Open your Bibles, if you would, to 1 John chapter 2. 1 John chapter 2. My little children These things I write to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. Now by this we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. He who says, I know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in him. He who says he abides in him ought himself to walk just as he walked. Brethren, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard from the beginning. Again a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness, and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake. I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one. I write to you, little children, because you have known the Father. I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one. thus far the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we ask this morning that You would settle our hearts, that You would quiet our minds, that You would focus our attention. Thank You that You have called us into this place to worship You. We have heard Your summons and responded, and we are here now to listen to what You say to us. Speak through me. Strengthen me to boldly proclaim what your word says to the church. We ask that we all might listen and bear fruit abundantly, praying these things in the name of our Lord Jesus and asking that we might walk like him in his name. Amen. Our passage this morning is about loving Christ and keeping his commandments. And it lays out for us essentially two different sequences of knowledge, obedience, love, and then the same three things, but in a totally different sequence, love, or obedience, love, knowledge. If you read the passage one way, it seems to suggest that first you know God, and then that leads you to obey Him. If you read it another way, it seems to suggest that first you obey God, and then that leads you to know Him. Of course, we want to say, what? Which is it? Come on, John. What's the answer? It's both. Knowledge leads to obedience, but obedience leads to knowledge. Here's how we know we know Him, if we obey. But at the same time, whoever obeys is the one who loves, and whoever obeys is the one who knows. Obedience is the way to know God, Obedience is the activity that fulfills or perfects God's love. We'll look first at verse three. Under this heading, keep God's commands to know Him. Verse three, we can say, starts with obedience and ends with knowledge. By this we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. And so that's a conditional statement. If we keep his commandments, that's the thing that's posited. If you do this, if you obey, then what's the result? You know that you know him. If obedience, then knowledge. If you obey, then you know. Now of course, we talk a lot about Knowing God. Some of you have probably read J.I. Packer's book by that title. Knowing God is, in one sense, the most important thing we can do. We need to know God, and of course we need to know that we know Him, but before we can know that we know Him, we need to know what it is to know Him. By this we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. What does it mean to know a fellow human being? We usually think of knowing someone as the sum of two things, conversation and physical proximity. I corresponded for a couple of years with a fellow who was an English professor in Iowa Now, back when I was in high school, I never met him, but we spent many hours writing back and forth to each other. So we had conversation, but we never had proximity. In the same course, you could say, oh yeah, I've spent maybe hundreds of hours on the phone with so-and-so, but we've never met. So you have the conversation part, but if you don't have the proximity part, then you wouldn't feel comfortable fully saying, yes, I know so-and-so. Nor is the physical proximity part on its own enough. You might have sat by somebody, maybe a fellow season ticket holder to some sporting event or musical event, and you could sit by the same person every time. yet never have spoken. You don't know who your seatmate is. So we use this equation, conversation plus physical proximity equals knowing another human being. And that equation, of course, completely runs aground when we come to the question of how do you know God? Because we all understand the conversation part, you need to pray, you need to read the word, right? You need to talk to God and you need to hear from God. But is that sufficient to know him? John says no, it's not, right? He doesn't say by this we know that we know him if we have good conversations with him. By this we know that we know Him if we have an intense, active prayer life. The conversation part alone is not sufficient, but how do you meet God? How do you gain physical proximity with Him? Well, obviously we know that we can't. And so that leads some people to say, well, you can't know God at all. That's not the correct answer. You can know him and know that you know him. What is John's point? He's saying that the physical proximity that we think is so important in getting to know a human being is replaced in getting to know God by obedience. To know a fellow human requires conversation and proximity. But to know God requires conversation plus obedience. This is how we know we know him, we keep his commandments. We do what he says. Obedience is a means of knowing