Works versus Faith (Part 20) — The Book of 1 John (Re-edited) (Part 1)

I completely re-edited and cleaned up this study of the Book of 1 John. I added a lot of things and corrected some things here and there. If you read through the previous one, this will be a fresh look at this awesome book and I think you will find it very informative, clarifying, and helpful. I also recently (within the past few months) fully re-edited the entire Kingdom of Heaven Series and “The Sheep and the Goats” study as well.

We are continuing the series of eternal security. We pointed out that salvation is by grace, through faith—this not from yourselves, it is the (free) gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). We also pointed out that to require works would actually cancel grace. Either one as a requirement for salvation negates the other; or, as Romans 11:6 puts it: “And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.” We went over many verses that show that we are saved by grace alone apart from works and that a Christian cannot lose his or her salvation by what they do because as far as salvation is concerned, our effort of obedience is not the grading scale that we are being judged by. The only grade we are judged by for salvation is whether or not we have the blood of Christ covering us just as the Israelites needed the blood on their doorpost for the Death Angel to pass by them without touching them (Exodus 12:7). Christians, by sinning, however can lose fellowship with God, but are nevertheless forever sealed by the Holy Spirit until the Day of Redemption (Ephesians 4:30), so they cannot lose salvation as long as they believe in the finished work of Jesus on the cross which includes his death and resurrection, and believing His person or true identity: that is that He is fully Deity (the Second Person of the Trinity) and fully man.

After going through the Scriptures that assert our eternal security, we then covered Scriptures that appear to argue the opposite of our starting assertions. These are passages that people incorrectly use to try to prove that salvation must be earned by our works or maintained by our works, and that it is possible for a Christian to lose his or her salvation based on his or her disobedience. Today, I would like to cover the first epistle of John. There are certain passages in 1 John that people tend to use (although incorrectly interpreted) to make their case that a Christian can lose salvation because of their sin, and that therefore salvation needs our works to be legit. The main verses are in chapter 3. For example, 1 John 3:10 reads, “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.” And the other main verse is 1 John 3:15, which states, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him (NIV version).” Before diving right into these verses, it is imperative to understand the previous chapters and the theme of the book. So while I don’t intend to cover every verse, I will cover the important sections that lead up to these verses.

Before I do that, I would like to emphasize why one should pause and be taken aback when one reads 1 John 3:10 and also 3:15. Verse 10 appears to say that a person who is not doing what is right is not a Christian at all. The honest reader who understands Paul’s entire message, should immediately protest that this verse contradicts what Paul says (at first glance, of course). I have come to the notion that many Christian students are not honest readers. They know intuitively that the Bible does not contradict itself, and so they internally, perhaps unconsciously accept the apparent contradictions without acknowledging that something must be incorrect with the interpretation. Ephesians 2:8-10 cannot be clearer. Not only does it clearly state that salvation is a free gift, and not by works; it even states “so that no one can boast.” The word “boast” there has nothing to do with pride. We are supposed to boast of our great salvation according to other Scriptures. That is not what this means. The word boast in Ephesians 2 means that the one who is saved has absolutely no part in the means of them getting saved. No one will be able to say in eternity, “I am saved because I...” No one will be able to start one’s sentence off that way. Nor will we be able to say, “I maintained my salvation because...” There is no “I” in one’s salvation. The “I” did not bring it about. Nor did the “I” maintain it. If anyone says, “I” and “salvation” in the same sentence, that would be boasting. God says, “Nay, not you, but I!!!” Our salvation is fully Jesus’ work, not ours. Indeed we cannot boast, for that same passage says, “this not from yourselves.” So it is important that the reader is sensitive to the apparent contradiction between what Paul says and how this text in 1 John 3 is normally, though cursorily and inaccurately interpreted. The reader should always dig deeper when these apparent conflicts surface. God wants us to notice them and take a closer look so that we can land on the Truth.

Now I will cover the verses that lead up to that:

The author of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John is the same person who originally penned the Gospel of John and Revelation. John wrote the Gospel of John to tell people how to get saved. John wrote his epistles (1st, 2nd, and 3rd John) to people already saved to tell them how to live in fellowship with God. John’s intended audience in the Gospel of John is the world, or the unsaved. John’s intended audience in the book of 1 John is Christians, people who have accepted Jesus as their Savior. John wrote the Gospel of John to tell people how to live forever. He wrote 1 John to tell people who are secured for the next life, how to experience life right now in history. John wrote the Gospel of John to tell people how to overcome God’s eternal wrath because of sin. John wrote 1 John to tell Christians how to overcome God’s discipline and abide in God’s favor, love and grace.

