¹¹ For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, ¹² and not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. ¹³ Do not wonder, brethren that the world hates you. ¹⁴ We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. ¹⁵ Any one who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. ¹⁶ By this we know love; that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. ¹⁷ But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? ¹⁸ Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.

1 John 3:11-18

It seems that there is conflict and strife among the people John is writing to. John wants his readers to see how this new life we have in Christ affects all of our relationships, especially here with fellow believers.

John begins this section by mentioning Cain and urging his readers to not be like him, but to love one another. He reminds them that Cain murdered his brother and he says that he did this because “his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.” What was it about Cain’s deeds that were evil and why is he the one John chooses to serve as a contrast to the kind of behavior John hopes to encourage?

The story of Cain and Abel is found in Genesis 4:3-16. Cain brought the Lord “an offering of the fruit of the ground,” while Abel brought “of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.” God “had regard” for Abel’s offering and not Cain’s. Cain reacted to this in great anger and God said to him, “‘Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.’”

Cain did not give an offering God had regard for, perhaps because it was not of the first of his crop. But God does not reject him for this and it appears from God’s response to Cain that Cain has every reason to believe that if he listens to God and goes on and does what is acceptable, God will have regard for his offering as well. But instead Cain is envious of his brother. He is preoccupied in comparing himself with his brother. He is more angry that his brother has God’s regard than he is in making the necessary changes in his own life and having a better relationship with God. This really comes through when he does not heed God’s encouragement and warning, but rather allows his jealousy to eat away at him until he actually murders Abel.

(How this will be more acceptable to God must have not crossed his mind. It probably was never at the top of his mind; just doing better and getting more approval than others must have been what was really his aim, even when he gave his first offering).

John goes on in the next verse to remind his readers that it is not surprising that the world hates them. There are many Cains out there whom God is encouraging and warning, but they are more interested in accusing Christians of claiming to be “holier than thou.”

I think John also sees that part of what tempts Christians to be jealous and envious of each other, as Cain was, is the world’s negative reaction to them for being Christians. The pressure from living in a hostile world and a desire to be liked and accepted by those in the world easily leads to comparing ourselves with our sisters and brothers. We look at other’s lives and are tempted to feel better about ourselves if they are in trouble or in doubt or are not as mature as we are. Or we are tempted to be jealous of them and to look for flaws in their lives or make cynical remarks about them to others. Being threatened, we put others down. When we focus more on the other person, we become distracted from our own relationship with God– the only thing we can really do anything about.

John reminds them in v. 14, that they have passed out of death into life. When we get caught up in comparisons in such a way as to lead to jealousy, then we are acting as if we do not live in a new life. We have died–we no longer have to justify ourselves to others, or even to ourselves. We have handed our lives over to Jesus. He is the only one who can tell us who we are, tell us our story–and it is a story that is still unfolding. In fact it is not yet clear what any of us who are in Christ will be. Paul says our lives are hid in Christ. This makes our tendency toward comparison, envy, and hate even more crazy. Only Jesus knows the truth about me and about others. John is encouraging his readers (again!) to focus all their energy on abiding in the one who is light, who has separated them from their sins, who has made them His children, and who is continuing to make this truth manifest in all of our lives.

John wants to impress on his readers how deadly this kind of thinking is. He says in v.15 that anyone “hates his brother is a murderer.” To continue down a path of comparison is to be in danger of being eaten out from inside. To think of becoming more concerned with hating our sister or brother, than letting God tell us about the child He made us to be!

What is love? Well, instead of destroying another’s life, love is when Jesus laid down his life for us. For Cain to have not killed Abel, he would have had to kill the jealousy and hatred inside him. When Jesus died for us, he died to all of our hate, jealousy and sin. We can accept His death for us, a death we could not accomplish on our own, and we can abide in His new life for us. As we grab a hold of this new life, we can see what an utter waste of time it is to be comparing ourselves to other Christians, indeed how destructive it is.

In the last 3 verses of this passage John speaks of right relationship between ourselves and other Christians. We are to lay down our lives for one another. There is a lot that could be said on the meaning of these words. I just want to focus on two things. First of all, Jesus laid down His life out of the fullness of His life with the Father. He did not do it to be approved/liked, or because He needed to. He knew who He was, He knew where He was going, and He loved us just as we needed to be loved in the deepest, most profound way. We can only lay down our lives, by first and continually receiving the life He gave us by His life, death, and resurrection.

Secondly, I think it means that when we lay down our lives for others we are participating in God’s own giving of His life to that person, looking to see what He is doing in their lives and calling us to be a part of it.

In the last 2 verses, John makes the point that love is something we do more than something we feel. We choose to love others out of trust in God’s work in us and in them. If the feelings of love are not there, we can trust in God to change that in us as we act in love out of our faith.

I found this an interesting passage to work through. John is warning us not to get caught up in either puffing ourselves up or tearing ourselves or others down in order to make ourselves feel better. The truth is we are not perfect–as John said in the 1st chapter. Our hope is not in being at least better than so-and-so, but is in the living God who has shown us that He is trustworthy to heal us completely and make us truly whole. As we give up justifying ourselves and allow God to show us all that He is healing us from, we can experience more and more the freedom to love our sisters and brothers rather than compare ourselves with them. He will continue to remind us of these things, whenever we find ourselves ready to beat ourselves up or tear others down.

¹⁹ By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before him ²⁰ whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹ Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God; ²² and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. ²³ And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. ²⁴ All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us.

1 John 3:19-24

In this letter, John has been reminding his readers all that God has done and is doing in and for them in Christ and what it means for them to abide in Christ, to receive this new life He is giving them. Jesus is the “expiation for our sins”(2:2), and as we turn to Him, confessing our sins, He is “faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”(1:9) God has made us His very children in and through His Son. God is not just forgiving us, He is making us clean and whole as His children, giving us a share in all of who Jesus is. Being His child affects all of our lives: our relationships with other believers, our relationship with the world, our wants and desires, the sin in our lives. This inward reality of new life in Christ has outward implications.

There must have been some who were telling these believers that their inward faith in Christ did not have implications for their outward lives and relationships. John assures his readers that God is at work making them His children in every aspect of their lives. And as we abide in Christ, and obey Him out of a trust in His faithful working in us, we participate in this process of making this new life we have in Christ manifest in all we are involved in. We see that He is making us less enamored with sin and more able to see others as Christ sees them and more desirous of loving them in Christ rather than being jealous or condescending. As we see His real work, we obey out of hope of His living presence and continuing work in our lives. So we choose to do the loving thing out of hope that He will enable us to love more truly in the process. We choose to confess sin in our lives instead of hiding it or justifying it. And, we do so out of hope that He will indeed forgive us and cleanse us.

