Last night after dinner, I found myself in the somewhat unusual position of having finished writing my message and had finished preparing everything for today’s service and so having a couple of hours before bedtime I decided to watch a movie on youtube. This movie that was suggested to me was billed as a Christian movie. I know it sounds terrible, but I usually avoid Christian Hollywood style movies. I can’t really enjoy them because I’m too busy analyzing their theology, or lack of it.
But this one featured a number of mainstream Hollywood actors, and one of them was an older man who I think is a fine actor and my wife and I have enjoyed many of the Westerns that he has been in over the years. I was kind of surprised to see his name as one of the leading characters so I decided to watch it.
As those type of movies go, it was probably better than most from a dramatic point of view. But I’m not sure if I could go so far as to call it Christian. The other lead actor played a young golfer that was trying to go professional, and he had a meltdown which was broadcast on national TV. And he ends up being mentored by this older gentleman who of course used to be a pro golfer as well.
But the part that bothered me was that as the older man mentors the young golfer, he is presumably trying to help him turn to God so that he can get a new lease on life. But there is very little mention of God in the movie and no mention of Christ. There is no mention of sin at all - just some bad attitudes that can affect your golf swing. There is mention of truth, and once or twice a mention of faith, and a few glances up in the sky. At one point the old man gives him a Bible, but it’s never opened or referred to. All of that is pretty vague though.
As the movie comes to it’s climax, it seems like the young golfer has some kind of experience. After a talk with the old man, he starts to tear up, and he looks up in the sky for a moment, and they kind of nod at one another through misty eyes. And then he writes down all the negative stuff that he has thought about himself or others have said about him on a piece of paper, and he buries the paper in a box in a shallow grave.
Now that’s about the extent of the religious experience in the movie. Except that after this experience, he starts to say “God bless you” on a couple of occasions. And of course, after this experience his golf game radically improves and he goes on to win a major pro golf tournament. So I suppose that is the Hollywood version of what it means to find God. That’s what it means to be a Christian. But I’m not sure anyone watching, nor even the character himself could really know for sure what it is that supposedly happened, or why. But that’s probably indicative of most people’s view of Christianity. You are in some sort of a crisis in your life, you sort of turn to God to help you, and you hope that somehow God helps you to find yourself, or the best version of yourself, or at least your best golf game.
Well, the apostle John would never cut it as a Hollywood screen writer, I’m afraid. But he has written a book in which he definitively writes what it means to come to know God, but not just to know about God, but to have fellowship with God, to be reconciled to God, and to have eternal life from God. In the last chapter of this book, John gives us the overarching theme of his epistle. He says in chapter 5 vs 13, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
It’s important that you know that you have eternal life. Not just have some vague experience that you’re not sure what happened, or if anything happened, or that doesn’t actually result in being reconciled to God. John has given in this book a number of assurances of our salvation, so that we may know that we have eternal life. And to do that, he gives a number of tests which give evidence that you know God, or have fellowship with God.
For instance, he gives some doctrinal tests. John says you need to have a right view of man in his sin, and a right view of Christ in His salvation. And then there are some moral tests or some behavioral tests. And really they can be summarized as two tests; obedience to the Word of God and love for the Lord and His people. You can, by these, test the validity of your claim of salvation and thereby gain assurance of it.
So as we finish up this chapter John is once again giving us some assurances of our salvation. And they fit in the two categories of doctrinal and behavioral. So we see three times in this last passage in which John either says or implies the phrase, “by this we know…” Three tests which yield assurances of our salvation.
The first test is in vs 13. “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us.” What follows then are the doctrinal tests of our salvation. That’s what to “abide in Him and He in us” refers to. It’s talking about our union with Christ. It’s talking about fellowship with God. It’s talking about the life which we have in Christ.
There are several doctrinal distinctions that we must adhere to which provide evidence and assurance of our salvation. And John says that the first one whereby we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us of His Spirit. Because we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. Jesus said in John 6:63, ““It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”
Now how do you know you’ve been given the Holy Spirit? How do you know that you have received the Holy Spirit? Not because you have experienced some sort of emotional event which made you feel something you thought was supernatural or spiritual. Not because you heard a voice or felt some ecstasy. But you know that you have received the Holy Spirit because you have the believed the words of Christ, what we call the gospel.