One of John’s favorite words in his epistles and even in his Gospel book is the word “abide.” The Greek word for “abide” is mӗnō. It means “to hang out with” or “to dwell with”; it means, well...to abide. It has the meaning of “keeping company with.” It means “to have fellowship with.” Unfortunately, if you are using the NIV, keep in mind that they translate mӗnō with the word “remain” in every occurrence, or they leave the word out completely. “Remain” has a different nuance in meaning than how John uses mӗnō in his epistles. Remain denotes never leaving, or maintaining an uninterrupted, permanent presence. The more accurate translations correctly translate mӗnō as “abide.” I’m going to still quote the NIV because it does a great job otherwise, but where it either uses “remain(s)” for “abide(s)” or leaves out the word abide altogether where the Greek manuscript has the word, I am going to insert the proper word: “abide.” In fact, 1 John 3:15 more accurately reads: “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him (refer to a more accurate version than the NIV, such as the ESV).”

Update: When I originally wrote this lesson, I was using the 2003 NIV edition. Translations change all the time as, for whatever reason, translators feel that they have to update them about every 5 years or so. Please note that all English translations, including the beloved King James Version, keeps getting updated with minute changes every 5 to 10 years or so. The manuscripts that they are basing their translations off of never change, as those were written centuries ago. 1 John 3:15 in the 2003 edition of the NIV reads, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.” But the most recent edition of the NIV reads, “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.” Please note that in the 2003 edition, they omitted the word “abiding” [in him] which is found in the more accurate versions. But in the most recent edition, they have the word “residing” instead of “abiding,” which still makes them fall short of accuracy to the original manuscript text. “Reside” and “abide” have connotative differences of meaning in English.

The theme of 1 John is fellowship. Let’s start by defining fellowship. Fellowship means: to hang out in the same place of another in a mutually friendly relation. God never fellowships with rebellion. Fellowship is a relationship with God through Christ where God is pleased with the present lifestyle of the believer. Fellowship is a relationship with God where His wrath is not kindled and His blessings, grace, and peace are freely dispersed to the believer with no obstacles or barriers in between. Fellowship is abiding in the goodness of God’s love and grace by actively seeking to please Him with righteousness, obedience, and worship. It is God’s relationship with the believer who is not under a curse because of sin, but rather, who is enjoying a clear conscience and relationship with Jesus because of their righteous living. Fellowship is where God has cleared your conscience of sin, and has given you the freedom to live in joy and peace. Unlike salvation, fellowship is the part of the relationship that must be maintained.

John said that there is a sin that does not lead to death. That verse clearly teaches that God does not view all sin the same even though all sin makes us fall way short of His glory and perfection. Not all sin is equal, but all sin equally makes us fall short of His glory. God judges each sin on a different scale—otherwise He wouldn’t be just if He were to judge a great infraction equal to minor one. The Biblical definition of “death” is to be outside of the fellowship and life of God. One can be in fellowship with God even if one is guilty of so-called light sins, or as the Bible puts it: sin that does not lead to death—which is different than rebellion. Examples of sin that does not lead to death may be: sin of omission because of ignorance or forgetting. It could also be watching a rated PG movie with some bad language. It should be obvious what sin that does not lead to death is because it is sin that does not affect the conscience of a Christian who seeks to please God. Your conscience and the Holy Spirit in you will tell you what type of sin you are committing. Rebellion, on the other hand, kicks a Christian out of fellowship and puts him or her in a “death” relationship with God. It grieves the Holy Spirit who is in you when we commit this type of sin. The Christian is still saved when he or she rebels, but they are outside of God’s fellowship. If one falls out of fellowship, repenting and obedience is the only way to find one’s way back into fellowship. To be outside of fellowship is to be under a curse. To be outside of fellowship is to be in darkness, and leads to confusion, misfortune, and discipline. God does not answer the prayer of those who are out of fellowship with Him.

Fellowship is exclusive to Christians. Non-Christians cannot experience fellowship with God in any fashion. Even though fellowship is exclusive to Christians, not all Christians are in fellowship with God. Christians fall in and out of fellowship based on how they live. Fellowship requires obedience without legalism. Fellowship also requires a love for God and a love for your Christian family. God will break fellowship from you if you do not have love for your Christian brothers and sisters or if you do not have love for Him. Jesus said that to have love for God requires obedience to Him. In John 14:15, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” 1 John 5:3 says, “This is love for God: to obey His commands. And His commands are not burdensome.” Without obedience one does not have love for God. Obedience is a requirement for loving God. We cannot say that we love Him and not obey Him. God acts against the person who is not in fellowship with Him and temporarily treats him or her as an enemy, but with loving motives. God will act against us to bring us back to Him. God used Satan to torment the Apostle Paul with a thorn (some type of nagging problem) to keep him from getting conceited (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). God had Jonah swallowed in a belly of a huge fish when he rebelled so that He would put Jonah back on the right path and back in fellowship with Him.

