This time last year we took a dozen sermons to look at the First Letter of John. If you missed those sermons, you can always watch them on Facebook or YouTube or read them on the blog. Can there be anything more to say about 1 John, you may well ask? But of course there always is! Last year we hardly touched on the topic of the work of the Holy Spirit in 1 John. John’s Gospel talks about the Holy Spirit more than Matthew, Mark or Luke. Chapter for chapter, 1 John talks more about the work of the Holy Spirit than any other letter in the New Testament, even 1 Corinthians. There are seven mentions of the Holy Spirit in 1 John, and another two verses which I believe refer to the work of the Holy Spirit although the Spirit is not named. So what does John have to say about the Holy Spirit in this Letter? And how does that tie in with what we heard last week from John’s Gospel, about the Helper, the paracletos, the presence of Jesus inside every believer?
In comparing John’s Gospel with the Letters it is important to say that I agree with the traditional view that the Gospel and the Letters of John were written by the same person. That the author was John, brother of James and son of Zebedee, the “beloved disciple” and one of Jesus’s inner circle. There is also one more point to make before we start talking specifically about the Holy Spirit. And that comes in chapter 2.
1 John 2:1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
This verse could easily confuse us because here John uses the same word advocate, paracletos, as he used in Chapters 14 to 17 of his Gospel. This is the only other place in the Bible where that word is used. But here it is unambiguously referring to Jesus our saviour who sacrificed himself for the sins of the world. This is not a reference to the Holy Spirit our Helper. In contrast, in what we talked about last week, paracletos in John’s Gospel is only ever referring to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth and not to Jesus. With that out of the way, how does 1 John extend our understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit as the Helper, the paracletos, the presence of Jesus in his disciples?
Last week we read this from John’s Gospel.
John 14 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
John 16 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
We saw last week that the Holy Spirit will help Jesus’s disciples bring to mind everything he has taught them. And the Spirit will teach them all things, helping them to understand and experience Jesus’s teaching for themselves. The Spirit will guide disciples into all the truth. We can see how John expands on this theme in his Letter.
1 John 2 20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.
John is confident that his readers know the truth because of “the anointing they have received from the Holy One.” The Holy One is clearly a reference to the Holy Spirit, who leads believers into all truth.
1 John 2 26 I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. 27 As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.
In his letter John is encouraging Christians to stick to the truth they have already believed because they received it from the Holy Spirit who teaches believers all things they need to know. This is what gives us assurance that we are saved.
1 John 319 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 if our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.
The Holy helps us to obey God, and to believe in Jesus and to love each other.
1 John 3 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: we know it by the Spirit he gave us.
We live in God and God lives in us! We know that is true because of the Holy Spirit living inside us. As we saw last week the Holy Spirit the Helper, the paracletos, is the personal presence of Jesus in believers. The Spirit brings us all our experiences of God living inside us. We read this last week in John’s Gospel.
John 14 15 ‘If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you for ever – 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
The Holy Spirit is another advocate, another Helper, living inside Christians and continuing the work of Jesus.
1 John goes on to explain how the Holy Spirit helps us to distinguish truth from error and to recognize false prophets and false teachers who try to lead the church astray.
1 John 4:1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
The Holy Spirit confirms for us that Jesus did come in the flesh, in other words that Jesus was truly and completely human. As the Message translation puts it, Jesus Christ came as an actual flesh-and-blood person
1 John 4 4 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. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognise the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
John is making a bold claim here, but as the “beloved disciple” he is entitled to do so. John is saying that believers who truly know God will listen to him and to his followers. If people do not listen to him then that is proof that they do not know God and are being led astray by a spirit of falsehood. Those who are led by the Holy Spirit will listen to John. So the Holy Spirit will help Christians to know which teachers can be trusted, and which are false prophets.
In the middle of that passage did you happen to spot a verse which deserved a whole sermon to itself last year?
1 John 4 4 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.
The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. Last year I spoke about the decisive victory over the devil which Christ accomplished on the cross. So I suggested that “the one who is in you” is referring to Jesus Christ. I think that is a good interpretation although the verse doesn’t actually specify which member of the Holy Trinity is in the believer. The one who is in you could be Father, Son or Holy Spirit. Verse 2 talks about the Spirit of God and verse 6 talks about the Spirit of Truth so the immediate context is speaking about the Holy Spirit. We said last week that the Holy Spirit the Helper is the personal presence of Jesus in the believer. So it could be that case that “the one who is in you” is actually referring to the Holy Spirit here. Believers have overcome the world because we have the Holy Spirit living inside us. And John goes on later to say that we know that God is living in us, because we have received the Holy Spirit.
1 John 4 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.
If we love one another, God lives in us. If we acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in us and we live in God. And we know that this is true because he has given us of his Spirit. God lives in us, through the Holy Spirit. Again as we saw last week, this is the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the Helper, the paracletos.
John 14:17 The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
John 14 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19…. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
Jesus is living in us, through the agency of the Holy Spirit the paracletos.
John 14 23 Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
The Father and the Son make their home with us, through the Holy Spirit. Like the branches are joined to the vine, Christians remain in union with Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus prayed in his High Priestly Prayer,
John 17 26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.’
Jesus continues to live in his disciples, through the work of the Holy Spirit. So we can see that actually it doesn’t really matter which member of the Godhead John had in mind when he said, “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all living in believers through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and all are greater than the evil one! We have overcome evil and we have overcome the devil, because God lives in us. We said last year, here is the secret of victorious Christian living. It is to live moment by moment, not in our own strength but in Christ’s strength. To let Him live and reign in US! To abide in Christ – to live in union with Christ. “I am the Vine, you are the branches.” “The triumphant Christian does not fight for victory; he celebrates a victory already won.”
The Holy Spirit teaches us and leads us into all truth, and saves us from being led astray by false prophets. John speaks about God living in us through the Holy Spirit. Then we saw last week that the Holy Spirit performs one further important task in Jesus’s disciples – bearing witness to Jesus.
John 15 26 ‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.
The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, testifies to the salvation Jesus brought. God the Holy Spirit gives us trustworthy testimony about Jesus the Son of God and the source of eternal life.
1 John 5 6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
There are three that testify, says John: the Spirit, the water and the blood. The water probably refers to Christ’s baptism. The blood is certainly pointing to Christ’s death on the cross. These two together bear witness that Jesus was truly the Son of God and that his death brings us eternal life. And then, says John,
1 John 5:6 … And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.
Not only do we have the testimony of the disciples about the life and death and resurrection. Also, says John, the Holy Spirit bears witness to Jesus being the Son of God who gives us eternal life. Remember the witness of the Holy Spirit at Jesus’s baptism.
Matthew 3 16 As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’
In particular, inside every believer the Holy Spirit bears witness to the fact that Jesus came in the flesh, that is that he was truly and completely human.
1 John 5:6 … And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
Theologians call this testimony from the Spirit “the inner witness of the Spirit,” “the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.” The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, is working inside every believer bearing witness to who Jesus is and to the salvation he brings us. And the Spirit then helps disciples in their witness to the world. This inner witness of the Holy Spirit is very important, John says.
1 John 5 9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.
The Holy Spirit helps us to know the truth and he helps us to put our trust in God.
1 John 5 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
So all these activities of the Holy Spirit which we learn about from 1 John fit exactly with what we learned last week from John’s Gospel about the Holy Spirit as the Helper, the paracletos. The Holy Spirit teaches us and leads us into all truth. The Spirit protects us from being led astray by false prophets. Indeed God lives inside us through the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, testifies to Jesus and to the salvation he brought, and helps us to bear witness to Jesus. The one who is in us truly is greater than the one who is in the world!

