Chapter Six: The Pretenders (1 John 3:1–10)
Key theme: The tests of reality in the Christian life
II.THE TESTS OF TRUE FELLOWSHIP: GOD IS LIGHT—1:5–2:29
A.Obedience—1:5–2:6
(“saying” vs. “doing”)
III.THE TESTS OF TRUE SONSHIP: GOD IS LOVE—chapters 3–5
A.Obedience—3
B.Love—4
C.Truth—5
(1 John 1:5–2:6)
(1 John 4:17–5:5)
Once upon a time …”
Remember how exciting those words used to be? They were the open door into an exciting world of make-believe, a dreamworld that helped you forget all the problems of childhood.
Then—pow! You turned a corner one day, and “Once upon a time” became kid stuff. You discovered that life is a battleground, not a playground, and fairy stories were no longer meaningful. You wanted something real.
The search for something real is not new. It has been going on since the beginning of history. Men have looked for reality and satisfaction in wealth, thrills, conquest, power, learning, and even in religion.
There is nothing really wrong with these experiences, except that by themselves they never really satisfy. Wanting something real and finding something real are two different things. Like a child eating cotton candy at the circus, many people who expect to bite into something real end up with a mouthful of nothing. They waste priceless years on empty substitutes for reality.
This is where the Apostle John’s first epistle comes in. Written centuries ago, this letter deals with a theme that is forever up-to-date: the life that is real.
John had discovered that satisfying reality is not to be found in things or thrills, but in a Person—Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Without wasting any time, he tells us about this “living reality” in the first paragraph of his letter.
As you read , you learn three vital facts about the life that is real.
As you read John’s letter, you will discover that he enjoys using certain words, and that the word “manifest” is one of them. “And the life was manifested” (), he says. This life was not hidden so that we have to search for it and find it. No, it was manifested—revealed openly!
If you were God, how would you go about revealing yourself to men? How could you tell them about, and give them, the kind of life you wanted them to enjoy?
God has revealed Himself in creation (), but creation alone could never tell us the story of God’s love. God has also revealed Himself much more fully in His Word, the Bible. But God’s final and most complete revelation is in His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” ().
Because Jesus is God’s revelation of Himself, He has a very special name: “The Word of Life” ().
This same title opens John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” ().
Why does Jesus Christ have this name? Because Christ is to us what our words are to others. Our words reveal to others just what we think and how we feel. Christ reveals to us the mind and heart of God. He is the living means of communication between God and men. To know Jesus Christ is to know God!
John makes no mistake in his identification of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of the Father—the Son of God (). John warns us several times in his letter not to listen to the false teachers who tell lies about Jesus Christ. “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?” () “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (). If a man is wrong about Jesus Christ, he is wrong about God, because Jesus Christ is the final and complete revelation of God to men.
For example, there are those who tell us that Jesus was a man but was not God. John has no place for such teachers! One of the last things he writes in this letter is, “We are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life” ().
False teaching is so serious a matter that John wrote about it in his second letter too, warning believers not to invite false teachers into their homes (). And he makes it plain that to deny that Jesus is God is to follow the lies of Antichrist ().
This leads to a basic Bible doctrine that has puzzled many people—the doctrine of the Trinity.
John mentions in his letter the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For example, he says, “By this know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God” (, SOC). Here are references in one verse to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And in is another statement that mentions the three Persons of the Trinity.
The word “Trinity” is a combination of tri-, meaning “three,” and unity, meaning “one.” A “trinity,” then, is a three-in-one, or one-in-three. To be sure, the word “trinity” is not found in the Bible, but the truth is taught there (cf. also ; , ; ; ).
Christians do not believe that there are three gods. They believe that one God exists in three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Nor do Christians believe merely that one God reveals Himself in three different ways, much as one man may be a husband, a father, and a son. No, the Bible teaches that God is one but that He exists in three Persons.
One teacher of doctrine used to say, “Try to explain the Trinity and you may lose your mind. But try to explain it away and you will lose your soul!” And the Apostle John says, “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father” (, NASB). No Person of the Trinity is expendable!
As you read the Gospel records of the life of Jesus, you see the wonderful kind of life God wants us to enjoy. But it is not by imitating Jesus, our Example, that we may share in this life. No, there is a far better way.
Read the first four verses of John’s letter again, and you will notice that the apostle had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. His was no secondhand “religious experience” inherited from somebody else or discovered in a book! No, John knew Jesus Christ face-to-face. He and the other Apostles heard Jesus speak. They watched Him as He lived with them. In fact, they studied Him carefully, and even touched His body. They knew that Jesus was real—not a phantom, not a vision, but God in human corporeal form.
Some twentieth-century student may say: “Yes, and this means that John had an advantage. He lived when Jesus walked on earth. He knew Jesus personally. But I was born twenty centuries too late!”
But this is where our student is wrong! It was not the Apostles’ physical nearness to Jesus Christ that made them what they were. It was their spiritual nearness. They had committed themselves to Him as their Saviour and their Lord. Jesus Christ was real and exciting to John and his colleagues because they had trusted Him. By trusting Christ, they had experienced eternal life!
Six times in this letter John uses the phrase “born of God.” This was not an idea John had invented; he had heard Jesus use these words. “Except a man be born again,” Jesus had said, “he cannot see the kingdom of God … That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ‘Ye must be born again’ ” (, ). We can experience this “real life” only after we have believed the Gospel, put our trust in Christ, and been “born of God.”
“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (). Eternal life is not something we earn by good works or deserve because of good character. Eternal life, the life that is real, is a gift from God to those who trust His Son as their Saviour.
John wrote his Gospel to tell people how to receive this wonderful life (). He wrote his first letter to tell people how to be sure they have really been born of God ().
A college student returned to the campus after going home for a family funeral, and almost at once his grades began to go down. His counselor thought that the death of his grandmother had affected the boy, and that time would heal the wound, but the grades only became worse. Finally the boy confessed the real problem. While he was home, he happened to look into his grandmother’s old Bible, and there he discovered in the family record that he was an adopted son.
“I don’t know who I belong to,” he told his counselor. “I don’t know where I came from!”
The assurance that we are in God’s family—that we have been “born of God”—is vitally important to all of us. Certain characteristics are true of all God’s children. A person who is born of God lives a righteous life (). A child of God does not practice sin (which is the meaning of the King James word “commit,” ). A believer will occasionally commit sin (cf. 1 John 1:8–2:2), but he will not make it a habit to sin.
God’s children also love each other and their Heavenly Father (cf. ; ). They have no love for the world system around them (), and because of this the world hates them (). Instead of being overcome by the pressures of this world, and swept off balance, the children of God overcome the world (). This is another mark of true children of God.
Why is it so important that we know that we have been born of God? John gives us the answer: if you are not a child of God, you a “child of wrath” () and may become a “child of the devil” (; and see , ). A “child of the devil” is a counterfeit Christian who acts “saved” but has not been born again. Jesus called the Pharisees “children of the devil” () and they were very religious.
A counterfeit Christian—and they are common—is something like a counterfeit ten-dollar bill.
Suppose you have a counterfeit bill and actually think it is genuine. You use it to pay for a tank of gas. The gas station manager uses the bill to buy supplies. The supplier uses the bill to pay the grocer. The grocer bundles the bill up with forty-nine other ten-dollar bills and takes it to the bank. And the teller says, “I’m sorry, but this bill is a counterfeit.”
That ten-dollar bill may have done a lot of good while it was in circulation, but when it arrived at the bank it was exposed for what it really was, and put out of circulation.
So with a counterfeit Christian. He may do many good things in this life, but when he faces the final judgment he will be rejected. “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name have cast out demons? And in Thy name done many wonderful works?’ And then will I profess unto them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity’ ” (, SCO).
Each of us must ask himself honestly, “Am I a true child of God or am I a counterfeit Christian? Have I truly been born of God?”
If you have not experienced eternal life, this real life, you can experience it right now! Read carefully. God has “gone on record” in His Word. He offers you the gift of eternal life. Believe His promise and ask Him for His gift. “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” ().
We have discovered two important facts about “the life that is real”: it is revealed in Jesus Christ and it is experienced when we put our trust in Him as our Saviour. But John does not stop here!
“That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you” (). And once you have experienced this exciting life that is real, you will want to share it with other people, just as John wanted to “declare” it to all his readers in the first century.
A pastor had a phone call from an angry woman. “I have received a piece of religious literature from your church,” she shouted, “and I resent your using the mails to upset people!”
“What was so upsetting about a piece of mail from a church?” the pastor asked calmly.
“You have no right to try to change my religion!” the woman stormed. “You have your religion and I have mine, and I’m not trying to change yours!” (She really was, but the pastor didn’t argue with her.)
“Changing your religion, or anybody else’s religion, is not our purpose,” the pastor explained. “But we have experienced a wonderful new life through faith in Christ, and we want to do all we can to share it with others.”
Many people (including some Christians) have the idea that “witnessing” means wrangling over the differences in religious beliefs, or sitting down and comparing churches.
That isn’t what John had in mind! He tells us that witnessing means sharing our spiritual experiences with others—both by the lives that we live and by the words that we speak.
John wrote this letter to share Christ with us. As you read it, you will discover that John had in mind five purposes for sharing.
That we may have fellowship (v. ). This word fellowship is an important one in the vocabulary of a Christian. It simply means “to have in common.” As sinners, men have nothing in common with the holy God. But God in His grace sent Christ to have something in common with men. Christ took on Himself a human body and became a man. Then He went to the cross and took on that body the sins of the world (). Because He paid the price for our sins, the way is open for God to forgive us and take us into His family. When we trust Christ, we become “partakers of the divine nature” (). The term translated “partakers” in Peter’s epistle is from the same Greek root that is translated “fellowship” in .
What a thrilling miracle! Jesus Christ took on Himself the nature of man that by faith we may receive the very nature of God!
A famous British writer was leaving Liverpool by ship. He noticed that the other passengers were waving to friends on the dock. He rushed down to the dock and stopped a little boy. “Would you wave to me if I paid you?” he asked the lad, and of course the boy agreed. The writer rushed back on board and leaned over the rail, glad for someone to wave to. And sure enough, there was the boy waving back to him!
A foolish story? Perhaps—but it reminds us that man hates loneliness. All of us want to be wanted. The life that is real helps to solve the basic problem of loneliness, for Christians have genuine fellowship with God and with one another. Jesus promised, “Lo, I am with you always” (). In his letter, John explains the secret of fellowship with God and with other Christians. This is the first purpose John mentions for the writing of his letter—the sharing of his experience of eternal life.
That we may have joy (v. ). Fellowship is Christ’s answer to the loneliness of life. Joy is His answer to the emptiness, the hollowness of life.
John, in his epistle, uses the word “joy” only once, but the idea of joy runs through the entire letter. Joy is not something that we manufacture for ourselves; joy is a wonderful by-product of our fellowship with God. David knew the joy which John mentions; he said, “In Thy presence is fullness of joy” ().
Basically, sin is the cause of the unhappiness that overwhelms our world today. Sin promises joy but it always produces sorrow. The pleasures of sin are temporary—they are only for a season (). God’s pleasures last eternally—they are forevermore ().
The life that is real produces a joy that is real—not some limp substitute. Jesus said, the night before He was crucified, “Your joy no man taketh from you” (). “These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” ().
Karl Marx wrote, “The first requisite for the people’s happiness is the abolition of religion.” But the Apostle John writes, in effect, “Faith in Jesus Christ gives you a joy that can never be duplicated by the world. I have experienced this joy myself, and I want to share it with you.”
That we may not sin (). John faces the problem of sin squarely (cf. , for example) and announces the only answer to this enigma—the person and work of Jesus Christ. Christ not only died for us to carry the penalty of our sins, but rose from the dead in order to intercede for us at the throne of God: “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” ().
Christ is our Representative. He defends us at the Father’s throne. Satan may stand there as the accuser of the brethren (Zech. 3; ), but Christ stands there as our Advocate—He pleads on our behalf! Continuing forgiveness, in response to His intercession, is God’s answer to our sinfulness.
“I would like to become a Christian,” an interested woman said to a visiting pastor, “but I’m afraid I can’t hold out. I’m sure to sin again!”
Turning to 1 John 1, the pastor said, “No doubt you will sin again, because God says, ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (). But if you do sin, God will forgive you if you will confess your sin to Him. But it isn’t necessary for Christians to sin. As we walk in fellowship with God and in obedience to His Word, He gives us ability to resist and to have victory over temptation.”
Then the pastor remembered that the woman had gone through surgery some months before.
“When you had your surgery,” he asked, “was there a possibility of complications or problems afterward?”
“Oh, yes,” she replied, “But whenever I had a problem, I went to see the doctor and he took care of it.”
Then the truth hit her! “I see it!” she exclaimed. “Christ is always available to keep me out of sin or to forgive my sin!”
The life that is real is a life of victory. In this letter, John tells us how to draw on our divine resources to experience victory over temptation and sin.
That we may not be deceived (). As never before, Christians today need ability to distinguish between right and wrong, between truth and error. The notion is widespread in our generation that there are no “absolutes”—that nothing is always wrong and that nothing is always right. False doctrines, therefore, are more prevalent than at any time in history—and most men and women seem to be willing to accept almost any teaching except the truths of the Bible.
In John’s epistles is a word that no other New Testament writer uses—“antichrist” (, ; ; ). That prefix anti- has two meanings: “against” and “instead of.” There are in this world teachers of lies who are opposed to Christ, and their method of “seducing” people is to use lies. They offer a substitute Christ, a substitute salvation, and a substitute Bible. They want to give you something instead of the real Word of God and real eternal life.
Christ is the Truth (), but Satan is the liar (). The devil leads people astray—not necessarily with gross sensual sins, but with half-truths and outright lies. He began his career by seducing man in the Garden of Eden. He asked Eve, “Yea, hath God said?” Even then, he did not appear to her in his true nature, but masqueraded as a beautiful creature (cf. ).
Satan today often spreads his lies even through religious groups! Not every man standing in a pulpit is preaching the truth of the Word of God. False preachers and false religious teachers have always been among the devil’s favorite and most effective tools.
How can Christians today detect Satan’s lies? How can they identify false teachers? How can they grow in their own knowledge of the truth so that they will not be victims of false doctrines?
John answers these questions. The life that is real is characterized by discernment.
The Holy Spirit, referred to by John as “the Anointing … ye have received of Him” (), is Christ’s answer to our need for discernment. The Spirit is our Teacher; it is He who enables us to detect truth and error and to remain (“abide”) in Christ. He is our protection against ignorance, deception, and untruth.
