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Information. 2

Chapter 1: Introduction To 1 John. 3

Chapter 2: Authentic Christianity. 13

Chapter 3: The Gospel According To Christ 23

Chapter 4: The Saint And Sin. 34

Chapter 5: Practical Christianity. 45

Chapter 6: The Christian And The World. 56

Chapter 7: The Christian And False Doctrine. 67

Chapter 8: The Family Likeness. 77

Chapter 9: The Saint And The Sinful Existence. 87

Chapter 10: Brotherly Love. 98

Chapter 11: Confident Christianity. 109

Chapter 12: Discerning Christianity. 120

Chapter 13: Christian Love: Its Source And Sign. 131

Chapter 14: The Features Of Effectual Faith. 141

Chapter 15: The Case For Christ 152

Chapter 16: Sure Life And Prayer 162

Chapter 17: A Trinity Of Certainty And Security. 173

Chapter 18: Introduction to 2 John. 183

Chapter 19: Walking In Truth. 193

Chapter 20: Handling Heresy. 202

Chapter 21: Gaius - The Man Who Helped God's Work. 214

Chapter 22: Diotrephes - The Man Who Hindered God's Work. 225

Chapter 23: Demetrius - The Man Who Was Honoured In God's Work. 236


David Legge studied at the Irish Baptist College, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He served as Assistant Pastor at Portadown Baptist Church before receiving a call to the pastorate of the Iron Hall Assembly. He now serves as pastor-teacher of the Iron Hall, and resides in Belfast with his wife Barbara, daughter Lydia and son Noah.

The audio for this series is available free of charge either on our website (www.preachtheword.com) or by request from info@preachtheword.com

All material by Pastor Legge is copyrighted.  However, these materials may be freely copied and distributed unaltered for the purpose of study and teaching, so long as they are made available to others free of charge, and the copyright is included. These materials may not, in any manner, be sold or used to solicit "donations" from others, nor may they be included in anything you intend to copyright, sell, or offer for a fee. This copyright is exercised to keep these materials freely available to all.

1 John - Chapter 1

"Introduction To 1 John"

Copyright 2005

by Pastor David Legge

First John, the first epistle of John, if you can find 1 and 2 Peter, it's just after it - just before the book of Jude, the little book before the last book in the Bible, the book of the Revelation. So, if you can't find it after that, you're in trouble! Now, I haven't given this series a title, it's self-explanatory - 1 John - and the only title I have for tonight is 'An Introduction'. We'll not really be dealing with specific verses this evening in an expositional manner, I just want to give you somewhat of an overview and an introduction to this little book. I think that's important for our understanding in subsequent weeks, it gives us a backdrop and a context in which to fit our expositions from here on in.

We'll read the first four verses of chapter 1, just to get the flow of John's argument in the introduction of his epistle. Verse 1: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full".

Now this first epistle of John, of course, if you're familiar with the New Testament, you will know it's the first of three epistles - the second straight after it, and the third which are only a chapter long each. John, the author of these three epistles, is one of the sons of Zebedee, along with his brother James that we read of in the Gospels. But of course, they were christened again by the Lord Jesus Christ 'The Sons of Thunder', because of their vehement personalities. John was also one of the inner circle of intimate disciples that had special fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ when He was upon the earth, the other two being James and also Peter. As such, as one of the twelve, and one of the inner three, he had a unique eyewitness experience of the ministry, the earthly life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some would go as far as to say that, even beyond the inner circle of the three, that John was special, and indeed the Scriptures speak of him as 'the disciple whom Jesus loved'. There's something special about John and his relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and indeed at the Last Supper he is found to be reclining on Jesus' breast.

Of course John, the author of 1, 2 and 3 John, is also - and many people don't realise this, believe it or not - the author of John's gospel, and indeed the last book in the Bible, the Apocalypse, the book of the Revelation. He wrote them all. But this book in particular, although it's called a letter, is not really like a letter in that it has no proper introduction, or address, or even close - and it seems to be, because of that, a circular letter, a letter that isn't specifically addressed to one person or a particular church. It's not like the book of Romans or Ephesians, it's not addressed to an individual like Timothy or Titus or Philemon. Yet, as we read it, though it's not addressed to specific people, we find that it is intensely personal - so personal, in fact, that John doesn't even feel the need to mention his own name to those he's writing to. He knows that they will know who is writing to them, and he is so attached to them, so intimate with them, that he bares his pastoral heart of compassion and love for them, and so often we read of him calling this flock 'My beloved', or 'My little children'.

Now John's writings are dated near the end of the first century, probably somewhere between AD 85 and AD 95, and because of that John, as he is writing this first epistle, is a very old man. Now I want you to picture him, as he sits wherever he wrote this epistle with a quill and a piece of parchment, and there he is well over his pension age, and he looks back and reminisces over the life that he has lived with Christ - bodily on the earth - for Christ as an apostle, as an evangelist, as a missionary. He remembers all the experiences he had with the Lord, he reminisces concerning the rise and spread of Christianity across Europe - what must his thoughts have been?

I don't know about you, but I think it's rather interesting to hear what old men of God have to say - especially at the end of their lives. If you can get aside an old man of God, listen to the advice that, as the Bible puts it, 'the hoary head' of wisdom would give to you! In fact, a very famous evangelist in our world today recently said, as he is almost at the end of his life looking back on the years of service that he spent for the Lord, that he wished that he had spent more time studying God's word and praying to the Lord. When someone who is a great giant of the faith says something like that, we tend to sit up and listen because of the authority of the experience, the weight that is behind their statements and the life that they have lived. When proven servants of God speak, we ought to listen!

Now, here is John, the apostle, at the end of his life - and he is speaking with great authority and with great influence, because at this point he is the only apostle now still living. He's the only human being, really, who has had this intimate communion with the Lord Jesus in bodily form as He was upon the earth. So he speaks to these believers with a fatherly counsel. As we see in chapter 2 and verse 1, he says to them: "Little children" - 'This is the message that I give to you, as I look and scour over the whole of my life and I assess where the church of Christ is at this particular juncture in its history, this is the message that I feel that God would have me bring to you'.

So what does he say? Well, that's one of the difficulties, because some have found it hard, in a sense, to analyse this little book - because it doesn't really develop an argument in any order, the way that, say, the book of Romans might do, or the book of Ephesians. John tends, as he goes through these five chapters, to repeat prominent themes that are in his mind and heart. Every time he repeats a theme, he tends to add a little bit more to it in repetition. If you look at the slide up here on the screen, it just gives you an idea - it's out of a commentary - how some men have tried to explain how John develops the themes in the first epistle. They have used the illustration of a spiral staircase, and he has these three main themes: righteousness, love, and truth. As you go through the five chapters you find that you revisit those themes again and again and again, and they're actually three cycles in the book, but each time he revisits them he tells you something that he hasn't told you before.

Peter Barnes in his well-known commentary on the Bible on this little book, he relates a story personal to his own family where he, at the breakfast table with his wife and children, was reading through this little epistle and sharing some thoughts. During one of the readings his eight-year-old daughter interrupted, and said: 'We've read that before' - we've read that before! He hadn't read it before, but sometimes we feel like that if you have read the first epistle of John, because he keeps repeating the same themes over again and again, the same truths. Why does he do that? Well, here is an old man at the end of his life, and he's coming and bringing perhaps the final message that he's going to bring to the church and going to be able to do in his lifetime, and these three themes that we'll share with you later, he feels are the most important things - so he just repeats them again and again and again, because they're worthy of repetition.

A bit of advice that was once given by a preacher, an old one to a young one, was: 'Say something, and then say what you've said, and then say it again' - say something, say what you've said, and then say it again. It's like hammering a nail into the wood over and over again. That's what this little letter is like. But I ask you the question: what must it have been like to have been in the church where John was a pastor, or he was an elder? What would it have been like to have worshipped in the Ephesian church, where John resided until he died and was buried there? Because, in the same way in this letter John keeps repeating the same truths, it seems that that's what he did in the little church at Ephesus. In fact Jerome, an early Christian, says that when the aged apostle was so weak that he could no longer preach, he used to be carried into the congregation at Ephesus, and he used to content himself with just a word of exhortation: 'Little children', he would always say, 'Love one another'. 'Little children, love one another', and when the hearers grew tired of the same message over and over again, they asked him why he so frequently repeated it. He responded: 'Because it is the Lord's command, and if that is all that you do it is enough!'. Little children, love one another!

This is not the onset of dementia in this old man of God, but John was commenting, inspired by the Spirit of the Living God, on the need of the hour - what these Christians in Ephesus needed most! He also comments on how these Christians could equip themselves to meet that need. So we must not grow weary, ourselves, in reading this epistle, of repetition within it - but neither, here's the application for us today, should we ever become weary with repeating the same message from God's word, whatever that message may be. Because God's word is the message that our generation urgently needs to hear, just like John's! The gospel, though we repeat it over again and again, and to some it might seem not to bear any fruit, that is the message that our hour cries for.

So what was the message that John brought to Ephesus? Well, let us look first of all at the primary reason for his writing, and then we'll be able to make more sense of what he actually goes on to teach them. I believe the primary reason for his writing is found in chapter 5 and verse 13, one of the key verses of the epistle, if you turn to it with me. John says: 'These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God'. This is why he is writing, that those who have believed in the Son of God may know that they have eternal life. Now if you would turn back with me to John chapter 20, we see there the reason for his writing of the Gospel of John. John 20, and in verse 30 we read that he could have written many other things, 'Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written', the things that I have written, 'that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name'.

So we see the distinction here. When John writes his gospel, he is writing to a people who as yet are not converted. He is trying to lead them to faith in Christ. But when he comes to his epistle, as chapter 5 and verse 13 tells us, he is talking to a people who have come to faith in Christ, but he's trying to lead them all into a deeper understanding and a further maturity in their life. In fact, as you go through this little epistle, you'll find the word 'know' over again and again and again and again. That little word infers to us that there was something that these Christians in Ephesus didn't know. Yes, they had believed in the Son of God, they were saved, but John is writing that they might know that they have eternal life. In other words, there seems to have been a lack of assurance in their salvation.

Now there are two Greek words for 'know' in this little epistle, and they're repeated about 38 times through 1, 2 and 3 John. Now you might say, and it would be a worthy question: why were they doubting their salvation? Why had they a lack of assurance? Well, if you turn to chapter 2 for a moment, and verse 19, we are given a hint as to the reason. Verse 18 says: 'Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us'. Now here we have a clue to the reason why some believers in Ephesus had a lack of assurance. It appears within this little church that an intellectual or a spiritual elite had arisen, and this little group of so-called Christians were claiming that they had some superior anointing from God. They were super-Christians, and they had a supernatural knowledge - that's the key word, a 'knowledge' - that just run-of-the-mill, five-eight, ordinary, nominal Christians didn't have. You could call it a special revelation from God that was unique to them, but this is the point: they were claiming to have discovered an improvement on what had been previously taught in the New Testament church. They had discovered something new.

Eventually this little group of 'elite' broke away, they caused a schism in the church in Ephesus. Consequently there's this little band of simple believers that maybe weren't the most intellectual among them, maybe weren't the most gifted, but they are left there on their own. That little flock of sheep, perhaps, is confused, bewildered, saying to themselves and one another: 'What's this all about? Is there something special about the people that have left us? Are they better Christians than we are? Is there something in their supernatural knowledge that we don't have? Have we really got the truth? Is the message we have believed the gospel, or is our truth and our salvation deficient? Is there something that we are missing?'. Perhaps they even went as far, and I believe they did, as to say: 'Are we really saved?'.

So their assurance was at a low ebb. Assurance is extremely important for the Christian, and if we glean anything from our studies of 1 John, it surely will be that. Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones said on one occasion: 'Assurance is not essential to salvation, but it is essential to the joy of salvation'. You see, you could be saved and not have assurance, many people are. You could have assurance and not be saved, and many people are that too. But the best position to be in, and the biblical position that we all should strive after, is to know that we are saved and have the assurance of it that brings the joy that can only come through that certainty.

So John wrote to these disciples who had already believed, that they should know for sure that they possessed eternal life. Of course in chapter 1 and verse 4, he tells us: 'These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full', as a consequence of your assurance. So John writes to them in a world of doctrinal, social, and moral confusion, and tells them they need assurance to survive. Increasingly, as we go through this little epistle, we will see the relevance of it to our own contemporary age, but particularly regarding the issue of assurance and certainty, we need to expose the truth of 1 John - because we live in a world, even in a Christian church, sadly to say, that is relativistic. In other words, they believe that everything is relative, even truth - that there are no longer any absolutes, no longer any right and wrong, black and white. We live in a society that is not necessarily immoral, though it is that, but it is amoral, there are no morals whatsoever! There is no truth, you have your truth, I have my personal respective truth, but no one can say that this is 'the truth'.

What we have within 1 John is a message for today, if ever there was, and it's this - John says: 'There are certainties, you can be certain, you can know'. If this book tells us anything, it tells us the fundamentals of the faith, and it encourages and exhorts us, calls us back to the basics of biblical Christianity. You can be sure, John says. What he does for us in this epistle, and for these early believers, is that he gives us three main tests how we can know that we are truly Christians. This is something that we can apply personally to our own lives, and it is something that we can apply across the board to Christendom at large to know those that are really the Lord's people.

Let me say, before we look at those three main tests, that there is no hesitation in the apostle's mind - the first thing he does for us is to declare categorically that a Christian can know the certainties of the gospel and the certainties of personal salvation. Throughout this book, over and over again, let me just give you an example at the end, if you turn to chapter 5, the last couple of verses, in verse 18 he says 'We know' - there it is, you could circle every 'know' in this book - 'We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not', and again, 'we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life'. This is John's point: 'You Ephesian believers lack confidence, but knowledge breeds confidence. I am here to tell you, as the last living apostle who encountered the Lord Jesus Christ physically, that you can be sure of the tenets of the gospel and your own personal salvation experience'.

Can I ask you, before we launch into these three tests of assurance, are you sure of your personal salvation? Do you know you're saved? Are you convinced of the Lord Jesus Christ, who He is, what He accomplished in His death, His burial, His resurrection, the truth of the gospel - by grace, through faith, not of works? Have you received it, embracing the offer of the gospel? Well, maybe you don't know, maybe you're in the same camp as these Ephesians? Well, here are the three tests. Put very simply, and it's been summed up by others in this way, there is first of all a doctrinal test. Then secondly there is a moral test. Thirdly there is a social test. Now we shall explore these, giving the reasons why they were crucial, and still are crucial to ascertain our own personal assurance.

Let's look first of all at the doctrinal test. Now this breakaway group that I spoke of, they had a name - they may not have been given that name actually in John's day, but a little bit later they came to be known as the 'Docetists'. The Docetists really were an early form of Gnosticism, you might be a bit more familiar with that word - but maybe you're not. Let me explain it: the word 'Docetist' comes from the Greek word 'Doceo' (sp?), which means 'I think', 'I seem', or 'I appear'. They taught, concerning the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, that Christ, as He came to earth, only appeared to be a man. He only looked like a man and seemed to be a man, but he was not truly human or physical. Now the Gnostics later developed this in the second century and had some similar views. 'Gnostic', the word comes from the Greek word 'gnosis', which incidentally means 'knowledge'. They believed that they had a special superior knowledge to other people who called themselves Christians. The Gnostics taught, along with some of the Docetists, that it was at the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ, when He went into the waters and the dove came down, that the Spirit of Christ, the Christ-spirit descended on the man Jesus, and that same Christ-spirit, they taught, left Him before His crucifixion.

Now think of the implications of that for a moment, that means there was no real incarnation of the Saviour. When John tells us in chapter 1 of his gospel, verse 14, that 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us' - well, He didn't. When Colossians speaks of the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Christ bodily, well, that is wrong - and of course both John and Paul in Colossians were writing against Docetism and Gnosticism in this sense. It's a form of dualism, that means this: that they reckoned that material things in the universe were evil, everything that you could see and touch, even your very flesh and body was evil; the only thing that was good is the spiritual realm and the spirit of man. Therefore it was unthinkable to them that Christ should take upon Himself a physical body, flesh, because that would be intrinsically evil. Do you know what that means? It means that whenever you see Christ in the Gospels eating and drinking, and growing weary, and sleeping in the bottom of the boat, He is acting! It is all a facade, because He wasn't a real man! But here is a fatal implication of this doctrine: when He went to the cross, and the Christ-spirit ascended from Him back to God, it was not the Son of God who died there! Christ, God's Son, did not die on the cross, and He did not die as a substitute for sinners, and we are all lost!

There are many implications to this heresy, but the bottom line that John is highlighting here is that the Docetists did not think rightly of Christ. This was the doctrinal test: how do you know you're in the faith? How did these Ephesians know whether the group that left them were the correct ones, or whether the truth that they had was the whole truth and nothing but the truth? These Docetists, they preached Christ, they looked and sounded like Christians, but this is John's point, it's Paul's point, it's all the apostles points, it was even Christ's prophetic point: the Christ that they preached was of their own making! The test, doctrinally, is given in chapter 4 and verse 2: 'Hereby', John says, 'know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God'. In other words, anyone confessing that He did not come in the flesh is not of God.

I said to you last evening in the Gospel meeting, and I never tire of repeating it, the most important question that we can ask anyone in the ecclesiastical world or in the ordinary everyday world is: what do you think of Christ? That is the doctrinal test. John Newton put it poetically in verse:

''What think you of Christ?' is the test

To try both your state and your scheme;

You cannot be right in the rest,

Unless you think rightly of Him'.

We have spent many weeks, fifteen in all, looking at confusing cults and false world faiths - and you will remember, I hope, that if not all of them, at least most of them erred regarding the person of Christ. Everything else fell out of tandem with that false doctrine. Can I say to you this evening that I believe, to an extent, that the early Christian church took this Christological heresy more seriously than many Christians in the church do today. In fact in the early second century, Ignatius of Antioch wrote against one who took this view of Christ, and he said, I quote: 'This one blasphemes my Lord by denying that He ever bore a real human body. In saying that he denies everything about Him'. In fact, in Asia at this particular time, there was a Gnostic teacher contemporary to the apostle John and an opponent of him, called Cerinthus. It is only a legendary story, but nevertheless some of these stories have a lot of weight behind them, the story is told that John one day bathing in the baths in Ephesus noticed that Cerinthus was beginning to descend into the pool. The old man, as he was then, girded himself and ran as fast as he could, lest the roof of the baths would fall in upon him in judgment on Cirenthus.

You see these men of God in the early church, they strongly opposed anything that denigrated Christ - because they saw this doctrine, and all other departures in relation to the person of Christ, as a departure from the historical faith that God had given to them. That's what it is! We need to see it as such today! Wasn't it Jude who said in verse 3 of his little book that we are to 'earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered' - the Greek is 'once and for all delivered to the saints'. It cannot be changed, it cannot be added to or subtracted from. Now, of course, this adaptation of Christianity made the message of the church more acceptable to Greek culture. Philosophers could swallow it better with this spiritual element. Plato was to accept many of these philosophies later on, but the fact of the matter is: John saw it as it was! He saw this false doctrine as destroying the essential nature of the Christian message. For John, the Christian message was not a body of ideas or theological precepts, but it was an historical unalterable fact that was personified in Christ Jesus the Lord. Now have you got that? Christianity is Christ, the Christ of God, the Christ of the Bible.

As James Montgomery Boice put it: 'Gnosticism produced a type of philosophical religion that was divorced from concrete history, for concrete history tells us that Jesus was born as a man in Bethlehem's manger'. He lived as a man among men, whilst He was the Son of God and the Christ of God, He was a man, otherwise He could not have been the Saviour of the world. Now friends, here is a lesson if ever there was one to our modern age, because if we, like these Docetists, try to adapt the Christian message to be acceptable to our modern society, the message itself will eventually become irrelevant when the values and philosophies of society change, as they will and must. Whereas God's message applies to all generations and to all people - now we've got to preach it, and meet people where they're at, but sometimes I hear people say 'We've got to make the Gospel relevant' - the Gospel is relevant! We shouldn't attempt to adapt the message to suit our age, because the Gospel is the very message that people need to conform to, as the revelation of God that will change their lives and change their world.

So John, and I love the way he does this, no wonder he was called one of the 'Sons of Thunder'! In verses 1-3 he says it like it is: 'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ'. It reminds me of Genesis chapter 1, where God just comes in through Moses and says: 'In the beginning was God'. He states the facts, they are nonnegotiable, he doesn't even attempt to argue them - because, as far as he is concerned, the evidence is too great. We know that God made the world because it's here, and we know that Christ came in human flesh because they saw Him with their eyes, they touched Him with their hands, they heard Him with their ears. He was there!

Can I say to you this evening: the church needs to discover again what it is to preach the old message of the Gospel. I'm not talking about caricatures of the Gospel, sometimes you would think we were going back in time when we look at how we do things and how we say things even in this modern age. But what I am talking about is this: it is the historical Christ, the Christ of the Bible, the Christ of church history that we need to preach - and if we try to modernise Christ, or modernise the Gospel, we divorce it from history. Do you know what you do when you do that? You change its character and you make it another gospel. I love modern songs, and there are certain modern trends in Christianity today that I think are very welcome, I would have to say. But on the other hand there is a certain trend within Christendom that is trying to divorce itself from all of Christian history up to now, you'd think the Christian church was something that only happened from 1960 or 70 up to now. We are an historic people! We're not rooted in any age, but yet the fact of the matter is: our Christ and our gospel is relevant to every age. But this is the warning: if we do not have the historical Christ of Christianity, we do not have the Christianity of Christ.

C. H. Spurgeon put it well, I can do no better than put it in his words: 'The truth, the old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, is the truth that I must preach today, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape truth, I know of no such thing as pairing off rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox's gospel is my gospel, that which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again!'. Here's the test: is the Christ that you have and believe in the Christ of the Bible? That's the personal test to your salvation: do you believe that He is God the Son, that He also came as a man among men and died as the substitute for sinners? That's the test of Christendom.

The second test is the moral test - these two are shorter if you're worried about the time! The moral test. I need to give you a bit of background regarding Ephesus first of all, that we believe John was writing to - his own church. This was a circular letter around many, but the context of Ephesus gives us an insight into some things that John teaches here. The first thing I want you to notice is that Ephesus was a place that had now become familiar with Christianity. Like our own age, perhaps like Ulster, many believers were now the children of believers, or even the grandchildren of the first believers. You remember the day in the Acts of the Apostles where there was a great thrill and excitement, Paul was preaching the Gospel, challenging the god Diana of the Ephesians. Those who plied their trade in making little images for people to worship in devotion of Diana were up in arms, they were losing in their livelihood. Gone were the days when people would go every day for two years to the school of Tyranus and listen to the apostle Paul exegeting the Holy Scriptures. Now this second, or even third-generation Christianity in Ephesus had lost the glory of their witness, they'd lost their power and their zeal. They were becoming tainted with the world. That's who John is writing to.

Also Ephesus was no longer a place of persecution. No, the enemy now was false doctrine. They were at peace, but yet false doctrine was entering in just as Paul had warned them in Acts chapter 20 and verses 29 to 30. As he left the elders in Ephesus he warned them of ravening wolves that would come into the church and devour them. Thirdly, sin was rampant in the city of Ephesus. The Bible tells us it was a pagan city, wholly given over to idolatry and superstition. There was a whole huge religious industry that was dependent upon the worship of this goddess Diana, and it was centred upon the magnificent temple of Diana. The wealth that was derived from that idolatrous worship not only brought great wealth, but it brought spiritual bankruptcy and gross immorality that we couldn't even go into this evening. We know from the Acts of the Apostles 19 verse 19, from those who were converted out of Ephesus, that there was sorcery and a lot of the occult and dark arts, because they brought their books and their artistic instruments in spiritism and they burned them after their conversion.

Therefore it should be no surprise that in chapter 1 of this epistle, verse 6, John tells them not to walk in darkness. In chapter 2 and verse 15 he warns them not to love the world nor the things of the world. In chapter 4 and verse 1 he tells them to try every spirit, not to believe every spirit that is manifest. In chapter 5 and verse 21, doesn't he tell them: 'Keep yourself from idols'? What a place Ephesus was! But what I want you to see, fourthly, is that there was an error concerning Christ that had crept into the church, but that error with Christ was intrinsically linked with an error in their understanding of sin. Their theology of sin was wrong, because the false teachers were maintaining that sin is essentially in the flesh. They didn't believe that Christ could become a human physical being, therefore they reasoned that the physical was sinful and the spirit was the only holy and good thing. But that led them to the view that because the flesh was sinful, and eventually would be destroyed, would never be resurrected again, you could legitimise sin in the flesh - sin as much as you like, because it has no consequence.

So the second test was a moral one. John said in chapter 2 and verses 3-4: 'Hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him'. Now this is not sinless perfection that some teach, because in chapter 1 verse 8 he says: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us', and verse 10 'If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us'. But nevertheless, what he is teaching is that the Christian's obedience is not an option. One writer has put it like this, I think well: 'While we are imperfect there must be a real, habitual, and substantial obedience to God'. Real, habitual, substantial - do you know what that's against? Easy-believism, false profession, 'You can take Christ as your Saviour but not as your Lord'. I'm not getting into a debate tonight, but I'm telling you this much: there's nowhere in this book where God says you can come for justification, but not sanctification - nowhere.

A. A. Hodge put it like this: 'You can no more separate justification from sanctification than you can separate the circulation of the blood from the inhalation of the air. Breathing and circulation are two different things, but you cannot have one without the other. They go together and they constitute one life'. You can't come to God and say: 'I want to be forgiven for all my past sins, but I want to live on in sin. I want to be justified but I don't want to be sanctified. I want Christ's salvation but I don't want Christ's image'. That's not on offer. So this is a test, a moral test. None of us are perfect, none of us are what we should be as Christians, we all feel guilty where we fall short - but is there at least a real, habitual, and substantial obedience to God's commands? That is the second test that will give assurance.

The third, very briefly, is the social test. We've seen the doctrinal, the moral, and now the social in chapter 4 in verses 20 and 21. 'If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also'. In other words John is saying, 'Look, if I claim to be a Christian, and if God is love, and He is love, and I claim to know this God of love, I too must love others'. Is that not what 1 Corinthians 13 is all about? You can have all the gifts of the Spirit you like, you can die at the stake for Christ - but if you have not love... Wasn't it the Lord said in John 13: 'A new commandment I give unto you, love one another'. I sometimes am amused with some of these books in Christian bookshops, you've seen them perhaps. They're called 'The Hard Sayings of Christ Explained' - there are many hard sayings of Christ, but I think there's no harder than this one. This one doesn't seem to be in any of those books: 'Love one another'.

Oh you might have the doctrine test alright - 'Oh I know my p's and my q's doctrinally'. You might not even be affected by worldliness in any shape or form, perhaps that's not a problem for you. But what about this one? You can tick the doctrinal test and the moral test, what about the social test? Do you love your brother? Or is there a brother or sister that you hate? Can I say to you tonight: it is very doubtful, if there's hate in your heart for a brother, that you're saved. Luther put it like this: 'It is not Christ walking on the sea, but His ordinary walk that we are called on here to imitate'. Oh the gifts are wonderful, the power is wonderful, the charisma that is in this church, the anointing, the knowledge, the doctrine - but what about the walk? I'll tell you, here is a test that the church needs to apply in Ulster: the bickering, the backbiting that goes on in congregations in our land, the dissension that is among believers today - is there another message that the church needs to hear more than this one? This is the test! It's not about loving your own people in your own church, it's not about loving your own denomination, it's loving Christ's ones - whoever they are!

With John these matters, with this Son of Thunder, they're just black or white - there's no grey areas. It's right or wrong, it's true or false, it's good or evil, it's either salvation or damnation, it's either Christ or Antichrist. There's no middle ground, no neutral ground.

You need the doctrinal test, the moral test, the social test - and then you can have assurance! What relevance has this little epistle to our modern day? Have you not seen it already? It has something to say to those in our world that are unsure about spiritual things - they are floating from one religion and one cult to another. But it also has something to say to Christians who have falsely professed faith, and who feel secure when they shouldn't be secure. It has something to say to Christians who are insecure and have no reason to be such. It's telling us this: you can know that you're saved, and here's how you can know! It has something to tell us about Christian ethics, the debates that go on about how a Christian should live in an ungodly age - and sometimes it seems to change from age to age with fashion, how Christian should live. The question we ask here is: does it change in the eyes of God? John says 'No'. Then there's so much charismatic phenomena around today, people are claiming special anointings and knowledge and revelation - and they make a lot of believers, simple souls, feel second-class citizens because they haven't got that. It says: 'Ye have an anointing from God'. Then it has something to say to all of us who think that we have all the truth and got it all correct, yet how often we betray an absence of true agape love, and betray the fact that all we really have is an empty, bitter orthodoxy.

That is why these things were written. God willing next week we'll look in more detail at these first number of verses. Do go home, it's only five chapters long, and read it through for next week a number of times to familiarise yourself with the content. Can I ask you all to search your hearts, just now before God, the doctrinal test, the moral test, the social test - how do you fare, honestly? Is your assurance founded well on solid ground? Or should it be a little shakier than it is? Are you not saved tonight, and you know it deep in your heart? It's time you were. Maybe there wasn't true repentance there in the beginning, and that's why you've got the problems now that you have. Well, set it right this evening.

Father, we give thanks for a wonderful Saviour. We thank You for a Saviour who, just as the children partake of flesh, He likewise partook of the same; that He might die, defeating him who brought death upon this whole race, even the devil. Lord, where would we be if He hadn't become a man, if He hadn't lived as a man among men? We wouldn't have a High Priest to bring us to God. We wouldn't have One in the glory with prints on His hands, His feet, and His side - but we have. We need no other argument, we're on solid ground tonight. But Lord, for those who aren't, oh Lord, search their hearts, what they think of Christ, what fruit is in their lives, how they behave to others - even if they call themselves Christians. Let us all be a people who have this mark: 'Behold, how they love one another'. Take us to our homes in safety, with the fragrance of Christ in our soul, Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - September 2005

www.preachtheword.com

info@preachtheword.com

1 John - Chapter 2

"Authentic Christianity"

Copyright 2005

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

Now I want you to turn with me to the book of 1 John. I would encourage you, if you haven't been at our introductory evening, that you would get the tape recording tonight - you can get it on CD or on audio cassette - it just gives you...I spent the whole night giving a background to the theme and the context of such a book like this. I'll not be going over all of that ground tonight, so it's important that you get that knowledge, though I will be touching on some of the relevant information. But you'll be glad to know that we haven't dealt with any of the verses in any depth, and so we're looking at the first four verses specifically this evening from chapter 1 under the title 'Authentic Christianity' - authentic Christianity.

Verse 1 - do note that there is no normal introduction that is given to a New Testament epistle or letter, John just cuts to the chase and gets right to the point: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full".

The reason why John wrote this epistle, as we saw in our introductory week, is found in the last chapter and verse 13 - let's just remind ourselves of that: 'These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God'. Now we were recapping that in John's gospel he wrote that particular narrative of the life of the Lord Jesus in order that people should believe in the Son of God. But now, as he comes to his first epistle, he is writing to those who have believed in the Son of God, but he is giving them an assurance - because, for a reason which we will touch on again this evening, they lacked assurance. Though they had trusted in Christ, they had not that particular assurance that every child of God should seek that brings joy, that brings the satisfaction, the reassurance of the faith of Jesus Christ.

Now why was it that they lacked such assurance? Well, we found out in our first week that there was a sect within the church at Ephesus who considered themselves as an intellectual and spiritual elite. They were, in fact, claiming superior anointing from the Spirit of God, they believed that they had a knowledge and a revelation from God that was almost an improvement on the gospel message that had been revealed to the apostles and passed down through the church to this stage in its history. We have a hint in chapter 2 and verse 19 that this sect broke away, they caused schism within the church in Ephesus. So there's a group of believers that John is writing to - and of course this is a circular letter, but I believe that primarily it was written out of the situation in Ephesus - those who were left behind after this split, those who were confused, shaken, made uncertain because of those who said: 'We have an anointing that you don't have, we have a knowledge and a revelation that you don't have!', and they were starting, perhaps, to ask themselves 'Well, what if they're right? What if there's something in this anointing and knowledge that they have that we don't?'.

So John comes, and if this epistle teaches anything, it teaches Christian certainties. He gives the certainty that these Christians, because they had believed in the Son of God, could know that they have eternal life. In order to bolster their assurance, we saw in our introductory week that he gave them three litmus tests - how they could know that they were the children of God. The first was the doctrinal test, which specifically we'll take up tonight in most of our time, which related primarily to our view of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. That is the test of Christian authenticity. Then the second test was moral, and we find this right throughout this book, and we'll spend much time on this, that you can't call yourself a Christian - even if you believe correct doctrine - and not live a sanctified and holy life. Then the third test was social, because a holy life is not just all about you and how you live, but it's also entails how you react and relate towards others - particularly your brethren and sisters in Christ, and even those outside in the world. So there was a social test as well as a moral and a doctrinal one.