I mentioned legalism, so I should define it for the Reader. Legalism is an attempt to worship God based on paying homage to the rules and commands rather than paying homage to the Person and relationship of the one who gave the rules and commands. Legalism is trusting that one’s obedience to the rules will appease God. While there is some truth in that, God never intended for His commandments to be the driving force of our relationship between Him and us. God wants love to be the reason for our obedience to Him. He wants us to obey because we love Him and show our love for Him through our obedience to Him. One can obey many commandments, but never have a love for God, and such a person is guilty of legalism. Imagine a couple that just got married and the husband on day one pulls out a set of rules for the wife to follow: 1. Wash dishes and vacuum every day. 2. Have warm meals ready at 6 pm the moment I come home from work. 3. Do laundry twice a week. 4. Iron and fold my clothes every day. Such a relationship is legalistic and such a couple will never experience true fellowship living this way. But if the husband simply loves his wife sacrificially then she would naturally do the same list, but with great pleasure. God wants us to enjoy His grace while still obeying Him because we love Him, not because He is some slave master. Religious people are often legalists. Christianity is a relationship with God through Christ, not a religion. Religions are based on appeasing a divine being by following a set of rules. Legalism is an incorrect mindset. Grace and love should be our mindset, which naturally leads to obedience. God gets offended by Christians who live legalistically because that implies that they see God as a tyrant. And legalism can prevent a non-Christian from becoming saved in the first place because salvation is not based on obeying a set of rules, but by trusting in what God did for us through Jesus Christ on the Cross. Paul speaks against legalism throughout the book of Galatians, but especially Galatians 3:2-3, which read, “I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?” The answer to Paul’s rhetorical question is that we received the Spirit by believing what we heard. Paul continues, “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” And in verse 5 he says, “Does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?” The answer to that rhetorical question is that He does those things because of our faith in Him, not because we are forced to follow a set of rules.

Back to the Book of First John: The theme of the book, as mentioned earlier, is fellowship. 1 John 1:3 says, “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.” Near the very beginning of John’s book, he says that he wants the Christian reader to have fellowship with the Apostles who saw Jesus and testify of Him. But wait a minute John...you are not our contemporary, so how can we today have fellowship with you and the Apostles from almost 2,000 years ago? That’s fine for your contemporary readers, but what about us today? John says that he and the Apostles proclaim what they saw and heard. They proclaimed it by writing it down for us today, which is the Word of God. What John saw and heard put him and the other Apostles in fellowship with Jesus and the Father. The Word of God puts us into the same fellowship with Jesus and the Father that the Apostles experienced. John tells the Christian readers that we Apostles, who are eye witnesses are enjoying fellowship and we want you to know how to enjoy fellowshipping with us. The Apostles are still fellowshipping in Heaven, and it is the Word of God that makes it possible to link us to continue fellowshipping with them from down here on Earth. Fellowship is more than just proximity. It is possible to be sitting in the same church congregational pews or in the same choir, but not be in fellowship with those around you. Great distance separates us today from the Apostles who lived ages ago, and yet we can still have fellowship with them today. Obedience to the Word of God is the only link to horizontal fellowship (fellowship with other believers) as well as vertical fellowship (fellowship with God).

Verse 5 says, “This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.” This message, John asserts, is what keeps us in fellowship. The message is that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. How does that message keep us in fellowship? In order to have fellowship with God we must be in the light because God does not hang out in darkness at all. Fellowship is hanging out where God is hanging out. He is light. All of the properties of light that makes light light, God has. Light is pure. There is no darkness or impurities in light. Light also exposes and reveals hidden things that we cannot see while in darkness. It reveals impurities and blemishes that went unnoticed or that we try to keep hidden. When light comes, darkness flees. Light does not run from darkness, but darkness flees from light. Light and darkness do not blend together, but rather, light completely eradicates darkness when it shows up. For sin to stay alive, it must remain in the darkness; it cannot dwell in the light. Our calling is to bring our sin to the light, not to keep it hidden in darkness. That is an important point to keep in mind: Light is not designed to keep sin out, but rather, God wants us to identify our sin and bring it into the light so that it will be dealt with between a mutual cooperation between us and God. God will give you the power through the Spirit to overcome your sinful habits when you bring your sin into the light and stop hiding it in darkness. Light exposes sin and deals with it. Ephesians 5:11 says, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” We expose them in the light. We must start with the plank of our own sins, and then we will be able, as Jesus puts it, deal with the speck of other’s sins.

