About a month ago I started a series of sermons on 1 John. Earlier in the year we surveyed the miraculous signs in the Gospel of John with a particular emphasis on John 20:31 where John puts forth his thesis for writing…that “these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in His name.” It doesn’t take too long to see that 1 John shares a very similar thesis with one slight (but significant) modification. In 1 John 5:13 the thesis is put forth like this: “I write this to you who believe so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
Did you catch the difference? These are a people who BELIEVE already. John writes His Gospel to promote the believing…but he writes this exhortation to those who already believe but are apparently struggling with the conviction/knowledge that they have eternal life as a result of that belief.
There are a couple of issues at stake in KNOWing that we have eternal life. One has to do with the social background of 1 John and the antichrists that had gone out from the churches in Asia b/c they had received a higher knowledge (the grassroots of Gnosticism…in the late 1st century it was Docetism). I’m not concerned about that in this post, however. The other issue has to do with how John links KNOWing (used some 37 times in this book) with action.
For John, the manner in which his thesis holds true for the believers is in the transformation that they have experienced as a result of the Spirit of Christ living in their lives. John will write things like, “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands,” or, “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” These kinds of statements are littered throughout John.
What do you think about these statements? If John is writing to convict us of eternal life that is within our possession, what do you think about how he ties this to our obedience to Christ’s commands, to our walking as Jesus walked, to our loving our brothers, etc.? I don’t think there is any doubt that John is trying to encourage the believers who heard this word, but it is not just about having an easy conviction of our eternal destiny. John does not let them off the hook that quickly…NO, for John it is about transformation. If our lives are planted in the love of Christ there is going to be evidence of the fruit of eternal life in our lives. We can’t help it, can we? I mean, if the spirit of Christ is truly taking hold how can we hate our brothers? How can we walk in the darkness or love the world?
When I read John’s logic in this exhortation, I know that it is right. The signs of life must be seen to truly KNOW that we have eternal life. Though that is encouraging to me (on my good days;)), it offers a challenge that I had never fully appreciated in prior readings of 1 John. If we are to be convicted, truly convicted, of our eternal destiny…John makes it clear that there will be evidence of eternal life in our present journey. What kind of challenge(s) does that present to you?
2 Comments
May 26, 2009 at 8:26 pm
So you see John making the point that there’s a difference between knowing and KNOWing. And the kind of knowing we need in order to be fortified for life’s challenges is the second kind, i.e., the KNOWing, is it not? And involved in this KNOWing is a loving, committed, growing intimacy that inherently changes us…changes everything about us…and would be clearly visible to anyone who knew us prior to our journey of KNOWing God. The changes are wonderful and real and ever growing…but they are not and cannot be our focus, can they? If we were to stop focusing on His loveliness and start obsessing over our “level” of obedience or growth…as in “Did we gain enough ground yesterday, or last week or last year?”…we begin to drift away from Him. On the other hand, if we keep our eyes on Him, He comes into our lives along the lines of that kind of devotion in such a way that He cannot be hidden in us. Neither He nor we will have it so. And isn’t it His wonderful knowing of us that bids us come to KNOWledge of Him? We KNOW because He first KNEW us. It gives us permission…it inspires us to come boldly…it even makes us urgent…it draws us as His vast deep calls to the deep in us (however shallow that may be). The servant of Christ is so because he/she wants to KNOW Christ. Wasn’t it the hardest working apostle of all whose quest in life was all about that?
You asked what kind of challenge does John’s conception of knowing we have eternal life bring to us. For me it’s the challenge of keeping the horse before the cart. I often seem to allow my focus to drift towards the pathetic record of failure my life reflects in so many ways rather than to so focus as to keep growing in the grace and knowledge of my Lord Christ. If I don’t trust in His grip of my life, rather than my grip on Him…if I don’t rely on His grace, rather than on anything or everything good I have ever done or will ever do…if instead of placing my foot into the next step of Jesus Christ, I am satisfied with the journey thus far…I find a distance increasing between me and my Lord Who continues to walk in the pathway of humble service in our world today. It is as easy…and as difficult…as watching our Lord as we follow His steps. A successful day in the lives of disciples has a potentially endless variety of portrayals…for one it may be that they successfully resisted all their inner impulses to quit trying and to give up…for another they may have been Christ’s hands and feet to some tired traveler who for the first time in his life caught the aroma of Christ. And both of these KNOW Christ in the way that invests them with eternal life both now and beyond…and with an inner resolve to unceasing conflict with everything that tends to add distance between humans and their Savior.
May 27, 2009 at 12:00 pm
I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that the “changes themselves cannot be our focus” in our spiritual journey. I believe John would say the same thing based on my readings. Its kind of like those who take the fruit(s) of the Spirit and try to pick them apart to determine which one they are “good” at and those they need to work on. The misunderstanding inherent in such logic is that a child of God could pick and choose to begin with. There is obviously no choosing necessary for the child of God…this fruit is the natural outflow of the life lived in Christ.
I was speaking with one of our shepherds the other day about the challenges of learning how to live and act as Christ in the oilfields and how early on in my transition I would second guess myself at the end of the day regarding the nature of my influence. Jesus was accepted by these people when he walked the earth. If I was to live the same ‘ol huber-religious Christianity in the oilfields, I knew I would find no acceptance. For a while, I second guessed my actions b/c I felt that maybe I was too relaxed around the work environment. But the logic dawned on me…that I love Jesus…I really love Jesus. Not nearly as well as he loves me, but I certainly love him. I don’t see how I can go wrong if this statement is the first truth about my life. I may not live the perfect example, but I have come to realize that even the world will not fault the Christian who makes an honest attempt at loving Jesus. Our concern has to be this first…and this only, doesn’t it? If we start digging too deeply into the particulars…our focus is inevitably diverted from the one thing that matters…keeping our eyes fixed on the author and perfector of our faith!