The Epistles of John, Part 22: Purpose Statement

Confidence.  What a nebulous word!  Oh, it is easy enough to define.  Noah Webster said confidence is: A trusting, or reliance; an assurance of mind or firm belief in the integrity, stability, or veracity of another, or in the truth and reality of a fact.  Ok, that’s not so hard.  But what Webster doesn’t say is how to achieve such a state.  Some people seem to have boundless confidence; at times to a fault.  Others have almost none; almost always to a fault.  But how does one go about gaining confidence?  Is there a step-by-step process we could follow if we desired to acquire greater confidence?

Well, as we continue to move through 1^st John chapter 5, we are going to discover in verses 13 to 15 that John says emphatically YES!  There is a method to having confidence in life.  In fact, he considers this so important for us that he makes it a part of his stated purpose for writing this entire letter.  As has been his pattern so far, this is not a new topic for John.  He has already mentioned confidence, in Greek “parrhesia” (par-rhe-see’-ah), three times. 

In 2:28, 3:21, and 4:17 the apostle has given us pieces of the puzzle of how to have confidence.  What is particularly noteworthy is the context he places this confidence in.  In 2:28 he writes: now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.  In 3:21 we find: beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.  And in 4:17 another aspect is revealed: by this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment.  We can see from these three verses that John categorizes the elements that make up a biblical confidence into three components:

1. abiding in Christ
2. listening to the Holy Spirit and examining the righteous fruit of our Christian conduct rather than listening to our heart
3. abiding in love.

But what is most significant to me about these passages is their focus, or theme.  Every time John brings up the issue of having confidence, his approach is to relate that confidence to God.  In other words, the only confidence that matters to John is that which we have, or do not have, before the Lord.  I believe this is diametrically opposite of how Christians typically view situations. 

You see, I think that probably for most of us, when we consider the issue of having confidence, our instinct is to associate it with how it relates to other people.  For example, at the prospect of giving a public speech is it the Lord God we are concerned about messing up in front of and being embarrassed, or is it all the humans in the audience?  If we find ourselves in a situation where loving confrontation is necessary, what are we most fearful of: having conflict or drama with the other party, or disobeying God’s extremely clear teaching on how to go about reconciling an offense with a brother or sister in Christ?

I think that with very few exceptions our concern is over the human interaction that is at stake rather than the divine relationship that is on the table.  But for John it seems to be exactly the opposite.  In his teaching throughout this letter he relates the entire conceptual understanding of confidence to the divine relationship.  In other words, John’s approach is to ground his confidence in his relationship to the Lord first, and only then give any thought whatsoever to how that confidence might relate to the various situations he finds himself in and the experiences he has.

And if that wasn’t noteworthy enough, consider this.  As already stated, John has touched on this topic on three separate occasions in this letter alone.  But his pattern throughout the book has been to revisit teachings repeatedly, offering some additional nuance or insight to our understanding each time.  I think John is demonstrating in his epistle that he is a master of repetition teaching.  He gives us bite sized chunks of truth to chew on, one at a time, in a methodical and structured manner.  The reason is so that by the end of the letter, assuming we read slowly and carefully, digesting just a portion at a time, we will have a much fuller grasp and understanding of what he is teaching.

John is going to stay true to that approach here in verses 13 to 15.  And as we will see in a moment, he is going to up the ante considerably by making it clear that having confidence before God is so critically important for a believer that it is tied to his entire reason for writing the letter in the first place!  He accomplishes his task by identifying two major components or elements of having confidence before God: knowledge and assurance.

We will pick it up in verse 13 with the knowledge angle: These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.  This is nothing less than John’s purpose statement.  This is, at the end of all things, his attempt to summarize the whole letter.  Setting aside all the individual teaching he has given us: being honest about our sin, walking as Christ walked, understanding apostasy, rejecting the world and the things in the world, loving one another, discerning between false prophets and authentic Bible teachers, and conquering the world.  All of those elements are of vast importance to a Christian.  But if you walk away from this letter only remembering one single thing, this is what John wants it to be.  He wants you to know that you have eternal life.  He wants your confidence in Christ to soar like an eagle and cause you to sail far above the troubles and turmoil of this evil world we live in.

At the very beginning of our consideration of John’s epistle, we examined the relationship between his gospel and this letter.  In that connection there is a fascinating flow of logical purpose and intent.  It’s worth a reminder now.  John 20:31 reveals the purpose statement for the gospel of John: these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

I find this to be an utterly compelling and fascinating sequence.  John wrote his gospel for the express purpose of facilitating the Holy Spirit’s work of bringing people to faith in Jesus and the necessary repentance that must follow it.  All of the miracles, all of the teaching, all of the historical details, all of the horrifying reality of the crucifixion.  John intended every drop of it to ultimately coalesce into faith and trust in Christ.  Then, once that was accomplished and someone had become a believer, he wrote his first epistle so that they would be able to follow on the heels of that saving faith with a concrete and unshakeable assurance of their security in their savior.  What a beautiful package of sound teaching and instruction for us to partake of 20 centuries later.

On the topic of John’s purpose, consider this.  The phrase “have eternal life” at the end of the verse may be proper English, but it’s not quite right according to the original text.  First of all, every major English translation places this phrase at the end of the verse, after the clause about believing in the name of the Son of God.  But the original phrase that John wrote places “have eternal life” in the middle of the verse.  The verse reads approximately like this in Greek: these things I have written to you in order that you may know that life possess eternal, these that believe in the name of the Son of God.

What you need to understand about the Greek language of John’s day is that it was very flexible.  Word order was extremely important.  In English we have a very methodical structure of subject – verb – direct object.  But in New Testament Greek subjects and verbs were not determined by placement in a sentence or relation to each other.  They were communicated through altering the way the word was written by using different case endings on the ends of the nouns.  In other words, you could conceivably have a verb at the beginning of the sentence and the subject at the end, separated from each other by multiple other words.  This presented a wonderfully freeing opportunity for the NT writer to place particular emphasis on the words they thought were most important in the verse they were writing.  They accomplished this by putting the more important words earlier in the sentence and relying on the case endings to enable readers to determine subject, direct object, etc.

So for verse 13 this means that John considered the clause of a Christian knowing that they have eternal life to be of primary significance.  This is why I said a moment ago that it was absolutely central to him that you not just be saved, but that you are absolutely, unswervingly convinced of the reliability and trustworthiness of that salvation.  He wrote a whole letter to you for the purpose of convincing you of that fact!  Have you been and are you listening?

Beyond that, let’s go back and once again compare English and Greek.  The English phrase “have eternal life” is a translation of the Greek “life possess eternal”.  What’s the difference you might be thinking.  Aren’t both versions saying the same thing?  I don’t think they are.  Think about it like this.

