Do You Know Him? (1 John 2:3-6)

What does it mean to truly know God? In this powerful exploration of 1 John 2:3-6, we confront the ultimate test of authentic faith—a transformed life that increasingly walks as Jesus walked.

Many of us have experienced religious moments that didn't lead to lasting change. I share my own journey of "giving my life to Christ" at 15, only to discover that nothing changed, in contrast to the genuine salvation I experienced at 19, which radically altered my course. This reveals a confronting truth: if your faith hasn't transformed your life, it may not be authentic faith.

The passage offers three markers of genuine Christianity. First, knowing—not just intellectual understanding, but a relationship that changes how we live. Second, loving—experiencing God's perfect love being worked out within us, empowering obedience not through willpower but through transformed desires, and finally, walking—living in a way that mirrors Christ's example, especially when facing hatred or persecution.

What makes this teaching particularly powerful is its practical application. When faced with public slander against their church, the congregation responds not with anger or retaliation, but with prayer for their persecutor. This counter-cultural response demonstrates the radical difference between knowing about Jesus and truly walking as He walked.

The beauty of this message lies in its grace—we're reminded that this isn't about achieving perfection, but about embracing direction. The Christian journey involves growing "degree by degree" more like Christ, not through human effort but through the Holy Spirit's transforming work within us. As we abide in intimate daily fellowship with God, we find ourselves increasingly wanting what He wants.

Join the conversation and discover how knowing God, loving His word, and walking in His ways can transform not just your life, but your entire community. How might your response to difficulties change if you truly walked as Jesus walked?

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Church Announcements
• 9:13 Knowing: The Ultimate Test
• 17:41 True Faith Transforms Lives
• 21:14 Love: God's Perfect Work Within Us
• 28:55 Walking: Living as Christ Lived
• 33:57 Responding to Persecution with Love