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The captions are here:

Sin that leads to death 1 John 5:13-21

What is “sin that leads to death”? (Verse 16)

16 If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.

Not “a sin” but “sin” or “a kind of sin”
(no indefinite article)

If you see your brother or sister committing what is not a mortal sin, you will ask, and God will give life to such a one—to those whose sin is not mortal. NRSV

If you see a fellow believer sinning in a way that does not lead to death, you should pray, and God will give that person life. (New Living Translation)

For instance, if we see a Christian believer sinning (clearly I’m not talking about those who make a practice of sin in a way that is “fatal,” leading to eternal death), we ask for God’s help and he gladly gives it, gives life to the sinner whose sin is not fatal. (Message)

CONTEXT of 1 John – 3 sins he has talked about already

1) The sin of insisting they are sinless, refusing to confess and repent

1 John 1 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

2) The sin of denying the true humanity of Christ

1 John 4 2 This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

If a person does not believe that Jesus is truly the Lord, the Messiah and the Son of God, then they will not be saved.

3) The sin of failing to love brothers and sisters, disobeying the New Commandment and rejecting the Christian community

1 John 3 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

1 John 4 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 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.

As long as people persist in these kinds of sin, they are rejecting God’s forgiveness.

jesus’s teaching on the sin of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”

Matthew 12 28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. ….
31 And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

In Matthew/Mark/Luke, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit means denying that the Holy Spirit was at work in Jesus’s ministry proclaiming God’s Kingdom

In the context of John’s Gospel
The sin of rejecting the witness of the Holy Spirit

John 14 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you for ever —17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. …

26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

John 15 26 ‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.

John 16:7 … Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8 When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; 10 in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; 11 and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

When people persist in rejecting the Holy Spirit’s witness about Jesus, they close the door to forgiveness.

Romans 6 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

All sin leads to death.
“Sin that leads to death” means all kinds of sin which stop a person from receiving God’s gift of forgiveness and eternal life.
But everybody can be forgiven if they believe the witness of the Holy Spirit that Jesus is Son of God and Saviour, and turn from their sins.

1 John 1 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

These were the captions for this message.
Watch the video here. https://youtu.be/wGDTeT8j-yY

Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (1 John 4:2)

Jesus Christ came as an actual flesh-and-blood person (The Message)

The false teaching which John was writing to contradict – the idea that Jesus was not truly human

1 John 4 2 This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

2 John 7 I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

The wrong idea that Jesus only appeared to be human
Docetism, 2nd century heresy
Dualism – matter and mortal flesh are
inherently evil
Because Greek gods are impassible,
incapable of feeling or suffering

Why does it matter?
If Jesus was not human then Jesus didn’t suffer as we suffer – not an effective high priest

If Jesus was not human Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross, therefore no sacrifice for sin, no forgiveness

“What has not been assumed has not been redeemed.” (Athanasius of Alexandria C.4th)

“What Christ has not assumed He has not healed.” (Gregory of Nazianzus C.4th)

Proofs of Jesus’s true humanity

John’s testimony 1 John 1:1-4
1 John 1:1 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. 2 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. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.

Jesus’s experiences, thirst, hunger, tiredness, wept, angry, compassion,

John 1 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The three witnesses water, blood, spirit

The water and the blood

1 John 5 6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood.

Water = Baptism
where Jesus identified with human beings
Matthew 3:13-15

Blood = Death
the blood of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross
Matthew 26:27-28

AND/OR blood and water at the crucifixion,
Another interpretation, because John’s Gospel does not include an account of Jesus’s baptism, but it does include this eyewitness testimony by John.
John 19 33 But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. 35 The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.

Blood flowing from Jesus’s heart and water from Jesus’s stomach after his death prove he was truly human.

Water, blood and Spirit

1 John 5:6 And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.

Three aspects of the Holy Spirit’s witness to Jesus – John could mean any or all of these.

The witness of the Spirit at Jesus’s baptism
Matthew 3 16 As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’

The work of the Holy Spirit throughout the ministry of Jesus (the objective witness)
Matthew 12 28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

The inner witness of the Holy Spirit within believers (the subjective witness)
1 John 5:10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

We experience life through believing in Jesus. This proves that Jesus was truly flesh and blood like us.

The three witnesses – water, blood and Spirit.

1 John 4:2 …. every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,

The “Superman heresy” – underneath the disguise of mild mannered reporter Clark Kent hides the Man of Steel, the indestructible Superman. Some people wrongly think that although Jesus appeared to be human, underneath because he was God he was actually indestructible, could not suffer and could not die as human beings do.

The truth is that our faith rests on the reality of a historical Jesus, who was both man and God, completely human and completely divine, who died and rose again to save us.

Only Jesus’s sacrifice could be an atonement for sin.
Only Jesus could be a great high priest in the order of Melchizedek

Jesus Christ came as an actual flesh-and-blood person (1 John 4:2 The Message)

11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 19 We love because he first loved us.

God’s love is unlimited – it holds nothing back

9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
We thought before about 1 John 3:16.–
1 John 3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for us is the standard and supreme example of the kind of love we should show to other Christians. Not just love when it suits us, love when we can spare the time, but love which costs, love which pays the ultimate price!

God’s love is totally undeserved
We can never ever do anything to earn or deserve God’s love!

God’s forgiveness is Unilateral Forgiveness

The essence of Christian forgiveness is that God makes a way for us to be forgiven BEFORE we repent. “It was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8) As Jackie Pullinger puts it, “Jesus didn’t wait for me to make good before he died for me.”
The Father is out looking waiting for the prodigal to return BEFORE the prodigal comes to his senses and returns to his Father and confesses and repents. (Luke 15) The paralysed man in Mark 2:5 and the woman caught in adultery in John 8:11 are forgiven BEFORE they repent.
Our repentance is then the channel by which we come to enjoy the benefits of forgiveness. But it is God’s gracious act of forgiving us which prompts our repentance, NOT our repentance which earns or even opens the door to God forgiving us. The initiative comes from God.
This is NOT to say that everybody is saved. Only those who receive God’s forgiveness by repentance enjoy the blessings of salvation. But God’s forgiveness is UNILATERAL – originating from within his merciful character and made possible through the death of Christ on the cross. God’s forgiveness is NOT BILATERAL – not forgiveness as a response to human acknowledgement of sin. Human acknowledgement is necessary in the process of us experiencing God’s forgiveness and enjoying a reconciled relationship, but not necessary for God to forgive us.
Most human forgiveness is Bilateral – a response to confession and repentance:
Acknowledgement by the guilty -> forgiveness by the injured -> reconciliation
On the other hand, God’s kind of forgiveness is Unilateral – all from God’s side:
God forgives -> this prompts sinners to confess and repent -> reconciliation
THIS is the mystery of God’s amazing grace!