The modern English structure conveys the idea of eternal being an adjective that describes life.  To be sure, eternal is in fact an adjective by definition.  And the life that we now live in Christ is most certainly one that will be lived eternally.  But the structure paints a picture of this life being just one of a variety of different flavors of life.  We might have reduced life, wasted life, vibrant life, etc. to go alongside eternal.

Now compare that with the way John actually wrote it: life possess eternal.  His original structure says that because of belief in the Son of God, we now have life eternally.  The negative implication of this is that apart from that belief in the Son, catch this, life is not possessed at all.  It may be true that physical life exists apart from Christ.  But this biblical concept of John’s is accurate because such life is only partially realized, in the physical sense only.  If one possesses physical life but lacks spiritual life can one be said to be truly alive?  I don’t think so, and I submit to you that neither did John.

Consider the very beginning of this same letter.  1^st John 1:2 reads: and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us.  John is describing Jesus here.  He calls Him “the eternal life” and he mentions His manifestation, in other words, His incarnation in human flesh to the human parents Joseph and Mary.  And although that manifestation is time bound, Jesus was born, he grew, he died, he lived, his quality of eternal life is not.  He was possessed of this quality prior to being manifested.  So His eternal life cannot be bound up in a chronological time sequence.  John 1:4 echoes this point: In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.  Christ’s quality of being alive was present as a part of His character long before the night He was born in a stable.

What’s my point?  Simply this.  The biblical concept of life, as it applies to Christ, has nothing to do with length of years.  Rather than dealing with the quantity of life possessed, it has the idea of the quality of life that is possessed.  And this is the same quality of life that being granted to us through faith and trust in Him.  It is the same life that John wants us to be absolutely convinced that we now have.

So I think what he is getting at here is the idea that to even be truly alive in the first place you must express belief in the name of the Son of God.  And not only will you be granted life when you do, but that life will be of an eternal, imperishable, undefiled, and vibrant nature.  Reading 1^st John 5:13 as “possess eternal life” rather than “life possess eternal” does not convey this sense nearly as well.  Do you see why it is so important to work hard and study and dig to attempt to ascertain the author’s original intent?

And on that note, I need to side track for a page or two.  I discovered something troubling as I was studying this verse.  All of the major modern English translations of the Bible basically line up with each other on this verse in structure and flow.  All, that is, except for one.  The King James translation is as follows: These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. 

Now compare that with the NASB that I bolded several paragraphs back, or read it in your own Bible, assuming you have a translation other than the KJV.  Do you notice the difference?  There is an entire clause hanging off the end of the KJV that is not present in any other English translation: and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.  Why do the other versions of the Bible not include this crucial piece of information?  Were the modern translators lax in their efforts?  Were they not as thorough as their 17^th century equivalents?

The answer is really quite simple.  That clause at the end of 5:13 in the KJV does not exist in the original text.  It is simply not there.  It was straight up added out of thin air by the team of translators that England’s King James put together to translate the Scriptures.  Now then, is this a huge issue?  Not really, no.  The overall intent of John’s writing is not altered.  In fact, we already know from the aforementioned John 20:31 that he definitely did want us to believe on the name of the Son of God.

But here’s the problem.  That is not what he was trying to accomplish right here, right now, in the 13^th verse of the fifth chapter of the first letter to the church that he wrote.  His purpose for this letter begins and ends through these three verses with confidence.  He had already covered the belief issue with his gospel.  He didn’t need to revisit that topic again.  In fact, I think John’s assumption was that you had already read his gospel and come to faith in Christ.  Otherwise, why in the world would you bother to read a letter about unpacking that faith and relating it to daily living.

And please understand, I am not trying to dump all over the KJV here.  It is a very good word-for-word translation of the original texts.  But no English version of the Bible is perfect because no translation from one language to another is perfect and no team of translators is perfect.  I have yet to find any English Bible that is free from issues of one sort or another.  There are better and worse efforts.  Some are more accurate and others, not so much.  But none of them is a literal rendering of the original text that the Holy Spirit authored through human writers.

Ok then, you might ask, “After jumping the KJV’s case and then rushing to assure me that it’s not alone in its errors, what in the world are you driving at?  Am I supposed to just not trust anything?”  Nothing could be further from my mind.  The English Bibles we have are extraordinarily accurate, especially in light of the translation issues they all face.  I would submit that the more modern versions, such as the ESV and the NASB are better, simply because textual criticism (the science of interpreting dead languages) is more refined today than it was in 1611.  But again, none of them are completely free from issues and the problems with the KJV are not sufficient enough to cause me to not ever use it.

No, my plea is not to turn away from our Bible translations.  Rather, my plea is to be careful, discerning, and studious in your attempt to understand God’s word.  But how can you do that if you don’t know the original languages?  Simple.  Just compare English translations every time you study.  Many web sites are available to help you do this, such as www.biblehub.com.  Look for anomalies.  Watch for sore thumbs and red flags that stand out from the rest.  And when you find them avail yourself of the Internet, your pastor, or other Bible teachers to help you investigate and attempt to get to the bottom of it.

I will not apologize for that intentional rabbit trail because I believe it was important.  But we do need to get back to our text and look at the other aspect of John’s unpacking of confidence; that of assurance.  Verses 14 and 15 read: This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.  And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.

Here we have our word; confidence.  This word is the theme we are looking at today.  So we need to spend a few minutes observing how John uses the word elsewhere to be sure we have a firm grasp on it.  This is not all the occurrences in the New Testament of John using “parrhesia”, but it is enough of them to paint a picture for us.  I will underline the relevant word in each passage:

• John 7:13 – Yet no one was speaking openly of Him for fear of the Jews
• John 7:26 – Look, He is speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to Him.  The rulers do not really know that this is the Christ, do they?
• John 10:24 – The Jews then gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, “How long will You keep us in suspense?  If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
• John 11:14 – So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.”
• John 11:54 – Therefore Jesus no longer continued to walk publicly among the Jews.
• John 16:25 – “These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; an hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the Father.”
• John 16:29 – His disciples said, “Lo, now You are speaking plainly and are not using a figure of speech.”

There are three distinct images of “parrhesia” in these verses: openly, publicly, and plainly.  To exercise “parrhesia” in your actions is to perform them openly.  You are unconcerned about whether anyone observes what you are doing.  Not only that, but it is to do those actions publicly.  You are so committed to your lack of concern for outside opinion that you intentionally place yourself in a visible and public arena so that others may witness your deeds.  And then when the time comes to conduct your business you ensure that it is clear and obvious both what you are doing as well as the why behind it.  “Parrhesia” is nothing less than an unembarrassed and self-assured confidence.