In the section preceding this passage, John tells them that as Christ has laid down His life for them, they are to love others “in deed and in truth” not just in words. God is at work in us enabling our relationships to be more loving. So we can step out and do loving things in the hope and evidence of God’s real transforming work in us. Now John wants to deal with what happens when our hearts condemn us–when we’re feeling guilty. Since “it does not yet appear what we shall be”(3:2)– we daily see evidence in our lives that we are still on the way . It is not perfectly clear (sometimes obviously unclear!) that I am truly God’s daughter. So, I am tempted to condemn myself for the distance I still see between who God is making me to be and who I appear to be today.

John says that we can look at the evidence in our lives of God’s changing us when our hearts are condemning us. We can look at the outward manifestations of the inward reality. There will be some evidence of His work. Those times when I found a new freedom from jealousy of another or a way to love another in my actions are signs that God is indeed working. They can feed my faith and help me to hope in His ultimate transformation over all these other things with which I am still struggling.

The reason we can take the time to ask God to show us the evidence of His work and be reassured by it when we are feeling condemned is because “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” God is not our feelings so how we feel at any particular moment does not tell us absolutely what is true about God and His presence and work in our lives. God knows everything, we only “see through a glass darkly” to borrow one of Paul’s phrases. God knows us, He knows where He is taking us and He knows what He is doing now in our lives. When I am in a place of self-condemnation, I am tempted to believe these feelings are the reality. John reminds me here that God is at work and my feelings are not always (or maybe even often) capable of telling me the truth about who I am in Christ.

John goes on to say that when our hearts are not condemning us “we have confidence before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.” When we are in a state of self-condemnation then, we do not feel confidence before God and we do not know what to ask and cannot receive easily from God. That is because when we are condemning ourselves, we are no longer counting on God to do His work in our lives. Instead of seeing that our part is to participate in what God does in us by obeying Him out of trust in His activity in us, we come to believe we are the ones who make ourselves His children by our own efforts. We feel thrown back on ourselves. We believe that the truth about us is in our condemning ourselves. We are not abiding in Christ and His work.

I certainly know the truth of this section in my own life. I lack confidence in God’s love for me when I condemn myself. I can’t see clearly what to pray for and how to receive from Him because I struggle to believe He is loving, present, and at work in me.

This turning away from condemnation to confidence happens when we obey God and so do what pleases Him. And, God is not pleased with my self-condemnation! In v. 23 John says that to obey God is to “believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another.” There it is again–to obey is to act out of a counting on, trusting in, living by, God’s presence and activity in the world and in us. It pleases Him when we choose to believe (despite any feelings to the contrary) that He loves us and is making us the children He created us to be. As we obey out of this trust in His faithful work rather than in our own efforts, we abide in Him and He in us.

Lastly, John says that we ultimately know Jesus abides in us by “the Spirit which he has given us.” Again, what we count on is the objective reality of who God is, not on ourselves. It is God’s Spirit that enables us to abide and grow as God’s children. He does not leave us to work out our transformation on our own. Rather, it is in the Spirit’s work that we are to place our trust. And sometimes (often?) that work is deeply hidden in our lives, only to become apparent much later in our lives. But we can count on the Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, no matter what.

This was a very encouraging passage for me. God can and will enable us to trust in Him when we are feeling guilty. We can turn our moments of self-condemnation over to the one who knows us better than we know ourselves and is at work making us wholly His.

¹ Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. ² By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, ³ and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already. ⁴ Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. ⁵ They are of the world, therefore what they say is of the world, and the world listens to them. ⁶ We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

1 John 4:1-6

In this letter, John has emphasized the need for his readers to abide in Jesus. To abide in Jesus means to rest in, count on, and act from the reality of Jesus’ presence, redeeming and transforming work, and His passionate love. This is what it primarily means to obey Jesus–to evaluate all that we think, say, feel, and do in the light of this reality. It is to obey only by faith, hope and love in and for God because of Christ and to do nothing on the basis of anything else, especially our own guilt, fear and anxiety.

John has been fleshing out what this abiding means so far in his letter. To abide in Jesus is to know ourselves as the children of God and to count on this becoming manifest even though it is not clear now (3:2). It is to hope in God’s work in us and by this hope to participate in the work by turning all of our concerns, sins, anxieties, hopes, fears, etc. over to Him. We no longer act on these concerns, etc. but on the truth that our lives and our identities come only from the good, reconciling, transforming triune God. It is our placing ourselves in Him that we are purified, made whole (3:3).

Abiding in Jesus means confessing that we are sinners, that we are still imperfect and in need of His continuing work of restoration in us (1:8 &9) but it also means that we no longer believe that our identity is bound up in our sin. We have a new relationship with sin–it no longer rules us and when we see sin in our lives we recognize a new desire to be healed from it rather than indulging in it. God is at work in us to help us see more and more clearly the fruitlessness, the destruction and the pain that comes from looking elsewhere for our identity and life.

I am in a Bible study with 2 very new Christians. It is a privilege to watch as these women are seeing how empty and destructive certain ideas and patterns of behavior, they held onto in the past, really are. Of course, this process continues for all of us. God is still showing me sinful patterns in my life and increasing my longing and hope for the day when they will truly be destroyed, never to be seen again.

Abiding in Jesus means seeing others as Jesus sees them, growing in our ability to not compare ourselves to others but to rejoice in others’ growth as much as in our own. It means that we are learning to love others “in deed and in truth,” rather than merely “word or speech”(3:18).

Last week, we saw that to abide in Jesus is to count on God being greater than our hearts even when our hearts condemn us. It is to realize that our feelings of guilt or fear do not tell us the truth about God’s love for us and work in our lives. In the verse that immediately precedes this passage John says, “All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit he has given us.”

John knows that his readers are hearing a lot of other voices as well (“for many false prophets have gone out into the world”). He now tells them how to discern these spirits and know which are from God and which are not. He actually already discussed this earlier in the letter (2:15-17 and 2:22-23) but He returns to it here to further enable his readers to have discernment so that they will not be deceived.

