Only Jesus (Nobody Between Us, Nobody!)

Hebrews and other various scriptures.

Preached 11/10/2024

[audio]

 

INTRODUCTION

The opportunity to preach this time came with very little warning, and since I am preparing to continue in 1 John two weeks from today (and am not ready yet) I decided to talk about something that has been in my heart for the last couple of years. Those who come to our Sunday School will find a lot of the thoughts familiar but hopefully this will speak to all of your hearts. What I want to do this morning is simply to exalt our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We hear the term “Christian” today used by a lot of religions, churches, denominations, cults and organizations. The general consensus in our culture seems to be that anyone who gives any credit to someone named “Jesus” or “Christ” is a Christian and if, for instance, an evangelical were to question whether a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon were not “real” Christians we would be  condemned by many in our culture. But the gospel is uniquely about two things: the person of Jesus Christ, and how sinners can be saved by Him. Many of the writers in the New Testament give us strong warnings against falling for “other gospels” or for “another Jesus”, so we are duty bound to guard the doctrine of Jesus and of salvation. Why? Because, without Jesus and without the gospel we are lost. As Jesus told Nicodemus at the start of his three-year public ministry, God sent his unique Son so that whoever believed in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. Then He said that without this salvation all of us were “condemned already”. In other words, we need Him and the salvation that He brings.

Over twenty centuries there have been many church councils, theological controversies, and even political battles to keep the professing church in line with the truth, and the biggest fight started about 500 hundred years ago with a group of reformers who looked in scripture and saw that their own church had drifted quite a bit from scripture and added various new traditions that even contradicted holy writ. They were not successful at their attempts at reforms and so Protestantism was born, which is what our own fellowship a part of. We call ourselves evangelical, or “born again”, or “bible-believing” here, and we preach the gospel of salvation by faith in Christ and not by human works here. We try to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission by educating our members so that they can “make disciples of all nations”. To this day most of us understand why the reformers broke with Rome, though it is not quite true that the Catholic church believes in works and we believe in faith. It is more complex that that, and, as they say, the devil is in the details.

But I don’t want to get into these arguments today. (If anyone wants to study them there are many books about it. One that I would recommend is R.C. Sproul’s book Are We Together.) Instead, I want to have a positive talk about the two things I mentioned before:

• Who Jesus is, and
• What Jesus does for us.

If we really appreciate those two things our spiritual lives with be full of joy and hope and, just like money handlers are trained to detect counterfeit money by learning about real money, we will be safe from those who, knowingly or unwittingly, try to put distance between us and our wonderful Lord. A lot of this sermon will involve just reading passages from the New Testament about Jesus, with many of them coming from the book of Hebrews. Remember that the book of Hebrews was written to believers who were feeling the temptation of going back into their previous religion to fit in, warning them of how much they were short-changing themselves on the blessings that they had in Christ. Let’s proceed:

 

I  He Is God

The first thing we must understand is that Jesus is divine. John calls Him the Word in his gospel, who was in the beginning, who was with God and who was God. Though mighty angels rightly rejected worship in the bible, saying to worship only God, Jesus freely accepted worship. He used such clear language about this that the religious leaders of his day wanted to put Him to death because He was “making Himself equal with God”. Paul says to the Colossians that “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” (Col 2:9).  The writer of Hebrews starts on this point and he pulls no punches:

Heb 1:1-4   ¹ Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. ³ He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ⁴ having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

This language makes it clear that Jesus is not just a great prophet or a wise teacher, or even (as some teach) a great guy that became a vessel for “the spirit of Christ” for a little while. He is not just a person “created in God’s image” – he is the One who literally holds the universe together by “the word of his power”.

Why is this important to us? Isn’t this just a doctrinal detail that is okay for theologians to debate but doesn’t impact our lives? Consider what it means to be God. What attributes are unique to God that separate Him from all that He created? Of course there are those big words that start with the prefix “Omni”:

• He is Omnipotent – all powerful (as evidenced by the fact that the entire universe exists by his word).
• He is Omniscient – He knows all things. The corollary of that is that one thing God can’t do is learn. That means He knows more than us, even about ourselves. Nothing is hidden from his sight, nothing surprises Him. And, as Jesus said: “your Father knows shat you need before you ask him.”
• He is Omnipresent – He is always at hand, near to all who call on him (Ps 145:18). Also, we can’t escape from Him.
• He is Eternal – He was from the beginning and He will reign forever and ever.
• He is Holy – this is important for our salvation as we will see later.

So why is this important for us? Our Savior Jesus Christ will be able to keep any promise that He makes. He will never grow tired. He can “cause all things to work together for good” for his people. He will always be available when we pray. He will always know us intimately. He will never be too busy with other work. If He can maintain the uncountable atoms in the entire universe, do we need an intermediary to get his attention?  Ridiculous! We don’t need a priest to relay our requests to him for us, and we certainly don’t need to talk to his mom to get his attention. Most of all, we can depend on Him. As we read in Hebrews:

Heb 13:8  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

 

II  He Became Like Us

The second thing we learn is that God the Son made the decision to join us in our humanity. John wrote “He became flesh and dwelt among us”. Paul wrote: “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:6-8 ESV). The writer of Hebrews tells us several reasons why He did this:

Heb 2:9-11, 14, 17-18   ⁹ But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. ¹⁰ For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. ¹¹ For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, … ¹⁴ Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, ... ¹⁷ Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. ¹⁸ For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

When Jesus joined us in our humanity (while not sacrificing any of what He was before), He did several things:

• He made it possible to be the sacrifice for our sins by dying on the cross,
• He manifested God in a form that we could see and interact with – even a “brother” to us in a real sense,
• And by living a life as a human being he shows his sympathy for our troubles so that we can rely on Him for help. He did it, not for his own learning, but so that God would not seem remote or unreachable. He stepped down because we couldn’t step up. 