Perhaps the thought on your mind at this point is that this description doesn’t sound very much like the way you conduct yourself in your interactions with other people, let alone your posture before the Lord.  Even the most self-assured among us face the daunting prospect of situations where we lack confidence.  Perhaps for you it’s public speaking.  Or maybe you have a debilitating fear of confrontations.  Possibly you are convinced that you sound less intelligent than others, causing you to shy away from social interactions, tending to stay in your shell rather than risk exposure to perceived embarrassment.  Whatever your hang-up, I can with a high degree of certainty predict that you do have one or more.

Where does my confidence come from?  Further, if I am correct why are we like this?  Why are we cursed with this basic lack of confidence and assurance?  Both questions can be traced to the same source.  It all stems from mankind’s core state of mind in a fallen and corrupted world.  Because of the curse of the fall we are, without exception, shackled by a predilection to shame and embarrassment coupled with uncertainty and fear.

Let’s trace it back to its biblical roots and piece together the image of where our shame comes from and what it looks like from God’s perspective.  Genesis 2:25 tells us that: the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.  Prior to the entrance of sin into the world there was no concept of embarrassment.  There was no understanding of shame.  Some theologians refer to this as the dispensation (a fancy term for age) of innocence.  But have you ever thought about how odd it was for Moses to include this seemingly random detail?  We previously discussed that the Bible contains no accidents and no authorial flights of fancy.  This particular piece of information about Adam’s and Eve’s nakedness is no exception.  Notice the connecting detail in the next chapter.  Verse 7 describes the man and woman’s immediate response to their sin: then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

God is specifically demonstrating a contrast here.  He wants to take a single detail, that of nudity, and display the difference in how man viewed it both pre and post sin.  And in that post sin response we notice an interesting point.  Why would they seek to cover themselves as one of their first actions?  Verse 10 gives us the answer: he said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”

Adam was afraid.  His fear was caused by a previously unknown awareness of his nakedness.  At a primal and perhaps even subconscious level, one of the divinely decreed effects of sin was to be uncomfortable with even the idea of someone else seeing us without clothes on.  This basic premise of the new human condition was placed into the Mosaic Law as well.  In Exodus chapter 20 God is giving Moses instructions about how to properly worship Him.  One of the requirements was that altars to worship Him not be placed on high.  The reason is found in verse 26: “and you shall not go up by steps to My altar, so that your nakedness will not be exposed on it.”  Even with that restriction in place it still was not sufficient for God’s chosen people to be acceptable in His sight.  In Exodus 28 we find instructions for the priestly garments that Aaron and his sons would wear.  Verses 42 and 43 are particularly relevant: You shall make for them linen breeches to cover their bare flesh; they shall reach from the loins even to the thighs.  They shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they enter the tent of meeting, or when they approach the altar to minister in the holy place, so that they do not incur guilt and die. It shall be a statute forever to him and to his descendants after him.

I believe the Scriptures are clear that nakedness and the associated humiliation are a crucial element in our quest to understand where our lack of confidence comes from.  This is only one aspect of shame, but I think it stands as a surrogate representative of the root cause of why we can even experience disgrace in the first place.  The negative connotations associated with nakedness are pervasive and influential.  It is more than merely an embarrassing cultural more taught to us by our parents.  This stigma was put into place by God Himself as a visible and tangible reminder of our rebellious and alienated condition of separation from His perfect holiness.  So I believe, based on Scripture, that inhibitions regarding nudity are hard-wired into our brains.

Now hold on some might say.  What about people around the world who live in nudist colonies, perform nude photo shoots, or otherwise seem to glory and revel in their nakedness.  Frankly, these facts hold no weight with me whatsoever.  It is a solid biblical truth that God’s laws are written onto every human heart (Rom. 2:14-15).  Furthermore, it is clear that apart from God man will, by nature, do everything in his power to suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18).  So I find it to be utterly inconclusive that some folks have trained themselves to ignore the warning bells their consciences are sounding. 

In fact, we all do this exact same thing to some extent, although probably not with nudity. 

But whatever the private sin is that we struggle with, have we not at times trained our consciences to be silent about it?  We know what is a correct course of action yet we blindly and stubbornly choose to go a different direction anyhow.  Further, the more we engage in the binding and gagging of the Holy Spirit does it not become easier and easier to do the same thing the next time?  Of course it does.  No, offering up our modern culture’s infatuation with sex and nakedness as supposed proof of the Bible’s irrelevance is no proof at all of anything.

Now, with all that in mind, consider for a moment what it would be like to actually be free from humiliation, from disgrace, and from dishonor.  Can you imagine how it will feel to have that veil or barrier of shame finally removed from your relationship with God?  Would it not make a massive difference in your attitude toward Him to be completely unafraid, unashamed, and unembarrassed in His presence?  Does it make you long for your heavenly glorification in the presence of the Lord?

If it does, then you have misunderstood John’s point in this verse.  Because that is not what he is saying.  John used the present active form of “echo”, or to possess, to describe our “parrhesia”, or confidence.  He is not talking about “someday” or “in glory”.  He is literally stating that right here, right now, you own a confidence before God that is open, public, and plain.

I think the obvious question hanging in the air right now is this.  If you lack this confidence.  If you have no idea what John is talking about.  Why?  To attempt to answer that for you without knowing any of the private details of your life let me put it this way.  Based on our study of “parrhesia” earlier, what would it look like for someone to have that level of confidence before God?

First of all, this person would have no need to try to hide any of their activities from God because all of them honor and glorify Him.  In other words, they would be completely transparent about their life.  Second, they would feel no trepidation at allowing anyone else into the privacy of their life to view what they do behind closed doors because their activities in private mirror their activities when others are around.  In other words, they would be very public about their life.  Finally, there would be no need to dance around topics with words, or attempt to side-track conversations to avoid discussing issues, either with themselves as an internal monologue, with the Lord in prayer, or with other people in conversation.

That is what the life would look like of a person who has real confidence before God.  So if you feel that you lack that confidence, examine your life and compare it with what I have just written.  Better yet, match it up against the life of Jesus that we read about earlier.  I have a feeling, if you feel disgrace before your God, your life will reflect the reason why.  And I have a further suspicion that you know exactly what it is that needs to change in order to effect an alteration of your perceived standing before your King.  The question most likely isn’t “what is the problem?”.  Rather, the question is probably “what are you going to do about it?”

