The Spirit of fellowship, 1 John 4:1-6

If you have been in attendance at any point during our study of 1 John, then you will be aware that the theme of 1 John is fellowship.  Fellowship with God and fellowship with His church.  This is what we were saved for; fellowship, or communion with God and with His body.  Fellowship is one of those old fashioned words perhaps.  It is part of the proper name of our church.  And we chose that name because it encompasses the full spectrum of the purpose of the church better than simply the word church, which in most people’s mind today indicates a building.  Fellowship is about a relationship, communion, loving God and loving one another.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with a building.  

So we were made for fellowship with God and with His body.  We were made to love God and love one another.  That’s the outcome of fellowship.  And throughout this epistle, John has been giving us a series of tests as evidence of whether or not we have fellowship with God.  Now I don’t want to review months of messages this morning in order to remind you of all the various tests of fellowship John gives us. So if you don’t remember these tests, then I would encourage you to go to our website and review some of the messages posted there which will help refresh your memory.  But suffice it to say, that John has provided certain moral, social and doctrinal tests which give evidence as to whether or not you are in fellowship with God.  

John makes it clear from the very outset, that many people claim to have fellowship with God, and yet they are not, because they do things which are contrary to God’s commandments and His nature.  So it’s important that we examine ourselves and our faith in light of this epistle, that we might know that we have fellowship with God, that He abides in us, and we abide in Him.

Now as we finished the last chapter, John gives us another test, or another evidence that we have this fellowship. In chapter 3 vs 24 he tells us what this evidence of fellowship is; “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.”  Now actually it sounds as if John is giving two evidences; he who keeps the commandments abides (or has fellowship) with Him, and then secondly, we know He abides in us by the Spirit whom He has given us.   But we have already looked comprehensively at the first evidence in previous studies.  Today we are going to look more closely at the second evidence; that of the Spirit of God.  We can know we have fellowship with God by the Holy Spirit who abides in us.  Our inner conviction of the Spirit of God is evidence that we have fellowship with Him.

Now this thought introduces one of the most simple and yet most important principles in Christianity, and one that is especially apropos to the modern church. In vs 1 of our text, John declares that there are many spirits at work in the world which are not of God, so consequently we need to test the spirits.  Now this is very important because the devil is a deceiver, first and foremost.  The Bible says that he goes around pretending to be an angel of light.  He is described in many places as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  He is in his nature a liar,  a false prophet.  And again and again in scripture, from the ministry of Jesus to that of the apostles, we are warned repeatedly that there will come false prophets who will ravage the church, and lead people astray. 

John says that already, just a generation removed from Jesus, many false prophets had gone into the world.  From the very beginning of the church, there was a battle for the hearts and minds of the church against the deceit of Satan.  And the thing about deception, is that it doesn’t have to be a major doctrinal issue to be effective and ultimately destructive.  A little leaven leavens the whole lump.  A one degree mistake in setting your compass will put you far off course eventually.  So the devil is adept at deception, mixing a lot of truth with a little lie, and if we are not on guard against it we can end up in spiritual shipwreck.

Let me tell you something that is taught right at the beginning of Creation.  Satan comes as a beguiler, as a deceiver.  He comes as someone who seems to be a citizen of Paradise.  He comes not so much to deny God, as to deceive by twisting the truth, and subtly denying the word of God so as to get man to rely upon his own judgement more so than God’s word.  In the third chapter of Genesis we see Satan come to Eve, first of all disguised as someone beautiful, someone wise, some great thing of God’s creation.  And notice how he tempts Eve: he tempts her by saying if she disobeys God’s commands, she will be wise like God.  He tempts Eve to sin by telling her she will be like God.  Isn’t that what we are supposed to want to do? Aren’t we supposed to be like God?  Yes, the Bible teaches we are to follow in Christ’s footsteps, we are to be conformed to His image.  So this temptation doesn’t even sound like a temptation. It sounds like higher knowledge.  It sounds like it is beneficial to godliness. Except that you have to deny God’s word in order to be like God.  That’s a contradiction, and God does not contradict His word, and neither can we without subjecting ourselves to peril.  And of course we know what disastrous consequences came from Eve’s seduction.

So John is warning us that though we have fellowship with God through His Spirit, we must be wary, we must be wise, we must examine the spirits because not all that claim to be of God, are of God.  Vs.1, “Beloved, 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.”  

You know, one of the most well known verses in the Bible quoted by unbelievers as well as believers is “judge not lest you be judged.”  We hear that all the time whenever we question some doctrine, or teacher or principle.  The “Bible says not to judge!”  But actually, right here in vs1 John he is telling us essentially to judge between that which is of God and that which is from the devil.  Don’t believe every spirit.  

I remember one time many years ago when I was in my 20’ss,  I had a neighbor who was half deranged from taking some serious drugs, and he came knocking at my door late one night.  And when I answered the door I could see that he was really messed up.  He looked as if he was possessed or something, half crying and half laughing,  and he said to me, “God told me to kill you.”  Well, though I was a Christian, I wasn't living for the Lord at that time.  But I can tell you I was suddenly very interested in renewing my relationship with the Lord again.  However, though I was startled, I had the presence of mind to answer him by saying, “Well, I don’t know what God you are talking about.  Because the God of the Bible would never tell you to kill someone.”   Now this guy was obviously under the influence of drugs.  But it’s also evident that he was under the influence of a false spirit. Just because he thought it was God did not mean that it was of God.  By the way, the Bible uses a Greek word for sorcery which is pharmakea.  It’s the same word we get pharmacy from.  The drug store.  And the Bible translates that as sorcery.  So there is a connection between drugs and the spiritual world.  But as John says, we should not believe every spirit, because not all spirits are from God.