God loves us!
So we love God in return

When we realise how much God loves us – we will love God!
We thought from the beginning of 1 John 3 about how great the love is that God has lavished upon us – so great that he has made us his children.
When they asked Jesus what are the greatest commandments, He replied,
Luke 10:27 He answered: “`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, `Love your neighbour as yourself.'”

LOVING GOD

Loving God is NOT romantic love. Loving God has nothing to do with “being in love with God” 20th century charismatics are to blame for that wrong idea, as are certain popular songwriters. You could blame it on a misunderstanding of the interpretation of the Song of Solomon as a love poem between God and the church. But when the Bible says we are to love God, that concept does NOT include any notion of “being in love with God”
The proper pictures for our love of God are the love of a devoted child for a parent. Or the love the apostles showed for Jesus during His ministry. To put it in the negative, we should never address God in a way that a loving child would not address their parent. We should never address the Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, in a way that apostles like Peter, James and John would not have done!

We love God, and we also love each other

When we realise how much God loves us – we will love God! And we will love other Christians too.

1 JOHN 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. …. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No-one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. (NIV)
if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen? (NEW LIVING TRANSLATION)

Loving our brothers and sisters in the church is easy in theory, and harder in practice!
To dwell above with saints we love, that will be grace and glory–
To live below with saints we know … that’s another story!
We need to show our love for our fellow Christians in practical ways. In hospitality. In just spending time together. And in forgiving one another.
C.S.Lewis – Everybody agrees forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have something to forgive.
George Herbert wrote, “He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven, for everyone has need to be forgiven.”
Jesus’s parable of the two debtors remind us that the more conscious we are of how much God has forgiven us, the more we will be able to forgive others who sin against us.
And we saw from 1 John 3:14 that it is our love for our fellow Christians which gives us assurance that we are actually saved.
1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.
How can we be sure we are saved? Because we love our brothers. Not because of what we say we believe – but because we love other Christians! It’s not our beliefs which are the test – but how much love we show! This is embarrassing. This is challenging. This is the kind of verse we would like to ignore – and if it were just that one verse we might be able to ignore it. But hear what else John says

14 ¶ We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.
John is very clear. If we are not loving your fellow Christians, we don’t have eternal life! And again we saw from chapter 3:-
3:10 Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

We love God, we love other Christians, and then we also love our neighbours

When we realise how much God loves us – we will love God! And we will love other Christians. And then we will love our neighbour as well!

This is the second of the greatest commandments. `Love your neighbour as yourself.'”
It should be so simple. God loves us. So we should love God. We love should each other. We should love our neighbours. Let’s be honest about this challenge to love each other as Christ has loved us? What about this standard of loving our neighbour as much as we love ourselves? These are the ideals God calls us to aim at, by his grace. But we have to admit that all of us have times when we fail to show the kind of love God calls us to show. That leads us to an important question.
Does love have limits?
God’s love for us does not have limits. But does our obligation to love other people have limits? Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that we are not allowed to retaliate – we must always turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile. We are obliged to keep on forgiving.
Matthew 1821 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
We must keep on forgiving. But I want to point out this evening that we may occasionally come to a point when we are allowed to step away from loving. There can be situations when loving other people with God’s love is simply beyond us. And in such an extreme situation, if we find ourselves completely unable to show God’s love, then

We are allowed to walk away.

A woman or equally a man might find themselves trapped in a loveless and abusive relationship. Because they are Christians they might think they are obliged to stay with that partner and obliged to keep on being rejected and hurt, emotionally and maybe even physically. It seems very clear to me that the Bible teaches that a person in that situation is not obliged to keep on suffering and being hurt. They are allowed to walk away.
I believe the same is true for people who are trapped in jobs which are destroying them, with bosses exploiting and mistreating them. You are allowed to walk away. Trust in God for what you are going to do next – but don’t keep on suffering. Walk away.
I have even said the same to Ministers where the church they are seeking to serve is treating them unacceptably. Making unreasonable demands on them. Failing to love them and support them. Gossiping about them. They are allowed to just walk away.
None of us are allowed to retaliate. We do have to keep on forgiving. But in the interests of self-preservation, Christians are allowed to walk away. The obligation to love DOES have limits.
Remember at the beginning of his ministry, the apostle Paul was fiercely opposed by the Jews.
Acts 923 After many days had gone by, the Jews conspired to kill him, 24 but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. 25 But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall.
So Paul escaped. Just think how different the history of the church would have looked if the apostle Paul had NOT walked away at that point. No second half of the book of Acts. None of Paul’s letters. There are times when it is alright to walk away! It is not the first resort. Or the second. But as a last resort, walking away and even running away is an acceptable option. Walking away can be the right thing to do. But one more thing from 1 John 4.

The reason God loves us is NOT because we love Him or anybody else

God loves us because God IS love. Whether we love Him back as much as we should – or not – God loves us just the same. Whether we love each other as much as God loves us – or not – God loves us just the same. Whether we love our neighbours as much as we should – or not – God loves us just the same. If our love runs out and we just can’t love any more and so we walk away – God loves us just the same! That is the amazing love of God! So we don’t love God because that will make God love us more. We don’t love other people because that will make God love us more. God is love. And we love because God first loved us.
I wonder if the same thing has ever happened to you as it did to us one year when we put up the Christmas tree and finally set all the decorations in place. Switch on the lights – and only the red bulbs are working. No yellow. No green. No blue! Christmas lights are wired in series. The electricity comes from the plug, into the wire, then to the first bulb and through its filament. Then back into the line, on to the next bulb, and so on through the entire chain of lights. As it flows into each of those lights and out of each of those lights, the entire circuit is completed, and the string of lights shine. But if there’s a single bulb that’s loose, or a filament that’s broken, then the electric current can’t flow through any of them!

In a sense, God has wired us Christians in the church to be like those Christmas lights. He has wired us to receive His love, and He has also wired us to pass it along to others. We have God’s love to give. If just one part of the circuit is broken, the whole can’t work properly.

11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 19 We love because he first loved us.

We have overcome!
1 John 4 4 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.
The spiritual battle we are in
1 John 5 19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

Since Adam disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, every human being who ever lived has been trapped by the devil. Everything in the world has been and still is in the grip of the devil. Except Jesus
Ephesians 2:1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

It is because of the devil that people do not realise that God exists, or that they need saving or that Jesus can save them.
2 Corinthians 4 4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
For most of the time the devil doesn’t even need to bother about most people. They are already in his trap. They already do things wrong without needing to be tempted. But those who are following Jesus are aware of the pressures on us all the time from the world around, and our fallen human nature, and temptations directly from the devil. So we are on our guard.
1 Peter 5 8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

The good news is that we don’t have to fight the devil in our own strength. God gives us all the armour we need to resist the devil’s schemes. All we need to do is stand firm in God’s strength.
Ephesians 6 10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

So now the devil and his minions the demons, or evil spirits, are in a continual war against God. The battlefield is this world God has created, and the hearts and minds of every human being. It was the devil, the ancient serpent, who deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And the devil and his demons are still leading the world astray today.
But we are not worried or afraid! Because Jesus has already won the victory!

