The Doctrine Test
Preached 3/12/23 [previous sermon]
1 John 1:10-2:2
INTRODUCTION
This is the fourth sermon in this series from the book of First John and we are just getting to the end of the chapter one of this important letter. As we previously saw, the apostle John gave us his overall purpose for writing it in chapter five:
1 John 5:13 “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
In other words, he was writing to Christians (or at least those who professed to be Christians) to let them have assurance of their salvation. Why is assurance important? Consider:
In the world of human religions there is generally no real assurance of salvation. Most people, if asked the questions “if you were to die today, would you go to heaven”, would say “I think so.” If pressed to answer where their confidence (such as it is) comes from, they will probably give an answer that sounds like “because I’m a good person”, or “I think I do more good than bad”, or “I have good intentions.” But the Bible tells us a different story, and the gospel gives us a completely different source of assurance. The gospel tells us that “there is none righteous, no, not one”, that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and that “the wages of sin is death”. (Romans 3:10, 23; 6:23) It tells us that God has provided salvation through the sacrificial death of his Son in our place, that we receive this salvation solely by faith, so that “… by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, [it is] the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
If we trust in our own righteousness, we deny either our sin or the holiness and justice of God. Either denial is deadly. And in the end, we are left sitting on a pair of scales with no idea whether we have accumulated enough “points” to make the grade. Does God grade on a scale? Is a “D” grade enough? Or maybe a “C” is a passing grade for heaven? Or do you need an “A”? Or maybe even an “A plus”? There is no assurance in this kind of system, and people start grabbing for last-minute boosts. If we are, say, diagnosed with cancer or we find ourselves in a foxhole amidst bombs and bullets, we will start bargaining with God: “If I make it out of this I will give money to charity” or, “… I will stop cussing”, or especially “… I will go to church every week – even Sunday School and maybe even a prayer meeting or two!” as our sin and our uncertainty before judgment and our eternal peril becomes much more real to us. But – if we rely upon the work of Christ on the cross, our certainty is based on his power and on his righteousness and on his faithfulness.
The truth is that a Christian has assurance of salvation. As the writer of the book of Hebrews admonishes us:
Hebrews 4:16 (NASB) Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Confidence. John wants all of his readers to experience that kind of peace and assurance in Christ. So starting in verse 10 of this chapter John gives another test. But this one is different from before. We will see here that doctrine is an important part of our salvation. It is an essential part. And we must realize that, contrary to popular opinion in the world, God is not what we make of him. No matter how much we think that we can define Him according to our wishes, He is what He is. We rely on his own self-revelation to know anything about Him. In the same way our self-image must be the same as his image of us. Our salvation depends this. He is omniscient, and knows us better than we know ourselves. We cannot have assurance of salvation if we
1. Deny the need for a Savior, or if we
2. Deny the will of the Savior, or if we
3. Deny the sufficiency of the Savior.
I Denying The Need for a Savior (v1:10):
There are three “if we say” clauses in the first chapter of this letter. First he told us that as Christians if we say that we have fellowship with the God who is light and in whom there is no darkness, but we are walking in darkness ourselves, “w lie and do not practice the truth.” (V6) This was the first level of severity. But John was not finished. Next, in verse 8 he told us that if we say that we have no sin, “we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Since Christians have been given a new heart and are indwelt by God’s own Holy Spirit, we will be growing in holiness and will hate our every wrong deed or thought or attitude. This is the second level of self-deception. As he says in verse nine, we should not deny our sins but rather confess them to God and receive loving forgiveness and restoration.
The final and worse one of the three statements is found in verse 10. It is the worst because it is the one that is an acid test of whether one is really in the faith. We might, as Christians, temporarily stray from the path of light, and we might try to conceal a specific sin from our conscience or from God, but this final statement indicates a person who was never saved at all. So after John gives us a fellowship test and then a holiness test, the final one is a doctrinal test. Let’s read it in verse ten:
1 John 1:10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
What is John saying? Consider this. The first part of being saved is realizing that we need a Savior. That makes sense right? Before we can ask forgiveness for our sins, we must be aware of our sins. Before we repent of our sins, we must we must first agree with God that we have sinned. And before we fall upon Christ for God’s mercy, we must comprehend the depth of our rebellion against God. Jesus illustrated this beautifully in the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector:
Luke 18:9-14 9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."
This contrasts the self-righteous vs the convicted, the complacent vs the desperate, the satisfied vs the repentant, and the arrogant vs the humble. The change from self-righteousness to humble contrition is done by the combination of two agents.