As I said, the first four verses of chapter 1 really comprise of this doctrinal test, part of it, that we will find within this epistle. You remember that I told you in our first week of introduction that the group that broke away from this church in Ephesus most likely were a group called the Docetists. It was an early form of Gnosticism. Basically they believed that the Lord Jesus just appeared to be a man, He was not really human flesh and blood like you and me, but He only appeared to be such in a sort of phantom or ghostlike manner - He wasn't truly human, so therefore there is no doctrine of the incarnation any more according to these Docetists and Gnostics. That has great ramifications. It means that when the Lord Jesus lived His life before men on this earth, He was really playacting, He wasn't a genuine man. He didn't hunger, He didn't thirst, He wasn't tired, He wasn't really tempted in a human sense. The Word, therefore, did not become flesh, as John says in chapter 1 of his gospel and verse 14, and tabernacle among us. It contradicts directly the teaching of Colossians 2 and verse 9, that the fullness of the Godhead dwells completely, bodily in our Lord Jesus Christ. But here was the fundamental problem in relation to our salvation: obviously incarnation. If He wasn't incarnate He could not go to the cross, and there's a problem regarding salvation and substitution. If He didn't become a man, He couldn't become men's substitute, a sacrifice for all mankind on behalf of man and before God. So this doctrine of the Docetists and the Gnostics had fundamental ramifications for Christian doctrine. They did not think rightly of Christ, and so the whole of Christian faith was at stake. They had created a Christ of their own making.

This is why John was so strongly and vehemently opposed to the teaching of these false teachers and false prophets. Because, as far as he was concerned, and remember he is inspired by the Holy Spirit, this was a complete departure from historical Christian faith. You remember that verse in Jude, verse 3, where he encouraged them to earnestly contend - or defend - for the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints...a completed faith that does not need to be added to, and certainly should not be taken away from. Now this is terribly important: we live today, in the 21st century, in a culture that is eager for religious experience. I think that in our post-modern age we have evolved out of a sceptical society, to a large extent - there aren't as many atheists or agnostics about today, but there are a lot of people around who are yearning for a particular religious experience, and it doesn't have to be Christian necessarily. You see it in the New Age movement, you see it in ecumenism: it doesn't really matter the particular religious label that you take, as long as it seems to work for you! It is a religious pragmatism, it throws out the idea of truth, right and wrong, and accepts that, 'As long as it does something for me, gives me a buzz, gets me to my desired end and goal - well, I'll embrace it, it doesn't really matter whether it's the truth or not'.

Let me illustrate this to you: George Barna, in one of his polls in the United States, and I take it from there because not only is it one of the greatest 'Christian' countries in the world, so-called, but it's the only one I could really get my hands on figures for. The Barna poll reports that in the US over 80% of people believe in God or gods. It is not an atheistic country by any means. When the folk were asked in this poll in the States if all of the world's religions essentially prayed to the same God, 64% of the adults said 'Yes, they did'. The next statistic is staggering, because the figure among evangelicals in the United States that said everyone prays to the same God was 46%. Among those who labelled themselves as 'born again', as opposed to 'evangelical' - you can make the distinction as you like there! - 48% said that they all prayed to the same God. Among the regular church attendees that may not have considered themselves evangelical, 62% within American churches believed that everyone in the world, whatever religion they belonged to, prayed to the same God in heaven. That means that within the pews of America, two thirds of churchgoing people believed that the exclusive character of the Christian message was now obsolete! Indeed, with those who call themselves evangelicals, half of them believed the same.

So the question needs to be asked today, as it was asked in John's day, in the light of so much confusion: what are the essentials of Christian doctrine? What makes you a Christian? What makes a church Christian? Not only what are the essentials of doctrine, but what are the essentials of fellowship? How can we join with other people? On what grounds? Now, especially in the light of ecumenism, one commentator who I'll share some excerpts from this evening shares the dangers that he encountered in interfaith fellowship. He was there, he fellowshipped with other religions on a low-key level, not, perhaps, to the extent of the fellowship that we would have tonight, but he operated and cooperated with them in various ways, even if it was on a social level. He says this, and I quote him: 'Trying to build unity, particularly for commendable social programs, I recall attending one such attempt in Illinois. This was a meeting of Jewish rabbis and Christian pastors who, for the sake of Chicago's northern suburbs, agreed that a united front was needed against crime and drugs. As the discussion progressed, all sides pressed for' - he quotes - ''common theological denominators' that would be the basis of prayer and worship and ethics. It goes without saying', he says, 'that the Christological emphasis had to be set aside'. Christ, that's what Christological means, the study and understanding of Christ had to be set aside.

Now this writer also expresses how at one stage in his life he was a navy chaplain in the United States Navy. He says from one experience in that career, I quote: 'I recall leading a prayer at an Officer's School near the Navy War College in Newport, Rhode Island. I was reminded gently by the commanding officer not to include anything offensive, such as any reference to Jesus Christ'. He says: 'Imagine wearing a cross on your collar device in the military, and not referring to Jesus'. Now whether we care to admit it or not today, that is the attitude of the world, largely speaking a religious world, and it is even an attitude that is starting to invade the church - a pragmatism. In fact, the same writer goes on to say of a specifically Christian situation in a broad sense: 'A friend of mine once told a story about Harvard Divinity School', which hundreds of years ago used to be a very reputable Divinity School, 'upon learning that one of her professors was an agnostic, she inquired about the range of theological diversity on the seminary campus. 'Anything goes', came the reply. My friend pursued the point, 'You mean there's no belief or absence of belief that would keep one from being hired to teach theology?'. 'Only one', came the clarification, 'the refusal to endorse women's ordination''. That was the only account on which someone would be refused to be a Professor of Divinity in Harvard Divinity School. It didn't matter what you thought of Christ, what you thought of the Gospel, all that seemed to matter was what you thought in endorsement of women's ordination!

The same confusion, perhaps not to such an extent, exists among evangelicalism today. The Evangelical Theological Society is an academic fellowship of hundreds of evangelical professors and pastors, and it has only one doctrinal affirmation for every member to sign, and it is the inerrancy of Scripture. The Mormons could write a signature beside the inerrancy of Scripture! That tells you nothing! What John tells us is that there is no Christianity if Christ is not at the centre of it. They, as we, were trying to discern: what are the essentials for Christian identity? Indeed, what are the grounds for Christian unity and Christian fellowship? So he gives us both the historical and the experimental aspects of what Christianity is.

So let's answer that question this evening: what is Christianity? The first answer is found in verse 1, and it is the life that the apostle John and the rest of the apostles encountered: the life encountered. 'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life'. What John is giving to us now is the objective, foundational, historical basis for the faith that we have. Something objective is something that you can see, something that you can handle, something that is solid. So he tells us: from the beginning, from the beginning! What a statement! It's very reminiscent of how he began his gospel in chapter 1 and verse 1: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'. It's even reminiscent of how the Bible itself begins in Genesis 1 and verse 1: 'In the beginning was God'. What John is seeking to do here is lay down a foundation: this is historical, this faith that we have is founded in the Christ of God who came before the world - and he records the account in John 1. But it's also more than that: it is a faith that is rooted and grounded right back to creation, Genesis 1 verse 1, and this is none other than the pre-existent Christ that we preach. This is the One who was with God before the world was.

This is so important that we maintain and realise that we believe in the pre-existent Christ. The Gnostics did not believe this, the Docetists believed that the Spirit of Christ fell upon Him, the man Jesus, when He was baptised in the Jordan, and it left Him before He was crucified on the cross - but the man Jesus who was born into Bethlehem wasn't really that Christ in and of Himself. But He is! He was the pre-existent Son of God. This is important to realise, that our faith is not just an historic faith, our faith is an eternal faith in the eternal pre-existent Son of God. You see the Mormons would say: 'We believe the Bible, but we believe our Mormon Bible too - it's a new revelation added to the Bible', like the Docetists and the Gnostics. But we have to reply to the Mormons: 'I don't need your new book, for I have a book that gives me the revelation of God from the beginning, and tells me that His complete revelation is perfected in Jesus Christ'. Mary Baker Eddy might say to us: 'Well, you need the book 'Science and Health' to complete your understanding of God and how to get to Him'. Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford of the Jehovah's Witnesses would say you need the books 'Studies in Scriptures', but we say: 'No, we don't need any of those, because our faith goes back to the beginning - that which God gave at the first, the One who was with God before the world began. Our faith is founded on the pre-existent One!'.

You see, what John is saying here is that the foundation of all true fellowship with God and with any other people is the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, and these first two verses are telling us of His eternity. Not only His eternity, but the reality of His incarnation as He came from eternity into time to be our Saviour. He articulates it in such a graphic way by saying: 'We heard Him' - the 'we' being the apostles - 'We saw Him with our eyes, we even handled Him with our hands, this Word of life. We say this because He was not an illusion, He was not a phantom, He was not a ghost, He was not a figment of our imagination, He was real! He came in flesh and blood as a man. That one who came in flesh and blood was from the beginning', and as verse two says, 'He was with the Father'. Now the Greek phrase there is 'proston patera' (sp?), which means He was in closest face-to-face fellowship with the Father, that fellowship that existed in the eternal mystery of the Godhead. This is God the Son, and He became flesh! What John is telling us is that this is a central tenet of what Christianity is, and if you don't believe in it - either the deity of the Saviour or His humanity - you cannot call yourself a Christian. The life was encountered, it was revealed.

Then secondly, as we look into verse 2, we read: 'For the life was manifested', a favourite word of John's, 'and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us'. The life was manifested. The New Age movement, even the Baha'i Faith, and many of the cults follow the heretic of John's day, Cerinthus, in the view that the divine Christ is a sort of spiritual entity that just came upon the man Jesus at His baptism and left Him before the cross. What they do is, they take away this truth, they take away the truth that this life, this Son of God, this Word of God, this Christ was actually manifested in the flesh. The whole of Christianity stands or falls on that truth - it falls to pieces without it. Christ's teachings mean nothing, they fall to the ground and rot, if he was not the Son of God in human flesh. His miracles mean nothing, they are not signs, they do not point to anything. His death was not for sinners, it did not atone for your sins. His precious blood was worthless, because on the cross He was not the Son of God nor the Christ of God. His resurrection didn't happen, His promises to raise the dead are all empty and futile, and therefore we will not rise from the dead, we will rot too. Our sins cannot be forgiven, and He is not coming to judge the world and bring His own to glory. Everything in Christianity rests on the person of Christ, and who He claimed to be.

May I say, that's where it differentiates greatly and fundamentally with other religions in our world. What I mean by that is: it doesn't really matter who Buddha was, Buddhists follow his teaching. In a sense, it doesn't really matter who Mohammed was to the Moslems, other than the fact that he was a prophet, what matters is his teaching and what he revealed. We could go through all the religions of the world, but Christianity is different because it rests fundamentally on who Christ was, and who He said He was. It rests on the premise of Him being God. Confucius and Buddha and Mohammed never claimed to be God in the flesh, but He did! So Christianity as a faith is more than a conglomerate of ideas, it's more than a philosophy, the greatest miracle of Christianity is Christ, and if we don't have Him we don't have anything!

An anonymous writer put it like this: 'I am glad as a Christian that my knowledge of eternal life is not built on the speculations of philosophers or even theologians, but on the unimpeachable testimony of those who heard, saw, gazed at and handled Him in whom it was incarnate'. What John brings to us in verse 2 is not only was that life encountered, but he had a personal experience of it. This life was experienced, he saw it, he heard it, he handled it - it was manifested, it was revealed. In other words, what John is saying, if you look at this verse, he is saying: 'We are not deceived, we saw Him!'. The word for 'saw' there is literally 'We gazed intently upon Him'. You remember when Peter went in and examined the clothes of the Lord Jesus after He had risen again, the grave clothes? There's a word for 'look' there, and it means he 'examined it', he interrogated those pieces of cloth. This is the same word, he gazed intently upon Christ when He was on the earth. We know that of John, he was the beloved disciple, he was the one who was the last at the cross, he was the one whose head was on His bosom on the night in which He was betrayed, he was the one who intently studied the Lord Jesus Christ. He is saying: 'We know that He was a real man, and His vision, experientially, has filled our souls'. Do you know what he's saying? 'This is no second-hand religious experience that has been inherited from someone else. This is not something that we just read in a book and have adopted, we know that this is real! This Christ of God is not a phantom, He is not a ghost, He is real!'.

Now let me add to the fact that this life came in the flesh, the incarnation, He was the Son of God, it was encountered and experienced - this book intrinsically develops for us the doctrine of the Trinity. Because we see that it says in verse 2 that this life 'was with the Father' before the world began. You see, if you believe in the doctrine of the Son of God, you must believe in the doctrine of the Father and in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, in chapter 2 of this book, if you'll look at it for a moment, in verse 23 John categorically states: 'Whosoever denies the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that acknowledges the Son hath the Father also', and that is implied. So what we have here is the doctrine of the Trinity. No matter what somersaults exegetically and expositionally you try to do to say that there is no Triune Godhead, how can you explain these words? 'This life was with the Father' - with Him - 'before the world began'. You must, therefore, accept the Trinity to be considered as Christian. Indeed, one teacher of doctrine said this: 'Try to explain the Trinity and you may lose your mind, but try to explain it away and you will lose your soul'. That is what John is saying: the truth of the Father and of the Son are intrinsic to this Christian doctrine, and you must believe in both. No person of the Trinity is expendable in our faith.

This is serious stuff, because not only are there those like the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses who deny that the Lord Jesus was actually God the Son, there are others who believe that He was not God in human flesh like the Docetists and the Gnostics, like the Baha'i and the New Age Movement; but there are the Oneness teachers, and they teach that there is no Father and Spirit except Jesus who manifests Himself in three different ways at three different times. People have been astounded that I have pronounced that this is not a Christian doctrine, neither should churches like that be considered Christian - but this is what John says! I stand foursquare on the word of God.

Some will say: 'Well, are we not at a disadvantage? The apostles saw Him, they heard Him, they touched Him, they handled Him; but we have not'. Don't misunderstand what John is saying here. John is saying that the One that brought us this life, the Author of our faith, He was a physical reality, and the foundation of our faith is a historical fact - but that does not exonerate us from exercising personal faith in Him. Even the apostles who saw Him and heard Him and handled Him, they had to do that to be saved. Indeed, that is what he reveals in this book in chapter 5 and verse 1: 'Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God' - 'whosoever believeth', faith must be exercised. Whilst the apostles were greatly privileged, we do not contradict that fact, as in Matthew 13 the Lord Jesus reminded them, when He said to them: 'But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them'. They were awesomely privileged, and their witness gives the witness to the authenticity of Christian faith today in the 21st-century - but it doesn't at all diminish from our personal experience of faith and salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. As Peter said in chapter 1 of his first epistle and verse 8, 'Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory', because the reality of the physical historical fact of the coming in flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ is attested by the apostles, and is of such authenticity that when we put our faith and trust in it, it will save us effectually.

This life was encountered and it was experienced, and it still can be experienced by us in personal salvation. Can I ask you: have you experienced it? Oh, you might have the doctrines all right up here, that's good, but it's not good enough. Judas had the doctrines, but he never had an encounter with Christ in such a manner where he ventured his all upon Him, and trusted Him and repented of his sins. Have you? Authentic Christianity, you see, is not just an historical base, but it has to have an experiential personal identity with Christ.

Then thirdly, in verses 3 and 4 we have the life expressed. Not just encountered and experienced, but expressed. In verse 3 he says: 'That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ'. 'Declare we unto you' - that's a Christian responsibility! Do you do it? Do you declare your faith? Do you share it with others? But the question begs: what is it to share our faith with others? Well, it is to share, obviously, the truth of who Jesus Christ is - but it's also not just to share the historical, but to share the experiential, to express what He has done for us, the experience of personal salvation in our lives! That's terribly important, because although the apostles are the historical witnesses of the coming of our Lord Jesus in the flesh, we are also witnesses. Of course, to be an apostle you had to witness the resurrection, and all of them did - but we are witnesses. I think I've told you this before, perhaps around the Lord's Table, that Lloyd-Jones on one occasion in his book 'Preachers and Preaching' expressed how a preacher is not to be simply an advocate. An advocate is someone who stands and represents another, and looks for evidence and then presents it, historical evidence. But an advocate, or a lawyer, a barrister has not been there at the events, whereas a witness is the evidence - and that's what an evangelical preacher ought to be! That's what a Christian is: a witness! They're evidence in themselves, and there is a sense in which - though it is not physical - we ourselves have touched and seen and known this Word of life. That's what he means, I believe, in a sense, when he says: 'Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ'.

The Gnostics wanted to establish a fellowship of intellectually elite pilgrims, but the contrast is of the apostles: they wanted to declare, to proclaim to the world what they had received from God. They were not an elitist club and group, there was nothing hidden about this truth that God had revealed through Christ. This was not a secret knowledge to a select few, this was something that was declared to the world, that all men could believe if they would have faith in the Son of God who came into the world, the whole world! This must be believed, the message that is declared. It is an everyday experience.

So we have looked at the objective, the fact that historically Christ came, John saw Him, touched Him, handled Him, the life was manifest. But now we're coming to the subjective, and these are the evidences of authentic Christianity - both the historical base and the subjective experience. Everyday experience! One writer has said: 'This is a rebuke to much contemporary evangelicalism, which divorces a right theology from a Christ-like life'. The sad fact of the matter is, there are many churches that are Bible-believing today and fundamentalist, and they are evangelical, but they do not know what it is to be like Christ, to live like Christ, to talk like Christ, to love like Christ! Sadly, often they hold truth with great arrogance and pride.

Do you have an everyday experience that is authentic Christianity? A man who receives a letter from an absent friend is probably happy and chuffed to get it, but he will be far happier when he actually meets and enjoys the immediate company of his friend. You can know who He is, the Son of God, the Christ of God, in human flesh for us, and all the doctrines of the atonement and the resurrection and His second coming - but you may have an absence in your life of fellowship with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ; and that is what Christianity is all about.

Can I ask you when the last time was that you had fellowship with the Father and with the Son? This is the subjective experience that authenticates the Christian Gospel. Now he communicates it in two ways. This subjective experience is manifest through first of all fellowship, that's what he says at the end of verse 3: 'our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ'. This word in the Greek language for 'fellowship' is 'koinonia', 'koinonia', it literally means 'to have in common'. It was used in classical Greek language as a favourite expression for the marriage relationship, the most intimate bond between human beings - 'to have in common'. Yet it is used very appropriately here as a description of the fellowship that not only we have with the Father and with the Son, but ultimately the fellowship that will derive from divine fellowship towards others who are in Christ also. Isn't that remarkable? It's one of the deepest expressions of human fellowship that there can be.

Let me say this: here we're getting at the base, not only for what is Christian doctrine and what makes a person an authentic Christian, but we're now seeing the grounds for fellowship and unity within the Christian church - it can only be with those who are authentically Christian, those who hold to the Christian doctrine of who Christ is and what He has done. But what John is saying here is that fellowship with one another is only derived from fellowship with God and fellowship with His Son. In other words, tradition cannot provide a basis for church unity, even common experience cannot provide a basis if it is unrelated and divorced from the historical reality of who Christ was. Sadly today what is so notorious as the grounds for Christian fellowship, and even ecumenical fellowship across all religions, is subjective experience and standards. I'll give you one example: the Roman Catholic Church has its own brand of the charismatic movement that use the same language as evangelicals and have the same experiences. They speak in tongues, they baptise - so-called - in the Holy Spirit, they do all sorts of things - but they're not saved. One or two of them may be, I'm not limiting the grace of God, only God knows those that are His, but the fact of the matter is: when you probe into the meanings behind the evangelical garb that they use, we find that there is classical ancient Roman Catholic theology behind it all.

You see, Christian unity can only be upon the truth of the Scriptures. That can be the only authentic and adequate foundation for fellowship, and we must fellowship on those grounds alone - fellowshipping only with those whose fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, and that means as the Father is portrayed in the Scriptures and as the Son is also. But let me also add to that: that means that we ought not to add to those grounds of fellowship. A man who has fellowship with the Father and with the Son, I can have fellowship with. As the little chorus put it:

'I don't care what church you belong to,

Just so long as for Calvary you stand.

If your sins have been washed in the fountain,

You're my brother, so give me your hand'

That's the Christian fellowship we have here in John. But isn't it remarkable when we think for a moment that as sinners this word 'koinonia' is used toward us, we who have nothing in common with a holy God! We who are the exact antithesis morally and spiritually of all that He is in His divine being - sure we have hardly anything in common, some of us, with each other! But this salvation that we enjoy, this commonality has come because God in His grace has sent Christ into the world to have something in common with us - what was that? His flesh! Koinonia, fellowship can only be upon this fact: that Christ came in the flesh for us, and in that flesh He went to the cross and bore our sin in that body upon it. Because of that, when we trust in Him, what does Peter say in his epistle? 'We become partakers of the divine nature', the new birth, and we are given the very nature of God. Do you see that word 'partakers 'that Peter uses? It is from the same Greek root that is translated 'fellowship', 'koinonia'.

I hear some evangelicals, they say: 'I think the church lacks in fellowship, you know'. So they get a picnic together, or they go for a walk in a forest park, or they go bowling or something like that - not that there's anything wrong with those things, there's not, and it's good for Christians to do recreational things together - but that's not fellowship. Fellowship is something deep, something spiritual. Sure, doesn't God tell us to love our enemies? There's nothing in love or friendship that is spoken of here, this is a deep fellowship with each other and with God upon the knowledge of the Gospel of who the Father is and who the Son is, and what we have together.

Then the second subjective experience that authenticates Christianity is not just fellowship, but joy. In verse 4 we find it: 'And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full'. If fellowship is the answer to spiritual loneliness, joy is the answer to spiritual emptiness. Didn't the Psalmist say in Psalm 16: 'In thy presence is fullness of joy'. Sin has caused unhappiness right throughout all of mankind, indeed in Hebrews 11:25 regarding Moses we see that pleasures only last for a season when they are sinful ones, but God's pleasures are for evermore - at Thy right hand there are pleasures forever! A life that is real, listen to this, a life that is based on the authentic historical facts of Christianity - who Christ was as God's Son, coming in the flesh to us; authenticated by the fellowship among God's people, and daily experiential fellowship with the Father and with the Son - it'll be a life that is permeated by joy. Is that your experience? Maybe that joy is not there, even though you believe everything about Him - that's right, because you're not fellowshipping with Him.

The night before the crucifixion the Lord Jesus said in John 16: 'Your joy no man taketh from you'. Remember the wee chorus years ago: 'The world didn't give it to you, the world can't take it away'? I know that some of you are going through indescribable circumstances at this moment in time, but the fact of the matter is that if you can lay hold upon the Christ of God and have fellowship with Him and have fellowship with His Father, you will have a joy that transcends even the direst and darkest of life's circumstances - for this is a fellowship of life, the life that was eternal and is eternal, a life which is historical, a life which is personal! You can have it and you can enjoy it! Praise God that we stand on historical fact tonight of who Christ is, and we must never lose it; but equally so let's never lose the authenticity of the experiential nature of Christianity that is both fellowship with one another and all those in Christ, and joy shed abroad in our hearts.

It was old Karl Marx that wrote: 'The first requisite for the people's happiness is the abolition of religion'. The truth of God is: the first and only requisite for the happiness of people is that Word that was with the Father from the beginning, which they heard, which they saw, which they handled with their hands, and which they have declared unto us, and which we have embraced by faith. The fellowship that we enjoy with Him and each other is in that One, and what a joy it brings! Hallelujah! The truth is Christ, He is Christianity, He is our faith!

Our Father, we thank You that our fellowship is with You and with Jesus Christ Your Son, that One who came to this scene veiled in the likeness of our sinful flesh, apart from sin. As the children are partakers of flesh and blood, so He likewise partook of the same that He might die, and die for us. Thank You, Lord, that He rose again, and He could stand before doubting Thomas and say: 'Thrust your hand into my side, look upon me. Behold, a spirit has not flesh and bones as ye see me have'. He is the human Christ, but then we witness Thomas as he falls at His feet and declares: 'My Lord and my God!'. We know that the Son of God has come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal life, in whose name we pray, Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - October 2005

www.preachtheword.com

info@preachtheword.com

1 John - Chapter 3

"The Gospel According To Christ"

Copyright 2005

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

Well, let's turn together to John, the first epistle of John, and we're still in the first chapter of course - I think we'll be there for a week or two yet! Maybe this is your first week, I don't know. I'm glad that some of you have been here on previous weeks, it's good to have you back, we hope that you're going to continue coming. Perhaps this is your first week with us, and it would be a help to you I'm sure if you got some of the recordings either on CD or on audio cassette of previous studies, just to put everything into place. We spent some time in our first study looking at the context of this book, and we're not going to repeat and go over that ground again and again every week, so if you want to get the context of all that we're going to say in this book, why not get the first tape, and then it wouldn't do any harm getting the last study which comprised of verses 1 through to 4 of chapter 1, where we looked at the subject of 'Authentic Christianity'. This week we're looking specifically at verses 5 to 7 of chapter 1 under the title 'The Gospel According To Christ'.

We'll begin our reading at verse 1, just to get the flow of what John the apostle is saying to us: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin" - and we'll end our reading at verse 7.

Now in the day and age in which we live, you could ask a Protestant or a Roman Catholic clergyman the question: 'What is the Gospel?', and you may get a plethora of different and even contradicting answers. Often the answer that is given is a nebulous one, an unspecific one. Sometimes the answer is given that the Gospel is simply the body of the record concerning the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it doesn't go any further than that and specify what the Gospel is in exact terms. Often you don't get any more out of a specific answer than just: 'Well, it's to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself' - and I don't know how many sermons and funeral homilies I've heard broadcast over the radio and over the television where a priest or a Protestant clergyman is saying just that, that the Gospel is to love, to love God, to love your neighbour.

I would have to say, in this day and age in which we live, modern evangelicals aren't much different in their understanding of what the Gospel is. I dare you to take this experiment, and set someone down - and beware because they might do the same to you, be prepared for it! - and ask them: 'What is the Gospel?'. Recently I took a series of meetings in Portrush with the CPA on conversions in the Acts of the Apostles, and one of the reasons I said I was doing it was because I'm a bit perturbed at how little understanding there is, especially among young people today in Christian circles, regarding what true conversion is. Sometimes the answer that comes back, even from evangelical folk is: 'Well, it's to know God, it's to know Christ, it's to have a relationship with God'. But if you leave it there in that sort of airy-fairy mamby-pamby undefined language, we are in real trouble! Surely there's nothing more important than what the Gospel is? Therefore we must be certain what it is, because the Gospel is a life or death matter, in fact eternity - your eternal soul and its destiny - depends on the Gospel.

Indeed, that's what the apostle Paul said, wasn't it, to the Galatians in chapter 1 of his epistle, verse 8: 'But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed'. If you preach or believe a false gospel, the inevitable outcome is: you will be damned, you will be cursed! So it's important that the believers who John was writing to in the church at Ephesus, and in the other churches that were being affected by false teachers, would be certain about what the true Gospel was. They had become uncertain because a new Gospel had been introduced into these churches by these false teachers. We saw that they were called Docetists, they were forerunners to the early Gnostics, but basically they were teaching that God had come to them as the chosen few and revealed a new revelation to them that was different and had additions to the original Gospel that was given by Jesus to the apostles.

Now if ever you were looking for the certainty of what the true Gospel is, well 1 John is a good book to go to, because it's a book that is filled with certainties. What better could the apostle John do to stop all the debate of what the Gospel is, than by telling them the Gospel according to Christ. That's exactly what he does here in verses 5 to 7, what he's saying is: 'We', speaking of the apostles, 'We are only communicating to you what Christ told us from God. The message we declare to you, Christ gave to us, and we are only relaying what He told us'. In John chapter 8, of course, the Saviour said: 'I speak that which I have seen with my Father'. So there is this chain of communication: God the Father communicates to Christ what He wants men to know; Christ comes and instructs the twelve, and the twelve are instructed to go into all the world and preach this Gospel; and now John comes and refutes any false gospel claims by saying, 'All that we are giving to you is the Gospel according to Christ'.

Of course, John is not the only apostle that concurs with that view. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, if you care to turn to it with me, in the first four verses Paul the apostle says exactly the same thing. He's going to go into an exposition of the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ and our subsequent prospective resurrection - incidentally, the backdrop of heresy was quite similar to the Docetists and the Gnostics of 1 John. In 1 Corinthians 15, look at the first four verses: 'Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved' - this is the message which I preached first of all, it's the message that was effective to you and saved your soul, 'keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures'.

Paul put it another way in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, that he would have nothing known among them save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That was the Gospel they heard from His lips, they saw through His death, they witnessed in His resurrection, and they were instructed by Him to preach. You see, what he has been telling us in the first four verses of 1 John is that the authentic Christian message is that of the historical Christ, who came in the flesh, who they saw, who they touched, who they heard, and from whom they received this great Gospel message, passed to them as apostles, and now they have passed it on to us, the church, through the apostles' doctrine which is the holy Scriptures. You hear what John is saying, hear it loud and clear: the Gospel, the message that we declare unto you, is the Gospel according to Jesus Christ. What is that message? Well, we're going to see tonight: it's a simple message, how sinful men can have fellowship with God through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now let me ask you, just before we launch into an understanding of this Gospel according to Christ: why would you ever need an additional revelation, an apocryphal writing, a new prophet, when you have a Gospel like this one from the very lips of Christ? We don't need Joseph Smith, we don't need Mary Baker Eddy, we don't need Brigham Young, we don't need any of these new prophets, we don't need any of their holy - so-called - writings; for God hath, in these last days, spoken unto us by His Son. The reason why Christ is able to save to the uttermost all who believe in Him is because He ever lives to make intercession, He has an unchangeable priesthood, Hebrews 7 says. That word 'unchangeable' means literally 'a nontransferable priesthood' - there's no one qualified like Him! There's no one who has satisfied the justice and the righteousness, judicious wrath of a holy God for mankind like Christ. The message of His death, His burial, and His resurrection is, as Jude says in verse 3, 'the faith once and for all delivered to the saints' - full stop, no addition, no subtraction.

How, after such a declaration like that, could you possibly add extra-biblical accounts, or claim to have secret knowledge other than what has been revealed through the Lord Jesus? The whole of the New Testament declares that as an utter impossibility. Romans 1 and verse 1, if ever there was an understanding of the Gospel needed today it's in the exposition of the book of Romans, right there at the very beginning Paul declares that he's going to expound the Gospel of God. Of course, he tells us that it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. Indeed in Galatians 1, where we've read from already, Paul says: 'I neither received this message from man, neither was I taught it by a man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ' - God has revealed Himself in His Son, and you can't improve on that!

Christians, you need to beware, because through the 'God Channel' and through cheap Christian paperbacks today there is a false doctrine of revelation coming into the church that is deceiving many. It would almost need that we double up, or triple, or quadruple the pages of this book to have all the new revelations that men are having revealed to them today! A lot of it, all of it in fact, if it adds to and contradicts Scripture, is false! We have a perfect revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we can't improve on Him. That's what we have, can I ask you tonight: Do you have it? Maybe you're here and you belong to a cult, or you belong to a false religion, and maybe you think I'm being far-fetched saying that - but we have from time to time folk who do frequent the building who belong to Jehovah's Witnesses or to Mormons or to other sects. I'm asking you this evening: is this the message that you have had declared unto you? Christ and Christ alone! Christ who is the Son of God, Christ who is the substitute for sinners; and if you embrace Him by faith alone you shall be saved.

Well, to be certain whether or not you do have this message, and that the Ephesians had this message, John gives an outline of what this message was that was declared to the apostles by Christ. Like every good evangelical preacher he has three points! I don't always have three, but I'm not always good! So I'm going to share the three with you this evening, and the first - very simply divided out through this chapter - first of all he tells us: God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Now, as a Christian, you're going to learn this evening the nuggets, the tenets of fundamental truth in the Gospel. If you're a preacher this will be a good exercise for you, because right away what the apostle John is telling us is that the Gospel must always start with God. Genesis 1 verse 1 starts with God. John, in his gospel, starts with God. Now he's telling us: 'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life', the One who was with the Father before the world was - we are preaching the message of the Godhead in the Gospel. The Gospel starts with God.

But of course, the big question today in our world is: who is God? What is God? The fourth question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks the same question: What is God? I'm not going to test any of you good Presbyterians here tonight to see if you know the answer, but that is a question that our century and every century has been puzzled with. Men have stretched their intellect to know 'Who is God? What is He? What is He like?'. Today in our individualistic and relativistic age, people are saying: 'Well, God, for me, is this... and God, for you, can be that...' - and there's such a confusion over who and what God is. It's as if God is a chameleon character, who just morphs into a myriad of people's individual preferences. God can be what you like Him to be, and what I like Him to be at the same time - that is an utter reasonable and rational impossibility!

The Shorter Catechism does say, very prolifically and profoundly: 'God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth' - and we can say 'Amen' to that. But what John is talking about here is not knowing about God, he speaks to us about experience, and he's telling us that it's not all about knowing about Him, it's about knowing Him personally and intimately. This is what he experienced, the message that he had declared to him was experiential through an actual personal encounter with Jesus Christ. No other writer tells us as much about God as John does. He tells us 'God is spirit' in John 4:24, that is in his gospel. In chapter 1 verse 5 here we see 'God is light'; chapter 4 of this epistle and verse 8 'God is love'. But please beware, because John is not wanting to just give us knowledge concerning the Almighty, but he is wanting the goal of fellowship for all. Look at verse 3 of chapter 1: 'That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ'. It's an intimate, personal, experiential knowledge that John desires for us.

But let us not miss the point: how is it that God chooses to reveal Himself initially through the message that He has given to mankind, with the goal of fellowship in mind, but how does He come to men first and foremost? Please note: He does not come as a God of love. While He is a God of love, and that is one of His dearest attributes to all sinners who have been saved by grace, that is not how He reveals Himself to man initially. Rather, He shows Himself as light. You can go back to John's gospel in chapter 1, and the theme is the same there. In fact, even in the beginning in Genesis chapter 1, God speaks and there is light. Here in 1 John chapter 1 and verse 5 there is this declaration before love is mentioned: God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. That word 'darkness' is in the emphatic double negative, which means there is no darkness whatsoever in Him.