John’s emphasis here makes me realize two things. First, I see that there are many spirits that I encounter daily that are not of Christ, not just a few. Secondly, it is not hard to be deceived. If I am not paying attention I can take in ideas and attitudes that really are not Christian and begin acting on them. John wants his readers to take these warnings seriously.

But at the same time, the way to avoid being deceived is amazingly simple. John takes us back to Jesus. Any spirit that confesses that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God (vv. 2-3).

What does it mean to confess Jesus is of God and has come to us in the flesh? Well, let’s look at what John has told us so far in his letter. It is to believe that Jesus is the very Son of the Father, and to know Jesus is to know the Father. You cannot have God the Father without God the Son (2:23). That Jesus came in the flesh from God means that we now have “an advocate with the Father” who is the expiation for the sins of the whole world (2:3) Jesus is the Anointed One, and it is because John was a witness to who Jesus is and what He did that He writes this letter. It is because of Jesus that we are now the children of God. In fact, all that John has said about this new life and this new identity is only true because of Christ. And, this new reality is only known, experienced, enjoyed as we abide in Jesus, not just believe certain facts about Him.

So the best way to grow in our ability to discern all the voices around us telling us what is the good life, or who we really are, etc., is to continue to choose to abide in Jesus and to grow in our knowledge of Him. Listen only to those voices which speak to us and attempt to move us on the basis of who Jesus really is and so on the basis of who we really are in connection with Him.

It is clear in this letter that abiding never becomes automatic–we choose again every day to live in the truth, in Jesus Himself. And I have found for myself that when I am not actively abiding in Jesus and learning about Him, I am much more susceptible to these other voices. The media pours forth tons of information each day about how I should look, dress, think, feel. It plays on our guilt, fear, anxiety, and jealously of one another. Our economy is based on my being discontent so that I will buy products to make me feel whole.

Also, there is plenty of advice out there on relationships and how to make decisions. How seriously do I need to take all these? Well, that depends on how close they are to the truth I know and am coming to know better in Christ. Some of it can be helpful but it can never tell me the whole truth. For example, there has been a lot said recently about our genetic makeup and how much of who we are is determined by them. This can help me gain insight into some of my behavior and struggles. But when I remember that Jesus came in the flesh from God, I see that He is making me truly His child and there is nothing He can’t heal, supersede, make right. I am His, right down to my DNA! He alone has my future securely in His hands. Nothing can prevent me from entering into that future, can keep me from becoming who I am in Him.

John goes on to once again remind his readers that as powerful and persuasive as these spirits might seem at times, we are of God, “and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” John ministers to his readers by bringing them again to the truth that God is the greater reality and so we depend ultimately not on our own sophistication but on His faithful work. Again, we are to abide not in ourselves and our own efforts but in His person and work, which is not only greater than us but greater than the world and its various false spirits. It is interesting that he says twice here that his readers are “of God”–that we belong to Him are attached to Him, are from Him as His children. We may live here but it will feel foreign at times because we are not of here.

Part of what seems to be difficult for John’s readers is that these spirits are listened to by so many. (Can a million Americans be wrong?) This can make them seem more powerful or legitimate. If these spirits do not spread the truth, his readers must be thinking, why are there so many who listen to them? John’s answer is that it is because at this time these persons do not yet know the Spirit of Jesus and so are of the world. Because they do not confess Jesus is of God, they cannot see the lies of the voices of this world. It is when we respond to the Spirit of God working to draw us to Himself that we are able to discern the inadequacies and falsehoods of these spirits because we are now finding the wonderful truth of all that it means to have our life and identity come from God. The truth of God in Jesus and of us in Jesus provides our North star to guide us, to stay on course. Those without the true North star can easily be blown off course.

So, the best way for us to grow in our discernment is to surround ourselves with whatever reminds us of the good truth of God in Christ. John does not tire of reminding his readers of the wonderful character and work of God. We can tell each other this good news over and over–I find it never gets old. As we look together at His work, worship and pray together, we are more anchored to that “North star” and by that we can consider the other voices or spirits we encounter every day.

Remember as you choose to abide in Him that He is the one who is drawing us already and always to Himself.

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸ He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. ⁹ In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

1 John 4:7-12

This is not the first time John has exhorted his readers to love one another. He says in 2:10 “He who loves his brother abides in the light,” and in 3:14 “He who does not love abides in death.” He encourages them to love “in deed and in truth” in 3:18. In this section, John discusses why it is so important that their relationships with one another be loving. He tells them in verse 7 that “he who loves is born of God and knows God.” The person who is born of God is one who loves. This is because, John goes on to tell us, “God is love.” Love is not just something God does, this is what He is, at He deepest level. God has always been love. That is who He is. God is a Trinity of relationships and love is the very heart of the universe as George MacDonald says. There is nothing deeper than love. Love has eternally existed and the whole world was created out of this eternal love. God is the author of love and because He is love, all real love involves His very being. So when we have a share in this love, it is a sign that we are born of Him, belong to him in our very nature as His children. As we love, we know Him who is love. We are created for relationship, as He is relationship. We are created to know ourselves in loving relationships with God and each other. (So no wonder Jesus sums up the whole of God’s will as loving God and loving our neighbors! That’s all there is!)

When John speaks about love then, he is not including everything that we as human beings call love. Since God is love we learn what love is only from Him. I know all of my relationships are somewhat mixed and confused. My love is never “pure” at this point. God has shown me and continues to show me the motives and understandings that He is removing from my life so that I can give and receive love more fully and joyfully. John says in v. 9 that God’s love is made manifest among us in the sending of His only Son into the world “so that we might live through him.” We learn or see this love that is God’s most clearly in the sending and coming of Jesus, His uniting Himself to our fallen nature to heal us from the inside out and give us a share in the very life He has with the Father. Jesus is the “expiation for our sins” (v.10). By His life, death, and resurrection, He becomes the one who removes us from sin and heals and straightens out all that is broken in our lives. Now we live through Him, live in His life and receive His love.

So, in Jesus we see what true love is: love breaks down barriers, overcomes obstacles to come to the beloved. This love endures rejection and misunderstanding to bring about reconciliation, healing, peace, and life. In Christ, we see God’s great commitment to love us to perfection, to do all that is necessary to give us the fullness of love He already knows in His triune self. True love loves to perfection and perfects all that it loves. True love will not, in the end, settle for anything less than the perfection of the beloved. He accepts us where we are only to take us to where He is: the perfection of love.