What love God has manifested through the incarnation! The infinite invisible Creator of the universe stepped into his own universe to be with his own created beings. As John wrote in his gospel: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.” (John 1:18)

 

III  He Bought Our Salvation

The third thing that we know about Jesus Christ is that He completed his mission to save hell-bound sinners from God’s own righteous and holy wrath. Our hope does not rest on our own deeds, or on our ability to somehow talk God into letting us off the hook. Jesus is our only refuge. As Hebrews tells us:

Heb 6:18b-20   ¹⁸ that … we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. ¹⁹ We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, ²⁰ where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

In the Old Testament God through Moses gave a priesthood to Israel. The job of the priest was to be a go-between between God and his people. The priest stood in the holy area that they people could not enter and made blood sacrifices to cover the sins of the people so that they could be near Him. Without priests, the people could not approach God, and without a sacrifice the priest could not cleanse the people from their sins. But the Levitical priesthood was merely a picture of what God had planned for our salvation. Sheep and bulls and goats had no moral affinity for humans. God had his own lamb to sacrifice, and this Lamb had two required qualities: He must be a human to effectively die in another human’s place, and He must be devine so that He could escape the inherited sin of mankind and so that his infinite sacrifice of Himself would be effective for all who trusted in Him. Which is why John the Baptist introduced Him with the words: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:19)

But Jesus was more than the Lamb. He also fulfilled the role of a priest, in that He bridged the gap between man and God for all time. In this way the priesthood was abolished forever. When the sacrifice was over, Jesus said “It is finished”. As He died, God tore the veil in the temple separating the Holy of Holies from the people. Now all who trust in Him are fully cleansed and need no more sacrifices – EVER. Now we must read several passages from Hebrews, from chapters 7, 9 and 10. Note the difference between the old priesthood and the priesthood of Jesus:

Heb 7:23-28  ²³ The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, ²⁴ but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. ²⁵ Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. ²⁶ For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. ²⁷ He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. ²⁸ For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.

Also note wording like “once for all”, “for all time”, “perfected” and “single”:

Heb 9:11-12, 24-26  ¹¹ But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) ¹² he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. ... ²⁴ For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. ²⁵ Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, ²⁶ for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Heb 10:10-14  ¹⁰ And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. ¹¹ And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. ¹² But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, ¹³ waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. ¹⁴ For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Heb 10: 19-22  ¹⁹ Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰ by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, ²¹ and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²² let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

What does this all mean? It means that we now have confidence before God. Unlike those who are attempting to earn God’s favor by trying not to sin so much, those who trust in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross can trust that the work is finished. It means that if we tell people that they need to do good deeds to earn any part of their salvation we insult the blood that Jesus shed for us. If we trust in Him, his single sacrifice is completely sufficient to accomplish our entire salvation forever. The earthly priests had to stand continually while they worked, but the bible tells us that when He finished, Jesus sat down at the Father’s right hand. The job was done. If any church claims that Jesus is still being literally sacrificed to pay for sins they are spitting on the “once for all” and denying Jesus’ own words when He said “it is finished”. Our cross is empty, signifying that we believe that Jesus is now in heaven, providing us access to God’s throne.  As Paul put it:

Ephesians 2:13-18  ¹³ But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility ¹⁵ by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, ¹⁶ and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. ¹⁷ And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸ For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

 

IV He Is Our Advocate

Usually I have three points, but one of the best – but overlooked – needs to be mentioned. What is our Lord Jesus Christ doing now?  If He is way up in heaven, and He is “sitting”, does that mean that He is tired and busy with other stuff now?  Are we who have trusted in Him for salvation now left to our own devices, with God still far off? Is the priesthood of Jesus now complete, necessitating the continuation of some sort of intermediary class of people or beings to take our messages back and forth to heaven? Even if there are no more sacrifices to accomplish, do we still need an earthly priesthood to be God’s representatives to us and our representatives to God? Do we need saints to go back and forth and put in a good word for us with God? What if we still commit sins?

The apostle John wrote: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2)  The sacrifice is complete, and the Lamb of God is in heaven as our advocate. As our eternal defense lawyer, He can show the wounds that paid for our complete redemption whenever Satan accuses us of sin. Paul wrote this to Timothy:

1 Ti 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.

With the sacrifice of Jesus completed, we all have access to heaven. He will never need to be sacrificed again, but until we are glorified in heaven and become perfect He will act as our high priest in heaven. He will be our defense attorney forever, and he is always listening to our prayers. He knows that we are but dust, and when He died on the cross it was for all of our sins, past, present and future. The salvation He provides is the full package!

Heb 4:14-16  ¹⁴ Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. ¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

But in a way there is still a priesthood. The bible calls us a kingdom of priests. The only human priesthood on earth now is done by all believers. As Paul wrote:

2 Corinthians 5:18-19  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

The mediator between believers and God is Jesus. He then leaves us to represent Jesus to others. When they believe the gospel they have access to God and now represent Jesus to the world. But the only sacrifice that we do is the sacrifice of ourselves in obedience and gratitude and worship, as Paul wrote in Romans 12:1. Not a blood sacrifice, but a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

 

Conclusion

What should this mean to us?  How does this affect us? 