In fact, scripture encourages us to put teachers and doctrines to the test.  In the Old Testament, we find counsel in the law of Deut. 13 that if someone prophecies and that prophecy does not come true they were to put such a person to death.  That shows how severely God considered false teachers.  

Jesus said in Luke 12:57 that we should judge what is right.  The Bereans in Acts 17 were called more noble minded because after being taught, they searched the scriptures to see if those things were so.  That’s an important point we will come to later; they compared prophecy with scripture to prove whether or not the prophecy was true. Paul said in 1Cor. 14:29

“Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment.”  And John quoted Jesus speaking in Rev. 2:2 “I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false.”

So it is abundantly clear that we are to examine or judge prophets and teachers.  We are not to give attention to those who are false teachers, and we recognize that many false teachers have gone out into the world.  Jesus said in Matt. 7:15-16  "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?”  And also Peter warns in 2Peter 2:1 “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.”

So these false teachers obviously are of another spirit.  They are not of the Spirit of God.  And if we are to judge our fellowship with God by the Spirit who abides in us, then we must be certain that it is the Spirit of God.  Now that sounds simple enough, but the problem many times is that people encounter something “spiritual” or supernatural, and don’t examine it but accept that because it is spiritual, it must be of God.  We see this happen in a church setting quite often.  Someone makes a prophecy; “The Lord told me so and so…”  or someone has some sort of experience and the automatic assumption is that it is from God because it happened in the church, or in a religious context.  Or we simply believe it because the person who had the word of prophecy, or who exhibited the spiritual experience, claims to be of God.  And so we don’t examine it.  We blindly accept it as the truth, when in fact many times it is a deception from the devil.  As Dr. SL Johnson said, “to identify the supernatural with the divine necessarily is a perilous mistake.”  Just because it is supernatural, or spiritual, does not mean it’s necessarily of God.  Don’t forget, that when Moses caused some supernatural event to come about, Pharaoh called his magicians and sorcerers who also replicated the same supernatural event.  Just because it is supernatural, does not make it of God.

Now John tells us to test the spirits, and he gives the means of testing.  First he gives us the means by which we can know the Spirit of God and then he gives the test by which you can know the spirit that is not from God.  First the positive; vs2, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”  

I want to remind you of something here.  John is speaking to believers.  He isn’t giving a definition of salvation.  He is giving a general principle for recognizing the Holy Spirit.  And the key is not simply saying the name Jesus.  But it’s confessing Jesus Christ.  The key is the word confess.  It comes from the Greek word homologeō, which means to say the same thing as another, i.e. to agree with, assent.  In other words, to say the same thing as Jesus Christ.  To agree with His doctrine, His teaching, His word, is to confess Jesus.   It’s not just to acknowledge that He existed.  But to agree with all the doctrine of Christ.  The teachings of Christ.

You will find this principle again and again in scripture.  Phrases like “believe in the name of Jesus, and confess Jesus as Lord, and so forth, are all phrases which were intended to comprehend all that the name of Jesus signifies, all that Jesus claimed to be and all that He taught.  Satan certainly knows who God is, He knows who Jesus is.  The demons cried out that He was the Holy One of God.  They know who He is.  They may say His name.  The devils believe in God.  But they do not confess Him, they do not agree with His teaching and with His doctrine.  They have rebelled against His word.

So that’s the positive test; to confess, or agree that Jesus is the Messiah, and as John 1 tells us, that the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  To confess then is to agree with His word, agree with His teaching.  Then John gives us the negative side. Vs.3, “and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.”  

See, here in this negative test, it is a little more clear.  The emphasis is not on His coming in the flesh, but on confessing Jesus.  These believers John was writing to knew what it meant to confess Jesus.  They knew the gospel.  They were already believers.  So when he said, those who do not confess Jesus, they knew  it meant those who do not agree with the gospel.  They have a different gospel.  They may believe Jesus lived, and died in the flesh, but they do not agree with what He taught. 

And John uses the word antichrist to emphasize that.  Antichristos, the opponent, or opposite of Christ.  The adversary of Christ’s gospel. The spirit that does not confess Christ is the antichrist. Now it’s interesting in light of all the attention of the media and eschatology books out there, that 1 and 2nd John is the only place the Bible that the word antichrist is found.  It’s not found in Daniel, it’s not found in Revelation.  It’s only found 4 times in these two little epistles.  And note that John says that the antichrist is not singular but plural, and are already in the world.  That was 2000 years ago.  Look at chapter 2:18, “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.”  

He goes on to say who the antichrists are in ch.2 vs.22, “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.” Once again, that means those that deny the word of the Father and the Son.  Not the existence, but the word.  The devils believe in the existence of both the Father and the Son.  But to confess them, is to believe in their word.

Now John is going to take the principle of these two opposing spirits and unpack them further.  He does so by assigning people as belonging to either one of two groups.  You are either of the Spirit of God, or you are of the spirit of antichrist.  And notice that he equates the antichrist with the world. The world system is under the dominion of Satan, the supreme adversary of Christ.  And so the world system is working against the kingdom of God.  The kingdom of God is superior, it  is above all power in heaven and in earth, but as the author of Hebrews said in chapter 2:8, “we do not yet see all things subjected to Him.”  The world is still in rebellion against the Lord.  But in the last days, when Christ comes the second time in judgment, it says in Revelation  11:15 “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become [the kingdoms] of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.” That is at the end of the age when the Lord comes in judgment.  But for now, the Lord has come in love to win the world to Him.  But one day He will come again, and this time He will come in judgment, and subject all the world to Him and rule them with a rod of iron.