Now then, those last few paragraphs are probably enough for you to chew on that I could stop writing right now.  But we haven’t finished our passage yet.  And there is another question that I think leaps out of verse 14.  Namely, how do we know that we are asking things according to God’s will?  This is one of the top questions on people’s minds across Christendom.  Believers typically fret and worry over whether they are truly acting according to the will of God.  They lose sleep over decisions that are coming up or have already been made.  They seek counsel from pastors and teachers, desperate for someone to tell them what to do.

And to everyone who may be struggling with that same dilemma, I have tremendous words of encouragement from Scripture.  The answer to the question of how to know if you are in God’s will or not is actually astoundingly simple.  I will use three passages, all from the gospel of John, to explain.

In the fifth chapter of John, Jesus is explaining His relationship with the Father.  And in verse 30 He says the following: “I can do nothing on My own initiative.  As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”  The key component of Jesus’s ministry, power, and effectiveness was His dogged determination to never seek His own will.  One hundred percent of the time, He was committed exclusively to accomplishing whatever the Father asked of Him.  So the first piece to knowing God’s will is to determine right off the bat whether you are going to follow suit.  Is the will of God truly and honestly what you want most of all?

A while later, in chapter 9, we find a man who had been born blind.  Jesus has healed him and the man is being interrogated by the Jews.  In a delightfully sarcastic response to their repeated stubborn insistence that Jesus could not be from God the man says in verses 30 and 31: “Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes.  We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him.”  Adding onto what we already read in 5:30, we now find that once you set your will to be in submission to God’s greater will, you are absolutely guaranteed beyond question that He will hear you. 

But how do we know if we are truly conforming our wills to His?  Is there any evidence or test we can measure ourselves against to be sure of this?  As a matter of fact, there is.  It is found in John 15:7: “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”  John has made it clear, all the way back in 1^st John 2:6, that if we want to know whether we are abiding in Christ we need to examine whether we are walking in the same manner as He walked.  And now we find the glorious truth that if we are walking like Him, then we know that we are placing the will of God before our own because that is exactly what Jesus did.  And finally, if all that is true so far, then we are guaranteed by nothing less than the promise of Almighty God that He will grant our requests when we speak to Him.

If you have a petition for your God and you want to know if it’s according to His will, don’t look at the request itself.  Examine the rest of your life.  If it matches up with Christ’s life then ask away, and ask that God’s will be accomplished.  In effect, the biblical method to always have your prayers answered and your requests granted is to pray for His exaltation.  He will always give you what you want if what you want is what He wants!

Perhaps that is not the answer you were hoping for.  Maybe you feel that this is rather self-serving of God.  And it is.  But you were not created to satisfy yourself and the Bible was not written to tell you how to accomplish such an aim.  You were created to worship God and the Bible was written to tell you how to accomplish that correctly.

I have one final point to make about this passage.  It is an observation rather than a question.  I find John’s wording in verse 15 fascinating.  He begins with “if we know that God hears us”.  First we must become convinced of our place before Him and that His “ears” are inclined in our direction.  Then we know, it is a guarantee, it is an absolute assurance, that He will grant our request.  And once again John uses our little word “echo” to indicate that God doesn’t just give us what we want.  He makes it so that we possess the petition that we have asked from Him.

This implies that God’s character is such that a petition heard is automatically a petition granted.  There is an obvious flip side to that of course.  God sometimes does not hear.  This is figurative language because God always hears everything.  The point is that God chooses not to hear.  And when He responds in this manner it is because we have not asked according to His will as Jesus did.  So in effect, it is as if He did not hear us.  But if we always ask for everything in the context of whether God wants us to have it or not, then we are guaranteed to always receive what we asked for.

But beyond all that, it is interesting to me that John’s description of God’s character in this verse is such that He automatically grants requests.  What does that say about who He is on a fundamental core level?  I think it communicates to us the reality that God is a god of generosity, of love, of mercy, of tenderness, of compassion.  He delights in giving out wonderful and beautiful and useful and priceless gifts to His children.  In fact, He is of such an incomprehensibly magnanimous nature that He is even pleased to give an absurd level of gifting to those who are in active and open rebellion against Him?  What does this look like?  It looks like all those unrepentant sinners continuing to draw breath every day and enjoying the fruits of their labors.  It looks like God not obliterating them all in an instant with the fiery consuming wrath of His anger.

This piece of who God is causes me to think of James chapter one.  James has just described to us what the process of lust, temptation, sin, and death looks like on a practical level.  And he wants to assure us that this is all of our doing and none of God’s.  So in verses 16 and 17 he writes: Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.  Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

Not some good things.  Not a part of the perfect gifts we receive.  Every. Single. One.  If there is anything good in your life (and we have looked in previous chapters at the truth that all things are for your good if you love God) then it is one hundred percent of the time, totally and completely, without exception, the Lord God who is responsible for giving it to you.  This is an absolutely glorious truth beyond reckoning!  God is so good as to defy human comprehension.  Jeremiah writes in Lamentations 3:22-23: The Lord’s loving kindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. 

The prophet wrote this as he was surveying the utter destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the wholesale enslavement of his countrymen.  How much more then should we, who live lives of such ease and contentment and pleasure, be passionate about glorifying God for His goodness?  John is certainly pushing that angle in these verses.  He expects you to walk away from this letter on cloud 10, reveling in your confidence before the goodness of God and your assurance of a supreme quality of life possessed eternally.  The simple question is; how will you respond today?

God and Evil

God’s relationship to evil is frankly rather frightening, if you are honest enough with yourself to carry certain notions, preconceived or otherwise, to their logical conclusions.  What I mean is this.  It is rather easy to say “God is good” and “Sin is bad”.  It is also quite comfy to belt out the familiar Christian refrain of “God is sovereign”.  But if we are to ever attempt to put all three of those disparate elements together, and if we are serious enough in our attempt to understand the Lord, then we have a terrible philosophical, logical, and theological problem on our hands.  Because if God is good and sovereign, and if sin is bad or evil, then how can God be sovereign over sin yet still be good?  Alternatively, if God is not sovereign over sin and evil then how is He sovereign?

Just to be clear, a lexical definition of sovereign is: supreme in power; possessing supreme dominion; superior to all others.  The word itself implies a complete and total power over all else.  So again, how can God be that in regard to sin, yet not be affected by sin Himself such that He is not also evil?

The way I see it is this.  God is completely and unilaterally sovereign over every living thing.  His sovereignty covers the big picture as well as the microscopic details of life “under the Sun”.  I like Isaiah 46:9-11 to give a picture of God’s umbrella sovereignty: “For I am God, and there is no other; declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure”; calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of My purpose from a far country.  Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass.  I have planned it, surely I will do it.”  For the other end of the spectrum, that of fine details, I think Proverbs 16:33 is supremely powerful in its simplicity: The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.  A lot is essentially an ancient equivalent of modern dice.  So Solomon is telling us that every time the dice are rolled, the pips that come up are determined by God.