So John encourages his readers to love one another. The fact that he encourages them so much means that even though they are now born of God and do love because of this, they can be tempted to turn from their brothers and sisters in jealousy, anger, apathy, or fear. John encourages them to fully participate in God’s work in their lives by choosing to live by the truth that God is love. To receive His love and to know ourselves as His children is to be freed more and more from requiring others to give us our lives or identities. Rather, we can grow in our ability to give and receive love with others and recognize them as brothers and sisters of the same loving Father. And so, we love in ways that join with God in seeing others receive God’s love, hoping in and encouraging them along the way of the perfection of their love (just like John is doing in this letter!)

If God is love and the deepest reality of the universe is relationship, then that means this is what we were created for–to love each other in Christ. Heaven will simply be doing this to the fullest extent possible. At last, we will be able to truly receive and give love with no restraint, shyness, jealously, etc. Reality is ultimately relational.

But John encourages his readers to see clearly that we are not the ones who create love. How do we love one another? Some days this seems hard to do even with those who are closest to me, my own husband and children. Do we simply grit our teeth and try harder? Is it just a matter of my will?

I don’t think so. Notice John addresses his readers twice as “beloved.” Who are we? We are the ones who are loved by God. In verse 10 John says, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us …” Love does not start with us. God has always been love. He created us in love, and He sent His only son to redeem us and make us sharers in the great love of the universe that has always existed. Our love grows as we receive this love from Him, as we open our arms and hearts and let Him love us. When I am struggling to muster up any willingness to act lovingly towards others, I need to turn to God and receive again the good news of His passionate love for me, seen in the suffering of His Son in wrestling with and destroying all that keeps me from knowing and living in God’s love. When I don’t do that, I am not abiding in and enjoying the truth of who God is and the life He has for me. When I choose not to have God enable me to love others, I can not know God because God is love, that is who He is and so what He is up to.

In the last verse of this section, John says that as we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. So, we participate in His work by choosing to love each other. We love each other only as we first receive God’s great love for us and those around us. He will enable us to grow in our ability to love as we act out of our faith in Him and in this process He will perfect His love in us–we will indeed know a day where we live in love, moment by moment.

¹³ By this we know that we abide in him and he is us, because he has given us of his own Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. ¹⁶ So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. ¹⁷ In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. ¹⁹ We love, because he first loved us. ²⁰ If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother who he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. ²¹ And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.

1 John 4:13-21

John begins by reminding his readers again why they can have assurance that they do indeed abide in God and He in them. In an earlier passage, John had stated that they could consider the loving deeds they did when their hearts were condemning them (3:18 and 19). In the verse that just precedes this section, John tells his readers that “No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us…”(4:12) There is evidence in our lives that God is at work in us and we truly belong to Him. Those situations or experiences where we see that we are indeed new people in Him can quiet our hearts in times of doubt about who we are.

But these are only signs and they are not always consistent. There are times when our anger or hate for another, or our indulging in sinful behavior make it very hard for us to feel assured that God does indeed still abide in us. So John now turns again to the deepest evidence of God’s presence in our lives. “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.” (v. 13) Notice John does not say that it is our experience of the Spirit, but the objective reality of the presence of the Spirit in our lives. Also notice that John says Jesus “has given us of his own Spirit”. Jesus does not give us an impersonal force, or another spirit like His. He gives us a share in His very own Spirit. We belong to Him because we share in His spirit–the very same Spirit that He has. So our assurance comes from who God is and what He has done, not from what we do or have done.

But then, what assurance do we have that we share in Christ’s Spirit? John now reminds his readers that he and others have been witnesses of the fact that “the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world”(v.14) This is where John began his letter, proclaiming that his message involves that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands…”(1:1) John’s message is about an objective reality and he is even an eyewitness to it! And what is he an eyewitness to?–“that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.” This is a mouthful and John has been unpacking the truth of this phrase throughout his letter. In the great love between the Father and the Son, the Father sends His Son to rescue us, heal us, and make us His sons and daughters, sharing in this very love of God.

This is the truth, that the Father has sent His Son. And the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus has changed everything. So it is our part to recognize, acknowledge, confess this truth, this reality. We do not make this true, God is the One who acts towards us. And, John assures his readers that God abides in whoever confesses this truth.(v.15) It is the Son who brings the Spirit. So when John testifies that Jesus was sent by the Father to save the world, this involves the Spirit that led Jesus, the very Spirit He leaves for us when He ascends back to the Father. Where do we look then when we are unsure of the presence of the Spirit in our lives? We look to the Son, we see His life in the Spirit and trusting in what is revealed of Him, we count on that very same Spirit to operate in our lives. In fact, our very confession of Jesus being the Son is only possible by the work of His Spirit in our lives, opening our eyes and hearts to the truth.

John concludes this thought in the next few sentences.(v.16) “So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” In our believing in and trusting in Jesus, we have come to know or experience God’s love for us and to trust in His love. It is in Christ and by His Spirit that we know God’s love, not just for the whole world but for us personally. We know it and are coming to know it. We do not yet fully know and experience this love moment by moment as we will when He appears and we “see Him as He is.” (3:2) But His love is ours to know for He has given us a share in His Spirit. And we now can count on His love, live as if we are His beloved–because we are!

Here in v. 16, John repeats what He said in the preceding passage, “God is love.” I was thinking about this amazing statement today while in church. It is incredible and wonderful to realize that the heart of the universe is not cold, dead space, or chaos, or even just order and meaning–it is love! So as we abide in real love, the love that existed before us, we abide in God.

Now I want to point out an idea that John has repeated three times in these 4 verses we have just been looking at. John is emphasizing the truth here that God abides in us and we abide in Him. I was wondering why He makes this point 3 times. I think it is to emphasize the intimacy and the sharing that exists in our relationship with our heavenly Father. There is a true, deep sharing between us and the very heart of God. He now lives in us, dwells in us forever. We have His very Spirit in us, making us new people, never to be the same as before. And we now live, dwell, play, love, rest in Him–not just nearby or with Him. There is truly an deep sharing between us and our heavenly Father.

Let’s look at the next verse (17): “In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence on the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world.” It is in this indwelling of God is us, and our abiding in Him that our love grows to perfection. Perfect love will be our ability to perfectly receive and give love to God and all others around us. And in the perfecting of our love, John says we have confidence in the day of judgment. This echoes an earlier statement, “…abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.”(2:28) Our confidence comes from our trusting in His love and His work, receiving from Him and abiding in Him and not counting on ourselves to love perfectly by sheer will. The last part of v. 17 seems to refer back to our having a share in Christ’s Spirit. Our lives on this earth now are like His because we live in Him.