Verse 6 reads, “If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the Truth.” We can sound holy with our lips, but if we are walking in darkness, then we are outside of God’s fellowship. We are called to not walk in darkness, but rather, we are called to bring whatever darkness we find in ourselves into the light. Darkness is the opposite of the light. If we illuminate darkness by exposing it to the light, then it disappears in the blood of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirt. While light exposes sin, darkness on the contrary, hides sin and refuses to repent. Think of some of the things that qualify as darkness. Foul language, cussing, sexual impurity, adultery, abortion, hatred, pride, thievery, greed, gluttony, and idolatry. Rebellion is taking any of these things or more with a heart to continue them without repenting and coming clean from them. Rebellion is darkness. Again, the issue is not being without any sin—if that were the case then no one can experience fellowship with God—but rather, the issue is not being in rebellion, which is darkness, which kicks us out of fellowship and God’s light. John will later say that there is sin that does not lead to death (sin that does not kick us out of the light and into darkness) and we will look at that in more detail later on. God does not have fellowship with those who live in darkness, but through His mercy, He still remains in fellowship with Christians guilty of sin that does not lead to death, but who are seeking to live godly lives.

Please don’t confuse consequences for sin for excommunication from God’s fellowship. There are consequences for sin whether one is in fellowship with God or out of fellowship. Moses, for the most part, remained in fellowship with God, but because of his sin, he was not allowed to enter into the Promised Land as a consequence and judgment for his sin. And on another occasion, God was about to kill Moses, but because of Zipporah’s (Moses’ wife) intervention in circumcising their son, God’s wrath was appeased and Moses got to live on. Many times God being able to express His judgement for our sin, along with us repenting is what brings us back into fellowship with Him. Sin is atoned for through sacrifice, repentance, and an expression of God’s judgment. The Cross is there to perpetually keep us in fellowship with God when we repent and appeal to the Cross, but there still remain consequences for our sins that we just have to accept and go through. Those consequences are a part of God’s discipline, which is designed to mature us spiritually.

God wants us to remain in fellowship with Him. He commands us to be holy because He is holy. As long as we are living holy we are living in the light and not in darkness. There is no in-between light and darkness. You are either in the light or you are living in darkness. I like the verse that says that love covers a multitude of sins, so if you want to be in the light, that is a good start. We know that God cannot fellowship with those who walk in darkness. To hide your sin by not repenting of it and continuing in it is to walk in darkness. To take your sin to God and repent and ask for not only His forgiveness, but also His grace to empower you to put the sin away is to walk in the light. Demons hang out in the darkness and promote their world view. To be in the darkness is to walk with and agree with demons. It is also to invite demons into your life and all of the consequences that comes from darkness, including depression, fear, unanswered prayers, no help from God, etc. This is why Truth and remaining in the light is important because Satan is the great deceiver and will try to get you to walk in darkness and be content with it.

Verse 7: “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.” Note that John has been referring to Christians using the first person plural pronoun “we.” To have fellowship with each other requires that we walk in the light. Two Christians: one walking in the light, but the other in darkness, results in lack of fellowship between the two. God wants us to be in fellowship with each other. The one and only link that establishes such fellowship is that we each walk in the light of God. As pointed out earlier, fellowship has little to do with location. It is possible for a Church filled with Christians for the members to still be out of fellowship with each other. Church is not required for fellowship. Christians can have fellowship and be in fellowship anywhere as long as they are unified, walking in the light of God. When we walk in the light, which leads to fellowship with each other, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from whatever sins were previously hovering over us. If we take this verse and flip it, we learn more truth. If we Christians are out of fellowship with each other, we are not walking in the light, and therefore, we are out of fellowship with God.

Fellowship with each other is a requirement for walking in the light with God. To be in fellowship with God one must not have hatred, jealousy, envy, etc., against one’s fellow Christian brothers or sisters. God hates pride. Pride was Satan’s first sin. God hates the attitude of people who think they are better than someone else and He will not have fellowship with such Christians until they relinquish their pride. Christians are forever sealed with the Holy Spirit for the Day of Redemption because they have trusted the payment of Jesus on the Cross to cover their sin debt. But to remain in fellowship, we need Jesus’ ongoing, recurring forgiveness of our sins. We are set for eternity as far as Heaven is concerned, but since it is possible for Christians to lose fellowship with God and walk in darkness, we need to constantly repent of our sins and make sure that we do not fall to those sins again. The Greek word for “repent” means “to change one’s mind.” We need to change our mind towards the sin and ask God to forgive us through the blood of Christ, and commit to not committing the sin again and ask that He empowers us to overcome it. We are definitely not to “walk” in darkness as a way of life, but to “walk” in the light. The word “walk” connotes a consistent, steady pattern of living. Our norm should be light living, not darkness living. Walking is a natural thing. Walking in the light should be natural because we have become used to doing it on a daily basis. There is no sin, by the way, that the blood of Christ does not cover. For this verse says that He cleanses us from all sin.