The discernment of false doctrines and of false teachers will come to our attention again.
That we may know we are saved (). We have already touched on this truth, but it is so important that it bears repeating. The life that is real is not built on the empty hopes—or wishes—based on human supposings. It is built on assurance. In fact, as you read John’s letter you encounter the word know more than thirty times. No Christian, if he is asked whether or not he is going to heaven, needs to say “I hope so” or “I think so.” He need have no doubt whatever.
The life that is real is such a free and exciting life because it is based on knowledge of solid facts. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (cf. ), promised Jesus. “We have not followed cunningly devised fables” (), was the testimony of Jesus’ disciples. These men, almost all of whom died for their faith, did not give their lives for a clever hoax of their own devising, as some critics of Christianity fatuously assert. They knew what they had seen!
Years ago a traveling entertainer billed himself as “The Human Fly.” He would climb up the sides of buildings or monuments without the aid of ropes or the protection of nets. Usually the whole neighborhood would turn out to watch him.
During one performance, the Human Fly came to a point on the wall of the building and paused as though he didn’t know what to do next. Then he reached with his right arm to take hold of a piece of mortar to lift himself higher. But instead of moving higher, he fell back with a scream and was killed on the pavement below.
When the police opened his right hand, it did not contain a piece of mortar. It contained a handful of dirty cobwebs! The Fly had tried to climb on cobwebs, and it just didn’t work.
Jesus warned against such false assurance in the passage which we have already quoted. Many who profess to be Christians will be rejected in the day of God’s judgment.
John is saying in his letter, “I want you to be sure that you have eternal life.”
As you read this fascinating letter, you will discover that John frequently repeats himself. He weaves three themes in and out of these chapters: obedience, love, and truth. In 1 John 1 and 2, the apostle emphasizes fellowship, and he tells us that the conditions for fellowship are: obedience (1 John 1:5–2:6), love (), and truth ().
In the latter half of his letter, John deals primarily with sonship—our being “born of God.” How can a person really know he is a child of God? Well, says John, sonship is revealed by obedience (1 John 3), love (1 John 4), and truth (1 John 5).
Obedience—love—truth. Why did John use these particular tests of fellowship and sonship? For a very practical reason.
When God made us, He made us in His own image (). This means that we have a personality patterned after God’s. We have a mind to think with, a heart to feel with, and a will with which to make decisions. We sometimes refer to these aspects of our personality as intellect, emotion, and will.
The life that is real must involve all the elements of the personality.
Most people are dissatisfied today because their total personality has never been controlled by something real and meaningful. When a person is born of God through faith in Christ, God’s Spirit comes into his life to live there forever. As he has fellowship with God in reading and studying the Bible and in prayer, the Holy Spirit is able to control his mind, heart, and will. And what happens then?
A Spirit-controlled mind knows and understands truth.
A Spirit-controlled heart feels love.
A Spirit-controlled will inclines us to obedience.
John wants to impress this fact on us, and that is why he uses a series of contrasts in his letter: truth vs. lies, love vs. hatred, and obedience vs. disobedience.
There is no middle ground in the life that is real. We must be on one side or on the other.
This, then, is the life that is real. It was revealed in Christ; it was experienced by those who trusted in Christ; and it can be shared today.
This life begins with sonship and continues in fellowship. First we are born of God; then we walk (live) with God.
This means that there are two kinds of people who cannot enter into the joy and victory about which we are thinking: those who have never been born of God and those who, though saved, are out of fellowship with God.
It would be a wise thing for us to take inventory spiritually (cf. ) and see whether or not we qualify to enjoy the spiritual experience with which John’s letter deals.
We have already emphasized the importance of being born of God, but if you have any doubts or questions, a review of Fact 2 might be beneficial.
If a true believer is out of fellowship with God, it is usually for one of three reasons:
1. He has disobeyed God’s will.
2. He is not getting along with fellow believers.
3. He believes a lie and therefore is living a lie.
Even a Christian can be mistaken in his understanding of truth. That’s why John warns us, “Little children, let no man deceive you” ().
These three reasons parallel John’s three important themes: obedience, love, and truth. Once a believer discovers why he is out of fellowship with God, he should confess that sin (or those sins) to the Lord and claim His full forgiveness (1 John 1:9–2:2). A believer can never have joyful fellowship with the Lord if sin stands between them.
God’s invitation to us today is, “Come and enjoy fellowship with Me and with each other! Come and share the life that is real!”
1 John 1:5–2:6
Every form of life has its enemies. Insects have to watch out for hungry birds, and birds must keep an eye on hungry cats and dogs. Even human beings have to dodge automobiles and fight off germs.
The life that is real also has an enemy, and we read about it in this section. This enemy is sin. Nine times in these verses John mentions sin, so the subject is obviously not unimportant. John illustrates his theme by using the contrast between light and darkness: God is light; sin is darkness.
But there is another contrast here too—the contrast between saying and doing. Four times John writes, “If we say” or “He that saith” (, , ; ). It is clear that our Christian life is to amount to more than mere “talk”; we must also “walk,” or live, what we believe. If we are in fellowship with God (if we are “walking in the light”), our lives will back up what our lips are saying. But if we are living in sin (“walking in darkness”), then our lives will contradict what our lips are saying, making us hypocrites.
The New Testament calls the Christian life a “walk.” This walk begins with a step of faith when we trust Christ as our Saviour. But salvation is not the end—it’s only the beginning—of spiritual life. “Walking” involves progress, and Christians are supposed to advance in the spiritual life. Just as a child must learn to walk and must overcome many difficulties in doing so, a Christian must learn to “walk in the light.” And the fundamental difficulty involved here is this matter of sin.
Of course, sin is not simply outward disobedience; sin is also inner rebellion or desire. For example, we are warned about the desires of the flesh and of the eyes and about the pride of life (), all of which are sinful. Sin is also transgression of the Law (), or literally, “lawlessness.” Sin is refusal to submit to the Law of God. Lawlessness, or independence of the Law, is the very essence of sin. If a believer decides to live an independent life, how can he possibly walk in fellowship with God? “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” ()
Neither in the Old Testament nor in the New does the Bible whitewash the sins of the saints. In escaping a famine, Abraham became weak in his faith and went down to Egypt and lied to Pharaoh (Gen. 12). Later, the patriarch tried to “help God” by marrying Hagar and begetting a son (Gen. 16). In both cases, God forgave Abraham his sin, but Abraham had to reap what he had sowed. God can and will cleanse the record, but He does not change the results. No one can unscramble an egg.
Peter denied the Lord three times and tried to kill a man in the Garden when Jesus was arrested. Satan is a liar and a murderer (), and Peter was playing right into his hands! Christ forgave Peter (cf. John 21), of course, but what Peter had done hurt his testimony greatly and hindered the Lord’s work.
The fact that Christians sin bothers some people—especially new Christians. They forget that their receiving the new nature does not eliminate the old nature they were born with. The old nature (which has its origin in our physical birth) fights against the new nature which we receive when we are born again (). No amount of self-discipline, no set of man-made rules and regulations, can control this old nature. Only the Holy Spirit of God can enable us to “put to death” the old nature () and produce the Spirit’s fruit () in us through the new nature.
Sinning saints are not mentioned in the Bible to discourage us, but to warn us.
“Why do you keep preaching to us Christians about sin?” an angry church member said to her pastor. “After all, sin in the life of a Christian is different from sin in the life of an unsaved person!”
“Yes,” replied the pastor, “it is different. It’s much worse!”
All of us, therefore, must deal with our sins if we are to enjoy the life that is real. In this section, John explains three approaches to sin.
We Can Try to Cover Our Sins (, , ; )
“God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (). When we were saved, God called us out of darkness into His light (). We are children of light (). Those who do wrong hate light (). When light shines in on us, it reveals our true nature ().
Light produces life and growth and beauty, but sin is darkness; and darkness and light cannot exist in the same place. If we are walking in the light, the darkness has to go. If we are holding to sin, then the light goes. There is no middle ground, no vague “gray” area, where sin is concerned.
How do Christians try to cover up their sins? By telling lies! First, we tell lies to others (). We want our Christian friends to think we are “spiritual,” so we lie about our lives and try to make a favorable impression on them. We want them to think that we are walking in the light, though in reality we are walking in the darkness.
Once one begins to lie to others, he will sooner or later lie to himself, and our passage deals with this (). The problem now is not deceiving others, but deceiving ourselves. It is possible for a believer to live in sin yet convince himself that everything is fine in his relationship to the Lord.
Perhaps the classic example of this is King David (2 Sam. 11–12). First David lusted after Bathsheba. Then he actually committed adultery. Instead of openly admitting what he had done, he tried to cover his sin. He tried to deceive Bathsheba’s husband, made him drunk, and had him killed. He lied to himself and tried to carry on his royal duties in the usual way. When his court chaplain, the Prophet Nathan, confronted him with a similar hypothetical situation, David condemned the other man, though he felt no condemnation at all for himself. Once we begin to lie to others, it may not be long before we actually believe our lie.
But the spiritual decline becomes still worse: the next step is trying to lie to God (). We have made ourselves liars; now we try to make God a liar! We contradict His Word, which says that “all have sinned,” and we maintain that we are exceptions to the rule. We apply God’s Word to others but not to ourselves. We sit through church services or Bible studies and are not touched by the Bible’s teachings. Believers who have reached this low level are usually highly critical of other Christians, but they strongly resist applying the Word to their own lives.
The Holy Spirit’s inspired picture of the human heart is devastating indeed! A believer lies about his fellowship (); about his nature—“I could never do a thing like that!” () and about his actions ().
Sin has a deadly way of spreading, doesn’t it?
At this point we must discuss an extremely important factor in our experience of the life that is real. That factor is honesty. We must be honest with ourselves, honest with others, and honest with God. Our passage describes a believer who is living a dishonest life: he is a phony. He is playing a role and acting a part, but is not living a genuine life. He is insincere.
What losses does this kind of person experience?
For one thing, he loses the Word. He stops “doing the truth” (); then the truth is no longer in him (); and then he turns the truth into lies! () “Thy Word is truth” () said Jesus; but a person who lives a lie loses the Word. One of the first symptoms of walking in darkness is a loss of blessing from the Bible. You cannot read the Word profitably while you are walking in the dark.
But a dishonest person loses something else: he loses his fellowship with God and with God’s people (). As a result, prayer becomes an empty form to him. Worship is dull routine. He becomes critical of other Christians and starts staying away from church: “What communion hath light with darkness?” ()
A backslidden husband, for example, who is walking in spiritual darkness, out of fellowship with God, can never enjoy full fellowship with his Christian wife, who is walking in the light. In a superficial way, the couple can have companionship; but true spiritual fellowship is impossible. This inability to share spiritual experiences causes many personal problems in homes and between members of local churches.
A group of church members were discussing their new pastor.
“For some reason,” said one man, “I really don’t feel at ease with him. I believe he’s a good man, all right—but something seems to stand between us.”
Another member replied, “Yes, I think I know what you mean. I used to have that same problem with him, but now I don’t have it anymore. The pastor and I have great fellowship.”
“What did he do to make things better?”
“He didn’t do anything,” said the friend. “I did the changing.”
“You did the changing?”
“Yes, I decided to be open and honest about things, the way our pastor is. You see, there isn’t one stain of hypocrisy in his life, and there was so much pretending in my life that we just didn’t make it together. He and I both knew I was a phony. Since I’ve started to live an honest Christian life, everything is better.”
One problem with dishonesty is that just keeping a record of our lies and pretenses is a full-time job! Abraham Lincoln used to say that if a man is going to be a liar, he had better have a good memory! When a person uses up all his energy in pretending, he has nothing left for living; and life becomes shallow and tasteless. A person who pretends not only robs himself of reality, but he keeps himself from growing: his true self is smothered under the false self.
The third loss is really the result of the first two: the believer loses his character (). The process starts out with his telling lies and it ends up with his becoming a liar! His insincerity, or lack of truthfulness, is at first a role that he plays. Then it is no longer a role—it has become the very essence of his life. His character has eroded. He is no longer a liar because he tells lies; he now tells lies because he is a confirmed liar.
Is it any wonder that God warns, “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper”? () David tried to cover his sins and it cost him his health (), his joy (Ps. 51), his family, and almost his kingdom. If we want to enjoy the life that is real, we must never cover our sins.
What should we do?
John gives two interesting titles to Jesus Christ: Advocate and Propitiation (). It’s important that we understand these two titles because they stand for two ministries that only the Lord Himself performs.
Let’s begin with Propitiation. If you look this word up in the dictionary, you may get the wrong idea of its meaning. The dictionary tells us that “to propitiate” means “to appease someone who is angry.” If you apply this to Christ, you get the horrible picture of an angry God, about to destroy the world, and a loving Saviour giving Himself to appease the irate God—and this is not the Bible picture of salvation! Certainly God is angry at sin; after all, He is infinitely holy. But the Bible reassures us that “God so loved [not hated] the world” (, italics added).
No, the word “propitiation” does not mean the appeasing of an angry God. Rather, it means the satisfying of God’s holy law. “God is light” () and, therefore, He cannot close His eyes to sin. But “God is love” () too and wants to save sinners.
How, then, can a holy God uphold His own justice and still forgive sinners? The answer is in the sacrifice of Christ. At the cross, God in His holiness judged sin. God in His love offers Jesus Christ to the world as Saviour. God was just in that He punished sin, but He is also loving in that He offers free forgiveness through what Jesus did at Calvary. (Read , and also give some thought to .)
Christ is the Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, but He is Advocate only for believers. “We [Christians] have an Advocate with the Father.” The word “advocate” used to be applied to lawyers. The word John uses is the very same word Jesus used when He was talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit (, ; ). It means, literally, “one called alongside.” When a man was summoned to court, he took an advocate (lawyer) with him to stand at his side and plead his case.
Jesus finished His work on earth ()—the work of giving His life as a sacrifice for sin. Today He has an “unfinished work” in heaven. He represents us before God’s throne. As our High Priest, He sympathizes with our weaknesses and temptations and gives us grace (; ). As our Advocate, He helps us when we sin. When we confess our sins to God, because of Christ’s advocacy God forgives us.