Charles Spurgeon said it this way:

I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes – that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens – that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence – the fall of . . . leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.

What is fate? Fate is this – Whatever is, must be. But there is a difference between that and Providence. Providence says, Whatever God ordains, must be; but the wisdom of God never ordains anything without a purpose. Everything in this world is working for some great end. Fate does not say that. . . . There is all the difference between fate and Providence that there is between a man with good eyes and a blind man.

Now then, if all of that is true, then God must be sovereign over death, evil, sin, etc. or He is not fully and completely sovereign.  I believe this is borne out by passages such as Romans 8:20: for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope.  He directly and intentionally placed the entire created order under a curse of vanity, purposelessness, emptiness, unreality, ineffectiveness, and instability as a punishing sentence for Adam’s sin.  In other words, God is the one who introduced evil and corruption into the rest of creation.  What Paul is describing in Romans 8 is not a situation where Adam pulled the cork on a genie bottle, so to speak, and corruption just flooded out into the rest of the world.  God’s decree, because of Adam’s sin, was that the rest of the world would be subjected to death, hopelessness, and futility.  Animals would now eat each other, disease would now run rampant, the whole nine yards.  God caused all that to happen, Paul is saying.  Yet we know that God is good (Hosea 14:9), light (1 John 1:5), and completely separated from sin (Habakkuk 1:13). 

The only possible reconciling of these seemingly competing themes that I can make work in my mind is what I mentioned in the previous post.  First, that God’s perfect justice was being satisfied by doing this.  He as the ultimate arbiter of what is right or wrong, has the complete prerogative to decide what is the best punishment for the clay He has shaped.  This of course was His masterstroke point against Job in the last four chapters of that book.  Second, because God is truly and perfectly good, we can only accurately define evil as being when a creature destroys that which God has created.  We cannot say that God is evil for destroying that which He created.

Yet, we still have a problem.  If God is truly sovereign, and He is, then He is also sovereign over the actions of those creatures that commit the acts of evil that cause destruction to His “property”.  This logically implies that He is in full control of what they do and when they do it.  This does not make Him culpable, however, because each creature is responsible for its own actions (I am particularly fond of the first “song of woe” found in Habakkuk 2:6-8 to convey this point).  Yet at the end of the day, God has permitted those actions to occur.  This, I believe, was the case with Satan and Job.  I find it to be very clear in Job 1:12: Then the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him.”  Then in 2:6 we find: So the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your power, only spare his life.”  I think the implication of this is that God specifically knew exactly what Satan was going to do to Job’s children.  This is why he adds the additional caveat of “spare his life” when it comes to Job himself.  That detail is conspicuously absent from the first chapter’s exchange. 

If we take the approach that Satan went out and did what he did completely outside of God’s allowance it doesn’t work for me.  Because how can God be truly sovereign over something if it transpires outside of His purview, or approval, or whatever word we can think of to attach to it.  Even if God did not commit the killing Himself, He certainly condoned it if for no other reason than His perfect knowledge must have made Him aware of it before Satan did it and He could have stopped him.  The fact that He did not implies that He let it happen with full knowledge, awareness, and even approval.

So God does not commit evil directly.  But I believe Him to be fully in control of it.  Evil dances like a puppet at the end of God’s strings, being used for his purposes as He chooses, in order to increase His own glory.  I have stated it this way in the past: God ordains evil.  I know from experience that that statement causes people’s toes to curl up in their shoes, and I understand that.  But I think if we look at the definition of ordain, it fits.  To ordain something is to order or decree it officially.  I believe that is what God does with evil and even sin, because otherwise I just do not see how He can be sovereign over them.  If that sounds extreme, then consider Jonathan Edwards’s take on this philosophical conundrum.  He articulates it even more bluntly that I am trying to do:

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God's glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all. . . .

Thus it is necessary, that God's awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God's glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.

If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God's holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God's grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired. . . .

So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature's happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect.

Here is John Piper’s attempt to clarify this issue…

What I have seen over 18 years of pastoral ministry and six years of teaching experience before that, is that people who waver with uncertainty over the problem of God's sovereignty in the matter of evil usually do not have a God-entranced world view. For them, now God is sovereign, and now he is not. Now he is in control, and now he is not. Now he is good and reliable when things are going well, and when they go bad, well, maybe he's not. Now he's the supreme authority of the universe, and now he is in the dock with human prosecutors peppering him with demands that he give an account of himself.

But when a person settles it Biblically, intellectually and emotionally, that God has ultimate control of all things, including evil, and that this is gracious and precious beyond words, then a marvelous stability and depth come into that person's life and they develop a "God-entranced world view." When a person believes, with the Heidelberg Catechism (Question 27), that "The almighty and everywhere present power of God . . . upholds heaven and earth, with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all things, come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand" – when a person believes and cherishes that truth, they have the key to a God-entranced world view.

One thing is certain.  This concept of God’s relationship to evil, whichever way you wind up going with it, is neither easy or painless.  To arrive at a logically coherent and Scripturally sound conclusion is to stretch one’s brain far past the breaking point.  My prayer to the Lord this day is that I have represented Him as accurately as I am able to.  Above all else, what I do not want to do is give anyone a distorted view of God.

The Epistles of John, Part 21: On the Witness Stand Part 2

Continuing our exposition of 1^st John 5:6-12 and jumping immediately right back into the text.  John has shown us already the incredible testimonial power of water and blood as they relate to Christ.  These two elements stand as silent testaments to His ministry and work.  They work together as advertisements of God’s favor toward His Perfect Son.  The water at Jesus’s baptism, when the skies opened and the Spirit of God descended like a dove to rest upon Him, immediately catalyzing the testimony of John the Baptist which was borne on the wings of personal prophecy, previously delivered to him by the Holy Spirit.  

And the blood at the follow-up to the crucifixion, when God was pleased to raise His Son from the dead and exalt Him to the highest position over all that exists.  Likewise, the water and blood relate to the Jewish sacrificial system implemented by Moses at God’s command.  Both water and blood held strong cleansing properties and uses for the nation of Israel, causing readers of John’s epistle to immediately grasp the significance of his statement in the very first chapter that the blood of Christ covers our sins.  Furthermore, John is very clear that neither element, water and blood, stand alone as a witness.  They both function together to point the way to Christ as the Son of God and the complete rationality of belief and trust in Him.

