Here’s a way in which feeding on 1 John is really helpful: this, probably more than any other Bible book, helps us with assurance, helps us know we really are born again.
Of course a book will often have more than one purpose. But clearly one of John’s aims was to give his readers a basis for joyous assurance that they (and we!) really do have `life`, eternal life. This would seem to be stated explicitly as his purpose in 5:13. And that assurance, he makes clear, leads to a deep, foundational boldness about our secure standing before God, both now (3:19-20) and also in the final judgment (2:28, 4:17), and then also practically to confidence in prayer (5:14, cf 3:21-22). (And he says that the truths he’s giving to create this assurance will aim to – and indeed do – create joy, 1:4.)
So then: How can we know that we have [the past tense here is important] come to know him? (2:3). Perhaps this reminds us of the challenge Paul puts to the Corinthians, `Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith’ (2 Cor 13:5). John presents the signs of our genuineness, the roots and proofs of our assurance, as combining both our beliefs and the our actions. `This is how we know`, he says with conviction, numerous times.
First, objectively, his `children’ can be sure of salvation because they (we!) are those who know they listen to and affirm the truth (4:6). Particularly, the truth that Jesus has come in the flesh (and is therefore preexistent; 4:2), and is the Son of God: `If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us’ (4:15-16, cf 2:22-23, 5:1). If we believe in the Son we can know we have eternal life, he says clearly (5:13). (Let’s bear in mind here what is it to truly `believe` in the way the new testament uses the term: obviously if belief is genuine, and from our hearts, it will bear fruit in the deep desire to live according to Christ’s commands.) Then also, equally objectively, if we confess our sins, we can be certain that we are among those whose sins are forgiven, and that Christ speaks to the Father in our defence (1:9-2:1). Here then are objective facts we know about ourselves, that can give us certainty of where we stand with the Lord.
But in fact what John puts first in his opening sequence of `basics’, and returns to also through a series of remarks throughout his letter, is something different, an assurance based firmly and practically on our actions, our sense in ourselves of a desire to live according to God’s commands. (Of course there would have been no true repentance if that were not there.) `We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands’ , he says (2:3; cf also 2:29, 3:6-7). `This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did` (2:5-6). `This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child` (3:10). Our sense of assurance will grow, then, as we do sense the Spirit in us, developing in partnership with us a heart and lifestyle that is obedient to Christ (2:3-6) – repentantly hating sin, doing all we can to live out Christ’s love and not to `keep on sinning` (cf 3:6-10); because `All who have this hope in [Christ] purify themselves, just as he is pure` (3:3).
Of course this is so even though, as Paul says at length in Romans 7, there is still something in us (the `old nature`) deeply resistant to God’s ways (`What I want to do I do not do… I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out!` (Rom 7:15,18)): something that we’re promised will be overcome increasingly by the Spirit’s power controlling our deepest being, as Paul then explains in Romans 8. (For more on this see the relevant posts in https://petelowmanresources.com/category/bible-introductions-3/romans-to-philippians/ .) But meanwhile, as John says, we do certainly have the need (and the promise!) of our Saviour’s atonement and intercession for when we fail. Look at 1:9-2:2, for example: `My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.` So the other side of John’s main theme is this assurance of our loving God’s forgiveness; but meanwhile that central, Spirit-given desire to follow his commands is a key sign that we are born again. (If it were not there, of course, we would not have repented at all, as we said previously!)
Then let’s note how John’s primary application of this desire for obedience, this self-purification by the Spirit’s power, is growing in real love for one another: `Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth` (3:18-19). `We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other` (3:14; cf also 4:16-17). (This, incidentally, doesn’t conflict with another of God’s commands through John, `Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them` (2:15); rather the two commands need to be held together. More about that, God willing, in a later post.) But John emphasises this fundamental command to love so many times that it’s worth reading all the relevant passages together, to get it firmly into our heads: 2:3,7,9-10; 3:10,14,18-19; 4:7-8,12, 16-17; and 5:1. Former IFES general secretary Lindsay Brown has explained helpfully how all this can be a foundation for our assurance, saying it took five years after his conversion `before I received a deep assurance of salvation. I must have asked Jesus to be my Saviour twenty times! Assurance came through 1 John 3: “We know we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren.” I could see this in my reactions to people who were very different from me. This was like a shaft of light to my soul!’
Perhaps the two most difficult `This is how we know’ verses are 3:24 and 4:13: `This is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us` (3:24). `This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit` (4:13). Is John saying (a) we know we are saved because we sense within us an inward impulse from the Spirit acknowledging joyfully that Jesus is the Son? That seems to be a theme back in 2:20,27, and a little further on in the epistle in 5:6-10. (And we might compare Romans 8:15-16: `By [the Spirit] we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children` – where a key sign of spiritual reality is the inner desire to praise, motivated by genuine love for God.) Yet the next verse, 4:1, shows a concern about false witness of this subjective kind that is dangerously possible. Or is it again (b) calling us to an objective certainty that we’ve been born again and received the Spirit because, by the faith that the Spirit (alone) inspires (cf 2:20), we’ve believed the truth the Spirit reveals; since the context following this 3:24 concerns the witness about Jesus that the true Spirit of God gives (4:1-2)?
On the other hand, (c) the context preceding 3:24 about how we know concerns obeying Christ’s command to love each other: `This is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us…` Which suggests that this `This is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit’ might be repeating the message of other `This is how we know’ verses: it is the commitment to keeping his commands, and most importantly our living out in obedience the love the Spirit puts in us for the rest of the family, that proves we are his children. We know we are real because the Spirit’s love is there; if not, how could God be dwelling in us? If the fruit of the Spirit were not there, neither could the Spirit be; since the fruit is there, the Spirit obviously is. The same possibility arises with the other verse, 4:13, `This is how we know… He has given us of his Spirit`, because on the one hand 4:14 goes on to talk about our key beliefs: `We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.` But on the other hand, the preceding verse 4:12 has been about love: `If we love one another, God lives in us…`
Perhaps this is actually is an illusory choice – assurance of salvation grows as we grasp in action how true belief and true love are present inseparably in us! Either way it is only the Spirit who can enable us to `obey his commands… believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another’ (3:22-23); these together are the signs of his presence. Likewise in 3:18-19 love is the test of whether we belong to the truth. (Cf also 2 John 1-2.) And we find a similar combination, moving from love to truth, in the context preceding and following 4:13.
Yet clearly from 3:18 this love is something we can, and must – and by the Spirit’s power, we will! – grow in. In other words, those who are real, those who have assurance of Christ’s new birth, are those who, in believing obedience to their Lord, find themselves making the effort to draw on the Spirit’s power within (3:24), to love, generously and forgivingly, as Christ commands…
And the more that happens, the deeper that certainty of salvation that John is so keen for us to have will become…