The Old Testament contains a beautiful picture of this. Joshua () was the Jewish high priest after the Jews returned to their land following their Captivity in Babylon. (Don’t confuse this Joshua with the Joshua who conquered the Promised Land.) The nation had sinned; to symbolize this, Joshua stood before God in filthy garments and Satan stood at Joshua’s right hand to accuse him (cf. ). God the Father was the Judge; Joshua, representing the people, was the accused; Satan was the prosecuting attorney. (The Bible calls him the accuser of the brethren.) It looked as if Satan had an open-and-shut case. But Joshua had an Advocate who stood at God’s right hand, and this changed the situation. Christ gave Joshua a change of garments and silenced the accusations of Satan.
This is what is in view when Jesus Christ is called our “Advocate.” He represents believers before God’s throne, and the merits of His sacrifice make possible the forgiveness of the believer’s sin. Because Christ died for His people, He satisfied the justice of God. (“The wages of sin is death.”) Because He lives for us at God’s right hand, He can apply His sacrifice to our needs day by day.
All He asks is that when we have failed we confess our sins.
What does it mean to “confess”? Well, to confess sins means much more than simply to “admit” them. The word confess actually means “to say the same thing [about].” To confess sin, then, means to say the same thing about it that God says about it.
A counselor was trying to help a man who had come forward during an evangelistic meeting. “I’m a Christian,” the man said, “but there’s sin in my life, and I need help.” The counselor showed him and suggested that the man confess his sins to God.
“O Father,” the man began, “if we have done anything wrong—”
“Just a minute!” the counselor interrupted. “Don’t drag me into your sin! My brother, it’s not ‘if’ or ‘we’—you’d better get down to business with God!”
The counselor was right.
Confession is not praying a lovely prayer, or making pious excuses, or trying to impress God and other Christians. True confession is naming sin—calling it by name what God calls it: envy, hatred, lust, deceit, or whatever it may be. Confession simply means being honest with ourselves and with God, and if others are involved, being honest with them too. It is more than admitting sin. It means judging sin and facing it squarely.
When we confess our sins, God promises to forgive us (). But this promise is not a “magic rabbit’s foot” that makes it easy for us to disobey God!
“I went out and sinned,” a student told his campus chaplain, “because I knew I could come back and ask God to forgive me.”
“On what basis can God forgive you?” the chaplain asked, pointing to .
“God is faithful and just,” the boy replied.
“Those two words should have kept you out of sin,” the chaplain said. “Do you know what it cost God to forgive your sins?”
The boy hung his head. “Jesus had to die for me.”
Then the chaplain zeroed in. “That’s right—forgiveness isn’t some cheap sideshow trick God performs. God is faithful to His promise, and God is just, because Christ died for your sins and paid the penalty for you. Now, the next time you plan to sin, remember that you are going to sin against a faithful loving God!”
Of course, cleansing has two sides to it: the judicial and the personal. The blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross, delivers us from the guilt of sin and gives us right standing (“justification”) before God. God is able to forgive because Jesus’ death has satisfied His holy Law.
But God is also interested in cleansing a sinner inwardly. David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (). When our confession is sincere, God does a cleansing work () in our hearts by His Spirit and through His Word ().
The great mistake King David made was in trying to cover his sins instead of confessing them. For perhaps a whole year he lived in deceit and defeat. No wonder he wrote () that a man should pray “in a time of finding out” (lit.).
When should we confess our sin? Immediately when we discover it! “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (). By walking in the light, we are able to see the “dirt” in our lives and deal with it immediately.
This leads to a third way to deal with sins.
John makes it clear that Christians do not have to sin. “I am writing these things unto you that you may not sin” (, NASB).
The secret of victory over sin is found in the phrase “walk in the light” ().
To walk in the light means to be open and honest, to be sincere. Paul prayed that his friends might “be sincere and without offense” (). The word sincere comes from two Latin words, sine and cera, which mean “without wax.” It seems that in Roman days, some sculptors covered up their mistakes by filling the defects in their marble statues with wax, which was not readily visible—until the statue had been exposed to the hot sun awhile. But more dependable sculptors made certain that their customers knew that the statues they sold were sine cera—without wax.
It is unfortunate that churches and Bible classes have been invaded by insincere people, people whose lives cannot stand to be tested by God’s light. “God is light,” and when we walk in the light, there is nothing we can hide. It is refreshing to meet a Christian who is open and sincere and is not trying to masquerade!
To walk in the light means to be honest with God, with ourselves, and with others. It means that when the light reveals our sin to us, we immediately confess it to God and claim His forgiveness. And if our sin injures another person, we ask his forgiveness too.
But walking in the light means something else: it means obeying God’s Word (). “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” (). To walk in the light means to spend time daily in God’s Word, discovering His will; and then obeying what He has told us.
Obedience to God’s Word is proof of our love for Him. There are three motives for obedience. We can obey because we have to, because we need to, or because we want to.
A slave obeys because he has to. If he doesn’t obey he will be punished. An employee obeys because he needs to. He may not enjoy his work, but he does enjoy getting his paycheck! He needs to obey because he has a family to feed and clothe. But a Christian is to obey his Heavenly Father because he wants to—for the relationship between him and God is one of love. “If you love Me, keep My commandments” ().
This is the way we learned obedience when we were children. First, we obeyed because we had to. If we didn’t obey, we were spanked! But as we grew up, we discovered that obedience meant enjoyment and reward; so we started obeying because it met certain needs in our lives. And it was a mark of real maturity when we started obeying because of love.
“Baby Christians” must constantly be warned or rewarded. Mature Christians listen to God’s Word and obey it simply because they love Him.
Walking in the light involves honesty, obedience, and love; it also involves following the example of Christ and walking as He walked (). Of course, nobody ever becomes a Christian by following Christ’s example; but after we come into God’s family, we are to look to Jesus Christ as the one great Example of the kind of life we should live.
This means “abiding in Christ.” Christ is not only the Propitiation (or sacrifice) for our sins () and the Advocate who represents us before God (), but He is also the perfect Pattern (He is “Jesus Christ the righteous”) for our daily life.
The key statement here is “as He is” (). “Because as He is, so are we in this world” (). We are to walk in the light “as He is in the light” (). We are to purify ourselves “even as He is pure” (). “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous” (). Walking in the light means living here on earth the way Jesus lived when He was here, and the way He is right now in heaven.
This has extremely practical applications in our daily lives. For example, what should a believer do when another believer sins against him? The answer is that believers should forgive one another “even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (; cf. ).
Walking in the light—following the example of Christ—will affect a home. Husbands are supposed to love their wives “even as Christ also loved the church” (). Husbands are supposed to care for their wives “even as the Lord” cares for the church (). And wives are to honor and obey their husbands ().
No matter what area of life it may be, our responsibility is to do what Jesus would do. “As He is, so are we in this world.” We should “walk [live] even as He walked [lived].”
Jesus Himself taught His disciples what it means to abide in Him. He explains it in His illustration of the vine and its branches (John 15). Just as the branch gets its life by remaining in contact with the vine, so believers receive their strength by maintaining fellowship with Christ.
To abide in Christ means to depend completely on Him for all that we need in order to live for Him and serve Him. It is a living relationship. As He lives out His life through us, we are able to follow His example and walk as He walked. Paul expresses this experience perfectly: “Christ liveth in me” ().
This is a reference to the work of the Holy Spirit. Christ is our Advocate in heaven (), to represent us before God when we sin. The Holy Spirit is God’s Advocate for us here on earth. Christ is making intercession for us (), and the Holy Spirit is also making intercession for us (). We are part of a fantastic “heavenly party line”: God the Son prays for us in heaven, and God the Spirit prays for us in our hearts. We have fellowship with the Father through the Son, and the Father has fellowship with us through the Spirit.
Christ lives out His life through us by the power of the Spirit, who lives within our bodies. It is not by means of imitation that we abide in Christ and walk as He walked. No, it is through incarnation: through His Spirit, “Christ liveth in me.” To walk in the light is to walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (cf. ).
God has made provisions for us in these ways to conquer sin. We can never lose or change the sin nature that we were born with (), but we need not obey its desires. As we walk in the light and see sin as it actually is, we will hate it and turn from it. And if we sin, we immediately confess it to God and claim His cleansing. By depending on the power of the indwelling Spirit, we abide in Christ and “walk as He walked.”
But all this begins with openness and honesty before God and men. The minute we start to act a part, to pretend, to impress others, we step out of the light and into shadows. Sir Walter Scott puts it this way:
Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
The life that is real cannot be built on things that are deceptive. Before we can walk in the light, we must know ourselves, accept ourselves, and yield ourselves to God. It is foolish to try to deceive others because God already knows what we really are!
All this helps to explain why walking in the light makes life so much easier and happier. When you walk in the light, you live to please only one Person—God. This really simplifies things! Jesus said, “I do always those things that please Him” (, italics added). We “ought to walk and to please God” (). If we live to please ourselves and God, we are trying to serve two masters, and this never works. If we live to please men, we will always be in trouble because no two men will agree and we will find ourselves caught in the middle. Walking in the light—living to please God—simplifies our goals, unifies our lives, and gives us a sense of peace and poise.
John makes it clear that the life that is real has no love for sin. Instead of trying to cover sin, a true believer confesses sin and tries to conquer it by walking in the light of God’s Word. He is not content simply to know he is going to heaven. He wants to enjoy that heavenly life right here and now. “As He is, so are we in this world.” He is careful to match his walk and his talk. He does not try to impress himself, God, or other Christians with a lot of “pious talk.”
A congregation was singing, as a closing hymn, the familiar song, “For You I Am Praying.” The speaker turned to a man on the platform and asked quietly, “For whom are you praying?”
The man was stunned. “Why, I guess I’m not praying for anybody. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I just heard you say, ‘For you I am praying,’ and I thought you meant it,” the preacher replied.
“Oh, no,” said the man. “I’m just singing.”
Pious talk! A religion of words! To paraphrase , “We should be doers of the Word as well as talkers of the Word.” We must walk what we talk. It is not enough to know the language; we must also live the life. “If we say—” then we ought also to do!
I just love that hat!”
“Man, I really love the old-fashioned kind of baked beans!”
“But, Mom, don’t you realize that Tom and I love each other?”
Words, like coins, can be in circulation for such a long time that they start wearing out. Unfortunately, the word love (or, as it is now sometimes spelled, luv) is losing its value and is being used to cover a multitude of sins.
It is really difficult to understand how a man can use the same word to express his love for his wife as he uses to tell how he feels about baked beans! When words are used that carelessly they really mean little or nothing at all. Like the dollar, they have been devalued.
As John describes the life that is real, he uses three words repeatedly: life, love, and light. In fact, he devotes three sections of his letter to the subject of Christian love. He explains that love, life, and light belong together. Read these three sections (; ; ) without the intervening verses and you will see that love, life, and light must not be separated.
In our present study (), we learn how Christian love is affected by light and darkness. A Christian who is walking in the light (which simply means he is obeying God) is going to love his brother Christian.
In , we are told that Christian love is a matter of life or death: to live in hatred is to live in spiritual death. In we see that Christian love is a matter of truth or error (cf. ): because we know God’s love toward us, we show God’s love toward others.
In these three sections, then, we find three good reasons why Christians should love one another:
1. God has commanded us to love ().
2. We have been born of God and God’s love lives in us ().
3. God first revealed His love to us (). “We love … because He first loved us.”
John not only writes about love but also practices it. One of his favorite names for his readers is “Beloved.” He felt love for them. John is known as the “Apostle of Love” because in his Gospel and his epistles he gives such prominence to this subject. However, John was not always the “Apostle of Love.” At one time Jesus gave John and his brother James, both of whom had hot tempers, the nickname “Boanerges” (), which means “sons of thunder.” On another occasion these two brothers wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy a village ().
Since the New Testament was written in Greek, the writers were often able to use more precise language. It is unfortunate that our English word love has so many shades of meaning (some of them contradictory). When we read in 1 John about “love,” the Greek word used is agape (ah-GAH-pay), the word for God’s love toward man, a Christian’s love for other Christians, and God’s love for His church ().
Another Greek word for love, philia (fee-LEE-ah), used elsewhere, carries the idea of “friendship love,” which is not quite as profound or divine as agape love. (The Greek word for sensual love, eros, from which we get our word erotic, is not used at all in the New Testament.)
The amazing thing is that Christian love is both old and new (). This seems to be a contradiction. Love itself, of course, is not new, nor is the commandment—that men love God and each other—a new thing. Jesus Himself combined two Old Testament commandments, and , and said () that these two commandments summarize all the Law and the Prophets. Loving God and loving one’s neighbor were old, familiar responsibilities before Jesus ever came to earth.
In what sense, then, is “love one another” a “new” () commandment? Again, a look at the Greek helps to answer the question.
The Greeks had two different words for “new”—one means “new in time,” and the other means “new in quality.” For example, you would use the first word to describe the latest car, a recent model. But if you purchased a car that was so revolutionary that it was radically different, you would use the second word—new in quality. (Our English words “recent” and “fresh” just about make this distinction: “recent” means new in time, “fresh” means new in character.)
The commandment to love one another is not new in time, but it is new in character. Because of Jesus Christ, the old commandment to “love one another” has taken on new meaning. We learn in these five brief verses () that the commandment is new in three important ways.
In the previous paragraph (), John has been talking about “the commandments” in general, but now he narrows his focus down to one single commandment. In the Old Testament, the command that God’s people love one another was only one of many, but now this old commandment is lifted out and given a place of preeminence.
How is it possible for one commandment to stand head and shoulders above all the others? This is explained by the fact that love is the fulfillment of God’s Law ().
Parents must care for their children according to law. Child neglect is a serious crime. But how many parents have a conversation like this when the alarm clock goes off in the morning?
She: “Honey, you’d better get up and go to work. We don’t want to get arrested.”
He: “Yeah, and you’d better get up and get breakfast for the kids, and get their clothes ready. The cops might show up and put us both in jail.”
She: “You’re right. Boy, it’s a good thing they have a law, or we’d stay in bed all day!”
It’s doubtful that the fear of the law is often the motive behind earning a living or caring for one’s children. Parents fulfill their responsibilities (even if grudgingly on occasion) because they love each other and their children. To them, doing the right thing is not a matter of law—it’s a matter of love.
The commandment “Love one another” is the fulfillment of God’s Law in the same way. When you love people, you do not lie about them or steal from them. You have no desire to kill them. Love for God and love for others motivates a person to obey God’s commandments without even thinking about them! When a person acts out of Christian love he obeys God and serves others—not because of fear, but because of his love.
This is why John says that “Love one another” is a new commandment—it is new in emphasis. It is not simply one of many commandments. No, it stands at the top of the list!
