationship with God and embracing what God has for us and recognizing that the sin that Satan tempts us with are just cheesy substitutes. Recognize them for what they are and call them what they are. "It’s a lie!" Here’s the truth that God has given us. There’s great security in the new reality of our life, great security. The overwhelming reality of forgiveness through the blood of Christ, a restored relationship with the living God, powerful, life changing victory over the enemy – those are all securities and at the same time, they carry with them challenges; challenges to embrace forgiveness and to be free from fear. Your forgiveness is not based on your behavior. It is based on the revealed character of the Lord Jesus Christ and His work on the cross. That’s it. That’s it. And that forgiveness is going to manifest itself in our relationship with God that is to be practiced and victory over Satan which is to be practiced and lived in consistently, day after day. That’s the Christian life. It’s not exactly rocket science, is it? We make it sometimes so difficult. It is knowing who we are and living like it.