Now I am not going to even attempt to expound what it means for God to be light. One scholar has put it well in a one line definition that sums it all up for us. He says: 'Light physically represents glory. Intellectually it represents truth. Morally it represents holiness'. So physically, if we can talk about God even in those terms, for God to be light speaks of His glory, His blinding majesty. Then to speak of light intellectually speaks of His truth, His wisdom, His precepts, His counsel, His word. To speak of light morally speaks of His holiness, His purity. Job could say that even the heavens were unclean to the Lord. Even the lips of the prophet Isaiah were unclean to the Lord. Even His own people are unclean. Habakkuk 1 and verse 13 says that the Lord is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, He cannot look upon sin. Paul said to Timothy that God, who is the only one with immortality, dwells in light which no man can approach unto.

'In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes,

Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days'

So the first theme of Christ's message, the message that the apostles received from Christ, the message that they passed down to the early church, the message that we ought to receive today is first of all: the message of the holiness of God, and therefore man's separation from God because of his sinfulness. Now let me sum that all up in this statement: the first theme of his message is that man lacks fellowship with the holy God of heaven. Now, if we need anything in these days, we need a fresh vision of the holiness of God. F. W. Faber is a hymn writer and poet whom I love greatly, and one of his greatest hymns I believe is: 'My God How Wonderful Thou Art'. Listen to two of the verses:

'My God, how wonderful Thou art,

Thy majesty how bright,

How beautiful Thy mercy seat,

In depths of burning light!

How wonderful, how beautiful,

The sight of Thee must be,

Thine endless wisdom, boundless power,

And aweful purity!'

Oh, that we would get a vision of the Almighty like that, in all of His light, in His glory, in His moral perfections, in His holiness and purity! But of course, Genesis 3 tells us that man is out of fellowship with God, man has been cut off by original sin - our father and mother in the Garden of Eden - and even practically today, as Isaiah 59 tells us, it is our sins and our iniquities that separate between us and our God. Our sins have hid His face from us, like a cloud coming between earth and the sun, it's blocking the light - the light is not getting in!

So what we are seeing here is that John is telling us that an understanding of the separation that sin has caused between humanity and God is intrinsic to the preaching of the true gospel. 'Why?', you say, 'Why can't you just come in there right away and tell them that God loves them?'. Now you must do that, but if you don't talk to them of God's holiness, if you don't speak to them of sin and how men personally have broken God's law - do you know what you do? You cheapen the love of God! 'How is that so?', you say. Simply because you cannot understand the greatness of God's love until you understand both His holiness, His awesome holiness, and the magnitude of your personal iniquity. If you go to a jewellers and you look through the front window, and you see there beautiful diamond rings. But you know those diamond rings are being offset by a black backdrop of black velvet, black as the coal that the diamonds came from. It is that black backdrop that offsets the diamond, that causes the light to shine through it, to see its splendour, to see its glory - it's exactly the same with the love of God. You can never appreciate Calvary love until you appreciate the awesome holiness of God and your awful sinfulness!

Do you know what that means? A message that ignores the holiness of God, and a message that fails to preach against sin and declare God's judgemental wrath because of the broken law of His holiness, is not the message that Christ gave to the early disciples: God is light, in Him is no darkness at all. In some pulpits in our land you dare not even mention sin, judgment, or hell - it's unfashionable, it's not trendy! Well, it's not the message of Christ if you don't preach it!

Well, John's first point is: the message that we declare to you that we received of Him, is that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. Let's look at his second point, for his second point is found in verse 6: 'If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth'. John's second point is simply: fellowship with God cannot be known if we walk in darkness. Because God is light, we must walk in the light, but we cannot claim to walk with God and have fellowship with God if we walk in darkness. Now what you have here in this verse in the 'If we say...' is the first of three denials. The first is found, as we said, in verse 6; the second is found in verse 8: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us'. The third is found in verse 10: 'If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us'.

Now there are three more 'If we say's', but just concentrating on the three in chapter 1 - verse 6 is the suggestion that fellowship can be enjoyed while walking in darkness. There were those false teachers, and maybe some Christians who were starting to believe it in Ephesus, that you could walk in spiritual, moral darkness and still have fellowship with God. John answers this, and he says: 'If you say that and believe that, you're lying, and you're not doing the truth'. Now, it takes on another form a step further in verse 8, because in verse 8 there is the allegation that we have no sin in ourselves - it is the theological assertion that we have no sinful nature, that we are not fallen creatures, that we are essentially good as human beings. In verse 10 there is a further allegation, an assertion that not only are we not sinners by nature, but we have not sinned - we are not sinners by practice. There's a group of people actually claiming here that they never sinned against man or against God! John answers them: 'You're liars, you're not doing the truth, you're deceiving yourselves, the truth isn't in you. You're making God a liar! God's word does not dwell in your heart'.

Now we're only going to deal with the suggestion in verse 6, that fellowship can be enjoyed while walking in darkness. John concludes to them that they are lying, and they are committing untruth. Let me show you how this was witnessed in John's day and in ours in two practical ways. The first is theologically. Theologically what John was trying to bring to their attention was this: that if they walk in darkness, and claim to have light from God, they are potentially opening themselves up to fellowship with others outside the grounds of the Gospel. That's exactly what was happening here. They were following a false Christ, they were imbibing the Greek philosophy of the day that was fashionable intellectually and socially. What Paul said to the Corinthians could be said to some of these Ephesians: 'What fellowship hath light with darkness, and Belial with the Living God? What fellowship hath Christ with temple idols?'.

My friend, here is a lesson for us today theologically: the only grounds on which we can have fellowship with another man or woman in humanity, as brothers and sisters in Christ, is on the foundation of the Gospel. If they deny the fundamentals of the Gospel, they cannot be considered authentically Christian, and they're not proclaiming or declaring the Gospel according to Christ, and we cannot have fellowship with them. Theologically they had to learn that in Ephesus, we need to learn it today. The other side of the coin regarding that truth is that in the one regard we must always fellowship on the grounds of the Gospel, we must never add to it anything else other than the gospel. What was happening here in Ephesus was there was an elitism - it could have been charismatic in the sense that these false teachers were coming along and saying they had a personal privileged knowledge of God greater than the rest. They were making the other believers second-class citizens. They were believing themselves to be above those Christians, that those Christians were not worthy of their fellowship, so they split off in schism. We have exactly the same thing today: you have people who believe they have come into charismatic gifts, and they're leaving churches and forming other ones, and causing a split in the body of Christ. But equally so, there are those who are so tight that they squeak when they move, and they won't have fellowship with any other believer even though they name the name of Christ, and stand upon the fundamental tenets of the Gospel. We must never fall into either of those errors, because that is walking in darkness.

 

Secondly this has a practical implication, not just theologically but it was practically seen and evidenced in John's day and in ours. Here is the first way it was seen: people were living in sin and claiming that they had the life of God. Living practically in a lifestyle of habitual sin, yet claiming that they were in fellowship with God. This has been given a theological name: antinomianism. Now don't switch off when you hear these big names, you might learn a thing or two! Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law, 'nomy' means 'law' really. What you have in antinomianism is 'anti-lawism', Christians - so-called - who were saying, 'We can trust Christ and have the life of God, be in fellowship with the brethren and in fellowship with the Father through Christ, yet live a life that is against the law of God, and even in contradiction of it'. That's what was written of in Romans 6 when Paul asked the rhetorical question, hypothetically: 'Should we continue in sin that grace may abound?'. Of course he said: 'God forbid' - but what was coming into vogue here was this dualism of the Gnostics, the Docetists. Now don't get confused, remember they were saying that everything spiritual is pure, and everything physical is evil - so therefore they believed that the body would be burned up in the judgment, and it didn't matter what you did with the body as long as you had eternal life in your soul. So they were committing all sorts of sins through the body.

But John says: 'You cannot have fellowship with God and walk in darkness'. I shared this with you a number of Sunday nights ago, the story of J. P. Mehaffey who was a famous scholar and man of the world from Trinity College in Dublin. When he was asked if he was a Christian, he answered: 'Yes, but not offensively so'. What he meant by that statement was, he didn't let his Christianity interfere with his social life. That is exactly what John's preaching against: you cannot claim to have the life of God and walk in darkness, and live habitually in sin. Indeed, many cults fall into this trap because of their intrinsic fundamental error. In the 1960s, during the sexual revolution, there was a group called the 'Children of God' cult, and they actually taught that people could be won for Christ through sinful means. You may find that staggering, but that is exactly what happened in John the apostle's day - so much so that they declared that you could be a 'hooker' that was a Christian, a Christian hooker and win men for Jesus! That was almost 40-odd years ago, and there's a mentality about today that is quite similar. American gangster Mickey Cohen reputedly had converted to Christ, and then later declared that he wanted to be a 'Christian gangster' - if he had come to me, I could have introduced him to quite a few of them! He might have learned a thing or two! But nevertheless there was this idea that you could live the life of God, yet live a life of sin - and it is impossible. In fact, what John is saying is: if you claim that, the life of God is not in you!

You listen to that carefully tonight, my friend. I don't know where you're living, but what we're talking about here is not just falling into sin now and again - we all do that, and we all try with the Spirit's help not to - but what John's talking about is a lifestyle of habitual sin that marks you out as an habitual sinner, addicted to sin. If you live in sin, you cannot claim the life of God in your soul - that's the Gospel, and we need to herald it out today, because there's an easy-believism that says: 'Come as you are'. That's the Gospel alright, but it lacks repentance - to come as you are, but be willing to give up your sin, and Christ will enable you to give up your sin. In fact, people are coming to Christ with the one hand, and keeping their sin with the other - and that's not salvation! I hope you haven't believed that one.

Then practically this was manifest in those who were actually claiming perfection and living a lie. They were saying that they had not sinned, that they hadn't within them a sinful nature. John says 'Look, if you're claiming that, if you're actually denying that men are sinners, that they're born sinners, you do not have the truth. You're living a lie'. Now what relevance has this to us today? Well, this is a popular Western philosophy in contemporary thought, largely influenced by Freudian psychology which denies any objective basis for guilt. You shouldn't make people feel guilty from the pulpit, they just learn little things as children - they didn't have a rattle when they were in the pram, so they go out and they joy-ride, or they take drugs, or they rape people. You shouldn't make people guilty, and counsellors and psychologists are all trying to free people from guilt - but they don't realise that the source of guilt is sin! They're denying sin, and by denying sin they're deceiving themselves, and they're making liars of all of us.

So, what John is saying is: a message that preaches that you can be forgiven and live a godless life is not the Gospel of Christ, it's not the one that Christ preached to the apostles. 'Who preaches that today?', you might say. Nominal Christianity preaches it. You can go to mass, you can go to communion, you can think you're saved because you're baptised and you go through the sacraments, and that is the same thing. You live a life that is devoid of the power of God, and the transformation that the salvation of Christ brings in the new birth, and think that you're on your way to heaven - well you're not! You need to be converted! You need to have the life of God in your soul! I'll tell you, evangelicals often live like that. They think because of a profession at an early age, that they can ask Jesus into their heart: 'Come into my heart, come into my heart, come into my heart Lord Jesus, come in today, come in to stay' - do you think He's going to come in to stay, and you'll just say that prayer and live like a reprobate through your teenage years and the rest of your life, and think God's going to open the door of heaven for you? That is a lie! That is not the Gospel that Christ preached. Once you're saved, you're saved forever, but to be saved in the first place there must be that initial repentance.

Are you in darkness tonight, my friend? You cannot walk in darkness and claim to be in fellowship with God! Roy Hession speaks even to Christians in his little book 'The Calvary Road' on this verse, and he says: 'Sin always involves us in being unreal, pretending, duplicity, windowdressing, excusing ourselves and blaming others' - do you know what that means? Staying in the darkness! Trying to hide our sins from God! Could you ever think of anything more idiotic? But maybe it's not just hiding sins from God, maybe it's hiding sins from our brother. In Genesis 3 what you have is the relationship broken down with God and man, but then in Genesis 4 we have the relationship subsequently breaking down between man and his brother, Cain and Abel. It all comes together. Are you hiding something from your brother that you're doing? Something from your wife that you're doing? Something against your children that you're doing? No one knows about it - but God knows, my friend! You cannot claim to walk in the light if you're hiding in the darkness. You might as well, as one man has said, live in a coal pit and claim that you're developing a suntan. It's not possible. 'Be not deceived, the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God', and the gospel that preaches that men are not sinners is not a gospel!

'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all' is his first point. Secondly, fellowship with God cannot be known if we walk in darkness. Thirdly, in verse 7 we see that fellowship with God, and indeed each other as believers, can only be known if we walk in the light. 'But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin'. Now it follows, logically, that if God is light you cannot have fellowship and hide in sin. Spurgeon said: 'To walk in the light is the willingness to know and be known'. To know what you are as a sinner, to know how you are in the sight of God, and be willing to be known as such, and to humble yourself at the cross. To say, 'Lord', just as Amos 3:3 says, 'Can two walk together except they be agreed? So I agree that I am what I am, and You are what You are, and I confess my sins to You'. Walking in the light is just agreeing with what Jesus says about you, and walking with Him in it. I can't put it any simpler than that. He said in John chapter 8: 'I am the light of the world, he that walks after me, follows me, shall not walk in darkness shall have the light of life'. Do you know what He's saying? 'Follow me! Follow me! Come out of the darkness, come into the light - and when you come into the light, your sin will all be shown up, and I'll put my finger on them. When I pinpoint them, if you admit them and put them under the blood by faith, I'll deliver you from them' - bring it into the light!

Is that what Christ is saying to you tonight, believer? You're dabbling in something that is ungodly and is profane, and is an abomination in God's sight, and you know that's why the blessing of God is not upon you, nor your marriage, nor your church. It's time, Christ says, to bring it into the light. If you want to be delivered, if you want the light of God to flood your soul, bring it out of the darkness into the light! 'How can I do that?'. Practically, how do you do it? Psalm 119 says: 'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path'. If you take the torchlight of God's word and shine it on your soul, God will start showing you those things that are not right. As He shows you them, if you plead the blood of Jesus Christ and confess your sin before Him, He will cleanse you. You see, this is the whole point of what John is saying: God is light, and if you're going to have fellowship with God you've got to walk in the light and live in the light - but that's impossible for a sinner, and you're a liar if you say you're anything but a sinner, but - Hallelujah! - the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Now you listen to this carefully. Remember the context of 1 John, what he's saying is this - against the Docetists, against the Gnostics - Christ wasn't a ghost, Christ wasn't Jesus upon whom the Christ spirit came at His baptism, but Christ the Son of God came in flesh and blood, and died in flesh and blood, and was buried, and shed His blood for sinners and rose again victorious over the grave, over death and hell. Why? That you should live in the light. I'll tell you, if He didn't come in flesh and blood like they were claiming, you're damned and so am I - but He did! He partook of flesh, just as children do, so that He could die the death of every sinner and defeat him who has the power over death, even the devil.

As we walk in the light, here is the thought, if you seek God's light and seek the Lamb who is the light, the blood will constantly avail for you. It's not really thinking about trying to do a post-mortem of all your sins, because there are some sins that you're ignorant of just at the minute. There are sins that you're unconscious of, sins of omission - and I'm not suggesting you don't look out sins and confess them, but what this is actually saying is this: even the sins that we don't yet know about, if we seek to walk in the light, Christ will cleanse them in His precious blood. That word 'cleanse' is in the present tense, which means 'continuous' - if we seek to walk in the light, He will continuously cleanse us constantly from our sin, Hallelujah! It's not only the guilt of sin that is atoned for in the precious blood of the Saviour, but this is the thought - and I want you to grasp this tonight, you who are bound with some kind of habitual sin and not converted: in His blood the power of sin is broken! Maybe you haven't got that, but I'll tell you: that's what available in His precious shed blood. The sinner is not only justified, but the sinner potentially is sanctified also. The believer is given a new nature through Christ's blood, a new status, a new direction. Holiness is demanded by a holy God, He wants us to reciprocate what's in His nature. He made us in His image, He wants us to be like Him, but that's only possible through the blood - but, hallelujah, it is possible! Holiness is provided in Christ!

Do you see this? Oh, Thomas Binney put it well in his hymn summing up this whole first seven verses:

'The sons of ignorance and night,

May dwell in the eternal Light,

Through the eternal Love'

Is there someone here, and you've never availed of the blood of Calvary? Maybe you're a backslider, and there's sin between you and your God. Or maybe you feel you're walking in the light, but you're really walking in darkness - there's things you're hiding from God, things you're hiding from a brother or a sister. God calls you a liar if you don't feel, this evening, your need of the precious blood - because either you're denying a sin, or you're denying that there is efficacy in that blood! There's only one thing that can hinder your fellowship with God, my friend, and that is sin. You can't get it more simple than that. But there's only one thing that can restore your fellowship with God, and that is the precious blood. By the power of the blood peace has been made between God and men, by the power of the blood there is forgiveness of sins, there is the gift of eternal life, Satan is overcome by the power of the blood, says the book of the Revelation. There is continual cleansing from all sin - and the Greek word for 'all' there in verse 7 literally means 'every sin'. There's not a sin deep-dyed that the precious crimson blood cannot cleanse. You can be set free from the tyranny of an evil conscience. You can serve the living God, win freedom and peace of mind and heart. By the infinite power of the precious sinless blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, you can be brought into the immediate holy of holies presence of the living God to live there all the day long, every day of your life. Hallelujah!

'How can I experience the power of this precious blood?', you say. Look to the Lamb, 'Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world'. 'What do I need to do?' - what's the Lamb of God doing? He's bowing His head, isn't He? He's bowing His head for you, under the load of your sin. Do you know what you need to do, my friend? You need to bow your head. You need to bow that stiff-necked 'I', say 'Lord, help me to bow the head and die, beholding Him on Calvary who bowed His head for me'. Oh, you can pray all you like to be cleansed from some sin. You can pray for the peace of God to be restored to your heart. But you see, unless you're willing to be broken on the point in question, the very sin that you love more than Christ, it will never happen. Take it out of the darkness, bring it into the light, and Christ will plunge it under His blood!

Old Martin Luther on one occasion dreamt that his accuser, Satan, had set before him on a great scroll afresh all of his sins and manifold iniquities. Luther didn't argue with the devil, he just admitted them all without denying any of them. He didn't seek to justify himself before the wicked one, but do you know what he scrawled across that list? First John 1:7: 'The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin' - Hallelujah!

'I may my great accuser face

And tell him Thou hast died!

I hear my great accuser roar

Of ills that I have done.

I know them all and thousands more,

Jehovah findeth none!'

Are you still in your sin tonight? Backslider, are you like the pig that is wallowing in the mire, you've gone back like a dog to the vomit? Can I tell you tonight: the blood of Jesus, oh that precious flow, will make you white as snow. No other fount you can know, nothing but the blood of Jesus, that fountain that is open for sin and uncleanness, to cleanse you now and to cleanse you continually. Will you come tonight?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - October 2005

www.preachtheword.com

info@preachtheword.com

1 John - Chapter 4

"The Saint And Sin"

Copyright 2005

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

Well, do turn with me to 1 John again. God willing, we'll hopefully enter chapter 2 this evening, but we have the remaining three verses to deal with in chapter 1 and so we'll read the whole of chapter 1 in order to get the flow of John's thought. Our title this evening will be "The Saint And Sin", and we'll be looking specifically at verse 8 of chapter 1 through to the second verse of chapter 2.

Verse 1 of chapter 1, then: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for our's only, but also for the sins of the whole world". Amen.

When the word 'saint' is mentioned to most people today, even in the church, immediately there often conjures up an unbiblical idea of its definition. Maybe it's a picture of some ancient man with a long beard and a halo around his head; it could be a woman with angels singing praise unto her; maybe it's the picture of pilgrims venerating, almost to the point of worship, someone with 'St' before their name. In some circles you can adopt your own Saint, depending on perhaps your personal disposition, or your occupation and livelihood. In your difficulties and weaknesses in life you can pray to them, and the belief often is that they will intercede for you before the throne of God. Generally speaking the perception of a saint is someone who is transcendent above normal ordinary humanity. They're like super spiritual human beings, and though they are admittedly below God, or below the Lord Jesus Christ, or even in the Catholic Church below the Virgin Mary, there's something special about them, and it's very hard for us to conceive of a saint sinning.

Now, of course, that idea of a saint is something that has been invented by the Roman Catholic system and the Orthodox Church. Anyone who reads the word of God, particularly the New Testament, will know that true saints are down to earth people, they are people like you and me, they live in the real world with real temptations and a real struggle with sin. In fact, one text - we could look at many which prove this to us - is 1 Corinthians 1 verse 2, where Paul addresses that church there: "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints", and he expands on that word 'saints', "with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both their's and our's". If you know anything about the church at Corinth, you will know that they certainly were not squeaky clean as far as morality and spirituality was concerned. In fact, Paul calls them 'carnal' at one point.

So a saint is not the common perception that people have, and yet many people today - including evangelical Christians - have a dilemma of reconciling how saints, even in our New Testament evangelical understanding of that word, how saints relate to sin. You remember that we established last week in particular that this little epistle of 1 John has a theme running throughout of fellowship: our fellowship, as we see from verse 3, is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. We saw last week that you cannot claim to have fellowship with God if you walk in darkness, or you could put it 'if you walk in sin'. So we're coming to the question this week: what happens when a Christian sins? What happens if I sin as a believer? What is the relationship, after conversion, of the saint and sin?

Now this is an important subject, apart from the fact that it's outlined for us in the word of God tonight, because new converts, people who have come recently to faith in the Saviour, can often get confused about the old passions that they once knew in their pre-converted days raising their head again. They feel the struggle, maybe, that they had in their past, and they start to ask themselves: 'Have I had a real encounter and experience with God? Am I truly saved? Surely a person that's now been forgiven of sins, and experienced the new birth, and is a new creature in Christ shouldn't be feeling like this?'. Maybe that's the way you feel tonight? Then there are other zealous believers who have been on the road for a little bit longer than the new lambs in Christ, and in an attempt to trod a deeper walk and path of holiness with God they attempt to rid themselves of all sin, and to achieve some kind of sinless perfection. There are actually people running around in evangelicalism today who claim that they have this, that they have no longer any sin in their lives. Then there are others who believe in it, but they die of frustration and disappointment because they can never achieve the standard that they're seeking and searching after. Then others have developed a charismatic doctrine of some second experience from God that 'zaps' your sin nature and eradicates it. Even those who believe it is possible to be sinlessly perfect know all too well the reality of their own hearts. John Wesley is an example, and I would never criticise that man of God, that mighty giant of the faith publicly, but he did believe in sinless perfection - yet he denied personally that he possessed it. That in itself should tell us something - how could we ever achieve sinless perfection if the great John Wesley didn't?

So John answers a number of these practical questions asked in his day, and hence he gives us some answers to some questions that are asked in the church today. So we're going to learn these answers under four headings which will take the form of questions. Here's the first question that we have implied within this chapter, I believe. It's found in verse 8 and verse 10: do Christians sin? Do Christians sin? I didn't hear any answer there! The fact of the matter is that the Docetists, who later became in a certain form the Gnostics who we've been looking at over these weeks, they believed that the spirit, that part of the human being that was given by God to relate to Him, is pure; and the flesh, the physical, material realm, is that which is evil. Therefore, because they believed the spirit was pure, and that was all that really mattered to God, they believed that's all that should matter to them - but they claimed to be perfect in that particular realm of their being. So you can understand how this doctrine started to influence the church. These Docetists were teaching that the spirit, that part that had been quickened by God in salvation, was perfect.

Now John comes along and points out two facts for us to dispel any such notion from our mind. The first is found in verse 8, he says: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us'. So he's pointing out first of all here: we are sinners by nature. It would be good to note these things down with a pen and paper. We are sinners by nature, and what John is speaking of there is the root of sin, that fallen Adamic nature that we have inherited from our parents in the Garden of Eden. So right away, John is saying: 'Yes, Christians do sin, because they are sinners by nature'. This is his answer to this second denial, these Docetists were encouraging others to say: 'We have no sin'. John is saying: 'If you say that you have no sin, you're deceiving yourself and the truth is not in you'. Now please notice the difference between verse 8 and verse 9: the word 'sin' is used in verse 8, and yet the word 'sins' is used in verse 9 - 'If we confess our sins'. That is an important distinction that is not irrelevant, because 'sin' speaks of our nature, 'sin' is what we are and have in our fallen nature. Whereas 'sins' is what we do, practically speaking, the sinful acts wherein we transgress the law of God.

Now taking this first type, 'sin' that we find in verse 8, John is saying you're deceiving yourself if you say that you don't have a fallen sinful nature - you certainly don't deceive anyone else, that's for sure! I don't know whether there's anybody here tonight that's claiming sinless perfection, but I'd love to talk to your next-door neighbours - especially if you're in a semidetached - or maybe even your husband or your wife, or your wider family circle. As Robbie Burns said 'Oh, for the gift to see ourselves as others see us'. But you see, what John is pointing out here is that we are not seeing ourselves as we really are if we actually think that we can get rid of our sinful nature. Now the converse of that for us tonight, hopefully I'm preaching to the converted who believe that we all have a sinful nature, even those of us who are converted, is: do we really believe it to any significant extent? Do we believe - and this is the bottom line - that we are much worse in our sinful nature than anything that we could do as a sinful act? Do you believe that? Conjure up in your mind the most awful sin that you can imagine, and what the doctrine of the sinful nature teaches is: what we are is far worse than anything we could ever do.

The whole of Scripture bears this out, I don't have time tonight to expound it all for you, but in Psalm 51 and verse 5 David could say: 'Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me'. Romans 5 verse 12: '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'. John says: 'If you really believe that you don't have a sinful nature, that you have no sin, you deceive yourself and the truth is not in you'. Not only does that mean that you're not agreeing with the truth of Scripture that I just read, but he's actually inferring that the divine reality of true eternal life is not in you, the truth is not in you.

So we establish right away from John that conversion is not the eradication of the sinful nature. This so often discourages young converts, and I make a point during my young converts classes and discipleship course to point out to those who have come newly to faith in Christ that they still have a fallen sinful nature. Now do you know that? Maybe you're a long time on the road, and often after conversion, because you're given new eyes to see yourself and your sinfulness before God, you can see your sin more than you have ever done, and you can become even more discouraged than before you were saved. Praise God, the new birth gives an implantation of a new nature, and with it gives us the power to live victoriously over indwelling sin - that's the wonder of the Gospel message, but don't believe the lie that in some way your old sinful nature disappears. You can reckon it dead through the cross, the power of it has been extracted through the blood of Jesus, but it's still there and if you feel it you'll know all about it. We are sinners by nature, John says, don't deceive yourselves.

Then secondly, he says in verse 10: we are sinners by practice. If the nature is the root of sin that's in all of us, the practice is the fruit of sin. 'If we say', verse 10, 'that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us'. This is the third denial that these Docetists were implying within this church by their false doctrine. They're not saying now that we have no sin, but that we have not sinned. What they are saying is, practically speaking, we do not do things that are wrong. Now John says: 'If you say that, you're making God a liar', because God clearly teaches through His word that you do do things that are wrong. Psalm 14, for instance: 'The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one'. Romans 3:23: 'For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God'. God's word says that we have all sinned - and not only that, but the Bible and the Gospel teaches that it's because we have all sinned that Jesus had to go to the cross and die for sin. So if we deny our fruit of sinfulness in our lives, we're actually denying the reason why Christ had to go to Calvary. His word is not in us, John says - how could it be, if His word teaches the opposite that we claim if we say that we don't practice sin?

In 1775 Augustus Toplady, who was the author of the hymn 'Rock of Ages' and many other great Gospel hymns, published an article in which he attempted to assess England's guilt as a nation in terms of the national debt. His conclusion was that England would never be able to pay its moral debt to God. Then he calculated that if, as individuals, we sinned every second of our lives, we would each run up 2,522,880,000 sins if we lived to the ripe old age of 80. How could anyone claim that they do not practice sin, or have a sinful nature? Do Christians sin? Yes, they do! To say anything else or claim anything else, God's word categorically states, is to deceive yourself, not to practise truth, to call God a liar, and God's word does not nor cannot dwell in you.

Here's the second question that must be an offshoot of this one: should Christians sin? Because right away someone will say: 'Well, if you're saying Christians do sin, are you not encouraging us?'. It's the implication of Romans 6:1: 'Should we continue in sin that grace may abound?'. These Docetists were guilty of what we called last week 'antinomianism'. Now don't be confused with all these words, because they're very simply explained. 'Antinomianism' means 'anti-law' - these Docetists, because they believed that the spirit was the only pure thing, and the flesh didn't matter because it would be burned up by God in the judgment day, they thought: 'Well, just use the flesh in whatever way you want! You don't need to obey the law in the physical sense'. So they were committing all sorts of sin, that's what this 'dualism' lead to - the spirit was holy, but the flesh was weak, and so they were sinning. John says categorically: 'This is the reason for my writing', if you look at verse 1 of chapter 2: 'My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not'. It doesn't say 'that you sin just a little bit', but 'that you sin not'.

Now here we need to get the balance: whilst we do not in any way claim that we can be sinlessly perfect, whilst the Bible teaches that our old sinful nature still resides in us, the fact of the matter is that we ought not to encourage sin or condone sin in any shape or form. Now there may seem to be a contradiction there, and we'll iron that one out in a few moments, but let us make clear: God is a holy God, and God says 'Be ye perfect, for I, the Lord your God, am perfect'.

Calvin Coolidge was the president of the United States in the 1920s, and he was renowned for never using an unnecessary word - he obviously wasn't a preacher! But one Sunday morning he went to church and, on returning home, he was asked what the subject the preacher spoke about was, and he replied one word: 'Sin'. The frustrated questioner said: 'Well, what did he say about sin?'. Characteristically Coolidge said: 'He's agin'it' - he's against it! That, put very simply, is the way God is, and the way we should be regarding sin. We ought to abhor it with a holy hate, for this is why John wrote. He's not saying: 'I'm writing in some way to excuse your misdemeanours', but 'The reason for my writing is that ye sin not'. Don't take any consolation out of your sinning tonight from the message.

Secondly, he also says that sin should be the exception rather than the rule. So, answering the question: 'Should Christians sin?'. 'No, that's the reason I'm writing this letter', but he says, 'If any man sin' - sin should be an exception in the life of the believer, certainly not the rule or the lifestyle. As we go through this book we'll find out that if your lifestyle is a lifestyle of habitual sin, you're not a believer. We will not be completely free from sin until we are free from these bodies of death, Paul teaches that. We will not be free from the sinful nature until we are redeemed body, soul and spirit in the presence of the Lord Jesus, but the implication of Scripture to all of us is that our responsibility is to seek after holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

Do Christians sin? Yes. Should Christians sin? No. Here's the third question: what happens when a Christian sins? The answer is found in the second half of chapter 2 verse 1, and also chapter 2 verse 2. Here's the dilemma, and this is where I've brought you to now: we have a sinful nature. He has established that - do Christians sin? Yes, they have a sinful nature, therefore they practice sin. They show the fruit of sin in their daily life, that we have established from John. 'But yet you're saying that John says Christians should not sin - now that just doesn't seem to make sense. What's the answer to this contradictory equation?'. We have a sinful nature, we practice sin, yet we're told not to sin. Here are some of the answers that people give to this, and this is where some of the heretics come in here in John's day. They deny the sinful nature - in order to make the equation balance, deny one half of it, say we don't have a sinful nature. That's what the Gnostics were doing: 'The spirit is pure' - it led to antinomianism. Then a second answer was: if you don't deny the nature, deny the practice, say that you have overcome it completely. That led to an asceticism, monks going away from the world, cutting themselves off from anything like the flesh - whether it was food, whether it was sex, whether it was clothing to warm themselves or even a roof over their heads, deny the practice of sin by harming the flesh rather than giving in to it. Then thirdly the implication for some was: threaten the loss of salvation, and then people will stop sinning. Tell them that if you sin, you'll lose your eternal life and you'll be damned in hell. Often those that believe in sinless perfection also believe that you can lose your salvation through sin. Now if you're one of those people here tonight, I want to ask you a very very simple but elementary question: how big does your sin need to be to damn you? Because once you get into that realm, you're into Catholicism, mortal sins and venial sins, sins that will damn you and you'll have to burn in Purgatory to burn it off, or sins that you can get forgiven through confession and penance and so on.

That reflects the problem with all these answers that the Docetists, and indeed any heretics, give to the problem of sin - because their answer characteristically is: 'To stay saved, to stay sanctified, the emphasis is on you', but the gospel of Jesus Christ, the message that John declared unto this church, that Christ declared unto him, was 'The emphasis is not on you, it is on Christ!'. That is not a simple and meaningless detail, that is the fundamental truth on which all error is derived: emphasising self rather than Christ. Now it's not to say, and do not misunderstand that this is what I say, that we are not responsible for our own holiness or our own practical sanctification - you could never use 1 John to prove that! But what John is saying is: the source of any holiness that we may have and our sanctification is not found within us; just as we agree, hopefully, that our salvation does not rest on our own virtue, neither does our fellowship.