We should be angry if anyone tries to get between us and Jesus, putting intermediaries between us and God or implying that we need to supplement the work of Christ by our own goodness or by sacrificing Jesus again.  But we should avoid letting ourselves get complacent or loosing our wonder and joy at the fact that Jesus did all that He did so that we could know God and be with Him forever in joy.  Is Jesus precious to you?  Is He a part of your hopes, your aspirations, your thoughts, or your daily life? Is church a chore or a joy? Is praise pouring from your heart this morning, or just a yawn?

I will finish with a few verses from Paul:

Philippians 3:3b, 7, 8, 10a, 20-21  ³ we … glory in Christ Jesus ...  ⁷ But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ  … ¹⁰ that I may know him ... ²⁰ But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹ who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

And this prayer by Paul:

Ephesians 3:14-19  ¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

 

Solus Christus

1 John 5:6-13

 Preached 12/15/2024 [Previous Sermon]

[audio]

INTRODUCTION

The apostle John is a simple writer, but his themes are very deep and profound. Of the four gospels, John’s gives us the deepest revelations of Jesus’ divine nature and of the absolute sovereignty that God exercises in our salvation. He talks about how God so loved the world that He gave us his Son, so that everybody who believes in him can have eternal life. At the end of his gospel he tells us that he wrote it so that we might believe in Jesus, and that through believing in Him we could have eternal life.

The first of John’s letters, found near the back of your bible, has a different purpose. In this letter, he is writing to those who have come to believe in Jesus. The topic and purpose for his letter, which we have talked about for the last two years, is found in today’s text:

1 John 5:13  I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

Though I plan one sermon after this one, today’s passage is the climax of John’s letter of comfort for we who believe. John speaks a lot about truth and about love. But another word that he likes is the word “know”. And he is writing this letter to all true believers in Jesus that he wants them to have confidence that they have eternal life. He wants us all to have assurance of our salvation.

Now a lot of people claim that they expect to go to heaven when they die, but if pressed they will say “I think I will be going there”. In other words, they hope that they are going to make it. If we ask why they think they will make it, they will usually say something like “I think that I am a good person”, or that “I try to do more good things than bad things.” But the gospel is not kind to human pride and tells us that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23) and that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23a). Instead, we are called upon to believe in Jesus to receive salvation free of charge, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom 6:23 again) We are saved, says Paul “by grace… through faith, … not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph 2:8) and “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy”. (Titus 3:5) We are told to trust, and John wants us to be confident that we have eternal life. Thus he has written to us about assurance.

Now assurance is a tricky topic, and controversial. Not all churches teach it, even though surely John is talking about it in 5:13 of this letter. In fact, when the reformers taught that this doctrine was clearly taught in the bible, the Roman Catholic church responded (at the council of Trent):  If any one saith, that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end, -unless he have learned this by special revelation; let him be anathema. 

So we must ask, are there reasons why we should be should think that having assurance is a bad thing? Surely. For one thing, many people think that they are saved when they aren’t. Remember that John talked about them back in chapter two. He called them antichrists, people who hung around the church and looked like everybody else but later they skedaddled away, revealing their true state.  Also, Paul addresses a big issue in Romans just after talking about free justification through faith in Christ by asking whether having our sins – past, present, and future – fully forgiven meant that, since we now have our free ticket to heaven why wouldn’t that mean that we are now free to just sin all the time? Paul later writes for Christians to “work out their salvation with fear and trembling”. (Phil 2:12) James challenges Christians with the statement “faith without works is dead”.

So, we might reason, maybe it is better if everybody goes through life with some serious doubt about their salvation. Human logic at least would say that this is good because it will keep us on the straight and narrow, doing good works, attending church, donating to charity, and keeping our language clean. But John is stubborn here. He has written an entire letter to let Christians know that they have eternal life. So what would be the reason for this? What benefit is there in having assurance of eternal life? There are actually good reasons for this.

Assurance lets us live lives of peace and joy. Back at the start of this very letter John told us “And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete” (1:4) Reading through the letter, we see that he wants us to know that God is our Father (2:14). He wants us to be strong and defeat the evil one (2:13-14) and to love God rather than the world (2:15-16). He wants us to trust God and his promises (2:26). He wants us to have confidence and not fear approaching God (2:28). He wants us to purify ourselves (3:3). He wants us to love one another (ch 3-4). He wants our hearts to be reassured (3:19). He wants us to be free from fear (4:15-19). And he wants us to be confident in prayer (5:14-18). And that is just from this letter!

As I mentioned last time, however, the first four chapters leave us with a quandary. People don’t have assurance because they don’t know that they are good enough to make it to heaven. John purports to fix this by giving us a series of tests by which a saved individual may be identified. These tests fell into three categories: moral, doctrinal, and social, or if you prefer, tests of obedience, truth, and love. Do you keep God’s commandments? Do you believe that Jesus came in the flesh, lived, died and rose again bodily? Do you love God and also the people of God? The problem that becomes obvious to us as we read through it is that none of us come out perfect in this testing scheme at all.

But in the first four verses of chapter five John comes full circle and brings us back to faith. Our faith overcomes the world. But it is not just raw belief that does it. It is a trust in Jesus, the Son of God. John is not contradicting Paul’s theology or even James’. They all say the same thing, just in different ways. Paul explains justification by faith and then answers sticky questions about how it works out in real life. James comes from the other side and addresses the issue of how faith works out because that is the part that we see. But both speak of faith. John was neither as methodical as Paul nor as combative as James, but he instead subtly wove the two themes together and cleverly constructed a tapestry that only revealed its story when it was completed. He built up the picture slowly in a way that generates an intuitive understanding of the mysterious but glorious wonder of salvation by faith.

