Bible Story: 1st John

Introduction

Now we come to the five-chapter book of 1 John. And I confess unto you, it’s a book that takes a lot of study. Every verse is a challenge. Do you know why? There were a group of false teachers known as the Gnostics in the first century. Their name came from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis, which means I know. And their point was unless we can know it by mental faculty and our own brilliant mind, we reject it. We accept nothing by faith. And so they thought they were smarter than God. And they just walked on off and left the Lord, 2 John verse 9. They were forever saying that Christ was altogether divine and not a bit human. And sometimes they’d turn around and say it was all human and not a bit divine.

And the docetist, one of the famous groups of the Gnostics, said, if you thought you saw Jesus in the flesh, you just saw a vision or an apparition. Because the devil makes the body and thus it’s inherently sinful. And God made the mind, and that can’t keep from doing right. This was leading, of course, to the idea of we can do anything we want to in the flesh and it not be wrong because we can’t help ourselves anyway, the devil made our body, and if we commit adultery and steal in the body, that’s all right because we couldn’t help it anyway. They removed the perfect example of Christ, and thus said there’s no need for you to try to live virtuously because nobody ever did in bodily form anyway.

1. We Saw Him, We Touched Him

When a Christian said Christ did, he lived perfectly. They’d say, Oh, he just came as a phantom. He didn’t really exist. But first John begins by saying we saw him, we touched him, we heard him, we walked with him. And that also takes care of the Christian science philosophy of Mary Baker Eddie. That’s ancient Gnosticism revived. The Bible teaches in the book of 1 John that God is love and man’s a sinner. That may be why the book is a little bit difficult. Two converse themes, just the opposite of each other. God is love and man’s a sinner. And how are we ever going to get man the sinner back to God the lover? That’s the real point. Being reconciled to God who loves us, though we’re such sinners.

2. If We Walk in the Light

This book was written to Christians, and don’t forget that. It wasn’t written to the world. And writing to Christians, the aged inspired apostle John said, If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we make him a liar, and his truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then he says, as we begin first John two, and remember the Bible was not divided into chapters and verses by the Lord. Men did that fifteen or sixteen centuries after the canon of Scripture was completed.

3. We Have an Advocate With the Father

Sometimes it’s helpful, sometimes it isn’t. And here’s a case where the thought continues right through. There shouldn’t be a chapter division here. He says, My little children, I write these things unto you that you sin not. But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Christ Jesus the righteous, who gave himself for our sins and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world. He is our lawyer who pleads our case at the bar of God. Have you noticed that God not only provides us an advocate, a lawyer, but he gave us his son, his only begotten son, as our advocate, and the sinless son of God. We couldn’t have a better lawyer than that to plead our case.

4. Born of God, He Cannot Live a Life of Sin

So when we as Christians err, step out of the light momentarily, we come back to God through Christ who pleads our case, the one mediator between God and man, Himself, man Christ Jesus. First Timothy 2 5. Old Job cried in Job 9 33, Oh, that there were a daisman between thee and me, a mediator, an umpire, to plead my case. What Job longed for, we have provided for us in Christ. What a difference. New Testament Christianity makes. In 1 John 3, he says, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God, and such we are. And then he says, The man who is born of God, whose seed abides in him does not live a life of sin.

He cannot be an habitual sinner. The very nature of Christianity prohibits it. It’s like a man who wants to go fishing so bad, and a friend says, Would you come have dinner with me? And he says, I cannot, meaning I will not, because I have something I’d rather do, something more compatible with my plans. The faithful child of God says, I cannot live a life of sin. That’s out of the question. I might err occasionally, step aside from the path of duty momentarily, but I cannot live a life of sin. There’s just no way that I can do it because I’m committed to righteousness. It’s like Ecclesiastes 12, which says, Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth, before the evil days come and the years draw nigh when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them.

5. Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

If you choose to serve the Lord faithfully and fully early in life, then when temptation comes later on, you say, I don’t have any pleasure in things like that. I can’t do that. And so 1 John 3 tells us, as long as the seed abides in us and we walk in the light, we cannot live a life of sin. It is impossible to be an habitual sinner. And then in 1 John 4, he says, You’re going to have to try the spirits where they be of God, for many false prophets have already gone out into the world. At the end of 1 John 4, he says, We can have boldness in the day of judgment. And we must love our brother whom we see if we would claim to love God whom we have not seen.

We love because he first loved us, and perfect love casts out fear. The fear of the world is cast out of the child of God. We’ll always have godly reverential awe, Hebrews 12 28. But we will not have the fear of the world if we’re a faithful child of God. We do not stand in trembling before God or man, in the sense of being fearful and of doing God’s will. And then in 1 John 5, he says, This is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous.

6. There Is Sin Unto Death

He mentions the fact this is the confidence we have in him. If we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us. First John 5 14. And then he says, All unrighteousness is sin, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And then perhaps the most pulsating verse of all, I know it’s a challenging statement. He says, There is sin unto death. I do not say that you should pray for that. Sin unto death, sin persisted in, continued in, sin we will not repent of, confess, turn from. And if a man lives in sin and dies in sin, no need to pray for that. He’s lost forever. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Revelation 14 13. Contrast that with John 8 21, where Jesus said of sinners, you shall die in your sins, and where I go you cannot come.

Conclusion

So first John tells us God is love and man is a sinner, and how we need to get the sinner back to the lover. And last of all, he says, little children, keep yourselves from idols.