1 John 5 - Part 2

We are in 1 John, chapter 5. I will read the first five verses. Again, I am reading from the Berean Standard Bible. If that's slightly different from the wording you have, that's why. 1 John 5, verse 1. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves those born of Him.

By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. Because everyone born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who then overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

Last week, we reviewed the first about two and a half verses, and what we concluded was that if you believe Jesus is the Christ, you've been born of God, and that as you've been born of God, you love the Father, you love God, you love He who makes those born again. And also, though, as a result of that and as an ought of that, you love the children of God. So the point being that you cannot say that you love God while not actively loving God's children, which is the point made at the end of chapter four.

And John is reiterating that. So I want you to turn to Titus. Titus chapter two. it's not a long enough book that you can really turn to the wrong page of Titus anyway, but we'll be at the end of chapter 2. And what I want to remind you of is that there is commands of God that even though we cannot keep them for our salvation, we are commanded to obey. and that we can fall into the trap of believing that we don't have to obey God's commands, which is why God repeatedly reminds us to obey His commands throughout the New Testament and including in the fifth chapter of John.

But at the end of Titus, just to bring this point home, in chapter 11, speaking of the grace of God, which many people pit against obedience. What? I said chapter 11? You don't have to check that on the recording. Titus 2, verse 11. The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone.

It instructs us, it being the grace of God, it instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live sensible, upright and godly lives in the present age. As we await the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.

And so what we're reminded of at the end of Titus 2 is that we were redeemed, that we might renounce ungodliness, that we would deny worldly lusts to live soberly and that we'd be a people zealous for good works. what I would submit to you is that God did not leave your renouncing of ungodliness, your denial of worldly lusts and your zealousness for good works to your subjective opinion. That we have the word of God to instruct us as to what are the commands of God so that we may actually know how we can fulfill these things that we are doing, not only for God. Some commands are just how we interact with God and how we deal with one another.

So legalism, we talked about, is the idea that you are earning favor with God through your actions. So you do something, God sees it, and then God responds and he owes you something in a sense, right? This is how most of the pagan religions work. So when you hear about people in pagan religions doing rain dances and things like that, because they're trying to please the gods so that the gods will bring them rain and things of that sort.

And so we want to watch out for legalism, which is where we're denying the grace of God as our motivation for why we We deny worldly lusts and renounce ungodliness and are zealous for good works. We deny that the grace of God is the root of all that. And instead, we make our obedience to God the basis by which God is going to be happy or pleased with us.

We defined it well last week and what I wanted to make sure we got to is that I thought of four ways that we can recognize if you are acting legalistically And there probably other ways it can be looked at But there two sets of two ways where you can test yourself and see if you think you're falling into legalism. The first is by either adding to God's law or subtracting from God's law. So if you would agree with me that God's law is perfect, and thus right and complete, then for any of us to ever add to God's law is an error.

And it's a common thing with legalists, which the great example we have is the Pharisees, that the Pharisees made the traditions of men into the commandments of God. And so when you're falling into legalism, when you start to look at things that you do, and you start to say, well, this is a law I follow, But it's not a law that God gave. It's not the most common thing because we have such a stark example with the Pharisees.

Most of us in evangelical churches don't immediately fall into this error. We're actually more afraid of this error than not, I think, at times. But we can tend to make laws out of things that aren't laws. And one of the ways we do that is by putting up fences around sin that we invent so that we don't get too close to sin, which could be a very good idea.

So, for example, you may say you don't go to the beach because at the beach things are happening that could cause you to sin. And you realize, well, I just shouldn't go to the beach at all. It's maybe a really good idea. But God never said don't go to the beach. So for you to say that that's a law God gave or to try to enforce that on another person's conscience is now to be functioning in legalism.

It doesn't mean you're not saved because once in a while you also function in a way that isn't right. We all sin at times. another way that we another result of legalism is we subtract from God's law so that's where we look at God's perfect law the mirror where we see how unrighteous we are and because something in us is still performance based something in us is still looking at our relationship with God rather than by grace and adoption into his family but we're looking at it as well we have to do some of the right stuff for him to be happy with me and like me. When we see the perfection of his law, we don't meet it.

