I John 1:1-4
See
what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called
children of God! And that is what we are! – I John 3:1a
and
You,
dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the One who is in
you is greater than the one who is in the world. – I John 4:4
and
This
is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according
to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have
what we asked of Him. – I John 5:14-15
There are, indeed, many other passages
in I John that offer encouragement and hope. However, there are at least as many
other verses that are extremely challenging. This time, I give you five
examples:
If we
claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do
not live out the truth. – I John 1:6
We
know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commands. Whoever says, “I know
Him,” but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that
person. – I John 2:3-4
Do
not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love
for the Father is not in them. – I John 2:15
If
anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no
pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? – I John 3:17
Whoever
claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does
not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom
they have not seen. – I John 4:20
These are hard sayings! I don’t know about
you, but they make me very uncomfortable. John does not beat around the bush;
he speaks quite forcefully and plainly. Frankly, a part of me wishes he would
speak a little less forcefully.
One of the things about John that we see in
I John is that, as these five verses (and many, many others) show, his writing is very bold. He doesn’t hold back. One of his themes is that Christians should live
lives that look radically different from those of non-Christians.
I wonder what John would think about
America. Polls typically show that over 80% of Americans identify themselves as
Christians, and of this group, the majority, often between 70% and 80%,
identify themselves as “born again.” Sounds good, right?
But other statistics tell a different
story. Among people who attend what they self-describe as “evangelical” churches,
about 80% say that “religion” is very important in their lives, but that still
means that about 20% think it is only “somewhat important” or “not at all
important.” More shockingly, among these self-described evangelicals, a bit
more than half agree with the statement that “many religions can lead to
eternal life.” Among those who attend mainline Christian denominations the
numbers are even worse; only about half say that religion is very important in
their lives, and more than 80% (!) agree that many religions can lead to
eternal life.
And it is sadly ironic, but I think
non-Christians have a better sense of what is going on that the people who
self-identify themselves as Christians. A recent survey in North America asked
various non-Christian religious and ethnic groups if they had ever personally
met a Christian. Given these supposed giant percentages of Christians out
there, you would think it would be rare, right? But the survey found that 66%
of Buddhists and 78% of Hindus had never met a Christian. The number was lower
among Muslims, at 43%, but I suspect that is because the exclusivist nature of
the Islam religion tends to make them count “generic” people they meet as
Christians, whereas the more open-philosophy view of Buddhists and the multiple-god
worship approach of Hindus tends to make them a little more savvy about these
things. But the important thing is that there is no way that both groups, the
self-professed Christians, and the self-professed non-Christians, can both be
right.
Now, I think it is important to be very
careful about statistics. For example, you may have heard the statistic that
the divorce rate is around 50% and it is basically indistinguishable between
Christians and non-Christians. Well, yeah, if about 80% of Americans self-identify
themselves as Christians, pretty much every
statistic will be the same between Christians and non-Christians. When you
look at divorce specifically, the more qualifiers you put on “practicing
Christians,” for example, looking at one’s frequency of having personal quiet
times and prayer, you will see these numbers go down. But I don’t think this
would impress the apostle John. He speaks in black and white, in absolutes. “If
you claim to love God,” he would say, “your life should look radically different.
You should be living, by and large, a life characterized by holiness, by agape
love, by goodness. If your life doesn’t look like that, you are just fooling
yourselves. Your claim of loving God is just empty words.”
One of my all-time favorite moments in the
Star Wars movies is the scene between a young Obi-Wan Kenobi and a man in a bar
which goes as follows:
“You wanna buy some death sticks?”
“You don’t want to sell me death sticks.”
“Uh, I don’t wanna sell you death sticks.”
“You want to go home and rethink your life.”
“I wanna go home and rethink my life.”
By the way, I found this quote on a Star
Wars wiki page that explained that death sticks contain highly addictive
hallucinogenic drugs that, with each dose, shorten your lifespan (which is why
they are called death sticks). But I love this scene – if I could make movies,
I would make one showing what happens to this man in the days, weeks, months,
and years after this encounter, after he does in fact go home and rethink his
life.