But it is new in emphasis in another way too. It stands at the very beginning of the Christian life. “The old commandment is the word which ye had from the beginning” (). This phrase “from the beginning” is used in two different ways in John’s letter, and it is important that you distinguish them. In , describing the eternality of Christ, we read that He existed “from the beginning.” In —a parallel verse—we read, “In the beginning was the Word.”
But in , the subject is the beginning of the Christian life. The commandment to love one another is not an appendix to our Christian experience, as though God had an afterthought. No! It is in our hearts from the very beginning of our faith in Jesus Christ. If this were not so, John could not have written, “We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren” (, NASB). And Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (, NASB).
By nature, an unsaved person may be selfish and even hateful. As much as we love a newborn baby, we must confess that the infant is self-centered and thinks the whole world revolves around his crib. The child is typical of an unsaved person. “We ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another” (). This unretouched photo of the unbeliever may not be beautiful, but it is certainly accurate! Some unregenerate persons do not display the traits here mentioned, but the works of the flesh () are always potentially present in their dispositions.
When a sinner trusts Christ, he receives a new life and a new nature. The Holy Spirit of God comes to live in him and the love of God is “shed abroad in [his] heart” by the Spirit (). God does not have to give a new believer a long lecture about love! “For ye yourselves are taught of God [i.e., by the Holy Spirit within you] to love one another” (). A new believer discovers that he now hates what he used to love, and that he loves what he used to hate!
So the commandment to love one another is new in emphasis: it is one of the most important commandments Christ gave us (). In fact, “love one another” is repeated at least a dozen times in the New Testament (; , , ; ; ; ; , ; , ; ). And there are many other references to brotherly love.
It is important that we understand the meaning of Christian love. It is not a shallow sentimental emotion that Christians try to “work up” so they can get along with each other. It is a matter of the will rather than an emotion—an affection for and attraction to certain persons. It is a matter of determining—of making up your mind—that you will allow God’s love to reach others through you, and then of acting toward them in loving ways. You are not to act “as if you loved them,” but because you love them. This is not hypocrisy—it is obedience to God.
Perhaps the best explanation of Christian love is 1 Corinthians 13. You should read a modern translation of this chapter to get the full force of its message: the Christian life without love is NOTHING!
But the commandment “Love one another” is not only new in emphasis. It is new in another way.
“Love one another,” John points out, was first true in Christ, and now it is true in the lives of those who are trusting Christ. Jesus Himself is the greatest Example of this commandment.
Later on we will think about that great statement, “God is love” (), but it is anticipated here. When one looks at Jesus Christ, one sees love embodied and exemplified. In commanding us to love, Jesus does not ask us to do something that He has not already done Himself. The four Gospel records are the account of a life lived in the spirit of love—and that life was lived under conditions far from ideal. Jesus says to us, in effect, “I lived by this great commandment, and I can enable you to follow My example.”
Jesus illustrated love by the very life that He lived. He never showed hatred or malice. His righteous soul hated all sin and disobedience, but He never hated the people who committed such sins. Even in His righteous announcements of judgment, there was always an undercurrent of love.
It is encouraging to think of Jesus’ love for the twelve disciples. How they must have broken His heart again and again as they argued over who was the greatest, or tried to keep people from seeing their Master. Each of them was different from the others, and Christ’s love was broad enough to include each one in a personal, understanding way. He was patient with Peter’s impulsiveness, Thomas’ unbelief, and even Judas’ treachery. When Jesus commanded His disciples to love one another, He was only telling them to do as He had done.
Consider too our Lord’s love for all kinds of people. The publicans and sinners were attracted () by His love, and even the lowest of the low could weep at His feet (). Spiritually hungry rabbi Nicodemus could meet with Him privately at night (), and 4,000 of the “common people” could listen to His teaching for three days () and then receive a miraculous meal from Him. He held babies in His arms. He spoke about children at play. He even comforted the women who wept as the soldiers led Him out to Calvary.
Perhaps the greatest thing about Jesus’ love was the way it touched even the lives of His enemies. He looked with loving pity on the religious leaders who in their spiritual blindness accused Him of being in league with Satan (). When the mob came to arrest Him, He could have called on the armies of heaven for protection, but He yielded to His enemies. And then He died for them—for His enemies! “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (, italics added). But Jesus died not only for His friends, but also for His foes! And as they crucified Him, He prayed for them: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
In His life, in His teachings, and in His death, Jesus is the perfect Example of this new commandment, “Love one another.” And this is what helps to make the commandment “new.” In Christ we have a new illustration of the old truth that God is love and that the life of love is the life of joy and victory.
What is true in Christ ought to be true in each believer. “As He is, so are we in this world” (). A believer should live a life of Christian love “because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining” (, NASB). This reminds us of the emphasis (1 John 1) on walking in the light. Two ways of life are contrasted: those who walk in the light practice love; those who walk in the darkness practice hatred. The Bible repeatedly emphasizes this truth.
“The darkness is passing away,” but the light does not yet shine fully all over the world, nor does it penetrate every area of even a believer’s life.
When Christ was born, “the Dayspring from on high” visited the world (). “Dayspring” means sunrise. The birth of Christ was the beginning of a new day for mankind! As He lived before men, taught them, and ministered to them, He spread the light of life and love. “The people who sat in darkness saw a great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up” ().
But there is a conflict in this world between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. “And the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness is not able to put it out” (, lit.). Satan is the Prince of darkness, and he extends his evil kingdom by means of lies and hatred. Christ is the Sun of Righteousness (), and He extends His kingdom by means of truth and love.
The kingdoms of Christ and of Satan are in conflict today, but “the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (). The darkness is passing away little by little, and the True Light is shining brighter and brighter in our hearts.
Jesus Christ is the standard of love for Christians. “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another,” He says; “as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (). And He repeats: “This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you” (, italics added). We are not to measure our Christian love against the love of some other Christian (and we usually pick somebody whose life is more of an excuse than an example!) but against the love of Jesus Christ our Lord. The old commandment becomes “new” to us as we see it fulfilled in Christ.
So the commandment, “Love one another,” is new in emphasis and new in example. It is also new in a third way.
Our passage continues the illustration of light and darkness. If a Christian walks in the light and is in fellowship with God, he will also be in fellowship with others in God’s family. Love and light go together, much as hatred and darkness go together.
It is easy to talk about Christian love, but much more difficult to practice it. For one thing, such love is not mere talk (). For a Christian to say (or sing!) that he loves the brethren, while he actually hates another believer, is for him to lie. In other words (and this is a sobering truth), it is impossible to be in fellowship with the Father and out of fellowship with another Christian at the same time.
This is one reason why God established the local church, the fellowship of believers. “You can’t be a Christian alone”—a person cannot live a complete and developing Christian life unless he is in fellowship with God’s people. The Christian life has two relationships: the vertical (Godward) and the horizontal (manward). And what God has joined together, man must not put asunder! And each of these two relationships is to be one of love, one for the other.
Jesus deals with this matter in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. ). A gift on the altar was valueless as long as the worshiper had a dispute to settle with his brother. Note that Jesus does not say that the worshiper had something against his brother, but that the brother had something against the worshiper. But even when we have been offended, we should not wait for the one who has offended us to come to us; we should go to him. If we do not, Jesus warns us that we will end up in a prison of spiritual judgment where we will have to pay the last penny (). In other words, when we harbor an unforgiving, unloving spirit, we harm ourselves most.
The contrast between “saying” and “doing” is one we have met before (, , ; , ). It is easy to practice a Christianity of “words”—singing the right songs, using the right vocabulary, praying the right prayers—and, through it all, deceiving ourselves into thinking we are spiritual. This mistake also ties into something Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (). What we say should be the true expression of our character. We should not need extra words (“oaths”) to fortify what we say. Our yes should mean yes and our no should mean no. So, if we say we are in the light, we will prove it by loving the brethren. Many Christians urgently need to be accepted, loved, and encouraged.
Contrary to popular opinion, Christian love is not “blind.” When we practice true Christian love, we find life getting brighter and brighter. Hatred is what darkens life! When true Christian love flows out of our hearts, we will have greater understanding and perception in spiritual things. This is why Paul prays that our love may grow in knowledge and perception, “that ye may distinguish the things that differ” (cf. ). A Christian who loves his brother is a Christian who sees more clearly.
No book in the Bible illustrates the blinding power of hatred like the Book of Esther. The events recorded there take place in Persia, where many of the Jews were living after the Captivity. Haman, one of the king’s chief men, had a burning hatred for the Jews. The only way he could satisfy this hatred was to see the whole nation destroyed. He plunged ahead in an evil plot, completely blind to the fact that the Jews would win and that he himself would be destroyed.
Hatred is blinding people today too.
Christian love is not a shallow sentiment, a passing emotion that we perhaps experience in a church service. Christian love is a practical thing; it applies in the everyday affairs of life. Just consider the “one another” statements in the New Testament and you will see how practical it is to love one another. Here are just a few (there are over twenty such statements):
Be of the same mind one to another ().
Edify [build up] one another ().
Bear one another’s burdens ().
Confess your faults to one another ().
Use hospitality one to another ().
In short, to love other Christians means to treat them the way God treats them—and the way God treats us. Christian love that does not show itself in action and in attitude (cf. ) is spurious.
What happens to a believer who does not love the brethren? We have already seen the first tragic result: he lives in the darkness, though he probably thinks he is living in the light (). He thinks he sees, but he is actually blinded by the darkness of hatred. This is the kind of person who causes trouble in Christian groups. He thinks he is a “spiritual giant,” with great understanding, when actually he is a babe with very little spiritual perception. He may read the Bible faithfully and pray fervently, but if he has hatred in his heart, he is living a lie.
The second tragic result is that such a believer becomes a cause of stumbling (cf. ). It is bad enough when an unloving believer hurts himself (); but when he starts to hurt others the situation is far more serious. It is serious to walk in the darkness. It is dangerous to walk in the darkness when stumbling blocks are in the way! An unloving brother stumbles himself, and in addition he causes others to stumble.
A man who was walking down a dark street one night saw a pinpoint of light coming toward him in a faltering way. He thought perhaps the person carrying the light was ill or drunk; but as he drew nearer he could see a man with a flashlight carrying a white cane.
“Why would a blind man be carrying a light?” the man wondered, and then he decided to ask.
The blind man smiled. “I carry my light, not so I can see, but so that others can see me. I cannot help being blind,” he said, “but I can help being a stumbling block.”
The best way to help other Christians not to stumble is to love them. Love makes us stepping-stones; hatred (or any of its “cousins,” such as envy or malice) makes us stumbling blocks. It is important that Christians exercise love in a local church, or else there will always be problems and disunity. When we are falling over each other, instead of lifting each other higher, we will never become a truly happy spiritual family.
Apply this, for instance, to the delicate matter of “questionable things” (Rom. 14–15). Since believers come from different backgrounds, they do not always agree. In Paul’s day, they differed on such matters as diets and holy days. One group said it was unspiritual to eat meat offered to idols. Another group wanted strict observance of the Sabbath. There were several facets to the problem, but basic to its solution was: “Love one another!” Paul puts it this way: “Let us not, therefore, judge one another anymore; but judge this, rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way … But if thy brother be grieved with thy food, now walkest thou not in love” (, , SOC).
A third tragic result of hatred is that it retards a believer’s spiritual progress (). A blind man—a person who is walking in darkness—can never find his way! The only atmosphere that is conducive to spiritual growth is the atmosphere of spiritual light—of love. Just as the fruits and flowers need sunshine, so God’s people need love if they are going to grow.
The commandment, “Love one another,” becomes new to us in our own day-by-day experience. It is not enough for us to recognize that it is new in emphasis and say, “Yes, love is important!” Nor is it enough for us to see God’s love exemplified by Jesus Christ. We must know this love in our own experience. The old commandment, “Love one another,” becomes a new commandment as we practice God’s love in daily life.
Thus far, we have seen the negative side of ; now let’s look at the positive. If we practice Christian love, what will the wonderful results be?
First of all, we will be living in the light—living in fellowship with God and with our Christian brothers.
Second, we will not stumble or become stumbling blocks to others.
And, third, we will grow spiritually and will progress toward Christhkeness.
At this point, we should think about the contrast between the ugly “works of the flesh” () and the beautiful fruit of the Spirit—“Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control” ().
When we are walking in the light, the “seed of the Word” () can take root and bear fruit. And the first cluster the Spirit produces is love!
But love does not live alone. Love produces joy! Hatred makes a man miserable, but love always brings him joy.
A Christian couple came to see a pastor because their marriage was beginning to fall apart. “We’re both saved,” the discouraged husband said, “but we just aren’t happy together. There’s no joy in our home.” As the pastor talked with them and they considered together what the Bible has to say, one fact became clear: both the husband and wife were nursing grudges. Each recalled many annoying little things the other had done!
“If you two really loved each other,” said the pastor, “you wouldn’t file these hurts away in your hearts. Grudges fester in our hearts like infected sores, and poison the whole system.”
Then he read, “[Love] thinketh no evil” (). He explained, “This means that love never keeps records of things others do that hurt us. When we truly love someone, our love covers their sins and helps to heal the wounds they cause.” Then he read, “And above all things have fervent love among yourselves; for love shall cover the multitude of sins” (, SCO).
Before the couple left, the pastor counseled them: “Instead of keeping records of the things that hurt, start remembering the things that please. An unforgiving spirit always breeds poison, but a loving spirit that sees and remembers the best always produces health.”
A Christian who walks in love is always experiencing some new joy because the “fruit of the Spirit” is love and joy. And when we blend “love” and “joy,” we will have “peace”—and peace helps to produce “patience.” In other words, walking in the light, walking in love, is the secret of Christian growth, which nearly always begins with love.
Now, all of us must admit that we cannot generate Christian love under our own power. By nature, we are selfish and hateful. It is only as God’s Spirit floods our hearts with love that we, in turn, can love one another. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us” (). The Spirit of God makes the commandment, “Love one another,” into a new and exciting day-by-day experience. If we walk in the light, God’s Spirit produces love. If we walk in darkness, our own selfish spirit produces hatred.
The Christian life—the life that is real—is a beautiful blending of “something old, something new.” The Holy Spirit takes the “old things” and makes them “new things” in our experience. When you stop to think about it, the Holy Spirit never grows old! He is always young! And He is the only Person on earth today who was here centuries ago when Jesus lived, taught, died, and rose again. He is the only One who can take “old truth” and make it fresh and new in our daily experience at this present time.