And then we decide, well, maybe God didn't really say we have to do this. And so then we can subtract from God's law and we can come up with something that that God either said we ought to do or said we ought not to do. And it's something we realize we're falling too far short of. So we decide it's just not sin at all. That is something that that Jans brought.

I wish Jans was here because Jans brought up two things last week, one after the service and then one during Sunday school that I wanted him to be able to expand on. But Jans brought up that we can become libertine. And that's the word that he used. And I believe also the Bible calls it licentiousness, where we decide we can just do anything because we're under grace.

We're not under law as a covenant of works with God. And so, therefore, we end up subtracting from God's law. We don't want to do either of those things. As Christians, what we want to do is we want to know what God's law says, and then we want to, by grace, try to obey God's law, not as a function of getting him to be pleased with you, but simply because he's already bestowed grace upon us. the second set of of the second pair of things i think we can err in being legalistic is by making god's law either purely external or purely internal so the first set was you add or subtract from it you can't do that it's a bad idea the second set is to make it purely external or purely internal So do you remember when the Pharisees would tithe all their mint and cumin and they would they would they would try to obey all the letter of the law?

And Mike Weissman brought it up last week that we can check all the boxes. I did this. I did this. I did this. I did this. But your heart is far from God.

And Jesus's prime examples were hating your brother, yet thinking other people were murderers or lusting after a woman in your heart. and yet calling other people adulterers. And so the point is that we can't make obeying God's law purely external, where we don't also look at our hearts and try to evaluate, am I really obeying God? Have you ever come to church but not wanted to?

You don't have to raise your hand. The pastors are here. Yeah, I get it. What do you think? Do you think the pastor would raise his hand? Well.

But and Andrew's addressed this when talking about devotions and how important it is, even when you don't feel like doing your private devotions, you still do them externally, even though you don't feel like it. But it still doesn't still not as pure as if you had the heart desire for it. So we don't want to make God's law purely external where we can just check boxes. and if you don't understand that, think about any of you that has a relationship with someone else where that person is supposed to love you.

Most people in here are married or you have some relationship. And think about a time when that person has done something for you and they did the thing they were supposed to do but you knew well they not doing it out of love right now You know what that feels like. You almost wish they didn't do it. And I think God wants to see our hearts for him. And then maybe the more difficult one to conceive of is making the law purely internal rather than external.

So that's where we start to think that, well, as long as my heart's right, I can literally do anything. And there's people in Christianity who commit what we would know are outward, even debaucherous sins at times. And when confronted about it, they'll say, well, I prayed about it and my heart was right. It didn't bother my conscience, they'll say. The conscience is used a lot to justify sin.

But in the Old Testament, do you remember that there were sacrifices for unintentional sins? There was a system in the Levitical priesthood for people to bring a sacrifice that the priest would have to slaughter and shed the blood of for the unintentional sins of the people. The things people didn't even realize they did. That's how holy God is, that we will we will go about our day just being yourself and you're committing sin or you're omitting the good you ought to do a sin of omission.

And oftentimes you don't even realize it. And maybe you don't even know. I think there's a lot of times you don't think you're doing something wrong, but you are a good example. Well, an easy one is if you're Baptist or Presbyterian, one of us is in sin for the way that we are doing church. If you can't say that, you're not understanding the worship of God.

One of us is wrong and is actively in sin. But what I'd say is that we're following what we think the Bible tells us and we're faithfully trying to obey God as Baptists. And so are our Presbyterian brothers and sisters. But one of us is wrong, and thank God Christ's blood atones for it. Whichever one of us is the unintentional sinner, maybe we're both a little bit wrong.

I hate saying that, but okay, thank you. Andrew said we're not, so that's good. So a reminder, legalism, legalism's bad, usually entails adding to God's law, subtracting from God's law making it purely external or internal there's also the flip side of the legalism coin is licentiousness both of those sides of a coin are saying we're going to do other than what's lawful according to God obeying God is called lawfulness and we do that because we love God not because we're trying to be little Pharisees So if you want to turn to Ephesians 6.1, I'm guessing everyone here has it memorized.

