Through the New Testament 2006
Life in the Son
1 John 5:11-13
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
These three verses near the end of 1 John provide a bird¡¦s eye view of the entire book. Note the five indisputable facts contained in these lines:
Fact 1: God gives eternal life. Eternal life is more than living long. It is a quality of life. The Greeks had two words for life. Bios described physical life. Zoe referred to something more. It was life that was more than existence. The difference between the two is the difference between adding years to your life and life to your years. God gives more than existence. He offers an abundant life.
Note that it is God who gives this life. We can¡¦t manufacture it on our own. We can¡¦t buy, bargain for, or earn it. Real life is a gift from God.
Fact 2: This life is in his Son. The Son refers to Jesus Christ, the self-revelation of God in human flesh. This is a startling truth. The Son was begotten of the Father, not made. He and the Father are one. What Jesus revealed in his life is the means to our eternal life.
Fact 3: He who has the Son has life. To have means to believe in, not in the sense of just knowing facts about him, but trusting him. At its root, saving faith is believing Jesus, not just believing about, but actually believing him, taking him at his word. This is a personal knowledge and relationship that no one can do for us. Our parents can¡¦t have the Son for us. We can¡¦t believe in the Son for our spouse or our kids.
Fact 4: He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. This is an unhappy truth. Not everyone who walks this earth will walk the streets of heaven. No amount of wishing or hoping can take away the reality of eternal death and separation from God. People without the Son may have a pulse, but they don¡¦t have an eternal future with their Maker.
Fact 5: You may know that you have eternal life. This doesn¡¦t say you may hope that you have eternal life. Or you may someday after you die know whether you have eternal life or not. It speaks in the present tense. This is the promise of assurance about our standing with God here and now. This is not an arrogant or presumptuous claim that I¡¦ve said the right words or gone through the right ceremony or belong to the right church, therefore, I know I am going to heaven. This is a confident statement about what God has done for me and is doing in me. Eternal life, that quality of life, has already begun.
One question begs an answer: How do you know? How does a person arrive at this certainty about his or her relationship with the Living God? John says, ¡§that¡¦s what I have been writing to you about.¡¨ The message of 1 John is about distinguishing true assurance from false assurance. The whole book outlines the difference.
This is our sixty-second book in our journey through the Bible. 1 John was probably one of the last books written. Our best historical information tells us that John, the youngest disciple-recruit to Jesus and last surviving apostle died an old, beloved man among the Christians of Ephesus. He had walked and talked with Jesus. He had been there when the church began. He preached Christ and spread the Gospel far and wide. John was the only apostle to die a natural death. He had been imprisoned for his faith (that¡¦s when Revelation was written) and then lived out his years in Ephesus. Ancient historians tell of young men carrying John back and forth to church. He was old and infirmed, but he still preached the Gospel with power.
In his closing years, John becomes concerned about the drift of the new generation of believers away from the solid message of Christ. False teachers had found easy prey among the second generation Gentile believers who had been born and raised on pagan philosophy. They were tempted to reinterpret the message Jesus in terms they were more familiar with. 1, 2, and 3 John all addressed to believers battling these problems. He says over and over again that nothing brings him more joy than to see his ¡§children¡¨ walking in the truth. 1 John is about helping that to happen.
We don¡¦t know all that the false teachers that were plaguing the church were saying and doing. We have some hints in the book. We also know the kinds of thinking that was common outside the church in that day. Most of the thinking grew out of the Greek philosophies of Plato. Plato and his followers divided the world into two parts¡Xspirit and matter. Spirit was all good. Matter/flesh was all bad. That was why humans could have aspirations they can¡¦t attain. We are held back by the flesh, Plato and his followers said. The result was that in Greek thinking the gods had nothing to do with matter or the flesh. The spiritual and the fleshly were always separate.
This has serious fatal consequences for Christian belief. If spirit and flesh could never connect, then Jesus could not have been the Son of God in human flesh. The spirit-flesh thinking also led to a minimizing of immoral behavior. If God was only concerned about the ¡§spirit¡¨, then what a person does in the body doesn¡¦t matter. Only spiritual experiences matter.
John sets out to correct that thinking. Throughout the book he offers three tests of a spirit-filled life¡Xall are down to earth and very much connected with the real life were we live it in the here and now. He presents these three tests over and over again throughout the book.
1 John 3:21 offers a good summary. ¡§Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. 23And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24Those who obey his commands live 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.¡¨
The first test is the ¡§head test.¡¨ You know you have eternal life because of what you believe about Jesus. Listen to how John¡¦s words contradict the false thinking.
1:1 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¡Xthis we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The 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. 3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write this to make our„T joy complete.
2:18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
20But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.„T 21I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist¡Xhe denies the Father and the Son. 23No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also. 24See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. 25And this is what he promised us¡Xeven eternal life.
4:1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. 4You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit„T of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
The second test is the hand test. We know we have eternal life because of the life we live, our behavior.
1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all„T sin.
8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
2:1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense¡XJesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for„T the sins of the whole world.
3We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4The man who says, ¡§I know him,¡¨ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5But if anyone obeys his word, God¡¦s love„T is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
The third test is the heart test. We know we have eternal life because of our love for one another.
2:7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. 8Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. 9Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. 10Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him„T to make him stumble. 11But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.
3:11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother¡¦s were righteous. 13Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. 14We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. 16This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 19This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 20whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son„T into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for„T our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Conclusion: These three (head, hands, heart¡Xwhat we know about Jesus, how we live like Jesus, and how love and treat our brothers and sisters in Jesus) provide the assurance that God is at work in our lives. Without these three, no one can have that assurance. Nothing can substitute for right faith, right life, and right love.
When these are present, we can have confidence before God. Note how John ends his book with a call to this confidence.
We can have confidence in prayer: 14This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us¡Xwhatever we ask¡Xwe know that we have what we asked of him.
We can have confidence in our efforts to reach out to erring brothers and sisters: 16If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that. 17All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.
We can have confidence in our lives of moral victory: 18We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him. 19We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. 20We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true¡Xeven in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Note the last sentence of the book: ¡§Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.¡¨ The living God who made heaven and earth and who revealed himself in Jesus is the one and only source of real life. Accept no substitutes!
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College of the Bible, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