The simple story of all three writers is that

(1)     salvation is a miracle wrought by God in the hearts of sinners by the power of his Holy Spirit without any righteousness or work on our part because we could not save ourselves, and

(2)     when He saves a person they are made new and sealed by the Holy Spirit, and that nature will always manifest itself in real life. As Jesus put it: “you shall know them by their fruits”.

As some of the reformers put it: “Faith alone saves, but faith that saves is not alone.” And the fruit that comes from the new nature is threefold, as John has explained in the preceding chapters.

 

I  We Trust Christ Because He Alone Did The Work – (The Testimony of the Apostles) (6a):

That brings us to our text for today. Verse five was the transition into John’s conclusion, and verse six begins John’s explanation of the saving faith he spoke of.  Let’s read verse five and the start of verse six:

1 John 5:5-6a Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he who came by water and blood--Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood.

At this point I want to mention that there are various controversies on the interpretation on verses 6-9 with regard to what John is referring to when he talks about “water and blood” in verses 6 and 8. (There is another issue we will talk about later). When reading various commentaries there are a lot of suggestions about what John is talking about.Some suggest that the water refers to Jesus’ birth (where the water would be amniotic or other bodily fluids) and the blood refers to his birth or his death. Others suggest that they both refer what flowed out from Jesus’ side when the centurion pierced his side with a spear. Others say that they refer to the ordinances of baptism and communion in the church.

The majority of modern conservative commentators that I have consulted seem to agree that John is referring to two events in Jesus’ life that were involved in heresies that John has addressed already in this letter, his baptism and his crucifixion. Remember back in chapter four, John told us:

1 John 4:2-3a By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

And then in chapter five we read:

1John 5:1a, 5  ¹ Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, … ⁵ Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

In these verses John affirms that believers will believe in a Jesus who (a) is the Son of God, an eternal member of the trinity, and who (b) took on human nature, becoming like us and living a real life on earth with us, and (c) He is the promised Messiah. Jesus is the great God-man, the only one who is qualified to accomplish our salvation.

Why would John reference his baptism and his crucifixion here? Consider that the nature of Jesus is the first doctrine messed with by cults, his deity being the doctrine that is the most attacked. The JWs declares that Jesus is a created angel, named Michael. The LDS church makes him the physical child of a god named Elohim whose brother was Lucifer. Islam declares him to be a great prophet who specifically did not die on the cross (because their god caused the soldiers to grab the wrong guy at the last minute).

The heresy that John was dealing with, is still seen today in some cults, was that Jesus was just a regular man until his baptism. When He was baptized, they say, the spirit of the Christ descended on Him for three years but abandoned Him while He was on the cross, so what died on the cross was just the man, no longer the Christ. But John contradicts this with his statement in verse six. Jesus was he who came by (or through, or into) the water. He was the Christ, the Messiah, before the Holy Spirit descended on him in the Jordan river. He was the eternal Word who became flesh, not the flesh who became the Word.

Then John makes his point clearer. He did not come just by water only, but by the water and the blood. The Jesus who died on the cross and rose again and who was baptized was God in flesh. If He was not deity, his death would be insufficient to be the propitiation for the sins of millions and millions of believers. Even if He could die in the place of one other human, as a mere human He would have had to endure an eternity of suffering for that one man’s sin. But as a regular man, and therefore a sinner, He would have to spend eternity in hell for his own sins so He would have been useless in procuring our salvation. On the other hand, if He was not human in his life and death He would not have been able to identify with us in his death, any more than animals. Remember the verse in Hebrews 10:4 - For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

So saving faith trusts in a Christ who is both God and man. A Christ who died a sacrificial death in space-time history on a cross outside of Jerusalem. Any other Christ is imaginary and also insufficient to accomplish our salvation. There is no assurance, John says, in a faith resting on a false Christ.

But why should anyone have faith in these signs? Because they were testified to by hundreds of people, especially by the eleven apostles who testified to the world, most of them staking their testimonies by accepting painful deaths rather than recant. And John declared himself one of those witnesses at the beginning of this letter. Remember how he started it?

1 John 1:1-3a  That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us- that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you,

The testimony of John, the last living apostle, was the same testimony as the other apostles. Notice the words heard, seen, looked upon, touched with our hands. He even repeats these words. This Jesus, this God-man, can save us, and no other. And John has placed him firmly on our planet in space and time for us to know and believe in.

 

II We Trust Christ Because He Alone Has God’s Testimony (6b-10):

Having witnessed about Jesus himself, John now refers to the rules of evidence from the Mosaic Law. In Numbers and Deuteronomy God declared that nobody could be condemned on the basis of the testimony of only one witness (Num 35:30, Deut 17:6 & 19:15). And the witnesses have to agree for their testimony to be valid. This is the reason that, during Jesus’ trial the Sanhedrin were frustrated because they could not get the testimony of any two or three of Jesus’ accusers to agree in their details.

Jesus Himself when the Pharisees and scribes were questioning his credentials gave this defense:

John 5:31-35,37a,39  ³¹ "If I [alone] testify about Myself, My testimony is not true. ³² "There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true. ³³ "You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth. ³⁴ "But the testimony which I receive is not from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵ "He was the lamp that was burning and was shining and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. …  ³⁷ And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. … ³⁹ "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me;

Jesus cites three witnesses to back up his own testimony to them: (1) John the Baptist, (2) God the Father (through the miracles given to Him to do), and (3) the Old Testament, which prophesied about Him.  John now cites three witnesses in these verses: The Holy Spirit and the aforementioned water and blood.