Christ’s victory – plundering the strong man

1 John 3 7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

For this purpose Christ was revealed – to destroy all the works of the evil one. Jesus did not only come to save human beings, but to set the world free from the grip of the devil. Part of that was his ministry of driving out demons, setting free those who were imprisoned by evil.
Matthew 12 27 And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. 28 But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
29 “Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.

In that little parable of disarming the strong man, the strong man represents the devil and Jesus is represented by the person plundering his possessions which is a picture of Jesus driving out demons. Jesus was able to command the demons because he had already “tied up” the devil. And Jesus accomplished that at the very beginning of His ministry when he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Jesus was tempted. But He did not give in to temptation. Jesus was the first human being ever who did not give in to the devil’s temptations. He proved there that He was stronger than the devil. It was there in the wilderness that Jesus “bound the strong man”. From that point on, the battle was won. Demons would have to obey Jesus every time!
The devil had no grip on Jesus. “I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me.” John 14:30. This was demonstrated clearly in Jesus’s acts of deliverance. Jesus came to release the prisoners and set the captives free – to set people free from evil by driving out demons. Even during his ministry, Jesus delegated that authority to his disciples to drive out demons in his name. He sent them out in pairs, first 12 and then 72, to preach the gospel, heal the sick and drive out demons.
Luke 10 17 The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”
18 He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

So even during his earthly ministry, Jesus had the upper hand over the devil. But the decisive victory was won on the cross.

Christ’s victory on the cross

John 12 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”
The hour has arrived. The hour which Jesus had been anticipating every day of his life was getting very close indeed. It would be a vital hour not just for Jesus but for the whole world, the whole of humanity in every age. Jesus would be glorified – not through his resurrection but through his death.
The judgment and the salvation of the whole world would hang on that one hour. For Jesus it would be the hour of his departure – the hour Jesus had to leave the world in death. But that be the hour when the devil was finally defeated and the grip of evil on the world would be broken for good.
We should remember that it was the cross, not the resurrection, which brought Christ’s victory over the devil and all the powers of evil.

Colossians 2 13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

It was by the sacrifice of his death on the cross that Jesus set human beings free from the grip which the devil has over us all.

Hebrews 2 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Jesus has defeated the devil and set us free. As we put our trust in him, we share in the benefits of his victory. We have overcome, because he has overcome.
The victory we share in
1 John 4 4 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.
Believers are from God, and they have overcome. In this short letter the word ‘overcome’ appears six times, which is more than in any other book in the New Testament other than Revelation which uses the word a staggering seventeen times! To overcome speaks of Christ’s victory! We have overcome! Here the verb overcome is in the perfect tense. The victory is not just a single occasional event but a decisive and continuing experience. We have victory because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. God is immeasurably more powerful than the devil. We have overcome evil and we have overcome the devil, because God lives in us.
1 John 2 14 …. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

James 4 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.

So we can live our lives in victory. When we talk about “Victorious Christian Living”, we are not talking about “success” or “popularity” in human terms. We are not talking a worldly false gospel of “health, wealth and prosperity”. Victory in Christian living means victory over temptation, victory over the devil, victory over everything which drags us away from God. And the secret of victorious Christian living is simple. A wise preacher once said,
“The triumphant Christian does not fight for victory; he celebrates a victory already won.”
Christ has already won the victory over sin and death and the devil by His cross and resurrection. Christ has defeated the devil. One day the devil and all his minions will face his just desserts in eternal judgment for all the pain and destruction he has caused. Until then our victory over the devil comes from sharing in Christ’s victory. We don’t need to be anxious or afraid in this battle. Christ has already won the war.
1 John 4 4 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.

We are called simply to resist the devil and he will flee from us. To put on the armour of God and stand firm, wearing truth, righteousness and gospel shoes. We must take up the shield of faith which protects us from all the flaming arrows of temptation. We are protected by our salvation and by the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God, the weapon which God has given us to confront and resist and rebuke the devil. Christ has already won the victory over sin and death and the devil.
As Christians we SHARE Christ’s life. Our life and death are wrapped up in HIS death and resurrection life. Christ lives in us! Christ is IN us – living in us, working in us by His Holy Spirit. So here is the secret of victorious Christian living. It is to live moment by moment, not in our own strength but in Christ’s strength. To let Him live and reign in US! To abide in Christ – to live in union with Christ. “I am the Vine, you are the branches.”
“The triumphant Christian does not fight for victory; he celebrates a victory already won.”
We don’t have to win the war. The devil has already been completely defeated on the cross. We are just involved in the “mopping up” operations. And if there are times that seems difficult, remember the message of the whole of the Book of Revelation. Jesus is going to win. Jesus as the Commander of the Armies of heaven, whose Victory is certain. The devil is condemned and God’s enemies are doomed. Judgment Day is coming and the church WILL BE triumphant. We may face hard times. But Jesus has already won the victory. We just need to live in that victory.

1 John 4 4 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.

How can I be certain I am saved? How can a person be sure he or she is a Christian, is truly born again, is a child of God, is heading for heaven?
Some theologians will tell you that we can’t ever be assured of our salvation in this life. That we have to just trust in God and do our best to follow the example of Jesus Christ. But the Bible is much more encouraging. The Bible says that we CAN know for certain that we are saved. But how?

If you’ve been going to any church for a while then you probably already know the answer. I certainly did. Very early on as a Christian I learned the words of John 3:16
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

I knew that because I believed in Jesus I was sure not to die but to receive God’s gift of eternal life. I learned by heart the words of Jesus in John 6.

35 Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. … 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. … 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.’

I knew that I had come to Jesus and believed in Him and He would never drive me away. I knew that I was saved and could never be lost again, because I looked to the Son and believed in Him and that He would never lose me and would definitely raise me to life at the last day. I was certain that I was saved!

I’d been a Christian for about three years and gone away to university when I discovered that maybe that assurance of salvation was misplaced. That perhaps my salvation wasn’t as certain as I had believed. I learned this at a very sound and respectable Christian Union Saturday evening Bible Reading, from Martin Goldsmith, Principal of All Nations missionary training college. What he said was this. If we think that our salvation is guaranteed just because we believe the right doctrines – think again! If we think we can be sure we are saved because we have “saving faith”, think again, and listen to these words of the apostle John.

1 John 3 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.

How can we be sure we are saved? Because we love our brothers. Not because of what we say we believe – but because we love other Christians! It’s not our beliefs which are the test – but our love! This is embarrassing. This is challenging. This is the kind of verse we would like to ignore – and if it were just that one verse we might be able to ignore it. But John makes the same point three times in the reading we just heard. He is very clear. If you aren’t loving your fellow Christians, you don’t have eternal life!

14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

10 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 God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

It’s not just about faith. We should have faith AND love. We are saved by faith alone but saving faith is never alone! It is ALWAYS faith expressed in love. John says it again in chapter four in some memorable verses which we will think more about next week.

1 John 4 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

If we are not showing our faith by showing love to other Christians, we don’t really know God at all. A great philosopher once said a very wise thing which very many people would agree with. It was Snoopy who said “I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand!” It is easy to love – in abstract, in theory. What is difficult is to show true love in concrete ways, in practice, in everyday life, with real people.

