SS07-11-04

STUDY THEME: THAT’S ENCOURAGING. 7-11-04

“ENCOURAGED BY SURE SALVATION”

1 JOHN 3: 23-24; 1 JOHN 5:1-2, 3-5, 9-10, 11-13, 18-19.

PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO 1 JOHN 3.

As we continue our study of things that “Are Encouraging” we find a topic in 1 John that Baptist call “The Perseverance of the Saints.”

Concerning this the New Hampshire Confession of Faith says, “We believe that such only are real believers as endure unto the end; that this persevering attachment to Christ is the grand mark which distinguishes them from superficial professors; that a special Providence watches over their welfare; and that they are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.”

In 2000 the Baptist Faith and Message Study Committee, chaired by Adrian Rodgers, simplified this by writing under God’s purpose of grace the following: “All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by his Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end. Believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation, whereas they grieve the Spirit, impair their graces and comforts, and bring reproach on the cause of Christ and temporal judgment on themselves; yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.”

Dr. Holcomb, professor at O.B.U, while interim pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church taught that, “Faith that fizzles at the finish was faulty at the first.”

In John 8:31 Jesus said, “If you obey my teaching, you are really my disciples.” He repeated this in 1 John 3:23-24.

1. PLEASE READ 1 JOHN 3: 23-24.

Vs. 23 begins with two of the main threads that run through the letter: believe on the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ and love one another. John called these words his commandment.

On Paul’s second missionary journey, in Philippi he and Silas were beaten and imprisoned. When they were released by an earthquake they were asked by the jailer, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved---you and your family.”

Paul wrote in Ephesians 2: 8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

One of the evidences of trusting in Christ for salvation is to love one another. Jesus Him self had commanded this in John 13: 34: “I give you a new commandment: that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” Those whose hearts are set ablaze with trust in the loving Savior will automatically overflow in love for others who trust and love Him. The only way to become children of the Heavenly Father is through faith: therefore, it follows that all the children in this great family will love their sisters and brothers, even as they love their Father.

A believer who keeps or obeys the commandments “abides in Him, and He in him.” They abide in Christ as the branches abide in the vine. John 15:1-10 elaborates on this point. One evidence of abiding in Christ is obedience to His commands. Bearing the fruit of obedience does not save people: however, bearing the fruit of obedience is evidence of the life-giving relationship of abiding in Christ. This is an important point in this lesson. We are not saved by obedience but by knowing the One who gave Himself for us. However, our obedience confirms the relationship.

Three groups can be identified. A large number of people think that living a good life can save them,. They think they can obey God’s laws in their own strength. They are wrong. Only by God’s grace can anyone be saved. Then obedience is possible.

Among those who are called believers are real and spurious; ---It was always so. There is a believing that does not attain to the quality of saving faith.

When Jesus first appeared in Jerusalem, prior to His conversation with Nicodemus, there were certain persons who, seeing His miracles, were eager to be reckoned as believers in Him; but Jesus did not trust them, knowing what was in the human heart. They were not saints. Judas was counted among the inner circle of believers; but his believing was inadequate, and his discipleship was proved at length to be spurious. He was not a saint.

All sincere, born again followers of Christ are saints. The title “Saint” may not be applied to those whose believing is shallow, and who cannot endure the test of the years and of trial. The change in them has been external and superficial. They are not ‘new creatures.” They do not persevere in the way of life because they have never entered it. The real believer is like the stream that flows from a living fountain. The spurious believer is like the flow of water from an overturned cup.

Another group thinks they can ensure themselves a place in heaven by professing faith, but they fail to do God’s will. When faith is real, people should publicly profess it. However, Jesus condemned those whose profession of faith does not lead to an obedient life. Jesus said in Matt. 7:21 “Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”

This test is complete only when the end of life has been reached. The anchor chain has been fully tested. The Christian believer has not given full proof of the reality of his faith until that faith has been put to the test in youth and in old age, in the beginning of the way and, at the end of the way, as well as all the way along. Or a man may be self-deceived; he has been lulled into a false security.