Look at vs 14, “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son [to be] the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” You cannot believe the gospel apart from the Holy Spirit. Your belief and confession in Jesus as the Son of God is evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The Bible tells us that the natural man is spiritually dead because of their sin, and until their eyes and ears are opened to see and hear they cannot believe. As I talked about last week, the Spirit of God quickens you so that you can believe. Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you [hath he quickened], who were dead in trespasses and sins.” It is the Spirit who gives life to that which is dead. You can’t even understand the scripture properly if you don’t have the Spirit of God in you because that which is spiritual cannot be naturally appraised. And the Spirit gives us new life, and the power or the desire to do what God has commanded us to do. We walk by the Spirit. Not in our strength, but in the strength which God supplies through His Spirit.
So how do I know that the Spirit of God has taken up residence in me? Because I believe what can only be believed if it is revealed by God. And how do you know that you have the Spirit? Because you believe the gospel. And the gospel is what we just read in vs 14 and 15.
Let’s read them again. This is the gospel in a nutshell; “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son [to be] the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” John words this carefully and it’s important to take note of what he is saying. It’s not just believing that Jesus was a man who was born in a stable. But what John says is that God sent Jesus to the world. That means that Jesus was in the beginning with God, that He was God, and then God became flesh, became man in order to be our Savior, to be our substitute who died for our sins upon the cross, that we who believe in Him might receive His righteousness and everlasting life in Him.
And because we believe in Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior, we are made righteous and holy by His righteousness and thereby we can receive the Spirit of God in us. He abides in us, and we abide in Him. His Spirit abides in us, and we abide in Him by accepting Him as Lord of our life.
The third aspect of the doctrinal test has elements of a behavioral test. Because you cannot separate doctrine from behavior. Some people think that you can have a correct doctrinal perspective and that’s all that counts, your behavior doesn’t really matter. But the truth is that your behavior comes out of your doctrine. And so we find the third aspect of the doctrinal test in vs 16 “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
That means that we have assurance of our salvation because we have received the love of God, and we express that love to God and to one another. “We have come to know” speaks of our doctrine. We believe the doctrine of the gospel. And the gospel is that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) So love is from God to us, and having believed that, we abide in love. We have love for God and love for one another. And because we abide in love, we abide in God and God abides in us. The end of vs 16 is almost a word for word recap of what was stated in at the beginning, in vs 13. To abide in Him and He abides in us is another way of speaking of our salvation.
Now the next assurance of our salvation is found in vs 17. And though he doesn’t begin with exactly the same phrase as before, as in “by this we know…” I think we can safely interpret it to mean the same thing. John says in vs 17, “By this, love is perfected with us…” Love is perfected with us is yet another way of referring to the completion of our salvation. It’s referring to God abiding in us, and we in God. For example, back in vs 12, John said, “if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” So perfect love, and God abiding in us are both speaking of the same thing; our salvation. We can have assurance of our salvation because love is completed or perfected in us.
And there are three aspects to this perfected love that John gives us here. The first one is that we might have confidence in the day of judgment. Not confidence in our golf game, but when everyman will one day stand before the judgment seat of God, we can have confidence. He says, “By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment.” We can have confidence because of the promise of the gospel. We that have trusted in Christ have been forgiven of our sins. You know, that is one thing you should have felt when you were saved. I’m not big on feelings as measure of your salvation. But when you know you are a sinner, and you repent and confess that to God, and He forgives you, there is usually accompanied with that forgiveness a sense of a great weight which has been lifted.
In salvation, there needs to be forgiveness. Some of you here today have perhaps never come to the point of acknowledging that you are a sinner. You might have come to God thinking you could use some improvement in your handicap, but actually you’re a not such a bad guy. But the fact is that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And because of your sin, you deserved the punishment of death. By faith we trust in Jesus who took your punishment and in believing in His propitiation for your sins, you were forgiven. If you haven’t been forgiven, then you haven’t been saved.
But if you’ve been forgiven for your sins, then you can have confidence in the day of judgment. Because you know that Jesus paid for your sins. And God will not be guilty of double jeopardy. He cannot charge you again, because Jesus paid it all.
The second aspect of perfected love is still in vs 17, “because as He is, so also are we in this world.” "As he is so are we in this world." That simply means that as Christ is now, invisibly, we are, in this world, visibly. We alluded to that in our last week’s study, which was spoken of in vs 12, “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” What John was referring to then was that the world cannot see God, but it can see us. The world cannot see Christ, but it sees us following in Christ’s footsteps, doing the things Christ did, carrying on the ministry of Christ. As Christ said that He came into the world to seek and to save those that are lost, so we walk as He walked, and we seek and save those that are lost. Love received and then poured back out is completed love. And if we love our brothers we will seek to save our brothers. There is no greater love than that.