There are other exciting truths in the rest of John’s letter, but if we fail to obey in this matter of love, the rest of the letter may well be “darkness” to us. Perhaps the best thing we can do, right now, is to search our hearts to see if we hold anything against a brother, or if someone has anything against us. The life that is real is an honest life—and it is a life of doing, not merely saying. It is a life of active love in Christ. This means forgiveness, kindness, long-suffering. But it also means joy and peace and victory.
The love life is the only life, because it is the life that is real!
A group of first-graders had just completed a tour of a hospital, and the nurse who had directed them was asking for questions. Immediately a hand went up.
“How come the people who work here are always washing their hands?” a little fellow asked.
After the laughter had subsided, the nurse gave a wise answer:
“They are ‘always washing their hands’ for two reasons. First, they love health; and second, they hate germs.”
In more than one area of life, love and hate go hand in hand. A husband who loves his wife is certainly going to exercise a hatred for what would harm her. “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil” (). “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cleave to what is good” (, NASB).
John’s epistle has reminded us to exercise love ()—the right kind of love. Now it warns us that there is a wrong kind of love, a love that God hates. This is love for what the Bible calls “the world.”
There are four reasons why Christians should not love “the world.”
The New Testament word world has at least three different meanings. It sometimes means the physical world, the earth: “God that made the world [our planet] and all things therein” (). It also means the human world, mankind: “For God so loved the world” (). Sometimes these two ideas appear together: “He [Jesus] was in the world, and the world [earth] was made by Him, and the world [mankind] knew Him not” ().
But the warning, “Love not the world!” is not about the world of nature or the world of men. Christians ought to appreciate the beauty and usefulness of the earth God has made, since He “giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (). And they certainly ought to love people—not only their friends, but even their enemies.
This “world” named here as our enemy is an invisible spiritual system opposed to God and Christ.
We use the word world in the sense of system in our daily conversation. The TV announcer says, “We bring you the news from the world of sports.” “The world of sports” is not a separate planet or continent. It is an organized system, made up of a set of ideas, people, activities, purposes, etc. And “the world of finance” and “the world of politics” are likewise systems of their own. Behind what we see, in sports or finance, is an invisible system that we cannot see; and it is the system that “keeps things going.”
“The world,” in the Bible, is Satan’s system for opposing the work of Christ on earth. It is the very opposite of what is godly () and holy and spiritual. “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (, NASB). Jesus called Satan “the prince of this world” (). The devil has an organization of evil spirits () working with him and influencing the affairs of “this world.”
Just as the Holy Spirit uses people to accomplish God’s will on earth, so Satan uses people to fulfill his evil purposes. Unsaved people, whether they realize it or not, are energized by “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” ().
Unsaved people belong to “this world.” Jesus calls them “the children of this world” (). When Jesus was here on earth, the people of “this world” did not understand Him, nor do they now understand those of us who trust Him (). A Christian is a member of the human world, and he lives in the physical world, but he does not belong to the spiritual world that is Satan’s system for opposing God. “If ye were of the world [Satan’s system], the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” ().
“The world,” then, is not a natural habitat for a believer. The believer’s citizenship is in heaven (, NASB), and all his effective resources for living on earth come from his Father in heaven.
The believer is somewhat like a scuba diver. The water is not man’s natural habitat, for he is not equipped for life in (or under) it. When a scuba diver goes under, he has to take special equipment with him so that he can breathe.
Were it not for the Holy Spirit’s living within us, and the spiritual resources we have in prayer, Christian fellowship, and the Word, we could never “make it” here on earth. We complain about the pollution of earth’s atmosphere—the atmosphere of “the world” is also so polluted spiritually that Christians cannot breathe normally!
But there is a second—and more serious—reason why Christians must not love the world.
Because of What the World Does to Us ()
“If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” ().
Worldliness is not so much a matter of activity as of attitude. It is possible for a Christian to stay away from questionable amusements and doubtful places and still love the world, for worldliness is a matter of the heart. To the extent that a Christian loves the world system and the things in it, he does not love the Father.
Worldliness not only affects your response to the love of God; it also affects your response to the will of God. “The world passeth away … but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever” ().
Doing the will of God is a joy for those living in the love of God. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” But when a believer loses his enjoyment of the Father’s love, he finds it hard to obey the Father’s will.
When you put these two factors together, you have a practical definition of worldliness: anything in a Christian’s life that causes him to lose his enjoyment of the Father’s love or his desire to do the Father’s will is worldly and must be avoided. Responding to the Father’s love (your personal devotional life), and doing the Father’s will (your daily conduct)—these are two tests of worldliness.
Many things in this world are definitely wrong and God’s Word identifies them as sins. It is wrong to steal and to lie (, ). Sexual sins are wrong (). About these and many other actions, Christians can have little or no debate. But there are areas of Christian conduct that are not so clear and about which even the best Christians disagree. In such cases, each believer must apply the test to his own life and be scrupulously honest in his self-examination, remembering that even a good thing may rob a believer of his enjoyment of God’s love and his desire to do God’s will.
A senior student in a Christian college was known for his excellent grades and his effective Christian service. He was out preaching each weekend and God was using him to win the souls and challenge Christians.
Then something happened: his testimony was no longer effective, his grades began to drop, and even his personality seemed to change. The president called him in.
“There’s been a change in your life and your work,” the president said, “and I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong.”
The student was evasive for a time, but then he told the story. He was engaged to a lovely Christian girl and was planning to get married after graduation. He had been called to a fine church and was anxious to move his new bride into the parsonage and get started in the pastorate.
“I’ve been so excited about it that I’ve even come to the place where I don’t want the Lord to come back!” he confessed. “And then the power dropped out of my life.”
His plans—good and beautiful as they were—came between him and the Father. He lost his enjoyment of the Father’s love. He was worldly!
John points out that the world system uses three devices to trap Christians: the lust (desire) of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (). These same devices trapped Eve back in the Garden: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food [the lust of the flesh], and that it was pleasant to the eyes [the lust of the eyes], and a tree to be desired to make one wise [the pride of life], she took of the fruit” ().
The lust of the flesh includes anything that appeals to man’s fallen nature. “The flesh” does not mean “the body.” Rather, it refers to the basic nature of unregenerate man that makes him blind to spiritual truth (). Flesh is the nature we receive in our physical birth; spirit is the nature we receive in the second birth (). When we trust Christ, we become “partakers of the divine nature” (). A Christian has both the old nature (flesh) and the new nature (Spirit) in his life. And what a battle these two natures can wage! ()
God has given man certain desires, and these desires are good. Hunger, thirst, weariness, and sex are not at all evil in themselves. There is nothing wrong about eating, drinking, sleeping, or begetting children. But when the flesh nature controls them, they become sinful “lusts.” Hunger is not evil, but gluttony is sinful. Thirst is not evil, but drunkenness is a sin. Sleep is a gift of God, but laziness is shameful. Sex is God’s precious gift when used rightly; but when used wrongly, it becomes immorality.
Now you can see how the world operates. It appeals to the normal appetites and tempts us to satisfy them in forbidden ways. In today’s world we are surrounded by all kinds of allurements that appeal to our lower nature—and “the flesh is weak” (). If a Christian yields to it, he will get involved in the “works of the flesh” ( gives us the ugly list).
It is important that a believer remember what God says about his old nature, the flesh. Everything God says about the flesh is negative. In the flesh there is no good thing (). The flesh profits nothing (). A Christian is to put no confidence in the flesh (). He is to make no provision for the flesh (). A person who lives for the flesh is living a negative life.
The second device that the world uses to trap the Christian is called “the lust of the eyes.” We sometimes forget that the eyes can have an appetite! (Have you ever said, “Feast your eyes on this”?)
The lust of the flesh appeals to the lower appetites of the old nature, tempting us to indulge them in sinful ways. The lust of the eyes, however, operates in a more refined way. In view here are pleasures that gratify the sight and the mind—sophisticated and intellectual pleasures. Back in the days of the Apostle John, the Greeks and Romans lived for entertainments and activities that excited the eyes. Times have not changed very much! In view of television, perhaps every Christian’s prayer ought to be, “Turn away my eyes from looking at vanity” (, NASB).
Achan (Josh. 7), a soldier, brought defeat to Joshua’s army because of the lust of his eyes. God had warned Israel not to take any spoils from the condemned city of Jericho, but Achan did not obey. He explained: “When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and 200 shekels of silver, then I coveted them, and took them” (). The lust of the eyes led him into sin, and his sin led the army into defeat.
The eyes (like the other senses) are a gateway into the mind. The lust of the eyes, therefore, can include intellectual pursuits that are contrary to God’s Word. There is pressure to make Christians think the way the world thinks. God warns us against “the counsel of the ungodly.” This does not mean that Christians ignore education and secular learning; it does mean they are careful not to let intellectualism crowd God into the background.
The third device is the “boastful pride of life” (NASB). God’s glory is rich and full; man’s glory is vain and empty. In fact, the Greek word for “pride” was used to describe a braggart who was trying to impress people with his importance. People have always tried to outdo others in their spending and their getting. The boastful pride of life motivates much of what such people do.
Why is it that so many folks buy houses, cars, appliances, or wardrobes that they really cannot afford? Why do they succumb to the “travel now, pay later” advertising and get themselves into hopeless debt taking vacations far beyond their means? Largely because they want to impress other people—because of their “pride of life.” They may want folks to notice how affluent or successful they are.
Most of us do not go that far, but it is amazing what stupid things people do just to make an impression. They even sacrifice honesty and integrity in return for notoriety and a feeling of importance.
Yes, the world appeals to a Christian through the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And once the world takes over in one of these areas, a Christian will soon realize it. He will lose his enjoyment of the Father’s love and his desire to do the Father’s will. The Bible will become boring and prayer a difficult chore. Even Christian fellowship may seem empty and disappointing. It is not that there is something wrong with others, however—what’s wrong is the Christian’s worldly heart.
It is important to note that no Christian becomes worldly all of a sudden. Worldliness creeps up on a believer; it is a gradual process. First is the friendship of the world (). By nature, the world and the Christian are enemies (“Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you,” ). A Christian who is a friend of the world is an enemy of God.
Next, the Christian becomes “spotted by the world” (). The world leaves its dirty marks on one or two areas of his life. This means that gradually the believer accepts and adopts the ways of the world.
When this happens, the world ceases to hate the Christian and starts to love him! So John warns us, “Love not the world!”—but too often our friendship with the world leads to love. As a result, the believer becomes conformed to the world () and you can hardly tell the two apart.
Among Christians, worldliness rears its ugly head in many subtle and unrecognized forms. Sometimes we tend to idolize great athletes, TV stars, or political leaders who profess to be Christians—as if these individuals were able to be of special help to Almighty God. Or we cater to wealthy and “influential” persons in our local church, as if God’s work would fold up without their good will or financial backing. Many forms of worldliness do not involve reading the wrong books and indulging in “carnal” amusements.
Sad to say, being conformed to the world can lead a Christian into being “condemned with the world” (). If a believer confesses and judges this sin, God will forgive him; but if he does not confess, God must lovingly chasten him. When a Christian is “condemned with the world,” he does not lose his sonship. Rather, he loses his testimony and his spiritual usefulness. And in extreme cases, Christians have even lost their lives! (read )
The downward steps and their consequences are illustrated in the life of Lot (; ; 19). First Lot looked toward Sodom. Then he pitched his tent toward Sodom in the well-watered plains of Jordan. Then he moved into Sodom. And when Sodom was captured by the enemy, Lot was captured too. He was a believer (), but he had to suffer with the unbelieving sinners of that wicked city. And when God destroyed Sodom, everything Lot lived for went up in smoke! Lot was saved so as by fire and lost his eternal reward ().
No wonder John warns us not to love the world!
Because of What a Christian Is ()
This raises a practical and important question about the nature of a Christian and how he keeps from getting worldly.
The answer is found in the unusual form of address used in . Note the titles used as John addresses his Christian readers: “little children … fathers … young men … little children.”
What is he referring to?
To begin with, “little children” () refers to all believers. Literally, this word means “born ones.” All Christians have been born into God’s family through faith in Jesus Christ, and their sins have been forgiven. The very fact that one is in God’s family, sharing His nature, ought to discourage him from becoming friendly with the world. To be friendly with the world is treachery! “Friendship with the world is enmity with God … whosoever therefore will be [wants to be] a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (cf. ).
But something else is true: we begin as little children—born ones—but we must not stay that way! Only as a Christian grows spiritually does he overcome the world.
John mentions three kinds of Christians in a local church family: fathers, young men, and little children (). The “fathers,” of course, are mature believers who have an intimate personal knowledge of God. Because they know God, they know the dangers of the world. No Christian who has experienced the joys and wonders of fellowship with God, and of service for God, will want to live on the substitute pleasures this world offers.
The “young men” are the conquerors: they have overcome the wicked one, Satan, who is the prince of this world system. How did they overcome him? Through the Word of God! “I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you” (). The “young men,” then, are not yet fully mature; but they are maturing, for they use the Word of God effectively. The Word is the only weapon that will defeat Satan ().
The “little children” addressed in are not those addressed in ; two different Greek words are used. The word in carries the idea of “immature ones,” or little children still under the authority of teachers and tutors. These are young Christians who have not yet grown up in Christ. Like physical children, these spiritual children know their father, but they still have some growing to do.
Here, then, is the Christian family! All of them are “born ones,” but some of them have grown out of infancy into spiritual manhood and adulthood. It is the growing, maturing Christian to whom the world does not appeal. He is too interested in loving his Father and in doing his Father’s will. The attractions of the world have no allure for him. He realizes that the things of the world are only toys, and he can say with Paul, “When I became a man, I put away childish things” ().
A Christian stays away from the world because of what the world is (a satanic system that hates and opposes Christ), because of what the world does to us (attracts us to live on sinful substitutes), and because of what he (the Christian) is—a child of God.
Because of Where the World Is Going ()
“The world is passing away!” (cf. )
That statement would be challenged by many men today who are confident that the world—the system in which we live—is as permanent as anything can be. But the world is not permanent. The only sure thing about this world system is that it is not going to be here forever. One day the system will be gone, and the pleasant attractions within it will be gone: all are passing away. What is going to last?
Only what is part of the will of God!
Spiritual Christians keep themselves “loosely attached” to this world because they live for something far better. They are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (). “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (). In Bible times, many believers lived in tents because God did not want them to settle down and feel at home in this world.