But for now, we do not yet see everything subjected to Him.  The world is still under the dominion of the prince of this world, the devil.  So once again, John gives us the characteristics of the people who belong to the Spirit of God.  Look at vs.4,  “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”  The children of God have overcome the world because they have the Spirit of God in them.  He is able to deliver us, to  help us, to lead us, to guide us and comfort us.  He is able to teach us the truth, and that is the means by which we overcome the captivity of the world.  Jesus said in John 8:32 “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  That is the way we overcome the snare of the devil and overcome the captivity of the world forces - through the truth, taught us by the Spirit of Truth through the word of God. He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world.  Satan and God are not equal.  Satan is a created being, who has been given some authority for a while, but whose power is overcome by the Spirit of God who is in us.

Now look at the opposite side.  Vs.5, “They (that is, those of the antichrist, those of the false spirit) are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them.”  So what John is saying is that these false teachers are not from God, they are of the dominion of Satan.  They are worldly, they are from the world, and so the world is attracted to their words.  Paul warns of this very thing in 2Timothy 4:3-4 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, [because] they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers;  and they will turn [their] ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”

Listen, the devil knows your nature better than you do.  He knows what men want, how to appeal to their flesh, to their pride, to their lusts.  And so his false prophets prophesy what people want to hear, in order to satisfy their lusts, the pride of life.  And those that preach such false doctrines get great crowds, they get a great response because they are telling people what they want to hear.  And yet how often do we qualify whether or not something is of the Lord because it has a great crowd.  I have news for you, a great crowd is often a reason for concern, not for boasting.  If you are pleasing everyone, then chances are you aren’t preaching the truth, you’re preaching health, wealth and prosperity.  That’s the doctrine of the world.  That’s the doctrine of demons.

Well, once again, John emphasizes the positive.  He closes this argument by characterizing the Spirit of God.  Look at vs.6: “We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”  Remember John is speaking to believers, and he says, we are from God; he who knows God listens to us.  

Now it’s important to realize who he is speaking to; that is the church, but also who he is speaking about.  When John says, “we” and “us”, most conservative commentators believe that he is speaking of the apostles.  The church was built on the apostles word and doctrine.  The apostles were eyewitnesses of Christ’s ministry.  They were given the words of Christ.  And as such, those words were later brought to mind under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit so that they might write the New Testament scriptures.  So when John says, “he who knows God listens to us, and he who is not from God does not listen to us,” he is referring to the scriptures.  They don’t regard scripture as authoritative.  They are guilty of the same sin as Eve.  They disregard the word of God for the sake of their own wisdom.  They consider themselves as equal to God in determining right from wrong.  I can’t tell you how many people I hear go against the plain meaning of scripture and say something to the effect that “I think it’s ok to do this,” or “I don’t think that is applicable today in our culture.”  Their excuses may be different, they may sound sincere, but in effect they are putting themselves above God and saying that they know better than He does.  

And that’s the same thing false prophets do as well. They are basically putting their word above God’s word.  But we are to test the spirits to see if they are from God.    So John says, by this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.  What does he mean by “this”?  He means that those that are of God hear the truth of the apostles.  They listen to the truth of scripture.  They obey the word of God.  They submit to the word. John says we can discern the spirit of truth and the spirit of error by the scriptures. The Spirit of Truth is the title that Jesus gave His Holy Spirit which He was sending to the world.  We know the Holy Spirit because He is in union with the word of God.  God will not contradict Himself.  We test spirits by scripture.  We test experiences by scripture.  We test prophesy by scripture. God has written His word so that we might know the truth and that the truth would make us free.  

Finally, notice how John characterizes the spirit that is not from God.  In vs.1, he says it is the spirit of false prophets.  In vs.3 he says it is the spirit of antichrist.  In vs.5 it is the spirit of the world.  And in vs.6 it is the spirit of error.  There it is.  The spirit of antichrist is not necessarily this giant red dragon that appears at the end of the world breathing fire and smoke.  No, it is the spirit of error.  Just a little leaven which leavens the whole lump.  Just a little taking away here, and a little adding there.  Just a slight course correction that sets the ship on a perilous course, and that little error ends up costing shipwreck of souls.  

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are of the Spirit of God, then God has given you the gift of discernment through the Spirit, that nothing would defraud you from fellowship with God.  Eph. 1:18-23 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might  which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.  And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church,  which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”  Let nothing defraud you of your prize.  Let nothing separate you from the fellowship of the Spirit.  Test the spirits by the scripture, to see if they are of God.  And may the Holy Spirit lead you and guide you into all truth, and may the truth set you free.  

The assurance of fellowship, 1 John 3: 16-24

I think it was last Sunday that I kind of threw out a surprise question to the congregation.  The question concerned whether or not you could say that your life was a living testimony to the transforming power of the gospel.  I don’t often ask for a raising of hands in our services, so perhaps I caught everyone off guard.  Because the response was from just a half a dozen people or so, until I said that I expected a lot more affirmations, and then a few more people belatedly raised their hands.

Now my purpose this morning is not to embarrass anyone.  I’m not going to ask for another raising of hands or anything.  But I would like to come back to the question of whether or not you can testify to having been made a new creature?  Can you say that there has been a transformation in your life?  To use the church expressions of yesteryear, have you been born again?  Have you received a new heart?  This is the essential question of Christianity. Not trying to be a better person, or a religious person, but having become a new person through a radical transformation within your heart and soul.  