I John 5:6b-8   ⁶ This is he who came by water and blood--Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. ⁷ For there are three that testify: ⁸ the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.

The Holy Spirit has many ministries in the life of a believer. It is the Spirit who first makes us alive when we are dead in our sins. Jesus told his disciples after the Last Supper that He would send them the Holy Spirit, who would guide them “into all the truth” (John 16:13). Paul wrote in the great chapter eight of the book of Romans:

Romans 8:14-17a ¹⁴ For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. ¹⁵ For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" ¹⁶ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.

This is what is referred to as the internal witness of the Holy Spirit where God reveals to the heart of a believer who Jesus is and provides faith in the newly-built heart.  John has already mentioned this ministry of revealing Christ and keeping the believer in Christ back in chapter two. Right after he spoke of the fake believers who left the church, John wrote to his readers:

1 Jn 2:20-21, 25, 27  ²⁰ But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. ²¹ I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. ... ²⁵ And this is the promise that he made to us--eternal life. ... ²⁷ But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie--just as it has taught you, abide in him.

Going back to the water and the blood, consider the testimony of God at those times. When Jesus was baptized, God the Father spoke from heaven, saying  "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." (Matt 3:17)  The Holy Spirit descended upon Him then so that in that scene every member of the Trinity was represented in unity. At the crucifixion Jesus’ blood was shed for us. As it happened, the Father gave many signs, including three hours of darkness, earthquakes, and even the resurrection of some Old Testament saints. The veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom when the sacrifice was finished, and then Jesus rose from the dead three days later, about which Paul wrote that “[He] was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 1:4).

John therefore establishes the credentials of Jesus as our redeemer, not based on human testimony, but on God’s testimony, with three witnesses, fulfilling the Old Testament law for valid testimony. Since we are told elsewhere in scripture that God is not able to lie, this is sufficient. John emphasizes the strength of this testimony in the next two verses:

1 John 5:9-10  ⁹ If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. ¹⁰ Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.

In other words, if the rules of evidence are sufficient for us to credit mere human testimony as true, how much more shall the testimony of God be received?  And this testimony is not just that we should believe in some guy called Jesus. His testimony is about a specific individual, the Messiah, the Son of God, the God-man who died as the full propitiation for the sin of everyone who trusts in Him and who rose again and now sits at the Father’s right hand as our eternal advocate, the only person in the universe who could accomplish this because of who He is.

III  We Trust Christ Because He Alone Is Eternal Life – (The testimony of God) (11-13,20):

So God has testified at the bench in Jesus’ behalf, and his testimony is determinative. What has He testified about Jesus? What eternal truth has God promised all who trust in Jesus Christ? How does his testimony give us assurance?

1 John 5:11   And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

So in the end, those who trust in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have eternal life. There are several important parts of this testimony, so we should parse these words carefully.

First, all Christians have been given eternal life. John lists this in past tense, which means that if you are trusting in Christ you already have eternal life. It is not life that is eternal in the future. It is not a promissory note for eternal life. It is not a long life that will be eternal unless you mess up and lose it. Eternal life that you can lose is not eternal life at all.

To be clear, this eternal life is not just a long, drawn out life in this broken world in an aging, sick ancient body. That is the body of this world before our final glorification. Unless the rapture comes soon, we will all experience death in this old body, but the new creation that God has caused to be born again within us will continue, and at the resurrection we will receive our eternal body. Body 2.0, we can call it. No sin nature in it, no sickness, no agony. A body that can stand in the presence of God’s glory in the new Jerusalem and not die. A holy body. A beautiful body. A body like that of the angels.

The second thing to notice is where our eternal life is. It is in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Imagine a million dollars sealed in an envelope. To get the million dollars you need to take the envelope. If you don’t have the envelope you don’t have the money. In the same way, the testimony of God is that only those who have Jesus have eternal life. As John elaborates in the next verse: 

1 John 5:12   Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Do you have Jesus? Then you have eternal life. Do you want eternal life?  God’s testimony is that you need Jesus. This is an either/or situation, and there is no third choice. Certainly this is not a popular doctrine for many people. We like to think that there is some sort of credit for trying. “All paths lead to God”. But we can’t reach God by ourselves, He is out of reach. And if you think about it, the saying “all paths lead to God” is a nonsense statement. It is like saying “all letters are Q”. How can the gospel be true at the same time as another religion that says God will take you to heaven if you, say, wear yellow socks, is true?  If I can get to heaven if I really believe that I can, then I am saying that Jesus’ sacrifice for my sin was a total waste of time. If I can earn eternal life by putting on yellow socks instead of trusting what God testified is the only way, I am spitting on Christ, I am calling Him a loser, a failure, someone who I am better than, because not only can I save myself, but I came up with a better way! What an insult. The writer of the book of Hebrews warned those who reject the gospel and have no sacrifice for their sins:

Hebrews 10:29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

The supremacy and uniqueness of Jesus is not a strange doctrine in a corner of the Bible. Jesus told his disciples “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Peter preached in Jerusalem (in the very first Christian sermon in history)  “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). John wrote of Jesus “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4).

Jesus is eternal life. He said John 10 “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” And then specifically:

John 10:27-29   “²⁷My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. ³⁰I and the Father are one.”

 

Conclusion

There is no better deal in the universe. In Jesus there is utter security, because He is the only provision made by God for reconciling yourself with Him. So where is our security?  In the Son.  If you have the Son, you have life.

In the final three verses of this letter John summarizes his teaching here. Verse 20 tells of what we know, because of God’s testimony:

1 John 5:20  And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

If you have received Jesus Christ as your Savior, you can have peace, joy, and rest in Him. If you have not yet trusted Him, consider the question from Hebrews 2:3:

How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

Today can be the day that you receive eternal life. Will you trust Him today? 