John is contrasting two ways of life: a life lived for eternity and a life lived for time. A worldly person lives for the pleasures of the flesh, but a dedicated Christian lives for the joys of the Spirit. A worldly believer lives for what he can see, the lust of the eyes; but a spiritual believer lives for the unseen realities of God (). A worldly minded person lives for the pride of life, the vainglory that appeals to men; but a Christian who does the will of God lives for God’s approval. And he “abideth forever.”
Every great nation in history has become decadent and has finally been conquered by another nation. There is no reason why we should suppose that our nation will be an exception. Some nineteen world civilizations in the past have slipped into oblivion. There is no reason why we should think that our present civilization will endure forever. “Change and decay in all around I see,” wrote Henry F. Lyte (1793–1847), and if our civilization is not eroded by change and decay it will certainly be swept away and replaced by a new order of things at the coming of Christ, which could happen at any time.
Slowly but inevitably, and perhaps sooner than even Christians think, the world is passing away; but the man who does God’s will abides forever.
This does not mean that all God’s servants will be remembered by future generations. Of the multitudes of famous men who have lived on earth, less than 2,000 have been remembered by any number of people for more than a century.
Nor does it mean that God’s servants will live on in their writings or in the lives of those they influenced. Such “immortality” may be a fact, but it is equally true of unbelievers like Karl Marx, Voltaire, or Adolf Hitler.
No, we are told here () that Christians who dedicate themselves to doing God’s will—to obeying God—“abide [remain] forever.” Long after this world system, with its vaunted culture, its proud philosophies, its egocentric intellectualism, and its godless materialism, has been forgotten, and long after this planet has been replaced by the new heavens and the new earth, God’s faithful servants will remain—sharing the glory of God for all eternity.
And this prospect is not limited to Moody, Spurgeon, Luther, or Wesley and their likes—it is open to each and every humble believer. If you are trusting Christ, it is for you.
This present world system is not a lasting one. “The fashion of this world passeth away” (). Everything around us is changing, but the things that are eternal never change. A Christian who loves the world will never have peace or security because he has linked his life with that which is in a state of flux. “He is no fool,” wrote missionary martyr Jim Elliot, “who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
The New Testament has quite a bit to say about “the will of God.” One of the “fringe benefits” of salvation is the privilege of knowing God’s will (). In fact, God wants us to be “filled with the knowledge of His will” (). The will of God is not something that we consult occasionally like an encyclopedia. It is something that completely controls our lives. The issue for a dedicated Christian is not simply, “Is it right or wrong?” or “Is it good or bad?” The key issue is, “Is this the will of God for me?”
God wants us to understand His will (), not just know what it is. “He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel” (). Israel knew what God was doing, but Moses knew why He was doing it! It is important that we understand God’s will for our lives and see the purposes He is fulfilling.
After we know the will of God, we should do it from the heart (). It is not by talking about the Lord’s will that we please Him, but by doing what He tells us (). And the more we obey God, the better able we are to “find and follow God’s will” (, WMS). Discovering and doing God’s will is something like learning to swim: you must get in the water before it becomes real to you. The more we obey God, the more proficient we become in knowing what He wants us to do.
God’s goal for us is that we will “stand … complete in all the will of God” (). This means to be mature in God’s will.
A little child constantly asks his parents what is right and what is wrong and what they want him to do or not to do. But as he lives with his parents and experiences their training and discipline, he gradually discovers what their will for him is. In fact, a disciplined child can “read his father’s mind” just by watching the parent’s face and eyes! An immature Christian is always asking his friends what they think God’s will is for him. A mature Christian stands complete in the will of God. He knows what the Lord wants him to do.
How does one discover the will of God? The process begins with surrender: “Present your bodies a living sacrifice … be not conformed to this world … that ye may prove [know by experience] what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God” (). A Christian who loves the world will never know the will of God in this way. The Father shares His secrets with those who obey Him. “If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine” (). And God’s will is not a “spiritual cafeteria” where a Christian takes what he wants and rejects the rest! No, the will of God must be accepted in its entirety. This involves a personal surrender to God of one’s entire life.
God reveals His will to us through His Word. “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (). A worldly believer has no appetite for the Bible. When he reads it, he gets little or nothing from it. But a spiritual believer, who spends time daily reading the Bible and meditating on it, finds God’s will there and applies it to his everyday life.
We may also learn God’s will through circumstances. God moves in wonderful ways to open and close doors. We must test this kind of leading by the Word of God—and not test the Bible’s clear teaching by circumstances!
Finally, God leads us into His will through prayer and the working of His Spirit in our hearts. As we pray about a decision, the Spirit speaks to us. An “inner voice” may agree with the leading of circumstances. We are never to follow this “inner voice” alone: we must always test it by the Bible, for it is possible for the flesh (or for Satan) to use circumstances—or “feelings”—to lead us completely astray.
To sum it up, a Christian is in the world physically (), but he is not of the world spiritually (). Christ has sent us into the world to bear witness of Him (). Like a scuba diver, we must live in an alien element, and if we are not careful, the alien element will stifle us. A Christian cannot help being in the world, but when the world is in the Christian, trouble starts!
The world gets into a Christian through his heart: “Love not the world!” Anything that robs a Christian of his enjoyment of the Father’s love, or of his desire to do the Father’s will, is worldly and must be avoided. Every believer, on the basis of God’s Word, must identify those things for himself.
A Christian must decide, “Will I live for the present only, or will I live for the will of God and abide forever?” Jesus illustrated this choice by telling about two men. One built on the sand and the other on the rock (). Paul referred to the same choice by describing two kinds of material for building: temporary and permanent ().
Love for the world is the love God hates. It is the love a Christian must shun at all costs!
It makes no difference what you believe, just as long as you are sincere!”
That statement expresses the personal philosophy of many people today, but it is doubtful whether most of those who make it have really thought it through. Is “sincerity” the magic ingredient that makes something true? If so, then you ought to be able to apply it to any area of life, and not only to religion.
A nurse in a city hospital gives some medicine to a patient, and the patient becomes violently ill. The nurse is sincere but the medicine is wrong, and the patient almost dies.
A man hears noises in the house one night and decides a burglar is at work. He gets his gun and shoots the “burglar,” who turns out to be his daughter! Unable to sleep, she has gotten up for a bite to eat. She ends up the victim of her father’s “sincerity.”
It takes more than “sincerity” to make something true. Faith in a lie will always cause serious consequences; faith in the truth is never misplaced. It does make a difference what a man believes! If a man wants to drive from Chicago to New York, no amount of sincerity will get him there if the highway is taking him to Los Angeles. A person who is real builds his life on truth, not superstition or lies. It is impossible to live a real life by believing lies.
God has warned the church family (“little children”) about the conflict between light and darkness (1 John 1:1–2:6) and between love and hatred (). Now He warns them about a third conflict: the conflict between truth and error. It is not enough for a believer to walk in the light and to walk in love; he must also walk in truth. The issue is truth—or consequences!
Before John explains the tragic consequences of turning from the truth, he emphasizes the seriousness of the matter. He does so by using two special terms: “the last time” and “antichrist.” Both terms make it clear that Christians are living in an hour of crisis and must guard against the errors of the enemy.
“The last time” (or “the last hour”) is a term that reminds us that a new age has dawned on the world. “The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth” (). Since the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God is doing a “new thing” in this world. All of Old Testament history prepared the way for the work of Christ on the cross. All history since that time is merely preparation for “the end,” when Jesus will come and establish His kingdom. There is nothing more that God must do for the salvation of sinners.
You may ask, “But if it was ‘the last hour’ in John’s day, why has Jesus not yet returned?”
This is an excellent question and Scripture gives us the answer. God is not limited by time the way His creatures are. God works in human time, but He is above time (cf. ).
“The last hour” began back in John’s day and has been growing in intensity ever since. There were ungodly false teachers in John’s day, and during the intervening centuries they have increased both in number and in influence. “The last hour” or “the last times” are phrases that describe a kind of time, not a duration of time. “The latter times” are described in 1 Timothy 4. Paul, like John, observed characteristics of his time, and we see the same characteristics today in even greater intensity.
In other words, Christians have always been living in “the last time”—in crisis days. It is therefore important that you know what you believe and why you believe it.
The second term, “antichrist,” is used in the Bible only by John (, ; ; ). It describes three things: 1. a spirit in the world that opposes or denies Christ; 2. the false teachers who embody this spirit; and, 3. a person who will head up the final world rebellion against Christ.
The “spirit of antichrist” () has been in the world since Satan declared war on God (cf. Gen. 3). The “spirit of antichrist” is behind every false doctrine and every “religious” substitute for the realities Christians have in Christ. That prefix anti actually has a dual meaning. It can mean, in the Greek, both “against” Christ and “instead of” Christ. Satan in his frenzy is fighting Christ and His eternal truth, and he is substituting his counterfeits for the realities found only in our Lord Jesus.
The “spirit of antichrist” is in the world today. It will eventually lead to the appearance of a “satanic superman” whom the Bible calls “Antichrist” (capital A). He is called () “the man of sin” (or “lawlessness”).
This passage explains that there are two forces at work in today’s world: truth is working through the church by the Holy Spirit, and evil is working by the energy of Satan. The Holy Spirit in Christians, is holding back lawlessness; but when the church is removed at the Rapture (), Satan will be able to complete his temporary victory and take over the world. (John has more to say about this world ruler and his evil system in the Book of Rev., particularly ; ; and .)
Does it make any difference what you believe? It makes all the difference in the world! You are living in crisis days—in the last hour—and the spirit of antichrist is working in the world! It is vitally important that you know and believe the truth and be able to detect lies when they come your way.
John’s epistle gives three outstanding marks of the false teacher who is controlled by the “spirit of antichrist.”
He Departs from the Fellowship ()
“They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us” (, NASB).
The word “us” refers, of course, to the fellowship of believers, the church. Not everyone who is part of an assembly of believers, is necessarily a member of the family of God!
The New Testament presents the church in a twofold way: as one worldwide family, and as local units or assemblies of believers. There is a “universal” as well as “local” aspect of the church. The whole worldwide company of believers is compared with a body (1 Cor. 12) and with a building (). When a sinner trusts Christ as Saviour, he receives eternal life and immediately becomes a member of God’s family and a part of Christ’s spiritual body. He should then identify himself with a local group of Christians (a church) and start serving Christ (). But the point here is that a person can belong to a local church and not be part of the true spiritual body of Christ.
One of the evidences of true Christian life is a desire to be with the people of God. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (). When people share the same divine nature () and are indwelt by the same Holy Spirit (), they want to enjoy fellowship and to share with one another. As we have seen, fellowship means “to have in common.” When people have spiritual realities in common, they want to be together.
But the “counterfeit Christians” mentioned in 1 John 2 did not remain in the fellowship. They went out. This doesn’t imply that “staying in the church” keeps a person saved; rather, it indicates that remaining in the fellowship is one evidence that a person is truly a Christian. In His Parable of the Sower (, ), Jesus makes it clear that only those who produce fruit are truly born again. It is possible to be close to an experience of salvation, and even to have some characteristics that would pass for “Christian,” and yet not be a child of God. The people in view in 1 John 2 left the fellowship because they did not possess the true life and the love of Christ was not in their hearts.
There are many unfortunate divisions among the people of God today, but all true Christians have things in common, regardless of church affiliation. They believe that the Bible is the Word of God and that Jesus is the Son of God. They confess that men are sinners and that the only way one can be saved is through faith in Christ. They believe that Christ died as man’s substitute on the cross, and that He arose again from the dead. They believe that the Holy Spirit indwells true believers. Finally, they believe that one day in the future Jesus will come again. Christians may differ on other matters—church government, for example, or modes of baptism—but they agree on the basic doctrines of the faith.
If you will investigate the history of the false cults and antichristian religious systems in today’s world, you will find that in most cases their founders started out in a local church! They were “with us” but not “of us,” so they went out “from us” and started their own groups.
Any group, no matter how “religious,” that for doctrinal reasons separates itself from a local church which holds to the Word of God, must immediately be suspect. Often these groups follow human leaders and the books men have written, rather than Jesus Christ and God’s Word. The New Testament (e.g., 2 Tim. 3–4; 2 Peter 2) makes it clear that it is dangerous to depart from the fellowship.
The key question for a Christian is: Who is Jesus Christ? Is Christ merely “an Example,” “a good Man,” or “a wonderful Teacher”; or is He God come in the flesh?
John’s readers knew the truth about Christ, or else they would not have been saved. “You all know the truth, because you have the Spirit of God, an unction, and the Spirit teaches you all things” (cf. , ). “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” ().
False Christians in John’s day used two special words to describe their experience: “knowledge” and “unction.” They claimed to have a special unction (anointing) from God which gave them a unique knowledge. They were “illuminated” and therefore living on a much higher level than anybody else. But John points out that all true Christians know God and have received the Spirit of God! And because they have believed the truth, they recognize a lie when they meet it.
The great assertion of the faith that sets a Christian apart from others is this: Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh ().
Not all preachers and teachers who claim to be Christian are really Christian in their belief (). If they confess that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh, then they belong to the true faith. If they deny Christ, then they belong to Antichrist. They are in and of the world, and are not, like true believers, called out of the world. When they speak, the world (unsaved persons) hears them and believes them. But the unsaved world can never understand a true Christian. A Christian speaks under the direction of the Spirit of Truth; a false teacher speaks under the influence of the spirit of error—the spirit of antichrist.
To confess that “Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh” involves much more than simply to identify Christ. The demons did this () but it did not save them. True confession involves personal faith in Christ—in who He is and what He has done. A confession is not a mere intellectual “theological statement” that you recite; it is a personal witness from your heart of what Christ has done for you. If you have trusted Christ and have confessed your faith, you have eternal life (). Those who cannot honestly make this confession do not have eternal life, which is an ultimately serious matter.
George Whitefield, the great British evangelist, was speaking to a man about his soul. He asked the man, “Sir, what do you believe?”
“I believe what my church believes,” the man replied respectfully.
“And what does your church believe?”
“The same thing I believe.”
“And what do both of you believe?” the preacher inquired again.
“We both believe the same thing!” was the only reply he could get.
A man is not saved by assenting to a church creed. He is saved by trusting Jesus Christ and bearing witness to his faith ().
False teachers will often say, “We worship the Father. We believe in God the Father, even though we disagree with you about Jesus Christ.”
But to deny the Son means to deny the Father also. You cannot separate the Father and the Son, since both are one God. Jesus says, “I and My Father are One” (). He also makes it clear that true believers honor both the Father and the Son: “That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent Him” (). If you say you “worship one God” but leave Jesus Christ out of your worship, you are not worshiping as a true Christian.