Verse 8 reads, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the Truth is not in us.” Donald Trump was asked in an interview if he repented of his sins. He responded, “I can’t think of any sin I have done that I need to repent of.” It appears that he never read 1 John 1:8. This verse does not mean that a Christian cannot have a clear conscience in regards to sin. In 1 Corinthians 4:4, Paul says, “My conscience is clear...” By that, Paul is not saying that he is without sin. Paul’s sins are well documented for us. He persecuted Christians. But what Paul is saying is that He has acknowledged his sins and has repented and is trusting God to keep Him walking in the light of righteousness. That is what God is calling us to do. It is not impossible to live holy and walk in the light. The sad tragic misinformed, popular Christian thought today is when we say that living righteously is impossible. Those who proclaim this will quickly refer to Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God...” But sadly, they are only quoting the first half of the sentence and they never quote the whole sentence. The rest of the sentence in Romans 3:24 says, “and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Christians in general, do not know their new identity in Christ. The point Paul was making in Romans was verse 24, not verse 23. Verse 23 was leading up to his main point in verse 24. All have sinned (past tense), but as believers in Christ, God has made us new creatures who are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. If we still fall short of His glory that would mean we have not been saved because to be saved requires that our righteousness meets His in His eyes. I made a separate lesson and series on our new identities in Christ Jesus. Please refer to that series. But in brief, we are no longer sinners, we are now Saints who sin. Sin is no longer our identity. As long as we still think we are sinners we will feel like we are obligated to continue sinning. But if we ever find out who we really are in Christ, we will be much more prone to living godly, righteous lives. Galatians 5:16 says, “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Sin no longer has mastery over us because we are not the same people we were before we came into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. God changed our spirits into righteous creatures.

God wants us to deal with our sin, not ignore it. Anyone who claims to have no sin is not dealing with the sins that they obviously have. Obviously no one can claim to be without sin. Even if you cannot think of a sin you committed recently, we have all inherited Adam’s sin. We said that the way to walk in the light is to bring our sins into the light so that they will be exposed by the light to our full awareness so that we can then redress them. By coming into the light through a total submission to God’s will, God will reveal transgressions that we did not previously notice in ourselves. About 2,000 years ago, Jesus predicted that this current Church age that we live in today, which is referred to as the Laodicean Age, that we, collectively as a Church will be blinded to our own sins and not see the wrong that we are doing. Jesus says in Revelation 3:17, “...But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” Basically He says it twice in this one verse. He says “you do not realize” then He says that we are “blind.” We are blind to our own sin. We think we are pleasing Him through our worship services in our Churches across the world, but we have actually locked the door with Jesus standing on the outside of our churches, knocking, asking for someone to let Him in. What are we doing in our church services if Jesus, the Guest of Honor, has not been invited in? The true tragedy is that we don’t see that we have locked Him outside of our Churches.

In Revelation 3:20, Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock...” This verse not only means that we left Jesus on the outside of our churches, while on the inside, we continue enjoying our conventional, culturally prescribed way of service, but it even denotes that we have locked the doors on Him. He’s knocking because the church doors are locked. We don’t want to hear or obey unadulterated Truth. We want some watered down version of Truth that we can control the rules to and pick out only the things palatable to our fleshly ears. Jesus has to knock so that someone will come and unlock the door to let Him in. What is worship if Jesus is not there? We are not worshiping up to the standard that the Bible has called us to. This is the prophecy of us today. Again, the true tragedy is that we are blinded to it. We don’t realize that we are Laodicea. It is an identity crisis. No church will confess that they are guilty of being the Laodicean Church. Why does every Christian Church today call themselves Philadelphia (cf. Rev 3:7-13) in this age of Laodicea? I believe one of the greatest connections of our blindness is the fact that the Church has turned a deaf ear to the abortion of millions of innocents without answering their silent cries for our help. 94 percent of all evangelical churches today do not speak on the topic of abortion. We have acquiesced the laws to the wicked and are standing on the sidelines while a true genocide of innocent blood is occurring. No other Church Age had this problem to this magnitude and certainly never sanctioned by the Church. Sure, abortion has always been around, but not to this extent. 1.5 million are slain here in America each year. Yearly, China murders 5 times the numbers we do. Each year over 50% of African Americans are aborted—yet we are marching for “Black Lives Matter”? If blacks never aborted their own we would no longer be a minority race. We have become our own 21st Century slave master. The Bible says that child sacrifice is equivalent to the worship of demons (Psalm 106:37-38). Indeed every Sunday, we say that we are rich spiritually, but we do not realize that we are poor, wretched, pitiful, blind and naked. We claim to be not guilty, but our silence alone makes us guilty participants of this evil massacre. Any excuse we give corroborates our place in the Laodicean prophecy. Abortion seems to be the greatest evil of the Church today, but not to mention the contemporary Church’s acceptance of homosexual preachers and other abominations and false doctrine that did not exist in the previous church ages.