If there is an overarching theme in I John,
I think it is that John wants you to go home and rethink your life. He wants
you to really understand what it means if you are to be truthful while saying
that you love God. And he wants you to really understand what God’s love means
for you. The two of course are tied together; if you really understand God’s
love for you, you should love Him – it’s what should happen. And this love
should be apparent by how you live your life, by your actions, by what you do.
Now one might falsely conclude from this
that John thinks people can lose their salvation, but I don’t think he thinks
that at all, and more to the point, I think this is missing the essence of what
John is saying. In fact, as we shall see, assurance – of Christ’s love, of a
glorious eternal future with Him, is also a major theme of I John. Assurance
comes out in Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and Chapter 5. I know a lot of believers get
tripped up on assurance, and I think sometimes the cause can be that they lose
sight of key aspects of the gospel.
As I thought about this this week, I
thought about the following analogy. Now, all analogies are flawed and limited,
so bear with me. But imagine that you are walking along and soon realize that a
very thick fog has descended, so thick that you cannot see the ground. Years
ago, when I used to snow ski frequently – and by the way, I was shocked to
realize recently that in my growing up years I actually skied for more than
half a year of my life; that is what two weeks a year for 18 years adds up to –
anyway, when I used to ski, sometimes a thick fog would descend on us very
quickly. If it happened while on a chairlift, you would get the situation in
which you could not see the next pole holding up the chairlift, and so you had
the sensation that you were being carried straight to heaven. But there were a
few times when the fog was so thick that I quite literally could not see the
tips of my skis. It’s actually pretty dangerous to ski in these conditions, and
they would usually shut down the lifts when this happened. For one thing, you
couldn’t see anyone else and could easily ski right into them. For another, you
couldn’t see which way was down, and it became shockingly difficult to keep
your balance even when skiing at a ridiculously slow speed.
Anyway, imagine you
are walking along and this fog descends on you. You keep walking for a while
but you cannot see how the ground is changing. Now imagine a Voice comes to you
tells you to stop, because you are now on an extremely narrow ridge of land
with deadly cliffs on each side. There are no railings or anything else to keep
you safe. At this point you can choose to ignore this Voice and walk in a
random direction, or, if you have any sense at all, you can stop and listen
more to what this Voice has to say. Imagine that out of this fog appears a
hand, and the Voice says that if you hold onto His hand, He will lead you
safely on. Partly out of fear, and partly out of a mustard seed of faith, you
take His hand. He holds you tightly so that you cannot accidentally let go.
Then the fog quickly lifts and you see that He was right; you would have
certainly died if you had done anything other than take His hand. He then leads
you, supporting you, step by step down this path, so that you cannot fall. Personally,
I think this is a pretty good picture of both salvation, and assurance. God is
doing all the work, and He won’t let go. By the way, as I thought about it
more, I realized that C.S. Lewis uses a very similar picture in his Narnia
series; but as I’ve shared before, “It’s all in C.S. Lewis.”
Anyway, as we will see, assurance is a
second major theme in I John. As we go through I John I, am sure we will see
many themes, but I want to mention one more recurring
topic, the topic of being aware and wary of false teachers and false disciples.
Even in the gospels, Jesus warned
repeatedly of false teachers. Here is one such warning, from Matthew 7:
Watch
out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they
are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from
thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good
tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A
good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into
the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
– Matt. 7:15-20
Paul warned of the same thing in Acts 20.