Would anybody like to tell me Ephesians 6.1? Every parent should know this one, and all your kids should know it. Carrie, what is it? Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. But there's a principle in Ephesians 6.1 that I want us to make sure that we understand. Children are being commanded to obey their parents.

We can all agree that that is in fact what they ought to do. But what's the exception that is built into the phrasing of Ephesians 6.1? When should a child not obey his parents, even though God commands they obey his parents? In the Lord. Laura? In the Lord.

So what does that mean? What could a parent tell a child to do where we say, well, you don't have to obey that? Kill your brother. Kill your brother. We went straight to, yeah, we're not going to argue about this one. Steve's like, we're not going to pick a controversial thing.

It's good. Yeah, if you try to tell them to sin, right? And so there's a principle here where we will all agree. So remember, we're in the context of, in order to show that we love the children of God, we have to obey God. In order to be obeying God, I just labored to prove to you that there's all these commands we ought to be obeying, right? And that in order to obey the commands of God, we have to know what they are, and we should study them, and we would want to do them even meticulously, and potentially be seen like legalists because we're trying so hard to obey God.

But we also want to be careful that we wouldn't go too far. And so Paul gets accused repeatedly, what, of licentiousness by the legalists of his day. And that's what we get accused of too sometimes. And now I'm telling you that, oh yeah, there's times God has said something like, obey your parents, but they can just disobey it. So what's the principle?

Any thoughts? What principle is involved when there are what would be seemingly contradictory things that are commands and you have to pick which one to obey. I heard somebody say something. Like how would you know if you're supposed to obey a command or if this is a command that you wouldn't obey? As a child or as an adult? Either way, it's going to be the same principle ultimately.

The fact that we expect children to figure it out makes me think we ought to be able to, though. Charlie, do you have something? Well I saw it fly but I thinking Wow glad it wasn an auction Yeah Could have cost you Go ahead Laura If the commandment contradicts what the Bible tells you to do, you should not do it. So the principle is knowing God's Word.

You have to know God's Word. Well, it's what's right and what's wrong, right? For this is right, that's what it says. He gives the commandment to comment on what's right. It's founded on what's right. So the child has to know that this command he was given is also potentially a violation then of a command God's given in order to choose.

And so when we're dealing with obeying God and loving the brothers, which it says here we do by obeying God, we have to be able to discern how to love somebody and that love is always going to accord with what God has commanded. So the idea is this. If somebody says, I want you, if you're thinking you need to love your brother or sister, and if there's ever an opportunity to show that person whatever you think love is, but loving that brother or sister means you have to disobey a different command of God, you need to step back. and you have to figure out when is it the right time to love in this way if somebody wants you to do something that requires you to sin you don't obey that command so loving brothers and sisters always is going to be under the guise of the same as what children obey your parents in the Lord is you're always doing it in the Lord Love is defined by God, not by subjectively how that other person might feel or even respond to you.

All right, moving on. I'm trying to get to the whole thing together. So we talked about God's law in verse three. John writes, For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. So what does burdensome mean? What are some ideas?

Or maybe you have a different word in your Bible. I think there's a better translation out there. You may have it. Oppressive. Oppressive. Okay, that's a good word.

That's what the word burdensome makes us think of. Overloading. Good. Grievous. That's one of the words used in some of the English translations. so what does it mean then that God's law is not oppressive heavy burdensome overloaded how can John say that when we are also going to preach that God's law is impossible for you to keep. In fact, it's so above your abilities that you were never going to keep it and you need Christ to keep it for you.

And that it wasn't even going to be something you kept a little bit of and then he filled the gap. So do you see the contradiction? We have the most impossible thing in the world that we've described for us to be able to keep. And then John says, by the way, keep his law, it's not burdensome. How do you reconcile that? Because we're found in Christ, we're empowered to obey that spirit.

So we're empowered to obey. That's true. So... I think it's because you already said that we count on the person of Jesus to fulfill it for us. So that, in a lot of ways, the burden is the duty, right? I have to keep all of this for myself.