I digressed. I regress back to our discussion of 1 John:

To make righteousness a lifestyle requires maturity and development from God. It is not something that a new Christian learns in a day. The flesh has to come under submission to God. During this journey, Christians fall to the temptations of the flesh because the flesh is strong and Satan is deceptive. The Holy Spirit is stronger when the mature Christian learns how to live by Him. God’s discipline is also involved in cultivating our spiritual maturity. God never gives up on us. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” When we sin, we are obviously living unfaithfully. No matter how unfaithful we are, God remains faithful and just to forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Does it say that He will purify us only of minor offenses? No, it says of “all” unrighteousness (including abortion and murder). God’s grace surpasses human reasoning. I’m sure that if humans were to make the rules, we would have limits as to how much we would forgive the offender. That what our law of the land does: we are more forgiving of some offenses than others. God is faithful. He is faithful to His Word, to the Cross, and to His own character. He loves and keeps those who trust Jesus as their Savior. Verse 10 reads, “If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His Word has no place in our lives.” No Christian who understands the Gospel, even on an elementary level, can make the statement that he or she has not sinned. To say that, like Trump, is to not know God’s Word or God at all. Verse 10 says that a person who claims that is not incorporating God’s Word in their life. The first step in becoming spiritually mature is to acknowledge our offenses against God.

John states his purpose for writing this letter in 1 John 2:1. He says, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.” This statement suggests that it is possible for a Christian to stop sinning through God’s power, unlike what many Christians today suggest. As stated earlier, John’s theme is fellowship. Fellowship requires that the believer refrains from sinning, or more precisely, from rebellion (as we mentioned that there is a sin that does not lead to death). John is going to share how to live in fellowship with God so that we will not sin. When we love, as he will reveal, we are able to live effortlessly in fellowship with the Father because love covers over a multitude of sins. Fellowship is the theme; love is how to activate and live in fellowship. He continues, “But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.” The first clause of the last statement is clearly referring to Christians. Christians were reconciled through Jesus’ death on the Cross. All of our sins were forgiven, and the punishment of death that was on us, He put on Himself to do away with it. But Jesus is still our advocate for our continual sins. When a Christian sins, he or she is in danger of losing fellowship, but nevertheless, has the Cross to appeal to and is able to repent to get back into fellowship because Jesus is our continual Mediator, or Advocate for our sins. Not only ours, but the Cross is available for anyone who would believe.

1 John 2:3 reads, “We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands.” This is a very important verse to understand. It is a conditional statement. We know Him only if we obey His commands. Those who do not obey God’s commands verify that they do not know Him. The “Him” in this context refers to Jesus from verse 2: “He is the atoning sacrifice...” But it ultimately refers to both Jesus and the Father: i.e. God. To make this verse clear, it should be understood that there are many Christians who are saved for salvation, but do not know God at the same time. “Knowing,” here, is an intimate knowing. In fact, the word “know” is stated twice in this verse. But in the Greek, the two words are in different forms from each other. The first “know” in the sentence is in the present indicative active form. The second “know” is in the perfect indicative active form. “Indicative” basically means that the action is a fact. But as for the “perfect” tense (regarding the second know), Wikipedia defines the perfect tense as: "a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself." Whereas, the “present” tense describes an ongoing action that is happening when the statement is written. The second “know” in this verse is an intimate knowing that has occurred (or matured) over a period of time through past experience.

Jesus made similar statements to this verse. In John 14:15, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” And in verse 23, He states, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.” Flipping this statement would be equally true: “If anyone does not obey Me, he does not love Me.” It is very unlikely that a brand new Christian is able to love Jesus. The word “love” is not the same as our English word for love. “Love” here is the Greek word agape, which is a sacrificial love, not dependent on feelings. It is something not produced by the will of the flesh, but rather produced by the Spirit over time. It is possible to not know Jesus, to not obey Jesus, and to not love Jesus, but still be one of His and saved by one’s faith in His payment on the Cross for one’s sins. Over time a Christian learns to obey, learns to love, and then discovers Jesus on an intimate level and for the first time, know Him. Isaiah was already a prophet in the first 5 chapters of the book of Isaiah. He was already preaching to Israel against their sins. Isaiah 1:1 says that Isaiah was a prophet during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Many misread and think that Isaiah didn’t become a prophet until after Uzziah died. That is incorrect. He was already preaching the first 5 chapters during the reign of Uzziah. But it was when King Uzziah died in chapter 6 that Isaiah says, “I saw the LORD.” And it also took up until chapter 6 when Isaiah was able to say, “Woe is me! I am ruined.” This, after he had already been preaching to Israel regarding their sins. To get saved requires believing that the finished work of Jesus on the Cross and through His resurrection is fully sufficient to cover your sins. It is simply accepting the free gift of God. But to know God requires that we obey Jesus’ and God’s Word, and rid our sins through the power of the Spirit. To know God also requires that we agape love God, which is also something else that only the Holy Spirit produces in us when we submit and empty ourselves of ourselves. It is called the fruits of the Spirit, not “the fruits of man.” The Spirit produces the fruits, not us. As long as there is pride and self-will, the Holy Spirit is not free to act and produce His fruits in us. We have to truly be able to say with Isaiah, “Woe is me! I am ruined,” to have our eyes opened to knowing the Lord.