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Good morning, good morning. Go ahead and turn your Bibles to the book of 1 John. And before we begin, reminder there will be festivities after service. You don't have to have brought anything or plan to participate. You can come and just eat if you would like, and that is completely okay. But you may hear a few bold people share their story of how Jesus saved them as they begin the process toward membership. This is our second potluck for that purpose. And if you are scared of public speaking and you would like to be a member, that is okay. You can even write it out and give it to the elders of the church, or you can give a personal testimony to the pastors themselves. So, with that out of the way, let's go to God's Word. We're in 1 John. We go verse by verse through God's Word and let God's word direct where we will be. We find ourselves in verses 3 through 6 today. And uh this is a timely, timely passage. Please read with me, God's holy word. And by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him truly, the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Our text will break down into the following outline. Verses three and four will be called knowing. Verse five will be loving, and then verse six will be walking. We begin with knowing. Verse three says, and by this we know that we have come to know him. I don't know if you heard the news or not, but uh great pastor by the name of Vodibum passed away this last week. Um, and that is a there's now a litany of great Christian leaders who have passed away in recent months. Many tragedies, many deaths. And so one of the most important questions we can ever ask when there's life and death portrayed to us before our very eyes is who do you know? You see, when you get stuck in certain situations, uh it helps to know someone that's in charge, someone that has authority, someone that has some clout to move things around. There are times where you're in desperate need of just a little bit of grace, and if you didn't know so-and-so, you wouldn't have gotten it. And in the same way, in this moment, there is no greater question, there is no greater security than to know that you know God and that he knows you. So this is an ultimate test, and it it presses into the heart of what every heart is anxious and worried about. Because you and I don't know what death is like. We've never experienced anything like it. And truly, experientially, we have no idea what is on the other side. We only know through faith what is on the other side. If someone told you that you were not going to live this next week, wouldn't it be nice to know that you know the one who can ensure that everything will happen perfectly on the other side? Wouldn't that be the ultimate security? Would there be anything more pressing? Right? What about disobedient children or a dirty house? Overtime at work, that one relationship that's going awry. Would any of those things be more pressing this next week than knowing that you know God? We uh are coming into a time as a community, as a church, as a nation, where we're beginning to understand again that Christianity does begin with an intellectual, educational aspect. That it is impossible to believe in something that you have never heard. You may never be fully convinced of something that's never been explained to you. If I were to say the Pythagorean theorem makes no sense, if any of you remember that math class, you might say yes or no, but most of us don't remember these words, or they're a far-off distinction in our minds. It is important that we know that we know. So John, out of love, has just now, the last week, right, pointed to Christ and said, Christ is everything. He is your defender, he is your sacrifice, he stands in the gap. And if this is the man, don't you want to know that you're on his side? Don't you care to know what it means to be saved? And why does that matter? Especially in our day. Why does that matter? Well, because in the 60s, 70s, these things called altar calls came into being. I don't know if you guys remember those. Those were really popular. They still are popular to a degree. What would happen, especially again, I was a 90s kid, right? So, like youth groups, you'd have these like youth camp moments, and you'd have people streaming down the aisles, just giving their life to Christ. I did that. I remember that moment. And I'm here to tell you that as soon as I left camp, nothing in my life changed. It was the biggest letdown of my life in many ways. I went to camp, had this mountaintop experience on this nut-nosed 15-year-old that thinks he has everything together. And I have confessed to be a Christian, and my life looks exactly the same. There's no superpower inside of me. I don't feel light as a butterfly. Like nothing has changed. Most importantly, nothing changed in my heart. I didn't realize I was not saved, actually, until I was 19. And the Lord truly saved me. And in that moment, I realized this truth, which is so essential for your life, that if your faith has not radically transformed your life, it may not be true. Because the Jesus who controls everything, the Jesus who spoke the world into