Now John has been circling this question in this entire epistle.  His main theme, as I have repeatedly emphasized, is that of fellowship.  Fellowship with God, and fellowship with the church of Christ.  Fellowship is the goal of our salvation.  We are to become one with Christ, as He abides in us through His Spirit, and we abide with Him in obedience and love.

Now obedience can sound legalistic.  It can sound as if we are trying to earn our way to heaven by good works.  But that is not what John is teaching here.  For one thing, he is speaking to people who are already supposed to be born again.  They are already Christians, they are a new creation in Christ.  They are the body of Christ.  So what he is assuming is that we already have a relationship with Christ, and now he is giving a series of evidences or tests that we are in fellowship with God. 

And the only way that is going to happen, is not by perfectly keeping every commandment and doing every work perfectly, though we should aspire to be perfect, even as He is perfect.  But the only way we can be in fellowship with God is if we have first been born again.  We have to have a transformed heart.  We have to have a new nature which is given to us by God.  We then have to act in obedience to God’s word to maintain that fellowship, but new life must first come as a gift from God in  response to our faith in Christ.

So if we have this new heart, then that simply means that we will have new desires.  We will want to please the Lord.  We will love the Lord, and consequently love His law, or His word.  We  will love His church.  We will love one another.  But we will not have those new desires unless you have first been radically transformed by faith in Christ and receiving salvation from Him. 

So, don’t raise your hands.  This is a rhetorical question.  Do you know that you have been radically transformed in your heart, you have been born again and are a new creature?  That is the starting point.  There can be no talk of fellowship until you have first this relationship with Christ which results in a transformed heart.  And if you can’t honestly say that, then you need to call upon the Lord and confess your need of a Savior.  You need to be changed.  You need to repent of your sinful nature and ask for the righteousness which comes from the Lord. And when you receive that forgiveness and Christ’s righteousness is applied to your account, God works a transaction in your soul.  He puts your sins upon Christ, and He puts Christ’s righteousness upon you, and He gives you a new heart, new desires, and He gives you the Holy Spirit to indwell you to help you and lead you into paths of righteousness.  The divine transaction results in a divine transformation.

Now if that is already your experience, you have been born again, you have a new heart, and are a new creature, then John tells us in these last verses of chapter 3 that you can have the assurance of fellowship with God.  You can have confidence that you are a child of God, and that He loves you, and is with you, and will never leave you.  You can have confidence in fellowship with God because now that you are born of God, you exhibit the nature of God in your new life. So in keeping with this theme of fellowship, our title of this message today is the assurance of fellowship.  And there are four points, or four evidences of fellowship which gives the Christian assurance.  

First, there is the assurance of love.  Love is the normal result of fellowship.  When a man meets a woman, they initially form a relationship.  If it’s the right fit, that relationship usually initiates the dating process.  They start going on long walks together, hanging out together, talking to one another, listening to one another, finding out about one another.  All of that is what the Bible calls fellowship.  Fellowship is communion with God, walking with God, abiding with God and He abiding with you.  And what is the typical result of this couple’s dating or felllowship?  They fall in love.  And love is this blissful, contented, happy existence where you are satisfied with each other.  He or she is the most important person in your life.  You want to spend eternity with one another.  You want to be together all the time.  That is love.  And that is the love which we have with Christ when our fellowship is all that it should be.  

Now the problem with this kind of love that the Apostle John is talking about, is that we don’t really understand Christian love.  When we think of love, we think of amore, we think of feelings, of sexual love, or sentimental love.  The problem is that we have one word for love, and it covers every thing from loving ice cream to loving my dog, or loving my wife.  But in the Greek language there were primarily three different words that were used for love.  Eros is a word for love which refers to erotic love.  It includes romantic love.  Sexual love.  All of that is included in eros.  Phileo, another Greek word, means brotherly love.  It’s the root of the word Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.  It includes familial love; love of family.  Neither of those words are the one that John uses here.  That word John uses is agape love, which refers to a sacrificial love. In some of the old English versions, it was sometimes rendered as charity.  That wasn’t a bad idea, because it is a love which involves giving.  It’s an active love that is more concerned with others needs than your own.  

Now John wants to make sure he sets the right standard of love at the very outset.  So he gives us the Biblical definition of love in vs 16; “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”  Christ laid down His life for us, that is the Christian definition of love.  Now ladies and gentlemen, that is not a natural love, is it?  Not many of us would die for someone else so that they might live.  It’s possible that we might do that for our wife, or for our children, but not for a stranger, or better yet, not for our enemies.  That would be unnatural would it not?  But that is what Christ did for us.  Rom. 5:8  “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were enemies of God, rebelling towards God, Christ died for us. And that love sets the standard for Christian love on our part. We love one another as Christ loved us.

That’s why I said at the outset that this kind of fellowship is not possible unless you first receive a new heart.  Unless you have been transformed from the natural man to a new man in Christ, having received the nature of Christ, then you cannot, you will not, love like Christ loved us.

Now that is the principle; that we should love one another as Christ loved us, laying down, or laying aside our lives for the brethren. It’s tempting to think of this in heroic terms, and overlook the mundane, everyday ways in which this principle can be fulfilled.  We are like Walter Mitty, and imagine dying gloriously on the battlefield or something heroic like that.  But while it may possibly mean going to that extreme, it also means laying aside your prerogatives, laying aside your rights, laying aside your priorities, in order to serve one another.