1 John 2:4-5a reads, “The man who says, ‘I know Him,’ but does not do what He commands is a liar and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys His Word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.” Lip service means nothing. We already detailed that it is impossible to know God while disobeying His commands. So if a person says, “I know him,” while deliberately disobeying, that person is obviously lying, though they possibly may not realize their own lack of truth. When we don’t know Him, we don’t know that we don’t know Him because we don’t know what we don’t know—I hope that made sense. Of those who disobey, whether they think they know God or not, their assertion of knowing Him is not the truth. However, God made it possible to know Him intimately. The person who obeys God’s Word perfects the love of God in him or herself. Knowing God is not about how many Scriptures we know, or how well we can interpret and explain Scripture; rather, to know God is about obedience to the Scriptures we know. When we obey, God’s love is made complete or is perfected in us. I believe this explains a confusing passage in Scripture. 1 John 4:18 reads, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” The confusion is: what is perfect love? How can mere imperfect mortals achieve perfect love? Only God is perfect. We just read that obeying God’s Word perfects God’s love in us. So we obtain perfect love through obedience to the Scriptures, which in turn, casts out all fear. Don’t expect peace if you are living in disobedience to God. The ESV of verse 5 says, “...but whoever keeps His Word, in Him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him:”. Verse 5 tells us that God’s perfect love is cultivated in us when we obey Him.

1 John 2:5b-6 reads, “This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to abide in Him must walk as Jesus did.” Here, I had to correct the NIV version. The NIV really reads, “This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.” The NIV omits the word “abide.” My 1994 King James edition reads, “...By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.” These two statements are an example of synonymous parallelism. Synonymous parallelism is stating the same thing in two different ways, often for poetic effect. There are many Scriptures that use this technique throughout the Bible. One example is Proverbs 3:11, which says, “My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline, and do not resent His rebuke...” That was the same thing stated twice in two different ways for a poetic effect, which is a common ancient Hebrew poetic convention. Here in 1 John, we have an instance of synonymous parallelism. Part A is: “This is how we know we are in Him.” Part B is: “Whoever claims to abide in Him...” The reason why it is important to know that this is Biblical parallelism is because Part B clarifies Part A. It is saying the same thing, which means that Part A is also referring to “abiding” in Him, not just being “in Him.” Earlier, we explained that abiding means fellowshipping with, or hanging out with God on good terms. It means walking closely with Him. It is not referring to salvation although salvation is required to walk closely with Him. If we want to be sure that we are currently in fellowship with God, our confirmation of “abiding in Him” is that we are obeying His Word. God’s will is not as mysterious as many think it to be. If we are obeying His commands, walking like Jesus did, we are living His revealed will for us. Where that leads us individually is up to God. But we at least know that we are in His will and fellowship although we might not know where that will will lead us to down the road.

Verses 7 – 8 reads as follows: “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in Him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” Love is a command. We are saved by grace, by the way, not by commands. Love is something we are to accomplish in the power of the Spirit. We are to love by emptying ourselves of pride, which allows the Spirit to do His thing in us and give us the power to love. But John seems to state an oxymoron. He says that the command to love is both an old command and a new one. The sun has been around for eons, so the sun is quite old. But each morning when we open the blinds, we are refreshed by the new sun light. The sunlight is new even though it is old because its experience is new to us each morning. God wants us to fellowship with Him in love as a new experience each day, not resting on our laurels of yesterday’s love. Since it is an old command, God wants us to obey what we know until He reveals to us His will for us that we don’t know. That unknown will for us will keep getting postponed until we have shown to be diligent obeying what we know. This passage also says that the darkness is passing. Keep in mind that God is light and we started out as dark when we first came to Him. The more we are in His light the more the darkness will pass from us and we will experience true life and light. I believe what this is really saying is that darkness passes when we learn more about Truth, which is revealed when we come into the light with a heart of obedience.