The third group are genuine believers who show by their obedience that they have a right relation with the Lord. Obedience is the fruit, not the root, of a saving relation with the Lord. The test of the reality of a believer is endurance to the end. The believer must endure the strain of this life’s test not in the first year only, or the second, or the third, or any succession of years short of all; he must endure the test unto the end.

Perseverance to the end is the only sufficient test. The real and the superficial believer may have many things in common: Just as the wheat and the tares in Jesus parable. It is what they are at the end of the way, which determines that one shall go to the granary and the other to the consuming fire.

The key word throughout 1 John is the word “know.” John affirms that we can know that we are saved. But how? John answers that question in vs. 24. We know we have salvation because God has given us His Spirit. Romans 8:9 says “whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.” In vs, 14 Paul continues, “Those who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons.” In Rom. 8: 16 he wrote, “The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children.” In actual practice, abiding in Christ is the same reality as living with His Spirit within us, and guiding us.

There were many spirits. How can Christians discern when, someone is led by the Holy Spirit? Gal. 5: 19-23 says “when the Spirit is within, a person’s life resembles the life of Jesus by bearing the fruits of the Spirit, not by doing the works of the flesh.”

PLEASE TURN TO 1 JOHN 5.

2. PLEASE READ 1 JOHN 5: 1-2.

We know that we have salvation because we obey His commands. Notice that John placed this discussion in a family setting. How can we really love God? By keeping His commandments. In 1 John 5: 1 faith means complete reliance on someone. The Christian gospel invites people to depend solely on Jesus the Messiah. Jesus is the One the Scriptures said would come: As the unique Son of God, He opened the way for others to be born of God and to become part of the divine family.

In ancient times anyone outside the family who loved the parent naturally also loves his child. How could someone truly love “Mr. and Mrs. Jones” without loving their children? They are all part of the same unit. In the same way, how could someone love God and at the same time not love God’s children. And this love we have for God and His people comes from God. 1 John 4:21 says, “We have this command from Him: the one who loves God must also love His children.” Like God, we are to do good to other persons by choice, regardless of our feelings or what they deserve.

3. Please read 1 John 5: 3-5.

In vs. 3 John again reverts to the idea, which is never far from the surface of his mind and the center of his thinking. Obedience is the only proof of love. We cannot prove our love for anyone in any other way than by seeking to please him and to bring him joy. Love can be exemplified only in obedience.

Then John says quite suddenly a most surprising thing, God’s commandments, he says are not heavy. Now he certainly does not mean that obedience to God’s commandments is easy to achieve. Christian love is no easy matter.

True there is no doubt that John is remembering that Jesus said in Matt. 11:30 “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” How can it be said that the tremendous commands and demands of Jesus are not a heavy burden on any man?

1). It is the way of God never to lay a commandment on any man without also giving him the strength to carry it out. With the vision comes the power. With the need for it, there comes the strength.

2) Our whole response to God must be the response of love; and for love no duty is too hard and no task is too great. Christ’s commandments are no burden, they are a privilege; to have to carry them is an opportunity to show our love.

There is something in the Christian that makes him able to conquer the world. That is the world apart and in opposition to God: The world which tries to make us forget God, and to abandon the standards of God. That which enables us to conquer that world is faith. That faith is the belief that Jesus is the Son of God.

If we believe in the incarnation, it means that we believe that in Jesus Christ God entered the world and took our human life upon Himself. If God did that it means that God shares in all the manifold activities of human life and is involved in the human situation; it means that God is in this business of living along with us. If we believe in the incarnation we have the continual presence of God in Jesus Christ. We have strength to endure the attacks of the world. We have the indestructible hope of final victory. We have with us forever Christ the Victor: To give us the victory.

