What an appropriate introduction to 1 John chapter 3 which says, Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God. Therefore the world does not know us because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure. Amen. Father, we thank you for the grace that we stand in. We dare not stand in our own efforts. We dare not stand in our own righteousness. We stand in what Christ has provided for us, what you have given to us, what the Holy Spirit applies in us. And so as we meditate on this incredible book, I pray that you would give me lips that would speak accurately and that you would anoint this preaching and that you would be with every heart that we might receive it and grow through it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, the first words of this book remind me a lot of the first words of the Gospel of John. And right out of the chute, John is confronting some heretics that have created all kinds of havoc in his congregations. Written the same year that 1 Peter was written, AD 65, John's congregations were facing the same apostasy and the same heretics that Peter's were. And he was facing, and all of his churches were facing the same persecutions that 1 Peter talks about. So it's AD 65, at least on my dating, And there's a growing number of conservative scholars that are saying, yeah, that's an absolute solid date. But who are some of these heretics? Well, there were proto-Talmudists, proto-Gnostics, Docetists, Ebionites, and other heretics who had mixed enough truth in with their error that people were somewhat buying into it. At least it was creating confusion. in the congregations and John writes all three of his epistles to try to reestablish some antithesis within the congregation and to oppose the heretics and make it clear what is the true gospel, what is the false gospel that is out there. Now there are other challenges as well. The biggest challenges that 1 John is facing was a lack of holiness, a lack of love, and a lack of good doctrine. Somehow people had gotten confused on those three, and I find it very interesting he uses those three tests as tests of what true Christianity looks like. And to get a feel for the brilliant way that John does this, it might be good to appreciate the structure of the book. Now, I will hasten to say that many commentaries do not think that there is any structure in the book of 1 John. The NIV application commentary says, discovering a recognizable pattern or structure of thought in 1 John has proven impossible. And it documents numerous previous attempts to find structure, and they've all come really under legitimate criticism. I've read quite a few of those critiques of earlier attempts, But as I've pointed out quite a number of times in the past, when scholars cannot find structure, which ought to seem weird, you know, when God's inspired these books, when scholars cannot find structure, it's probably because they are looking for a Western structure that doesn't exist, and they are missing a Hebrew structure, and that's definitely the case in this book. This is yet another book that was constructed as a chiasm. And once you see it, and there's been two or three scholars in just recent years that said, whoa, yeah, there's a chiasm right there. It's so clear. It is not forced at all. It jumps out at you. But this is also one of those rare and curious times when all of the other attempted structures are also true, or at least partially true. And the reason is that 1 John is almost as complex in its intertwining structuring as the book of Revelation was. We looked at that before. And the more I study this book of 1 John, the more amazed I really am at it. What I have found remarkable is when all of those other proposed structures are put, overlaid on this chiasm that I've placed in your outlines, all of a sudden the criticisms that have been rendered evaporate. And let me go through each theory. Though incomplete by itself, I think each theory really does contribute to the meaning of the book as a whole. First of all, there is a logical linear structure. Linear just means it goes from the beginning to the end, it's developing, where it moves from God revealing himself in the first verses to cut through all of the heresies that John is going to be addressing in the body of the book and emerging in the last verses with a series of we know, we know, we know statements that leave Christians with absolute certainties. Just because there's a ton of heretics out there doesn't mean we can't be certain, right? Ever because there's confusion doesn't mean we cannot be certain. If we take the Sola Scriptura approach of 1 John seriously, then we too can say, I know about the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. And the whole linear structure that I, Howard Marshall, and others have discerned I think is a beautiful answer to the confusion that's rendered in our own generation by Colts and other false doctrines out there. But that linear structure does not in any way contradict the chiastic structure. As I've pointed out before, most chiasms also have some linear development within them. They're not identical on both sides. There's some development. Likewise, there is a neat two-fold structure to the book. Raymond Brown says that the book clearly divides into two parts, and that's the end of it. And of course, he's had criticism from a number of people, said, but yeah, but what about these? It seems like there is some structuring over here. But anyway, again, every chiasm is divided into two parts, right? And so it's not an either-or, it's a both-and kind of a situation, and his contributions, I think, are helpful. Likewise, the mystifying Greek structures that Robert Longacre, Kier Hansford, and Simon Patterson have discerned, but which don't make sense