God is easy to love. God never does anything wrong. God never does anything to hurt us or let us down. We may sometimes feel that God has hurt us or let us down but that’s only our wrong understanding. God is completely righteous and holy and just. God never does anything wrong – so God is easy to love.
If only people were like that! But people aren’t like that! People say things that upset us. People do things that hurt us. By the things that they do and by the things they don’t do when they should, people let us down time and time again. Sometimes it happens by accident or because they don’t know any better. Sometimes it’s their deliberate choice. Sometimes it’s just because they are human and human beings mess up – that’s human nature. But time and time again people hurt us and let us down – so people are difficult to love. Perhaps things have happened to you this week and so you know exactly what I mean. People can be difficult to love! But John says we can’t claim that we love God if we don’t show it by loving other Christians. And the kind of love God expects from us is no easy task. It is very demanding and costly. Most of us know John 3:16 off by heart. We ought to learn 1 John 3:16 off by heart as well –

1 John 3 16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for us is the standard and supreme example of the kind of love we should show to other Christians. Not just love when it suits us, love when we can spare the time, but love which costs, love which pays the ultimate price! Think of how much it cost Christ to die for us. How much does it really cost us to live for him? Laying down our lives not just for God but for our brothers.

God’s kind of love is costly but at the same time it is very practical and down to earth!

1 John 3 16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 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? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

True love is not feelings but actions. It shows itself in practical ways, in simple acts of kindness and generosity and helpfulness. True love means forgiving other people when they don’t apologise and don’t even realise they have done anything wrong. It means patience. It means turning the other cheek and going the extra mile. True love is becoming a servant and washing each other’s feet and taking on the unpleasant and unrewarding jobs so that nobody else will have to do them.

We thought last week about how much God loves us. How God has lavished his love upon us. God loves us so much that he has made us to be his children. How God in his immeasurable love God has forgiven our sins and given us eternal life. God lives within us! He gives us victory and he answers our prayers. And God has given us the happy certainty of heaven and seeing him face to face in glory forever. Above all last week we were reminded that we know just how much God loves us because Jesus has died for us!

God loves us so much – Christ’s death on the cross for us proves that. And there is the first reason why Christians should love one another. That is our grateful joyful response to God’s amazing love for us. We believe in Jesus Christ and we are trusting in His death to pay the penalty for our sin so that we can share His resurrection life. And we can be certain that we are saved, because not only do we believe the gospel but we also love our brothers and sisters in Christ.

But John also gives us a second motive to love our brothers and sisters at a number of places is this letter. We have read it before and we will read it again. God commands it!

1 John 3 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

Jesus only gave his disciples one new commandment to add to the Law of Moses. Only one – so we can deduce that this is a very important command indeed. It was not a commandment to pray, or worship, or read the Bible every day, or avoid a particular kind of sin.

John 13:34-35 Jesus said “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

So we love because Christ commands it. Loving each other is the most important thing we can do to show our Christian faith.

And for a third motivation, we love because this love for one another is our witness to the world! Showing the difference Jesus makes. Being the Light of the World. In His New Commandment Christ spells out exactly how our Christian lifestyle will be a witness to the watching world. And it is this. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

It was my favourite of the Early Church Fathers, Tertullian of Carthage, who wrote early in the Third Century about the impact the growing church was having in the world. He commented on how the world around noticed the difference between the attitudes of the Christians and the attitudes of the pagans.
“‘Look,’ they say, ‘how they [Christians] love one another’ (for they themselves hate one another); ‘and how they are ready to die for each other’ (for they themselves are readier to kill each other).”

So we should love each other as our response to God’s love for us. We should love each other because Jesus commands it. And we should love each other because that is the way that and family and neighbours and friends and strangers will know we are Christians.

THIS is how we can be certain we are saved

10 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 God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.

Have you ever felt loved? Loved by a parent. Loved by a friend. Loved by a wife or husband? I want us all to realise this evening that God loves each one of us much, much more than that – more than any love we have ever experienced in our lives. God loves you more than you can possibly imagine!

We know how much God loves us because
God lavished his love on us!

1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

Ephesians 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us.

Redemption, forgiveness, the riches of God’s grace, the unsearchable riches of Christ –
LAVISHED upon US!!! Extravagantly poured out on us! Like the Father’s love for the wayward prodigal son:-

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us!”J.B.Phillips: “See what incredible love God has for us!” Great. Incredible. Amazing. Fantastic. Wonderful love of God!

I love our children Lizzie and Susie and David. I believe that I love them as much as any Father is able to love his children. But I don’t love them one thousandth as much as God the Father loves us!

Believe it – and also think about it! Imagine it! Meditate on it. Receive for yourself God’s great incredible amazing fantastic wonderful love! God loves you! God loves me! Say it for yourself, “God loves me”. GOD loves me. God LOVES me. God loves ME!

What does that mean?
God’s love is “not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between man and woman.” C. S. Lewis

God shows us how much he loves us by the way he treats us and the blessings he pours out on us! We are going to think about some of those blessings this evening. They are all there in this first letter from the apostle John.

We know how much God loves us because
We are God’s children

1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! …. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God,

What an impossible miracle – Almighty and Eternal God, Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth, adopts us, mere creatures, to become His sons and daughters! Consider how great God is and how small we are!!

God has made us His children – that’s how much God loves us!

To realise just how amazing that is, remember the insurmountable problem of our sin! All the things we have said and thought and done which make the Holy and righteous God justifiably angry with us. Yet, in order to make us His children:

We know how much God loves us because
God forgives our sins

1 John 2:1 … My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

1:8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

None of us deserve to be God’s children! We could never earn our forgiveness! It’s all God’s grace!

God has forgiven your sins – that’s how much God loves you!

We know how much God loves us because
We have eternal life

2:25 And this is what he promised us- even eternal life.

5:11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

We “have the Son.” We are born again. God’s Spirit is within us. We have passed from death to life and we now have eternal life – life in all its fullness.

God has given you eternal life – that’s how much God loves you!

We know how much God loves us because
God is in us and we are in God

4:15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

3:24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: we know it by the Spirit he gave us.

God has shared His life with you so that God is IN you and you are IN God – God LIVES inside us by His Holy Spirit – that’s how much God loves you!

We know how much God loves us because
God gives us victory over temptation

5:4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

4 4 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.

What a glorious truth. He is in you is greater than he who is in the world. We will certainly have much more to say about that verse in a couple of weeks. God gives you victory over the world, the flesh and the devil – that’s how much God loves you!

We know how much God loves us because
God answers our prayers

5:14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask- we know that we have what we asked of him.

3:21 Dear friends, …. we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.

Just pause for a moment and think about all the prayers you have offered over the years. Every time God has helped you. Every time God has rescued you. Every time God has guided you. Every time God has healed you. Every time you have prayed for somebody else and God in His mercy has heard your prayer and granted your request.

God answers your prayers – that’s how much God loves you!

We know how much God loves us because of
The certainty of heaven

3:2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

The world around doesn’t understand what we are talking about but that’s because the world doesn’t know God! We know there is more to life than this life! This life is just the introduction, the foreword. We are God’s children already, but there is much much more waiting for us.

And the blessings of heaven will be much more amazing than we can imagine.

“What we will be has not yet been made known.” “Who knows how we will end up?!!” We cannot begin to imagine how wonderful heaven is going to be!!

