1 John 4-5: Know that you know that you know

We read 1 John 4–5 and lay out why Christian faith can hold real certainty about God’s love, Jesus’ identity, and eternal life. We talk about testing spiritual claims, defining love the way Scripture defines it, and holding truth and obedience together without losing compassion. 

• John’s purpose of assurance for believers 
• testing the spirits by what they confess about Jesus Christ 
• God’s love shown through Jesus as atoning sacrifice 
• love for fellow Christians as a real-life test 
• perfect love driving out fear and punishment 
• faith that conquers the world 
• God’s testimony about the Son and the promise of eternal life 
• confidence in prayer according to God’s will 
• love and obedience as inseparable 
• guarding ourselves from idols 

Go back and read it again anytime you need reassurance. Hear it, love it, live it. 

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Assurance Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hey, welcome to the Out Loud Bible Project Podcast. This is Mike. We're reading the letter of 1 John. This is John the Apostle, one of Jesus' best friends, and he's writing this letter as an overseer of a region of churches to help these new and veteran believers to be assured of their faith, to be assured of their salvation. This assurance is a common theme here. Even today, we're going to read just the final two chapters, but we're going to talk about being able to test the spirits, the things that say they're of God. How can we be assured that they're really of God? And how can we be assured that God loves us? And how can we be assured that someone who says they love God truly does? We're talking about the testimony about the Son. How can we be sure that Jesus is who he says he is, which is John's point of his whole gospel of John, as we read recently. And how can we be assured of eternal life? I'll tell you what, being a Christian, it doesn't have to involve like this doubt of like, oh, am I a Christian? I don't know. Like there are significantly large sects of Christians, denominations, and practices that carry with them this twinge of, or or more than a twinge, maybe just a full-on doubt of, oh man, well, I can I go to am I gonna go to heaven? I don't know. Well, let's do enough things, let's make sure. No, we don't. That's not the faith that we live. Our faith can be a faith of certainty. And I know faith requires, by definition, some level of uncertainty, but that uncertainty is not about can I be saved? Do I have God's love? Do I have God's approval? Am I going to heaven? Not that. There's no uncertainty there. We can be assured of those things. That's what this letter is here for. The uncertainty of faith is regards to, well, I don't know how it's exactly going to turn out. I don't know if God is going to do exactly what I want him to do or hope he'll do. I don't know if it's going to work out, but I'm going to take steps of faith to trust him anyway. That's faith. That's the uncertainty of faith. But we have a whole lot of certainty and assurance regarding our faith in Christ that John is highlighting here today. So let's check out 1 John 4 through 5 in the New English Translation. Dear friends, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they're from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. You want assurance? Here you go. Every spirit that confesses Jesus as the Christ who has come in the flesh is from God. But every spirit that refuses to confess Jesus, that spirit's not from God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming and now is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and have conquered them because the one who is in you is greater than the one who's in the world. They are from the world, therefore they speak from the world's perspective, and the world listens to them. We are from God. The person who knows God listens to us, but whoever's not from God doesn't listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit. Dear friends, let's love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. The person that doesn't love doesn't know God, because God is love. By this the love of God is revealed in us, that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time, and if we love another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we reside in God and He in us, in that He has given us of His Spirit, and we've seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him, and he in God, and we have come to know and believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God and God resides in him. By this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world. There's no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love. We love because he loved us first. If anyone says, I love God and yet hates his fellow Christian, he's a liar. Because the one who doesn't love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he's not seen. And the commandment we have from him is this that the one who loves God should love his fellow Christian too. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been fathered by God, and everyone who loves the Father loves the child fathered by him. And by this we know that we love the children of God. Whenever we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments don't weigh us down, because everyone who has been fathered by God conquers the world. This is the conquering power that has conquered the world, our faith. Now, who is the person who has conquered the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Jesus Christ is the one who came by water and blood, not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are in agreement. If we accept the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater because this is the testimony of God that he has testified concerning his son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. The one who doesn't believe God has made him a liar because he's not believed in the testimony that God has testified concerning his son. And this is the testimony. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his son. The one who has the Son has this eternal life. The one who doesn't have the Son of God doesn't have this eternal life. I've written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have before him, that whenever we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in regard to whatever we ask, then we know that we have the requests that we have asked from him. If anyone sees his fellow Christian committing a sin not resulting in death, he should ask, and God will grant life to the person who commits a sin not resulting in death. Now there is a sin resulting in death, and I don't say that he should ask about that. All unrighteousness is sin. But there is sin not resulting in death. We know that everyone fathered by God doesn't sin, but God protects the one he has fathered, and the evil one can't touch him. We know that we're from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one, and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us insight to know him who is true, and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This one is the true God and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols. And it ends right there. Did you catch how many times John wrote the word no KNOW that you can know, or by this we know, or the confidence, this is the confidence that we have, or assurance, we have this assurance, a lot of colons after these, and and by this we know, or this is the assurance we have, or and this therefore is how that's true. There's so many assurances in this book. And what does it boil down to? Often it boils down to love. Look for the love, because God is love. Now, I'll tell you what, our culture has its own definitions of what love is or what love should look like or should be. We're not saying that anytime someone says love, then there's God. No, no, that's Satan is uh is clever enough to to muddy the waters a little bit, so that even talking about love, we may be talking about two different things or more. But John gives us a definition of love that we can be assured of. Chapter 5, verses 2 and 3. He says, By this we know that we love the children of God. Whenever we love God and obey his commandments, for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. Loving God and obeying God's commandments cannot be separated. You do not get to have love without obeying God and obeying his word. That is the problem that we see in our culture today. People want to love, people appeal to love, people ask for love, but they don't want the obedience to God and his scriptures and his commandments. That's the problem we face. And if we are truly children of God, we really need to handle both. They feel like opposites, but their attention we need to manage both truth and love. We can't just go around bopping people with Bible verses and telling them that they're, you know, and just being ultimately hateful to them, being cruel to them, but technically we're not wrong because we have the truth. Now that's not loving. But we can't also just uh lean so heavily on love that we just kind of brush aside the uncomfortable bits of scripture and the uncomfortable commandments of the truth. No. Study the life of Jesus. Go back to read the Gospel of John if you want. See how he interacts with with the woman at the well in John chapter 4. See grace and truth, love and obedience go hand in hand, and that is the spirit in which we are to go out into the world. That is the power we have through faith to go live like Jesus in the world. And you can be assured that you love him and that he loves you, and that as you go forward in love, that we can see Jesus transform more lives through the testimony that we carry. That's the Thinking Out Loud thought for the day. I hope you enjoyed the book of 1 John. It's uh it's a short read. I'd go back and read it again. Read it through and through. As long as you need more reassurances of your faith and your love and God's love, go ahead. Read the book. Do what it says. Hear it, love it, live it. That's Out Loud Bible. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time.