Then it is burdensome. Yes. And it's just duty that God has done. And so with Jesus, two things I think are true. One is he's done it, and the other is it's now his way. Yes.

That's very good. So has anyone here ever birthed a baby? maybe recently some of you, right? Could it properly be said from a strict definition of the term standpoint that carrying and birthing a baby is, we'll say it's somewhat burdensome, it's difficult? Anybody agree with that? What? Understatement, right?

But do you think of it as a burden? No, because you love your child. Right? You think you're doing something good, and you're willing to take on the apparent difficulty of it. I shouldn't even say apparent in that case. But the point being that we perceive difficulty in all sorts of things, right?

Last week, again, I wanted Jans here, but last week Jans brought up that real love for the brethren would even rebuke somebody if needed. Has anyone here ever had to rebuke a fellow Christian? Wasn't that just the easiest thing ever? You guys are so non-interactive. It's heart-wrenching. It could cause an enormous amount of anxiety, not necessarily the sinful kind.

Difficulty in going to do something so difficult that we are commanded to do. So now you have a command of God that we all agree would be difficult, rebuking a brother or sister. And yet John says it's not burdensome, and I think Levi brought up the whole reason, which is that it's out of love. Because we're responding to the love of God when we are obeying His commandments, rather than His commandments seeming burdensome to us.

It's just something we do out of love. If you've ever cared for a sick person who you love, if you've ever shepherded a flock for a while that can be difficult at times, when you do these things out of love for those people, it doesn't feel burdensome, even though I will submit to you that obeying God can be extremely difficult. Like you realize if obeying God was easy, everyone would just do it.

Like, you know, this is not, this is very difficult stuff. And when it's difficult, it often can be seen as burdensome. But when you have love in your heart, you won't sense it the same way. Jeremy? So, I understand what you're about to say, and I'm not trying to contradict what you're about to say, but my initial thought and my mind went to, we were created for a purpose.

The burden that we're referencing here is the result of sin. Falling that wall wasn't a burden until sin came along. The struggle of the very children wasn't a struggle until sin came along. That's true. It's not a burden because we were designed to do it. We were created to do it.

Yes, and in the new birth, we're born again to do the things that God has told us to do. And yet, I think we can agree there's still difficulty sometimes in doing the right thing because of the curse still being active. So when the law was a tool of damnation in your life, when the thought of keeping the law was your way of getting to God, it could only be seen as heavy or oppressive, burdensome, even grievous to you.

But now, in Christ, the law is the joyful rule of love. so it's as if you're it's as if God has told us love me and then he says and here's exactly how and now we have the ability not checking boxes but we have the ability to go and say alright I'm so pleased I'm free to go and love God and he's told me how I don't have to guess I don't have to wonder now in verses 4 and 5 I think John continues this thought and I think he actually wraps everything up with restating the first verse again in different words So in verse 4, John continues the sentence, his commandments are not burdensome, because everyone born of God overcomes the world. and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. It sounds like a subject change, but I'm going to argue that John is saying the same things again in different words. And when John talks about the world, I think what John is talking about is everything propped up against the knowledge of God.

Every argument, every lofty opinion that is out there that gets you thinking to do the opposite of what God has commanded. Basically, God tells you, I love you, here's what's good for you, do these things. And then the world tells us, obeying God will hurt you. Obeying God will reduce your pleasure. Obeying God will reduce your joy. But it doesn't say it that overtly.

What the world does is the world creates other scenarios to try to attract you, right? And so that's why an easy example for this room because of the education we've had from Tim is psychology. And things like the Enneagram and astrology and all these tools that the world has created to help you and to help you parent your children or help you do better at work.

And the world doesn't say, hey, here is an opposite religion to Christianity that we've created for you to follow. It's always presented as something good that has the same goals that Christianity has and even will borrow some of the same language. So what God is seeking are people who will obey his law. remember we're talking about verse 4 we overcome the world through faith God is seeking people who obey his law because they apprehend by faith that God's law is always good and right for them regardless of how they feel and despite any negative consequences to their person that they may experience as a result of holding fast to his commands this is where faith starts to come in.