to some scholars, all of a sudden make perfect sense when you overlay them over the chiasm. These are microstructures. Now they cannot explain the development of the book as a whole, but they explain some of the divisions within the book. And then lastly, older scholars like Robert Law saw a spiraling repetition of themes. Now he too has come under criticism, but those criticisms I think can be resolved in exactly the same way. Now before we get to the chiasm, I do want to briefly explain this spiraling chiasm that Robert Law discovered in 1913 and that others have refined. And I don't think you're gonna find this to be wasted time at all or wasted information. The book really does have a series of cycles going on. And actually, when you see those interwoven with each other and meditate on that, to me, it just highlights the inspiration of this book. But the spiral theory divides 1 John into three sections. Well, and the chiasm can be divided into three sections as well. But he calls these three sections, three cycles, each of which has three tests. And Joe Moorcraft likens this to a spiral staircase where you've got three stories, and each of those stories on the staircase have three steps within them. And each of these steps are three tests that showcase the false from the true. Now I tried to draw this for you and put it into the outline. I'm a lousy artist and maybe one of you will come up with artwork on this. I couldn't do it so you're just going to have to imagine. I'm going to try to describe this for you. Try to imagine that the first story of the book first story of the building, however you want to look at it, is illustrating what it means to have fellowship with the God of light who has brought us into his kingdom of light. The staircase that goes from the first floor to the second floor has three steps, as I've mentioned. Each of those three steps are tests of whether these claims, your claim, my claim, to being in fellowship with the God of light is a realistic claim or not. These are tests. Can a person say that he is in fellowship with the God of light when he's persistently walking in darkness? No. And you've got to keep in mind, he is opposing false believers and contrasting them with true believers, false teachers contrasting them with true teachers, and both sets of people claim to be in fellowship with God. They claim, oh yeah, yeah, if you follow my teachings, you're going to enter into fellowship with God. So what he's doing is he's giving three tests by which their claims to fellowship with God can be evaluated. Those three tests are holiness or righteousness, love, and correct belief. And the false believers and teachers failed all three tests. So John's conclusion is, that it really doesn't matter that they claim to have special information you can't find in the Bible that's going to draw you into Gnostic fellowship with the Father. If they fail these three basic tests, they are fake. Don't even listen to them. That's basically what he's saying. The next cycle, or the second floor of this building, focuses on what it means to be true or false sons and daughters of God. So this goes one step earlier. It's not just fellowship, but now there's a relationship with God as sons and daughters. What does the nature of sonship look like? And the three steps on this portion of the staircase are exactly the same three steps. It is righteousness, love, and correct doctrine. And again, the false believers demonstrate that they were obviously not born of God. They're not sons and daughters. Only the elect pass these three tests of righteousness, love, and correct belief. So if your life is not being changed in those three ways, you don't have a family resemblance, is what John is basically saying. So that's the second third of the book. The last cycle, or the third floor if you prefer, focuses on how to have assurance. It's all preoccupied with assurance of our salvation and fellowship and sonship. And the three steps on the staircase, as you might have guessed, are exactly the same three steps. It is righteousness, Love and correct doctrine. Those things give witness, powerful witness that brings us comfort and assurance. And I think that that structure explains a lot. Now, there have been authors like Simon Patterson who have criticized that and said, you know, it doesn't explain everything in the book. And that's true, it doesn't. But I think it's beautiful when it's seen within the chiastic structure. And all of these structures interweave with each other. They all have their purpose. And I debated, okay, which one of these structures am I going to use to show the development of the book? I almost went with Robert Law's because there is such explanatory power and simplicity in his structure. But because so few people know about the chiasm, I'm going to use that this morning. And as we go through each of the parallel points of the chiasm, hopefully you'll see that each of these drives you right to the center of the book, the heart of the book. And John will show that the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart, a heart that is either influenced by Satan or influenced by God. It's out of a transformed heart that we automatically begin to see righteousness, love, and correct belief beginning to develop. It's out of a transformed new heart that we have a genuine Christianity. Without a new heart, the linear progress of this book makes no sense. Without a new heart transformed by the Spirit, we cannot gain assurance of salvation. So all of these themes that are interweaving, they lock in, they hone in on the center of the book, and hopefully I can adequately explain that. So let's look at the first A section, and it's, you know, the chiasm's right in your front side of your outlines there. A