But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

This is our Christian hope – not just a wishy washy optimism but a happy certainty which rests on the promises of our God who always keeps His promises!

The promise of heaven is a great comfort to us when a loved one has died, or when we face illness or later years. But we should all think about heaven much much more than we do. We will be spending eternity there with God! Sometimes the reason we don’t look forward to heaven enough is because we are trapped in this world!

2:15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world- the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does- comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives for ever.

God has guaranteed you a place in heaven, with Him in glory forever, waiting for you – that’s how much God loves you!

So we know and rely on God’s love – We have nothing to fear from God.

4 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. …. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear

There is nothing you can do to make God love you more! There is nothing you can do to make God love you less! His love is unconditional, impartial, everlasting, infinite, perfect! Because God is love!

And if we want a measure of God’s love we look at the cross.

We know how much God loves us because
Jesus laid down his life for us!

4:9 This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

Romans 5:7 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We use a mark of a CROSS on letters, cards, emails, text messages, Valentine’s cards to say “I love you”
Cross of Christ = God’s “I love you” to the world

O THE DEEP, DEEP LOVE OF JESUS! Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free;
Rolling as a mighty ocean In its fulness over me.
Underneath me, all around me, Is the current of Thy love;
Leading onward, leading homeward, To my glorious rest above.

Great! Incredible! Amazing! Fantastic! WONDERFUL LOVE!

How big is God’s love? It is infinitely broad, infinitely long, infinitely high, infinitely deep. And it goes on forever. God’s love is everlasting. It is eternal.

God wants us all to know just how much He loves us. To know the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, even though it is so big that even all eternity will not be long enough for us to know it completely. Our minds won’t be able to understand God’s amazing love. But our hearts can receive that love.

And God longs so much for each one of us to know and receive and experience the love which he has lavished on us. God’s love which is so great and Incredible and Amazing and Fantastic and Wonderful!

This is how we know how much God loves us.

• God has lavished his love upon us
• God has made us His children
• God has forgiven our sins
• God has given us eternal life
• God has shared His life with us so that God is IN us and we are IN God
• God gives us victory over the world, the flesh and the devil
• God answers our prayers
• God has guaranteed us a place in heaven, with Him in glory forever,
• Look at Jesus dying on the cross – that’s how much God loves us!

Towards the end of his life the Apostle John was writing to Christians and churches because he had heard of problems they were facing with divisions and splits and false teaching.
We have seen before how some Christians were breaking fellowship by claiming that they were sinless and had not committed sin. Others were failing to love their brothers and sisters, and were in fact hating other Christians. Others were failing to obey God’s commands, walking in darkness instead of walking in the light. Still others were falling into worldliness – loving the world instead of loving God, being led astray by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
But there was another way that some of John’s readers were breaking fellowship with God and with each other. They had embraced false teachings. They no longer believed that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God.
Will you notice first of all the strength of condemnation for those who had departed from the truth of the gospel? People who were teaching wrong things about Jesus were not just mistaken. They were not just misguided. They were not just ignorant. They were dangerous.
2 18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.
2 22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.
4 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
The anti-Christ – the opposite of the Christ – the enemies of Christ
So John doesn’t mince his words about how dangerous these false teachers are. He is not talking about shades of opinion or things Christians could disagree about. These are matters of right or wrong, truth or lies.
So these false teachers are called Antichrists and Deceivers! More than that – they are described as false prophets.
4:1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
These false teachers are false prophets. In the Old Testament false prophets were to be put to death.
Remember what Jesus said about false prophets.
Matt 7 15 ‘Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
John writes,
1 John 2 18 Dear children, this is the last hour;
Talking about the Last Days, Jesus said this.
Matt 24 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.
Matt 24 24 For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible.
See also elsewhere, in Paul’s letters and here in 2 Peter
2 Peter 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
False teaching has been a threat to the existence of the church from the earliest days. In the New Testament false teachers were not viewed as simply misguided or mistaken or ignorant. They were dangerous. Antichrists and deceivers and false prophets.
I think this is particularly significant because we are living in the days of postmodernism – where people will tell you that there is no such thing as absolute truth. The only thing we can be certain of is that we aren’t allowed to be certain about anything any more. We are living in the era of post-truth, where people are influenced by subjective opinions and ignore objective facts. The perfect playing field for antichrists and deceivers and false prophets.
There are corners of the church today where preachers like me, who insist that the Bible is the Word of God, completely true and reliable, are considered to be dinosaurs. We have seen the rise of celebrity preachers with huge churches built on sermons which are so engaging and entertaining that people don’t stop to ask whether the teaching is actually true or not. The coronavirus lockdowns have simply accelerated the move towards virtual church so many Christians today are choosing their diet of services on the basis of the slickness of the presentation. Many don’t stop to ask, is this teaching actually true? Is it faithful to the Bible.
I was in a discussion with some ministers who were questioning why preaching is an important element of how churches call their next minister. Preach with a peep. Preach with a view. I was really feeling old when some were rejecting the idea that it is important that every minister knows the truths of scripture and is able to proclaim them faithfully and clearly. I would like to hope that any church I have served would still think that it matters what the minister preaches and what the church believes. Truth matters. If we neglect the truth we open the door for the antichrists and deceivers and false prophets and welcome them in.
John does not hold back at all in his condemnation of these false teachers. He is talks plainly about right and wrong, truth and lies. And why does what we believe matter so much.
2 24 As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is what he promised us—eternal life.
Our eternal life depends on holding on to the truth of the gospel. Our eternal salvation is in jeopardy if we are taken in by the lies of the devil. Believing what is true really is that important. Not being deceived by lies really is a matter of eternal life and eternal death.

So, here in 1 John, what specifically are the false ideas which John is wanting to challenge? What wrong teaching is so heretical that John calls those who were teaching it antichrists and deceivers and false prophets?
2 22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
4 2 This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.
The false teaching John is challenging is the wrong idea that Jesus did not come “in the flesh”, in other words as truly a human being. That error proved to be so persistent that John had to write a second letter to challenge it again.
2 John verse 7 Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Historians find lots of evidence from the second century about heresies which developed these wrong ideas, known as Gnosticism and Docetism. We must be careful not to read back into the New Testament ideas which we can’t be certain were around until the second centuries, but we probably can say that we see the seeds of Gnosticism and Docetism here in 1 John. From the days when the Early church began to spread among the Gentiles we can see signs of pagan religions creeping into Christianity, what historians and theologians call syncretism. And that is what was happening here in this wrong idea that Jesus did not come “in the flesh”.
In their legends, the false gods of the Greeks and the Romans would sometimes walk around the world disguised as human beings. These Greek and Roman gods did not become human beings. They just took on the appearance of being human. So in John’s time, probably late in the first century, the false idea began to circulate that Jesus had not really been a human being at all. The idea of the incarnation was too incredible. In particular, Greek and Roman gods were impassible – they were incapable of experiencing suffering and pain. So some people were thinking that the Son of God did not become properly human, but just took on the appearance of being human.
Of course this is a denial of the historical truth of the incarnation.
John 1 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
It was essential for God’s masterplan of salvation that Jesus did become truly human – that the Son of God, the Word, did in every sense, “become flesh”.
Hebrews 2 explains it this way.
Hebrews 2 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
If Jesus had not become completely human, he could not have saved us.
In the Fourth Century Athanasius of Alexandra put it like this.
“What has not been assumed has not been redeemed”
. If Jesus was not completely God, he could not have SAVED us. If Jesus was not completely human, he could not have saved US humans. It is an essential element of the gospel that the son of God “came in the flesh” and was completely human.
You will remember how John begins his letter with his personal testimony. John knows from his own personal experience that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ and the Lord and the Son of God, had become completely human. John had lived alongside Jesus for three years. He was an eyewitness to the humanity of Jesus.
1 John 1:1 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. 2 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. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.
And John had not only witnessed Jesus’s life on a day to day basis. He had witnessed Jesus’s death. John 19 tells us that among the apostles John alone was at the foot of the cross at the hour of crucifixion. John witnessed Jesus dying – close up. He knew more about the suffering and dying of Jesus than anybody else. John knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Son of God had come “in the flesh.”
Over the centuries this heresy that Jesus was not really fully human has continued to raise its head in different forms. It can lead people to think that Jesus does not fully understand our situation, or our suffering, because in some way life was “easier for him” than it is for. If we think that dying on the cross was easier for Jesus than it would be for us, because he was the Son of God and so he knew he was going to rise from the dead again, then we are falling into that trap.
So we should be on our guard for false teachers. Always asking ourselves, is this what the Bible really teaches? There are so many other lies to watch out for. But make no mistake. The antichrists and deceivers and false prophets are having a field day in our generations.