The opposite of confidence and love is fear. John now deals with fear in v. 18, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.” God is love, John has told us twice. Speaking of perfect love, he says that perfected love casts out fear. Love and fear cannot exist together. John says the reason fear is cast out by love is because fear “has to do with punishment.” What John is dealing with here is the character of God. God is love. That is who He is. And God desires to see His love perfected in His children–that is what He is up to. But when we are fearing God, we think that He is double minded about us. The fear that John speaks of has to do with punishment. If we think we might get punished, at best we will approach Him with fear. Perhaps we will rather want to flee. Think of when you were a child, and your parents called you to come. You would approach them with fear if you thought they were going to punish you.

Fear is a paralyzing emotion. We often find ourselves fearing. When we fear God’s punishment, it it could very well be because we despair of a recurring sin we cannot seem to get rid of, or we can’t imagine He can forgive and heal some of the things we have done. We fear because we do not trust that God can really be that loving, or that willing and able to transform us. We fear He is putting us to a test and that we will fail. We fear He will grow tired of us, become impatient, give up on us. And this fear affects then how we approach Him, and stunts our ability to recognize and receive His deep love for us.

Look carefully at this verse. John says that the reason perfect love casts out fear is that fear has to do with punishment. So that means that punishment is not what God is up to at all! God, who is love, casts out all fear that has to do with punishment. God is love, not just “kind of” love, or sometimes love. As I said in the last study, love is not just something God does, it is who He is. Can God really be this good? YES! God is not interested in punishing the sinner, only in condemning the sin. God is against sin and He will see it destroyed. But it is just because of His passionate love for us that He is so adamantly opposed to sin. Sin is against us, sin twists, distorts, and destroys the life God created and gives to us and all our relationships. God will get rid of it by separating us from our sin, condemning it to hell and by perfecting our love for Him–all in Christ. He will have us filled with His life, with Himself. It is hard to wrap our minds around such love. This is the love the Father shows us in sending Jesus to takes our sins and goes through the death and separation from God that sin brings, then conquers death and destroys sin, so we can live new lives in Him.

What John is saying here takes us back to the beginning of this letter. John says that the message he is proclaiming to his readers and to us is “that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.”(1:5b) God is love, through and through. We do not need to fear a “God behind God” and He is committed to perfecting His love in us in such a way that all our fear is cast out.

In the last three verses of this section, John deals again with our loving one another. The first point he makes, which echoes what he said in the preceding section (3:10), is that we love because “he first loved us.” We could not know love or participate in loving except that God loved us. All of our loving is a response in the power of the Spirit to the great love with which He loves us. We cannot take pride in being already loving. It is as we know and experience through His Spirit this love which is for the whole world that we are able to see how strange it is for us to hate our sister or brother. We are all receivers of this love of God–we are all created in His love, redeemed in His love. We are all in need of knowing this love and being made more and more able to receive it. When we hate others, we are not yet able to see them as those, like us, who are in need of God’s transforming grace.

John ends this section with the commandment that “he who loves God should love his brother also.” How are we to do this? The truth is that all of us still experience times of anger, dislike, and yes, even hate towards others, even our sisters and brothers in Christ. Is John telling his readers just to buck up and by sheer will love those they currently do not? Not at all. If he were saying that, he could just give the commandment and leave it at that. John wants to enable his readers to more readily participate in the sanctifying work God is doing in their lives. He wants them to know that God is love, that this means He is loving them and making them His children. He wants them to see that God’s intention is for us to fully participate in the giving and receiving of loving God and others. Out of hope in God’s character and work, seen in Jesus and from time to time in their lives, John encourages them to abide in Him, to confess their sins, and live in His love and forgiveness. So we hand God our hate and anger, confessing our need for forgiveness and for His Spirit to transform our feelings and perfect our love. He is the one who will change us, so we hand over each day all that we are, our fears and frustrations as well as our faith, allowing Him to do His loving will in us.

¹ Every one who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God, and every one who loves the parent loves the child. 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. ⁴ For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. ⁵ Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

1 John 5:1-5

In the preceding section John says, “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.”(4:15) In the last study, I considered the intimacy of sharing that we now have with God as those who confess that Jesus is God’s Son. God now comes by His Spirit to live in us, united to us. He makes His home in us. And at the same time, we now abide in and live in God Himself. He is now our dwelling place, our home. John further expands on this idea here in 5:1. Each one of us is God’s child, sister or brother to the Son when we confess Jesus is the Christ, God’s anointed One. To be His child is to share in this wonderful mutual indwelling or abiding.

John completes this thought with an interesting play on words. He says “and every one who loves the parent loves the child.” To love someone else is to grow to love and appreciate what they love. To love someone who is a parent is to love her or his child, to share in the love of the parent for the beloved. To love God the Father then is also to love His child. By using the singular form here, John can refer both to Jesus as the child and to another person, or ourselves as the child. To love God is to believe, trust, count on, and yes, love Jesus as the beloved Son who is sent to us. John has spoken earlier in the letter that to confess the Father is to confess the Son and to deny the Son is also to deny the Father. In 2:23 John says, “No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.”

But this “child” can also certainly mean ourselves as His children as well as others. And the wonderful thing is that John is saying that as Jesus is the Child, so now we are also children (not just creatures) in Him. God loves us and His other children and to love Him is to grow in our ability to share in His love for His creation. Now in verse 2, John is clearly focusing on our love for others. Earlier in the letter John states that if we love God then we should love our brothers and sisters. Now he is focusing more on how we love others–and it leads right back to loving God! “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.” The best way, then, to grow in loving others is not to will for ourselves to love them directly with God to the side of the picture. Rather, it is to grow more and more in our love for God by obeying Him, that is loving what He commands us to love, namely our neighbors. As we obey this command to love what God himself loves (namely his Son and his earthly creatures) we come to see and appreciate more clearly how good, gracious, loving our Father is. We then are moved to love others by living more in the truth and love of God. Our love for others then is grounded in God’s own love and becomes more and more like God’s, that is, becomes more and more Christ-like.

To love God is to obey His commandments. John repeats this point in verse 3. I have thought of this verse in terms of my children (and when I was a child!). My children love me and tell me so, but I see at the moment that they disobey me, they are not loving me deeply for they do not see or cannot see that what I ask comes out of my love for them and for them to obey is to exercise their love for and trust in me. Ideally, as they obey they come to see the goodness and rightness in what I ask and they grow in their love for me and in their willingness to obey the next time. To do as someone asks leads us to come to know their heart, their character and concerns better–to see more clearly who they are and what they are up to. The same is true for us with God.