Here is the context of his warning: Paul gathered together the elders in
Ephesus for a meeting. He began by reminding them of how he had lived among
them serving the Lord despite severe testing and persecution, of how he had
taught them “that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in the
Lord Jesus.” Then Paul threw out the bombshell that he would be following the
direction of the Holy Spirit and be leaving for Jerusalem, not knowing exactly
what would happen there, only knowing that repeatedly the Spirit revealed that
prison and hardships awaited him. He warned that, because of this, he would
never see them again, but reminded them of his unwavering devotion to
proclaiming the gospel in Ephesus without hesitation. He reminded them to be
shepherds of the church, and then, here is what Paul said next to his shell-shocked
listeners:
I
know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not
spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in
order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your
guard! – Acts 20:29-31
He
committed them to God and prayed with them, and they wept with him, and then he
left them. Now what I want to point out is that Paul was right. Actually, I
think you could say that Paul was “prophetic” about this. He said with
certainty this is what would happen, and it was exactly what happened. “Savage
wolves” did come in among them and did not spare the flock. Even from their own
number, men arose and distorted the truth to draw away disciples.
How big a
problem did this become for the early church? A huge problem! Nearly every New
Testament letter talks about false teachers, the damage they were doing, and
what needed to be done. I don’t claim this is an exhaustive list, but
performing a relatively brief search, I found direct discussions of this in
Romans, I and II Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Colossians, II
Thessalonians, I and II Timothy, II Peter, II John, Jude, and Revelations, and
yes, it is also discussed directly in I John.
Does this
have application to us? Absolutely! False teachers come in so many categories
today that I don’t know where to start. For most Americans, the most
influential false teacher is probably their television set. False doctrines
don’t need to be religious to be false doctrines. TV shows can be much more
subtle. Almost universally, the characters on TV shows portray the idea that
“normal” life is a secular life, a life where thoughts about God just don’t
really occur. Certainly, a devotional life, one where a person spends time
regularly in prayer and in the word, in fellowship with other believers, and in
a good church, is almost completely nonexistent on TV. Instead what we have is
characters who have their ups and downs, who make some OK decisions and some
bad decisions, but who progress through life using a standard of morality not
derived from the Bible, but that is just “there,” just common knowledge. This
morality includes such things as the idea that premarital relations are fine if
you really care about the person, that you just need to be “yourself,” that
same-sex relationships are fine, and so on, but what I think is even more
profound, that truly worshiping and loving God is not even on the radar screen
– it’s not that it’s weird, it’s that it’s nonexistent, that it’s unheard of. To put it in the terminology of I John, it is
that you can say you love God if you want, as long as you actually live just
like everybody else. This is exactly what John seeks to address and that he
addresses so forcefully in this letter.
And so we
will see many more things in this letter, but these three themes, love,
assurance, and false teachers, are visited again and again in I John. My desire
is that you see that all three are profoundly relevant to our lives today even
though this letter was written close to 2000 years ago.
Before
time gets away from us, let’s look at the first four verses of John’s letter.
That which was from the beginning, which we have
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands
have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and
testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the
Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have
seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our
fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. – I John 1:1-4
One of the things that
strikes me about John’s opening is well, it’s lack of what we are accustomed to
in the opening of New Testament letters. Where is the part that says who it’s
from? Missing! Where is the part that says who it’s to? Missing! Where is the
part that actually gives a greeting? Missing!
You may wonder, given
the lack of all this information, how we even know that John wrote it. Well, we
have the unanimous testimony of the early church fathers in this. Now, John
lived longer than any of the other apostles, and in fact, most experts believe
he lived well into the AD 90s. One of the implications of this is that, as the
last living apostle, he knew some of these “next generation” church fathers
personally; for example, John personally discipled a man named Papias who
talked about authorship and quoted many New Testament scriptures in his
writings.
I think we can go
further and say that the very lack of
John’s (or anyone else’s) name argues strongly that John was the author,
because, given the strongly authoritative tone of the letter, the only way it
would have been accepted in the early church is was if it was written by the
last living apostle, one of Jesus’ so-called “inner circle,” John. If I John
was written towards the end of his life, in the 90s, as most scholars suspect,
John would have been so well-known and adored that nobody, nobody, would have
said, “John who?”