God that is fundamentally similar to meeting with, in a physical sense, a fellow human being. We all know people, we've all met people who claim to have a very intense, active prayer life. Oh, I talk to God all the time. And yet, whose lifestyle choices and decisions clearly indicate that they have no interest in obeying God. Oh yeah, I talk to God and God told me to leave my wife. I talk to God all the time and God told me to steal this piece of equipment. Well, they haven't followed the equation. To know God, you can't just speak to Him. You also have to obey Him. So how do you know God? Well, of course you have to talk with Him and listen to Him. That's a given. But on top of that, you have to add obedience, where you do what God says. Keep his commandments. George MacDonald put it this way, instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because he said do it, or once abstained because he said do not do it. It is simply absurd to say that you believe or even want to believe in Him if you do not do anything He tells you. Well, there's the test. You can think back over your last 24 hours and say, is there one thing that I've done in the last day that I did because God said do it? Is there one thing that I abstain from doing because God said don't do it? That's what it means, in one sense, to know God. What's the presupposition here? That if you know God, if you actually know Him, you will have an overwhelming urge to obey Him. What came to my mind for a simile to try to compare this to is a drug lord who manages to capture a couple of hostages. One is an old grizzled cop. The other is a ditzy blonde. The drug lord tells his two hostages to go in the other room and give him some privacy. The cop jumps up and rushes into the other room. The ditzy blonde giggles and says, Are you sure you want privacy? Why is the cop so eager to do what the drug lord says? The cop happens to be familiar with what the drug lord might do when he gets angry. The cop has a healthy sense of fear of this villainous, homicidal drug lord. Whereas our ditzy blonde doesn't have the slightest conception of what this fellow is capable of. And has no sense of respect for the brutality that he has inflicted on many, many people. John is telling us, if you know God, if you have any idea of who God is, if you actually know Him, you can't wait to obey Him. You're beyond eager to do everything He says. This inner compulsion tells you, if God wants it, I'm going to do it. If He says do it, that's it for me. I will do it. I have no desire to cross the Holy One of Israel. Is that the God you worship? Is that the God you know? A God who is so fearsome and terrible, adjectives that the Old Testament applies to Him regularly, a God who's so fearsome and terrible that everything He says to do, you are instantly, compulsively desirous of doing. That's the question. You know you know Him if you keep His commandments. Now what kind of knowing is this? You know God when you add together conversation plus obedience. But you know that you know Him. John says, not just you know him, you know you know him. What sort of knowing is this? Well, many people have told us that it's a discursive kind of knowing. You look at your life, right, kind of along the lines of George MacDonald even, that I quoted earlier, and you say, okay, well, here I can find five things in the last week where I wanted to do X, but I realized that God didn't want me to do that. So I did what God wanted instead. Therefore, I know God. And that's certainly part of it. But I think John is going beyond that and saying, not just that you can add up the calculations and say, well, let's see. I obeyed God about 75% of the time last week. Therefore, I know him more than not. Whereas another week was a bad week and well, let's just say I only obeyed God about 25% of the time that week and disobeyed 75% of the time. Now I mostly don't know him. Is that what he's talking about where we kind of just keep track of our spiritual temperature? We go and make a little line chart each night that says, well, I was up, I was down, my obedience kind of looks like the sine wave. No. There is some place for the discursive where you reason from, I obeyed here, therefore I think I know God. But what John is mostly talking about is the intuitive, where you know that you know God because you obeyed Him. If I ask any of you what the thing in front of you is, you would all be able to say, it's a chair. I've got a chair sitting in front of me, and when I say to you, how do you know? You won't say, well, it has four legs, it has a seat, it has a back, it is basically along the pattern of things that have been pointed out to me as chairs in the past. Therefore, I conclude that what I'm perceiving is a chair. If I say, how do you know it's a chair? You'll just say, I look at it and that's what it is. You intuitively grasp that it's a chair. You don't have to add together a bunch of different things in order to arrive at the conclusion that, yes, it's a chair. You know just by looking at it. And John is saying, intuitively, you know you know him, when your life is one of obedience. Intuitively, your mind grasps the fact that you know God when your life is one that does what He says. You don't question yourself and say, oh, do I know God? How was my performance this week? Did I just break