One agent is the word of God. In Romans 10 Paul tells us “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (10:17) What does the word of God teach us?
1. It teaches us about our sin. In fact, Paul said back in Romans 6 that he would not have known about his own sin without hearing the word of God. It is like a perfect mirror that reveals all that is in our hearts. In fact, it is more like an MRI or a CAT scan than just a mirror. As the writer of the book of Hebrews put it:
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
2. The Bible tells us about God’s righteousness and his holy and just wrath against sin. In the Bible, God reveals what He is like to us – especially about his holiness, righteousness, and justice. It teaches us what His standard of righteousness looks like – but also about his love for us even when we didn’t deserve it.
3. It tells us about Jesus and what He did to save us.
But the scriptures do their work by the empowering of a second agent, which is the Holy Spirit. What does the Holy Spirit do to bring about saving faith?
First, He gives us new birth – He regenerates us, making us spiritually alive. He gives us spiritual light. Paul told the Christians in
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Titus 3:5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
2 Corinthians 4:6 For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Secondly, He convicts our soul of the truths about ourselves and about God:
John 16:7-11 7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
Jesus describes three things that the Holy Spirit does in this present age to bring people to salvation. Let’s look briefly at them:
1. He convicts us of the fact that there is a judgment coming. Everyone will face a reckoning for sin. There will be no escaping it. There is no spiritual force that will be able to stand against God’s righteous judgment. Satan is already condemned. As the Bible tells us: “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27)
2. He reveals the righteousness of Jesus to our hearts. As we already read in 2 Corinthians 4, each of us that are saved turned to Christ when the Holy Spirit brought us to an understanding of who Jesus is: the righteous Savior, who was a perfect sacrifice that satisfies God’s wrath against us when we trust in Him.
3. Finally, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin. Why? Because nobody will turn to the salvation Christ offers if they don’t think that they need forgiveness. If we think that we are righteous enough to say to God “you owe me heaven because of my own righteousness” then we are we are in great danger. We are rejecting God’s own appraisal of our fallen condition. While he offers salvation with an outstretched and open hand, we will slap that hand away in our self-satisfaction. Even wise Solomon said “there is no one who does not sin” (2 Ch 6:36, 1 Kings 8:46) If we do so, the question from Hebrews 2:3 applies to us: “how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?”
So this brings us back to our verse. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and God’s just wrath against it. If we are without conviction by the Holy Spirit then we are described by Paul in Romans 8:9 when he tells us “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” If you call yourself a Christian but have never come to the realization that you were “dead in trespasses and sins”, have never loathed your rebellious acts against God, have never left behind the idea that you will go to heaven because you have been “a good person”, then the apostle John says that you are “a liar, and his word is not in [you]”. If you have never repented of your disobedience to God’s laws then you are just like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable that thanked God that he was not a sinner. If that is the case, then you have not been justified before God and your name is not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
R.C. Sproul made an interesting comment about this. He said: “The church is full of hypocrites. At least that’s the judgment that I hear over end over again from those who are critics of the Christian faith and of the church. It’s one of the most common objections to the truth claims of Christianity. The problem is that it’s wrong. There are certainly some, of course, but to say that the church has a plenitude or a fullness of hypocrites in her midst is simply slander. Why is this charge made so frequently? It’s probably because people don’t understand what hypocrisy actually is. People on the outside of the church notice that we come to church on a regular basis, and then during the week, they observe us. They watch our activities. They listen to our words. The see that we sin. And then they say, “You say you’re a Christian, but you sin; therefore, you must be a hypocrite.” Well, if we claim as Christians to be without sin and then we sin, we would indeed be guilty of the sin of hypocrisy. If these people’s complaint were that the church is filled with sinners, then that would be correct. In fact, the Christian church is the only organization that I know of that requires a person to be a sinner to join it.” [1] So, we see that “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
In other words, if we deny our own sinfulness, we deny God’s written word and the testimony of the Holy Spirit – and that road does not lead to salvation.
II Denying The Will of the Savior (2:1a):
1 John 2:1a My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
Again, we are reminded that the point of this letter is to give assurance to believers. The companion point to this is that if we want true assurance, we must not only confess the truth about ourselves and about God (in other words, agree with the message of the gospel), we must also show the fruit of that salvation in our lives. We can parrot the truths of the gospel and still show by the direction of our lives that our souls have never been redeemed.