The real answer to how the saint relates to sin is found in verses 1 and 2 of chapter 2. Here's the first answer: how can we solve this dilemma? The Christian has a sinful nature, he practices sin, yet he is told by a holy God not to sin: how can you explain it? Verse 1, the second half: 'We have an advocate' - if any man sin, we have an advocate. Now, relating to eternal security, let me just point this out in the second half of verse 1, it says: 'We have an advocate with the Father'. Do mark the designation for God there, it doesn't say we have an advocate with God, but we have an advocate with the Father - meaning that if a man sin, God is still your Father. A son may disgrace his father, but if he is his son it's a fact of birth, not a fact of behaviour. What John's talking about here is not judicial forgiveness, this is where people often get confused with 1 John 1 and 2, they think that we need to continually get saved, almost, and have our sins atoned for as we come and confess them to God, and if we don't do it and die after committing a sin, we'll go to hell. That's not what John is saying, this is parental forgiveness, fellowship is what is in view in 1 John. If we want to continue in fellowship, we need to avail ourselves of our Advocate with the Father.

Now look very carefully at this word 'advocate' in verse 1, because you'll be interested - or maybe not so interested! - to know that in the Greek language it is the word 'paracletos'. 'Paracletos' is the word that is used for 'the Comforter', that is the Holy Spirit spoken of in John 14 and John 16, who the Father and the Son would send after the Lord Jesus left this scene of time. It's often translated 'the Counsellor', it is sometimes translated 'the Advocate', and the Holy Spirit for the believer is the Comforter and the Advocate of the child of God before a hostile world. The Lord, before He left the world, said: 'I will send to you another Advocate who will defend you, who will comfort you in all your persecution. Let not your heart be troubled'. But here we have this word used of the Lord Jesus, speaking of Him after He was crucified, the third day rising from the grave, ascending in glory at the right hand of God, He represents us as an Advocate, a Paracletos with the Father.

It's spoken of in Romans chapter 8 and verse 34 if you turn with me to it for a moment, Romans chapter 8 and verse 34: 'Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us'. I haven't time to launch into an exposition of the epistle to the Ephesians, but a great deal of the material there is all about how it is Christ, as our Advocate, as our Counsellor that brings us before God - and because of His cross work, and His precious blood, He is able to represent us and bring us into the very holiest place of all because of His righteousness and His merits through His work. So this word 'Paracletos', 'Counsellor', 'Advocate' means literally 'one who pleads for another in a court of justice'. It literally speaks of the counsel for the defence, it is a friend in the court. You've heard the quip: 'It's not what you know, but who you know' - that's often said in a negative sense, but here it is in a positive sense. We cannot know enough to save ourselves, we cannot achieve enough to save ourselves, we certainly cannot present any evidence - credible, that is - to save ourselves before God, but if we know the Advocate...! If any man sin, what happens is this 'Paracletos' - this is the sense of the Greek - comes alongside us in our sin.

Can I ask you a question here, as we pause for a moment: how do you think of the Saviour when you fall into sin? Do you think of Him with a big stick ready to hammer the daylights out of you? Do you know what this is teaching us? That when a believer sins and falls, Christ, as a Paraclete, as a Counselor, as a Comforter, as an Advocate comes alongside at the very moment of our falling - He does not leave us, He does not condemn us, but He comes to help us in our time of need. Christ never condemns us - hallelujah! If you look at Romans chapter 8 for a moment: 'Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?' - that means in a court of law, if you have Christ at your defence, He is also the only one who is righteous enough to judge you, and He brings no charge to you! Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? He's not bringing a charge if you're in Him by faith. Who is he that condemns? There is no judge, because Christ is the only one worthy, but He's not judging you for there's no condemnation - as verse 1 of chapter 8 says - to those who are in Christ Jesus. In verse 35: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?', there's no jailer, there's no one who is going to take you away and lock you up for your sins, because Christ has you - hallelujah!

Who condemns the believer then? Are you in Christ tonight, and you're sitting here and there's sins that are coming before your conscience just now - one, after one, after one - and you're feeling condemned, you're feeling filthy? Maybe every time you come into a place like this and sing the hymns, hear the preaching, you feel: 'Oh, I know I'm saved, but I feel so unworthy' - who is condemning you? It's not Christ if you're truly born-again! The accuser of the brethren is by definition Satan, that's what 'Satan' means: 'one who throws at'. He is the accuser of the brethren, throwing mud at the child of God hoping that it will stick to them. We read in the book of Job that he came before God, and he accused Job before the Divine of being a hypocrite: 'If You touch his flesh, skin for skin, he's only serving You because You're giving him produce and wealth'. Then he came to Joshua, the High Priest in the book of Zechariah. Joshua stood before the Lord, we read, and Satan stood at his right hand to resist him. We read that he accused Joshua, but the Lord, it says, rebuked the accuser, the Lord pleaded Joshua's cause and told those who stood by to take away his filthy garments and give him pure clean white robes.

But Satan still condemns and accuses the brethren - Revelation 10:12 says he accuses them before God day and night. I'm speaking to someone here this evening, and you have experienced his accusations to the point of almost torture. Maybe it's not him at all, maybe it's your conscience, your conscience can condemn you - we'll find that out in this book - but God is greater than our conscience! The law can condemn you, it condemns us all for none of us reach the standard of it, and the world can even accuse us as Christians and point the finger - whether legitimately or illegitimately - but do you know what the word of God is saying here? What does a Christian do when they sin or when they are accused of sin? What do you do? Do you stand in the dock? Do you try and contradict the devil, the law, your conscience, the world? Do you try and satisfy your intellect, your reasoning and rationale? Do you know what God's word is saying? Don't argue! Don't make any excuses! Throw yourself on Christ! He is the Advocate, He is the one who maketh intercession for the transgressors. Him the Father heareth always - don't you try and argue your case! Lift up your heads:

'Your Advocate appears

For your defense on high;

His plea the Father hears

And lays His thunder by.

Not all that hell or sin can say

Shall turn His heart, His love, away'.

Our Advocate - listen to it now, child of God, wherever you are tonight - He has never lost a case yet, and He never will! What happens when a Christian sins? 'If any man sin', oh, let it heal your heart, let it soothe your soul, 'We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous'. But we have more than an Advocate, for verse 2 of chapter 2 says: 'He is the propitiation for our sins'. Indeed, He's not only our propitiation, but He's the propitiation for the whole world. Now let me point out here that most modern translations, including the NIV and the RSV, obscure the meaning of 'propitiation', which is the Greek word 'hilasmos'. They choose obscure terms that refer to removal of guilt or removal of punishment, whereas the Greek word literally means - as the Authorised and the Revised version translates it - 'the removal of wrath'. Propitiation doesn't just mean expiation, it doesn't just mean 'an atoning sacrifice' - though those things are incorporated in it - but what it specifically speaks of is the fact, as Romans 1 verse 18 teaches, that the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of ungodly sinners. God is an angry God against sin, He is angry with the wicked every day.

Now in our politically correct society people, even theologians, are wanting to extract this attribute from God, that God is angry - we don't like an angry God. But there is, we have to see it in scripture, a divine wrath in the heart of God toward sin, and grace and forgiveness is far from sweeping God's anger under the carpet and ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist - but you want to see the damage that that does to the Gospel message! What am I talking about? Well, at the very centre of the Gospel is the cross, and at the centre of the cross is propitiation. What am I talking about? Well, we get a clue to it in Hebrews 9, because the word 'propitiation' is translated there as 'the mercy seat'. It was the place where the cherubim met at the top of the Ark of the Covenant in the Holiest of Holies in the Tabernacle. That was the place where God ordained that He should meet with man, the High Priest once every year, but in order that that should happen the blood had to be sprinkled on the mercy seat - that was the only grounds upon which man could come to God. It is a type, a representation of our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Ark of God, who is the Lamb slain, whose blood was shed to reconcile us to God. The message of the cross is that His blood has been shed, He has gone into the heavenlies with His own blood as a propitiation, sprinkled it on the holiest place of all that God should be satisfied and we should enter to have fellowship.

Now if you take that away, you take away the Gospel. I labour this point because there are many seeking to do just that in these days. I don't know whether you've ever heard of Steve Chalke, but he is a popular Christian TV personality, he used to come on breakfast television - I think it was the ITV version of it. He used to speak, I remember when I was at school, at 'MannaFest' and 'Youth For Christ' meetings and so on - he was flown over and he would speak to them, and he's written books. He has written a book recently, in 2003, entitled 'The Lost Message of Jesus', published by Grand Rapids and Zondervan, and this book has caused outrage in the evangelical world. He actually asks how we as believers, particularly as evangelicals, can - and I quote: 'Come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent His anger and wrath on His own Son'. How can we believe that? He believes that God should only be displayed as a God of love, not a God of anger, and he considers it to be mockery to say that Jesus taught that God could punish Him. It is a contradiction of the statement, he says, that 'God is love'. He says that 'Such a view of the cross would make the atonement', and I quote him again, 'a form of cosmic child abuse, a vengeful father punishing his son for an offence he has not even committed'. Because of that, Steve Chalke has stopped preaching penal substitution - that is, that Christ was punished as our substitute on the cross. He believes that the cross is simply Christ's identification with all who feel suffering and anxiety, who feel godforsaken and suffer in this world. That is heresy, and it is blasphemy of the deepest, darkest and damnable kind - and not only is it that, it is pure ignorance and a failure to see that God at the cross is not just venting His righteous wrath on His Son, but He is venting His righteous wrath on Himself! Jesus said: 'I and my Father are one', that means in purpose and in will, and Jesus Christ did not have to have His arm put up His back to go to Calvary, He set His face as a flint to go to Jerusalem. He was determined to go, even through the agony of Gethsemane, it could not turn Him back. The Father and the Son and the Spirit were all in agreement and counsel together at Calvary. It was the only way, and - hallelujah - it is the finished way! Steve Chalke, or whoever else, can deny it, but they deny salvation for themselves and for the whole world - because not only is He the propitiation for our sins, but for the whole world.

Now, you'd love me to skip over that one, wouldn't you? Huh! Well, what it doesn't teach is 'universalism', that means that everybody will be saved - that is not what John is saying here. Our salvation is by grace through faith, and if faith is not exercised it matters not how many men Christ died for, you cannot be saved - so be assured that universalism is not taught here. Some believe that it generally teaches that all races and all creeds and cultures can be saved, and of course that is what it teaches in a general sense as well, and it's interesting to note that the superscription at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ above His head was in Hebrew, the language of the Jews, Greek and Latin, the language of the known world at that time. But I don't believe that the meaning here can be limited just to those two definitions, what it is not and what it is in a racial sense. Let me say categorically that the atonement of Christ can only be effective, and only works for those who have believed and embraced it by faith - but the thought, I believe, that John is communicating to us here is that the cross work of Christ is sufficient in its nature to save the whole world!

Now you remember that these Docetists were probably denying this in the fact that they believed that they were the select few. But let me say - and I know I'm touching sore points here, but sure why change the habit of a lifetime? - there are those who call themselves 'Calvinists'...bear with me...and these Calvinists censure those who offer an open invitation in the Gospel. Now listen carefully to what I'm saying: I preach an open invitation to all men when I preach Christ and Him crucified. I have been criticised, not in this church but particularly over the Internet, for preaching an open invitation in the gospel - these people call themselves 'Calvinists', and they're not Calvinists! They're Hyper-Calvinists. I'm not standing here in defence of Calvinism, but I'm telling you this: Hyper-Calvinism has been a curse, like a cancer, on Gospel preaching in our land, in our pulpits, and in our churches. I believe in election, very strongly, I believe in the sovereignty of God, I believe there's a special sense in which Christ died for His sheep and for the church, but there is a respect in which the death of Christ was for the world, because His sacrifice was infinite! Sometimes I think that people are doing sums with a calculator of all the sins that Christ bore, making sure that they were in it all - that's not the way you think of Calvary! Let me illustrate it like this: if only one man was to be saved, Christ would not have needed to suffer any less. What He suffered on the cross would have to have been, if only one man was to be saved. But equally, if all were to be saved, Christ would need not have suffered any more - the work was done so that the offer can be given to all men!

Now, poor old Calvin, he never gets a chance to defend himself! One day he'll fill us in, hopefully - if he was one of the elect, that is! Then in John 3:16, listen to His commentary, listen to it: 'God has employed the universal term 'whosoever', both to invite all indiscriminately to partake of life, and to cut off every excuse from unbelievers. Such is also the import of the word 'world', which he formerly used; for though nothing will be found in the world that is worthy of the favour of God, yet he shows himself to be reconciled to the whole world, when he invites all men without exception to the faith of Christ, which is nothing else than an entrance into life'. He is the propitiation for our sins, and for the sins of the whole world, so that I can say to you tonight, person who is without Christ: if you embrace Him this evening, you can be sure that everyone who comes unto Him, He will never cast out. But you can only be sure that He died and bore your sin if you come to Him. There are two sides to this doctrine. There are a lot of people running around and they deny election, they deny God's sovereignty in salvation, and that is equally as wrong - but the Bible has the balance of the two, and the balance isn't to be found in the middle denying both, but like a seesaw you get balance when you go to either end. Don't be off balance.

What happens when a Christian sins? Well, if any man sin, we have an Advocate; He is our propitiation; He has satisfied the wrath and anger of a just God - and thirdly and finally, He is faithful and just to forgive sin and to cleanse, chapter 1 verse 9. That word 'faithful' is wonderful, isn't it? Timothy says: 'If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself'. What John is saying is because God, in Christ, has established a righteous and just basis upon which sins can be forgiven, He promises every man, if they confess sin upon that foundation, He will forgive - He is faithful! Why would you ever doubt His promise? Child of God, don't doubt your salvation! If you're believing in Christ, embrace Him with all your heart, and know that He is yours and you are His. He is faithful, and He is righteous.

Now, you might think that's a strange word - why didn't he say 'He is merciful to forgive us of our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness'? Because that's not the point he's trying to get across, he's wanting to show us that God is just and the justifier of them who believe in Jesus. What do I mean? Christ is righteous, Christ isn't sweeping the sin under the carpet, He's not diluting the righteous wrath of God to get us through the door of heaven some way, but He is remaining absolutely righteous, even as His Father. But this is the point, if I could illustrate it from John chapter 8, a young woman caught in the act of adultery, she is dragged by the religious Pharisees, the legalists, brought to the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ - 'Stone her, according to the law of Moses!'. Jesus says: 'Let him that is among you without sin cast the first stone'. Never leave out those words 'among you', 'Let him among you' - because Christ was righteous enough to be able to stone that girl, none of the rest of them were! He was the only one who could condemn - who is it that condemneth and is right to? It is Christ! But what did He say to the girl? He, being the only righteous judge, yet He says to her as they leave - the oldest to the youngest, condemned by their own sin - 'Where are thine accusers?'. Do you remember what He said to her? What was it? 'Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more'.

I told you that was the final one, but I've proved myself a sinner - that was the third! The fourth point is: what should a Christian do when they sin? It is found in verse 9 as well: confess. The Greek word literally means 'to say the same thing', say the same thing as God says about your sin: sins of omission, things you don't do; sins of commission, things you do do; thoughtful sins; volitional sins; your acts, your motives of the heart; secret sins that no one knows about only God; public sins - drag them into the light, as John has already said in this chapter. Bring them before God! Say the same thing, call them what God calls them, give them the names He has given to them, take sides with God, agree with God - the implication is repentance and forsaking. 'He that covereth', Proverbs says, 'his sins shall not prosper, but whosoever confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy'.

Let me say this: Jesus' blood will never cover a sin that you will not uncover. Is that plain enough? I know you can't remember them all, but admit that: confess, and then secondly believe. Believe that He is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse. You've got to grasp it! A lot of people confess their sins and ask the Lord to save them, but they don't take it away with them in their heart, they take their sins away again - they don't leave them with Christ. They start to worry: 'Am I really saved?' - maybe this old nature causes them. Believe! Christ has said it, I believe it, and that should settle it! Confess, believe, and then thirdly be clean. Be cleansed:

'Though the restless foe accuses,

Sins recounting like a flood,

Every charge our God refuses –

Christ has answered with His blood'.

The girl that came to Christ last evening was a bit afraid to come and talk to me - I don't know why that should be! Do you? Her aunt told me, after she came to Christ, she thought she would have to tell me all her sins. Isn't it wonderful not to need any priest, but the Great High Priest who is touched with the feelings of our infirmities, and who has already made a propitiation for our sins. Now here's the punchline: why should there ever be sin in the life of a believer that should rob them from such a fellowship as this? Bring it into the light! Put it under the blood and get rid of it!

I read today a story of Spurgeon, and he was crossing the street one day and he suddenly stopped in the middle of the road - it looked as if he was praying, and he was. One of his deacons - they always have an answer for everything! - they waited on the other side of the street, and said to him 'You could have been run down by a carriage there. What were you doing? You looked as if you were praying'. He said: 'I was praying'. The deacon said: 'Well, could it not have waited? Was it that important?'. This was his reply: 'Indeed it was important, a cloud came between me and my Saviour, and I wanted to remove it even before I got across the street'. Is that the way you cherish our fellowship with the Father and with the Son. Oh, listen to this tonight, don't miss it: if any man sin, if any woman sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. If you confess that sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us, for the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from every sin.

Oh our Father, we thank You that we can say 'Abba', oh the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are the sons of God. The presence of His Son, the Spirit answering to the blood, tells me I am born of God. Lord, this is wonderful, oh let us never lose the sight of the freshly slain Lamb in the midst of heaven for us, His wounds pleading on our behalf. If we could hear the Son of God mention our names in the room next to us, it would give us courage to fight any enemy, and yet He still pleads for me. Oh Lord, bless us tonight, if there's a backslider may this restore them to Your grace; unsaved souls, let them see the blood that can liberate them and change them. Glorify Your Son tonight in all our lives, we pray, Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - November 2005

www.preachtheword.com

info@preachtheword.com

1 John - Chapter 5

"Practical Christianity"

Copyright 2005

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

We're turning to 1 John again and chapter 2, and our title this evening - as we will be studying, in the will of the Lord, if we get through it, verses 3 to 11 - the title being 'Practical Christianity'. We begin our reading at verse 3:

"And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes".

A book that I have recommended to you on several occasions is Roy Hession's classic 'The Calvary Road', and I again commend it to you - buy it and be encouraged and instructed from it. In chapter 3 of his book under the title 'The Way of Fellowship', he makes some comments which are very helpful regarding the understanding of the truths that we're looking at this evening. He says this: 'When man first fell in the Garden of Eden, and chose to make himself rather than God the centre of his life, the effect was not only man out of fellowship with God, but also out of fellowship with his fellow man. The story of man's first quarrel with God in Genesis chapter 3 is closely followed in the fourth chapter by the story of man's first quarrel with his fellow man - Cain's murder of Abel. We live in a world where man does not just want his own way against God's way, but his own way against his fellow man's way - hence the tensions, barriers, suspicions, misunderstandings, clashes and conflicts that we experience as human beings'.

Now 1 John teaches us that when, as we have learned in chapter 1, our quarrel with God - sin - is put right, and through the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and through the confession of our sins, He is faithful and just because of the atonement made at Calvary to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness - when that happens, and when we intend to obey God's commands, we then as a result will have fellowship with one another as human beings. First John teaches us, and we'll see tonight, that the depth and reality of man's fellowship with God can be tested on two counts. One: his obedience to God's command; and two: his fellowship with his fellow man. The depth of your real spiritual experience can be tested on those two grounds: whether you're obeying God's word, and whether you're living in peace and harmony and love with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Now we know already, and we've learnt in past weeks, that this little epistle of 1 John is an epistle about assurance. Now please don't misunderstand what I'm saying tonight, I will not be expounding the word of God to say that you have to obey God's commands to be saved, or you have to love your brethren to be saved - that is not what this book is teaching. It's not teaching how you can be saved, but it's rather teaching how you can know that you're saved, what the signs of assurance are. You cannot get saved by obeying God's command or loving your brethren, but obeying God's commands and loving the brethren are signs that we are saved, and can be used as tests to see whether or not we are converted.

Now I wonder am I speaking to someone here tonight? You have had the age-old problem of many a child of God, you have a lack of assurance, you're troubled about your salvation. Maybe at one time you were certain that you were saved, and right at the beginning of your pilgrimage you had a real joy, satisfaction, and an assurance that you were one of God's children - but now things are different, for whatever reason. You're wondering tonight: 'How can I know if I'm truly saved?'. That's exactly the question that John is answering in this particular first epistle: how do we know that we know God? How do we know that we are in fellowship with Him?

We have learned already in chapter 1 verse 5 through to chapter 2 verse 2 that the means of maintaining this fellowship with God is through the precious blood of Christ, through confession and repentance from our sins, and trusting in what Christ has done and that alone. But now we're looking at verses 3 to 11 of chapter 2, which outlines for us the signs of true fellowship with God. How do we know that we have taken this step effectually? What are the tests to really know that we are in touch with God, that we are having fellowship with God?

If you lack assurance this evening, here are the two tests that we'll be looking at this evening. Now in chapter 1, in the first four verses or so, we've already looked at the doctrinal test of whether we are true Christians. That was the doctrine of what authentic Christianity really was, and we looked at it under that title on that particular week - we have to believe what is right concerning the Son of God, we have to believe in the historical and the biblical Christ. But here we will find this week that we're looking at the moral test and the social test of practical Christianity. Our Christianity is only authentic Christianity when it is practical Christianity in both a moral and a social sense.

So we'll look first of all at the moral test, what is that? It's found in verses 3 to 6, it is obedience to the Word. Now the statement is found in verse 4, verse 6 and verse 9: 'He that saith' - it's a bit like the three statements that we found in chapter 1, 'If we say', 'If we say', 'If we say'. Now he uses another three in chapter 2: 'He that saith', 'He that saith', 'He that saith'. Now, before I tell you what they're saying, it is interesting to note that it is the easiest thing in the world to make a profession. It's the easiest thing to utter words out of your mouth, and say something, and even think that you mean it. Incidentally, as we look at verse 4, what they are saying, those who John is quoting, is: 'I know Him', 'We know Him'. Then in verse 6 what they're saying is: 'I abide in Him'. Then in verse 9 they say that they are 'in the light'. The frightening thing for us should be tonight that we can say those three things, and of course we do, all of us who take the name of Christ would say 'I know Him. I abide in Him. I'm walking in the light with Him' - but, almost reminiscent of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 7:22 in the Sermon on the Mount, John is saying that it doesn't matter how vehemently we cry 'Lord, Lord', it doesn't even matter what we do in the name of Christ or say, what matters is whether we keep His commandments.

So in verse 3 of chapter 2 he says: 'Hereby we do know that we know him', and this is the basis for all he will say up to verse 11, 'if we keep his commandments'. Now he deals with the first 'He that saith' in verse 4: 'He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him'. To say that we have fellowship with God, we know the Lord Jesus Christ, and not to keep His commands, is to be a liar - and John says the truth is not in you. He doesn't miss and hit the wall, this Son of Thunder, even with grace and conversion!

We have to remember the context of what John was writing to, you remember these Docetists that I talked to you about in recent weeks. They were the forerunners of the later Gnostics, and although they hadn't been formed into a religious group as such, their teachings were in embryo even in the early church, and contaminating it. They claimed that they were special elect beings who had a superior knowledge of God - and this word 'knowledge' was very intrinsic to their vocabulary. They knew God in a way that the ordinary run-of-the-mill Christian didn't. For that reason, John uses the word 'gnosko', from which we get 'Gnostic', which is the Greek word for 'knowledge', 25 times in the first epistle of John. He uses another similar word, 'hoida', 15 times. What he's wanting to bring to the Christian's attention in Ephesus is that this is the true knowledge of God. The interesting thing is that these Gnostics and Docetists, they had a great intrigue with this special, superior, charismatic knowledge of God - but they had no interest in keeping God's commandments. They were living the lives of reprobates.

So John comes in and he says: 'No, this is how you know Him. Those who know Him', verse 5, 'keep His word'. In spite of what they claim, they keep His word - verse 5: 'But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him'. Now this is not sinless perfection, and a lot of charismatics often latch on to this verse to claim that, and blatantly ignore what we've already learned in chapter 1 verse 8 and verse 10, that if we say that we have no sin or have not sinned, we make God a liar, we deceive ourselves, and the truth and His word is not in us. What John's talking about here is that there should be in the Christian a habitual desire to please the Lord. It doesn't mean you please Him all of the time, it doesn't mean you're perfect, it doesn't mean that you never sin - in fact, chapter 1 teaches us that at times we will sin, but even though we fail our Lord on occasions there is a deep desire which is wrought by the Spirit in our heart to please the Lord.

Do you have that this evening? Do you keep His word? This is one of the ways we can know that we are a child of God. So John's teaching us that knowing God doesn't come through some kind of mystical experience while we fast and pray and flagellate ourselves, or lock ourselves up in a monastery somewhere. It doesn't come through superior intellectual knowledge, or a charismatic revelation, but it comes by bare, naked, raw obedience. Here's how we know Him and have fellowship with Him: if we keep His commandments, if we keep His word. If it wasn't found in the Scriptures, it would be a new revelation to many in Christianity in the age in which we live! We're all looking for quick fixes, we're all looking for new fads and new ways of knowing a little bit more of God - but John says that the way we can know God, the way that the love of God is perfected in us, is through obedience. Would you love, tonight, for God's love to be perfected in you?

Now it's not referring, I don't believe, to the love that we have for God, I believe it's referring to His 'agape' is the word, 'love' in us, for us, but which is displayed outwardly. It comes down from heaven and it channels in us and through us to those around, and that word 'agape' is used 18 times in this particular epistle, more than in any other book in the whole of the New Testament. The whole import of what John is saying here is that the whole goal and aim of God's love, sending Christ to the cross to die, to be buried, to rise again, is with one sole goal: that you would be an obedient child of God, that you would do His will, that you would obey His commandment, that His word would be in your heart. Now this phrase 'His word', 'keep His word', is not just keeping His commandments, because His commandments are scattered right throughout Scripture in intermittent places. But 'His word' has a deeper sense of actually 'God's will'. If you are an authentic Christian, and you want to test the authenticity of your Christianity, it will be tested through this moral test: that you keep His word. In other words, you walk in His will. You fail from time to time, I know, but generally speaking you have a great desire in your heart to please the Lord.

Is that not what Romans 8 verse 28 teaches us? We quote it in a different context, but listen to how it is found in the context of Romans 8 as Paul teaches it: 'We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose' - what is His purpose? - 'For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren'. God desires that we should do His will, and the reason why He has lavished His love upon us away in eternity past when He chose us in Christ, the moment and hour that He saved us, and then as He sanctified us, and as He's progressively bringing us closer to Himself, is that we should manifest the very life of Christ in our lives! 'I am crucified with Christ', Paul says in Galatians, 'It is not I that live any more, but Christ that lives through me. The life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me'. Keep His word, that's how you'll know that you know Him, keep His will.

Then secondly, we find in verse 6, not only have you to keep His word but you have to walk His walk. The second 'He that saith': 'He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also' - what sobering words - 'to walk, even as he walked'. Now, although the Saviour is first and foremost our Saviour, He is also our example. In John 13 verse 15 He said it Himself: 'For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you'. We often don't think of the Lord Jesus in this light, that His life as set forth in the Gospels - Matthew to John - is to be our life's pattern, it is to be our guide as to how we ought to live. Now don't misunderstand me: it's not that we can do what Christ did, there is an extent to which that is true, and we shall do greater things than He, but that does not mean that we'll be able to perform the mighty miracles at times that He displayed - not do what He did, but rather walk as He walked, and that is a more profound thing. Because even those who say 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Thy name, did we not cast out demons in Thy name, did we not do many mighty miracles in Thy name' - they have displayed charismatic powers, but they do not walk as He walked. Indeed, Martin Luther said: 'It is not Christ walking on the sea, but His ordinary walk that we are called on here to imitate'.

Now I know that there's a great debate going on, and there always has been in Christianity, about whether we are a people who live by rules or by principles, or whether it's just grace, it's a bit of a free for all. Each generation debates about what the rules of Christianity. Well, I'm going to give you the one sole rule by which all other rules can be measured. It's simply this, verse 6: we are to walk as He walked. Does that not settle a whole lot of disputes? Of course, we can only walk as He walked if we are walking, living through His Spirit, because the only life that pleases God is the life of Christ, and we are to die to ourselves - for Christ has put us to death on Calvary, and we are to lie low and allow Christ to live through us. It's only then, when we walk as He walked, John says in 1 John and chapter 2 verse 6, that we will abide in Him.

Is that not what he taught in that famous passage of Scripture - I believe Eddie Ray was preaching on it in my absence two weeks ago - chapter 15 and verse 10, Jesus said: 'If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love'. You only abide when you keep His word, and when you walk as He walked. That is the moral test: it is obedience to His word, it is walking as He walked in a moral sense - are you there, my friend? There's so much nonsense taught in contemporary Christianity today about what is legitimate. Some are saying: 'I don't need to live like this, as long as I love the Saviour, that's all that matters'. Many evangelicals are coming to the conclusion that doctrine is not important, all that matters is that your life and your teaching and conduct is ruled by love - but we see here that that is not the case. Yes, love is so important, and if we don't have love we have nothing - but we have to keep His word, and we have to walk as He walked. If we don't, we ought to doubt the authenticity of our Christian experience, whatever it may be. Now that's serious stuff - you apply that to your heart tonight.

Then secondly there is the social test. The moral test was obedience to the word, but the social test is love to your brother and sister in Christ. We find that in verses 7 to 11, and here we have the specific commands that we are to obey. There's a great debate: do we obey the ten commandments? Do we obey the Pentateuch, Genesis to Deuteronomy? Do we obey the Levitical laws, and the rituals and ceremonies of the Old Testament? What do we obey? Is it just Christ's law we obey? Or is it just the epistles, does the Sermon on the Mount not apply today? All this is discussed. But the Lord is saying through John, as He said Himself, that there is one commandment that we ought to obey: Love. He even addresses them in chapter 2 and verse 7, the Authorised says 'brethren', the word is really 'beloved', 'agapetoi' (sp?) - and it's used six times within this book. John is reinforcing again that what is necessary is that we love one another. John says: 'This is not a new commandment, but it's an old commandment which you've had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning'.

Now what is 'the beginning'? Well, of course, in his gospel chapter 1 and verse 1 it was creation. The Word was there in the beginning. In this epistle in chapter 1 and verse 1, we find that 'the beginning' speaks of when Christ was incarnated in the flesh, and lived among men, and they heard what He said, and they delivered it to the church. But of course this command to love one another is not a new command, Jesus was not the first to speak these words, it is given in the Old Testament law in the book of Leviticus 19:18 that we are to love our neighbour. But John, I believe, when he talks about 'the beginning', is speaking in the context of where he spoke in chapter 1 and verse 1 of our Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew comments on it and gives us an understanding when he tells us that Christ actually claimed, Matthew chapter 22, that the law, the prophets, and all of the Old Testament was summed up in Himself and in the command to love your neighbour and to love your God. Indeed, he bears this out if you look at chapter 4 and verse 21: 'And this commandment have we from him', from Christ. This is this commandment at the beginning, when Christ came into the world and taught that he who loveth God, loves his brother also. Indeed, in John 15:21, the Lord Jesus said: 'A new commandment I give unto you: this is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you'.

Now why is John labouring this point? Well, simply because these Docetists, these false teachers were parading their new knowledge as a new revelation. John is coming along, and he's saying: 'What I've to teach, it isn't new. What I've to teach is the authentic teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, when He summed up everything that the law and the prophets taught, and He said 'Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbour as yourself'' - as Jude put it, it was the faith once delivered unto the saints. I'm telling you today, in this neo-evangelical, charismatic age: you need to be careful of anyone who comes along and says, 'I've something new to tell you that is not found in the scripture'. We don't need anything new in that sense, because we have the old commandment from the beginning. But what John goes on to say in verse 8 is that this old commandment is ever new, and it is a new commandment, and it is true in Christ and in you, and it is that same commandment to love one another.

Now how is it new? Is this a contradiction? Well, he said, of course, himself in John's gospel that it was a new commandment. I believe what he's talking about is that this is a commandment in the Old Testament to love your neighbour, but the Lord Jesus Christ, as He comes upon the scene, He brings a new characteristic to this love and to this command: for in Christ it is the first time that that agape love of God has been perfectly and completely exemplified. That's why he says in verse 8: 'that thing is true in him' - this love is perfected in the personification of Christ as the divine Son. Then he goes on to say that this is a new commandment, never been seen before as it has now in Christ, but in the very present tense John says that this love is a new commandment seen in you, verse 8. In other words, this love that was in Christ is meant to be true in believers in John's day and in our day. This is the miracle of conversion, these Ephesians, other Christians in the early church, who in heathendom were ruled by passion and hatred and pride, by the grace of God have now been transformed and are displaying in their lives a new commandment that has never been seen in this light before - they're loving one another, when once they were hating each other.

That's what he means when he says at the end of verse 8, that in this the darkness, literally the tense is 'is passing away'. Through these conversions of pagans the darkness, the natural darkness that we've all been born into, enmity with God and our fellow men, is passing away. Now it isn't completely passed yet, but when people are converted and show love toward one another, that's what he says in verse 8: 'the true light shineth' - or the tense is, 'is already shining'. Do you have that love? Is there something that marks you out as a Christian, and it is your love for brethren and sisters in Christ and other people in this world? That is the test - it's not just all about obeying God's commands very coldly and in a matter of fact way, but it's about having a love that is like the love of Jesus, never to fail or fade.