even and obey 50% of the time and disobey 50% of the time? That's not it. It's not about the discursive. It's not about making a calculation. It's this intuitive sense, the same kind of sense you have that tells you this is a chair. So intuitively, when you obey God, your mind tells you, I know God. And so there's two different, there's two ways in, right? We already said, If you know God, if you know who He is, then you'll be eager to do what He says. But this is the flip side. If you're eager to do what He says, then you know Him. It works both directions. It's a self-reinforcing spiral process where the output comes out and then comes back in the input and strengthens your knowledge of God. I know God, which leads me to obey Him which leads me to know him. When Moses is talking to God in Exodus, what does he say? If I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways that I might find favor in your sight. It's that kind of spiral process. God, if I know you, let me obey you so I can know I know you, so that I can obey you, so that I can know you, Knowledge feeds into obedience, which feeds into knowledge, which feeds into obedience. And this cycle never ends. The better you know Him, the better you obey Him, the better you love Him. The better you know Him, the better you obey Him. So in one sense, does it matter where you start? No. You can start with knowledge. You can start with obedience. You can start with love. All of them lead you toward the same destination, which is conformity to the image of Christ. Do you all know where your hand is right now? Do you have to look to try to find it? Where is my hand? No, you have an intuitive sense that tells you where your hand is without looking at it. In the same way, when you obey, you have an intuitive sense that tells you, I know God. I just did what He wanted. And I liked it. I enjoyed it. Why did I enjoy it? Because I know Him. John is not ruling out the discursive, But he's emphasizing the intuitive. I know where my hand is. I know that I'm a child of God. Why? Because my desire is to do what he tells me. So what are his commands? We know we know him if we keep his commands. And you'll notice that John doesn't mention very many commands of Jesus, either in this epistle or in his gospel. Why is that? It's because we already know what his commands are. We can think of them in terms of the best summary ever written, the Ten Commandments. Do you worship any other god? Are you looking to a Black Friday sale coming up in two weeks? to be the kind of thing that fulfills you and makes you happy. I just saw a cartoon this week where the therapist says, now what do we say when we're feeling stressed and worn out? And the lady on the couch says, add to cart. Is shopping your God? Or is God your God? Do you worship graven images? Do you love something you can see and look to it for your fulfillment? Do you take God's name lightly? Do you honor God's holy day? Do you honor your father and mother? And fathers and mothers, do you honor your children? Do you kill, commit adultery, steal, lie, covet, want things that aren't yours? This is what John is saying. If you keep his commandments, if you keep his commands, if you do what he said to do, then you know intuitively that you know him. If you obey his commands, you'll have a certainty about your salvation that no human argument can challenge. John states it positively in verse 3, but then he immediately states it negatively in verse 4. He who says, I know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. The claim to know God is a claim that's contradicted by disobedient behavior. You don't know who God is any more than our ditzy blonde friend knows who this drug lord is. You are a liar. Now we have this expression, right? You talk the talk, but you don't walk the walk. You say, I know him, but you don't live like somebody who knows him. would actually live. This is the definition of hypocrisy. This is the definition of being a liar. This is someone who deserves, exactly what John says, the truth is absent. Truth is not in that person. I know Him. I know God. But if you don't do what He says, that proves that you don't know Him. But this takes us back to the question of Well, everybody disobeys. How much disobedience does there have to be before you don't know him? Is there some kind of threshold? A true Christian obeys 85% of the time. A carnal Christian obeys 65% of the time, right? He's getting a D. A non-believer obeys 0% of the time and is getting an F, but there's someone in there in between who's getting about a 35% or a 40%. Still what we would call an F. What about that person? Is that a hypocrite? Is that a liar? Or is that you and me? John's habit, John's tendency, if you haven't noticed, is to speak in absolutes. If we walk in the light, whoever is not walking in the light is in darkness. Either you know him or you don't know him. You're either in the light or in the dark. You either obey or disobey. You're either lying about your sin or confessing your sin. John automatically, in one sense, goes to the extreme and talks about the extreme. And we can all recognize the extreme. Of course, someone who never obeys is not a Christian. Of course, someone who always obeys is a Christian. What about the rest of us who sometimes obey and sometimes don't obey? What do we do with