So John gives us the principle and then tells us how to practice it in vs17, “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?”  That’s practical Christian love; not just dying on a battlefield or on the mission field, but unselfishly giving what your brother needs.  Opening your heart up to others and putting them before yourself. 

Now if you have that kind of love, if you are practicing that kind of love, then you can be assured that you have fellowship with God, because that is not a natural thing.  It is a divine love, and evidence that God dwells with you and you with Him.

The second assurance of fellowship John tells us in vs 18, is that of obedience.  “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”  The word tongue there is the Greek word glossa, which means language.  So our love is not merely lip service, not just in flowery speech,  but it is evidenced in deeds and in truth. We can say that we love the Lord, but if it is true then we will love one another with a sacrificial love evidenced in deeds.  What that means is that as the truth of God is revealed to us, as Christ is an example to us, we should be conformed to that truth in obedience.  Jesus said, “if you love Me, keep My commandments.”  God isn’t bowled over by your praise and worship, if it is not in accordance with His truth.  We must worship Him in spirit and in truth, Jesus said.

Now obedience is the principle, and again John makes the practical application whereby we can know the assurance of fellowship.  He first states it negatively  in vs.19, We will know by this (that is that we love in deed and truth) that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.”  The meaning of this verse is not immediately clear, but I think the Geneva Study Bible explains it well in this way; “If an evil conscience convicts us, much more ought the judgment of God condemn us, who knows our hearts better than we ourselves do.” In other words, if we are hypocritical by professing love but not being obedient to love others as Christ, our conscience will be stricken by God who knows our hearts.  So that is the negative assurance of fellowship.

Then the positive assurance is found in vs.21, “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.”  So obedience to the truth produces assurance of fellowship.  It’s similar to the boyfriend/girlfriend example I gave you earlier.  If you are true to one another, then you will have confidence in your relationship. But if you are running around behind her back seeing old girlfriends and so forth, then you will not have confidence in your relationship.  But when you know that you love one another fully and completely, then you are confident in your relationship.  And that is similar to what happens in Christian fellowship.  When you know you have fully obeyed with all your heart, then you will have an inward assurance of fellowship and all the blessings that come from such communion with God.

That assurance leads to the next evidence of fellowship, which is answered prayer. This is an area which can either be a great assurance or a means of great discouragement and even the possibility of coming to the point of despairing in your walk with God.  And that is the subject of prayer.  But what we see here, is that John ties our prayer life with the previous point of obedience in deeds and truth. So in context, we must read vs21 again as a pretext to vs22. “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.”

The problem with most people’s prayer life is that they key in on one part of the promise, but disregard the conditions of the promise.  They see “whatever we ask we receive from Him.”  And that’s all they focus on.  They are off to the races. “Lord, give me this.”  “Lord, give me that. In Jesus name Amen!”  I will confess that I can be as guilty as anyone else in this regard.  I want what I want, and want God to give me what I want when I want it.  And when He doesn't do it the way I want, then I accuse Him of not loving me.  But that kind of master/genie “your wish is my command” situation isn’t what is promised here.  

Look closely at what John says.  First, he ties answered prayer back to not having a guilty conscience.  When we know we are obedient, we know we are loving in deed and in truth, then we can have confidence that whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are right.  Now if the truth be known, if we truly examined ourselves in light of these verses, we would recognize that we don’t deserve to have any of our prayers answered.  Every prayer God answers is really a gift of grace.  But again, God knows the hearts, John says.  He knows those hearts that love Him, and those that are in rebellion against Him.  He knows those that desire to do His will, and those that are stingy and selfish.  

James said it this way; “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” (James 4:3)  But a heart that is right with God, knows the heart of God, and asks according to the will of God, and not just according to his own selfish desires, sees his prayers answered.

James has a lot to say about prayer, and one of the best sections is found in James 5:14-18 “Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord;  and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.  Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months.  Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.”

Now I believe in the power of prayer.  But there have been a lot of times in my life when I have prayed for years and not seen an answer.  And during such times I come to this passage again and again looking for power to my prayers.  And I have examined those verses from one side to the other, backwards and forwards, trying to make sense of what it says.  But one day it hit me, and my eyes were opened when I read vs 16, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”  I noticed that at the beginning the verse emphasized confession of sins.  And it ended with a righteous man.  And connecting the two is effective prayer.  The point being that the secret to effective prayer is being a righteous man.  Which is predicated by confessing your sins.  Praying for one another. And that is exactly what John is saying.  You want your prayers answered?  Then “keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.”  Then you will have power with God.  And when you have prayers answered, it will give you this tremendous assurance of fellowship with God like practically nothing else.  

Perhaps someone out there is saying, “Well, what does he mean by keep His commandments? Which commandments? Thou shalt not kill? I haven’t killed anyone.”  So John once again reiterates what the commandments are.  Look at vs 23; “This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.”  To believe in the name of Jesus means to believe in all that name implies.  That He was in the beginning with God, and He was God, and He became man to become sin for us, and paid our penalty of sin by dying on the cross and was resurrected and now sits on the right hand of the throne of God above all rule and authority, and no man comes to the Father except through Him.  There is more, but that’s the main things that the name of Jesus signifies.  So believing in His name is to honor Him as your Lord God and Savior, Jesus the Messiah.  Believing in His name is trusting in His sacrifice as an atonement for your sins, trusting that He is the way, the truth and the life.  Trusting in His word enough to obey Him as God, which equates to loving Him with all your heart, your soul, your mind and strength.  And then to love your neighbor as yourself.  To love one another, even as Christ loved the church and laid down His life for her.  To love others like Christ loved us, sacrificially.  In those two commandments are encapsulated all the commandments.  Keeping those commandments is the way to answered prayer, and the way to continued fellowship with God.