Sola Fide

1 John 5:1-5

Preached 10/20/2024 [Previous Sermon]

[audio]

INTRODUCTION

We’ve been going through John’s first letter for a couple of years now and we have now reached the fifth and final chapter, finally. As we proceed, let’s review:

1. John wrote this letter to Christians, and his purpose (given in 5:13) is that he wants his readers, “who believe in the name of the Son of God” to “know that [they] have eternal life.”
2. To support this knowledge, John has discussed tests that we can use to evaluate the reality of a our spiritual state.
3. The tests are in three general categories: moral, doctrinal, and social, or, better, they involve obedience, truth and love.
4. And as we saw previously, especially in chapter four, the love is two-fold: love of the Lord and the love of our brethren.

As we have gone through John’s arguments, we have seen him go back and forth through these tests, hitting each of them multiple times. Now, in these five verses of his last chapter, he’s going to give us all three tests mixed together, to illustrate the larger truth of how our salvation works, and how it produces the attributes that he has been describing.

Now you are like me, as you read through these chapters you are struck with a question: How in the world does a series of difficult tests give me any assurance of my salvation, especially when I can clearly see that I have failed all of them at one time or another? Well, John is way ahead of us and today’s five verses actually unpack how these things work together to give us assurance. They do it by describing something called the new birth, or being “born again”.

John himself has given us Jesus’ teaching about the new birth, back in the third chapter of his gospel. Just about all who call themselves Christians know what John 3:16 says, and most of them (or at least most evangelicals) identify themselves as “born again Christians”.  But I would guess that a very small percentage of those who call themselves “born again” are familiar with the conversation from John 3 between Jesus and Nicodemus from which we get the term. Remember that Nicodemus was a very respected teacher in Israel who came to Jesus by night to talk with Him. He addressed Jesus in respectful terms, indicating that he at least recognized that Jesus was someone who seemed to be different from the other teachers in the land, especially in the mighty signs that He had performed. But Jesus responded to his greeting with a simple statement: “You must be born again.” In the following dialogue, Jesus describes two essential parts of how a sinner can enter the kingdom of God.

·         First, he must be born “of the water and the Spirit”. This may be confusing unless we look back to a prophesy by Ezekiel where God promises that He will “sprinkle clean water” for cleansing from uncleanness on his people and then to put “a new spirit… within [them]” (Ez 36:25-26). It is important to note that Ezekiel says the result of this will be that the recipients of this treatment will “walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules”.

·         Secondly, this new birth will not be by human effort or ingenuity. Jesus gives two reasons for this. First, “that which is born of flesh is flesh”, in other words, nothing we can do in our sinful selves can elevate us to be worthy to stand before God, and second, the process, He says, will be like the wind. The wind, Jesus observes, is invisible and we cannot see its source or where it is going except by its effects.

It is this second point that gives us a key to our passage today. The effects John is describing here are results of a reality that we did not create. Instead, they point to a rock-solid reality behind it all. I think the best way to understand how this kind of assurance - or rather this kind of re-assurance - works, is to look at the life of one of the inner three apostles, the one and only Simon Peter. Peter was one of the first apostles called by Jesus, right from his fishing boat. He is first in the lists of the twelve apostles. He was, with John and his brother James, one of the three apostles who were allowed to see Jesus in all his glory on the mount of transfiguration. And Peter was the first to openly acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God. But on the day of Jesus’ arrest, Peter was the one who openly denied Jesus (as Jesus had predicted at the last supper), saying “I don’t know the man!”

All eleven of the apostles (minus Judas Iscariot) saw Jesus die on the cross, but three days later they experienced the joy of seeing Him alive again after his resurrection, manifesting that all of his promises were true. The resurrection validated their faith, and (as Paul wrote in Romans) Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God in power … by his resurrection from the dead”. But in spite of this, I think that something was broken in Peter. If we turn to the end of John’s gospel we see something unexpected. Right after John’s mission statement for his gospel at the end of chapter twenty, John shows us a scene involving seven of the eleven apostles who are hanging out in Galilee near their homes. Peter, who had been told by Jesus that he was going to become a fisher of men, announces that he is going to go ahead and be a fisher of fish, and the other apostles join him. Then, while they are being unsuccessful at catching a single fish, Jesus calls to them from the shore, asking if they have caught anything. Just like when He had called Peter three years before, Jesus told them to put their nets on the other side of the boat, and when the net overflowed with fish again, Peter realized Who was on the beach and swam back (leaving the rest to pull in the nets) and evidently sat at Jesus’ feet (like Martha’s sister Mary). Later, Jesus has a strange conversation with Peter, asking him three times “do you love Me?” When Peter replies in the affirmative all three times, Jesus reiterates his call of Peter to ministry. How does this relate to today’s message? Let’s look at 1 John 5 now and find out:

 

I  Faith Alone Saves (5:1a, 5b):

The title of point one sounds like something from Romans or Galatians, or maybe something from Martin Luther, Calvin or Zwingli, right?  As John gets to his conclusion, he is going to talk a lot about faith and the new birth. Of the ten times that John uses the verb for “faith” (or “believe”), seven of them are in this last chapter. John is going to tie these concepts together with the rest of his letter in the five verses of our text today. Note that verse one starts with belief and verse five ends with belief:

1 John 5:1a  Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, …

1 John 5:5  Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

There are two important truths we can see if we read these verses carefully. Firstly, we see that belief is a by-product of the new birth. James Montgomery Boice wrote: “In the Greek text the word “believe” is present tense, indicating a present, continuing activity. The word “born” (in the phrase “born of God,” also translated “is a child of God,” _RSV) is in the perfect tense. The perfect tense indicates a past event with continuing consequences. In other words … “Our present, continuing activity of believing is the result, and therefore the evidence, of our past experience of the new birth by which we became and remain God’s children.” We believe and, in fact, do everything else of a spiritual nature precisely because we have first been made alive.” [1]

Secondly, we can see that saving faith is not a faith without content. It is not enough to just believe in anything, as if the act of believing is of any value itself. Our faith must have a worthy object, and John, the apostle of truth, tells us what the content of saving faith is in these two verses. In verse one we see the humanity of Jesus and in verse five we see the deity of Jesus.  He is the great God-man, the eternal Word who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1,14), the promised Messiah, or Christ, descended in a direct line from King David himself. John has told us back in chapter four that the Spirit of God Himself testifies that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh”.  

Considering these two truths, let’s look back at the life of Simon Peter. One of his greatest moments was his great declaration of faith, right? If we turn to Matthew chapter sixteen we can read the story. Jesus had asked the apostles “who do men say that I am?” When they had answered that question, Jesus then asked them directly “who do you say that I am?” It was Peter who gave the great confession of faith in Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Note that the content of Peter’s declaration of faith pretty much matches the two points that John mentions in our text. By that confession, we see that the content of Peter’s faith matches John’s truth test above. But there is more here. Peter said the right words, but was it just from his own human cleverness?

Jesus’ response gives us the answer:

Matthew 16:17 And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

According to Jesus, Peter’s faith was not due to his summoning up belief through sheer will, or by a flash of human genius. Peter believed because God had revealed it to his heart.  I think we are seeing exactly what Paul talked about to the Corinthians:

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.

Isaiah 6:5  And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

I believe that Jesus has declared that Peter was born again by this time. I think it actually happened when Jesus called Him from his fishing boat at the beginning of his public ministry. Remember how Peter reacted when Jesus told him to put his nets on the other side of the boat and they caught the giant load of fish? His first reaction was to beg Jesus to depart from him because, as he said “I am a sinful man”. His reaction was similar to that of Isaiah when he beheld the glory of God and lamented

Isaiah 6:5  And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

Peter knew in his heart at that point Who it was that stood before him and his whole world changed perspective instantly. And he was ashamed and terrified to be in the presence of Jesus. But when Jesus called Peter to follow him, he left behind his old life to obey. Later, when many other so-called followers of Jesus were abandoning Him, Jesus asked the apostles if they would leave also, and Peter replied

John 6:68b-69 … "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. "We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God."

Something changed Peter’s heart. He wasn’t going anywhere. He believed wholeheartedly in Jesus.

 

II  Faith That Saves is Not Alone (5:1b-4a):

John fills the area between his two “faith brackets” with the fruit of the new birth. And in these two and a half verses we see a quick recitation of his three tests of salvation. But instead of giving a longer section to describe each one, he now twists them into a rope of three cords that can’t be separated. Let’s read, and then parse, these verses:

1 John 5:1b-3  ¹ … everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. ² By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. ³ For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

Remember that the sequence John seems to give is

(a)     a person is born “of God”,

(b)     then they believe in - or have faith in, or trust in - the Jesus of the Bible, who is the Son of God, the Christ, 

(c)     then they bear fruit in their lives in the areas of love, truth, and obedience to God.

The first fruit of salvation is a worship of Jesus as He really is, not another Jesus. Wait, is there more than one Jesus? No, not in reality. But hearts of the unsaved create an idol in their hearts that is more to their liking and worship and serve the false “Jesus” rather than the real one. You can see the word “Jesus” or “Christ” used all over the place, but when you ask whom they mean you will see they have created a Jesus who is comfortable for them, who is not so holy, or who will never be a judge, who will never send people to eternal punishment, who approves whatever sin society has determined to be moral this week, etcetera. Paul warned the Corinthians of the danger of people coming and preaching “another Jesus” (2 Co 11:4). A born-again person loves Jesus as He really is – as He is revealed in the word of God.

The second fruit of salvation is love for God and for God’s other redeemed children. If you are saved, you are adopted into God’s family and you have a huge group of forever brothers and sisters.  Note John’s use of absolutes: “Everyone who loves the father loves whoever has been born of him.” This LOVE is a true sign of a born again heart.

John says that the third fruit of salvation flows from and is an indicator of the reality of the second one. If we have that love for God and for his children we will obey his commandments. This is no great revelation. Jesus himself told the apostles

John 14:15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”

True obedience always comes from love, and one who has been born again loves God. And love says “his commandments are not burdensome”. Love motivates. It makes us want to please the person that we love. No act of love is a burden. For someone who is not born again, every one of God’s laws are an annoyance – something that takes away our fun or restricts our freedom to sin. But a reborn heart says, like the psalmist:

Psalm 119:97, 103   ⁹⁷ Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. [and] ¹⁰³ How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

It is good that John said back in chapter one the importance of confessing our sins to God as believers, otherwise we would take this as a statement that a born again person is a person who is perfect in all they do. Rather a true believer will be like Paul who spoke of his frustration because of his lack of perfection that clashed with the longing of his heart to obey God perfectly. But his heart was in love with God and desired to conform to his image. And, though he had not reached perfection yet, still he said “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:14)

Now let’s apply this to Peter. In the aforementioned account from the end of John’s gospel, we have seen a discouraged Peter, falling back into his old profession of fishing… for fish, in spite of the fact that Jesus had risen from the dead. Certainly he believed in Jesus. He had been the first one to go into the empty tomb and he had met the resurrected Jesus more than once. So if he did not doubt Jesus, why does the scene seem so somber? What does he need? What do we need when our conduct is unworthy of our calling? I think Peter needed some encouragement. He needed to understand that his calling from God was irrevocable. Though he had perhaps mouthed off a bit too often, he had actually had a pretty good run. But his cowardly denial of Jesus in that moment of weakness must have weighed heavy on his heart. Now Peter had certainly manifest the signs that John mentioned in this epistle. He had not abandoned the faith, he had not left Jesus, he was still with the disciples, he loved Jesus – he jumped out of the boat and swam 100 yards to the shore to be with Him. So Jesus encourages Peter with a question: “Do you love me?”