And then there is the
fact that the letter reads so much like the gospel of John. Even a child can
see this – so much of the symbolism, the style of writing, and so on, sounds so
uniquely like John that it is impossible to imagine it could have been written
by anyone else.
And finally on this
topic of authorship, note that John didn't refer to himself in his gospel
either. In fact, he went to great pains to not
use his own name. He calls himself the one who reclined near Jesus at the
Last Supper. And most famously, he calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved.
In his gospel it is clear that John is not a man of convention, as this almost
weird way of not giving his name was unique to John’s writings, and so it is no
surprise that he forgoes the standard conventions for opening a letter as well.
Now I love the opening
line. It reminds me of the opening of the gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through
Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In
Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. -- John 1:1-4
Notice how we have some
of the same words and phrases: the
beginning, the Word, life, the same words and phrases in both
the Gospel of John and in I John. But the purposes of these books are somewhat
different; John tells us that the purpose of his gospel is to help people to
come to believe; in John 20:31 he says it is so "that you may believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His
name." But this letter, as we have talked about, and we shall see, is more to
help believers “go home and rethink their lives,” to really understand what it
means to say you love God and be true, as well as to understand how you can
have assurance in Christ and how you can guard against the teachings of false
disciples. In short, the gospel is for unbelievers, and the letter is for
believers.
Let’s read this again:
That which was from the beginning, which we have
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands
have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and
testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the
Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have
seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our
fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. – I John 1:1-4
Now I want to ask a
question about John based on these first four verses. Is John humble? What I
want to point out is that our culture would tend to say “No,” that is, our culture
has come to equate humility with a lack of conviction. It’s not humble to say
you know you are right. Often when you talk with unbelievers this kind of thing
can come up; they are uncomfortable with your degree of certainty of your
faith, and actually think you are presumptuous to think you can possible know truths about God. This kind of
thinking is so pervasive in our culture you may find yourself affected by it
without even realizing it.
But this is a false
connection. Conviction and humility are like apples and oranges; they are
entirely different fruit. Now conviction when you have no basis for conviction
is bad, even foolish, but conviction when there is a basis for it, is not pride, but boldness, strength, courage,
and these are good things!
There is no question
that John speaks with conviction, with boldness, with strength, with courage,
but this does not mean John is proud – not at all! John is speaking in this way
because he absolutely knows what he is talking about! As a professor, when I
teach my Systems and Signals class, I speak with conviction, because I know
this material better than I remember my children’s names (sometimes). I had a
student ask me on Friday how long I have been teaching this class, and I
honestly can’t remember (and I don’t have records available to figure it out).
But I know it has been for more than 10 years, which means I have taught the
class at least 30 times.
John knows what he is
talking about it! He was with Christ, day after day after day. He was, as I have said, in Christ’s “inner
circle,” present at the transfiguration, at the raising of Lazarus, at the Last
Supper, in the Garden of Gethsemane, everywhere Christ went with anyone, John
was there. He was there when Christ appeared to the disciples after rising
from the dead. He was there at the start of the church, at Pentecost, when
the tongues of fire settled on the disciples. He was there when thousands came
to faith in one day in Jerusalem. He was there as the church continued to grow
by leaps and bounds, and he was there when the church was persecuted by those
outside the faith, and he was there when the false teachers crept in and tried
to destroy the church from within. He was there through all of this, and he
knows what he is talking about.