1 John 2:9 reads, “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.” We know that God is light. 1 John 4:16 states, “God is love.” God is both light and love, so whoever hates his brother, namely Christian brother, is still in the darkness and has not graduated into the light because in Him is no darkness at all. We cannot hate a part of the family and be in the light. Hatred is enmity and hostility towards another with the will to see them fall. Hatred is cheering for another’s downfall. How can the Church, which is one body, the body of Christ, prosper if the body parts have hatred toward one another? There is no light in hatred; there is no fellowship in hatred. Those who hate are in darkness. To be in darkness indicates that one cannot see. The one who hates cannot see God or His attributes, including righteousness, truth, love, peace, etc. Your truth is off when you hate because you cannot see Him. We may have a dim, vague understanding of God’s attributes, but we cannot see clearly while we are hating. Darkness also indicates that one is outside the fellowship of God because God hangs out, or abides in the light and never in the dark. To be in darkness indicates a cursed status where our prayers are not heard, and things no longer go right because God has distanced Himself from us. To be in darkness is an excommunication from God’s fellowship. Our minds are more susceptible to Satan’s lie of fear, anxiety, depression, anger, etc. when we are in darkness. There is no peace in darkness. Peace is found only in the light.

Verse 10 says, “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” Wow, that’s interesting. The ESV says for the last clause: “...in him there is no cause for stumbling.” I noticed that the English translations have not come to a consensus on the meaning of that clause. The New Living Translation says, “Anyone who loves another brother or sister is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble.” There seems to be some ambiguity—either this clause is saying that there is nothing in the person who loves to make the person who is doing the loving to stumble; or it is saying that there is nothing in the person who loves that causes others to stumble. Reading this verse together with the verses before and after, it does appear that the former is the case. Even so, the latter is obviously true also, even if that is not the author’s intentional meaning. It is obviously true that the person who loves does not cause others to stumble. Causing others to stumble is hatred and we intuitively know that. But regarding the person who loves, this verse seems to be indicating that there is nothing in that person to cause him or herself to fall so long as he or she is loving others. Love, in other words, prevents us from committing many sins. We should live to be other-centered, and not self-centered. Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment of the Law was. He replied in Matthew 22:37-38, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” He goes on in verses 39-40, saying, “And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Jesus says that at the root of all of the commandments of God is love. So indeed if one is loving in the Biblical way, there is nothing in that person to cause them to fall to sin. The flesh can be mitigated, weakened, and controlled when we love. We saw this even with fear: perfect love casts out all fear. For the person who loves and who relies on God’s perfect love, there is nothing in them to make them fall to fear (which is a sin because it is opposes your faith).

Love has the power to incapacitate the power and will of the flesh. If we love then we have no pride because we are putting others before ourselves. So the sin of pride is taken care of when we love. Would Cain have murdered Abel if he loved him? The sins of murder and hatred are obsolete in love. To love is to live in humility. If we love, then we cannot steal, put others down, or mislead them. Many sins are taken care of automatically when we habitually love our Christian brothers and sisters. Not everyone is lovable, but that is not the issue. God never commanded us to like anyone; we are commanded only to love them with a sacrificial, agape love. When we were unlovable to God, Christ died for us. While we were still sinners, Christ died. When we love we are imitating God’s love for us. James, in stating a different truth, makes a similar conclusion to 1 John 2:10. James says in James 3:2, “We all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.” John said that if we love our brother, then there is nothing in us to make us stumble. James adds that if we are able to control our tongue, then there is nothing in us to make us stumble. To be more like Christ, we need to, by the grace of God, control our tongue, and love our brother. By our tongue we curse our brother and gossip against him. Love is a prerequisite to being in fellowship with God. We can never be aligned vertically if we are out of alignment horizontally.

1 John 2:11 says, “But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.” Please don’t walk around in the dark because you’ll bump into stuff and injure yourself. He says that those who hate are living in a different environment than those who love. When we hate our Christian brother, we are walking in darkness because we are outside of God’s will, thereby injuring ourselves. A person walking in the dark does not have a working compass; doesn’t have direction. Recall that the Israelites got outside of God’s will and they wandered aimlessly for 40 years in the desert after bickering about how God was providing for them just after freeing them from Egypt. They were really close to the promised land, but God blinded them so that they could not see and they walked in darkness for 40 years. Interestingly, even though they did not know where they were going during those 40 years, God knew where they were and where they were going. Even when we wander aimlessly, God will let us when we are in the dark, but He still knows where we are. Walking in spiritual darkness causes us to bump into trials and tribulations that God would have otherwise let us avoid. Time is lost when we walk in darkness. Israel lost 40 years that they could have otherwise spent in the Promised Land.

» Works versus Faith (Part 2) — Salvation by Faith Alone (Book of John)
» Works versus Faith (Part 21) — The Book of 1 John (Part 2)
» Works versus Faith (Part 11) – The Book of James
» Works versus Faith (Part 4) — Salvation by Faith Alone (Random Verses — Part 2)
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