We have also seen that the water and the blood are completely useless to us by themselves.  They are truth.  But that truth is meaningless until the Spirit Himself appears and bears witness to their veracity.  When that happens the water and the blood suddenly transform supernaturally into powerful witnesses that join the Spirit in an unceasing trumpet blast and timeless advertisement of the power of Christ to those who are alienated from God.  And these three witnesses do not merely agree with each other.  That is not strong enough of a word for what happens when they come together.  Rather, they merge into a single, harmonious, unified voice of testimony that weaves seamlessly into a coherent argument for and defense of the man Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God.

Finally, we have discussed how every detail of the Bible is of massive and exceeding importance.  Even an innocuous little note from John about blood and water issuing from Jesus’s side, following His death, when He was pierced with a Roman spear.  Such a small thing might be easily glossed over as an extraneous detail or nothing more than a historical fact to lend credibility to the Biblical record.  But as John makes clear, this tiny little aspect of the Crucifixion is so much more and is a part of the foundation of the entire process of redemption itself.  Details are critically important because God is a god of meticulous planning and exacting precision.  He does nothing by accident and the Scriptures are no exception to this.

All of this we have looked at before.  Now we will continue to read and attempt to comprehend John’s argument, starting with verse 9: If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater; for the testimony of God is this, that He has testified concerning His Son.  John is drawing a comparison between competing testimonies in this verse.  This is the Father’s “marturia”, or the testimony that He has given.  His agents, the water, the blood, and the Spirit, are His “martureo” or His witnesses.  Now John is going to inform us more deeply about the “marturia” they have given concerning Jesus.  And in John’s estimation, this testimony is of far greater worth than the testimony of men, for two reasons.

The first reason God’s testimony is greater than man’s is the very existence of the Christ Himself.  There is an implicit assumption of the truth of who Jesus is in John’s statement.  Notice that he says “God has testified concerning His Son.”  A confirmation from God regarding the Son-ship of Jesus must necessarily also confirm the deity of Jesus.  John has already touched on this point with a rhetorical question just a short time ago, in verse 5: Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?  In the Jewish culture of Jesus’s day son-ship was a very special thing.  The son of an official was considered equal in stature to the father, if not equal in authority.  More to the point, the offspring of a ruler was viewed as having the same blood as the father and therefore the same royal essence.  If people were expected to treat the king with reverence and respect you can be sure the same treatment was expected for the prince.

The Jews understood this well, which is why they became so incensed when Jesus claimed that He was God’s Son.  A clear view of this animosity can be seen in John 5:16-18.  Jesus had just healed a man who had been ill for 38 years.  It happened to be on the Sabbath that the healing was performed.  So, the Scripture says: For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.  But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”  For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.

There is an imperial authority inherent in the son of a god that unmistakably trumps the worth and value of the son of merely a man.  Even secular cultures understand this.  Greek mythology, to take one example, is filled with stories about demi-human men such as Hercules and Perseus.  These heroes were the offspring of a union between a male god and a female human.  As such they were endowed with superhuman abilities as well as divine gifts to aid them in their various quests to defeat the forces of evil.  The implication of grandeur over and above ordinary men is clear and unambiguous.  Such a concept is not difficult or troublesome to understand for anyone, and these are fictitious characters.  So when it comes to a divine father and son relationship that is truth rather than fiction it is easily perceived how much worth is to be extended to the son.

The second reason that God’s testimony is greater than man’s is frankly rather shocking.  John says that the reason God’s testimony is greater is that He has testified.  This is what lawyers call a self-authenticating document (in this case a statement).  This is an item of evidence that is admissible in court with no extrinsic evidence of authenticity required.  An example would be a domestic public document that is signed and sealed.  The idea is a bit like saying “the best evidence for the existence of life is that life exists.”

To our overly rational and rabidly proof driven modern western minds this may very well sound like a weak and ineffective argument.  There is no real evidence given.  All that exists is a statement of divine authority.  God says, in effect, My witness trumps your witness simply because I have witnessed.  If we do take issue to such a declaration, we need to understand that our reticence is neither new or noteworthy.  In Exodus chapter 3 Moses has an encounter with a bush on Mount Horeb.  This particular bush was burning with a flame that never consumed it.  It must have been a simply astonishing sight.  Imagine the man’s surprise and amazement when the bush spoke to him.

The voice from within the fire introduced itself in verse 6 in this way: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  Notice that prior to this statement Moses was cautious but apparently unafraid.  Verse 3 records his internal dialogue with himself: “I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.”  There does not appear to be any fear but simply curiosity or fascination.  But after being advised to remove his sandals and being informed of who this really was, Moses immediately changes his attitude in the latter part of verse 6: Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Many of us know the account well.  God gives Moses his mission for the last 40 years of his life, to travel to Egypt, confront the most powerful ruler on the planet with nothing but a staff, and lead an entire nation back to this same mountain so that they might come to know and worship the God of their fathers.

Moses is understandably pole-axed by this assignment.  Everything within him wants to balk and run away.  He responds in verse 13: “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’  Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’  What shall I say to them?”  Do you see what Moses is doing here?  God has already told him who He is.  He clearly identified Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Yet Moses is asking for His name?  He is dithering and avoiding the issue is what he is doing.  He does not want to take on this herculean task.  His flesh is recoiling from the responsibility and is telling him to go find a nice big hole to hide in somewhere, jump in it, and pull the dirt in on top of him.

The particularly relevant point here is God’s immediate response in verse 14.  You probably know the verse well: God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”  God knew exactly what His reluctant servant was attempting to do.  And the perfectly considered response was not to provide logic, rhetoric, evidence or any other such forms of placation to help Moses to feel better.  The Lord simply and with supreme finality affirms that He exists as the best evidence of who He is.  Moses, the offspring of Jacob, Pharaoh, and everyone else under the sun has no need of any further proof of the existence of God.  That God states His existence is enough.

Now to be sure, He goes on to give Moses additional information regarding what to say and how to say it.  He gives him inside information about both what the people are experiencing, what they are pleading for, and prophetic glimpses of what God is planning to do.  But this is all ancillary material.  The manner in which the Almighty chose to shut down the objections of His child was to self-authenticate Himself.

We can see a similar line of reasoning in one of Jesus’s parables; of the rich man and Lazarus.  It is found in Luke chapter 16, verses 19 to 31.  The rich man lived a life of ease and comfort while Lazarus lay outside his gates covered with sores and starving to death.  After both men died, Lazarus was brought to heaven but the rich man was sent to hell.  In his torment the rich man asks for just a drop of water to ease his suffering.  This is refused him.  He then asks that Lazarus be sent back to warn his brothers of their impending doom if they do not change their sinful ways.  It is this conversation in verses 27 to 31 that is pertinent to our point.