Very early in his first letter, John writes this.
3 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.
The heart of following Jesus is the new and personal relationship Christians have with God our heavenly Father and with other believers as well. John is writing to Christians who are breaking that fellowship with God and with the church in a number of ways. We saw last week that some people were denying that they were sinful, or that they had sinned. So John calls them to confess their sins, assuring them of the promise that God will forgive them through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. Then in chapter 2 we read that John encourages his readers to keep on obeying God’s commands, to walk in the light as God Himself is the light.
3 We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. 4 Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them.
Obedience is essential if we wish to remain in fellowship with God and with other believers. And the standard of obedience God demands is very high.
This is how we know we are in him: 6 whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
While John talks in general about obeying God’s commands, it is clear from our passage this week that he has one particular command in mind. So he goes on to say this.
7 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. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
Christians are called to walk in the true light of God. John’s readers already know what they should be doing – they heard it right from the start of their discipleship. But it is a new command because it always has a freshness about it – just as God’s love and mercy is fresh and new every morning.
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. 10 Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.
The new command of course is the new commandment Jesus gave his disciples to love one another.
John 13:34 ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’
Love is at the heart of the gospel. Our love for other Christians is the essence of our witness to the world. And Jesus has set the example and the standard for that love – just as I have loved you, so you must love one another. Love is the sign that we are living in the light. Its opposite would be hating our fellow Christians, and that is clear evidence that a person is still living in the darkness.

11 But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.
Some of John’s readers were bringing division to the church and demonstrating hatred for other Christians. So John wants to remind them of the supreme importance of love.
. 10 Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.
That is the challenge for every believer and every church in every age. Relationships between Christians in the church are our witness to the world. There is no place for hatred or division.
CHANGE SLIDE
This next little section is a bit strange, for a number of reasons.
12 I am writing to you, dear children,
because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
13 I am writing to you, fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you, young men,
because you have overcome the evil one.
14 I write to you, dear children,
because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you are strong,
and the word of God lives in you,
and you have overcome the evil one.

Quite strange. To begin with, it’s not obvious what place this section has in the argument for John’s letter. Why should he start talking to his readers at this point about his reasons for writing?
Then the grammar is a bit strange, in a way which the NIV hides. Verse 13 is in the present tense, “I am writing”, but verse 14 is actually in the past tense – “I wrote”. NIV translates this in the present, “I write” because in Greek letters they sometimes said “I wrote” when they were referring to the current letter, rather than some past correspondence. The so-called “epistolatory aorist.”
Commentators generally agree that there is no significance whatsoever in John saying “I am writing” and then repeating himself by saying “I write” (or I wrote). And there is no significance in the small changes in the repetition, other than for emphasis. They also mostly agree that when he talks about children, fathers and young men he is probably talking about Christian experience rather than age in years. So he is talking to young Christians, mature Christians and Christians with a vibrant faith. Everybody also agrees that the characteristics which John assigns to particular Christians should be true of all Christians at every stage in their discipleship. So your sins have been forgiven on account of his name, and because you know the Father are not just true of young Christians. Because you know him who is from the beginning is not only true of mature Christians. And you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one surely refer to all Christians and not just “young men” and “young women of course.” All Christians have experienced forgiveness and know the Father and through Christ have overcome the evil one.
So John is simply reminding his readers of what Christian discipleship is all about. This challenges us to obey God’s commands, and especially the new commandment to love one another. And it also prepares the way for the next challenge which is a rebuke for another way some of John’s readers have been breaking fellowship with God and with each other.
CHANGE SLIDE
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.
The reason that many Christians fall away from God is that they love the world around more than they love God.
The great reformer John Calvin said something like this. “Unless a person breaks free from the pull of the things of this world they will forever be bound to it.”
Love of the things of this fallen world – the sin of the Rich Young Ruler who would not let go of his wealth and possessions in order to follow Jesus.
16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.
The lust of the flesh is passion for sensual satisfaction. The lust of the eyes means an inordinate desire for the finer things of life but also probably includes sexual desires. The pride of life means self-satisfaction in who we are, the things we have, and what we have accomplished. These are three things which lead people into sin. There is an interesting echo here in what we read about the very first sin, when Adam and Eve rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 3 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Eve saw the fruit, she desired the fruit and she took the fruit. And then she gave the fruit to Adam. What we see leads us to what we want leads us to taking what we should not, and then to causing others to sin as well.
“the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”. A perfect summary of our own self-centred self-obsessed generation.
MESSAGE Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.
Worldliness was already causing some of John’s readers to break fellowship with God and with each other. So he gives them this warning.
17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives for ever.
Love one another – don’t hate other people. Do not love the world, which is passing away. Whoever does the will of God lives forever. This is what it means to live in the light of God.