Maybe you're saying tonight: 'David, what is that true love?'. Well, John gives us its definition in verses 9 to 11, and he contrasts between two loves: the true love and the false. In verse 9, the third 'He that saith', he says: 'He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now'. In other words, it doesn't matter, talk is cheap: if you profess with your mouth to know Christ and walk in the light, yet you hate your brother, that is a sure sign that you are in darkness until now. Please don't miss the import of such a statement. That expression 'in darkness until now', it's not talking about just that sin has come like a cloud between you and God, and your fellowship has been interrupted for a moment or two. It doesn't even mean that you've backslidden to some extent. Literally that statement 'in darkness until now' means that the man continues to be what he has always been - unregenerate! Unconverted! Without the life of God in his being, cut off from God! That's what it means. Hatred is a sign and characteristic of our natural darkness.

Then, to show us what this true love is in contrast to the false, in verse 10 he tells us: 'He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him'. The one who truly loves his brother with authentic love, the true Christian, abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. Now that could mean two things, 'no cause for stumbling in him'. It could mean that he doesn't stumble himself, and I believe that that is the true sense of the verse. In other words, listen to me: if you believe the doctrinal truth about who Christ is, and you've passed the test and you've believed the true gospel, and you have trusted Christ's blood, confessed your sins, He has cleansed you; and you have passed the moral test, you're being obedient to God's word and, though you fail Him from time to time, there is within your heart an habitual desire to please the Lord; and you've passed the social test, you're loving your brother even though he offends you from time to time - I'm telling you, someone like that, there's less chance of them stumbling into sin and backsliding than another brother who fails all those tests.

The second meaning of 'there is no cause of stumbling in him' could be that he will not be the cause of stumbling to others. In other words, if you're teaching the right truths about Christ you're not going to lead somebody astray. If you're living by God's commandments yourself, you're not going to be a bad example to another. If you're loving your brethren in all circumstances, no matter who they are and how unlikeable they may be at times, you're going to win people for Christ, you're not going to be a stumbling block to others. This has weighed heavy on my heart today as I've been studying God's word - do you know why? Because I believe, from my own personal experience mingling among people and talking to unconverted folk, that one of the greatest hindrances to people coming to Christ in this day and in every day is those who claim to be Christians yet don't live up to the name. Am I talking to you tonight? Now be warned this evening: if you take the name of Christ and hate your brother, you're in darkness! You're not saved! Indeed, verse 11 says this: 'You know not whither you go or come', as it were, 'because darkness has blinded your eyes'. Hating another, what it leads to is more and more darkness. Whilst there are signs given in this book of how we can be assured that we are authentic Christians, this is a categorical statement that if we hate our brother we can know that we are not a child of God.

So we have looked at these two tests of our authentic Christianity, and they are the practical ones of Christianity. The moral test: obedience to the word, both keeping His word and walking His walk. Secondly the social test: loving your brother. Now can I sum all this up by saying this, very simply, that these two tests can be concluded in one word: it is simply the word 'Christlikeness'. The Lord Jesus Christ claimed that that the law and the prophets were summed up in Him. We see in His life love like we've never seen in any character in all of history and even in the Bible. We see in the Lord Jesus God's law and God's agape love in perfect harmony together, unlike the claims of evangelicals today who say that to have law is legalism, and legalists often say that to have love is licence - whereas in Christ we see these two gelled together in perfect harmony. But here is the challenge to us tonight: how ought we to live as practical Christians? We ought to walk as He walked! What is it? It is Christlikeness! Now, I know you can only live it by the Spirit, you can only live it when you lie low, you die to yourself and reckon yourself dead with Christ on the cross, and alive unto God through the new nature. I know all that, but my question is: are you living it? Christlikeness: how Christlike are you? Or are you, God forbid, and I'm sure there's one or more in the meeting tonight, a stumbling block to others coming to Christ, or to your brother or sister advancing and growing in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ?

How did the Saviour walk, and how ought we to walk? He walked in faith. The Bible says the Son can do nothing of Himself. Now we're entering into a very mysterious and holy piece of Scriptural ground, where in the humanity of Christ, the Lord Jesus did not lose any of His divine attributes, but voluntarily He chose not to use them. He chose to live as a man among men, He chose to depend as a man completely on His Heavenly Father and not what He could do. Here we see Him walking in faith, He submitted Himself to His Father's will, even to the extent of being obedient unto death - Philippians 2 says 'even the death of the cross', and you know what that meant! Do you walk by faith? Do you walk in total dependence upon your Heavenly Father? He walked in the word, He never doubted for one moment its authority, and He never accepted the authority of another over it. Even when the devil himself in Matthew 4 came and tempted Him, doubting God's word, He said three times 'It is written, it is written, it is written'. His answer to every challenge was: 'I do always the things that please Him'. He said to His disciples, and He says to us tonight: 'Walk as I walk. If you love me, keep my commandments'.

He walked in faith, He walked in the word, He walked in prayer. Can you see Him getting up in the dead of night and walking through the household and out into the street, and up the mountain into a solitary place and praying all night long before His Father? Can you see Him getting up a great while before day, and going into the wilderness and praying to God? Do you see Him withdrawing Himself from the crowd? There were people to heal, disciples to teach, but He needed to draw strength from His Heavenly Father. Do you walk in prayer?

These are the signs of a Christian. He walked in good works. Oh, you'll not get saved by good works - but a sure sign that you are saved is that, like Him, you will go about doing good, you will please not yourself, and you will lay down your life for the brethren and for those around you in the world who are dying without hope. Do you know what this epistle teaches us? That the purpose of the church in John's day and in ours, and the purpose of the individual Christian is to exhibit the real presence of Christ in this world. That is done by obedience and by love.

Now I hate these wee bangles with 'WWJD' on them, but I like the message: 'What would Jesus do?'. That is a profound message. You can dispensationalise it all you like, but it doesn't avoid the fact that in John's dispensation, which is ours, he teaches that we ought to walk even as He walked. The message of God's salvation is not just about chapter 1, it's not just about the blood that was shed and the cleansing that's available through confession, but it's about this fact: that God is so pleased with His own Son that He wants a whole company of people walking about heaven like Him one day.

How like Him are you now? A sculptor once fashioned a lion out of a block of granite, and he was asked how he accomplished such a wonderful masterpiece. He replied: 'Oh, it was easy, all I did was to chip away everything that didn't look like a lion'. Are you chipping away the things in your life that are not Christlike? Are you being conformed more and more, by the Spirit's help I agree, but are you getting there, progressing to be more like Christ? If that's the reason you've been saved, that's the reason the church exists, what kind of picture of Christ do you give to other people?

'If of Jesus Christ their only view,

May be what they see of Him in you,

My soul, what do they see?'

Someone put it this way: 'God has a surname. He is called the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob'. Hebrews 11, incidentally, and verse 16 says: 'He is not ashamed to be called their God' - but I wonder how God would feel having your surname this evening? 'The God of David' - put your name in there! My friends, I ask you: our sole duty on the earth is to exhibit Christ to our brethren and sisters and to a world that is dying, and is this not the very thing that we're failing in? I know we couldn't help but do anything else, for we all fall short of the glory of God - but I'm asking: is anything of Christ seen in my life and yours? James Spink said: 'More evil is done to the cause of Christianity by its adherents than its opponents'. Oh, we're touching sore spots tonight, but this is really where the rubber meets the road. Even in Hudson Taylor's days in the 1800s, he said: 'The inconsistencies of Christian people who, while professing to believe their Bibles, were yet content', in his day, 'to live just as if there was no such book'. He says: 'That was one of the strongest arguments of my sceptical companions' - nothing has changed! You witness to someone and they just point to a Christian, or to a church, and they say: 'Look at them! If that's what Christianity is, I don't want anything to do with it!'. I know we piously say: 'Och, but don't look at Christians, look at Christ' - my friend, they're meant to be looking at Christ in us!

George Duncan tells a story of a businessman - now not all businessmen are like this! - who was involved in a Christian broadcast on a previous evening. A girl that was employed by him heard it. Of course, the next morning he was in a very bad mood, and things were not going well for him or the girl. For some reason the girl seemed to get the brunt of it all and the benefit of his temper, and as she went out of the office she said to another girl coming in: 'That's right, come to Jesus on Sunday night, and go to hell on Monday morning'. Now listen: that's the way many unbelievers see Christians today. Can I ask you: are you a bitter, prickly, so-called Christian? Do you take offence at the smallest things? Do you maintain religiously a long memory of wrongs against you? Do you have an unforgiving spirit? Are you paralysed with spite and resentment? John says you need to look into your heart and question whether you're really a child of God, because that is a sign of characteristic natural darkness of a man or woman who has never been saved.

Isn't it ironic that today it's those who claim at times, just like the Docetists, to have a superior knowledge of God, they're the 'holier than thou' crowd, who are constantly in conflict with other believers and other people in our world - isn't that often the way? It's very hard to get a person that has, like the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, both grace and truth. It was Robert Candlish who said over a century ago: 'A selfish religionist is sure to become either morbid or stupid. It is by sympathy and brotherhood that the fire of personal Christianity is fanned'. One other man has said: 'The light in a man is darkness until it is warmed by love'. I don't care how much of the Bible you know, I really don't care - it's important to have a knowledge, but if it's without love, it's nothing! I don't believe in a 'second blessing', but there's some Christians could do with a baptism of fire and love!

Words are cheap, anyone can say anything. Maybe you're here tonight, and you haven't experienced much love in the Christian church to which you belong. How many walls of church buildings have heard the accusation: 'There's no fellowship in this place anyway, there's no love here'? But do you know what we all need to do? If we keep doing that and looking to other people, we'll get nowhere: we need to look at ourselves. We need to look at the lack of love that may be in my heart, the lack of forgiveness that may be in my breast. One very profound proverb in Proverbs 18:24 is this: 'A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly'. As one put it in verse:

'I went out to find a friend,

And found none there.

I went out to be a friend,

And found them everywhere'.

Look at your own heart tonight, don't look to the pew in front of you, to the front of the church, the other side, don't think of your own home church and the people that have offended you there - don't think of it, look in your own heart, my friend! Remember that the love of God was an unconditional love. God never waited until you were up to speed, and then He says: 'OK, I'll forgive you, don't do anything more again'. Oh, it was a gracious love. Now don't misunderstand what I'm saying tonight: does this mean that Christians can't disagree? Of course they can, they do, and they should. Does it mean that Christians can't be angry? Of course it doesn't, we are to be angry and sin not. It doesn't even mean that emotions of dissent among believers must be repressed, they must be expressed at times. What it does mean is that there should be no disagreement that should take a leap to the point of hate or a schism between the fellowship of two believers, because, my friend, there's more at stake than human pride! It is the very name of Christ and His image in the world today!

You have heard the quip: 'Actions speak louder than words', and that's exactly what John is saying. Robert Chapman was one of the early Brethren, and he set before himself this great aim, and I quote his words, he said: 'Seeing so many preach Christ, and so few live Christ, I will aim to live Christ'. Christ was preached from many pulpits in our land yesterday, and many adorned a suit, had a Bible under their arm, called themselves Christ's ones, even sat at His table, and many of them were evangelical - but who, today, is living Christ? John Nelson Darby said of R.C. Chapman: 'He lives what I teach'. Are you living Christ, my friend? Speaking of William Arnott, a friend of his said: 'His preaching was good, his writing was better, but his life was best of all'. One who only spent a night in the presence of Murray M'Cheyne said: 'Oh, that is the most Jesus-like man I ever saw!'.

What will they say of you when you're dead and gone? What will they say of me? 'He was principled', 'He was dogmatic', or 'He was Christlike'? We've only got one shot at it, only one life, only one chance - and remember that sin caused our first parents in the Garden that broken fellowship to run away and hide from God, and it still causes us to hide from God. But what I want you to see tonight is that it causes us to hide from our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we run from them! Roy Hession puts it like this - I started with a quote and I'll finish with one - 'Sin always involves us in being unreal'. Hiding, pretending, duplicity, windowdressing, excusing ourselves, blaming others - and we can do all that as much by our silence, as by saying or doing something. That is what John calls 'walking in darkness'. Just as we're not to hide our sins from God, we're to bring them into the light; we're not to hide our sins from our brothers and sisters in Christ, we're to bring them into the light too.

The moral test is obedience to the Word. The social test is to love our brother - but both of them can be summarised in this word 'Christlikeness'. How like the Lord Jesus Christ are you my friend? This is what God wants, this is what the church and the world needs. How are you? How do you measure up to His frame?

R.W. DeHann wrote of a missionary who, shortly after arriving on the field, was speaking for the first time to a group of villagers. He was trying to present the gospel to them. He began by describing the Lord Jesus Christ, and he referred to Him as a man who was compassionate and kind, loving, caring, one who went about doing good towards all men. When he was speaking, he noticed that his lesson brought smiles of familiarity to the faces of his audience, and some of them nodded their heads to one another in agreement. He was somewhat puzzled, and he interrupted his message to ask: 'Do you know who I'm talking about?'. One of the villagers quickly responded: 'Yes, we do. You're talking about a man who used to come here'. Eagerly they told about a missionary doctor who came to their remote village to minister to their physical needs, and his life was so like Christ in caring for those people that they saw Jesus in him. He walked even as Jesus walked: that is practical Christianity.

Can two walk together except they be agreed? Will you agree to walk with Him tonight? Bring out those sins that you're hiding between you and God, bring out before your brother or sister those sins that you're hiding towards them, and I'll tell you this: you will know revival in your soul.

Lord, that is our prayer, we can put it in no better words other than that you would make the mind of Christ our Saviour live in us from day-to-day, by His love and His power controlling all I do and say. Lord, make us like the Lord Jesus Christ we pray, for nothing else will do, nothing else will satisfy our souls or bring revival to our churches or bring an awakening to our world, other than being like Jesus. In His name we pray, Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - November 2005

www.preachtheword.com

info@preachtheword.com

1 John - Chapter 6

"The Christian And The World"

Copyright 2005

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

We're turning to 1 John again and chapter 2, our title for this evening's study - it is our sixth study - and the title is 'The Christian And The World', and we begin our reading at verse 12 of the second chapter.

"I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever".

William MacDonald in his Bible commentary has a very helpful outline of this little book, as he does of course with all the books, particularly those of the New Testament. He points out that in chapter 1 and verse 5, through to chapter 2 verse 2 that we studied in our second study in this series, we have the means of maintaining fellowship with God. It is through the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that cleanseth all our sins that we can enter into fellowship with God. That blood is applied to us when we confess our sins, and then He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Our continual coming in fellowship to God is made possible by, as he says in chapter 2 verse 2, the fact that we have One in heaven who is not only the propitiation for our sins, but the sins of the whole world, and as verse one says: 'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous'. So that is our means of fellowship, and maintaining fellowship with the Lord God. If sin comes in and interrupts, we ought not ever to say that we do not have sin, or that we have not sinned, but we must agree with God that our sin is as He has said, and bring it into the light and allow Him to, afresh, bring us into fellowship again.

Then after showing the means of maintaining fellowship, we have in chapter 2 and verses 3-11 the marks of those who are in the Christian fellowship. How do you know if you are indeed a Christian? How do you get that assurance? How do you recognise other Christians? We were given those two tests last week in verses 3 to 11, and they were: obedience to the Lord's commands, and love to the brethren and to those around us.

Now this week we're looking at verses 12 through to 14 first of all, as John personally addresses individual members within this church - and this, of course, is a circular letter going to other churches, but he is speaking now to the members, and members who are at different stages of growth in fellowship. Then we'll see a little bit later on in our meeting from verses 15 to 17, and later on next week, God willing, through to verse 28: he outlines two great dangers that threaten the fellowship that we have with God and with each other. We'll only have time this week to look at the first, and that is: the world. God willing, next week we'll look at the false teachers which he writes about in verse 18 following.

So let's look first of all at verses 12 to 14, and he addresses the members in the fellowship. Really, those whom he addresses, if you look at it, it embraces the whole family of God with this one expression in verse 12: 'Little children' - 'I write unto you, little children'. Now you will note, if you look down at verse 13, that he addresses 'little children' again just at the end of that verse. Now, in the Greek language there are two different words that are used for 'little children', and that isn't shown really in our English translations - it can't be. But the word that is used in verse 12 that we're looking at first of all literally means 'offspring of any age'. So, when it speaks of children, it doesn't mean 'little infants', or even adolescents, but it's not speaking about age or experience, rather it is talking about, in a generic sense, how we are the offspring of God no matter what age we are. In other words, it's speaking of those who have been regenerated by the Spirit, those who have been partakers of the new nature through the new birth.

You might say, 'Well, so what, what does that really matter?'. Well, it matters a great deal, because there are those in our world today, even in religious circles, who believe in the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. I'm sure you've heard this, that God is everyone's Father, and that we are everyone's brother and sister in humanity because we all own God as our Father. It becomes very popular, especially in the ecumenical movement and in syncretistic religion - trying to say that all roads lead to God because God is everyone's Father, and so we're all brothers and sisters in humanity. But this word right away tells us that John is addressing those who are the offspring of God, and the inference is that there are those who are not the offspring of God. Right away he is setting down a demarcation line that we find right throughout the whole of Scripture, and particularly in the New Testament: that God sees in this world not one great humanity with Him at the head, but two families that exist. There are, as the Lord Jesus Christ put it, those who are the children of Satan - remember He said to the scribes and Pharisees: 'Ye are of your father the devil' - then there are those who are the children of God.

Now the great question is posed: how do you get into God's family? Well, if God is to be your Father, then you must be His son; and if you are to be His son, then He must have given birth to you at some time - you must be born of God. That is simply what the doctrine, biblically speaking, the evangelical doctrine of the new birth teaches. It's not about simply making a decision, although that may be part of it in your own volition, but this is something that comes from heaven itself. A man or a woman who comes to faith in Christ does not essentially come to the Saviour in conversion just on the earth at some kind of evangelistic crusade, but there is actually some transaction that has taken place in heaven, that has caused them to give birth to the very life of God in their soul. Let's never forget that! Christianity is not just 'deciding to follow Jesus', although it is that - but there is a supernatural element whereby God's very life, by His Spirit, is breathed into us...and that's how you become a son or a daughter of God. That's why the Lord Jesus was at great pains in John chapter 3 to tell Nicodemus several times: 'Nicodemus, you must be born again'.

Now do you remember that the theme of this epistle not only is fellowship but assurance? Some of them were starting to doubt whether or not they were the sons and daughters of God. You might say: 'Well, how do I know if I am one of these people that are the offspring of God, whatever age I may come into?'. Well, he tells us in verse 12: 'I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake'. People who are born-again and know God are people who know that their sins are forgiven. Now that doesn't mean if you're doubting that your sins are forgiven, you're not saved, but if you want to get assurance: well, you need to know that the sins and the debt that you have toward God in transgressing His law has been wiped clean by the blood of Christ. Now I wonder could it be that there's someone in the meeting tonight, and you're not sure about that? It could very well be that you're not sure because it hasn't happened! You may be religious, you may even consider yourself evangelical, but you've never had that new birth experience. You might have had a simulation of it, you might have been pushed into some kind of decision on a human level by another Christian or even an evangelist. You might have put your hand up, you may have prayed a prayer, but the great question is: do you know the new birth in your heart? Do you know that your sins are forgiven you?

Here's one clue as to how you do know: it will always be 'for His name's sake'. Verse 12, at the end, our sins: 'are forgiven for His name's sake' - that is the ground of our forgiveness, that is the ground upon which God can bring us into new life through the new birth. We are born-again! Are you born-again? We are forgiven of our sins! Have you been forgiven of your sins? Well, if you have on both of those counts, it will simply be because you're resting on Calvary's work. Do you understand? You see, you can't earn forgiveness of sins in your own right, but you must be able to say with the hymn writer:

"I need no other argument,

I need no other plea,

It is enough that Jesus died,

And that He died for me".

I'm resting on His work, His completed atonement at the cross. Isn't it wonderful to have that assurance tonight? Isn't it? But if we were to ask specifically: who are these members in the fellowship that John is addressing? Who are these people that he refers to in verse 13 as 'fathers', as 'young men', and then again as 'little children'? Well, there's divergence of opinion - which should never surprise you in biblical matters! - on this particular interpretation, and there are some who say: 'Well, these three designations are just different words for the whole family. He's trying in a literary scheme to encompass everyone in this particular church because, let's face it, some of the traits that are in each of these people that he commends them for are traits that should be in us all as believers'. There is a point here - one author says: 'All believers should be children in innocence, and dependent on their Heavenly Father. Young men we should be in our strength, and we all should be fathers in our experience with God'. Whilst that may well be the ideal what we should all be, it is far from the reality, I'm sure you'll agree. So I don't think that John is addressing everyone when he designates these three types of people.

Then there are others who say, secondly: 'Well, he's talking to three different age groups, and that's self evident by the fact that he talks about elderly people, or older people, in fathers; then he talks about young men; and then he talks about little children or infants'. People push this interpretation to say that what he's actually getting at in speaking to fathers, he's talking to those who are experienced in the things of God. When he talks to these young men, because he commends them for their strength, that's what he's trying to highlight - strength, courage in the things of God. When he talks to these little children, he's speaking to folk who are immature in the faith, they've come to Christ recently and they haven't grown like these other two types of people. Now that may well be the case in part, but it would be wrong to say that these characteristics, whilst common to fathers and young men and to little children, are exclusive.

What do I mean? Let me explain myself: just because you're a father in an age sense, it does not necessarily follow that you're experienced in the things of God. Just because you're a young man does not mean necessarily that you're strong, courageous in the things of God, and that you're overcoming the evil one. Neither does it necessarily mean that if you're young in the faith and only come to Christ recently, that you're naive or even a babe in Christ up to now. Some of these things overlap, so I think that in these three groups of people that John is addressing he is outlining specific stages of spiritual growth in God's family. Now the fathers may well be older people, and the young men may well be young men, and the little children may well be infants, but I believe he's talking about stages in fellowship that we can have in the things of God - and I don't believe, sisters, that he's excluding the females just because he talks in the male gender.

So let's look first of all at the 'fathers', and we'll group together everything he says about each group even though they're scattered over these two verses. First of all he speaks to the fathers in verse 13: 'I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning'. Now it may well be that these fathers were elders, very seldom are elders called 'fathers', but the likelihood is that at least some of them, if not all of them, were elders in the church. They were the most mature, not in age now, but in their spiritual experience of God. When you look at this verse he commends them because they have 'known him', probably referring to the Lord Jesus, 'that is from the beginning' - because in the first couple of verses of this epistle, that's who he talks about when he speaks of having fellowship with Him who was from the beginning. He commends these fathers for their experience in the things of God. Now, that doesn't come with age - it often does carry with age - but because you're older doesn't necessarily mean that you've been experienced in the things of God, but these men had.

Let me say this, and this is to those who are elders in this church and other churches, and those who are fathers even in a chronological sense of how many years you've totted up: the pinnacle of spiritual maturity is to know God experientially. Do you understand that? Whilst it is commendable to have a great knowledge of the Scriptures, and whilst it is good to have experience of life, the fact of the matter is: to be a father in the faith you need to know God through your own personal experience - to know God in all His fullness! Isn't that what Paul said in Philippians and chapter 3 verse 10: 'That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death'. Now I ask you the question: is that how we accredit elders in the church? Often the reason we qualify them is because they have a knowledge of Scripture, or they even are apt to teach, they can preach a little bit: but these fathers needed to know God! Fathers in the faith! Now how many of those are around? We've got men who can turn you to the verses, but how many have we that have experienced the reality of those spiritual verses in their own experience, and can point you to have the right experiences in Christ also? It also entails that they need to be a good example to the flock, they need to discipline the flock as a father, they need to have also tender compassion. 'Fathers, I write unto you because ye have known him that is from the beginning'. Elder, you could say a lot about yourself tonight, but can you say, can I say: 'I know him'?

Then secondly, he addresses this group who are called 'young men'. Whilst they may not have been fathers in the experience that they had of Him who was from the beginning, like the first group, one thing is for sure: they are strong against sin and against doctrinal error. 'I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one', and then if you look at verse 14 in the middle, 'I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one'. They have the word of God in them, and that is the key! These young men, whilst they may not have the experiential knowledge of the word, they know the word and they know the doctrine - they know how to recognise error. They are vehemently opposed against every form of sin and iniquity!

Now, young people who are in our meeting tonight, is that not extremely encouraging to you in this particular day? So often when we read the word of God, and we read the biographies of great giants of the faith in church history, and then we look at our own environment in which we live and which we are growing up in and finding our feet, we can often despair thinking: 'It is impossible to live a life of godliness and purity in such a wicked world as this' - but, praise God, it is not impossible! John's world was not a stone's throw from our world this very evening, and yet he was able to commend young men in the faith because they had overcome the wicked one, because God's word abided in them. Isn't that wonderful? Not only fathers in the faith can be exemplars in the faith, but so can young men and young women - they can be examples in godliness, just as Timothy himself was. These young people had overcome the wiles of the devil himself morally, because the word of God dwelt in them, they believed it, they lived it out, and they faced false doctrine and sin and error - they overcame the devil himself. Morally, they had the victory; morally, they were triumphant; morally, they were overcoming - is that you today, young person?

The Psalmist asked the question that young people of every age asked, Psalm 119 and verse 9: 'Wherewithal shall a young man', or a young woman, 'cleanse his way?'. Then in verse 11 he tells us: '...by taking heed thereto according to thy word', verse 11, 'thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee'. That is the secret of these young men who overcame the devil in their age, and it'll be the secret of all young people who overcome this wicked world today: the word of God in your heart, and using it in your life! Morally they overcame, doctrinally they overcame all the false doctrine that was round about. You see, this is the mark of the difference between a young man in the faith, and a child or someone who is still an infant or a babe in Christ. Indeed, when we turn to Ephesians chapter 4 Paul, in another context in verse 14, says: 'Henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive'. Sometimes you meet young people, and this week they believe one doctrine, the next week they believe another doctrine, and they're just blown to and fro depending on who the popular teacher of the moment is. That's not the way we are to be: morally we're to stand fast with the word of God in us, living it out; but we're to have the word of God in our head, knowing doctrine that is true and false.

These young men - God give us more of them! - were overcomers doctrinally as well as morally. I can't put it any better than John Bunyan did when he said: 'This book will keep you from sin, and sin will keep you from this book'. That's the bottom line, and the sooner young people and older people realise this, that this is the secret to Christian success, the better your experience of the Christian life will be. Now I have a great concern about young people in our age, and sometimes from the pulpit young people are hammered and hammered again and again, and I don't think it's always fair because what's often hammered in young people could well be hammered in older people - and this is one particular aspect. It's this: that they don't seem to have, as used to be, an appetite for the word of God. Praise God for you that are here that are young people, and I'm not hammering the ones that are faithful and have come tonight! But the fact of the matter is: there is a decreasing knowledge among young people of the Scriptures. No matter how you want to measure it, I believe it's a fact. You don't seem to get young men that will sit down any more, flick through the pages and even argue over the Scriptures - which isn't always a bad thing, sharpening one another's sword. There is this laissez-faire attitude that: 'Well, it doesn't really matter, as long as you love the Lord' - but I'll tell you this: if you don't know the word of God, you'll never overcome the wicked one! You'll not do it!

Ephesians chapter 6 tells us that this book is the sword of the Spirit, it's the only offensive weapon that we have against the forces of evil. It doesn't matter whether you're a father in the age sense, or a young man, the fact of the matter is: whether you have the adolescent youth within you or the strength of young manhood, Isaiah says in Isaiah 40 that even the youths shall faint and grow weary, but it is them that wait on the Lord who shall renew their strength. Old or young, it's around this book, it's on your knees, it's before your God - only then can you overcome the wicked one!

Fathers, young men, young women, then thirdly he addresses the little children again. Now, as I pointed out earlier the 'little children' here in this particular verse 13, is a different 'little children' than verse 12, and it basically speaks of those in a young sense of the faith, those who are babes in Christ, those who have recently come to awareness of God and who need to do a bit of growing. Now that's natural, that's not something to be looked down on. In fact, Peter tells us that we are to desire the pure milk of the word as newborn babes desire their mother's milk. You don't set a wee baby down to a T-bone steak, you give them a bottle; and gradually it grows. Everything's new when you first come to faith in Christ or come back to the Lord again, as the hymn says, even the heaven above is softer blue, the earth around is sweeter green, something lives in every hue Christless eyes have never seen. But if that wee baby, after one year of life on this earth, didn't grow - well, I think you'd be taking it to the doctor, wouldn't you, with a heart breaking with great anxiety for the welfare and the future of your child. It is a tragedy. You know, it is a tragedy when one of God's newborn babes does not grow - and Paul had to come to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3:1, and say to them: 'Ye are still babes! I want to feed you with meat, but I have to feed you with milk. You're carnal, you think you know everything, but you know nothing!'.

Basically, babes need to grow up, all of them do. But I wonder is there someone here tonight, and you have stunted growth? You should have grown up a long time ago. Or is this starting to test your faith, even as we speak, it's starting to rock your assurance because maybe the signs of life are not even there! When the baby is born, often what the physician will do is move its hand across its face to see if there's any reactions, tap its bones at certain reflex points, and if there's no signs of life what other conclusion can they come to but that they are dead? If there's no development in your Christian experience, what other conclusion can you come to?

Well, the good news about why John, I believe, addresses these three groups - fathers, young men, little children - is because John had time for everybody in the family of God. I think that's beautiful. Here's why it's beautiful: because these false teachers and heretics, these Docetists and the forerunners of the Gnostics who claimed some kind of elite knowledge of God that only came through a special revelation to certain highbrow individuals, they were saying: 'Well, you have to be top-notch, you have to be one of the elite, you have to get up there, there's no room for the babes, there's no room for the young men, it's only the elite who can know God'. John says: 'No, I write to the fathers, I write to the young men, I even right to the little children' - isn't that wonderful? There's no ageism with God. Sometimes I'm concerned - and I don't wish to criticise other churches, I've no place to do that - but there are churches that are 'Young people's churches', then there's churches that are 'Old people's churches' - and we're glad we have a bit of a 'dolly mixture' here in this church. There are churches that are 'black churches' and churches that are 'white churches', but the beauty of what God wanted when He was thinking out the plan of salvation and the miracle of the mystery of the church was that there be no divisions, and all ages, and all classes, and all races, and all peoples would be able to be together!

Sometimes the old folk can look down at the young ones. Some of you want them to be old folk and won't allow them to be young folk, when the old folk, when you were young folk, allowed you to be young folk - are you following me? Some of the young folk want to take the whole thing by the reins and run away, and they want to sing hymns all the time that none of the old folk know - and that's not on either! Why can't we live together, as God meant us to live together? But John's point is this: no matter what age these people were, no matter what stage they were at as members in the church, every single one of them from the fathers right down to the little children manifested something of Christ's character somewhere. The question is: do you?

Those are the members in the fellowship, but then secondly he talks to them about a danger to the fellowship. As I said, in verse 18 following, God willing, next week we'll look at the second one of these, the false teachers. But first of all he deals with the first danger to church fellowship and our fellowship with God individually in verse 15, he says: 'Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world'. Now you will know that all of John's epistles have the great theme of love right throughout them, none less than 1 John itself, and we have already looked at that in great detail in recent weeks. But here we have John showing that there is a negative aspect to love. You don't often hear this in the day and age in which we live, everything seems to be positive even in Christian circles, but here is a negative side to love. Of course, this stands to reason when you think about it for a moment, because a Christian at the one and the same time cannot love God and love the devil, that would be ridiculous. A Christian cannot love righteousness and sin, indeed the Lord Jesus articulated it in the Sermon on the Mount when He said: 'You cannot serve two masters, ye cannot serve God and mammon'. The Psalmist put it in Psalm 97: 'Ye that love the Lord, hate evil' - that is the other side of love for God, it is a hate for evil things. Paul said in Romans 12: 'Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good'. Good and evil, God and Satan, holiness and worldliness, are mutually incompatible - do you understand that? James articulated it, perhaps in a very forthright manner, when he said in James 4:4: 'Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God'.

Now some people right away say: 'Well, here is one of the contradictions of the Bible. I always knew they were there, and preachers said to me, 'Where are they? Show us the contradictions', well here's one because I know John 3:16 which says 'For God so loved the world', and the word he uses for 'world', 'cosmos', is the same word that you have 23 times in this first epistle of John. How can God love the world and then tell His own followers not to love the world?'. Well, let's find out what this word 'world' actually means. Of course, it means different things in different contexts, and the word 'cosmos' is used with different meanings at times throughout the New Testament. First of all it can mean 'the material world', the actual soil of the earth, the whole of creation. We see that clearly, and right throughout scripture there is an agreement that God created all things good, God does not hate this world as a material entity - though we live in a fallen creation, He still glories in the wonder of the sky and the hills and the trees and all of nature. Then secondly this word is used in a racial sense, and I believe that's how it's used in John 3:16 - for God so loved the whole world, all peoples. Then thirdly, the way it's used here is that it speaks of the world system, 'Love not the world system'.

What is the world system? Well, the world system is the system which man has built up in an effort to make himself happy, satisfied, fulfilled apart from God. One person has defined it like this: 'Human society is the world system in so far as it is organised in wrong principles, characterised by base desires, false values and egoism'. In short, the world system is any sphere where the Lord Jesus is not loved, and the Lord Jesus is not welcomed. Does that define it for you? Well, worldliness, the ideal, poses another question for us which is a very contemporary one, particularly among young people today - simply this: 'What is it?'. It's bandied about in prayer meetings and from pulpits. In conversations people, sometimes older people, are saying: 'Oh, the church is getting so worldly' - but many people are at pains to define what worldliness means. What is it in practical terms? There's a great dispute regarding it.