that? Well, John has already told us. He's admitted that he knows about that. Jesus cleanses us from sin, but if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Jesus cleanses us from unrighteousness, but if we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar. The true Christian is not someone who doesn't sin. The true Christian is someone who deals with his sin by confessing it, by exposing it to the light, by seeking forgiveness for it, in Christ. The non-believer, then, is someone who's content to sin and never deal with it. The non-believer is the one who takes the way of denial and says, I have no sin. I'm good. Thanks. That's the non-believer. The Christian is the one who admits his sin, who confesses his sin, who seeks forgiveness from the Christ, who is the propitiation for our sins and for the whole world. So you keep God's commands to know that you know Him, and often times, some days, the command you'll be keeping the most is the command to repent. The command to admit, Lord, I just did something you hate. Please forgive me. Please change the course of my life so that I no longer do that. Please help me. That's why we confess our sins every week as part of our worship service. That's what true Christians do. They know they sin, but they're not content to live there. Well, John returns to the positive in verse 5. Whoever keeps his word, truly in him the love of God is perfected. Now, this is an odd way of speaking. How do you fulfill love? How do you perfect love? Especially God's love, which we would think is already perfect. How could God love with an imperfect love? The answer we can think about perhaps most easily with an analogy. This comes from a book on lying that I read a few years ago. All of us know what it is to tell a lie. But what if you tell a lie that doesn't deceive anybody? Transparent lies where everyone you're talking to knows It's a lie. That lie is out there. That lie had the goal of deceiving somebody. But it failed in that goal. It didn't deceive anybody. So, for example, right, I could tell the lie and say, I grew up in the projects in the inner city. And all of you will look at me and say, uh-huh. Sure you did. That lie didn't deceive me. But what about a lie that works? A lie that leads the people who hear it to believe a falsehood? That lie has been fulfilled. That lie has done what it set out to do. That lie has come to completion by lodging in the minds of the auditors and making them think something false. So it is with the perfection of the love of God. God loves you, but His love is perfected when it evokes love out of you. Love wants what's best for the other person. And what's best for us is to be obedient children. And so God's love is perfected, God's love is fulfilled when it succeeds in doing what it set out to do. Which is to make us loving. Which is to make us obedient. The lie is fulfilled when it succeeds in deceiving. But love is fulfilled when it succeeds in drawing out love in response. So whoever keeps His Word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. Love wants what's best for us, and what's best for us is to love God. So when God's love is perfected in you, it has drawn love out of you for God. God loves you and He has succeeded in evoking love from your heart. He wanted what's best for you, And he got it, because what's best for you is to love and obey. So again, what if you say, well, yeah, I love God sometimes. God's love is not exactly perfect in me. There are a lot of times when I don't love God. The answer is, this is not condemnation already. John is telling us, God loves you. And he'll say later, He first loved us. God loves you now. And the goal of His love is to draw love out of you. To revoke a response of love in your heart. And when it does that, then it will be perfected. If God's love to you has drawn forth some measure of obedience, some desire to please God and love Him back, then His love is being perfected in you right now. Even perhaps through this sermon. In you, the love of God is perfected because it is turning you into a lover. who keeps God's commandments, who knows God, and who knows that He knows Him. By this we know that we are in Him. When your heart loves God and wants to obey Him, intuitively then you grasp, I'm in Christ. I'm united to Him by faith. I belong to Jesus. And I know that not primarily by discursive reasoning, Not by adding up my score on a quiz. I know it intuitively. Because my heart loves Jesus. Do you long to be perfected in love and dwell in God's house forever? Then you're in Him. You're a truth teller. Christ who is the truth is in you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that your love has come to us and that it is busy even now drawing love out of our hearts. Teach us to obey. Teach us to start with knowledge, move to obedience and then to love. Teach us to start with love and move to knowledge and then to obedience. Teach us to start with obedience and then move to love and knowledge. Father, show us that all these reinforce each other. They all work together. They all draw us closer to Jesus. Thank You that You love us. And we beg, Father, that today Your love would be perfected in us. That it would reach its goal. We pray this in the name of Your beloved Son. Who loves You perfectly. And who loves us perfectly too. In His name, Amen.