In the New Testament, salvation embraces much more than God forgiving our sins. Salvation is more than being born again and receiving eternal life. Salvation is even more than experiencing life in all its fulness which not even death can take away. In verse 3 of his first Letter, the apostle John tells us this.
our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
Salvation means nothing less than entering into fellowship with God, fellowship with the Father and fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ, koinonia with God. The message translates the word as “communion with God”. God shares his life with us. God opens up the relationship between Father and Son to include us too. We get to participate in the very life of God. Fellowship with God – a personal relationship with the Father and with the Son. This is what salvation is all about. John and his companions are experiencing this fellowship with God and he wants all the readers of this letter to experience that relationship with God as well.
3 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.
John wants everybody else to enter into this relationship of fellowship with God as well, so he proclaims or declares to everybody the message of salvation. But this is not some message which he heard from somebody who passed it on from somebody else. John himself saw and heard first-hand what he wants to share with everybody. That is where his letter begins.
1 John 1:1 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.
Let’s just step back a moment and ask who it is who is writing? There is no name mentioned in any of the Letters attributed to John, but that was the name attached to them in the very earliest days of the church. They are written with the kind of authority which only an apostle would carry. We will see that there are great similarities in language and content between these letters and the Gospel of John. Although some people point to some differences in grammar and style, these are no greater than the differences between Luke’s Gospel and Acts which everybody agrees were written by the same person, or even the differences between different Letters written by Paul. At the same time these three Letters deal with certain issues which scholars believe only began to trouble the church towards the end of the First Century. By that time other sources suggest that most if not all of the other apostles had been martyred. Differences in style can be explained if the Letters were written by the same man but decades later than the Gospel. So I have no problems in believing that these Letters were written by John the Apostle, one of the Jesus’s inner circle of Peter, James and John and described as “the disciple Jesus loved.
The Letter begins, 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
When John says “we have heard, we have seen, we have looked at, we have touched,” the “we” does not mean “Christians in general.” John is declaring himself to be an eyewitness of Jesus’s life and ministry, and of his death and resurrection. He himself heard Jesus’s teaching. He saw Jesus with his own eyes. More than that, he looked intently at Jesus, he had the opportunity to study and examine Jesus. And he had touched Jesus with his own hands!
this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. In this Letter John is passing on his own personal experiences of Jesus and his own experiences of the fellowship which he himself enjoys with God the Father and God the Son.
That which was from the beginning … the Word of life.
Of course this reminds us immediately of the opening verses of John’s Gospel.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
Let’s remind ourselves of what John teaches us about Jesus in his Gospel. There the apostle John didn’t want his readers to be in any doubt who the central character is. So he began with a Prologue, an Introduction, in which he summarised the whole message of Jesus Christ: who Jesus is, his role in creating the world and how he redeemed the world, and the most fantastic good news of how ordinary people like you and me can become God’s children. John didn’t begin with the birth of Jesus. He looked much further back and further away – outside space and before time, to the beginning of everything that is.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word,
It is no coincidence that John’s Gospel starts just as the Book of Genesis starts the whole Bible with the words “In the beginning.” John takes us back before the beginning of time and space when there was nothing but God. And he introduces us to a person who he calls “The Word.” “The Word” was there right from the beginning.
I’ve mentioned before that the Greek word for “The Word” here is “The Logos.” We can find the background to “The Logos” in Jewish thinking at the time of Jesus. Our words are the way we communicate with others and reveal ourselves to others. Our words embody our thoughts. We read in Genesis chapter 1 how God spoke into the darkness, and there was light. Whenever God speaks, things happen. Time and again God’s words brought everything into being. It was the Word of God, the Law and the Prophets which gave birth and life to the nation of Israel and sustained them in their faith. And the Word of God was God’s revelation to the prophets who said, “The Word of the Lord came to me”. So “the Logos,” “the Word,” is how God expresses Himself and communicates with the world. The Word is the embodiment of God’s thoughts. The Word is how God reveals Himself to the world.
More than that, in Jesus’s time the Jews had a version of the Old Testament which was their equivalent of the Message or the Living Bible. The Targums were a combination of paraphrase and commentary and in the Targums the phrase “The word of God” was sometimes used to avoid using God’s name. So for example in Genesis 3:8 the Targums said, “The Word of God used to walk in the garden with Adam and Eve.”
So the Jews already had a sense that the Word of God, the Logos of God, was something very very important. John tells us that the Logos was there at the beginning of everything. But more than that,
the Word was with God,
In John 1 verse 1 and again in verse 2 John tells us that the Word was with God. But there is significance in the choice of word for “with.” John said that the Word is “pros” God, which means more than just two thing being located with or alongside each other. The word is used of two people being together in each other’s presence. So saying that the Word was “pros” God is not about objects in proximity but about persons in relationship. A good translation would be that “the Word was face-to-face with God.” The Word is revealed to be a Person who was alongside God in relationship with God in the beginning.
The Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This means more than saying “the Word was divine.” A better translation would be, “What God was, the Word was.” “The Word was fully God.”
John is not saying that the Word was another God or a different God. He is saying that the Word is both God, and yet at the same time with God. This Word is actually God. The Word is both God and at the same time a distinct person present with or alongside God.
John 1:2 He was with God in the beginning.
From the very beginning, before creation, the Word was there with God. This brings us to the idea of pre-existence. The Word existed face-to-face with God, before anything else existed. And the Word was God’s agent of Creation.
John 1:3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
Psalm 33 declares that God created the world through His mighty Word.
6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth …. 9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
God made the world THROUGH the Word. We can see here the three persons of the Holy Trinity working together in Creation. God the Father spoke the Word, God the Son was the Word that was spoken, and God the Holy Spirit was the breath which carried the Word and brought the whole of creation into existence.

Jesus was the visible image of the invisible God. Just as our words reveal and embody our unseen thoughts, so the Word reveals and embodies the unseen God. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus said. He was there with God in the beginning.
So this is who John is talking about as he starts his first letter.
That which was from the beginning, …. this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
This Word of Life is the Logos, the Word who brings life to all who believe in him. John says that he himself heard and saw and looked at and even touched this Word of life who had existed “from the beginning”, since before the universe was created. John goes on to repeat that this is his personal testimony of what he has experienced of Jesus.
2 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.
“The life appeared”.
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Word, became a human being as Jesus of Nazareth. The life appeared and John saw him and bears witness to him. John himself saw the glory of the Son of God when the divine Word became a human being and lived among us. John himself saw God’s grace and truth revealed in Jesus, overflowing in Jesus’s life.
3 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. 4 We write this to make our joy complete.
So John’s reason for writing his letter is so that his readers might enter into fellowship with him, or continue in fellowship with him. John wants his readers to share the same fellowship which he enjoys with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, He wants them to participate in God’s life, just as he participates in God’s life. 4 We write this to make our joy complete. The footnote here shows that some ancient texts say “to make your joy complete”. It doesn’t really matter which is the earliest form because fellowship with God is the source of complete joy for John’s readers as much as it is for John. The New Living Translation says, “We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.”
Perhaps the point is that John’s joy could not be complete until his readers did share the fellowship with God which he is experiencing. So this is why John shares his testimony of what he himself had experienced of God in the three years he had spent alongside Jesus.
We proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
Jesus, the Word of God was the source of life in creation. And he is also the source of eternal life, life in all its fulness to all who put their trust in him. John shares his experiences of Jesus so that others might believe in him as well.
The important things John says here in just four verses gives us confidence in what we believe. Our faith is not based on made up stories, or whispers of rumours. Our faith stands on the testimonies of people who were eyewitnesses to the historical events of Jesus’s life and his death and his resurrection.
But did you notice something else? The word “we” appears nine times in those four verses and is implied in the verbs another three times. Indeed, the word “we” appears at least once in very nearly half of the verses in this letter. In this short passage John also says “our” three times and “us” twice. This reminds us that we mustn’t be shy or embarrassed about sharing our own testimonies of the wonderful things God has done in our lives. We will tell our family and friends and neighbours and colleagues about Jesus’s life. But we will also talk to them about the difference Jesus makes to us day by day. We do this because we want them to experience the same fellowship with God which we have discovered. And we know that their joy and our joy will not be complete until they do.