Now let me say what worldliness, and to hate the world, is not. To hate the world, and to live a non-worldly life, is not first of all: Pharisaism. Pharisaism was what was around in our Lord's day: those who were religious and tried to be non-worldly by adhering to particular religious rules and rituals. Now the problem with legalism was that, though they had many right rules, they had not the life of God in their breast to live up to the rules. They hadn't the new birth, and the outcome of that was that it led to hypocrisy, because when you have rules but don't have the power to obey the rules, you portray the facade that you are obeying it, when with the heart and even in actions secretly you're transgressing your own rules. To hate the world, to love not the world as John says, is not Pharisaism - and there is quite a lot of Pharisaism in evangelical Christianity, particularly in Ulster.

Secondly, it is not asceticism. What is asceticism? Well, the ascetics were people who denied the fleshly appetites - sexually, with food, with drink, with rest, with any form of physical sensual pleasure. Now, what was the problem with that? This is how they decided they would become non-worldly - well, the problem is that these things are not necessarily wrong. Sensual pleasure is natural in certain areas. God, in fact, created some of these things, they were instituted before the fall of man, and God put His blessing on it - because of that, asceticism leads to frustration, because you're trying to dull certain things that God has given you which are good. It doesn't work either.

Thirdly, to love not the world does not mean monasticism. What is that? Well, you've heard of monks, hermits, they withdrew themselves from the world. They thought: 'If we get away from all the externalities that are tempting us, and hide ourselves and be alone with God, well, we'll be free from the world'. John Stott calls it 'Rabbit-hole religiosity'. There are a lot of 'rabbit hole' Christians about, they only put their head above the parapet when they go out to the Sunday meeting, and then they come back in. They only hang around with Christians and they only talk with Christians. You see, there's a danger in this ghetto mentality, because it actually prevents us loving the lost the way that God Himself describes in John 3:16. The great problem with monasticism regarding hating the world and becoming non-worldly, is that the greater problem is not so much external factors in the world, but the fact that the external things in the world find an echo with my old wicked evil heart - and that's what you take with you when you go into a monastery or a convent, and inevitably it leads to failure.

So, what is it to hate the world? People want specifics: 'Go on, tell them what's right, tell them what's wrong'. If you want to ask me privately about things, I will do that, but you know I don't need to say that from the pulpit. I'll tell you why: because the principles are clearly defined within the Scriptures of what is worldly and what is not, and it would be impossible for God to define specifics in a book that is timeless. He does better than that, He shows us, no matter how cultures change and trends change, the principles whereby we may know what is worldliness and what is holiness. Where are they? Well, they're in verse 16: 'All that is in the world', first of all, here's the first sign of worldliness, 'the lust of the flesh'. That's a definition of worldliness. What is the lust of the flesh? Well, it is gratifying sensual bodily appetites and desires of our evil nature. Now, bodily appetites are natural, they are God-given; but because of the fall of humanity they have been perverted, and by our own fallen nature inside they have been perverted also. The problem comes when the world tempts us to fulfil normal appetites and desires in abnormal ways, that's when the lust of the flesh comes on the field.

What am I talking about? Well, when the world tries to take hunger and turn it into gluttony, that is the lust of the flesh. When the world tries to take thirst and turns it into drunkenness, when it takes sleep and turns it into sloth and laziness, when it takes sex and turns it into fornication and adultery and immorality and sodomy - that is the lust of the flesh. Now if you're involved in any of those things in any shape or form, that is a sign whether or not you are worldly, that is worldliness! He goes on to define it a little bit more: 'the lust of the eyes', evil desires that arise from what we see. A prime example is David eyeing up Bathsheba, and that was the primary sin that led to the actual physical sin of adultery. Have you ever said to anybody - maybe when you were serving them a meal - 'Feast your eyes upon that'? That is the lust of the eyes, not in a true sense, but that's the idea that you're feasting your eyes on something that is ungodly and sinful. Sometimes you get up from the table and you say: 'My eyes were bigger than my belly' - don't you? That's the same idea: you're feeding on things that are unhelpful.

We live in a media dominated world, and the world's axis seems to spin today on the lust of the eyes, and TV adverts appeal to the eye: 'Drink this beer, and you'll get the best looking girl in the bunch', 'Drive this car, and you'll get the best job, you'll be a hero and all the rest'. We have a 'must have' mentality, a preoccupation with the lust of the eyes which is superficial, a preoccupation with that which is superficial skin deep morality. Whether it's pornography or possessions, it's the same lust that's behind it, the lust of the eyes. Can I address a very sensitive subject, because I believe Internet pornography is one of the greatest scourges of the church of Jesus Christ today, yet it's the silent sin - and the likelihood is that there are a number of folk here tonight and you're committing that sin. Possessions are fuelled by the lust of the eyes, what you see you want to have, and all of it could be summed up as covetousness - that's why people are head over heels in debt. Why is it? Do you ever wonder? Will Rogers said: 'Simply because we spend money that we do not have, to buy things that we do not need, to impress people that we do not like' - the lust of the eyes.

Then there's the pride of life, thirdly. Literally it means 'the boasting of what a person has or does'. An unholy ambition of self display, self glory, pride. What you have in these three things are unholy appetites, unholy avarice, and unholy ambitions. They are all illustrated in Eve in the Garden of Eden, and Satan said: 'Hath God said ye shall not eat?', and she saw that the tree was good for food - the lust of the flesh, it could feed her; and it was pleasant to the eyes, the lust of the eyes, she saw its beauty and attractiveness; and she saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, the lust of pride. You see in Matthew 4 the temptation of the Lord Himself. Satan came and said: 'Turn those stones to bread', praise God He didn't have a lust in Him, but He was tempted in all points as we are. On that very point Satan did tempt Him - the lust of the flesh - to feed Himself at Satan's demand; to cast Himself off the pinnacle of the temple to make a show, for the lust of the eyes; Satan offered Him the kingdoms of the world, the pride of life!

John says the first reason why you ought to hate the world is that it's incompatible with your love for the Father. You can't love the Father and love the world, you can't love the Father and lust the flesh, lust with the eyes, and have pride in your life. As Billy Sunday said, it makes as much sense to talk about a worldly Christian as it does to talk about a heavenly devil. They're mutually incompatible. Someone has defined worldliness as 'anything that keeps me from loving God as I ought to love Him, and from doing the will of God as I ought to do it'. Now, you put your little question into that definition, and realise that the world is not benign, the world is not innocent - no matter what trendy evangelicals are saying today! It is a treacherous place for the child of God!

The second reason, whilst the first is incompatibility with love to the Father, the second reason why we should hate the world in verse 17 is the fact that it is transient. Verse 17 says: 'The world passeth away, and the lust thereof'. When a company or a business falls into financial straits, sensible people don't invest in it. When a builder sees that the ground is like a peat bog, if he's wise he doesn't lay a foundation on it. But to live for the transient things of the world is absolute foolishness, it's like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic - the boat is going down, so what is the point? You wouldn't go out and buy a car if you knew it was going to break down in a couple of weeks, so why then do we invest our lives in things that do not and will not last? This world passeth away. Why won't you give your heart - and I'm challenging you tonight - to something that will last? Beauty does not last, it has an expiry date. It maybe lasts a couple of decades, it maybe lasts shorter than that when you wake up beside her in the morning - I don't know! Fame is fickle, even political power passes - you see Tony Blair, the darling of New Labour when he was elected, and now they could hang him! It all passes, and the bottom line of it all is simply this: whatever way you want to define the world and worldliness, none of it satisfies! None of it!

A shop notice on one occasion put up the words in its window: 'If you need it, we have it'. Their competitor across the road put up a sign the day after: 'If we don't have it, you don't need it' - but folks, that's the bottom line where the Lord Jesus Christ is concerned. If it's in the world and He doesn't offer you it, you don't need it! All you need is Him! There's such a great deal of confusion about worldliness, and there is such a great deal of worldliness in Christianity - to such an extent that I am deeply troubled at times. Maybe it's because the church, when it's set alongside the world looks like a pale black-and-white photograph, when the world is a multimedia presentation. We look old, we look dated, and the more worldly the world becomes the more outdated we feel - but the bottom line is: whatever the world's perception of us is, and whatever modernity's perception of us may be, the world cannot give us what Jesus can give us! For what Jesus gives never passes away, it lasts! The amazing thing that has thrilled my heart today about the end of verse 17 is that God's word says that: 'he that doeth the will of God' lasts also! He will abide forever!

Let me throw out that challenge to you today: fathers, elders, young men, little children - why don't you work for something that is permanent for a change? Why don't you work for something that will last! This was the verse that D. L. Moody took as his motto verse right throughout his life and ministry. When he died it was inscribed upon his tombstone: 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever'. Do you know something? Moody was called 'Mad Moody' by the world, but now he has no regrets, whereas Henry VIII took Hampton Court away from Cardinal Woolsey, who actually built Hampton Court, and poor old Cardinal Woolsey before he died said something like this: 'If I had only served my God like I served my King, I wouldn't be here today'. But 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever':

'The stars shine over the land,

The stars shine over the sea,

The stars look up to God above,

The stars look down on me.

The stars will live for a million years,

For a million years and a day,

But God and I shall live and live

When the stars have passed away'.

Hallelujah, he that doeth the will of God, and loves not the world, neither the things of the world shall abide forever.

Father, help us not to love the world. Lord, we confess that there are things that we do love, and Lord there's times that we put those things before the Saviour. Lord, maybe our whole life at this moment is for the lust of the flesh, or the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life - those could even be legitimate things like careers, and businesses, and family. Yet they could be taking Your place. Lord, help us all to say tonight: 'Take the world, but give me Jesus, all its joys are but in name, but His love abideth ever through eternal years the same'. Lord, help us to give You all, that we may be those who do the will of God, that we may abide forever as overcomers in time and throughout all eternity. Lord, we're all weak, but help us to be strong as we wait upon the Lord. Amen.

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Transcribed by: Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - December 2005

www.preachtheword.com

info@preachtheword.com

1 John - Chapter 7

"The Christian And False Doctrine"

Copyright 2005

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

We're turning to 1 John again and chapter 2, 1 John chapter 2, and we're beginning to read from verse 18. Our title tonight is 'The Christian And False Doctrine', and we'll read through to verse 27.

Verse 18 then: "Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also. Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father. And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life. These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him".

Now you'll remember that in our outline that we gave in our introduction last week, we saw that from verse 15 through to verse 27 where we ended our reading tonight, John speaks to us of two dangers to the fellowship between God's people and one another, and specifically God's people, the church, and the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ with whom our fellowship is. Last Monday evening we looked at the first danger to such fellowship, and that was the threat of the world - 'Love not the world, neither the things that are of the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him'. We alluded to the fact that the second danger that John tells us of is false teachers, and we didn't have time to look at it because John goes into great detail in these verses that we read together tonight, verse 18 to 27, regarding this danger.

So we're looking tonight at the Christian and false doctrine. We do well to remember that this epistle is not only an epistle about fellowship, but it is also an epistle about assurance - how we can know that we have eternal life, how can we know that we're a true Christian, and those who are true Christians, and those who are belonging to the true Christian church and that which may be false in taking the name of Christ to itself. This portion also presents us again with another test. We looked in the last couple of weeks at the social test and the moral test, the moral test being: if we obey His commandments, we know that the life of God is in us; and if we love our brother, that is the social test, we know that the Father dwells within us. But this evening we're looking again at the doctrinal test: how we can know those who are in true Christian fellowship by the doctrine that they teach. I want you to remember right back to the very first week in our introduction, if you were here you'll remember I put on the screen a slide of a spiralling upward staircase, because that is the thematic cycle of this little book of 1 John. We will be revisiting themes week after week, as John revisits them throughout this book. Each time he repeats a cycle, like an upward spiral staircase, he adds a little bit more information to it. So we're going to learn as we continually revisit these truths.

We recently considered, as I said, the moral test, obedience; the social test, love; and now we're going to look again at this doctrinal test. We do well to remind ourselves, as John was reminding his Christians in his particular day, that the battle today in our world is not just between love and hatred, that is a social battle; it is not just a battle between holiness and sin, a moral battle; but it is a battle for doctrine, it is a battle between truth and error. So what more has John to tell us regarding this doctrinal test that we're going to look at this evening? Well, here's the first thing in verse 18: John tells us, addressing these Ephesian Christians and the wider people who would receive this circular letter, 'Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time'.

He tells us first of all, how young believers in particular are threatened in this age. Now we have already dealt with the fact that many of us, whether we're young or old, are threatened by the world, and particularly, I suppose, the young. Now he is really homing in on the young, and he's saying this is how young believers in particular are threatened: by false doctrine. This time the subject of doctrine is introduced by John with a warning about false teachers. Now, we saw last week that he's already spoken to the fathers in the faith, and he talked to the young men within the church, and then he addressed the little children. Now I again he is speaking to these little children, the Greek word is 'pedea' (sp?), it means 'immature', 'little children'. I want you to imagine it like a family talk that this father in the faith, John the apostle, is giving to his spiritual children. It's as if he's gathering them all beside the fire, he's giving them a kind of pep talk regarding the dangers that there are out there in that big wide world to the Christian. He's talked about the world, but now he's saying that there are also dangers here in your home, in the very church of Jesus Christ.

Now I wonder if you were giving the pep talk to the new believers in Ephesus, what would you warn them about? Well, John says in verse 18: 'It is the last time'. It could be translated, 'It is the last hour'. There's a great debate regarding what this period of time may be, and I'm not entering into it tonight, save to say that I believe that the last hour, the last time that is spoken of here is the time between the first coming and the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ - more specifically, the time between Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came, and the second coming of our Lord Jesus. It is the church age, it is the age in which we can say, 'It is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation. Today, if you hear His voice, harden not your heart'. It is the time of God's grace. I wonder do you know that tonight? That not every age in history that has been or will be in the future is a time when you can avail of God's grace in salvation: now is the time, you've been given today, and we don't know when the Lord will come and when this period will end, but we know this - while it is today, we can be saved.

Are you saved? Don't waste any time about! Who knows? Even this very evening the Lord Jesus could return. But yet, this is the import of what he is saying: it is the last hour. Not only is the church age a time when there's opportunities in the gospel, but the church age is a time when we need to be alert, and more so as the coming of the Lord Jesus draws near - because of these false teachers, these antichrists that are around. The import of what John is saying is also that young people in the faith, not young people by age but by their birth in Christ in the faith, are susceptible particularly to the lies of these antichrists. Of course, John's readers had been taught that an Antichrist would arise prior to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ again to the earth. This Antichrist would pretend to be Christ.

If you turn back with me for a moment to Matthew chapter 24, we read the words of our Lord Jesus Christ predicting the coming of this pseudo-Christ. In verse 4 chapter 24 of Matthew: 'Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many', and then if you look down to verse 24 chapter 24, 'For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect'. Then the apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 gives us a further insight into this Antichrist: 'Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition'. That is the Antichrist that both Old and New Testament prophesies, and we find him right throughout the whole of the book of the Revelation. John the apostle particularly uses this term 'antichrist' four times, and once in his second epistle of John - but what John is saying is that prior to the rise of the Antichrist, look at verse 18, there shall arise many antichrists, if you want to put it 'many little antichrists' - antichrist with a small 'a'. They will precede this great Antichrist that will come on the earth.

So right throughout the period of the church age, there will be people who will arise claiming to take Christ's place, or be against Christ. Let me define this word 'antichrist' for you, because it is often misunderstood. This prefix 'anti' is a Greek prefix that can have two meanings. It can mean 'against', and you're familiar with that meaning, someone who is 'anti' is against. But it can also have a meaning that people are not so familiar with, it can mean 'instead of'. I believe that that is the chief meaning here and in many passages regarding antichrist in the Bible, because what John is teaching us and what the Lord taught in Matthew 24 is that these antichrists will offer themselves and their doctrines as a substitute for the true Christ. They'll not so much appear to be against Christ, although they will be, but they will be offering themselves and their doctrines as a substitute for the true Christ.

Here's a lesson if there ever was one for young Christians, indeed for all of us, and it's simply this: the devil wants us to take a substitute for the Lord Jesus as long as we don't take the real thing! He'll settle for us taking a pseudo-Christ, or something that is like Christ in person or in doctrine, as long as we miss the real Christ! That's his ploy. If you think for one moment that he wants everybody to be Satanists and bow down to him - no! He doesn't care what you bow down to, even if it's called 'Jesus Christ', as long as it's not the real thing! John's interest, by the way, is not so much in the antichrist - and that's why we're not going to dwell on it for too long, for our interest often is on him - but rather John's interest is that his children in the faith resist the influence of antichrist that is around even today and, the inference is, will increase more and more as the second coming of our Lord Jesus approaches.

So the question begs: how do these young believers that are threatened by antichrist recognise Antichrist and these little antichrists? Well, there are two ways I believe John outlines for us that we can recognise these antichrists. The first is: they are apostates. They are apostates. Verse 19 outlines this: 'They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us'. Now an apostate, to define it for you simply, is one who has completely abandoned the Christian faith, one who is standing apart from the Christian faith. It seemed that once they professed it, and stood beside the doctrines and tenets of Christianity, but now they're denying it and standing aloof from it. Now verse 19 tells us that these false teachers professed Christ, and at one time they were even the associates of the apostles - and I believe that's what the word 'us' means here collectively. John is speaking as one of the apostles: these people were with the apostles and knew the apostles. These people bore the name of Christ, these people identified with their local church, these people were baptised by immersion, these people were baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. These people sat at the Lord's Table and broke bread and drank from the cup - but John says, after a while within the fellowship of the assembly, they eventually showed their true colours and they left the church, showing that they were not children of God, they were not of us in the first instance.

They withdrew themselves from the body of Christian believers, and either they formed their own little sect with their new revelations or their new teachings, or they went straight back into the world. But the point is this: they were among believers, but they went out from them, and the fact that they didn't continue with them was a sign that they were never of them in the first place. Now please don't misunderstand what I'm saying here this evening: this does not mean that everyone who ever leaves a church is an apostate or is an antichrist, just in case you get that into your head. But let me say this: it should make us think, because some people flit from church to church as if it matters nothing, and although it doesn't make you an apostate and it doesn't make you an antichrist, we ought not to take fellowship so lightly.

But what is the context of this withdrawing from the church fellowship? Well these who were splitting the church and schisming the church, they were doing it by false teaching. They were saying that they had a new revelation, that God had told them something that had never been known and that the rest of the Christians didn't know, and they withdrew with that elitist knowledge and made another group and claimed to be the true church. Now, whilst there is a lot of flitting about from denomination to denomination, that's not what John's talking about here, but there's a lot of this does go on: people who break away and claim that they have a new truth. Judas was one of the twelve, the Lord said He had chosen one who was a demon, and the matter wasn't in him in the beginning, and one of the signs of that was the fact that he never persevered in the truth. What John is saying here in verse 19 is that one of the signs that you're a child of God is that you persevere in the truth, you don't withdraw and stand apart from the Gospel, the faith once delivered to the saints, and deny it with various heresies. You don't split the church with untruth in the fundamental doctrines of the faith. So if you want to be assured of your salvation, make sure that you're persevering in the truth of God's word, and make sure that you're not attempting to split God's church with any false fundamental doctrine.

John says they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us. Of course, we spent a year almost in the study of cults and false religions and so on, and it was interesting for me as I studied it and then did more research recently in putting the book together, how many of these modern heresies and cults were initiated by those who once professed the Christian evangelical faith. Let me give you an example: Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Moonies, was born into a Presbyterian family. Joseph Smith was reared in a Presbyterian home, the founder of Mormonism. William Miller of the Seventh Day Adventists was a licensed Baptist preacher. Ellen White, their famous prophetess, was reared in a Methodist home. Charles Taze Russell of the Jehovah's Witnesses was brought up as a Congregationalist and as a Presbyterian. Mary Baker Eddy was a Congregationalist in a very strict home, I'm led to believe. William Irvine of the Cooneyites was a Faith Mission Pilgrim, took crusades all over Ireland. They went out from us, but they were not of us! They were apostate, and God's word is teaching, I believe, that the matter wasn't in them in the beginning or they would have persevered with the truth.

Of course, a mark of a cult is that they believe that their breakaway group with their new revelation on truth is the only true church. All of them, without exception, condemn the rest of Christendom as apostates, when they're the apostates! They are apostates, that's a sign of how you know antichrist and those who are antichrist: they stand away from truth, they split the church with their new revelations on fundamental Biblical doctrine. There's the first sign, but how can young believers see this threat in a second way? Well, John tells us they deny the Christ. Not only do they show themselves as apostates, but in verse 22 - and I know I'm splitting up the line of thought of the passage, but we want to get the themes here tonight, as we've seen in recent weeks the themes are scattered way throughout, and there's not much order to this particular epistle. In verse 22 he says this: 'Who is a liar' - now in the original Greek that reads like this 'Who is the liar' - the liar. You see these false prophets were saying that John was the liar, and there was a great debate as to who was telling the truth and who was of the devil. John is saying: 'Well, who is the liar in this great debate?'. John is careful to point out in this verse 22 that anyone who denies the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ denies the Father also, and that is a sign of those who are of the devil. 'Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son'.

Now please stay with me here, because what I am not saying is that these people, these apostates, these false teachers do not have any Jesus in their creed. Oh, far from it, most of them do have - but this is the point: just because a man or a movement takes the name of Jesus Christ does not mean that it's the Christ of God, the Christ of the Bible, and the Christ of the Gospel. Oh, banish the thought! So many people say to me: 'But they worship Jesus, they're Christocentric!' - what does that mean? Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11 that there are those who worship another Jesus - another Jesus? Yes, another Jesus, a fictitious character of their own imagination, an individual who bears no resemblance or relation to the true Christ of God found within the word of God. That's what was happening in this church at Ephesus, remember the Docetists who were the forerunners to the Gnostics? What were they claiming? That the man Jesus was born in Bethlehem, that He had no preexistence; and when He was baptised there in the Jordan the Spirit of God came down upon Him, the Christ-Spirit, and enlightened Him and made Him presently at that moment the Christ and anointed one of God; but that same Spirit left Him before He died at Calvary - so He was born a man and died a man! That's not the Christ of the Bible, John is saying.

People around today, they have their own Christ. He may be a Christ who is not quite God, and therefore probably a Christ that doesn't quite save. He may be a Christ that offers you health and offers you wealth, rather than salvation from sin. He might be a Christ that is continually offered in the mass, yet He never ever seems to take away our sins no matter how many times He is sacrificed. Now listen, be plain here tonight, for John certainly was! The Son of Thunder says it well, be under no illusion: 'He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son'. The application of what he says is that that person who is wrong on this point is not to be trusted on anything. Do you get what John is saying? Who is the liar?

Now relativism is a philosophy that's in our world today, but it's had a massive effect even on evangelical religion, because people are saying today that it doesn't really matter what you believe - all that matters is how you believe it, the sincerity wherewith you hold your convictions. Some people in our world of all colours of the spectrum of religious belief, believe that all they need to do is worship God sincerely. Even Christians are saying this, Dr William E. Hawking who was once the Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University in the States, he wrote a book 'Living Religions in a World of Faith'. He said this several years ago, I quote: 'God is in His world, but Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, are in their little private closets, and we shall thank them but never return to them' - did you hear that? 'God is in His world, but Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, are in their little private closets, and we shall thank them but never return to them'.

Now listen: Professor Hawking and all his like need to realise, as John said, you can't have God if you won't have Christ. That's it put plainly. If you won't have the Christ of the Bible, you cannot have God - as verse 23 says: 'Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father'. Indeed, the Lord Jesus Himself said something similar in John chapter 8 and verse 19: 'Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also'. If you want to know God, you have to know Christ, for God can only be known through Christ. Then in verse 42 of John 8 He says: 'If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me'. If you want to love God with all your soul, with all your heart, with all your mind and all your strength, you've got to love Christ that way or you can't have Him!

Now what we have here is the wonderful truth of the unity between the Father and the Son, and we are on holy ground when we speak of these things. John's teaching that you cannot have the Father unless you have the Son, and without a right view of the Son of God you cannot have a right view of the Father - it's impossible! Take it or leave it, friends, it's God's word! David Jackman in his commentary, I believe he's a Church of England minister, put it like this, I quote: 'The God of the Bible is a Trinity. There is only one true God and He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Without the Son we cannot know the Father, and those who deny this may use the word 'God', but they cannot know Him'. Now that's what John said.

John Calvin, the great reformer's insights on this particular verse are very helpful - listen to what he says, and bear with me as I read through it, he says: 'I readily agree with the ancients, who thought that Cerinthus and Carpocrates were those  referred to here', as the false teachers, the heretics teaching this Docetistic doctrine, but he goes on, 'The denial of Christ extends much further; for it is not enough in words to confess that Jesus is the Christ, but he must be acknowledged to be such as the Father offers Him to us in the gospel. These two heretics I mentioned gave the title of Christ to the Son of God, but imagined that He was a mere man. Others followed them, like Arius, who adorned Him with the name of God, but despoiled Him of his eternal divinity. Marcion dreamed that He was a mere phantom, a ghost. Sabellius imagined that He differed in nothing from the Father, that Jesus was the Father and the Spirit. All these', Calvin says, 'denied the Son of God; for none of them really acknowledged the whole Christ; but adulterated the truth about Him so far as they were able, and made for themselves an idol instead of Christ'. Calvin then goes on to add: 'We now see that Christ is denied whenever the things that belong to Him are taken from Him'. He goes on to say: 'To confess that Jesus is the Christ is to confess the Christ of the Scriptures'.

Now John makes it very plain, whoever you are. The Unitarians will say: 'We want God, but we don't want the Christ of the Bible' - well, you can't have Him. The Christian Scientists, and the Muslims, and the Jehovah's Witnesses will say: 'Give us Jehovah, give us Yahweh, give us the Creator of the ends of the earth, but not your Christ' - you can't have Him! The Jew, the Freemason, the liberal Protestants all are saying the same: 'We'll worship God and bow down with the pagans in the jungle, but we don't want the Christ of the Bible!'. Jesus says: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me'.

How young believers are threatened: they are threatened by these false teachers. How are they recognised? They are apostates, they stand apart from the truth, they have subtracted themselves from the body of people who believe the truth; and secondly they deny the Christ. But my second point is: how should such a threat be thwarted? This great threat of false teaching towards young believers, how do we thwart it? Maybe you're sitting here and you're a young believer in the faith, and you're thinking to yourself: 'How would I ever recognise what was false teaching and what was true?'. Maybe you're not so young in the faith, and you're thinking the same thing! Maybe you see somebody like me, or maybe not me, but another teacher who is able to uncover some of these great truths and counterfeits - and you're thinking to yourself: 'That's a special gift that they have, I could never see through all that'.

Well, how can a young believer know what the truth is and what is falsehood? Well, John tells us every single believer, young, middle-aged or old, should be able to tell. Verse 20, look at it, John says: 'But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things'. How can such a threat of false teaching be thwarted in the life of the young believer? First of all: the Spirit of God - the Spirit of God. You see, John is saying that the Holy Spirit has been given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ according to the promise of John chapter 15 verse 26, where He said: 'When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me' - He shall lead you into all truth. Jesus promised the Spirit, Jesus sent the Spirit, the Father sent the Spirit also - and John is saying: 'You have the Spirit, believers, young believers, you have an unction, an anointing from the Holy One to tell what is truth and what is error'. Now this anointing, this unction is not an influence of the Spirit, it is the Spirit Himself. We're not anointed by the Spirit, like something being sprinkled on us or something zapping us, we're anointed with the Spirit, we're given Him - He is the anointing, He is the gift of God.

Let me explain this to you. When a person is saved, at that moment of conversion they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit indwelling them. He is the one who enables every believer, whoever they are, to discern between truth and error. Now Galatians teaches this, Paul says in Galatians chapter 4 and verse 6: 'Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father'. If you're a son of God, you have the Spirit of God - simple as that. Now, taking the illustration from natural humanity, a newborn babe into a family is as much part of the family as the eldest brother or the eldest sister, isn't that right? They might be younger, they might be only born, but they're in the family. What John is saying here is, by inference: how dare anyone say that just because you're a babe in Christ, that you're not one of the elite, you're not one of the charismatic people in this sect that has broken away who has an extra knowledge of God, a new revelation, a great experience that has taken them to a higher level. How dare you, because if you're one of God's children you have an unction from the Holy One, and you know all things! Don't believe these boys running about Ephesus, telling you that they're in the know, and they know something that you don't know about God - don't you believe them! You know all things because you've got the Spirit.

Perhaps that statement 'You know all things' should be translated, 'All of you have knowledge' - that, some believe, is the sense. Now it doesn't mean that these people knew everything, it wasn't a perfect knowledge that he's talking about here, but what he's saying is: you've got the capacity to know what is true and what is not. Any question that comes along your path, any false doctrine that comes along your way, a false practice or behaviour, you have the potential of being able to discern what's right and wrong because you've got the Spirit who knows everything, for He's God! Isn't that tremendously encouraging tonight? The youngest and the simplest believer in Christ has the capacity for all the knowledge that they need to get through this Christian life. Take that natural illustration of a little newborn babe: when a baby is born he's endowed with all his faculties. He mightn't have a lot of hair, he mightn't have any teeth - mind you, some of you are bravely on and you've neither of those two! - but nevertheless, the fact of the matter is: as they grow, and as they develop, what happens? The whole person develops - but the point is this: it's in them, it's programmed, and what is in them just comes out. Now, I grant you, we are responsible for bringing some of it out and allowing the Spirit to work in us. There are sometimes barriers and hindrances, and the Holy Spirit can be grieved, and the Holy Spirit can be quenched - and I'm sure that most of us couldn't say that we're filled with the Spirit, but we need to get away from thinking about getting more of the Spirit to thinking more about the Spirit getting more of me! Do you see the difference? You have the Holy Spirit, and don't let anybody tell you that you haven't - if you're saved He is in you!

The point that John is making, with all these heretics running around, is: there is no enlightened elite in the church of Jesus Christ on whom others depend. This is what modern charismatics need to realise: if we start talking this way, that there are different planes of revelation in God's church - I know there's different calibres of Christians, that's a different thing - but if we're starting to say that there's a little group who are the elite, and we need to depend on them for their knowledge, we're going back to Rome - the Reformation might as well not have happened, for that's what the Popes of Rome said, that's what the Priests and Cardinals said! 'You can't interpret the word of God', so they chained it up, they were the only ones who could read it in the Latin and expound it. Whether it's a Pope or a Cardinal or a Priest, or a modern-day prophet, or a shepherd, or a healer, or a charismatic guru - the truth of God tells you, no matter who you are, as long as you're converted by God's grace: 'Ye have an anointing of the Holy One!'.

I hope this is clearing up a few questions for some people here tonight. In verses 26 and 27 he tells them that the Holy Spirit abides in you: 'I [have] written unto you concerning them that seduce you', or would lead you astray - there's plenty trying to do that. 'But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him'. The Holy Spirit, he says, abides in you - now what does that mean? It means that once you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, He'll never ever be taken away from you - hallelujah! How could anyone believe that you can be saved one day and lost the next? The implication of this regarding these false teachers is that if you have received the Holy Spirit, you don't need anyone to teach you. Now, John is not saying that you don't need teachers to teach the word of God, otherwise I'd be redundant - but so would he be, because he's writing a letter, an epistle, and he's teaching them himself. God in Ephesians 4, and in other parts of the scripture, makes provision for teachers within the church. What he is meaning is that the Christian doesn't need any teaching apart from what is found in God's word, and the author of God's word is the Spirit of God, and He is the one who dwells in us and has promised to lead us into all truth. Yet these Gnostics profess to have additional truth - John is saying there's no need of it, because you've got all you need in the Spirit.

So, the first way of thwarting this threat of false teaching for young believers is the Spirit and, as we have already alluded to just now, the second is the word. In verse 21 he says: 'I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth'. John wasn't bringing a new revelation to them in 1 John - no, he's reminding them of something they already knew. He wants to reassure them that no lie is of the truth. Now, what does that mean, no lie is of the truth? Is that not obvious? He's telling them: 'These Gnostic teachers, and any false teachers who you're listening to, if what they tell you is contrary to what's in God's word: they are liars!'. You can't get much plainer than that. Now, how could they know the difference of what the truth was? Did we not spend a lot of time on it in chapter 1 and verses 1 to 4? How can they know the truth? Yes, they've the Spirit indwelling them, but John says 'that which was from the beginning', and he repeats this to them in verse 24, 'Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning'. What was from the beginning? The One who the apostles saw, they heard with their ears, their hands had handled, and then he tells them: 'For what was manifest to us we delivered unto you', the apostle's doctrine which is the Word of God!

Oh, it's so plain, yet so many err regarding it. In 2 Timothy, didn't Paul say to that young man in chapter 1 and verse 13: 'Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus'. This is the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, and we're not to change it or doctor it, or bring it up to date - we're to hold fast to it! In verse 24 the safeguard for young believers is to let that truth abide in us which we have known from the beginning, the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ and of all His apostles. John is ever pointing them back to the simple gospel message of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Our safety, John is saying, is to stay as close to the word of God as possible. The word he uses: 'Let it remain in you', he uses this Greek verb 'remain' four times in 1 John, and the word literally means 'let it take up a permanent address in your being', 'let it have a settled home in your soul'.