So the reason that John has been talking about sin is pretty simple indeed. “Sin! Don’t do it!”. The fact is, we are saved for the purpose of being sanctified. We are saved to be free from sin. All through the New Testament we see this truth repeated over and over. Verses like Romans 6:1-2 “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” or Ephesians 1:4 “… he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. …” or Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Later we will read this in 1 John 3:5-9 “You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.” It’s not like this message is hidden. So John has told us three important truths:
1. Salvation involves acknowledging our own sin before God and turning to Him for his forgiveness.
2. While in our old bodies we will not be perfect – we will still commit sins and will need to confess them to God.
3. Our new nature and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit should cause a measurable change in our attitudes, likes, and behavior if our salvation is real. It is impossible to be a Christian and have no spiritual fruit whatsoever.
So how is this a doctrinal issue? There are some who teach that a person can just “accept Jesus” and then it is perfectly okay to sin. This doctrine in its many forms has many names from “easy believe-ism” or “antinomianism”. The idea is that a person receives salvation when they accept Jesus as savior and then they may (or may not) accept Him as Lord. But we see in scripture that Jesus’ preaching always started with a call to repent of sin. It boggles the mind that someone could realize that they need forgiveness of sin but that would happen without realizing that sin is bad. John and James both argue strongly that a life without any sign of turning from sin indicates a false profession of faith. And John here is clearly indicating that a life of assurance of salvation is a life in which we strive to NOT SIN.
We do not, of course, trust in our obedience to get salvation. But a saved heart is always a changed heart. For salvation, though, and also for current sanctification, we trust only in our Savior, Jesus Christ. And this brings us to John’s third point. Our assurance is shaky if we don’t believe that Jesus and what He accomplishes for us are all that we need to be saved.
III Denying The Sufficiency of the Savior (2:1b-2):
John gives us two aspects of the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ in the first two verses of chapter two. Let’s look at them each in turn. The first aspect takes place in the present:
I John 2:1b 1 … But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
Remember that John said that he wrote this letter to his fellow believers in Jesus so that they would not sin, but remember that just a few verses previously he warned against thinking that we had already made it to sinlessness in this life. Rather we are to confess our sins to God and he will be faithful to forgive and cleanse us. But how can we reach all the way to God in his heaven? We need a go-between – a bridge – between us. But who can hold our hand here on earth and the hand of God the Father in heaven at the same time? Paul answered this question in his first letter to Timothy:
1Timothy 2:5-6 5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.
There is only one being who qualifies to be our go-between (or mediator), and it is the Lord Jesus Christ. No holy man living in a cave in a high mountain can reach higher than the mountain that he sits on. No human being with the word “Saint” added to their name is righteous enough. No other famous believer from Bible times can do it - not Abraham, not Moses, not David, not Mary, not even the Apostles like Paul, Peter, James or even John. No wise professor in the greatest university can get us there by their great knowledge or intellect. The greatest lawyer, trained by the greatest law schools in history could not stand before God in our defense. The greatest Olympic athlete cannot scale that distance. Only one advocate can bring us to God – the one provided: Jesus Christ the Righteous.
John uses the term advocate to describe Jesus’ ministry for us. This word used by John (and only John) in scripture is the Greek word paraklētos, which historically was used to describe “a party who represents the interests of a second party so that they might be furthered with some third party”. [2] But Jesus is more than a lawyer. He comes along side of us as our Helper. He makes intercession for us before the Father. What qualifies Him to be our representative? Look how John describes Him: “Jesus Christ the righteous.” He is (as the writer to the Hebrews said): “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens … who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin”. (Heb 4:14-15) So Jesus is all that we need. If anyone tries to tell you that you need a human priest to stand between you and God, they are pulling your hand from Jesus hand – run away from them and to the Lord, who is always beside you as your paraklete. If anyone tells you Jesus is really busy, so you should ask a canonized saint or even Jesus’ earthly mother, cling to Jesus. He is your only advocate, and the only One that you need.
There is a beautiful picture of the work of Jesus in the third chapter of Zechariah. A dramatic scene opens in verse one:
Zechariah 3:1 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.
We see that Joshua was in a terrible position. He was being accused of sin, and the accusations were true:
Zechariah 3:3 Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments.
Joshua was covered with the guilt and impurity of his sin, and Satan had every right to point out this sin as a prosecuting attorney. Without any defense he stood there, condemned. But the Angel of the Lord (who we believe is the preincarnate Christ, the Son of God), does something amazing. In verse four He called for the removal of Joshua’s filthy garments and provided him with “pure vestments”. He then gave Joshua assurance – in verses 6 and 7 the angel of the Lord told him that if he will walk in his ways then (among other things) he will be given “the right of access among those who are standing here”.