existence, the Jesus that died on the cross for your sins would not save you and leave you in the exact same place. In fact, he promises to complete what he has begun in you, to perfect it. And you and I change degree by degree, more and more like him. So the question in my Christian life then is I can say words, but the words do not matter if my life has not been transformed by them. In premarital counseling, you have these moments where you're trying to convince the couple that it's unloving to each other for them to have sex before marriage. You're like trying to convince them of that, right? You put the Bible before them, but you're also just now trying to encourage them. Like, this is not gonna go well for you. And I'll never forget a young man looking at me one time and saying, But I love her so much. And I chuckled. I said, It's not love that's driving you to have sex with your fiance early before marriage. That's the other L word. It's called lust. It is this desire that controls you from the inside that goes against God's word. You see, but you and I, we have these confused, and so we can say, I love this person, and that is why I'm going to sin against them and myself and our marriage and God. It's because I love them. And we would say, No, no, no. Love is a self-sacrifice for the betterment of another party. That's what love is. It's not a feel-good, Hallmark lied to you. It's not an emotion, it is a self-sacrifice for the betterment of another individual, person. Don't tell me you love your fiance and then defile her and your marriage and yourself and your relationship with God. You see, you and I, we we love to change the definition of words. We make fun of the current generation, right? Your truth, my truth. We're like, those people are ridiculous. How could they say your truth, my truth? There's only one truth. And yet we'll do that with the word love. Like, no, no, no, but I love her, and that's why we're doing this. You and I enjoy pointing the finger at everyone else and forgetting that there's a sinner inside here. I am the worst sinner that I know, which is why it is so important that I know that I know him, Jesus. My words matter. They're not nothing, okay? But my actions show much more. So let's get into this. And by this, we know that we have come to know him. That is a final moment. It is a definite, there is a singular moment where you know Christ in a saving way. How do we know? Well, if you keep his commandments. And if you are anything like me, that should just kind of be like a weight that lands on your shoulders and takes the breath out of you, and you're like, oh, okay, I know I don't do that. I know I failed yesterday and this morning and five minutes ago. So this is this is not looking good for the home team. Like we're we're not gonna make it. What does that mean? Let's look at the other side. Verse 4. Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. So what we're trying to do is create two opposites here, right? Uh John's real big on aggressive contrast. And he's saying, here's what the world looks like, and here's what you must look like. And what he is talking about is not perfection, but direction. He's not talking about this exquisite example, but is rather talking about the overall condition. So when we look at our lives, dear Christians, or people that have claimed to be a Christian, or if you've had a moment where you think you gave your life to Christ, what we do is we take this test and we lay our lives open to God and say, God, show me. We pray with David and we say, I don't know my heart. So here's my heart, Lord. Search it. Show me, save me, fix me. Because we are all in desperate need for a savior. And if we are not able and willing to admit the beginnings of our desperate need, we can guarantee that we are not in saving relationship with Christ. The beginnings of relationship with Christ is understanding our need. That if we keep his commandments is not the law coming down on us, pointing us to Christ, but is rather a general picture of a Christian in general should be defined as someone that keeps the commands of God. So when the world, right, yeah, there's there's uh Barner research that comes out, right? And it says in the world, there's a 50-something percent divorce rate. And then it says in the church, there's also a 50-something percent divorce rate. So there's no difference. We should say there should be a difference, right? There should be a categorical distinction between how the church acts and interacts and how the church and how the world acts and interacts. It is necessary for this distinction. Why? Because if we say, I know him, but we do not follow through on the other side, what have we done? Well, we've proven ourselves to be a liar, and we've proven that there's not truth inside of us, the real truth, Jesus. So why does that matter? Because the Christian journey begins with knowing, but it doesn't stop there. Because again, there's some of us that are more intellectually inclined and we're like, yeah, like I'll read more books, like I'll study more, like I will be the best at reading my Bible every day. Let me show you. Why does it matter that it begins with knowing but