He calls
Jesus the Word of life, and I think this is a fascinating name. The Word John
used in the Gospel of John, and he basically hijacked a term used in Greek
philosophy because it already was associated with depth, with mystery; it was
profound and implied the creator of all. This is not like one of the Greek "lower-case g
gods" who were really more like spoiled men, but like something so far above us that
we cannot really understand it, that we are ants in comparison. But here Jesus
is not just the Word, but He is the Word of Life. He’s not just the creator
(and that word “just” isn’t the right word, but I don’t know what else to use),
but He is the bringer of Life, of Zoe, another loaded word, that doesn’t merely
describe the biological process of living, as wondrous as that is, but what it
means to live, to experience life, to
know joy and love and hope and wonder and all the things that make being alive
an indescribable gift. And John has hijacked this word too, to imply more than
this, that it is an eternal life, a life so grand that our present lives are
just like shadows in comparison to the eternal life that is to come. Of course,
Jesus hijacked the word first, saying, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
Inspired
by the Holy Spirit, all of his word choices are deliberate. I think especially
important is the word translated here as touched. This word is used only a few
times in this form in Scripture, and one of them is in Luke 24:39, where the
resurrected Jesus appears before the disciples suddenly, and they are startled
and frightened, thinking maybe they are seeing a ghost. Jesus replies, “Look at
My hands and My feet! It is I Myself! Touch (same word) Me and see; a ghost
does not have flesh and bones, and you see I have.”
One of the things some of
the false teachers taught was that Jesus did not really appear in the flesh
post-resurrection. This was in part tied to an old Greek teaching that physical
things were bad, that physical bodies were bad, imperfect, that the perfect was
beyond flesh. But one of the amazing and wonderful things we know is that this
is wrong; our resurrected bodies, whatever they will be exactly like, we don’t
know, but we know they will be flesh; they can be touched and felt. The Zoe,
the Life that Jesus is preparing for us is not only spiritual, but physical –
not corrupted like our present bodies, but uncorrupted, eternal, yet physical.
Anyway, I love how John uses this same word Jesus used, to say, yeah, we
touched Him all right!
There are
two more things I want to bring out. First is this idea of fellowship. Like
many words we use today, we have lost the real meaning and make it to be
something so much less than it was meant to be. Today when we say fellowship we
tend to think of just a get-together, sharing food, socializing – we even use
this word here and in fact are having a home “fellowship” right after the
service today! But the word, which in Greek is koinonia, really meant more; it meant a lifetime shared in intimacy
together. A man and wife, at the end of a happy love-filled lifelong marriage,
might use the word koinonia to
describe what their lives have been like together. When I think of koinonia I
think of 2 Peter 1:3-4,
His divine power has given us everything we need for a
godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and
goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises,
so that through them you may participate in the divine nature… - 2 Peter 1:3-4a
Wow! What does it mean
to participate in the divine nature? Koinonia not just with John the Apostle,
which sounds pretty special, doesn’t it? But koinonia with God the Father
Himself, with Jesus Christ Himself! Wow! An eternal fellowship, an eternal
lifetime shared in intimacy together. This is our future! This begins now – we
get tastes of it now, as the Spirit illuminates our lives, as we, mutual
participants in the divine nature, connect with one another on a level that the
world doesn’t understand – I don’t know if you have had the experience of
seeing a believer that you shared life with years and years ago and then you
get back together and it is as if no time has passed – that is koinonia. But
even that is only a foretaste of what awaits us with Christ.
And second, that final
phrase – we write this to make our joy complete. Some translations say your
joy. I think it is both – but the key idea I want to end with is that joy is a key part of God’s gift to us
through His Son. To make our joy complete is to literally fill up our big jug
of joy. This fellowship with God, this koinonia, is for our joy, for his joy,
for every believer’s joy. I find it very curious that when we are overwhelmed
with joy, we weep. Why do we weep for joy? I stumbled across this quote, and I
have no idea of its context, but I really like it:
Why do we
weep once we know that everything will be alright? We weep because the only way
everything could ever be alright is in fiction. We weep because what we've seen
can't be true, no matter how badly we wish it were. We weep at the truth. –
Adam Levin
Doesn’t
that say it well? The gospel – the truth that God loves us and will love us for
eternity – is too good to be true. It’s a better ending than any “and they
lived happily ever after” in fiction. Koinonia with God, God in us,
individually and together, sharing one Spirit, eternal koinonia with one
another – not our old “us” but our new “us’s” filled with the Spirit, filled
with God’s love, healed by God, intimate with God, forever – it’s too good to be true, and yet it’s true! We weep for
joy at the truth.
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