4. PLEASE READ 1 JOHN 5: 9-10.

Behind this passage are two basic ideas. 1) There is the O.T. idea of what constitutes an adequate witness. Deut. 19: 15 says, “One witness shall not rise against a man concerning an iniquity or sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established.” A triple human witness is enough to establish any fact. How much more must a triple divine witness, the witness of the Spirit, the water, and the blood, be regarded as convincing?

Second, the idea of witness is an integral part of John’s thought. In the gospel, we find many witnesses all conveying of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist is a witness to Jesus. Jesus deeds witness to Him. The Father who sent Him is a witness to Him. The Holy Spirit is a witness to Him. It is John’s argument that all these witnesses converge on Jesus Christ.

John goes on to use a phrase, which is a favorite phrase of his in His gospel. He speaks of the man who “believes in the Son of God.” To believe in Jesus Christ is not simply to accept what He says is true; it is to commit all life into His hands and into His direction; it is to place ourselves in His hands in time and eternity.

It is the Holy Spirit that assures the man that he is right to make this act of commitment to Christ.

The man who refuses to do that is refusing the prompting of the Holy Spirit within his heart. He is refusing to listen to the messenger of God.

If he refuses to accept the many witnesses of Christ, then in effect what he is doing is that he is calling God a liar; he is placing no belief in the witness of God---and that is a blasphemy beyond which blasphemy can hardly go.

5. PLEASE READ 1 JOHN 5: 11-13.

With this paragraph the letter proper comes to an end, and what follows is in the nature of a postscript or addition. And the letter ends with a statement of the very essence of the Christian life. The essence of the Christian life is eternal life. What, then, is eternal life, and what are its gifts and characteristics?

The word eternal means far more than simply lasting forever. A life, which lasts forever might well, be a curse and not a blessing, an intolerable burden and not a shining gift. In the real sense of the term it is God alone who possesses and who inhabits eternity. Eternal life is, therefore, nothing other than the life of God Himself. What we are promised is that here and now there can be given to us a share in the very life of God Himself.

In God there is peace, and therefore, eternal life means serenity. It means a life liberated from the fears, which haunt the human situation. In God there is power, and therefore, eternal life means the defeat of frustration. It means a life filled with the power which is the power of God, and which is, therefore, a life victorious over circumstance.

In God there is holiness, and therefore, eternal life means the defeat of sin. It means a life clad with the purity, which is the purity of God, and armed with a defense against the soiling infections of the world. In God there is love, and, therefore, eternal life means the end of bitterness and Hatred. It means a life, which has the love of God in its heart, and the undefeatable love of man in all its feelings and in all its actions. In God there is life, and therefore eternal life means the defeat of death. It means a life, which is indestructible, because it has in it the indestructible life of God Himself.

It is John’s conviction that such a life comes through Jesus Christ and in no other way. Why should that be? If eternal life is the life of God, it means that we can only possess that life when we know God, and when we are enabled to approach God, and to rest in Him. We can only do these two things in Jesus Christ. The Son alone fully knows the Father, and, therefore, only Jesus Christ can fully reveal to us what God is like.

As John had it in his gospel in John 1: 18 “No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” And Jesus Christ alone can bring us into the presence of God. It is in Him that there is open to us the new and living way into the presence of God. We may take a simple analogy. If we wish to meet someone who we do not know, and who moves in a completely different circle from the circle in which we ourselves move, we can only achieve that meeting by finding someone who knows that person, and who is willing to introduce us to him. That is what Jesus does for us in regard to God. Eternal life is the life of God; and we can only find that life through Jesus Christ.

PLEASE MOVE DOWN TO 1 JOHN 5: 18-19.

6. PLEASE READ 1 JOHN 5: 18-19.

John draws to the end of his letter with a statement of the threefold Christian certainty.

The Christian is emancipated from the power of sin. We must be careful to see what this means. It does not mean that the Christian never sins in actual fact; but it does mean that he is not the helpless slave and victim of sin. A child of God may sin, but his normal condition is resistance to evil.