Now John gives  us one final assurance of fellowship in vs.24, “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.”  There are two parts to this assurance.  First, if we keep His commandments we abide in Him.  Secondly, and as a consequence of the first, we have assurance that He abides in us by the Holy Spirit who He has given us.  

Now these two parts sound unrelated at first, but actually they are contingent upon one another.  You cannot keep His commandments apart from the help of the Holy Spirit.  He is the author of our new hearts.  We are born again by the Spirit of God.  That’s why I said at the outset that if there has not be a transformation resulting in a new creature, a new heart, and a new person, then you cannot have fellowship which requires obedience.  It starts with a new heart, which is the product of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit upon conversion.  

And that new life, which is as apparent to you as it is to others, is proof of the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells in you. Furthermore, if you do not keep His commandments, then you will not have that assurance of the Holy Spirit, because you are quenching the Spirit through disobedience.  I recently talked to a former drug user who had just been radically transformed by God and he said that the peace he now felt was the peace he had been seeking for in drugs but could never find.  But now he had this peace through Christ.  That is the evidence of the Holy Spirit abiding in you.  When you know you are right with God, and He loves you, and you love God and one another, then you know the joy of your salvation.  You know the comfort of the Holy Spirit.  You know the assurance of your fellowship with the Almighty God. 

There may be someone here today that says, “Man, Roy, that sounds good.  I want that fellowship with God.  I want forgivingness.  I want that peace you are talking about.  But I can’t say that is really my experience. I don’t really see these evidences in my life that I have real fellowship with God. Then I would ask you today to consider and examine whether or not you have ever been born again by the Spirit of God.  You should be able to remember the time when God came into your heart and changed you by the Spirit to become a new creature.  When old things passed away, and all things became new.  You should be able to vividly recall the time when God changed your heart and your desires and you fell in love with the Lord and His word.  But if you cannot, then  I would suggest you consider coming to the Lord today in repentance and faith, asking for forgiveness, asking for a new heart, that new desires and a new spirit be given to you, that you might keep His ordinances and His statues.  Today is the acceptable day of salvation.  God will not turn you away if you come to Him with a broken and contrite heart, He will give you a new heart, and a new life.  

Or perhaps there is someone here today that says, I remember when I fell in love with the Lord.  I remember the day I called upon the Lord and He answered me and changed me and made me a new man.  But I have to admit that my love has grown cold.  I don’t have fellowship with God the way you have described it today.  But I would like to get that corrected this morning.  I would like to have the assurance of fellowship with God. Listen, God has provided a way for your fellowship with Him to be restored  like it was brand new.   1John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  Pray the prayer of David, from Psalm 51, O Lord, “Hide Your face from my sins And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit. ...  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”  Amen.

The love of fellowship, 1 John 3:11-15

As we have studied 1 John, we have looked at various aspects of Christian fellowship.  We have discovered that God created man for fellowship with Him.  But as we progress in our fellowship with Christ, the natural result that is going to develop will be love.  Love is the natural progression of fellowship.  Just as in human relationships, when a man and woman come to know one another, and they have a relationship, the natural development of their continued dating, or fellowship, will be that they fall in love.  So it is in our relationship with Christ.  We come to know Him as our Savior, and then we have fellowship with Him, and as a result of fellowship, we learn to love Him.  And John is going to tell us in these next couple of chapters what that love looks like.

Now as we look at this section, John says when someone becomes a Christian, when someone has fellowship with God and union with Jesus Christ,  we can see two characteristics as evidence of that fellowship. Christians who are genuinely born of God manifest the fact that they are born of God by means of righteousness and love. Those are the two basic characteristics of fellowship with God.  vs10, "By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God," and then comes the next characteristic in  verse 10, "nor the one who does not love his brother.”

Last week we looked at righteousness as the first characteristic.  We were told in vs.4-10, that he who practices righteousness is righteous. That he who is righteous is born of God.  This week we will look at the other characteristic of fellowship, which is love.  

We tend to think of these two characteristics as opposite ends of the spectrum.  Righteousness and love almost seem to be diametrically opposed, and yet perhaps John is saying we somehow need to have both characteristics, as if they will balance one another out.  Our legalism will be mitigated by love, or vis a versa. But the fact is, John is saying that they are correlating virtues.  They are not only compatible, they are complimentary.  In fact, I will go even further than that and say that one will be incomplete without the other.  In other words, you cannot have righteousness without love, and you cannot have love without righteousness.

A Christian who is all about love, but not about righteousness is not truly loving.  For Jesus said, “if you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”  And one who would claim to be righteous, but does not exhibit love, cannot be righteous, because Jesus said in Matt. 22:37 “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

So both characteristics must be working conjointly and are dependent upon one another.  Now let’s look at vs. 11; “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.”  Notice first of all, that this statement is repetitive.  John uses this type of statement again and again in this letter, to emphasize that this is not some new thing he is teaching, but it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which was the gospel from the beginning.  Look at chapter 1:1, He says we are proclaiming “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life.”  

Chapter 1vs5, “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you…” Chapter 2vs7, “Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning.”  And now in chapter 3 vs.11; “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.”  