Now John does not stop with his point that to love God is to obey His commandments. He then makes this wonderful statement, “And his commandments are not burdensome.” How can this be? Aren’t all commandments, by very definition, burdensome? After all, if they are not burdensome, then are they commandments at all? I know my children often moan when I tell them to do something–they view my requests as very burdensome at that moment! So how is it that God’s commandments are not burdensome? John tells us that they need not be burdensome if all of our obedience is done, as it ought to be, by faith. We obey counting on our heavenly Father to be good, trusting that whatever He asks of us, therefore, is for our maturity, our ability to receive more and more of His life, joy, peace, and love and to extend it to others. This is what we hope for our children: for them to see that what we ask is for their own maturity and ability to live life well and to be able to offer that life to others

Also, when we obey God by faith, we are also counting on His ability to change us and enable us to obey. John has emphasized in this letter the need for us to abide in God. This is our first obedience–to confess our own inability to be the children of God on our own strength, to be healed and made whole by our own wills. To abide in God is to count on Him to give us our identities and our lives, to be able to separate us more and more from the sin that destroys us and to truly make us His beloved children. When we abide in Christ we hand Him everything and allow Him to transform us. It is a burden to consider trying to love someone I fear or dislike. But it is not a burden to hand this fear or hate to God and wait on Him to do what I can not do myself–transform this fear and hate to love. Then, I can always begin to act out of confidence that He will be at work and enable me to become more loving.

I have found in my own life that trusting in God’s work frees me to wait on Him. This last December I had to go to a dinner party with Gary and there was a woman there who had hurt me and I was angry with her and did not want to see her at all. So my options at first seemed to be to not go or go and avoid her. But then I remembered that I had the third option of faith. I decided to pray that God would enable me to forgive her, to hand it over to Him, and that He would enable me to get to the place where I could attend in peace. This is just what He did and it was a great joy to me to see how much my heavenly Father loves me. Of course, I forget this and will forget this again. I can easily again be deceived into believing that God’s commandments are burdensome. John knows this is true of His readers and so He reminds them of the truth. We can remind ourselves and each other of the truth and we can count on the One who by His Spirit abides in us to remind us as well. For God knows that His commands are not burdensome and He longs for His children to live in this truth as well.

This passage reminded me of a conversation Gary had many years ago with a student who was in one of our fellowships. The student was struggling with great anxiety and having a terrible time letting go of it. Gary said to the student, “But the most important thing is not whether you are anxious, but whether God is anxious about this.” When she saw that God was not anxious, she could hand her anxiety over to Him and wait on Him to enable her to be peaceful. Whenever I am anxious, depressed, fearful, etc., I find I cannot find my way out on my own. I can abide in Jesus not by waiting to get rid of these fears and doubts first, but by handing them to Him. He knows better what to do with them than we do. I may think His commandments are burdensome, but what is more important is what He knows about His commandments—they aren’t!

In the last 2 verses of this passage, John tells his readers that “whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” In fact John repeats the phrase “overcomes the world” 3 times in these 2 verses! This is why, John says, God’s commandments are not burdensome–because when we believe in Him we are born of Him and now we overcome the world with and in Him!. God unites Himself to us by His Spirit when we trust in Him. So, now we are “born of God” and are not tied to the world as we once were. It is therefore our faith, which unites us to Christ, that is the victory–not because of the strength of our faith, but because of the object of our faith. It is not because of who we are that we overcome the world, it is because of who God is and His uniting Himself to us. It is because we count on Jesus, the Son of God (v.5) that we now are not overcome by the world.

What an amazing truth this is, and how I need to hear it again and again! It may seem at times that we are burdened and overcome by our life here on earth, but God knows better and He is able to take our circumstances and give us His life and peace in the midst of them. Whatever we have today to give Him, even if it is only repentance and fear, let us by His Spirit hand it over to Him, abide in and wait on Him to transform our lives so that we see more and more the truth that we are indeed His beloved children!

⁶ This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. ⁷ And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth. ⁸ There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree. 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 witness to his Son. ¹⁰ He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. He who does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne to his Son. ¹¹ And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. ¹² He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life.

1 John 5:6-12

John in his letter has spoken already of the testimonies that point to Jesus as the Son of God. At the beginning of his letter, John says that he is telling them about “That … which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands.”(1:1) He states in 3:24 that we have assurance that God abides in us “by the Spirit which he has given us” and he repeats this idea in 4:13 (“By this we know that we abide in him and he is us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.”) In 4:14 John mentions again his own testimony of this truth, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.”

John is assuring his readers of the truth that Jesus, as God’s Son, has united Himself to us and brought us new life and the hope of being fully separated from our sins. Here again he wants to assure them as he brings his letter to a close. He mentions that there are three witness: the water and the blood and the Spirit. The references to the water and the blood are enigmatic and I found in reading through several commentaries that there was not complete agreement on what these referred to. All the commentators believed that the blood referred to Jesus’ shedding of blood on the cross for our sins. But there was more disagreement about the water. I won’t take the time to talk about all the possibilities, but instead to just talk briefly about what I thought seemed the best interpretations.

A number of commentators thought that water refers to Jesus’ baptism. John, you will notice begins talking about the water and the blood as what Jesus “came by” or “came through.” They witness to Jesus as the Son of God, but they are also what Jesus passed through or came by. We know that there was some teaching at the time John was writing, that Jesus was just a man that the Son of God “inhabited” for a period before his death. These teachers assumed that God would never really be a human being and would certainly not die!

Earlier in his letter John says that “every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.”(4:2) Here John is helping his readers to discern which teachings and ideas to listen to and which to ignore. The key, John asserts, is whether the spirit is willing to confess not just that Jesus is the Messiah or Christ, but that Jesus is “of God” and that He has “come in the flesh.” The truth is that Jesus is fully God and fully man and both of these facts have to be received. God, Himself, truly does redeem us in Jesus. God did not send someone else to do the job for Him. Jesus is our advocate, the One who comes alongside, who forgives us, abides in us, and makes us His brothers and sisters. This is because He, in Himself, is the true mediator between God and man–uniting us in His very person.