Because we welcome, for example, suffering or affliction for the sake of our obedience because we are not trying to obey God's law in order to get something from Him. We're not obeying God's law so He'll like us or so He'll save us. We're obeying God's law because He's worth obeying because we know it's what's best for us and then even if we know that obedience at that time is going to result in suffering our faith overcomes that And we may not like it all the time You shouldn like suffering and affliction You count it joy.

The whole point is it's suffering, it's affliction. But we welcome it because we know it comes from the hand of a Father who loves us. And so everyone who's born of God overcomes the world. You can remember in chapter 2 that the world and all the things in the world are set up against us. We're not to love the world or the things that are in the world.

For the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh and the pride of life is not from the Father. It's from the world. And so we overcome these things by faith. Overcoming the world, I think, is another way of saying to obey His commandments and walk in love despite the world's hatred. so we're more than conquerors through him who loved us and i think being more than conqueror has more to do with just mortifying your flesh and your sin than defeating you know some enemy somewhere i think there's a handful of christians that end up doing those things most of us our battle is just fighting our own sin and god says we will conquer we will be victorious in those things.

So ultimately, we have all these antitheses in Scripture. It's either faith or works. Right? When you get saved, we say it's either faith or works. Getting a fly? Okay.

I'm going to have to do an auction sometime. Make a lot of money off a couple of these people. Okay. Okay. It's either faith or works. It's either grace or effort.

These are things that don't mix. Right? Either you're receiving grace or you're getting wages for your effort. And ultimately, it's either pride or humility that's going to help you along the way. Jeremy brought this up last week. We didn't focus on it.

But the humility is what's required in order to receive God's grace and then to walk in the newness of life that we're called to walk in. So the great theologian Keith Green, pause for laughter, said at the beginning of one of my favorite songs that he ever made, he says, my son, my son, why are you striving? You can't add one thing to what's been done for you. and I just think that if you would meditate on that thought in all the times we review things I recommend you would review the Ten Commandments and check yourself and say how am I doing today and pray for forgiveness you can review other passages of scripture the 5th chapter of 1 Thessalonians the 12th chapter of Romans These are passages that will give you an abundance of commands that you failed to keep in the last hour maybe And so it good to review our lives and to confess and and to ask God for forgiveness and to trust that the cleansing comes But it also good to just remind yourself that God cannot love you any more than he does this moment.

God cannot love you any more than he did the moment you first believed. A million years from now, God will not love you any more or less than he does right now. And I think sometimes we need to meditate on that fact. Sometimes even while we're in the difficulty of the sin that we're facing, when you're still not quite repentant for it, that's when it's God's grace and love that he's already given you despite your sin that is supposed to motivate you.

So who overcomes the world? Verse 5, only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Verse 1, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. I think John's making it full circle here. He's putting it all together as it's faith and grace. So to live out your faith that Jesus is the Christ, you must by faith.

Keep the phrase by faith in here. That's how we avoid the trap of legalism. You must by faith continue to walk in newness of life. That is, you must love God and his children. This is demonstrated by obeying God's commands or the law of Christ. To obey his law by faith means to be rewarded for diligently seeking him.

And you accomplish this by studying his commands so that you may meticulously obey them, not out of slavish fear. Remember, we weren't saved to slavery to fear, but as sons. Not out of slavish fear you are obeying his commands, nor for selfish gain alone. But rewards are a God-given incentive. But we don't obey his commands for selfish gain alone, but we obey because he's perceived as worthy to be reverently followed. when he's rightly the object of your devotion and love, even for his own sake and not for anything you can gain, you overcome the world and the devil himself.

So we will continue next week. Verse 6 will start if you'd like to read ahead and things like that. Let me pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word, for the fact that we can always trust that what you say is right. Help us to turn from our own feelings and our own subjectivity and to always trust that your objective truth can be trusted. We ask you to mold us and change us and renew our minds so that we will more habitually want to follow the way that you have said we ought to do things.

And it's in Christ's name I pray. Amen.