Now in saying this, he is saying that his message is the same as from the beginning of their faith, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ which leads to salvation. And the reason he makes this point is because as the church matured the message of the gospel had been diluted, it had been altered, and things had been left out.  False teachers had crept into the church in John’s day, just as there are today, who had twisted the truth of the gospel.  Just like very often is the case  today, the message had become that if you simply professed Christianity, if you merely had some sort of “religious” experience, or if you simply named the name of Christ, you were good to go.  They were teaching that you could have Christianity and still have the world.  You could claim to love God, and yet still love the world.  Nothing had to really change.  But John says that isn’t the true faith.  That is not real fellowship with God.  

So he reiterates the original message of the gospel; that we should love one another.  Now remember what I said earlier; John is saying love and righteousness go hand in hand.  You cannot have one without the other.   Now let’s break this down for a moment, because I am afraid that the world has co-opted the word love and the church has taken it’s definition from the world instead of from the scriptures.  And so it needs some explanation.

Christian love is loving God first with all your heart and soul and strength and mind.  The second part of that is that you love your neighbor as yourself.  These are the two foremost commandments in the Bible. Some of the commandments we are no longer under obligation to keep, primarily ceremonial in nature, which have been fulfilled in Christ.  We no longer have to offer animal sacrifices for instance, because they are fulfilled in the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  But the moral law of God still stands.  Though we have been justified from the penalty of the law, we still are to keep the commandments, because they express the will of God, and they establish righteousness.  So if we are to practice righteousness, as John says in vs.7, then we must keep these commandments which delineate righteousness.  Righteousness has to be defined by the law.  Thus if we practice righteousness according to vs.7, then we keep His commandments.

When a person is born of God by faith in Christ it produces a right relationship with God, based on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who was righteous.  That relationship in which we are declared righteous, provides the basis for our fellowship with God.  Now we can abide with Him, we can obey Him, we follow Him, we walk in the light as He is in the light.  That is fellowship.  Fellowship is growing to know Him, to walk with Him, to become like Him.  And that fellowship with God produces as the outcome our love for God and for His body. 

Now as I alluded to earlier, when a man and a woman are dating, they are getting to know one another.  They have a relationship, but now they have fellowship.  They spend time together, getting to know one another.  And in the process they develop a love for one another.  And when that love is really developed, it is characterized by a surrendering of themselves to one another.  They give everything and everyone else up, and surrender completely to one another.  That is the zenith of romantic love.  When you reach that point in your relationship, there is a joy that cannot be described.  There is nothing you want more than to be with that person.  It doesn’t matter what you have or don’t have, it doesn’t matter if you have any money to go out to dinner with or not.  You can eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches together on a beach towel and be blissfully happy and content. 

Well, that’s a picture of fellowship with the Lord, which produces our love for the Lord.  And when we surrender everything to Him, we can have that joy of our salvation that exceeds anything that this world can offer.  But we know that God is Spirit.  Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and sits at the throne of God.  We love spiritually as Christians, but we also desire a physical element to love.  And so God has designed His church to be His body.  His Spirit occupies His people. So as we express our love spiritually to Him, we also express our love physically to His body, which is the church. This is why we love one another.  It is the way we show our love for Him.

Now as I said, John is confronting false teaching in the church, and so he gives us a series of tests, or evidences of real Christianity.  We have been looking at them in detail for several weeks now.  But once again, as he reiterates this basic doctrine of love which is the result of real fellowship with God, he says this is not a new message, it’s the same message from God which is from the beginning.  

And to illustrate that, he goes back not just to the beginning of Christ’s ministry, or even the beginning of their salvation, but he goes back to the beginning of the Bible, to the beginning of the human race.  He gives us an illustration from the first two men born after creation, who are Cain and Abel.  Now John is going to give us an illustration in the negative to prove a positive.  He is  illustrating what love is not, what is not righteous and so he shows us a negative contrast to love which is when Cain murdered his brother.  John loves to use contrasts in his gospel; the contrast of light and darkness, truth and a lie, righteousness and lawlessness, and love and hate.  These contrasts he uses as a literary technique to show us the difference between those born of God and those who are born of the devil. 

John makes it clear that one who is born of God will exhibit the characteristics of God.  And those born of the devil, exhibit the character of their father the devil.  If the devil is a liar, then they will lie.  If the devil is a murderer, then they will be murderers.  Jesus said to the Jews in John 8:44  ”You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  So this is the language of Christ, it’s not some new thing that John has conjured up.  It’s not the language that I would necessarily have the courage to confront someone with.  It’s very strong language.  But it is the language of Christ, and thus it is the language of God.  It is the message of God which is from the beginning. 

This nature of the devil which is that of a liar and a murderer, was instilled in Adam and Eve when they spurned the word of God and did what was right in their own eyes.  Romans 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”  And so when Adam and Eve had children, that sin nature became their nature, and as such it has passed down to all men and women.  And John tells us here that Cain “was of the evil one”, that is, he had the nature of the devil, he was born of the devil, and he slew his brother.

Now why did Cain slay Abel, his brother?  The answer is in vs.12, “Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous.”  You remember the story in Genesis 4, Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruits of his labor.  He was a farmer, and he brought the fruit of his farming as an offering to the Lord.  Listen, we can never achieve righteousness on the basis of our own merits, on the basis of our labor.  Our own efforts are inculcated with pride in our accomplishments.  Righteousness derived from our own labor can never be acceptable to God.  And so God did not regard Cain’s offering.  

Cain evidently thought he would gain merit by his deed of bringing his good works to God. He’s indicative of the kind of person who thinks God must be pleased with however I choose to worship Him.  But Jesus told us that those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.  And truth is revealed in God’s word, not according to your cultural template, or according to your imagination.  