It is crucial that John’s readers grasp this truth and hold onto it. In chapter 4, John speaks of this to help them discern truth from falsehood.

Here John could be referring to this important truth again when he speaks of the “water and the blood.” Water, as I have said, could refer to His baptism. Or it could refer to His birth. If John meant it this way, then he is saying Jesus came in the flesh, by coming by or through the water of human birth and the blood of human death. He united Himself to us in a whole human life, redeeming and healing us from our birth to death. It was Jesus, the Son of God who died to destroy sin in us. He is our advocate because He did pass through the whole of human existence from birth to death–He didn’t leave at the last minute. John is saying this here because in the preceding verse (5:5) he says of Jesus: “Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” Our trust overcomes the world because it is placed in the Son of God who came down to the bottom of our sin and pain, and shed His blood to overcome sin and death the the same world in which we live. Thus His victory for us is really our victory in Him.

In the next few verses, John speaks of the witness of the Spirit. The Spirit is “the truth.” The Spirit’s witness agrees with the witness of the water and the blood. The Spirit testifies in us as well. John has mentioned the witness of the Spirit other times in this letter, as I have already pointed out. He wants to assure his readers again before he ends his epistle that we have the witness of God the Spirit to assure us that Jesus is truly our Redeemer and that we can count on Him to make us new people. This Spirit lives in us, abides in us, when we trust Jesus with our lives. So, we not only have objective, external testimony but by His Spirit, we have “the testimony in (ourselves).”

Now John speaks of what the testimony delivered to our very spirits is: “that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” At the beginning of the letter, John said that he and others were proclaiming to his readers “the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us-“(1:2) Jesus is the eternal life made manifest! Now as he concludes his letter John wants to remind us that God gives us this eternal life in Jesus and that the conviction we have of this comes from the very Spirit of God.

What God is up to is giving us life, eternal life, real, joyous, deep, loving life–the very life that He lives as the triune God. It is a life of love, of giving and receiving love forever. This is what God has always been up to as we know from the first chapter of this letter “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” All that God does in our lives to prune away the sin and make us more His children is in order to bring us more of His life, to fill us up until the day when we are full to overflowing.

Sometimes day to day existence is so wearying and painful and we wonder where God is and what He is up to in the midst of it all. Well, what a joy to remember, to see that He is making us more able to be full of life! Our lives are not leading to death, but to life. George MacDonald, a Scottish pastor and theologian once wrote a sermon entitled “Life.” In it MacDonald argues that when we are weary we may think we are weary of life. He goes on to say that really we are weary death, sin and its consequences. So, what we should long for is not death, but more life. In fact, he argues, that all of creation lies in the shadow of death and longs for the day when we are been completely made new and live in the fullness of life. “‘More life!’ is the unconscious prayer of all creation, groaning and travailing for the redemption of its lord (each one of us), the son who is not yet a son.”

Remember then that our abiding in God and being made His children is for us to know full, joyous, pulsating life. We are indeed now only living in and knowing His life a tiny bit. But it is with the hope of His filling us more and more that we can give Him our lives each day–including today!

¹³ I write this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. ¹⁴ And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him. ¹⁶ If any one sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is mortal. There is sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that. ¹⁷ All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal.

1 John 5:13-17

John has just been reminding his readers that “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” (5:11) God’s will, His desire, is to give us His life, to fill us with this life that is ours in Jesus, His Son. John’s readers may have been seeking assurance that this life that he has been telling them about is really theirs. After all, it is not yet obvious that we are God’s children (3:1-3), so how can we be sure that He abides in us and is giving us His wonderful, eternal life?

In this section, John assures his readers and discusses the place of prayer in our relationship with our heavenly Father. In verse 13 he writes, “I write this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” This life God offers us is in His Son, who gives it to us by uniting Himself to us in His life, death, and resurrection. When we believe in Jesus, we trust that He is truly the Son of God and our source of new life and new relationship with God the Father. We are not trusting in ourselves, our deeds, or even in our own trusting. It is because of who we are trusting, that we have eternal life.

Now John turns to the subject of prayer. “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.”(v.14) Have you ever wondered if God is really hearing you? Do we think we need sometimes to pray louder just to make sure He is listening? It is interesting to notice that in the gospel of John, Jesus is quoted as saying that he knows His Father hears Him. When Jesus stands outside of Lazarus’s tomb He looks up to heaven and says, “‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.’”(John 11:41-42) Jesus knows that His Father hears Him. He says this here to help those listening and looking on to know that Jesus has an intimate relationship with the Father, He has the Father’s ear.

Now here, John tells us that God hears us! We, too, have the Father’s ear as we pray according to His will. We know that His will is to give us eternal life, that the deepest thing in the triune God is love, and that He wills to make us truly His children–to know and live in His love, joy, peace, and life. To pray according to His will is to trust His character and purposes and to desire more of His life. We may not know how His will accomplishes His purposes, but when we pray according to them, we are agreeing with them. We really wouldn’t want God to hear those prayers of ours that are not according to His will, since we can see that His will is for our deepest, most complete good. It would be foolish to ask for anything less than that!

John is saying that our heavenly Father has a real, intimate relationship with us. He is listening to us when we pray–He takes up our prayers in His doing of His will and incorporates them in the outworking of His purposes. He takes my prayers seriously– He hears me.

John goes on in the next verse to say that “if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.”(v.15) God listens to us and He will have His will be done. He will, in the end, bring about complete redemption and reconciliation. There will be peace between us and others. He will fill us with all the fullness of His abundant life. There are times when we wonder–will God really redeem this situation? Will God give life? John says yes, we can have confidence–one day it will be obvious that we are the children of God. It will be clear to us and to others, who we are and who we belong to. This is our assurance.

It is hard for us at times because we want God to do His will the way we have in mind and when He does not, we wonder if He really hears us. John wants to help his readers, and us, to know that God is always hearing us as we pour out to Him our desire for His life and peace for ourselves and others. When we do not see an immediate response or the one we hoped for, we can know that this does not mean that God is not doing His good, perfect, life-giving will or not listening to us.

In the last 2 verses of this section, John turns to the issue of praying for a brother or sister who has sinned. His readers may have wondered whether to or how to pray for a fellow believer who is not trusting God at this time and who has been acting out of this distrust. John encourages them to pray for them, saying that “God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal.” We can and are urged to pray for those sisters and brothers who are not living now out of a trust in God’s character and work in the world.