So how does Jesus, our advocate, give us this kind of access to God? Where do our pure vestments come from? Verse two gives us that answer. They describe in the description of the past work of the Savior:
I John 2:2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
What is propitiation and why do we need it? To understand what he is talking about we must turn to the first chapter of Romans – to the beginning of the gospel explanation by Paul. Note that the gospel does not start on a happy note:
Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
Without Christ, we are in the position of Joshua the high priest from Zechariah 3. We are clothed with filthy garments of sin and Satan stands as our accuser before God. And, as Paul warns us, the holy wrath of the completely just God has been revealed against us. It is a debt that we cannot pay with our finite lives because the one that we sin against is infinite. All eternity will not be sufficient to pay that debt. But wait! Hope appears before us where no hope could be anticipated. The infinite Son of God, in love, has died in our place. He, who never sinned – who “knew no sin” – was made to be sin for us so that we might have his righteousness – or as Paul puts it: that we “might become the righteousness of God”. (2 Cor 5:21)
Though we receive this amazing and undeserved exchange as a free gift from God by grace through faith, it was not cheaply bought. The eternal Son of God took on human flesh, lived a humble life as a man on earth, and was then put to death though He had never done anything wrong. He took the entire, incomprehensible, wrath of God against us on his Cross. If we look closely at the gospels we see a moving detail. We see that the One who had always referred to God as his Father did not call Him that while taking our punishment on the cross. Instead, He cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” We will never, NEVER, understand the anguish and pain that He suffered for us on that day. It was not the pain of dying on the cross that made Him sweat blood at
This is the meaning of propitiation. As Horatio Spafford wrote in his hymn “It is Well with my soul”: “My sin – oh the bliss of this glorious thought – my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to His Cross, and I bear it no more; praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.
This propitiation paid in full for all of your sins if you have trusted in Christ – your past sins, your present sins, and your future sins. It paid for your so-called BIG sins. It paid for all of your everyday sins. It paid for what you (but not God) considers “little” sins. Some denominations tell you that Jesus covered your big sins, but that you need to go to an earthly priest to be given works to do to expiate your little sins. Some will tell you that you need to re-sacrifice Jesus bodily in a new ceremony to gain new grace for your latest sins. But the bible says no such thing. That would be a weak-sauce salvation. No, our glorious salvation in Christ was accomplished “Once For All”. When Jesus said “It is Finished” He meant finished – the debt was “paid in full”. The wrath of God was completely satisfied for all time. Where is Jesus? Unlike an earthly priest, who makes sacrifices daily, standing beside the altar, the Bible tells us that Jesus “sat down”. This is very significant language. He is no longer the man on the crucifix, eternally being sacrificed for us. He sits at the Father’s right hand, and we have confident access to the throne of God through Him. If Satan accuses us, Jesus has the marks in his body to show that the penalty has been paid.
Conclusion
So these three verses give us one of the most compact and complete descriptions of salvation in scripture. They also describe the source of sanctification through our current relationship with Christ. They contain a strong warning for the self-righteous person who believes that God owes him heaven. The person whose pride is stirred up in anger at hearing the gospel because he or she is impressed with their own goodness is in disagreement with God, not the evangelist. Someone who bristles in church at the gospel’s call for repentance because they think that the preacher is “talking down to them”, will, like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable go into judgment without the forgiveness that comes from knowledge of our sin and of Jesus’ righteousness.
God sees our sin. His justice must declare condemnation on all sin because otherwise He would be condoning and participating in our sin. This He will never do. But his great love and grace have provided an alternate path by sending his Son to take the punishment in our place. On the cross the sins of all of those who would be redeemed were placed upon Him. He took this willingly for us because of his great love for us. When He had completed making atonement for all of us, He went back to heaven and is preparing a place for all of his redeemed people to live with Him forever.
John calls out in this verse to anyone who is trusting in religion but who thinks that they have some sort of guarantee of heaven because they are pretty good. If you say that you have no sin, you are calling God a liar. But Jesus says “whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Have you missed this opportunity so far? Could it be that you have never turned in brokenness to God for the forgiveness that there is in Christ but are instead just playing church? It’s not too late. Come to Christ. As the hymn says:
Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you walking daily by the Savior's side? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Do you rest each moment in the Crucified? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright, And be washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin, And be washed in the blood of the Lamb;
There's a fountain flowing for the soul unclean, O be washed in the blood of the Lamb!
Are you washed in the blood, In the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
[Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power? Author: E. A. Hoffman (1878)]