doesn't stop there? Read with me verse 5. John says, but whoever keeps his word in him truly the love of God is perfected. Okay, so now we'll pause there. So now we have this clarification. What does it mean whenever I'm keeping God's word? What does that show? Number one, it shows that the perfect love of God, which was shown by Christ Jesus when he died on the cross for my sins, has come into me and has changed me and saved me from the inside out. Because you cannot take a sinner who has not given their life to a Savior and present them as a saint. It does not work. That's why the Bible's clear that Christians are defined as sheep and then the world is defined as goats. Why? We don't want it very close where it could be like, well, I mean, that might be, that might not be. It should be a very clear divide. Why? Because the love of God is perfected in Christians. The love of God is not perfected in the world. Why does that matter? Because we live in the generation of everything and everyone is love. And God says, no, it's not. God defines what love is. And God has defined love by sending his son to die for your sins. God has defined love by saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one will get to heaven except through me. That is the pressure. That is the power. That is the presence of Christ. That inside of Christians, there is this perfect love of God. Now, what does that love do? Work backwards. It is what empowers us to keep his commands. Because I don't know if you know this or not, but if you try to muscle through life and just like really discipline yourself to read your Bible more often, you will fail so hard, you will make the average college freshman look like a genius. Like you do not have the discipline or the capacity, you don't have the knowledge or the willpower to gunction yourself up to do the spiritual disciplines that are required in your life, to live a fulfilling, life-giving Christian life. You don't have it. Here's the good news: the engine inside is not your willpower. The engine inside is God. Because God says that when He saves you, He puts inside of you the Holy Spirit. That God, the Holy Spirit, lives within you, who is perfect love. So when you are nincampoop or nincompoop junior, whichever one you want to be, and you make a mistake and you fail and you fall short, you can always guarantee that God lives inside of you and He will bring you through, and He will save you, and He will keep you, and He will help you to get to the next stage of maturity and kindness and grace and mercy because there's nothing else that will give you that. This world will promise you everything and it will leave you empty. And God promises you one thing, and He gives you everything. Here's the biggest problem. Verse 5 has to do primarily with the internal struggle. I want you to think of verses three and four as your head, and I want you to think of verse five as your heart. All right, leadership principle time. People hate change. That's one of my least favorite quotes in the entire world, and it's a lie. People do not hate change. Do you know how I can tell you that? If someone came up to you and said, we're gonna give you your dream car for free. Do you want to drive it? I would bet that you would change and say yes and grab the keys to a car that you didn't have in the morning and go drive your dream car for free. I bet you would. I bet no one would have to pull your leg. No one would be like, come on, you gotta do it. You would just, I mean, you would skip, you would hop, you jump, you would throw yourself through the window, whatever you gotta do. It's my dream car. We have this misconception. People hate change. No, they don't. People love change, they buy new clothes, they buy new houses and furniture, they buy paintings for the walls, they they go different places for vacation. People don't hate change. People hate when others try to change them in a way they don't want. Why? What are the two times that someone changes? There's only two times. There's only two times in anyone's life that someone changes. It is A when they want to, and B when they have to. So it's gonna change what you do. You may not want to get in good physical condition, but if you go to the doctor and they say, if you don't, you're gonna die, guess what? All of a sudden we're changing. People change either when they want to or they have to. Now, question for you which one is more sustainable? So if we took the average people that are severely overweight and they start a weight loss journey, of the two options of want-to and have to, one, which one do you think has a higher likelihood of succeeding? It would be the want-to's. Why? Because the desire was already there. You see, I, as a leader, cannot instill desire in you. I can't create a want in you. I lack that capacity. What I can do as a leader is encourage a desire. I can stoke the fire, I can direct the fire. But if you do not want something, guess what you're not gonna do? Whatever that is. Okay, let's go back. But whoever keeps his word in him truly, the love of God is perfected. My dear friends, one of the greatest weaknesses that you and I have is beginning with we don't know stuff.