Abel brought an offering as well.  He was a herdsman, and so he brought a lamb from his flock.  He slaughtered the lamb and offered it upon an altar.  And God had regard for Abel’s offering, because it was an offering of faith.  Abel exhibited saving faith in that he offered a spotless lamb as an offering for sin, which was a prototype of the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.  And God credited Abel’s faith as righteousness, but He did not regard Cain’s offering. 

That message is as pertinent today as it was then.  God will not accept our works and our labors  as righteousness.  The righteousness God accepts is the righteousness of our substitute, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who was slain for our sins. By that death, we are made righteous, and so we now practice what we have become by faith, we practice righteousness.  

But when God did not accept Cain’s offering, Cain became angry with his brother.  In effect, he was angry with God but he took it out on his brother.  He hated him, and that led him to murder his brother.  Rather than repent of his sin, and do what was right, Cain acted like his father the devil and hated his brother, which resulted in murdering him.

So in light of that illustration, John says we should not be surprised if the world hates us that are believers.   If we are practicing righteousness, then don’t be surprised if the world, who is practicing evil deeds, hates us.  Because true righteousness makes them feel convicted.  But rather than repent at their conviction of their sins, they love their sin and hate that which condemns it as sin.  

Listen, the world hates righteousness.  Because the natural state of man is selfishness. To love righteousness is contrary to their nature, and their natural condition is to love themselves more than others.  Love in our fallen nature is always twisted and distorted and centered upon self. Therefore, the love of an unbeliever is really a love of ourselves. We love our children because they are extensions of us. We love our father or mother because our life is related to theirs.  We love those who please us, we love those who help us, we love those who somehow fulfill us. If you observe human nature you will see how true this is. Love from a human standpoint is always based on reciprocality.  What someone can do for me.  Thus human love is self-centered.  And their hatred is for anything or anyone that threatens their goal of self fulfillment.

So John restates this contrast between the children of God and the children of the devil once again.  He says those who are born again of God love the brethren.  But those who are born of the devil hates his brother.  Look at vs. 14 “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.  Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”

The phrase, “we have passed out of death into life, is another way of saying you are born again.  You have passed from the old man, the way that leads to death, the nature of the evil one, you have passed out of that, and have been given new life, a new nature, and new characteristics of your Father in heaven.  But if you do not love your brother, then it is evident that you are still dead in your sins.  You abide in death.  You are still dead spiritually. 

Listen, what John is reiterating is that there will be a transformation when you are born again. You will not be perfect, but you will have a desire to be perfect, because Christ is perfect.  You will want to be like Christ, because you want to be with Christ.  You desire fellowship with Christ.  And so this new nature which is born of the Spirit of Christ works in you that which is pleasing to God.  But those that don’t have that kind of transformation in their hearts, will show it by their selfish, sinful nature, which actually results in hatred for their brethren.  In fact, he says those that hate their brother do not have eternal life abiding in him.  They are not born again.  They are still dead in their sins.

And notice one other thing.  John equates hatred with murder.  “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.”  Jesus said the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount.  Listen to how Jesus qualifies this kind of hateful nature. Jesus said in Matt. 5:21-22  "You have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.'  "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, 'You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”  In other words, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.  If he hates his brother, even if he is angry with his brother, he is as guilty as if he committed the sin of murder.

Listen, this is how the Lord can say that love for God and your neighbor is the basis for all the law, the summation of all the law.  If you love your neighbor, you will not steal from him.  If you love your neighbor you will not bear false witness against him.  If you love your neighbor, you will not covet his stuff, you will not commit adultery with his wife, and you certainly will not kill him.  All of the law is based on the two overarching principles of loving God and loving your neighbor. 

However, Christian love is correlated with righteousness and obedience, and not just sentimentality.  We are called to a higher standard of love as Christians than what the world considers love.  We are called to a sacrificial love, not a selfish love.   We are to love one another as Christ has loved us.  He humbled Himself to serve our needs.  He laid aside His glory so that we might be glorified.  He took upon Himself our punishment that we might be set free.  And that is the standard of love we are to have for our brother.

Now as we progress in the next few weeks in this study we will look at practical ways in which we express that love for our brothers. But let me just give you a couple as a preview.   This Christian love is the standard of love which we are to have in marriage.  We are to love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.  Wives are to love their husbands as unto the Lord.  Marital love is to be a picture of Christ’s love for the church.  We don’t love our wives as long as she treats me right, but the moment she takes me for granted I’m out of here.  How many times have we taken our Lord’s love for us for granted?  Love seeks not it’s own.  We love one another sacrificially, even as Christ laid down His life for the church.

One more practical application of this principle and I’m done.  How do you love your brethren?  You love the body of Christ.  You love His church.  You love His people.  You serve one another.  You support the body of Christ.  You share time with His body.  You join to His body.  You belong to His church.  You fellowship with His body. You pray for His body. If you love your brother you will share the gospel with them.  And when you do that, you will find joy in your salvation.  Joy comes through serving, not being served.  Church is not just a place to be served, but it is a place to serve one another and edify the kingdom of God which is the people of God.  

On the other hand, hate for your brother may just be ignoring Christ’s body. Turning your back on his church. Not caring about His people. That constitutes hatred according to vs.17. 

“But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?”  Just ignoring Christ’s body is a form of self love and hatred of others.  Well, we will talk more of that next week.  Until then, let us love God by loving one another and practicing righteousness.