The Last Three Assurances For The Believer Series

Series: 1 John

Week: 25

Passage: 1 John 5:18-21

Title: The Last Three Assurances for the Believer

Focus: Assurance

INTRODUCTION: When it comes to assurance in salvation, it has been said that there are three groups of people:

1. Those who are secure but not sure: These are people who are hard-working believers in Christ who are saved but lack assurance.

2. Those who are "sure" but not secure: These are professing Christians who say, "Even though I'm living in sin, I'll make it. After all, 'once saved, always saved!'"

3. Those who are secure and sure: These are born-again believers who enjoy a warm, secure relationship with Christ each day.

a. This group not only believes with assurance the truth about Christ (I John 2:2,4; 2:15; 5:1), but also loves the fellow brothers and sisters in Christ (I John 3:14, 18, 19, 4:7-8), and obey God’s commandments (I John 2:3-5) thus experiencing a joy that the other two categories will never know.

Why is that important to understand? That information is important because John is closing his letter demonstrating the importance for a believer to understanding that his or her salvation does not depend on his feelings or individual effort but only on the assurance of what God has done for His people through Christ, lived out in faith. To move from group one and two into group three remarkable assurances for the believer to live a life the will constantly have them in amazement.

SCRIPTURE: “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know 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, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” 1 John 5:18-21

TITLE: Three Assurances for the Believer (Closing statements on the book of 1 John)

Assurance #7: The Assurance of Power (1 John 5:18)

• Explanation: John affirms “the one who has been born of God keeps himself” (1 John 5:18). John is restating an old truth we already know in a different form. Two ways we have power as believers.

o The New Self Has Power of over Satan: Remember the new self we received when we came to faith in Christ? The “new self”

• (1) Creates us to “be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:24)

• (2) Renews us “in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (Colossians 3:10)

• This “new self” is not influenced by the work of Satan

o 1 John 2:14 “You have overcome the evil one.”

o The New Self Has Power over Sin: Satan cannot touch that which has been given power from God. This new self from God gives victory over sin. John is not saying that a Christian never commits an act of sin but declares that if we are born of God we do not make a habit of sin! You have been given power through the Holy Spirit.

• Example: Before a person comes to know Christ and is born into the family of God, the whole trend and the whole direction of his life is toward sin. He really has no choice about the matter. He sins because it is his nature.

• Illustration: “Every time Satan knocks at the door, I let Jesus answer.”

Application: Are you letting Jesus answer the door when Satan comes knocking? John gives us an expression of God’s power when he says that Jesus is God’s Son. Jesus keeps the children of God under his care through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us. Humanly we have no power to overcome but through God’s grace His power can be manifested in the life of the believer.

o John states, “the evil one does not touch him” (1 John 5:18).

• NOTE: “Touch” is a metaphor referring to the grasp that Satan cannot have on the followers of Christ. Just as he had no hold on Jesus (John 14:30) so also he cannot conquer the followers of Christ, the co-heirs to the kingdom of the Father. Not even the power of Satan can strip us of who God has made us to me (Romans 8:35-39)

• The devil cannot lay hold on the child of God. That is, the devil cannot get the child of God in his grasp. The devil has only the permission that God grants him in dealing with the believer (Example = Job).