It is important that you stay with the truth of God’s Word. The Word (or message) Christians have “heard from the beginning” is all you need to keep you true to the faith. The Christian life continues just as it began: through faith in the Bible’s message. A religious leader who comes along with “something new,” something that contradicts what Christians have “heard from the beginning,” is not to be trusted. “Try the spirits, whether they are of God” (). Let the Word abide in you (), and abide in Christ (); otherwise you will be led astray by the spirit of antichrist. No matter what false teachers may promise, you have the sure promise of eternal life (). You need nothing more!
If false teachers were content to enjoy themselves in their own meetings, it would be bad enough; the tragedy is that they try earnestly to convert others to their antichristian doctrines. This is the third mark of a man who has turned away from God’s truth.
He Tries to Deceive the Faithful ()
It is interesting to observe that antichristian groups rarely try to lead lost sinners to their false faith. Instead, they spend much of their time trying to convert professing Christians (and church members, at that) to their own doctrines. They are out to “seduce” the faithful.
The word “seduce” carries the idea of “being led astray.” We have been warned that this would happen: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons” (cf. ).
Jesus calls Satan the “father of lies” (), The devil’s purpose is to lead Christians astray by teaching them false doctrines (, ). We should not accept everything a person tells us simply because he claims to believe the Bible, for it is possible to “twist” the Bible to make it mean almost anything ().
Satan is not an originator; he is a counterfeiter. He imitates the work of God. For example, Satan has counterfeit “ministers” () who preach a counterfeit gospel () that produces counterfeit Christians () who depend on a counterfeit righteousness (). In the Parable of the Tares (, ), Jesus and Satan are pictured as sowers. Jesus sows the true seed, the children of God; but Satan sows “the children of the wicked one.” The two kinds of plants, while growing, look so much alike that the servants could not tell the difference until the fruit appeared! Satan’s chief stratagem during this age is to plant the counterfeit wherever Christ plants the true. And it is important that you be able to detect the counterfeit and separate the teachings of Christ from the false teachings of antichrist.
How does a believer do this? By depending on the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Each believer has experienced the anointing (the unction, ) of the Spirit, and it is the Spirit who teaches him truth (; ). False teachers are not led by the Spirit of Truth; they are led by the spirit of error (, ).
The word anoint reminds us of the Old Testament practice of pouring oil on the head of a person being set apart for special service. A priest was anointed (), and so was a king () or a prophet (). A New Testament Christian is anointed, not with literal oil, but by the Spirit of God—an anointing that sets him apart for his ministry as one of God’s priests (, ). It is not necessary for you to pray for “an anointing of the Spirit”; if you are a Christian, you have already received this special anointing. This anointing “abides in us” and therefore does not need to be imparted to us.
We have seen that false teachers deny the Father and the Son; they also deny the Spirit. The Spirit is the Teacher God has given us (), but these false Christians want to be teachers themselves and lead others astray. They try to take the place of the Holy Spirit!
We are warned against letting any man be our teacher, for God has given us the Spirit to teach us His truth. This does not deny the office of human teachers in the church (); but it means that under the guidance of the Spirit you must test the teaching of men as you search the Bible for yourself (cf. ).
A missionary to the American Indians was in Los Angeles with an Indian friend who was a new Christian. As they walked down the street, they passed a man on the corner who was preaching with a Bible in his hand. The missionary knew the man represented a cult, but the Indian saw only the Bible. He stopped to listen to the sermon.
“I hope my friend doesn’t get confused,” the missionary thought to himself, and he began to pray. In a few minutes the Indian turned away from the meeting and joined his missionary friend.
“What did you think of the preacher?” the missionary asked.
“All the time he was talking,” exclaimed the Indian, “something in my heart kept saying, ‘Liar! Liar!’ ”
That “something” in his heart was “Someone”—the Holy Spirit of God! The Spirit guides us into the truth and helps us to recognize error. This anointing of God is “no lie,” because “the Spirit is truth” ().
Why are some Christians led astray to believe false teachings? Because they are not abiding in the Spirit. The word “abide” occurs several times in this section of 1 John, and it would be helpful to review:
•False teachers do not abide (“continue”) in the fellowship ().
•The word (message) we have heard should abide in us ().
•The anointing (the Holy Spirit) abides in us, and we should abide in the Spirit ().
•As we abide in the Word and in the Spirit, we also abide in Christ ().
We noticed this word abide earlier in John’s letter too:
•If we say we abide in Christ, we should walk as He walked ().
•If we love our brother, we abide in the light ().
•If the Word abides in us, we will be spiritually strong ().
•If we do the will of God, we shall abide forever ().
“To abide” means to remain in fellowship; and “fellowship” is the key idea in the first two chapters of this epistle. From chapters 3 to 5, the emphasis is on sonship, or being “born of God.”
It is possible to be a child in a family and yet be out of fellowship with one’s father and with other members of the family. When our Heavenly Father discovers that we are out of fellowship with Him, He deals with us to bring us back into the place of abiding. This process is called “chastening”—child-training ().
A believer must allow the Spirit of God to teach him from the Bible. One of the major functions of a local church is the teaching of God’s Word (; ). The Spirit gives the gift of teaching to certain individuals in the fellowship () and they teach others, but what they teach must be tested ().
There is a difference between deliberate deception and spiritual ignorance. When Apollos preached in the synagogue at Ephesus, his message was correct as far as it went, but it was not complete. Priscilla and Aquila, two mature believers in the congregation, took him aside privately and instructed him in the full message of Christ (). A Christian who spends time daily in the Bible and in prayer will walk in the Spirit and have the discernment he needs.
The Spirit teaches us “of all things” (). False teachers have a way of “riding a hobby”—prophecy or sanctification or even diet—and neglecting the whole message of the Bible. Jesus implies that we are to live by “every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (). Paul was careful to preach “all the counsel of God” (). “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable” ().
If you ignore or neglect any part of the Bible, you invite trouble. You must read and study the whole Book, and be able to “rightly divide” it (); that is, you must “handle it accurately” (cf. NASB). You should discern in the Bible what God says to different people at different times; there are passages that apply specifically to the Jews, or to the Gentiles, or to the church (). You must be careful to distinguish between them. Though all of the Bible was written for you, not all of it was written to you. False teachers, however, pick (out of context) only what they want, and often apply to believers today passages that were given only for ancient Israel.
John’s second epistle gives further warning about false teachers (). A Christian who meddles with these deceivers is in danger of losing his full reward (). You should not even say “good-bye” (which literally means “God be with you”). You are not to be rude or unkind, because that would not be Christian; but you are not to let them into your home to explain their views. Why? Because if you let them in, two consequences may follow: First, they will plant the seeds of false teaching in your mind, and Satan can water and nourish these seeds to produce bitter fruit. But even if this does not happen, by entertaining false teachers in your home you are giving them entrance into other homes! The deceiver will say to your neighbor down the street, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith let me into their home, and you know what good Christians they are!”
John has now concluded his message on fellowship and is about to begin his message on sonship. He has pointed out the contrasts between light and darkness (1 John 1:1–2:6), love and hatred (), and truth and error (). He has explained that a real Christian lives a life of obedience (walking in light, not darkness), love, and truth. It is impossible to live in fellowship with God if you are disobedient or hateful or untruthful. Any of these sins will lead you out of reality and into pretense. You will have an “artificial” life instead of an “authentic” life.
and are a “bridge” from the fellowship section into the sonship section (“born of God”); in these verses John uses three words that ought to encourage us to live in fellowship with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
•Abide. This is a word we have met twice before. You must recognize the importance of abiding in Christ. In fact, this has been the theme of the first two chapters of this epistle. You abide in Christ by believing the truth, obeying the truth, and loving other Christians—“the brethren.” Obedience—love—truth. If you are a believer and find yourself out of fellowship with God, it is because you have disobeyed His Word, lacked love for a brother, or believed a lie. The solution is to confess your sin instantly and to claim God’s forgiveness ().
•Appear. This is the first mention in this epistle of the promised return of Christ. The Book of Revelation deals in detail with future events. The epistle (1 John 2:28–3:3; ) merely mentions the return of Christ and a coming day of judgment.
Not all Bible students are agreed as to the details of future events, but evangelical Christians agree that Christ is returning for His church (). Though Christians will not then be judged for their sins, they will be judged on the basis of their faithfulness in serving Christ (). Those who have been faithful will receive rewards (); and those who have not been faithful will lose rewards. This event is called “the Judgment Seat of Christ” (; ); do not confuse it with the “Great White Throne Judgment” of unsaved people at the end of time ().
The fact that Jesus Christ may return at any moment ought to be an incentive for us to live in fellowship with Him and be obedient to His Word. For this reason, John uses a third word:
•Ashamed. Some Christians will be “ashamed before Him at His presence” (). All believers are “accepted,” but there is a difference between being “accepted” and being “acceptable.” A disobedient child who goes out and gets dirty will be accepted when he comes home, but he will not be treated as though he were acceptable. “Therefore also we have as our ambition … to be pleasing to Him” (, NASB). A Christian who has not walked in fellowship with Christ in obedience, love, and truth will lose his rewards; and this will make him ashamed.
No matter in which direction a Christian looks, he finds reason to obey God. If he looks back, he sees Calvary, where Christ died for him. If he looks within, he sees the Holy Spirit who lives within and teaches him the truth. If he looks around, he sees his Christian brethren whom he loves; he also sees a world lost in sin, desperately needing his godly witness. And if he looks ahead, he sees the return of Christ! “And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure” (). The return of Christ is a great inspiration for godly living.
John has written about light and darkness, love and hatred, and truth and error; and in he sums up the whole matter of Christian living in one phrase—“doing righteousness.”
The life that is real is a life of doing, not simply talking (“If we say,” 1 John 1:8–2:9) or giving mental assent that a doctrine is correct. “Not every one that saith unto Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven” (, italics added). Christians do not simply believe the truth; they do it ().
A person who professes to be a Christian, but who does not live in obedience, love, and truth, is either deceived or a deceiver. A child bears the nature of his father, and a person who has been “born of God” will reveal the characteristics of the Heavenly Father. “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children” (, NASB). “As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance; but as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy” ().
A Sunday School class seemed to be having constant problems. The pastor and the superintendent met with the teacher and officers, but made no apparent progress. Then, one Sunday morning, the teacher of the class came down the aisle during the closing hymn of the service. “I suppose she wants to dedicate her life to the Lord,” the pastor thought.
“Pastor,” she said, “I want to confess Christ as my Saviour. All these years I thought I was saved, but I wasn’t. There was always something lacking in my life. The class problems were my problems, but now they’ve been solved. Now I know I’m saved.”
“Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves!” (, NASB) Does your life bear the marks of obedience, love, and truth? Is your Christian life something real—genuine—authentic? Or is it counterfeit?
It is a question of truth—or consequences! And if you do not face the truth, you must pay the consequences!
The United States Treasury Department has a special group of men whose job it is to track down counterfeiters. Naturally, these men need to know a counterfeit bill when they see it.
How do they learn to identify fake bills?
Oddly enough, they are not trained by spending hours examining counterfeit money. Rather, they study the real thing. They become so familiar with authentic bills that they can spot a counterfeit by looking at it or, often, simply by feeling it.
This is the approach in 1 John 3, which warns us that in today’s world there are counterfeit Christians—“children of the devil” (). But instead of listing the evil characteristics of Satan’s children, the Scripture gives us a clear description of God’s children. The contrast between the two is obvious.
The key verse of this chapter is : a true child of God practices righteousness and loves other Christians despite differences. deals with the first topic, and takes up the second.
Practicing righteousness and loving the brethren, of course, are not new themes. These two important subjects are treated in the first two chapters of this epistle, but in 1 John 3 the approach is different. In the first two chapters the emphasis was on fellowship: a Christian who is in fellowship with God will practice righteousness and will love the brethren. But in 1 John 3–5, the emphasis is on sonship: because a Christian is “born of God,” he will practice righteousness and will love the brethren.
“Born of God” is the idea that is basic to these chapters (cf. ; ; ; , , ).
When you read in the Authorized Version, you may be startled by and , which seem to contradict . The Authorized translation of the verbs here is not accurate. What the Greek text really says is: “No one who abides in Him practices sin; no one who practices sin has seen Him or knows Him” (). “No one who is born of God practices sin … he cannot practice sin because he is born of God” (). To “practice” sin is to sin consistently and as a way of life. It does not refer to committing an occasional sin. It is clear that no Christian is sinless (), but God expects a true believer to sin less, not to sin habitually.
Every great personality mentioned in the Bible sinned at one time or another. Abraham lied about his wife (). Moses lost his temper and disobeyed God (). Peter denied the Lord three times (). But sin was not the settled practice of these men. It was an incident in their lives, totally contrary to their normal habits. And when they sinned, they admitted it and asked God to forgive them.
An unsaved person (even if he professes to be a Christian but is a counterfeit) lives a life of habitual sin. Sin—especially the sin of unbelief—is the normal thing in his life (). He has no divine resources to draw on. His profession of faith, if any, is not real. This is the distinction in view in —a true believer does not live in habitual sin. He may commit sin—an occasional wrong act—but he will not practice sin—make a settled habit of it.
The difference is that a true Christian knows God. A counterfeit Christian may talk about God and get involved in “religious activities,” but he does not really know God. The person who has been “born of God” through faith in Christ knows God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And because he knows them, he lives a life of obedience: he does not practice sin.
John gives us three reasons for a holy life.
God’s love for us is unique. may be translated, “Behold, what peculiar, out-of-this-world kind of love the Father has bestowed on us.” While we were His enemies God loved us and sent His Son to die for us!
The whole wonderful plan of salvation begins with the love of God.
Many translators add a phrase to : “That we should be called the sons of God, and we are.” “Sons of God” is not simply a high-sounding name that we bear; it is a reality! We are God’s children! We do not expect the world to understand this thrilling relationship, because it does not even understand God. Only a person who knows God through Christ can fully appreciate what it means to be called a child of God.
tells us what we are and tells us what we shall be. The reference here, of course, is to the time of Christ’s coming for His church. This was mentioned in as an incentive for holy living, and now it is repeated.
God’s love for us does not stop with the new birth. It continues throughout our lives and takes us right up to the return of Jesus Christ! When our Lord appears, all true believers will see Him and will become like Him (). This means, of course, that they will have new, glorified bodies, suited to heaven.