unknown: 21:17

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 21:17

I remember when Brie and I were first married and we're like going through things and we're figuring out parenting, that we're still on that journey, but it was really rough in the beginning. And we went to a couple of different parenting books and we left the door open and just said, okay, God, hands up, if it's in the Bible and they can prove it's in the Bible, we will change. We were adamantly against this. But if your word says it, we will change. Now, in that moment, we didn't know what we were signing up for. And you probably haven't either when you've gone to God's word and said, okay, if it says I shouldn't do this, I won't do this. Or if it says I should do this, I'll start doing this. You and I, our greatest weakness in life is not that we hate change, it's that we don't act like we can train our desires. Can you imagine looking at like a young man who's not married, who has all this amped-up testosterone, right? Just like ready to go. Where's a woman? I'm gonna marry her. We're like in that story in like 1 Samuel or 2 Samuel, where they like go and run and steal women to have wives, like they're like in that stage, right? They're ready. Can you imagine telling that young man who looks at many different women and is attracted to them and say, You will never be able to focus that attraction on your wife? That would be terrible. I mean, you're painting like a death scene for marriage, like, okay, stay pure. Like, God gave you a wife to fulfill all of your sexual needs within marriage, but also you'll never be able to control the desire going outside of you. That would be awful. That'd be the worst sales pitch for marriage ever. Why? Because I haven't told them that there's a power inside of them that's greater than that desire. That desires can be molded. And you'll never believe that more than when you go on a sugar-free diet. Because guess what? Most of you probably don't think that apples are like aggressively sweet. I'm here to tell you if you take 30 days with no sugar, an apple is like, oh, oh, oh, okay, yeah, that was sugar. Why is it like that? Well, because right now, my palate, my tongue is covered in top ramen or in McDonald's or in KFC or whatever. And you know what that does? It changes how I taste things. I can change my desires, not by my willpower, but because of the power inside of me. I am not a slave to my desires. My desires are slave to me, and I can control them. I can move them by the power of God inside of me. And I will never do that though, if I don't know. There was a moment, we're going back to premarital counseling again when I was doing another premarital counseling, and I'll never forget meeting with this couple, and I'm talking to them about marriage, and we're reading through Ephesians 5. And we get to a point where they're able to clearly see in the text that marriage is the only place that sex should happen. And they have this epiphany moment, and they're like, Does the Bible say that? And I chuckle because I thought they were like making a gag. And then I realized they were super serious. They were both newer Christians, so I shouldn't have been surprised. And I said, Yeah, let me take you to a couple of different texts. So we went to a couple different texts, and you know what happened? We end the session, and they're confessing to me, we didn't even know this was wrong. We're sorry, we'll stop doing this until after we're married. And it was this crazy moment for me where I'm like not shepherding, like I'm like passive shepherding, like God's doing all the work, and I'm just like, oh, that's really cool to watch. Like, real Christians, when they encounter the living God through his word, change. That was like Patrick, that was my fault. Okay, whoever keeps his word, so again, not perfection, but direction. Okay, everyone say it with me. Say not perfection, but direction. That's really important because again, you and I all have that little interlegalist inside. And he's like, you're not performing hard enough. You suck. And you'd be like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, God is everything, God's got this, I'll never get it. This is about the direction of my life, not the perfection. I'll be perfect in heaven one day, and you can wait till then. Verse 5. But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. And then it continues and gives us a launching pad into verse six. It says, By this we may know that we are in him. Verse 6. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Hey, Patrick, you might ruin the slideshow, but I emailed the picture, a picture to the church email. Can you get that in there over time? They'll be okay without the slide for a second if it goes away. Okay. Verse 6. Whoever says he abides in me ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Again, that word abides is extremely important. It means to remain, it means to live in intimate fellowship with. This is not a passing by. This is not consumer Christianity. This is not fast food drive-thru Christianity. This is live in family meals together daily, meeting in the morning, heart to heart with God. Whoever says he abides, which it means that you know, right? These are all synonymous. Whoever says they're saved should be able to say, I abide. I remain in God. What should happen? They ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Don't go to the picture yet, by the way. I'll tell you when. It's been well said by the world that they cannot hear the words you are saying over how loud your life is. You see, our life is a living testimony that is way more powerful than you being able to spitfire a bunch of Bible verses. When you sacrificially love someone when they don't deserve it, the world says this doesn't compute. That's not what you do. When someone flips you off and you say, God loves you. When someone lies about you and hates you, and you pray for them, you are acting like Christ. Because Christ was hated much more than you and I. Christ was spit on, he was betrayed, he was mocked as the king of kings and lord of lords, he was beaten and bruised. He was made fun of. He was called demon-possessed and a drunkard. And yet, did he respond with violence? Did he respond with sinful anger? No. There's a reason why in Romans it says that vengeance is the Lord's, and you and I aren't to get it. And in our lives as a church, some of you have heard, I'm sure, but maybe not all of you have, there was a happening this last week that came to surprise some of us, where someone in the area wrote some slanderous things on their front door. And in those slanderous things was the last name of my family and the name of our church. Now, in this moment, it's very easy to try to get angry about it and to say, how dare they? What are they doing? And yet, God would say, That person is the most in need of my love. That person has not died yet. Patrick, did you put the picture up? Go ahead and put it down. I was going to tell you when to put it up. It's okay. Now, hopefully you got plenty of looks at that. It is not worth dwelling on. Now, here's the good news is that when Jesus comes to town, we should expect that Satan will reject, will buffet, will fight. And yet you and I can sing, it is well with my soul. Not because everything's cozy, not because everyone's being nice, not because there's no persecution. But rather because we serve the God who controls everything. And the God who controls everything loves even that person. The God who controls everything wants that person saved. And you know who He's called to love her first. It's us. Now it doesn't mean that we're all going to parade by the house or go talk to her physically, personally, right now. But rather, how we are going to end this service today, or end this sermon today, before Dan Ashton comes up and gives a benediction, is that we're going to pray for this lady. She is in turmoil. She is tormented. And you and I could either turn a blind eye to this, or we could respond and retaliate, or we could look at the most hateful things and respond in love and pray for this lady and choose to overlook the offense. Because my friends, nothing will change this town, nothing will change this county, nothing will change this area more than you and I knowing God's word, loving God and his word, and then walking in the way in which he did. And we have a beautiful opportunity in this moment to do that. So, will you pray with me? Father, we come before you and we lift up Janice to you. And we ask that you would save her, that you would rescue her from the sin that is inside of her. That you would help her to heal and to see her need for a savior. We ask, Lord, that you would deal with our hearts, that we would not respond in anger or in judgment. We would not retaliate or be critical, but rather would see that that is a person just as in need of a savior as I am. Lord, help us to fulfill your mission here. Help us to be a church that knows your word, that truly and consistently studies your word. Help us to be a church that is always growing in our love for you, and our love for your word, and our love for each other. But Lord, please, please keep us from being the kind of church who knows these things and becomes internal and doesn't look to the outside world and does not reach out and does not love in action and indeed. Help us to be your hands and feet. Help us to speak love when people speak curses. Help us to bless when people persecute. Help us to be kind and gentle and patient when the world is wicked, harsh, and impatient. And Lord, may your will be done here at Sovereign Grace Bible Church. And may we degree by degree change to be more and more like you. Please use us, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.