And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’  But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’  But he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’”

The point is the same as in the case of Moses and the bush.  Requests for additional evidence are unnecessary.  In fact, they are pointless.  The only reason for a man to ask for more proof from God is to delay the inevitable admission that he does not believe.  And that lack of belief will not be altered by any further show and tell on God’s part.  The reason is quite simple.  God is the one who gives out the capacity for faith, at His whim.  If He has not seen fit to do this for someone then no amount of argumentation on the planet is going to convince them of anything.

The Apostle Paul knew this well, having witnessed it firsthand.  In his first letter to his beloved son in the faith, Timothy, he writes in chapter 1 verses 12 to 14: I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor.  Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus.  It was God’s grace toward Paul that overflowed abundantly and was evidenced by both faith and love.  God was the possessor of these attributes, and He parceled them out to Paul at the time and place of His own choosing, not Paul’s.

A further point to be made about 1^st John 5:9 is this.  Who in their right mind would be such an ignorant buffoon anyway as to believe the testimony of a man over the testimony of God?  Even with sin clouded perception that prevents us from seeing our own faults, it is immediately apparent to any sane human being that other human beings are unreliable at best and untrustworthy at worst.  Give a newborn baby with siblings just a few months of life.  Even before they can walk or talk they can see and assess that their brothers or sisters are looking out for their own interests, and when those interests run contrary to the interests of their younger brother there is blood to be paid, in intent if nothing else.  Solomon saw this and wrote about it in Proverbs 22:15 when he said “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.”

We see the reality of man’s sick, twisted, and fallen nature all around us.  A recent Open Doors story highlighted the experiences of a young girl from Uganda named Susan.  She was born into a Muslim family.  But after hearing the gospel she placed her faith and trust in Jesus for her salvation.  Susan's father, enraged about this, locked her in a room with a mattress and told her she could not leave the mattress until she was ready to renounce Jesus.  Then he left.  He did not return for three months.  Susan only survived through the help of her brother who slid food and dug channels of water under the door for her.  She was finally freed through the intervention of neighbors.

The point is this.  If even one’s own family members, given the right circumstances and motivations, cannot be trusted, then how much warier should we be of everyone else on the planet?  Are they not more to be distrusted than our “loved ones”?  King David, a man who knew painfully well the betrayal of those closest to him, wrote the following in Psalm 41:9: Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.  Such experiences prompted the king to write Psalm 118, verses 8-9: It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.  It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.

Such is the madness of the human race contaminated with sin and determined to pursue unrighteousness at all costs that we would go against our own common sense and the evidence right in front of our faces to pursue anything and everything other than God.

Continuing on with 1^st John chapter 5, we come to verse 10: The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son.

This is a fascinating verse.  We can see once again John bringing out the point of testimonies, or “marturio”.  God has given us witnesses who proclaim the deity of Jesus as the Son of God.  Their proclamation stands as a written confirmation of this truth, existing long after the events that inspired them.  This we already know.  But now John ups the ante by explaining that when we come to believe in what the witnesses claim, we take the testimony into ourselves.

This is an important point and we dare not miss it.  The Greek for “has” in this verse is “echo”.  It is one of the three words we examined at the beginning of this passage.  It means to have, to hold, or to possess.  It is a common word with over 500 occurrences in the New Testament.  In 1^st John alone “echo” shows up 23 times.  Because of that we have looked at it before in this series.  But I want to focus in on it again because it lends a very specific and powerful point to what John is saying.

To “echo” something is to possess it.  It is to gain and/or hold ownership of it.  It is the eternal inheritance “have” of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”  It is the marriage union “has” of John 3:29: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made full.”  And it is the divine character “has” and “have” of John 5:26: “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.”

This is the way John uses “echo” in his writings.  And it should tell us something about his meaning here in 1^st John.  He chose the present active form of the word to express his thought in verse 10.  This means that when we are granted the gift of faith and are persuaded to put our trust in Christ it constitutes an immediate and present possession of the testimony about Him.  In other words, we enter into, with our bodies, minds, and lives the multi-faceted witnessing testimony of Jesus that God has orchestrated.  We become a part of the testimony by owning it within ourselves.

But what exactly is this testimony that we come to possess?  John tells us, but he does it down in verse 11.  So I’m going to skip around a bit in order to flesh this out.  Verse 11 reads: And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.  The witness we are expected to give to the world stems from the foundation of the life we have been given in Christ.  It is a gift of matchless splendor, awe-inspiring benefits, and unfading glory. 

Peter spoke of it this way in 1^st Peter 1:3-4: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. 

Here’s the thing.  John has already specified exactly what our Christian conduct should look like.  We should walk as Jesus walked (1 Jn. 2:6).  We should hate the world system and the “stuff” in it (1 Jn. 2:15).  We should love one another unto poverty and even death (1 Jn. 3:11, 16-17).  And we should carefully guard against all false teachers who have forsaken the truth of Scripture (1 Jn. 4:1).  In other words, our pursuit of Christ should be a total body, total lifestyle, total energy, all-in commitment.

But even if John hadn’t written any of those things.  Just by considering the extent of the inheritance we have been granted that Peter speaks of in his letter, should we not be driven to heights of joy, gratitude, and passion?  Should not our zealous desire to love our God back, as much as we possibly can, so as to in some small way measure up to the love which He has granted to us, overwhelm our senses and all other concerns in life?  Shouldn’t our personal testimony be absolutely drenched and dripping with a soul encompassing satisfaction in God and God alone?  I think it should and I think John would agree if he were in the flesh with us.

Now then, let’s back up a moment to what we read in verse 10 and ask a question.  Namely, what does all of this business about eternal witnesses and possession of the testimony actually mean to you on a daily basis?  To answer that I would like you to consider the following.  This conduct I’m talking about is not about you alone.  Your reputation is not all that is at stake.  In Christian circles we often state that God’s reputation is also on the line.  And that is true.  But I think what John is getting at here is a fuller and deeper exploration of that theme.  Rather than simply tossing a blanket “God’s reputation” he is explaining in detail how thousands of years, hundreds of prophecies, and the perfect unified fulfillment of those prophecies alongside the infinite Spirit of God have come together to coalesce in the man, Jesus, who is the Christ of God.  Furthermore, every single person since the day of Pentecost who has placed their faith and trust in this Christ has joined the harmony being sung by the witnesses who came before them.

That is the living organism of the church that you have entered into if you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  Is it any wonder then that the author of Hebrews phrases his point at the beginning of chapter 12 like this: Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us?  Because of this great cloud or living organism we have been joined to, we have absolutely no excuse for apathy, debilitating sorrow, or fleshly pursuits.  You had better believe it’s not all about you.  That is a massive understatement!