section confronts the Jewish heresies that denied who Jesus was. So it confronts the Ebionite heresy, the Dositist heresy, the Gnostic heresy, as well as false teachers who said, hey, the Messiah hasn't even come. Let's read verses one through three. That which was from the beginning, now let me stop there for a moment because the Greek is crystal clear that in any beginning to have been begun, imperfect tense, the Messiah, the word of God, the son of God was already there. And so this is already focusing on his divinity, but immediately he goes into his humanity. And so it goes on to say, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled concerning the word of life. No docetist could say those words. because they didn't think that Jesus was really human. He was purely divine. He just had an appearance of being human, but they, like the Gnostics, did not like this idea of God and material world mixing. God is so separate that they thought that this was impossible. and yet John is emphasizing the physical. Verse 2, the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. So contrary to modalism, The Son, Jesus, was with the Father, which means He is a distinct person from the Father. That which we have seen and heard we declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. So it is in the inspired revelation that John is writing that we have the key to true fellowship, not, and he's going to emphasize this over and over, not the Gnostic secrets that these false teachers are trying to get people into. All of these heretics were trying to get the Christians to get into something really cool. We've got some secret knowledge that you need to know. We've got some cool experiences with God that you need to know. And the hoi polloi, the ordinary Christians, are not going to be able to do this. So in order to get initiated into this God, you've got to get initiated into our group, into our secrets. and secrets you can't find in the Bible. And this book really annihilates all of those first century heresies in these first few verses and throughout the book. Now, I can't get into all of the theology of this incredible section, But John will hammer home, you cannot have the father without an orthodox view of the son. If you've got a false Christ, you've got a false father. And for Christians to say nowadays that Muslims can be saved without Jesus, or Jews can be saved without Jesus, is completely to be ignorant of the book of 1 John. No man comes to the Father except through Jesus. And so the first A and the second A sections both deal with Christology. In fact, in chapter five, verse 13, he said that this is one of the reasons for writing the book, to give them faith in who Jesus is. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. Well, the only way that we can have that knowledge is through the written Word, so he writes another book of the Bible, right? Well, in chapter 1, verse 4, he points out that this doctrinal knowledge that we get through the Scriptures not only gives us faith in the Messiah, it gives us incredible joy. In these things we write to you that your joy may be full. So when John is going to be giving these recurring tests, of whether you've got a fake Christianity or an authentic Christianity. He's not trying to rob you of your joy. On the contrary, he's trying to get you on the authentic path so that you can have full joy, full assurance, full confidence. It can only be by Christ uniting us to the Father. So those two A sections form the prologue and the conclusion. Both deal with the purpose statements for writing the book. Both deal with Christology, how to have eternal life. Both deal with how to fellowship with God, how that fellowship is broken. Our fellowship starts with the revelation of the Father through the Son to the apostles, written down in the Bible, and then the book ends with, we know, we know, we know, we know certainties that result from belief in the Bible. And I wish I could park on the two A's because they really are marvelous bookends. They anchor the whole book in a sola scriptura certainty. Now, the two B sections move the argument one step forward. It's not enough to claim to know Christ and God, because there were cults out there in the first century, they claimed to know Jesus, some of them did, and all of them claimed to know the Father. But John contrasts false testimonies with true testimonies and makes it clear, hey, if you reject my testimony, my inspired testimony of who Christ is, you are liars. Them's fighting words. But you know, when you have heretics out there that Satan is using to try to destroy the church, you must fight, you must testify against them. So John is not modeling a nice get-along-with-everyone Christianity. Yes, they get along with a lot of people, but not with false heretics who are deliberately trying to destroy the church. And how does God testify? Well, the Father reveals Himself through the Son. The Son reveals all things to the apostles, verse 5. The apostles reveal that message in their writings, chapter 2, verse 1. And the second B, you see these parallelisms in all of these sections. Second B section says, If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater, for this is the witness of God, which he has testified of his sons. So both sections deal with Christology, yes, and Christ's atonement, But both of them are built on the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, the objective revelation of the Bible absolutely must precede and follow any subjective experiences of God that are mentioned in the beginning, in the inner part of this book, the inner illumination. And that's why he frames both sides with Sola Scriptura, the A and the B sections. Now let's briefly look at chapter one, verses five through 10. This section decimates both of two extremes that John was opposing when it comes to ethics. One extreme was perfectionism, the claim to be without any sin, which was a characteristic not just of Phariseeism, but also a couple of other Jewish cults. The other extreme was antinomianism, it really doesn't matter if I sin, which was a characteristic of at least one Jewish Gnostic cult. And you know what, these heretical teachings that started in the first century just gathered steam and continued to influence the church over the next three centuries. But I want you to see how he deals with these two heretical teachings. We'll begin reading at verse five. This is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Now here comes the test. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. So even that paragraph is addressing both extremes. If you claim to be in fellowship with God, but you're walking in darkness, he says you lie. But on the other hand, walking in the light does not mean you are without sin. Just think of a light bulb. What does a light bulb expose? When you're walking in the light, you got it shining, well, it exposes things you didn't realize were there before. It exposes dirt and dust bunnies and lint and all kinds of things you would not have recognized without the light. And so that makes us sweep and clean and vacuum. In the same way, when we walk in the light, we say, whoa, there's sin. We immediately confess, come into agreement with God and with his spotlight, and we don't justify our sin. We rejoice that we can see the sin so as to get rid of the sin. We put it under the blood. So that's the balance between the two extremes. In verses eight through 10, he deals with both extremes again. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. Now those verses are so important for understanding some verses later in the book where he says anybody who's been born of God does not sin, or a better translation, does not keep on sinning, is not in a perpetual habit of sinning. Here he claims that if you're lying, if you say that you do not have any sin, I've actually met Christians who have told me that they haven't sinned in decades. Had one guy say, oh yeah, it's been 23 years since my last sin. I said, well, you just sinned by saying that you don't sin. That's what First John right here says. He said, what are you talking about? But anyway. If you're truly walking in the light, it progressively reveals more and more sin the closer to the light that you get. But true Christians immediately repent of those sins. They're cleansed from those sins. They become more holy. Why? Because they're attracted to the light. They want to get more and more like God. They don't walk in the darkness, which means covering over your sin. They walk in the light, which means they're quite willing to expose their sin, because they want to get rid of it. That's what it means to walk in the light. But lest we become discouraged when our sins get exposed, he goes on to say in the first two verses of chapter 2, My little children, these things I write to you so 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 let's dig into those verses a bit. John says one of the purposes for writing this book is to get you to stop sinning the same sins. So if you've got a sin addiction that you're trying to get rid of, I encourage you to read and reread, to memorize and meditate upon the book of 1 John, it has a powerful sanctifying influence in our lives. That's one of its purposes, is to get us to quit sinning the same sins. And wow, does this book do that. It puts the fear of God into you, but it also brings comfort right along with that fear. But this is one of the books that really helped me to grow up a lot, to say it mildly. Second, John says, and if anyone sins, okay, you're not gonna be perfect, if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Now, as Daniel Aiken and others point out, the if anyone is modified by the previous clause and by the we that comes after it, okay? So Jesus is not an advocate for Satan or for demons or for the non-elect. He's only an advocate for the we. If any of the we, if any of the elect sins, it's not going to jeopardize their relationship with God. Christ will always stand as our advocate and helper, another translation of Pericles. And even though we're not perfectly righteous, he is the righteous one because we're united to him. It's like he's a lawyer. He's an advocate. He defends us. We get off the hook. He goes on and he says that he himself is also the propitiation. Now, propitiation means that God's wrath is completely removed from us. Now, again, This can only apply to the elect, since in John's gospel, he says, He who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. John 3, verse 36. God's wrath always abides on those that he cannot see as being united to Christ. Okay, so why does John say he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world? Heretical universalists love this verse. They rightly say propitiation means God's wrath has been completely removed. And if it's been completely removed from the world, and they define the world as meaning everybody in this universe, then everybody's going to get saved, including Satan. And yet we look and say, well, there's other scriptures that say there's people going to burn in hell for all of eternity. So how could that be true? And the answer to Universalist is actually quite simple. Who is the audience? Like Peter, John was an apostle to the Jews. His audience was made up of Jewish Christians, and Jews had this tendency to think that, especially these heretical groups, if you're not Jew, you can't be saved. In fact, that was the debate in Acts chapter 15, wasn't it? These heretics were coming in. In fact, let me read that for you, Acts 15 verse