The Spirit will never be taken from us, that's not what he's implying - that He'll get away somehow, but he's saying you are responsible for how He abides in you, how His teachings live out in your being, how you are filled with His influence. There's a great debate, of course, regarding how you're filled with the Holy Spirit. There are those who teach that you're saved, and you don't get the Holy Spirit when you're saved, and then maybe six months down the line you speak in tongues and then you get Him, or you're baptised in the Spirit or slain in the Spirit, and then you get the Holy Spirit and you're filled in the Spirit. I believe in the Spirit's filling, and I don't believe every Christian is filled in the Spirit the moment they're saved. I believe every Christian is gifted by the Holy Spirit, and all you need in the Holy Spirit is potentially given to you at your conversion - but if there was a definition of what is the filling of the Spirit, it is simply this: 'Letting the Holy Spirit have His sway in your life according to His word, that there be no hindrances, no obstacles'.

Let me define it in scripture, Colossians 3:16: 'Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly' - that is a definition of the Spirit's fullness, if ever there was one. Does the Spirit have His sway through the word? Is the word of God abiding in you? Does the word of God have a permanent address in your life? Has the Spirit of God a settled home in your heart? Well, are we not hearing afresh from God that we ought to test everything by this book - it is the canon, Latin meaning 'the measuring stick' for everything. We ought to ask of everything: 'What saith the Scriptures?' - and if a teaching doesn't agree with this book, we throw it out, we should reject it! What are we to think when the Mormons come along and present us with their little Book of Mormon, and its subtitle is 'Another Testament of Jesus Christ'? We're to say: 'That's a lie!' - that's what John says! After the New Testament and the first revelation of Jesus Christ, there's no such a thing as a new revelation of Him. There's no such a thing - listen to this - as new truth, it doesn't exist!

Indeed, Harry Ironside used to say: 'If it's new, it's not true; and if it's true, it's not new'. You might think that's a very blanket statement, but that's what John is saying in effect. Back in the 19th century Charles Hodge boasted of Princeton Seminary, which incidentally has apostatised since then, he said: 'I'm not afraid to say that a new idea never originated in this seminary'. Most universities wouldn't be proud of such a statement, but what he was trying to get across was that they studied the Scriptures, and it has been revealed. Then in verse 25 John says: 'This is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life'. When we abide in Christian doctrine we have the proof of the reality of our faith when we persevere in the truth. We don't stand apart from it, we don't deny who Christ is and what He did and everything that He is in the presentation of the gospel of God in the New Testament. If we accept this all by faith, we have the promise of eternal life! This is why it's serious, folks: for what you believe not only affects the way you behave, but it will affect whether you end up in hell or heaven! That is why false doctrine in the fundamentals of the faith is so serious, because Jesus said: 'My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me'. They hear His word as He spoke it, and they follow Him in His ways.

Someone has said, and I think it sums up all that I've said and all that John said very well: 'With the word of God in your hand, and Spirit of God in your heart, you've everything you need to understand truth and to grow in God'. Is that not what Paul said to Timothy, when he said in that second epistle in chapter 3 verse 14: 'But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works'. But when people abandon the word of God, do you know what happens? They don't believe in nothing, they believe in everything.

John's message is to us tonight: we are living in the last days, and the last days increasingly are fraught with terrible dangers. But if a man is drilled in the word of God, and filled with the Spirit of God, and thrilled with the Son of God, the victory of God will be his.

Our Father, we thank You for the gift of Thy Spirit and for the gift of Thy Word. Lord, oh how we squander these gifts but, Lord, we pray that both of them together may have their harmonious way in our lives. Dear God, that You'll protect us in these awful degenerate days from false teaching, especially for the lambs among us - protect them, and lead us all by Your Spirit in the word, that we may be full men and women, mature in the faith and filled to the uttermost with all the capacity of the Holy Ghost that God has given us. Oh Lord, hear us we pray, and may Thy word always be a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our pathway. May all of us be able to say tonight that the word of God dwells richly in our hearts. For Jesus' sake we pray, Amen.

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Transcribed by: Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - December 2005

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1 John - Chapter 8

"The Family Likeness"

Copyright 2005

by Pastor David Legge

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So we're turning to 1 John chapter 2, and we have two verses to finish off in chapter 2, and then we'll embark on chapter 3 verses 1 to 3. So our portion for consideration tonight is chapter 2 verse 28 through to chapter 3 verse 3, and our title this evening is 'The Family Likeness'.

Beginning to read at chapter 2 verse 28: "And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure".

It is a fact of life that you cannot choose your relatives, and of course it is equally a fact that you can't choose your parents. Now, we owe a great deal to our parents, not least the character traits that we have, many of us, in our personalities. Now some of those may be regretful to us. Maybe your nose is a little bit too long, or your temper is a little bit too short, or your frame is a little bit too light - but the fact of the matter is: you can't avoid it, and many of those things may be character traits that have been passed down in the genetic makeup of your parents to you as their children. Likeness, family likeness is the proof of the relationship that you have with your parents and with your family. What we have come to accept naturally in the physical realm as a matter of descent, John here is applying in our spiritual relationship to our Heavenly Father. He's wanting to point out that if we are truly the children of God, and we want the assurance of being children of God in fellowship with God as our Father and His Son Jesus Christ there must be, and indeed there will be, a family likeness. We as sons and daughters, children of God, will have a resemblance to our Heavenly Father.

Of course in verses 28 and 29 he outlines this: 'Little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming'. You see, like begets like, and God's children have a paternal characteristic, family traits to their Father - and the particular one that John is outlining for us, which I think is the fourth that we have dealt with up to now, is that the righteousness of God Himself will be displayed in our lives. This is the chief family likeness that the children of God will display: as God is righteous, as God is holy, we ought to be so as well. To abide in His fellowship, as verses 28 and 29 say, we ought to display His likeness, we ought to manifest His righteousness. Now, it's alright me pontificating from the pulpit here, but I know, and I freely admit with you who are struggling in the Christian life, that this is easier said than done. Our Heavenly Father is perfect, and the Lord Jesus spoke to us in the Sermon on the Mount and said: 'Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is also perfect'. That is a tremendous injunction that is given to the child of God: to be like God in the very aspect and character trait that we find it most difficult to be like Him in. Yet God's word is saying this is the very characteristic that is showing likeness between Father and son and daughter in the family of God.

Now we all admit equally, I'm sure, that it's not easy being a Christian in the world today. We struggle, don't we, from time to time. Everything is against us, the world is against us and all the temptations around us, and our own flesh, our old nature that we'll deal with in the weeks that lie ahead in the will of the Lord, it is also against us. The devil himself and all his minions are round about trying to distract us from the highway of holiness. We might be sitting here thinking: 'Well, it's alright for you to tell me that I'm to be like my heavenly Father, and that's a proof that I'm a son or daughter of God, but how do I get there? What is the motivation? I just seem not to be able to work it up, and my heart is filled with apathy, I'm lethargic regarding Christian things and I feel pulled down by all of these things around me in the world and in my flesh, and the influences of the devil. What is the motivation for me to have this type of fellowship with God, to abide in Christ, and to live a holy life as He is holy?'.

Well, we're looking this evening - and this is so important - at what is the motivation for living a holy life and manifesting this characteristic of our Heavenly Father that is righteousness. It's found first of all in verse 28, that we not be ashamed when He appears, that we will have confidence and not have shame at His coming. Now, incidentally, 'Now little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear', that word 'when' could also be translated 'if He appear'. Now that is not the 'if' of doubt, but it is the 'if' of imminence - what do I mean? Well, John is saying to them: 'Perchance, if in your lifetime Christ should come, you've got to live a life of righteousness like your Heavenly Father so that you'll not be ashamed, but that you'll have confidence when He comes, because He could come in your lifetime'. It's this thought of imminence, 'imminence' literally means that the Lord Jesus' second coming is hanging over us all the time - that's a fact, but I wonder is it a practical reality in our lives? That we're living our Christian daily experience, and seeking to live holy before God, because we know that His coming is hanging over us every moment of our day.

Now I know that many talk about the coming of Christ, that many get excited about it and know an awful lot about it, but many of those same people will be embarrassed when the Lord Jesus appears, because they will not have confidence toward Him, they will be ashamed before Him at His coming. We ask, rightly so, why would that be? Simply the answer is: because of their lives. Revelation 22 tells us in verse 12: 'Behold', Jesus says, 'I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be' - every man according as his work shall be. Second Corinthians 5:10: 'For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad'.

Now there is the question tonight, I throw it out right at the very beginning: do you have confidence toward the Lord concerning the imminent return, that He could come back at any time, and you would have confidence toward Him, you would not be ashamed? Maybe you can't say that, I wonder if any of us can say that, but maybe you've got as far as saying: 'Well, I never want to be like that when He comes. I want to have confidence toward Him, I don't want to be ashamed. How can I avoid this fate?'. Well, it's very simple: live righteously before the Lord, as if He's going to come at any time. Now, that's easier said than done, as I've already said - but what John does for us tonight, and what I want to relay to you from the word of God, are the motivations for living righteously in the light of the second coming of our Lord Jesus.

There are three of them, I believe, in a sense. The first we find in verse 1, John says if you're going to live righteously to such an extent that when Christ comes you will have confidence and you'll not be ashamed, first of all you need to contemplate your great privileges. Contemplate your great privileges. Verse 1: 'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God'. Now, what are these great privileges that we ought to contemplate that will motivate us to live a holy life in the light of the coming of our Lord Jesus? Well the first, John tells us: 'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us' - we're motivated to live holy lives through the love of the Father. You could put it: it is the privilege of His passion, His love for us. Now remember that John the apostle is the great man that wrote John 3:16 that we love so well: 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life'. He's telling us that the greatest motivation for living for Jesus until He comes is the love of God.

Now we're talking about family life here, aren't we? Love is the greatest drive in the human family. A man falls in love with a woman, and a woman falls in love with a man, they make tremendous sacrifices the one to the other, they become one flesh, they relinquish their individuality to an extent - and human love has a tremendous drive to it, there's a great passion, a great power. But the fact of the matter is: we are not children of God because we love God, we are children of God because He loves us. Now taking the family relationship again as an illustration, we were all loved by our parents before we even knew what love was. Most children don't understand what true love is, but that doesn't stop their parents loving them. We were in that position.

I read a story today about a man who was deeply depressed as a Christian because he felt that he didn't have the love that he should towards the Lord in his heart. He talked to a close friend, and the friend said this to him: 'When I go home from here I'll take my little baby on my knee, I'll look into her sweet eyes and I'll love her with all my heart. Now she loves me very little, if at all, and if my heart were breaking it would not disturb her. If my body were aching with pain, it would not interrupt her play. If I were dead she probably would forget me in a few days. Besides this she never has given me any money, but she has been a constant expense to me, and I'm not rich - but there is not money enough in the world to buy my little baby!'. 'Why is that?', he said, 'Is it because she loves me, or because I love her? Do I dare withhold my love from her until I know that she loves me? Or is there something that she must do first before she can earn my love? Absolutely not!'. Then he looked into his friend's eyes and said: 'If you want to love God and let your love for God grow, don't focus on how much you love Him, focus on how much He loves you'.

This is God's family and what John wants you to grasp just now, if you're ever going to be motivated to live, in the light of Christ's coming, a holy life, is the great love of God which far exceeds anything on the human dimension. It is beyond our imagination, the privilege of the passion of God's love toward us that we enjoy. Verse 1 says: 'Behold, what manner of love', now that literally could be translated like this, 'Behold, of what country is this love' - that's literally what it says. 'Behold of what country', now what does that mean? It's expressing the unearthly characteristic of this love. I could contemporise it by saying this: 'Behold, this love is out of this world!'. That's what John is saying: God has lavished, literally that's what 'bestowed' means, He has lavished this love upon us. Get a glimpse of it, John says, if you want to live a holy life in this awful world and you don't want to be ashamed when Christ comes, you need to get a greater capacity of an appreciation of His love for you.

Isn't that what Paul said in Ephesians? 'That we would be able to comprehend with all the saints the breadth, the length, the depth, and the height of this great love'. The children sing:

'It's so high, we can't get over it,

So low, we can't get under it,

So wide, we can't get round it,

It's wonderful love!'.

God loves us so much, John says, that He calls us His children. But not only does God call us His children, but John is saying He claims us as His own. Now I don't know about you, but I'm proud - in a right sense - to have God as my Father. I've nothing to be proud about in myself, but I'm proud of that fact - but do you know what blows my mind tonight? That God is proud to have me as His son. He's not ashamed to call me 'son', or you 'daughter', and He'll never ever disown me no matter how faithless and unbelieving I am, He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself. Once in Christ, in Christ forever! That's love, if ever there was love. Contemplate that great privilege: the privilege of His passion through the love of the Father.

Here's the second aspect: through the love of the Father we have been made sons of God. This is now not the privilege of His passion, but the privilege of our position: 'Now are we called the sons of God'. Now right away this blows out of the water this idea that everyone is a son or a child of God, and this is what we hear so often today - the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. It doesn't exist in God's word, you have to become, be made a son of God. So the question begs: how are you made a son of God? Well, the first step is the new birth. John tells us about it in his first chapter of his gospel, verses 12 and 13: 'But as many as received Christ, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God'. Now what does that mean? Well, we're not born-again by human decision, we're not born-again by something that we inherit from our parents or our culture or our religion, we're not born-again because of the desire of another or the desire of ourselves. It doesn't come primarily by human determination, the salvation, this new birth is not of man, it is of God. It's not about what man does for God, it's about what God does for man! That's how we can know that we have eternal life, that's why we can know that we are the sons of God, because it doesn't depend on you or me, it depends on God. Do you know tonight?

Verse 1 in many translations, and because some manuscripts put 'and we are' after 'the sons of God', '...we should be called the sons of God, and we are' - adding for emphasis that we know now. This isn't something that we're waiting on when the balances are weighed in heaven and God says: 'Well, your good has outweighed your bad, so you're a son of God' - not a bit of it! We can know now, the assurance is given to us now. 'How is it given?', you say - well, if you've got the traits of your Heavenly Father. Do you have those? Oh, we've seen them: there is the moral test, you obey His commandments; there is the social test, you love your brother; there is the doctrinal test, you believe in the Christ of God outlined in the Scriptures, and you believe about Him as God has revealed Him concerning who He is and what He has done. Why do you need to know? Because Christ is coming, and if you don't know for sure the likelihood is you'll be ashamed and confounded without confidence toward God.

But John now is turning his attention away from the new birth, simply because the new birth alone does not make you a child of God. Did you hear me? I see you perking up now! The new birth alone, oh, it's the first step of course, and it gives us a new nature which allows us to fellowship with God and enter into heaven - but God could have, if He so desired, allowed us to enter into heaven as slaves. He could have saved our souls and took us to glory, but the Bible's teaching here is that we are not slaves, but God has made us sons. Now would I be right in saying that most of us would be glad to get to heaven even as a slave? I heard of a preacher who said this: 'If God had said to me, 'James, you may go to heaven, but only if you agree to sweep the streets of glory', I would have said: 'Where's the broom, Lord?'. If He had said, 'You may go to heaven, but only if you agree to polish the pearly gates', I would have said: 'Where's the wax?'. If He said, 'You can go to heaven, but only if you agree to wash the wings of the angels', I would have said: 'Where's the soap?'. But praise the Lord, I'm not going as a slave, I'm going as a son'. Hallelujah!

My friend, get a glimpse of this: we don't only have a new nature in Christ, we have a new name. It's not just new birth that deals with us spiritually, we have adoption that deals with us legally. This is now what John is talking about, we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God. In Roman law, a bit like our own law, adoption was a legal act of taking a child that was not your own. That child had no rights in your family, it had no lineage or heritage, but by that legal act of adoption you were taking it as yours and giving him or her the privileges and the rights of your family. That's not an easy thing to do - what would motivate such an act? Well, I can only imagine, but perhaps some would choose a child because of its attractiveness or its beauty, blue eyes or blond hair - more superior, of course, is brown eyes! - its own beauty or attractiveness. Maybe it was obligation that made people choose a child, maybe they were left in a will to a brother or sister. But what we have here is God adopting us into His family out of pure, naked, raw, unconditional love - for no reason other than the fact that He loves us!

Friends, do you see it? We have been made sons through the love of the Father, the privilege of His passion. We now have the privilege of our position, 'Now are we the sons and daughters of God'. A wee boy was cruelly teased at school because he was adopted, and after a wee while his stiff upper lip began to wobble, and he could take no more. He blurted out: 'You can say what you like, all I know is my parents chose me, yours couldn't help having you'. That's what it's all about, isn't it? We are chosen in Christ. Galatians 4:4 and 5 says: 'When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons'. God's word says we've received the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry 'Abba, Father'. I don't wish to be irreverent, far from it, or over familiar with the Almighty, but that little word 'Abba' means 'Daddy', or 'Papa' - take it or leave it, that's what it means. Whilst we must always have reverence before God, this is the intimate relationship: the Bible says His Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.

I think it must have been the doctrine of adoption that motivated Samuel Crossman to write:

'My song is love unknown,

My Saviour’s love to me;

Love to the loveless shown,

That they might lovely be.

O who am I, that for my sake

My Lord should take, frail flesh and die?'.

Contemplate our great privileges, the privilege of His passion, the privilege of our position. Through the love of the Father we have been made sons, and then we find in verse 1, so that we will share in his suffering: 'Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not'. What John is saying is: the world didn't understand Christ, and the world's not going to understand you. 'If they hated me', Jesus said, 'they will hate you'. That liberates me, because so many Christians today are running around trying to get the world to understand them, aren't they? They're trying to become acceptable to the world - now I know that in our evangelism we have to be all things to all men that we might win some, but the fact of the matter is: they're never going to understand us - never! Because the natural man does not perceive or understand the things of the spirit, they are foolishness to them. Here's one of the greatest foolishnesses of all: that we should count it a privilege to suffer and not be understood for Christ!

Sure isn't that what the apostles said when they were whipped and scourged for preaching in the name they were forbidden to preach in - they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name. I'll tell you this: if you're suffering for Jesus, you'll not be ashamed when He comes again. First Peter 4 says: 'Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy'.

Contemplate our great privileges: one, through the love of the Father, the privilege of His passion, we have been made; two, sons of God, the privilege of our position, so that we can share in his suffering, the privilege of worldly persecution. Have you contemplated our great privileges - boy, if anything would motivate you, it's motivating me as I speak tonight, to live godly that I'll not be ashamed when Jesus comes! But the second thing he tells them to do to motivate them to live godly in the light of the coming of the Lord is to anticipate their glorious prospect, anticipate our glorious prospect. Verse 2: 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is'. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones said that he felt sorry for anyone who had not spent a week with such a verse as this one.

It's a wonderful verse, isn't it? Someone has said the Christian story can be told in three chapters: the first is entitled, 'I'm not what I used to be'; the second, 'I'm not what I should be'; but the third, 'I'm not what I'm going to be'. These Docetists were coming around saying, 'You can be sinless now' - we can't be sinless now, sure we can't? John has told us, if we say that we have no sin, or we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar and we deceive ourselves. But the fact of the matter is this: though we are discouraged, and I don't know if I'm talking to a child of God this evening who's discouraged because you find it difficult to measure up to the mark of other people, you see others as being super spiritual and yourself as some kind of Christian pygmy just not reaching their standards. Maybe there's others in your circle or in your denomination that make you feel even smaller, because you haven't had the so-called experience that they have had. Maybe you throw up the head, and you think: 'What's the point of it all? It can't be done, you can't live godly in Christ Jesus in this world'. This is what John is saying to this little discouraged flock: 'Look up, be encouraged, it will be done when Jesus comes'. You are the sons of God now, and the motivation for living righteously now is that it doesn't yet appear what you shall be, but when He shall appear, you'll be like Him. In other words, live righteously now, John says, because now is the dress rehearsal for eternity. You're going to be perfect - oh, my friend, that you could get that tonight and anticipate your glorious prospect in the future in Christ. I'll tell you, there'll be nothing else that could be a catalyst like that to cause you to live godly for Christ Jesus today.

Now there's a number of aspects in this glorious prospect that he wants us to anticipate. First of all there's an uncertain expectation, an uncertain expectation: 'It does not yet appear what we shall be'. It's hard to imagine, isn't it? Being perfect! Maybe some of you're sitting there thinking: 'It's not that hard!' - that's the wives, probably! The fact of the matter is: you know what a failure you really are, and I know the failure that I am. It's uncertain in its expectancy in the sense that we really don't have a clue what it's going to be like. It is incredible!

I don't know whether you've heard the story of Michelangelo, when a servant brought him a great lump of marble and the servant said nonplussed: 'What do you see in that?', and he said, 'I see the statue of David'. He says: 'You see what?', 'The statue of David, because I'm not seeing what you see, I'm seeing what it shall be'. That's what John's trying to get across: God is not finished with us yet, it does not yet appear what we shall be. I love that little chorus: 'He's still working on me, to make me what I ought to be'. First Corinthians 2 says that: 'it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him'. Let me tell you, some of you are experts on the Lord's return, I'm telling you tonight that the half you think you know, you don't know - and what you do know, some of it is wrong! And that's from somebody who knows nothing! But I know this much: that there is an uncertainty to our expectation in this regard, that we don't know, we don't contemplate or are able to grasp what we will be. That gives me more delight than rhyming off to you a whole list of things that we will be.

There is an uncertain expectation, but secondly there is a definite revelation: 'but we know that, when he shall appear' - a definite revelation. We mightn't know everything about how He will appear, and how we will appear with Him, but the fact of the matter is: it's definite that He will be revealed. Literally the word 'appear' means 'revealed'. Three hundred and eighteen times in the 260 chapters of the New Testament we find the second coming of the Lord Jesus. The Lord spoke of it: 'If I go away, I will come again', John 14. All the apostles in their epistles spoke of it, and Paul spoke of that moment of rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4: 'If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words'. The fact is this: a definite revelation of Jesus Christ is coming! It's a fact, whatever the unbelieving world says about it matters little: Jesus is coming again!

An uncertain expectation, a definite revelation, and then thirdly an incredible transformation: we shall be like Him. Second Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 10 is a remarkable verse, I don't know whether you've ever contemplated it, Paul says: 'When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe'. Christ, one day, is going to be glorified in you! He's going to be admired in you, because when He comes you will be like Him! Now that doesn't mean that there'll be a trillion Jesus Christ's in heaven - I think that's the conception that some people have. He's not going to dissolve our personalities, we'll retain our personalities apart from sin, and our individualities within reason. We'll still be ourselves, the Lord Jesus isn't going to destroy David Legge or you - but what John is getting across, and the whole Bible, is that we will behold Christ's face in righteousness. We will be satisfied when we awake with His likeness, the thrust of the thought is: we will be morally like the Lord Jesus. Do you get it?

With the Spirit's help, we're all down here trying to live godly in Christ, and it's possible but it's not easy - but there's a day coming when we'll be like Him! We'll be free from all possibility of defilement, of sin, of trampling into temptation, of sickness, of sorrow, of death. That's why Paul said in Philippians: 'For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself'. An incredible transformation: we shall be like Him! Are you anticipating this glorious prospect? If anything should motivate you to live for Christ, is it not these things? That He's coming, it's definite; and when He comes, you will be like Him - trying to live godly in Christ Jesus down here is not a waste of time, because you're going to get there, child of God, it's going to happen! Your faith will give way to sight, and you'll be perfect!

Then fourthly, anticipate our glorious prospect, there's also a desired realisation: we shall see Him as He is. You've desired it, haven't you? It has never been realised, we look through a glass darkly, but then face-to-face we'll see and know. Can I tell you this tonight: men have never seen Jesus, the Lord in Christ, the way He is. Did you hear me? They have never seen Him the way He is. You might say: 'Did the disciples not see Him?', they saw Him the way He was, but not the way He is. How is He now? Well, they saw Him without His glory, they saw Him without all the majesty, without all the splendour of heaven - but Jesus, in John chapter 17 and verse 24, praying to His Father, said: 'I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world'. There's a day coming when we'll be caught up to be with the Lord, and we'll be changed into His likeness, and we'll see Him as He is, as no men on earth have ever seen Him before. Oh my friend, this thrills my heart:

'Jesus, these eyes have never seen

That radiant form of Thine;

The veil of sense hangs dark between

Thy blessed face and mine'.

But what a day that will be when this will be accomplished - how will it be accomplished? This is mighty: at that very moment we look on His face, we'll be changed, perfect, and will see His glory - and His glory will be reflected out of our lives. The very look into the face of Christ will bring it to pass!

'Oh, to see Thee as Thou art,

And love Thee with unsinning heart'.

Well, we're motivated to live Christlike, contemplating our privileges and also anticipating our glorious prospect, and thirdly - do you know what will happen? These things will generate a growing purity in our lives. Verse 3: 'Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure'. It could be translated: 'Every man that has this hope set on Him'. The Authorised in the typesetting is a little bit misleading in the sense that this is what the verse means, verse 3 - watch my finger: 'Every man that hath this hope in Him', Christ, 'purifieth himself', me, 'even as He', Christ, 'is pure'. In other words, if you believe that Jesus is coming again, that will cause you to live a pure life down here, because you'll be living in the light of his coming. It will purify you, even as He is already pure.

This is the balance of the Christian life, it's the balance of prophecy between expectation and participation. It's the tension between living for today and looking for tomorrow, and it's often a tension that is missed - for many who are looking for tomorrow are not living for today, and some Christians who are living for today are not anticipating tomorrow. But isn't it wonderful to even contemplate tonight that we have a tomorrow? Do you know what rejoiced my heart today? John is an aged man, the last of the living apostles, and here he is, and the old man is still thrilled with the love of God. The old man is still anticipating the second coming of Christ and its imminence, waiting for it every moment of the day. Some old men in our world today, and old women, all they can do is look back because they've nothing to look forward to. I know there's some more mature folk in our meeting tonight, and maybe you've lost all that you know as dear to you, and everything is gone that held you down here - well, listen: you thank God tonight that you've got something to look forward to. You've got glory, and your loved ones in Christ; and you've got the Lamb of God to see and know and be changed into His likeness. Would that not purify you?

Jesus urges us, because He's coming again, to keep watching, Matthew 24:42; to be ready, Matthew 24:44; to keep serving, Matthew 24:46. He left specific instructions of what to do as we await His coming: we are to witness to Him everywhere across the world, we're to build His church in every generation, we're to occupy till He comes - that means we're to be doing and using resources and putting this money to the work, using our talents for Him, not burying them. We're to remain faithful to the word of God and keep doctrine pure. If we're living in the light of His coming, it will keep us in this balance of our present responsibilities and our future expectations. So I'm asking you: as you contemplate your great privileges, the love of God, your position as a son of God; as you consider the glorious prospect that you're going to see Him, you're going to be like Him, you're going to be changed to be in His character - does it not generate a growing purity in your life? It ought to, there's something wrong if it doesn't.

D. L. Moody said: 'I have felt like working three times as hard since I came to understand that my Lord is coming again'. That's what it ought to do! If your head is full of dispensational truth, and your life's not full of holiness - that's useless! This is a truth not to be held in our heads but our hearts, and if it's held in our hearts it will affect our hands, and it will affect our feet, and it will affect our lips! One thing is sure: if we are anticipating this glorious prospect, we'll not be ashamed when He comes. When He comes, do you want to be found with a grudge in your heart towards another brother or sister? When He comes, do you want Him to find His money in your pocket? When He comes, do you want Him to smell booze off your breath? Do you want Him to find dirty magazines under your bed? Do you want Him to find disharmony in your marriage or in your home? Will He find you in a place that He wouldn't mind being in Himself? Will He find you doing something that He wouldn't mind rolling His own sleeves up and helping you with? Will you have confidence toward Him or will you be ashamed? Will I be ashamed?

A group of teenagers were enjoying a party and someone suggested they go to a certain bar for a good time. A little girl called Jan said: 'I'd rather you took me home, my parents don't approve of that place'. 'What's the matter?', one friend said, 'Are you afraid your father will hurt you?'. 'No', replied Jan, 'I'm afraid that I might hurt him'. That girl understood the principle of being a child of God. He loves us, do we love Him? One writer has said: 'A mind singularly focused on meeting Jesus will discover a renewed power to pursue righteousness, so that when He appears our righteousness will resonate with Him'. This recalls the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:8: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God'.

I'm going to finish by reading to you the words of the late Vernon McGee, the Bible teacher on radio and Bible expositor. I'm just reading them, because I couldn't put it the way he does, and the sentiment of what he is communicating is tremendous. I want you to listen carefully and grasp it as we close tonight. He says, and maybe you can identify with him: 'We all have regrets. Personally', he says, 'I don't know about you, I can speak only for myself, but I very frankly make this confession: I have never really been the man that I've wanted to be. I am at the age now where I guess a man begins to dream a little, and as I look back over my life I realise that I've never been the man that I've wanted to be, and I've never been the preacher that I've wanted to be, I've never really preached the sermon that I've wanted to preach. People have been kind to me and have said nice things, and I appreciate that, but I know in my own heart that I wish I could do better. I've never been the husband that I've wanted to be. Previously I mentioned an illness I had several years ago which necessitated a three-month rest, and my wife and I sat out on our patio and did a great deal of reminiscing. As I revealed and reviewed my life, I thought 'My, I wish I'd been a better husband than I was. I should have been'. I've never been the father that I wanted to be. Some people think that I'm a little too much for my grandsons, well I'm trying to make up for them what I left out on my own child. I've never really attained my goal. I thank God for the way He has led me, He has been good to me in my life and I rejoice in the fact that He has given to me a Bible teaching radio ministry. I never thought He'd do that, but He has - but I have not attained my goal. But He says: 'Behold, I make all things new'. He is saying, 'Vernon McGee', and He is saying this to you too, 'We are going to be able to start all over again. You are really going to live an eternal life, and you're going to attain your goal''.

Does that not motivate you to live for Him? When you contemplate your privileges, and you anticipate your glorious prospect, does it not generate a growing purity - to be pure, even as He is?

We say 'Maranatha', even so, come Lord Jesus, Amen.

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Transcribed by: Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - December 2005

www.preachtheword.com

info@preachtheword.com

1 John - Chapter 9

"The Saint And The Sinful Existence"

Copyright 2006

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

We're turning again to 1 John, 1 John chapter 3, and if you haven't been with us before, or perhaps you've been with us infrequently, we have been following this study from chapter 1 and this is now our ninth week - if memory serves me correctly - and we are in chapter 3 and verse 4. In our last study just before the Christmas break we dealt with the first three verses of chapter 3, these famous verses, and we'll read them again just to remind ourselves where we left off - but we're reading through to verse 10 this evening and our study will comprise of verses 4 through to 10, under the title 'The Saint And The Sinful Existence'.

Verse 1 of 1 John 3: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God".

Now the first thing we want to do this evening is to look at verse 6, verse 8 and verse 9 - for this particular passage of Scripture has been a bit of a quandary to many theologians and Bible teachers for this one reason: it seems to categorically say, in a casual reading of the text, that the Christian should not sin. Of course, human beings in general and Christians in particular are aware, acutely, of their own inherent sinfulness both in their nature and in their practice. They know that they are sinners, and they know that they do sin. So we have to determine first of all this evening, before we can go on any further and make sense of what the apostle is saying to us in the crucial verses of this chapter, what he means when he says that Christians should not sin. What does he mean by sin? He says in verse 6: 'Whosoever abideth in him', in Christ, 'sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen God or Christ, and has not known Him'. Verse 8: 'He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil'. Verse 9: 'Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin'.

The Son of Thunder seems again to be black and white in his condemnation of sin of any kind in the life of the Christian. The thought should come to your mind, especially if you've been with us from chapter 1, that there seems to be an apparent contradiction in what John is saying here in chapter 3 and what he has already said in verses 8 and 10 of chapter 1, if you turn back to it. There he is equally dogmatic, but in a different sense, he says in verse 8: 'If we have no sin', speaking of the sinful nature, 'we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us'. Then in verse 10: 'If we say that we have not sinned', speaking practically of the sins that we commit, 'we make God a liar, and his word is not in us'. Some theologians have concluded that John is plainly contradicting himself. On the one hand he says Christians should not sin, and if a person calls themselves by the name of Christ and sins, they're a liar. Yet in chapter 1 he calls those a liar, and the truth does not reside in those who deny they have a sinful nature and who deny they commit actual sins.

One thing we have to determine first of all, of course, is that the word of God does not contradict itself. If there's a complication like this, there's always an answer - indeed the Lord Jesus Christ said that the scripture cannot be broken in John 10:35, so there has to be an answer. Whilst we don't look just for any answer, we know that there is a true answer. Now some people erroneously find the answer in what has been known as the 'doctrine of perfectionism'. That is, they believe that you can, as a Christian, get to a stage of existence where you no longer sin, and the root of sin has been extracted from your spirit. Now John Wesley was a great man of God, and I would always hesitate to say anything detrimental about a man who did so much for the Lord Jesus Christ and won so many souls for Him. Yet throughout John Wesley's life he was convinced of what he called, I quote: 'The absolute impossibility of being a half-Christian'. I happen to agree with him, and I hope that you do too - we ought to be out and out for Christ when we take His name to ourselves. But whilst we agree with that, John Wesley in his life, unreasonably I believe, came to the conclusion and took an unbiblical leap to conclude that because a Christian is to strive for perfection, because the Lord Jesus has said, and God in the Old Testament has commanded 'Be ye perfect, as I, the Lord your God, am perfect', he erroneously concluded that we are capable of being so; that we can, in this lifetime, reach that standard of absolute and complete perfection before God.