But the apostle does not stop here! He has told us what we are and what we shall be. Now, in , he tells us what we should be. In view of the return of Jesus Christ, we should keep our lives clean.
All this is to remind us of the Father’s love. Because the Father loved us and sent His Son to die for us, we are children of God. Because God loves us, He wants us to live with Him one day. Salvation, from start to finish, is an expression of the love of God. We are saved by the grace of God (; ), but the provision for our salvation was originated in the love of God. And since we have experienced the love of the Father, we have no desire to live in sin.
An unbeliever who sins is a creature sinning against his Creator. A Christian who sins is a child sinning against his Father. The unbeliever sins against law; the believer sins against love.
This reminds us of the meaning of the phrase so often repeated in the Bible: “the fear of the Lord.” This phrase does not suggest that God’s children live in an atmosphere of terror, “for God hath not given us the spirit of fear” (). Rather, it indicates that God’s children hold their Father in reverence and will not deliberately disobey Him or try His patience.
A group of teenagers were enjoying a party, and someone suggested that they go to a certain restaurant for a good time.
“I’d rather you took me home,” Jan said to her date. “My parents don’t approve of that place.”
“Afraid your father will hurt you?” one of the girls asked sarcastically.
“No,” Jan replied, “I’m not afraid my father will hurt me, but I am afraid I might hurt him.”
She understood the principle that a true child of God, who has experienced the love of God, has no desire to sin against that love.
John turns here from the future appearing of Jesus () to His past appearing (, where the word “manifest,” KJV, means “appear”). John gives two reasons why Jesus came and died: 1. to take away our sins (), and 2. to destroy the works of the devil (). For a child of God to sin indicates that he does not understand or appreciate what Jesus did for him on the cross.
Christ appeared to take away our sins (vv. ). There are several definitions of sin in the Bible: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (). “The thought of foolishness is sin” (). “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (). “All unrighteousness is sin” (). But John’s epistle defines sin as lawlessness (). It views sin as defilement (1 John 1:9–2:2), but here it views it as defiance.
The emphasis here is not on sins (plural), but on sin (singular): “Whosoever practices sin.” Sins are the fruit, but sin is the root.
That God is love does not mean He has no rules and regulations for His family. “And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments” (). “And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight” (). “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments” ().
God’s children are not in bondage to the Old Testament Law, for Christ has set us free and has given us liberty (). But God’s children are not to be lawless, either! They are “not without law to God, but under the law to Christ” ().
Sin is basically a matter of the will. For us to assert our will against God’s will is rebellion, and rebellion is the root of sin. It is not simply that sin reveals itself in lawless behavior, but that the very essence of sin is lawlessness. No matter what his outward action may be, a sinner’s inward attitude is one of rebellion.
Little Judy was riding in the car with her father. She decided to stand up in the front seat. Her father commanded her to sit down and put on the seat belt, but she declined. He told her a second time, and again she refused.
“If you don’t sit down immediately, I’ll pull over to the side of the road and spank you!” Dad finally said, and at this the little girl obeyed. But in a few minutes she said quietly, “Daddy, I’m still standing up inside.”
Lawlessness! Rebellion! Even though there was constraint from the outside, there was still rebellion on the inside; and this attitude is the essence of sin.
But after a person has become a child of God, born again by faith in Jesus Christ, he cannot practice lawlessness! For one thing, Jesus Christ was without sin, and to abide in Him means to be identified with the One who is sinless. And even more than that, Jesus Christ died to take away our sins! If we know the person of Christ, and if we have shared in the blessing of His death, we cannot deliberately disobey God. The whole work of the Cross is denied when a professed Christian practices deliberate sin. This is one reason why Paul calls such people “enemies of the Cross of Christ” ().
“Whosoever abideth in Him does not practice sin” (). “Abide” is one of John’s favorite words. To abide in Christ means to be in fellowship with Him, to allow nothing to come between ourselves and Christ. Sonship (being born of God) brings about our union with Christ; but fellowship makes possible our communion with Christ. It is this communion (abiding) with Christ that keeps us from deliberately disobeying His Word.
A person who deliberately and habitually sins is proving that he does not know Christ and therefore cannot be abiding in Him.
There is more in the death of Christ on the cross than simply our salvation from judgment, as wonderful as that is. Through His death, Christ broke the power of the sin principle in our lives. The theme of Romans 6–8 is this identification with Christ in His death and resurrection. Christ not only died for me, but I died with Christ! Now I can yield myself to Him and sin will not have dominion over me.
Christ appeared to destroy the works of the devil (vv. ). The logic here is clear: if a man knows God, he will obey God; if he belongs to the devil, he will obey the devil.
John accepts the reality of a personal devil. This enemy has many different names in Scripture: Satan (adversary, enemy), the devil (accuser), Abaddon or Apollyon (destroyer), the prince of this world, the dragon, etc. Whatever name you call him, keep in mind that his chief activity is to oppose Christ and God’s people.
The contrast here is between Christ (who has no sin, ) and the devil (who can do nothing but sin).
The origin of Satan is a mystery. Many scholars believe he was once one of the highest angels, placed by God over the earth and over the other angels, and that he sinned against God and was cast down (; ).
Satan is not eternal, as is God, for he is a created being. He was not created sinful. His present nature is a result of his past rebellion. Satan is not like God: he is not all-powerful, all-knowing, or everywhere present. However, he is assisted by an army of spirit creatures known as demons, who make it possible for him to work in many places at one time ().
Satan is a rebel, but Christ is the obedient Son of God. Christ was “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (). Christ is God but was willing to become a servant. Satan was a servant and wanted to become God. From the beginning of his career, Satan has been a sinner, and Christ came to destroy the works of the devil.
Destroy () does not mean “annihilate.” Satan is certainly still at work today! Destroy, here, means “to render inoperative, to rob of power.” Satan has not been annihilated, but his power has been reduced and his weapons have been impaired. He is still a mighty foe, but he is no match for the power of God.
Jesus compares this world to a palace that contains many valuable goods. A strong man is guarding this palace (). Satan is the strong man, and his “goods” are lost men and women. The only way to release the “goods” is to bind the strong man, and that is just what Jesus did on the cross. Jesus, in coming to earth, invaded Satan’s “palace.” When He died, He broke Satan’s power and captured his goods! Each time a lost sinner is won to Christ, more of Satan’s “spoils” are taken from him.
For many months after the close of World War II, Japanese troops were discovered hidden in the caves and jungles of the Pacific islands. Some of these stragglers were living like frightened savages; they didn’t know the war was over. Once they understood that it was no longer necessary for them to fight, they surrendered.
Christians may rest in the truth that Satan is a defeated enemy. He may still win a few battles here and there, but he has already lost the war! Sentence has been pronounced on him, but it will be awhile before the punishment is meted out. A person who knows Christ, and who has been delivered from the bondage of sin through Christ’s death on the cross, has no desire to obey Satan and live like a rebel.
“Little children, let no man deceive you!” Counterfeit Christians were trying to convince true believers that a person could be “saved” and still practice sin. John does not deny that Christians sin, but he does deny that Christians can live in sin. A person who can enjoy deliberate sin and who does not feel convicted or experience God’s chastening had better examine himself to see whether or not he is really born of God.
God the Holy Spirit Lives in Us ()
“Whosoever is born of God does not practice sin!”
Why? Because he has a new nature within him, and that new nature cannot sin. John calls this new nature God’s “seed.”
When a person receives Christ as his Saviour, tremendous spiritual changes take place in him. He is given a new standing before God, being accepted as righteous in God’s sight. This new standing is called “justification.” It never changes and is never lost.
The new Christian is also given a new position: he is set apart for God’s own purposes to live for His glory. This new position is called “sanctification,” and it has a way of changing from day to day. On some days we are much closer to Christ and obey Him much more readily.
But perhaps the most dramatic change in a new believer is what we call “regeneration.” He is “born again” into the family of God. (Re- means “again,” and generation means “birth.”)
Justification means a new standing before God, sanctification means being set apart to God, and regeneration means a new nature—God’s nature (cf. ).
The only way to enter God’s family is by trusting Christ and experiencing this new birth. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” ().
Physical life produces only physical life; spiritual life produces spiritual life. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (). Christians have been born again, “not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever” (). A Christian’s “spiritual parents,” so to speak, are the Word of God and the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to convict of sin and to reveal the Saviour.
We are saved by faith (), and “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (). In the miracle of the new birth, the Holy Spirit imparts new life—God’s life—to a believing sinner, and as a result the individual is born into the family of God.
Just as physical children bear the nature of their parents, so God’s spiritual children bear His nature. The divine “seed” is in them. A Christian has an old nature from his physical birth and a new nature from his spiritual birth. The New Testament contrasts these two natures and gives them various names:
Old Nature
New Nature
The old nature produces sin, but the new nature leads one into a holy life. A Christian’s responsibility is to live according to his new nature, not the old nature.
One way to illustrate this is by contrasting the “outer man” with the “inner man” (). The physical man needs food, and so does the inner, or spiritual man. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (). Unless a Christian spends time daily in meditating on the Word of God, his inner man will lack power.
A converted Indian explained, “I have two dogs living in me—a mean dog and a good dog. They are always fighting. The mean dog wants me to do bad things, and the good dog wants me to do good things. Do you want to know which dog wins? The one I feed the most!”
A Christian who feeds the new nature from the Word of God will have power to live a godly life. We are to “make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof” ().
The physical man needs cleansing, and so does the inner man. We wash our hands and face frequently. A believer should look into the mirror of God’s Word daily () and examine himself. He must confess his sins and claim God’s forgiveness (). Otherwise the inner man will become unclean and this uncleanness will breed infection and “spiritual sickness.”
Unconfessed sin is the first step in what the Bible calls “backsliding”—gradually moving away from a close walk with Christ into a life filled with the alien world in which we live.
God’s promise, “I will heal your backslidings” (), implies that backsliding resembles physical sickness. First is the secret invasion of the body by a disease germ. Then infection follows and there is a gradual decline: no pep, no appetite, no interest in normal activities. Then comes the collapse!
Spiritual decline works in a similar way. First sin invades us. Instead of fighting it, we yield to it (cf. ) and infection sets in. A gradual decline follows. We lose our appetite for spiritual things, we become listless and even irritable, and finally we collapse.
The only remedy is to confess and forsake our sin and turn to Christ for cleansing and healing.
The inner man not only needs food and cleansing, but he also needs exercise. “Exercise thyself … unto godliness” (). A person who eats but does not exercise will become overweight; a person who exercises without eating will kill himself. There must be proper balance.
“Spiritual exercise” for a believer, includes sharing Christ with others, doing good works in Christ’s name, and helping to build up other believers. Each Christian has at least one spiritual gift which he is to use for the good of the church (). “As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (, NASB).
Here is a vivid commentary on this whole process of temptation and sin:
“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God!’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. And when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death” (, NASB).
Temptation appeals to our basic natural desires. There is nothing sinful about our desires, but temptation gives us an opportunity to satisfy these desires in an evil way. It is not sin to be hungry, but it is a sin to satisfy hunger out of the will of God. This was the first temptation Satan hurled at Jesus ().
The two terms, “carried away” and “enticed” (), both relate to hunting or fishing: the putting of bait in a trap or on a hook. The animal (or fish) comes along and his natural desires attract him to the bait. But in taking the bait, he gets caught in the trap, or hooked. And the end is death.
Satan baits his traps with pleasures that appeal to the old nature, the flesh. But none of his bait appeals to the new divine nature within a Christian. If a believer yields to his old nature, he will hanker for the bait, take it, and sin. But if he follows the leanings of his new nature, he will refuse the bait and obey God. “This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” ().
Yielding to sin is the distinguishing mark of “the children of the devil” (). They profess, or claim, one thing, but they practice another. Satan is a liar and the father of lies (), and his children are like their father. “He that saith, ‘I know [God],’ and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (). The children of the devil try to deceive God’s children into thinking that a person can be a Christian and still practice sin. “Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He [God] is righteous” ().
False teachers in John’s day taught that a Christian did not have to worry about sin because only the body sinned and what the body did in no way affected the spirit. Some of them went so far as to teach that sin is natural to the body, because the body is sinful.
The New Testament exposes the foolishness of such excuses for sin.
To begin with, “the old nature” is not the body. The body itself is neutral: it can be used either by the old sinful nature or by the new divine nature. “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those [who are] alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (, NASB).
How does a child of God go about overcoming the desires of the old nature? He must begin each day by yielding his body to God as a living sacrifice (). He must spend time reading and studying the Word of God, “feeding” his new nature. He must take time to pray, asking God to fill him with the Holy Spirit and give him power to serve Christ and glorify Him.
As he goes through the day, a believer must depend on the power of the Spirit in the inner man. When temptations come, he must immediately turn to Christ for victory.
The Word of God in his heart will help to keep him from sin if only he will turn to Christ. “Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee” (). If he does sin, he must instantly confess to God and claim forgiveness. But it is not necessary for him to sin. By yielding his body to the Holy Spirit within him, he will receive the power he needs to overcome the tempter.
A good practice is to claim God’s promise: “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able; but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it” (, NASB).
A Sunday School teacher was explaining the Christian’s two natures—the old and the new—to a class of teenagers.
“Our old nature came from Adam,” he explained, “and our new nature comes from Christ, who is called ‘the Last Adam.’ ” He had the class read : “So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The Last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (NASB).
“This means there are two ‘Adams’ living in me,” said one of the teenagers.
“That’s right,” the teacher replied. “And what is the practical value of this truth?”
The class was silent for a moment, and then a student spoke up.
“This idea of the ‘two Adams’ really helps me in fighting temptation,” he said. “When temptation comes knocking at my door, if I send the first Adam to answer, I’ll sin. But if I send the Last Adam, I’ll get victory.”
A true believer does not practice sin; a counterfeit believer cannot help but practice sin, because he does not have God’s new nature within him. The true believer also loves other Christians, which is discussed in detail in .
But these words were not written so that you and I might check on other people. They were inspired so that we may examine ourselves. Each of us must answer honestly before God:
1. Do I have the divine nature within me or am I merely pretending to be a Christian?
2. Do I cultivate this divine nature by daily Bible reading and prayer?
3. Has any unconfessed sin defiled my inner man? Am I willing to confess and forsake it?
4. Do I allow my old nature to control my thoughts and desires, or does the divine nature rule me?
5. When temptation comes, do I “play with it” or do I flee from it? Do I immediately yield to the divine nature within me?
The life that is real is honest with God about these vital issues.