one. The heretics said, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. And so what John is insisting, hey, he's the propitiation. He will save not just us Jews, but the Gentiles as well. And that is one of seven definitions of the word cosmos in the Bible. It's Jew as opposed to Gentile. Paul uses that in Romans chapter 11. Israel and the world. Those are in contrast with each other. And so that's why in the second B, it applies this redemption of Christ's blood to anyone who believes. It's the same idea. By the way, Arminians give the same interpretation of the word world as the Universalists do, and it gets them into a similar contradiction. So they make the word world mean every man, woman, and child who's ever existed, but then they are forced by their logic to reduce the meaning of the word propitiation, okay? Why? Because they know God's wrath abides on other people. They're trying to believe the Bible, right? They know that that's the case, and so they say, well, it's potential, but it's not really. And it removes all the comfort of the word propitiation. If he's the propitiation for people who are burning right now in hell, that's hardly a comfort to people. And so this does not say he's the potential propitiation. He is the propitiation. Meaning of the word cannot be diluted. And so it's better to take one of the seven dictionary definitions of cosmos that does not contradict the meaning of propitiation. Every word in the phrase is important. And Jew versus Gentile definitely fits. So if cosmos meant every single individual in this universe, then everyone including Satan would be saved. Because if God's wrath was removed, None can legally burn in hell according to God's law. But remember that John's audience was the same as Peter's, Jewish Christians. Okay, enough on that. Two C-sections give several further evidences of true Christianity and contrast that with the liars who are out there, the false prophets, the false teachers. Both of these C-sections affirm that true believers will love God and will love each other. Ah, but then he, everybody claims to love each other, right? He defines what he means by love. It's keeping God's commandments. I'll just read the first C-section because both of them are so similar. Chapter two, verse three. 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 also to walk just as he, in other words Jesus, walked. Wow, what a powerful argument against antinomianism today. I think it's just as powerful today as it was back then. How did Christ walk? By perfectly keeping all of God's commandments. Now, he had no problem with breaking The man-made laws of the Pharisees, their civil laws that they made about the Sabbath, absolutely ridiculous. You ought to read some of the things. You can't eat an egg that was laid on the Sabbath because that chicken might have labored for it. I mean, they've got endless laws. Jesus said, that's not in the Bible. He had no problem breaking those laws. But if he broke even one of God's laws, he could not be our Savior because he would have been a sinner, right? And so John is basically saying, look, just because Jesus saved you, just because he removed the Father's wrath does not mean you could just live any way that you want to live. Anybody who is truly regenerate is going to want to conform his life to Christ who is the law keeper. He will walk just as he walked. He'll try to keep God's commandments just as Jesus kept those commandments. And I think this is a powerful argument in favor of theonomy as defined by Bonson and against theonomy falsely defined by Joel McDermott. I think it's a powerful argument. Jesus upheld the whole law and called out the Pharisees for not giving the death penalty to juvenile delinquents. That's Matthew 15, 3 through 9. Just read it for yourself sometime. Whereas Joel McDermott overthrows laws like that and a whole bunch of other laws, anything related to sexual misconduct and things like that. Anyway, John continues in verse 7, brethren, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment, which you have had from the beginning. In other words, he does not pit the New Testament against the Old Testament. They're one and the same. 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." Now, there's a ton of theology in there that we cannot get into, but Christ's new commandment, and you know the new commandment, right? That you love one another as I have loved you is not new with regard to content. exactly the same content. He did not overthrow the law. It's new in respect to modeling. He was the first human being to ever love by keeping God's commandments perfectly. And so it's imitating Jesus in doing this that's the new part of it, but not the content. Both Jesus and John defines love as keeping God's commandment. Well, John now sets this as a test of true Christianity. The antinomians of that day were not true to God's definition of love. They might have talked a lot about love, but it was a false love. Why? because they picked and chose what laws they would follow. Verse 9, 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 was 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. So he is drawing a very sharp antithesis between true believers and false believers. Section by section, he is making it harder and harder for these heretics to really claim that they are Christians. The second C section has almost identical language, but it amplifies on it a bit. It clearly defines love, chapter 5, verse 3. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. You know, with all that Jesus has done for us, we should delight in pleasing Him and keeping His commandments. John, just like King David of old, wants us to be able to say, oh, how I love your law. I meditate on it all day long. That's what he wants us to do. And with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have all the power that we need to keep His commandments. So basically what's happening, both sections are pressing home the tests of love and righteousness. Those are the evidences that we are walking in the kingdom of light. Well, we come next to the two D sections. Chapter 2, verses 12 through 17, is one of the sections that's messed up on every single previous attempt to outline this book. It just doesn't fit. This is one of the critiques almost everybody brings against those previous things. OK, how does this section fit in? I don't know. It doesn't seem to fit in. But you'll notice in your outline, it runs perfectly parallel to the second D section of this chiasm. Both deal with the victory of the believer over the world, the flesh, and the devil. And what encouraging words these are. True Christians do not stay down when they've been knocked to the ground by the world, the flesh, and the devil. They get right back up. They get into a fighting stance with the absolute confidence that we have the victory in Christ Jesus, okay? That should characterize us. Chapter two, verse 12. I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake." So that's where the Christian walk begins. Sins forgiven, slate wiped clean, we have a new beginning. But verses 13 through 17 indicate that every believer needs to mature beyond childhood into adulthood. And I can't get into all of the details of the meaning, but I think the principle of growth should be obvious. 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. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it. But he who does the will of God abides forever." So there were some branches of heretics had no problem with conforming to the world, at least certain branches of the world, and excusing sin in the name of grace. But they were showing how anti-Christ they were when they were satisfied with the opposite The opposite of what Christ had died to achieve. Christ did not die to make us lawless. That should be obvious. He did not die to make us comfortable in our bondage to sin. That should be obvious. He guaranteed us victory because we are indwelt by the very power of God. Second D section, chapter four, verses four through six says this. You are of God, little children, and have overcome them. And I do want to stop there for a moment. I want you to notice, little children can have victory. Why? Not because of themselves and how strong they are, but because they are indwelt by the very strength of Christ who indwells them. So he says, you are of God, little children, and have overcome them because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are of the world, therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God. He who knows God hears God. He who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. So your identity is not with political parties. Your identity in all that you do is with Christ and with His kingdom. Now the two E sections sharpen this contrast because the true teaching of Jesus, the Anointed One, which is what Christos means, is contrasted with the false teachings of the anti-anointed, the anti-Christuses. And I want you to notice that every one of these Judaistic heretics was defined by John as being an antichrist. There is not just one antichrist, there were many. And notice that those antichrists were living in John's day in the last hour or moment before war would come and seal their doom. To make the last hour the last 2,000 years, as so many amillennialists and premillennialists do, is really ridiculous. We've really been living in the last hour for 2,000 years? It makes a nonsense of language. But anyway, We're not looking forward to an Antichrist. The spirit of Antichrist had already come in the first century, the time of the great apostasy. In the book of Revelation, we saw it was actually the last hour in a very literal sense for Satan as well. Even though his angels would continue to be around for thousands of years, Satan himself would be about to be bound in the pit. Chapter 2, verse 18. Little children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard, the Antichrist is coming. Even now, many Antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us." I'll only comment on one thought in there. I want you to notice that these former church members did not lose their salvation. They were of us in the sense that they were members of the visible church, but they were not of us in the sense that they were not in the invisible church of the elect. See, just like the Apostle Paul who said in the Old Testament, not all Israel was Israel, John is saying, hey, not all the church is really the true church of the elect, the invisible church of the elect. For if they had been of us as the elect, they would not have gone out of us as the church. But God allowed them to leave the visible church to make it crystal clear that none of them were of us. Now that ought to scare the daylights out of the thousands of Christians who have bailed out of the visible church altogether. Now these former members of John's churches would later spawn all kinds of heresies. that would plague the church for the next few centuries, apocalyptic writers, docetists, Ebionites, Talmudists, Gnostics, and they all claim to be anointed by the Holy Spirit. We've had this experience. It's an awesome experience. You need to have this experience too. And John says, guys, we need to test all experiences by the word of God. That's basically what he is saying. In fact, you are anti-Christuses If you claim the Holy Spirit's anointing, but you fail these three tests. Each one of these groups denied Sola Scriptura, and they claimed to have special secrets, special knowledge you couldn't get from the Bible. And John will assure his church members, no, you do not need to know any of these secrets of the Antichrist, since you have a chrism that opens your eyes to know everything you need to know from the Bible. Verse 20, but you have an anointing. That's a chrisma. from the Holy One, and you know all things. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Now the phrase the truth there refers to the Bible. They know that the Bible is, they know what it is, and that nothing can be added to it. The whole section has been grossly misinterpreted by some cults to say that Christians don't need the Bible because they have the Holy Spirit. I've heard this over and over again. But would the Holy Spirit lead us away from his precious word which he committed to the church? No, he would not. In any case, these moderns' claims are really self-contradictory. I had one teacher tell me that there really is no need to be following the Bible, and he pointed to this verse to prove that you don't need the Bible. If we don't need the Bible, why are you trying to prove from the Bible that we don't need the Bible? That does not make any sense. And they say we don't need to be members of the church, ignoring the previous section. And they say no one needs teachers, contradicting themselves by teaching. them this false doctrine. And I mean, even the apostle was teaching them and writing to them showing they needed some teaching. They needed this scripture. So what is going on? What was going on was that the false teachers promised them special knowledge that was not in the Bible. The Bible's the anchor points, right, of the two A and B sections. John assured them that they had a complete deposit of all things in the Scriptures, and the anointing by the Holy Spirit enabled any believers to understand the Bible without specialized Gnostic insights. And you might say, wow, we don't have Gnostics around today. What's the relevance of this passage? Actually, we have people who do much the same thing. Our modern Gnostics, Christian Gnostics are the ones who say you have to have a PhD to understand the Bible or you have to have our specialized hermeneutic before you can understand the Bible. So they'll hand you a liberation theology hermeneutic and say this is the key to understanding the Bible or they'll hand you a feminist hermeneutic or LGBTQ hermeneutic or a Critical race, a hermeneutic. Actually, amongst evangelicals, we have similar things. Meredith Klein came up with a bizarre, weird hermeneutic that he imposes on the scripture. And this has been a plague on the Reformed Church. Dispensationalism. They didn't get that from the Bible. They came up with a hermeneutic, imposed it on the Bible. And John is basically telling them, look, guys, You do not need to go beyond the Bible for anything. You already have everything that you need, yes, even for Herman the Dukes, as I pointed out in last week's sermon. When these apostates denied the biblical doctrine of Jesus based on their supposed revelations, they were showing that their teachings were lies. Verse 22, who is a liar? But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either. He who acknowledges the Son has the Father also. These Jewish teachers pretended to have the father, but if they rejected the father's son, they obviously have rejected the father. Verse 24, therefore, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the son and in the father. And this is the promise that he has promised us eternal life. So John is not trying to get them to get into some mystical new ideas. He's saying, no, I want you to take seriously the teachings, the biblical teachings that I've handed on to you that have been taken from the Bible. Verse 26, these things I've written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. But the anointing which you have received from him abides in you and you do not need that anyone teach you. But as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as he has taught you, you will abide in him. Is he arguing that all you need is the Holy Spirit and the Bible and no one needs to teach you? No, he's not saying that or he would have contradicted himself by teaching them and giving them another portion of the Bible. John is referring to the false teachers who want to teach them supposed truths that the Holy Spirit has not given in the Bible. And he's basically saying, you have everything. You know it's in the Bible. Okay, the Holy Spirit will only lead you into biblical truth, and he will lead you into all biblical truth. And that this is true can be seen from the parallel passage on antichrists and false prophets in the second E section, chapter four, verses one through three. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. Alford correctly states this, the plurality of spirits are to be explained by the fact that both the spirit of truth and the spirit of error speak by the spirits of men who are their organs. So when you're testing the spirits, you're testing men who claim to be prophets. And they were to reject the false prophets who failed these three tests in the last days of the old covenant. You don't reject just the prophecies, you reject the prophets themselves. Why? Because they are false prophets. So John is warning these Christians, test, test between the true and the false prophets that are all around you. If people had prophecy, it was either from Satan or God. And it's important to realize that demons can give people prophetic abilities. That has always been true. But this spirit of Antichrist was a first century phenomenon that was especially manifested in these Jewish heresies. So the context was the days leading up to the last hour of the Old Covenant. Well, we come next to the two F sections that deal with the assurance of salvation. After