John makes a distinction between sin that is mortal and sin that is not. It seems that sin that is mortal is that which leads to eternal death. Jesus warns in Mark against blaspheming the Holy Spirit (3:28-29). It appears that it is somehow possible to reach a point of no return, where one has so thoroughly turned away from God that he actually despises the forgiveness God offers and does not want His grace at all and that there is nothing that even God could do to turn them around. This must be what John has in mind when he speaks of “mortal sin” and he states, “I do not say that one is to pray for that.” We need not pray that God would somehow let off someone who will never accept God’s forgiveness, for that would amount to asking God to something nonsensical: change someone who will not be changed.

I don’t think he is telling us that we can know exactly who has committed such mortal sin although he acknowledges that there is such an extreme possibility. Nor is he commanding that we should not pray for someone who seems to have gone so far. Rather, if there is someone who, regrettably, seems to us so far gone that we cannot pray for them in faith, we are not under strict obligation to pray for them. We can hand them over to God and let him deal with them Himself. For only God knows for certain if something can be done and what needs to be done to bring that person around. We can hand those people over to God and let Him do what He will with them.

An example might be John’s answer to the question: Should we even pray for Hitler (assuming he was still alive)? John’s answer seems to be: I am not saying that you must pray for such a seemingly hopeless case. He may have reached the point of no return. We do not have to pray, if we cannot pray in faith, for his repentance. God knows whether or not he can and you can leave it totally up to God. You are certainly allowed to pray if you have a mustard seed of faith that perhaps, despite all appearances, he has not yet so totally rejected God, that God could bring him to repentance, even if at the very last moment of life. But no, you do not have to pray for such a one.

¹⁸ We know that any one born of God does not sin, but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. ¹⁹ We know that we are of God, and the whole world is in the power of the evil one. ²⁰ And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, to know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. ²¹ Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

1 John 5:18-21

John has three statements here that he begins with “we know”. He is closing up his letter by reminding his readers of the great truths they have heard and know. He doesn’t want them to think he is going into a new subject. He is saying “these things I am telling you are already true and I want to remind you of what you already know.”

The Christian life is best understood as a process of going deeper into the truth, deeper into Christ. We begin with an understanding of our new lives in Christ and instead of leaving this behind to go on to other more important or profound truths, we delve deeper in our abiding in Christ and so more deeply appreciate, receive, and enjoy this new life He has given us in Himself. John has no need to give them new truths as he ends his letter, just to remind them of what they already know.

First, John reminds them that “any one born of God does not sin, but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.” This sentence may appear a bit confusing because John uses the term “born of God” to refer both to us and to Jesus. As earlier in the letter, John is emphasizing the truth that what God has done in Christ for us has changed in the deepest reality, who we are. We are called those “born of God” just like Christ who truly is born of God. And, we are called this as John stated in 3:1 because “so we are.” God did not just provide us with a new title or status, we are truly now born of Him, His children, in our very being. We are Christ’s brothers and sisters, and Christ, “He who was born of God” keeps us. Since we are born of God we no longer live in sin, we now live in and are kept by Jesus Himself. We have been rescued from our old relationship with sin, it is no longer the deepest reality of who we are. It cannot ultimately determine who we are.

John finishes the sentence with the fact that the evil one no longer can touch us. In his next statement, John reminds us that while we are of God, “the whole world is in the power of the evil one.” The world is not going in the same direction that we are going. The world is inundated with the evil one’s power and the temptation to not find our true identity and life in Christ is present everywhere around us. Yet as overwhelming as it may seem, John assures us that Jesus is keeping us and that in Christ, we cannot be touched by the evil one. All we need to resist the temptation to believe that our lives are incomplete without whatever the world is offering, is to be found in Christ. We are not defenseless. Although the world constantly puts us under temptation to add it’s offerings to Christ or to substitute for Christ altogether, Christ Himself can protect us and rescue us from falling under the power of that temptation.

John reminds his readers in this last sentence beginning with “We know” that Jesus, God’s Son has come and given us understanding and knowledge of the Triune God, who is the One who is true. God has broken into history, into our time, at a particular time and place and changed everything. How can anyone know God? Are we left to speculation and wishful thinking? No, we know God because God has spoken so that we can hear, and He did this in Jesus. We can have confidence that He gives us understanding, that He is a God who desires that we know Him. The One we know is true, He doesn’t just speak truth, He is true. He is light in whom there is no darkness (1:5). To know Him is to know reality, the “really real”, and to begin to come out of the fog that we have lived in, in this twisted, broken world.

Not only do we know Him, but we are in Him “who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ”. It is interesting to see that God is not merely concerned with our knowing Him, but that we are to belong to, live in, have our home in His heart. God draws us into to the fullness of the giving and receiving of love that is the Triune life. This is what it means that we, too, are now born of God. We will not be kept at a distance from the very deepest heart of the universe, the love of the Father and the Son in the Spirit. John goes on to say “This is the true God and eternal life.”

John has repeated the word “true” three times in this verse. We hear, as his first readers did, claims all around us of what is true, real. John wants to assure us that God is the One who is true. And, he says, this is eternal life. This is eternal life–to know and live in the One who made us, rescued us, loves us fully. There is no other life, nothing else we were created for than to enjoy this eternal life in Him.

In John’s last sentence, he encourages his readers to “keep yourselves from idols.” An idol is anything we look to besides Christ to give us our identity and our life. Whenever we say, “I will really be happy, life will really be good, only when …..” then we have made an idol of that thing. We can make anything an idol: having our kids turn out right, keeping our friendships, having enough money, having a meaningful job that the world recognizes as successful, being well thought of, etc. Anytime we believe our lives or our identities depend on the fulfillment of something besides God, we have taken hold of an idol.

I have had some good talks with my children since we have moved here about all of this. Can we see that God is so good, that He can pour out His life, His presence upon us way from our friends even here in Illinois? If we think we can’t receive real life from God here in Illinois under these new and different circumstances then we have placed an idol in the way of God’s blessing, in the way of God! It makes sense for John to end here because he has just reminded them of the character of God, the wonders of the life He gives us in Himself and His complete trustworthiness to make us more and more able to receive this life. When we are reminded of this it can help us to loosen our grip on our many idols, seeing that they cannot be the source of our life and identity anyway. They are nothing more than false gods, unable to deliver what only the true God can. For in the end that is the true nature of our daily spiritual battles and temptations. To whom will we turn for eternal life: the idols and promises of the world or to God in Christ through the resurrection power of the Spirit?