We would all agree that that is the standard that we are to strive at, we are to try and be like the Lord Jesus by the help of His Spirit. But who of us, for one moment, in this congregation or anywhere, I would imagine, would ever claim to be perfect? We can never claim to have arrived or achieved, even the apostle Paul could say: 'Not as though I have already attained'. Indeed, I believe, to say that you're without natural sin or practical sin is to transgress what we have read in chapter 1 and verses 8 and 10 - we are calling God a liar, the truth does not reside in our hearts. But here we find the distinct lack of clarity that is in this Wesleyan doctrine, this doctrine of perfectionism: John Wesley didn't claim it for himself - that's very interesting. Yet he declared, and I quote him again: 'I do not contend for the term 'sinless', though I do not object against it'. This is the confusion that perfectionism brings. On the one hand he says: 'I don't claim it for myself, and I wouldn't contend for this word 'sinless', attributing it to a human being, though I do not object against it'. He didn't think he had it, he probably didn't claim to know any Christians that did, yet he didn't want to rule out the possibility that a human being, by the grace of God, could obtain perfection in this realm.

Charles Finney, the revivalist of the late 19th century, also taught perfectionism. Again he did many exploits for the Lord, whilst his doctrine at times was rather dodgy, he also taught, I quote: 'It is self-evident that the entire obedience to God's law is possible on the ground of natural ability' - with our own flesh we could naturally obey God's laws. But Finney also backed off, like Wesley, from pressing this doctrine too far by explaining that, I quote him again: 'To overcome sin is the rule of everyone who is born of God, and sin is only the exception. The regenerative habitually live without sin, and fall into sin only at intervals so few and far between that in strong language it may be said of a truth that they 'do not sin''. So on the one hand he's saying that it is possible to perfectly and completely in our natural man obey the commands of God, yet on the other he is cautious to press this too far, and actually defines what is to say that a Christian does not sin in this way, that 'it's just not habitual sin, it's sin as the exception rather than the rule, few and far between'.

Here's where I believe that the language of this doctrine of sinless perfectionism has been a curse on the church and on Christianity as a whole, because on the one hand it propounds the distinct possibility of being perfect, yet when its proponents are pressed they admit that it has eluded them, and to not sin in the biblical sense ultimately means to only sin at intervals, to sin as exceptions rather than rules. So even they define this 'not sinning' in 1 John and in the Bible as not sinning in a lifestyle of sinful existence. So this is actually what John means, and when we look at this word 'commits sin' that we find in verse 8: 'He that committeth sin is of the devil', we find that this Greek word for 'commit' literally means 'does sin' - 'Him that does sin', and it is in the present continuous tense. That means it is someone who is doing sin now, and continues to sin. It is speaking of a continual behaviour. It actually means a sinful lifestyle, so whenever you find this in 1 John, where it talks about committing sin, it is speaking of a sinful existence, a habitual practice of sin. One translation puts it: 'No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning, no one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him'.

Now what John is doing for us in this new portion of Scripture is, he is arguing that this is another proof that one is not a child of God. This is a great epistle concerning assurance, didn't we find that out week after week? It concerns also how we can know we have assurance and are in fellowship with God and His Son Jesus Christ. Here he gives us another rule of thumb whereby we can know whether we're a child of God. If we are not habitually living in a lifestyle of sin, a sinful existence, we can know that we are the children of God. One commentator put it well like this, Alfred Plummer is his name, I quote him: 'Although the believer sometimes sins, yet not sin but opposition to sin is the ruling principle of his life. For whenever he sins he confesses it, he wins forgiveness and perseveres with his self-purification; but the habitual sinner does none of these things, sin is his ruling principle and this could not be the case if he had ever really known Christ'. Plummer is correct: the Christian will sin, but the Christian's existence should be in opposition to sin. Sin should not be the ruling principle of his life, and when he sins, as chapter 1 outlines, he should confess his sins and know forgiveness, win it and persevere with self-purification. But if you're not a child of God you will be, by a habitual lifestyle, a sinner - sin will be the ruling principle of your life, and if it is: you can be sure that you have never really known Jesus Christ in His saving or sanctifying way.

Now we did ask the question why John is writing in this fashion, and again we are brought to the backdrop of the theological arguments that were going on in this little church in Ephesus and further afield. These false teachers were coming in, and they were teaching a dualist doctrine - if you don't know what that is, it's simply 'dualism' which taught that the flesh, the material world, is essentially evil, and the spiritual world is righteous and good. So from that they concluded that, because the material is evil, and this body ultimately is going to be burnt up in the end (that's what they taught), it doesn't matter what you do in the flesh because the flesh will perish and it will only be the spirit that lives on. As long as you're all right in your spirit, you can do whatever you like in the flesh. Another name for this was 'antinomianism', 'anti-law', and it was a reaction against the Judaisers. The Judaisers were coming into the church and teaching that you have to keep the law of Moses, you have to keep the ceremonial and the ritual law, you have to keep rules and regulations - and so a group of people swung in a pendulum over to the other extreme and said: 'No, we're not going to keep any rules, we're not going to keep the rules of the word of God or even the New Testament rules and principles of Christ. All that matters is the spiritual realm, we can indulge the flesh'.

You can see right away what was going on. There were some running around taking the name of Christ and living a debauched, depraved existence in the flesh. We find the fruit of the flesh and the lusts and works of the flesh in Galatians chapter 5, and all of these things were being manifest in the personalities of these people who were taking the name of the Lord Jesus. So what John does is he builds a biblical case to reason with the believers that are left in this little church, that what is done in the flesh matters greatly - in fact it is a matter of spiritual life and spiritual death. Let us be absolutely clear tonight: our works, the things that we do which are bad or good in the flesh do not determine and cannot decide whether or not we will be saved. I would have to say, just as a little rider to that, that there are a lot of people who use these verses, they say, as proof to argue the doctrine that once you're saved you can again lose your salvation by sinning in some particular way. That's not what John is teaching, that our works, our good or bad, will determine positively or negatively whether or not we will be saved, but rather he is telling us that as Christians our works display and demonstrate whether or not we have been saved. That's so important to make that distinction, but understand it: our works cannot save us, but our works are to be the determining factor to show whether or not we have been saved.

What John does for us in these verses, as we're going to see now, is that first of all he gives us a negative that tells us why living a sinful lifestyle is proof that we do not know God. Then secondly, by inference, positively, he gives us the secret to victory over sin, how we can know overcoming the sinfulness in our flesh and in the world round about us.

So the flow of his argument is: to live a sinful life is, first of all, verse 4, to live lawlessness. To live a sinful life is lawlessness. Look at verse 4: 'Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law'. Now the Authorised Version, when it says 'sin is the transgression of the law' would be better translated, as some translate it 'sin is lawlessness' - that is the sense, sin is lawlessness. John says that to live a sinful lifestyle is lawlessness. Of course, he's taking us back to Exodus chapter 20 when God's law, the ten commandments were given, and God was showing to man the standard that He required of him. But don't fall into making the mistake that many do in our world today, even religious people, thinking that God gave the ten commandments as some kind of ladder of rules up which we climb to heaven by our own ethics and moral standards. Rather, Paul makes clear for us in Galatians, that the law of God was a schoolteacher to bring us to Christ. God's law was to instruct us, but only Christ could save us; and so the law instructs us that we need a Saviour, and points us to Christ. Now, if the law could save us in and of itself, keeping the Do's and Don'ts of the Old Testament, why would it need to point us to Christ? It has to point us to Christ, because Christ is the only answer - but the law was given to show us our inherent sinfulness, to show us that we couldn't keep it, to show us how far short we fall from the glory of God, and to make us feel our need for a Saviour. It's like a magnifying glass that shows us more clearly and largely our own sin.

Now, what happens when we're converted - or what's meant to happen? We come to Christ, and we repent of our sin, and the Bible says that God gives us a new nature to live righteously. What we could not do under law, when it says 'do not steal, do not kill, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not covet', so on and so forth - those things that we could not do in the flesh, as Romans says, now by the law of the Spirit in Christ Jesus we have been made free, and we are now able to live out the fruit of the Spirit and effectively fulfil God's law by His power. So that we can say 'we do not commit adultery now, we do not steal, we do not kill, we do not covet', and it's not us in our own flesh doing it, is the very life of God in us to live a righteous life. Now what John is saying is this: that is the mark of the child of God, that they are actually living out the law of God. In verse 3 of our chapter 3 he says that every child of God purifies himself, even as Christ is pure. The true child of God, as he anticipates the second coming of our Lord Jesus, will be purifying himself as he gazes on the prospect of Christ.

So John's asking us, in effect, the question: what are we to think of a person that professes faith in the Lord Jesus, but lives a life of lawlessness? What's our conclusion to be? Lawlessness is rebellion against one who should be obeyed, and if we are rebelling against God in our actions and in our existence, we're wanting our own way, what are we to conclude about our state before God? Are we a child of God or are we not? Clearly, John is saying, we cannot be children of God if we live lifestyles of lawlessness. Sin is not just an outward act, it is also an inward attitude. You could have everything right in a legalistic fashion on the external and in religious ritual and rule, but in your heart it could be a rebelliousness that is shaking its fist, a wilful shaking of your fist in the face of Almighty God.

I heard the story today about a little boy whose mother put him in the closet for being bad - I wouldn't advise you doing that. But she didn't hear him for a while and wondered what was going on, she opened the door and said: 'What are you doing?'. He said: 'Well, I've spat on your coat, and I've spat on your dresses, and I've spat on your shoes, and now I'm waiting for more spit'. Rebelliousness! He wasn't sorry! It's like the little girl who was in the car, and Mummy shouted again and again and again for her to sit down in the seat and put her seatbelt on. Eventually she did it, and then a few miles down the road she says: 'Mummy, I might be sitting down on the outside, but I'm standing up on the inside'. That's what sinners are like, that's what we once were but it's not what we should be now. We need to ask questions of our own state regarding salvation if we have a rebelliousness in our heart, constantly, that wants to live lawlessly in the face of God.

The sign of a Christian, John is saying first of all, is that they will have a surrendered will to God's will. What is God's will? Well, we've already learnt this in chapter 2 verses 3 and 4: 'Hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him'. We are to be obedient in love to the Lord Jesus, His principles and His precepts, as He in His completeness has fulfilled the law of God. What did He say? 'If ye love me, keep my commandments'. So I'm asking you tonight: do you have a desire, is the ruling principle of your life trying to get at breakneck speed to lawlessness before God? Or is there a desire, even though you fail and fall at times, like all of us do, is your desire to be obedient? Or is your desire to continually rebel? My friend, if it is to rebel, John says it's doubtful if you're one of God's children.

Then secondly, to live a sinful lifestyle is, John says in verse 5, a denial of Christ. 'Ye know', verse 5, 'that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin'. Basically what John is saying is: how can you call yourself Christ's-one, a Christian, and then continue in a lifestyle of habitual sin? John is saying that it's a complete denial of the purpose of the incarnation, why God's Son took upon Himself human flesh. Incidentally, the Dualists denied that, they believed that Christ was some kind of phantom or ghost, because the material, the flesh, is evil - so how could God's Son take evil? They denied the incarnation, they denied that Christ actually died and physically rose again, but John is now coming to the true believers and saying: 'How can you call yourself a Christian, and then live in the denial of why Christ came in the flesh, why He died, why He rose again?'. Indeed, to continue in sin would be a denial of the name that we bear, for in Him, Christ, is no sin. How could we call ourselves Christ's ones, in whom is no sin, and take upon ourselves the complete existence of a sinful habitual lifestyle.

There are three New Testament passages that deal with the sinlessness of our Lord Jesus. Peter, that great man of action, said: 'Christ did no sin'. Paul, that man of great thought in the mysteries of God's word, says: 'Christ knew no sin'. John, who was the disciple whom Jesus loved, the one who had an intimate fellowship and communion with the Lord, says: 'In Him was no sin'. He was without spot and blemish, as the Levitical offering in the Old Testament being offered to God. He had to be, to bear the sins of the universe. But John's point is this: how could anyone take His name, and claim to bear His likeness, and then relish a life of sinfulness? It is impossible! It is a denial of Christ's character!

Then not only is it a denial of Christ's character, but he tells us it is a denial of Christ's cross. This is why Christ came into the world, John is saying in verse 5, to take away our sins. Doesn't the Scripture say that He was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world? The first time John the Baptist lays eyes on Him in the ministry of Christ, what does he say? John 1:29: 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away' - takes away - 'the sin of the world'. Now that phrase 'takes away' is interesting, it literally means 'to lift up and to haul off'. 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who will lift up the sin of the world and haul it off!'. Now, I think it's on a Friday we get our bins collected, and you know what happens when the bin lorry comes round your way - I shouldn't call it 'bin lorry' or 'bin men', the 'waste disposal technicians' I think is the correct terminology. They gather the rubbish up, and then they throw it into the lorry, and they haul it off for you and you never need to see it again. It's wonderful, throw all your rubbish in your own domestic bin, put it out in the wheelie bin, and before you know it, a week later it's all gone. That is the sense here, Christ is lifting up our sin, He's hauling it off. When the Lord Jesus died on the cross and shed His precious blood, He took away all the rubbish, all the trash and the garbage of our lives, and He has hauled it off forever. Here's the wonderful thing: when God hauls it off, we don't need to look at it again! 'There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus', but better than that: when God hauls it off, the devil can't haul it back.

The Psalmist has said: 'As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us'. How far is that? It is an immeasurable distance, East from West, it keeps going, one away from the other. Not only do you never see your sin again, and the devil can't haul it up in your face again, but perhaps greater than those two things: even if you go looking for it, you'll never find the dump where God has put it. It's gone forever, for Christ took it, died, buried it, and three days later rose again without it - it's gone! The chorus says:

'Rolled away, rolled away,

And the burden of my heart rolled away'

Now here is John's point: there is something wrong if a so-called Christian is a bin-hoker, if they're looking for their sin again. My friend, is that you? I know people can backslide, I know the prodigal son, Luke chapter 15, and I know where he found himself after he spent all his inheritance in riotous living. He finds himself among the pigs, eating the swill - but remember this please: he couldn't be satisfied eating it, and he came to himself, and he got up and he went to his father. There's something wrong if you can live a lifestyle which is a complete denial not only of the character but of the cross of Christ, and it doesn't figure on you at all! The prodigal didn't stay with the pigs!

Now the positive in this point of John's for us is that if we are defeated, if we are constantly falling into sin - well, first of all, we need to question whether we're truly saved - but whatever the condition is that we find ourselves in, there is an answer. It's inherent in this verse 5, the answer is found in the victory of the cross of Jesus. This is why Christ has been manifested: to take away our sins, for in Him was no sin. The message is this: there is deliverance! My friend, whatever your particular sin is, even if it is an habitual lifestyle of sin and you're not even converted tonight, the wonderful message of the gospel, the good news of Jesus, is that you can be. The power of God's Son at the cross is the dynamite of God that is able to deliver all men.

But whilst there is deliverance, we have to be warned that a sinful lifestyle can never ever be an alternative lifestyle to the child of God. We hear an awful lot about alternative lifestyles today, don't we? Some are even saying that you can be a practising homosexual or a celibate homosexual, and be a Christian. Some are propounding that you can be committing adultery and be a Christian, you can practise idolatry and be a Christian, you can engage in constant drunkenness and be a Christian. Let me tell you what God's word says in another portion, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, listen to it carefully, verse 9: 'Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God'. God's word is clear: you can do those things, but if you're going to become a Christian you've to repent of them. Now I'm not saying that you'll not fall into some of those sins, God forbid that you should, but all of us fall into sin at some time in our Christian life, if not an awful lot - but this is the point: these lifestyles of sin must change and cease to be your lifestyles, cease to be the ruling, dominating factor of your existence. Here he points it out in verse 11: 'And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God'. Some of them were going back to their old sins, but Paul was saying: 'If you're truly converted, your life will not be a denial of Christ, of His character and of His cross'.

Well, my friend, the question is posed to you: have you been delivered from these things? I know you might have had a hiccup or two, but if you, from the moment of your profession, have constantly lived exactly the way you lived before, you cannot be saved. That's what John says. Then thirdly, he tells us: to live a sinful lifestyle, verse 6, betrays an absence of abiding. Verse 6: 'Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him'. You've never seen Him or known Him, in other words you've never been born again if you have a sinful lifestyle existence - for those who are born again, they abide in Christ. What does 'abiding in Christ' mean? Well, the Lord Jesus said: 'If you abide in me, and my words abide in you' - it's talking about God's word having a resting place in you, and you having a resting place in Christ. Essentially, what it is in a practical level is communion with the Lord Jesus, fellowshipping with Him, getting to know Him, becoming one with His Spirit. Now here's the great question, and it's a frightening one for every child of God - at least it ought to be - if you never ever abide in Jesus, what does that mean? If you never fellowship with Him?

I remind you of Matthew 7:23, where a lot of people will come and say to the Lord on that day: 'Did I not do this, that and the other in Your name?', and the Lord Jesus will say, 'Depart from me, I never knew you'...John says, 'Neither have they known him'. Do you know Him? Have you got to know Him more since you professed faith in Christ? You know, this is why we push for people to read the Bible, and to pray, and to have a daily time with the Lord, to cultivate it and to get it to grow, because this is one of the ways we get assurance of our salvation, and we know fellowship with God and we grow as a Christian. But for someone to profess faith in Christ and never ever abide, or even have a lifestyle of abiding in fellowship with God, it is questionable whether they even know Him! Serious stuff, isn't it?

But the positive here for us in verse 6 is that there is victory over sin in communion with the Lord Jesus. This is the source, if we abide, have fellowship with Him, if we're in perfect harmony with Him and there's nothing between our soul and His heart we can have victory over sin! Now sonship that we looked at in our last study in the first three verses brings us into union with Christ, but it is fellowship that brings us into communion with the Lord. Do you see what it's saying? A Christian who is in sweet fellowship and wonderful communion with his Lord will constantly be gaining victory over sin. Maybe you don't think it's important, and sometimes, I have to confess with you, it's the hardest thing in the world to get on your knees and pray and to read the Scriptures - but never underestimate the power of it. I look back on times when I have fallen into sin with shame, and I can as often as not pinpoint the time when perhaps my times with the Lord started to wane - and then all of a sudden we wonder why we fall flat on our face in that old sin. If we live a sinful lifestyle it betrays an absence of abiding.

 

Number four in verses 7 and 8: to live a sinful lifestyle is not only lawlessness, and a denial of Christ, and a betrayal of an absence of abiding, but verses 7 and 8 tell us that it proves our spiritual parentage. Verse 7 says: 'Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as God is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning'. Now here we have John telling us that you can only be righteous if you have the nature of the righteous One, verse 7: 'He that does righteousness is righteous, even as God is righteous'. You cannot get righteous by obeying rules and trying your best. Peter tells us that we have been made partakers of the divine nature, God has given us His very life, the only life that pleases God is the life of His Son, and He has given us that life by His Spirit. But if you practise unrighteousness, the implication is, that is not natural to God - unrighteousness isn't in His nature. So then it begs the question: who is our father if we are habitually, in a lifestyle, practising sin? John's conclusion is: our father is the devil.

In John 8 and verse 44 the Lord Jesus said the same thing to the Pharisees: 'Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it'. He's a liar from the beginning, Jesus said, and John says effectively the same in verse 8: 'He that commits sin is of the devil; the devil sinned from the beginning'. The tense there of 'sinned from the beginning' means that the devil's original sin has continued with out a break since it began - isn't that amazing? It's just like one big long sin! What is John trying to say? Are you like the devil or are you like God? What's the devil like? He sinned at the beginning, and he hasn't stopped sinning since - and if you profess faith in Jesus Christ, and you have sinned since your profession in a lifestyle and existence of sin, you don't belong to God, your father is the devil.

Some kids look so much like their parents that you couldn't lose them in a crowd, isn't that true? It's the same with the children of God and the children of the devil, they don't get mixed up - they're recognisable. But here's the crux, literally, of the matter at the end of verse 8: 'For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil'. If you name the name of Christ, and then follow a devilish sinful past, how can it be, if it was Christ coming into the world with the intent to destroy Satan's work that was meant to save you in the beginning? If Christ came into the world with the purpose of destroying the works of the devil, what is to be thought of someone who wishes to carry on the devil's work? The conclusions are obvious, aren't they? John says you're not a child of God.

I don't know whether you're sitting here worried or not - you should be if you're not a child of God - but there is a twofold test to tell us exactly how close we are to the Lord. It's an answer to two questions. First of all: how sensitive are you to sin? You'll know how close you are to the Lord Jesus by how sensitive you are to sin. Secondly: how separate are you from sin? John is saying that the man who is truly saved is abiding in the Lord Jesus, that means he doesn't want to be around sin. You and I both know that the one that you're closest with is the one that you will be most like and become more like, and John is saying that if you're living with Jesus and abiding in Jesus, it's because you're close to Jesus. But if you're living like the devil, what does that mean?

The positive of verse 8 is that Satan has been defeated. Whilst many need to question whether they're truly in the faith or not because they live like the devil their father, and practice habitual sin, isn't it great to be able to say categorically tonight that he has been defeated? If we are under the blood of Christ that He shed on the cross, the devil cannot make us sin. Now I know he can take us unawares, and he can call our bluff from time to time - but a lot of people, even Christians, need to defeat the lie of the devil in their mind and heart that says to them: 'You cannot resist this sin'. I know, it's happened to me, and I'm sure it's happened to you - some people say: 'Ah, I'm just prone to this, or that or the other, that's just my character, that's just my nature'. The devil would make us believe that and contradict what John says by the Holy Spirit, that Christ came to destroy, and has destroyed the works of the devil. 'Destroy' literally means 'to render inoperative', it could be expressed 'to put out of business, to decommission, to undo the devil's work'.

Imagine this: the Lord Jesus had just come down from heaven for a day, and went over and zapped with omnipotent power the devil off the face of the earth, and went back up to heaven - we might live a little bit more happily ever after, but the fact of the matter is He would not have undone what the devil had already done, would He? But He has come to die on the cross, to shed His blood, to be buried, to rise again, and to sit at the right hand of the Father interceding for us to undo everything that the devil has done against us. What a great discovery it is when the child of God realises that they're not fighting for victory and struggling with Satan and sin in the world, but they're fighting in the victory! It's already been purchased, the devil is already defeated at the cross, through the resurrection, and we are the victors and he is the vanquished!

Have you realised that? The devil wants to keep you down there, my friend. Christ has purchased the victory ground for you, and sin need no longer have dominion over you. If it does, ask the question: one, are you really a Christian?; two, do you really know the victory that Jesus has purchased for you?

There was once a US Army General, I think he was in the United States Army, his name was General Wainwright. During World War II he was taken captive by the Japanese, and he was beaten and starved and emaciated. One day a plane landed with the news that the war had ended, and the next day the Japanese, out of sheer habit, came to the compound with the General and started to torture him and beat him as they did every single day. They hadn't recognised that the war had ended, and they were defeated, and the General effectively was on the victory side. Just as the soldiers came in and started to lay into him, he said: 'Wait a minute! Put down your weapons, I'm in charge! You're my captives!'. They put the weapons down, because that was the fact - what had changed? Nothing had changed, they were in the same environment, the same forces, but what had changed was historical fact: the Allies had won the war. The fact of the matter is this: Christ is the Captain of our salvation, but Satan is the captive! Christ has sapped all his power, and we need no longer be under his control. Whilst the devil, at times, may throw us to the ground - praise God, he cannot pin you to the ground! Oh, that you would hear that tonight.

An habitual sinful lifestyle, finally, displays the lack of the Holy Spirit, verse 9. It is lawlessness, it is a denial of Christ's character and His cross, it betrays an absence of abiding, and it proves our spiritual parentage - but verse 9 tells us it displays the lack of the Holy Spirit. 'Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God'. Now, there's great debate over what 'his seed remaineth in him' means. Some people view it as the new nature which is imparted to us at salvation, some people believe it is the gift of the Holy Spirit, some believe it's the seed of the word of God - we're not born-again by corruptible seed, but by incorruptible, the word. It means all of those I think, but essentially it means the new life that we have in Christ, the seed of God's life in us. John is saying: if God has put that in us, it will remain in us. There's the verse for people who believe you can be saved one moment and lost the next. Their argument is: 'Well, that's a licence to go out and live as you please' - no, it's not! For John is saying that the evidence that God's life and seed remains in you is a life of holiness and not a life of sinfulness.

In other words, could I sum it up like this: a person who is saved is secure, but he must also be sanctified or he is neither. Did you hear that? A person who is saved is secure, but he must be sanctified or he is neither. Let me put it as the author to the Hebrews did: live peaceably with all men, for without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Ultimately the standard of your lifestyle will be determined by how you view two things that we've looked at tonight: one, how you view sin. Do you see it as lawlessness, verse 4? Do you see it as of the devil, verse 8? But also your view of Christ is so important to have victory over sin: do you see His worth, verse 5? In Him is no sin, and therefore if you take His name you cannot sin. Secondly His work, verse 8, this is why He came into the world, why He died and rose again, why He's at the right hand of God: do you see Christ? Someone has wisely written: 'Every sin a Christian commits, he knows he adds directly to the burden that Christ bore on the cross'. Do we think about that when we sin? 'Every failure to conform to God's standards denies the spiritual victory that Jesus won on the cross, and', he goes on, 'it grants the devil grounds for hope. Nobody who understands why Christ came can possibly live in anything but a state of unceasing war against sin'.

An old Methodist evangelist named Dr Morrison taught the doctrine of perfection in holiness, and some great godly Methodist evangelists there have been. It was said that he came closer, perhaps, to practising the doctrine than many folks do. But someone asked the preacher, a bit with tongue in cheek: 'Dr Morrison, have you reached a point in your life where you cannot sin?'. This is an interesting answer, listen to it, Dr Morrison wisely, with a twinkle in his eye, said: 'No, my brother, I have not yet arrived at such a place; but I can tell you where I am right now. I have come to a place where I sin, but I cannot enjoy it'. Are you in that place? Am I in that place? May we get to that place - but should there be one here that even doubts that they're in Christ, my friend, you doubt your salvation until you're sure.

If you're troubled with habitual sin in your life, and we've all been there, you need to get your eyes now on that crown of thorns, on those nail prints, on that scarred side of the Saviour and realise your sin is what put Him there, my sin. But realise that it was there to cleanse you from it and, my friend, if you can get there by faith and avail by trust of what He did for you, believing that it's sufficient to purge your sins, He will save you, child of God He will restore you. Whatever you do tonight: get there.

Father, after we sin we always ask the question: why did we do it? We thank You that John has taught us if any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins, and not our sins only but for the sins of the whole world. There's many things that we don't know about sin in this life and ourselves, but we thank You that we know this much: at God's right hand there is a Saviour who has defeated sin and Satan, and the world and death and hell. Lord, may we shelter in Him, and may we be known as the children of God, not because of our profession alone but because of our lives - that it may be said of us: 'They walk as He walked'. Take us now to our homes in safety, we pray, in the fellowship and abiding of our Lord Jesus. Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - January 2006

www.preachtheword.com

info@preachtheword.com

1 John - Chapter 10

"Brotherly Love"

Copyright 2006

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

Well we're turning, of course, again to 1 John, the first epistle of John, and this is study number 10 tonight, and the title is 'Brotherly Love'. Our verses for consideration are verses 10 through to 18, so let us begin at verse 10 under this title 'Brotherly Love':

"In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth".

Now as I've told you on previous evenings in this study, particularly in our introductory night way back at the beginning of September, there's not much structure to the first epistle of John, and the themes in it are really spiralled right throughout this book - if you like, in the form of a spiral staircase that tends to widen the further up it goes. So we begin in chapter 1 and chapter 2 of this book with several core cardinal themes that John's going to take right throughout this book as threads, but each time he revisits it in this spiral he adds another aspect of truth to it or another application to it. So we're going to find week after week that we're covering the same ground, but yet we'll have added to us each evening an extra truth or an embellishment of the original truth. Tonight we're looking again at this great subject of love, and of course this is an epistle to do with assurance and how we can know that we have fellowship with God and His Son Jesus Christ.

We've seen that there are three tests within this book whereby we can know that we are the children of God, we can have assurance. First of all there is the doctrinal test, that we believe the historical gospel that was revealed at the beginning through the incarnation of our Lord Jesus, His death and resurrection, that we believe in the historical Christ and the historical authentic gospel. Then secondly there is the moral test, we cannot claim to be Christ's-ones and live ungodly lives as some were doing in John's day - the moral test. Our life has to live up to what we believe and what Christ taught. But then there is the social test, and that is the one we're looking at tonight again, and that is that of love towards our brothers specifically in Christ - and our sisters of course - and indeed love that we are to show to all men.

The last time we visited this theme was in chapter 2 verses 7 to 17, we're not going to look at those tonight, but it would be good for you to recap at your own leisure and cover that again, what we have already studied in those verses. But this word 'love' is found fifty times within 1 John, and it's remarkable when you consider that 1 John is only a book of five short chapters - but this theme of love is found fifty times right across those five chapters.

I think love, as a concept and indeed as a word, is one that, perhaps, has been more abused and misused than any other in our language, or indeed any world language - especially over the last decade. A lot of people don't really know what love is to define or to experience in their own lives and environment. Sadly, love has come to be described in awful terms, some of the most hateful and perverse practices that are known to man today are now being described as 'love'. Things that God has declared to be an abomination, such as sodomy, homosexuality, something that God has pronounced His judgment and condemnation upon, people are describing as love - 'same-sex love'. So you can see how this great word, beautiful word, has been perverted in our day.

Then there are others who maybe wouldn't stretch their definition that far, but understand love as a sentimental sort of fluffy feeling that's akin to butterflies in the tummy - it's an emotion, purely, it is a tendency. Then there are others who see love as agreeing with everyone, being cordial, harmonious, even with others whose cultures and beliefs perhaps don't agree with yours, but yet you accept them and live and let live - they understand that to be love. Then, as we have already mentioned, many are confused today and just see love as raw gratuitous lust. Love, for many, has become lustfulness.

But if we take all those definitions, modern definitions of love, we can see that there's a trend running right throughout them all, and it is simply this: that love in some shape or form is understood as being something that gives you self-gratification. It's something that blesses you, it's something that gives you a buzz, gives you a worthwhile feeling, a sense of gaining and getting - and certainly any concept of self-sacrifice is foreign to the modern understanding of love. I believe this is seen often in how, sometimes, we casually use the word - even as Christians. I might say: 'I love chocolate' - dropping a hint there! You might say: 'I love golf'. The women might say: 'I love shopping'. What you are describing is that those things make you feel good, you get a measure of self-gratification tucking into a bar of Cadbury's, or spending your husband's money - it feels good! You can almost see it as well in the way that people talk about relationships. You hear people talking today about 'Falling in and out of love' - I don't believe you do either of those two things. Some people say that their marriage or their relationship has broken down irretrievably because they've 'fallen out of love'. Now that is cold language, I believe, which means they aren't getting out of that relationship what they feel is their right. They've chosen no longer to love the person because, one way or another, they're not getting their way any longer.

Now that is not the Bible's definition of love. It is not something that revolves around self or self-gratification, but at the very centre - and, ironically we could say, at the crux ('crux' is the Latin word for 'cross', of course) - there is self-sacrifice as the foundation of everything that can be described as love. Now in ancient Greece, in biblical Greek and ancient Greek, there were three or perhaps four definitions for love. One we know today is that of 'eros' describing sexual love and physical love, and we get the word 'erotic' from it. The Greek god 'Eros' takes a personification of this concept, and 'Aphrodite' and many other pagan gods were personifications of this fleshly, lustful love. Incidentally, you will not find the Greek word 'eros' in the New Testament, because sexual love had been degenerated, through this concept of what sexual love ought to be in Greek society and culture, the Holy Spirit never included this word within the Scriptures. It doesn't mean that God is against sexual union, it just means the concept was totally depraved and perverted.

Then there is the Greek word 'filio' which is found in the New Testament, but it describes an affectionate love that could be among friends and brothers. The word for love that we find in John's first epistle, and indeed many times right throughout the New Testament is the Greek word 'agape'. Now turn with me for a moment to 1 Corinthians chapter 13, to the great passage on love and its definition. Here Paul outlines for us what this agape love really is, and he defines it, and that's the word for love that he uses here. Let me read it in a slightly different translation just to bring it home, what is meant here, verse 4, and you can correspond in your own translation where you are: 'Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, it always trusts, it always hopes, it always perseveres. Love never fails'. Now agape love is divine love, it is the love of God, it is what God is in His essence. The mighty fact of the portion that we are studying tonight is that this is the very love that we are called upon as Christians to show to our brothers and sisters in the church. This is the love of Christ.

What we could do, if you keep your Bible open at this passage, 1 Corinthians 13, you could substitute - and I've done this with you before - the word 'love' for 'Christ' or 'Jesus'. 'Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind. He does not envy, He does not boast, He is never proud. Jesus is not rude, He is not self-seeking, He is not easily angered', so on and so forth. But I wonder how many of us could substitute our names for this word 'love'? 'David Legge is patient' - I'd have to stop right away! 'David Legge is kind, he does not envy, he does not boast, he is not proud' - but this is in effect what John is saying. What this agape love is, and this agape love is the love of God that has been displayed and manifested for us in Christ, is the love that we ought to show to one another. Again we could remind ourselves of what John said in chapter 2 and verse 6: 'We ought to walk even as he walked', in every aspect, not least showing that great agape love in our lives. Indeed Paul said in Galatians 5:23 that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance - but love is the fruit of the Spirit, the Spirit of God. If He is in us, He will manifest the love of God.

So what John is saying to us again is that here is a test of whether you're a child of God: do you have this love toward your brothers and sisters? If you do it's a good sign that you're saved, if you don't it's a sure sign that you're not. Verse 10: 'In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother'. It's a test of fellowship, it's something that can give us assurance and confidence that we know God. The presence of it should make us know that we have eternal life, but the absence of it proves that we do not have eternal life. S