If John had been referring to a single sin, he would have been claiming that true children of God are perfect---without any sin of any kind. If John had been referring to living in sin as a way of life, he was saying that while Christians are not yet perfect they do not live a sinful life. The latter view is consistent with the rest of 1 John and the entire N.T.

In vs. 18 John gave another testimony, another evidence of how God’s children may have assurance of their salvation. They have the marks of a changed life.

The last part of vs. 18 has a translation issue. In Greek there is only one letter difference between the words himself and him, but that slight difference results in two different meanings. The King James Version reads, “he that is begotten of God keepeth himself.” This translation assumes John meant “a child of God keeps himself living for Christ.”

The NIV reads, “God’s own son protects them.” This meaning is that Christ keeps one of His own. Actually, both meanings are taught elsewhere in Scripture. The first is the doctrine of the “perseverance of the saints.” The second can be called the preservation of the saints. True believers persevere because the Lord preserves them.

The last part of vs. 18 does not meant that a believer will not experience satanic attacks. Paul had instructed the Ephesian Christians in Eph. 6:11 to “put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the Devil.” Those who have taken shelter in Christ can have absolute confidence that those whom He has saved He also keeps—forever.

Whether we speak of perseverance of the saints, or preservation of the saints by the Lord, neither leads to presumption. Presumption is false confidence that we can live as we please and God will not punish us.

The pagan world was utterly defeated by sin. But the Christian is the man who has never lost, and never can lose, the battle. Because he is a man, he will sin; but he never can be conscious of the utter moral defeatedness of the pagan.

The reason of the Christian’s ultimate undefeatedness is that He who has His birth from God keeps him. That is to say, Jesus keeps him. The Christian has an active enemy, but he has also a watchful guardian. The heathen is the man who has been defeated by sin, and who has accepted defeat. The Christian is the man who may sin, but who never accepts the fact of defeat. “A saint,” as someone has said, “is not a man who never falls; he is a man who gets up and goes on every time he falls.

The Christian is on the side of God against the world. The source of our being is God, but the world lies in the power of the Evil One. In the early days the cleavage between the Church and the world was much clearer than it is now. Nowadays, at least in the Western world, we live in a civilization that is permeated by Christian principles. Even if men do not practice them, they accept the ideals of chastity, mercy, service and love.

But the ancient world knew nothing of chastity, and little of mercy, and of service and of love. John says that the Christian knows that he is with God, while the world is in the grip of the Evil One. No matter how the situation may have changed, there remains the necessity of a clear-cut choice. The choice still confronts men whether they will align themselves with God, or with the forces, which are against God.

Perseverance of the saints is based on the preservation of the saints by God’s grace and power.

St. Benedict Catholic Church advertised people would be welcome to attend a meeting where they would explain the doctrines of their church. One part of the explanation was how one became a saint. A lady who had been dead for 200 years was declared a saint during the service because of the good things she had done. My friend, in visiting with the priest, pointed out that he was a saint. The priest exclaimed, “You are a Baptist.” You are not a saint, you folks merely declare yourself saints. My friend still contents he became a saint when he became a child of God.

I trust in times of temptation that God will call to mind your sainthood that you may withstand the temptation. True faith doesn’t lead to sinful living: rather, assurance of salvation motivates our best as we live in faith and hope. The assurance that we will be like Jesus does not lead to presuming we will be saved not matter how we live. Instead, it calls us to become like Him now.

Those who have been born anew do not live a sinful life. Those who have been born anew, persevere in faith, because, they are preserved by Christ. Perseverance is based on preservation, but it does not lead to presumption. Christ has promised to keep from satanic injury, all who have been born again.

The four marks of persons who are genuine Christians are 1). They obey divine commandments, 2) they show they are God’s children by loving one another, 3) they know they have eternal life because they have committed themselves to Jesus Christ, and 4) as children of God, they persevere in a transformed life by the preserving power of Christ.

NEXT SUNDAY FROM NEHEMIAH WE ARE “ENCOURAGED BY REDEMPTIVE USEFULNESS.’ A.V. DAUGHERTY >altav@swbell.net