And we are still not done on this point.  Because even though each individual Christian is only one tiny piece of a larger whole, one individual cog in a labyrinthine system of gears, one unique witness amongst thousands or hundreds of thousands.  Even though all that is true, yet at the same time there is a delightful importance to every one of us as well.  We are sons and daughters of the king (2 Cor. 6:18)!  We are a royal priesthood of believers (1 Pet. 2:9)!  We are the saints of the living God (Acts 9:13)!  We will rule and reign with Christ on high, judging angels and nations (Rev. 5:10; 1 Cor. 6:3)!

All of this presents to the Christian an incredible dichotomy of understanding in which we are at once humble yet exalted.  We are both insignificant and majestic at the same time.  Reflecting on these truths causes me to echo the prophet Isaiah in 55:8-9 when he wrote: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.  “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”  Hundreds of years later Paul was similarly awestruck by the revelation he had been given.  In Romans 11:33 he wrote: Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!  Truly these writers of Scripture had the right of it.

However, there is a terrifying flip side to this coin.  The witnesses that God has put in place are eternal witnesses.  As we have seen, they consist of the undying and unchanging Holy Spirit and the unalterable historical events of the water and the blood as well as the historical record of Christian belief that has come down to us through the centuries.  Because all these elements testify eternally of the truth of Christ, when that truth is rejected, the effect is a continual, unceasing statement of belief that God is a liar.  This is why John uses the perfect tense of both “poieo”, or to make and “martureo”, or to bear witness.  He wants us to understand the weight of seriousness attached to the concept of disbelieving the testimony God has given us.

Think of it.  Every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year of every decade.  The life of a man or woman who rejects the testimony that God has given concerning His Son stands as a blazing beacon of offense, slander, and opposition to God.  Our culture would have us believe that God is a god to be scorned for His judgment.  They would teach our children that truth comes from within them and no one, not any other human being or even a god in the heavens, has the right to tell them differently.  But the reality is that God’s grievance against humanity surpasses our ability to comprehend such things.

We must endeavor to wrap our minds around the enormity of transgression that God has endured at the hands of sinful men.  Otherwise, when we come to a passage such as Deuteronomy 20:16-18 we will not be able to deal with or understand the rationale behind such a seemingly murderous rampage: Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.  But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the Lord your God.

Of course it goes without saying that any judgment which falls upon mankind here on earth pales in comparison to what awaits the unbeliever who dies in their hatred of God.  And on that note, John closes this passage of Scripture with verse 12: He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.  The opposite or absence of life is obviously death.  This is the prescription and prognosis for all those who do not possess the Son of God.  Wait a minute; what?  Possess the Son of God?  Doesn’t that sound a little… sacrilegious?  It may sound that way but I urge you to think again on John’s usage pattern of “echo”, the word he uses once more to indicate our relationship with the Son and the life.

John very clearly uses “echo” in the sense of ownership or possession.  We have already looked at this.  But here in verse 12 when it is applied to the Son, what does that look like?  How are we to understand this idea of possession or ownership when it is applied to God?  The first thing to wrap our minds around is that this is not the same as going down to the corner grocery store, choosing of our own volition an item, purchasing it with money, and thus coming into possession of it.  If we attempted to apply that paradigm to God it very much would be sacrilege.

Rather, it must be understood that whatever form this “having the Son” takes it is completely and totally done at His own motivation, not ours.  Titus 3:4-6 is instructive here: But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.  At God’s own choosing and at God’s own timing and at God’s own good pleasure He did this for us.  He washed us clean with the baptism of the Holy Spirit which was poured on us through Christ.

Understand that this idea of pouring is to be seen as not just a small trickle or even a controlled and measured flow.  It is an overwhelming flood of whatever is being poured.  In Matthew 9:17 Jesus is teaching.  He is describing a believer’s new relationship with Him and how it differs from the Law of Moses.  To accomplish this, He uses a parable of wine and wineskins, as follows: Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined.  The pouring of the wine out of the split wineskins is nothing less than an eruption of liquid that spews out and drenches whatever it falls upon.

So it is with the Christian when God saves them.  He drenches them with the Holy Spirit through the atonement of Christ.  What is drenched in this way is forever changed.  The “liquid” in the metaphor soaks into clothing, pores, hair, eyes, and mouth.  Even after being cleaned up the shirt is probably stained and the alcohol has been ingested to some degree into the person’s digestive system where it is processed and very literally becomes a part of them.

That is the picture I think John is giving us here of the “possession” of the Son and the life.  It is essentially the same kind of image we see from Jesus Himself in His high priestly prayer.  John 17:22-23 reads: The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.  There is an incomprehensible unity and oneness between the believer and his Christ that defies logic and explanation.  Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5 that the marriage relationship images this union in part.  And in God’s design of biblical marriage no human relationship is as close and intimate as that one.  But even with that metaphor in our minds we still come up short in attempting to provide a bonafide logical explanation for what Jesus is talking about.

So I don’t claim to have an inside track on exactly how this unity works.  But I think John is adding to our understanding here in 1^st John by referring to it as a possession or an ownership.  It is at God’s whim yes.  But once He has chosen us we are bonded to the tri-une God with an adhesive more powerful than anything else in the universe. 

This should at the very least cause us to stop and re-evaluate our Christian conduct and character.  This salvation we have entered into, this faith in the Christ, this belief and trust in Jesus of Nazareth, is not, to use a crude phrase, a “one-night stand”.  I am afraid many Christians view it that way.  They are oblivious to the reality of what they have entered into when they became a follower of Christ.  They think of Christianity as something they did, rather than something they do.  They perceive it as an event that occurred in their past rather than an ever present all-encompassing all-consuming daily reality.  They think of darkening the doors of a church as the extent of their current investment in Christ.  They view the passionate zeal that we see in Scripture as something reserved for the clergy. 

Is what I have just written true of you?  Ray Vanderlaan, a Jewish historian and Bible teacher, puts it this way.  In the first century, when someone was chosen as the disciple of a Rabbi, that young man was required to demonstrate a hunger to be like their master in every way.  The student had to watch how the teacher walked, how he ate, how he studied, how he taught.  They had to want to be like their Rabbi more badly than anything else in the world.  How badly do you want to be like your Rabbi?  The truth of the multi-faceted and eternal testimony we have been ushered into should cause us to look beyond and outside of ourselves to our divine Rabbi Jesus rather than within to our own pitiful broken souls.  And the wonder of it all should cause us to overflow with love and devotion and passion for the God who made it possible for us to follow Him.