Love reaches the world with the gospel of salvation. Love goes, love tells, love saves. And doing that is evidence of our salvation, and because of our salvation, we may have confidence on the day of judgment. Because we did what love demands we do. Love is the assurance of our salvation. Love which is perfected is love that is made visible in deeds. We saw that in Chapter 3, Verse 18, "Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth." Love, even God's love, can never find its end, its perfection, until it is expressed in a deed or word or compassionate act.
The third aspect of perfected love is because there is no fear in love. Vs18 “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”
Perfect love casts out fear. Why, how? Because we are obedient. Because we do his will. And his will is to love one another, to reach the world with the gospel. When we love others as Christ loved us, then we complete love, we have perfect love. When you are obedient in love, out of love, then you don’t fear punishment. God doesn’t punish us that are saved. He has punished Jesus already for our sins. He may correct us, He may discipline us, but He doesn’t punish us that are saved. That may seem like a minor distinction, but it’s actually a very important difference between those that are saved and those that are not. If you have rejected Jesus Christ as your Savior, then your punishment remains on you. But if you accept Him as your Savior, then Christ has taken your punishment upon Himself so that you may go free.
There is another aspect of this idea of fear though. Many Christians don’t witness or give testimony to the gospel because they are fearful. But when we obey the command to love, it casts out fear. God will help you when you commit to obey Him. And so when you obey you find that the fear goes away, because God is working with you and going before you. His strength takes away the fear of rejection or other people’s reactions, because our love for God is greater than our fear of man.
The last category of the assurances of our salvation is found in vs 19. And I am going to add the phrase, “By this we know” at the start of the verse because I think it’s implied there. I can’t be dogmatic about it, but I think I’m right none the less and I hope you will humor me for the sake of my outline. So let’s read it like that; vs 19, “[By this we know] we love.”
By this we know perfect love. By this we know that we are saved. By this we know the fellowship with God. God is love. And we can only say we know God if we have the love of God in us and we express His love to others. There has to have been a change in our nature, there must have been a new life created in us that has this capacity for love that wasn’t there before.
And there are three aspects of this love. First, we love, because He first loved us. Because God loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, so that He might be the Savior of the world, that we might be made righteous and receive the Holy Spirit to abide in us, because of that love in action, we have the love of God in our hearts. We love God and love others. But we need to remember that God didn’t love us because we were lovely. But He loved us when we were enemies of God and sinners, and rebellious. His love initiated our response. And our response is love for God and a love for one another.
And that introduces the second point, we have perfect love because we love God. John says in vs 20, “If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” In this statement, the foremost commandment is implied, and it’s consequence is indicated. But let’s not miss the foremost commandment in that verse which is understood but not directly stated.
Jesus said the foremost commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and your strength. That is the primary, foremost commandment. And Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Loving God is first and foremost above every other love. Jesus said in Matt. 10:37 "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” Our love for God is to be preeminent. Our love for God is expressed by obedience. It’s the motivation for doing what is pleasing to God.
And the third aspect of this perfect love is we love God by loving one another. John says in vs 21, “And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.” Jesus when He gave the foremost commandment, added that the second was like unto the first, that you should love your neighbor as yourself.
There is a love for one another that certainly includes those of the faith, a love for the body of Christ, His church. But the love for one another is not limited to just the church. It should be a love for our neighbor, and our neighbor may be a stranger, may be someone we have never seen before, someone we do not know. But we love them as ourselves. And Jesus said we should even love our enemies. God loved us when we were enemies, and we are to love like Christ loved. As John said in vs 17, “because as He is, so also are we in this world.”
John concludes this section by reiterating the command to love. It’s not an option. Our motivation to love comes from God’s love towards us. But because we have that as our motivation does not mean that we always feel like it. So perhaps that’s why John emphasizes the aspect of the command. We need to love whether we feel like it or not. Perfect love is sacrificial, and what we often have to sacrifice is our priorities for the sake of God’s priorities. We may have to sacrifice our natural attraction for what may not be attractive. But if we love God, then we will keep His commandments.
To reiterate what John said earlier in chapter 3 vs 18, “let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him.” Our obedience to His commands are yet another assurance that we are of the truth, that we know God, and that He abides in us, and we in Him.
Well, as we read at the beginning of this message, John has “written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Do you know that you have eternal life? Do you know that? You can know it and be certain of it, and have no fear in the day of judgment. Believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that He died on the cross for your sins, and that He rose again to give us new life in the Spirit. And you will receive eternal life from God. Jesus paid the price, it’s up to you to receive His forgiveness and His righteousness so that you might abide with Him, and He with you.
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