Note he does not ask him questions about religious duties or ceremonies. He does not ask him “didn’t you go forward in that revival meeting that I held?”. He doesn’t ask “didn’t you pray that prayer I said to repeat?”. He doesn’t ask “didn’t you raise your hand in that dark room when everybody’s eyes were closed?”. None of those questions are ever asked by Jesus, and John does not use them in this epistle of encouragement. What did Jesus do?  He asked him a fundamental question about his heart: “Do you love me?” In other words, has your heart been made new so that your focus in life revolves around pleasing the Lord? Have you been given a new life? If the answer is positive, denying Jesus would hurt Peter’s heart, which it did. Three times Jesus asked, and the question never changed. And each time Peter truthfully answered “yes”. For every yes answer, Jesus reaffirmed his purpose for Peter’s life. But now he would not just be a “fisher of men”, now he would be a good shepherd of the Good Shepherd’s flock. Peter’s faith was given to him by God, and he never lost it. He demonstrated his understanding of this when he wrote in his first epistle (and see how close Peter’s encouragement is to John’s):

1 Peter 1:22-23  Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;

 

III Faith is the Victory! (5:4b-5):

Let’s get back to 1 John to see his third point, which is in verses four and five:

1 John 5:4-5   ⁴ For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith. ⁵ Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

This is not a new concept in this epistle. Remember back in chapter two how John developed the idea of perseverance in the faith? He spoke of many who had seemed to members in good standing in their churches that had later left them and no longer participated in the body of Christ. John called them “antichrists” that had appeared, and went on to talk about how they (the true Christians he was writing to) had an anointing from God that abided in them and that could cause them to abide in Him.

Now John is explicit. And what encouragement he gives to us. How many people who have been born of God will overcome the world?  EVERYONE. And what gives the victory over the world? OUR FAITH. And who are those people who overcome the world? The ones who have a faith in the true Jesus, who is the Son of God.

So our perseverance in the faith depends on, but is guaranteed by, our being born again. How can we be sure that we will overcome the world? Because we are trusting in Jesus, and He said

John 16:33  I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."

The word for overcome here is the Greek word nikaō.  The word, from which we got the Nike brand name, is also translated as conquer, prevail, or for victory.  The word is mostly used by John, and that mostly in this epistle and in Revelation. It is especially used in the letters to the seven churches in Revelation, specifically describing the rewards for true believers. In Revelation, the overcomers are told they will get to eat of the tree of life, that they will not be hurt by the second death (not go to hell), they will receive a new name, they will be given authority over the nations, they will live in God’s temple forever, and Jesus will confess their name before his Father and his angels.

So what does a Christian overcome, anyway? John has mentioned both internal and external challenges to our faith. In chapter two he tells us not to love the world. The world has three footholds that it tries to gain in our hearts: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. John also warns about false believers and false teachers in the church, antichrists who look like they belong but ultimately leave, trying to take others with them. He speaks in chapter four about the spirit of error in the world and warns us to discern what is true, especially those who put forward false Christs to draw us away from the glorious Son of God who became flesh and then died and rose again to redeem us.  But a born-again believer will have lasting faith in Jesus, and will overcome, and will receive all the blessings of salvation. God will see to it, as Paul wrote to the Philippians:

Philippians 1:6  And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

 

Conclusion

So hopefully the apostle John’s strategy for encouraging believers is clear. If you are born again through a miracle of God and trusting in Christ for your salvation, but you fall on your face in your Christian walk, remember that you have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous, whose sacrifice is sufficient to pay for your eternal salvation. But Jesus did not just die for your sins – He rose again and is now at the right hand of God as your advocate.  He does not save half way. He continues forever, and as we read in the book of Hebrews:

Hebrews 7:24-25 … he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

What if you have not trusted in Jesus yet? Maybe you are a visitor just checking out the church or maybe you are watching this online – even years from now? Maybe you have been in another religion, and it was wearying just wondering if you had done enough to make it to heaven. You were on a treadmill of trying to be good enough, perhaps even living in fear about your future. Maybe you were buried under too many rules and regulations and just wanted to give up. Don’t lose hope. Talk to someone in the church, or open a bible and read it – perhaps starting in the gospel of John. Just read the words of Jesus and pray that God will give you understanding and a new heart. Then turn from your sins and forsake them. Join a local church to love and be loved by God’s people.

John wrote his gospel for you. He wrote the gospel “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his hame.” (John 20:31)

Once you do that, read 1 John, which he wrote for those “who believe in the name of the Son of God, that [they] may know that [they] have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13)

My wish is that everybody who hears this will have that joyful assurance, that we can all join together to sing praises for eternity.

[Next sermon]

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[1] James Montgomery Boice, The Epistles of John, p125 (Inner quote by Boice is of Stott)