everything that John has said, these Christians might begin wondering, man, am I really a Christian? I mean, after I read the first few chapters of 1 John, I began doubting my salvation. Have I really been born again? Because after all, he gives these very convicting tests. He says, are you a fake Christian? Well, here's some tests. Are you holy? Do you have love for all the brethren? Is your doctrine pure? And I'm thinking, well, yeah, sort of, but I've got sin inside. I don't know. And I began to have questions about this. And so in this section, he sets them straight and he says, look, I'm talking about direction, not perfection. If you persist in having sin and won't repent of it, if you persist in not loving the brethren, If you don't care about doctrine, that's a bad sign. But if you're on the pathway to more righteousness, more love, more consistent doctrine, that's a good sign. So both sections deal with a believer's confidence. The only difference being one section is confidence before the Father, the other section is confidence before the Son. Both reiterate the importance of keeping God's commandments, practicing righteousness, putting on discernment. So take a look at chapter 2, verse 28. And now, little children, abide in him, that when he appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him that is coming. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of him. And throughout this book, you're gonna see this balance between a scary, scary challenge and an immediate encouragement that our confidence is in Christ. So the challenge is, what's wrong with you? Quit sinning. And, you know, start loving the brethren, and then the immediate encouragement is, but don't look to yourself to do that, look to Christ. And it's back and forth. And we see exactly the same balance in the second F section, chapter 3, verse 19. By this we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him. So both of these sections are dealing with assurance, right? Shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God and whatever we ask, we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment that we should believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another as he gave us commandments. So there is that back and forth balance again. A challenge, we need to be holy. We need to be more loving. And then an assurance to look to Jesus for our confidence as we keep pressing into our upward calling. Verse 24, now he who keeps his commandments abides in him and he in him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us. So there's another source of encouragement. It's the indwelling Holy Spirit. Now let me ask you something. Is the Holy Spirit who is inside of you going to give you assurance of your salvation when you are in rebellion against His law? No, he's going to do the exact opposite. He's going to withdraw that assurance because he doesn't want you to be comfortable in your sin and in your rebellion. But on the other hand, even though you keep falling into sin, if your desire, Lord, I want to be more like you, I don't want to be a fake Christian, please draw my heart to you. Yeah, he gives that assurance to you. So it really has to do with our attitude and our unwillingness to just lie on the ground after we've been knocked by Satan onto the ground. We get up, say, sorry, Lord, please forgive me. I'm gonna keep fighting for you. That's the attitude that we need to have, and he gives assurance to those kinds of people. And before we get to the heart of the book that gets to the heart of the matter, he makes one more contrast that shows how a believer's true nature is revealed. In the first section, it's revealed in the future. This is chapter three, verse one. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God. Therefore, the world does not know us because it did not know him. Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure." So here he is saying that even the doctrine of eschatology drives us to be more and more holy. If you have an eschatology that removes all motivation toward holiness, you've got a lousy eschatology. The eschatology of the heretics that left John's churches was a pessimistic eschatology that robbed people of faith and robbed them of hope to do anything. And if you doubt it, just read any of those apocalyptic writings that the Jews put out. They're unbelievably pessimistic. They're just saying, well, we can't do anything. It's completely defeated. We're just waiting to get bailed out. Well, that's exactly the eschatology of the modern evangelical church. You know, most all mills and pre-mills, it's just like we can't win anything. We're just waiting for the rapture. We're waiting to get bailed out. Apocalyptic eschatology always leaves people passive and hoping to be bailed out. But true eschatology stirs up our blood, makes us want to take over the world. Now last week I read you the conclusion of Paul's very optimistic eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15. The last verse begins with a therefore, and that therefore means in light of all of the eschatology I've given to you, here's what that eschatology should produce within you. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." That's what a genuine eschatology does to you. It energizes you, makes you more holy. Well, that's what John says here. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure. Do you have a hope, an eschatology that purifies you? You gotta start searching the scriptures to get the right eschatology if you don't. Postmillennialism definitely stirs us up in that way. And so the first G section shows that a believer's true nature is revealed by his approach to the future. What kind of hope drives you? The second G section shows that a believer's true nature is revealed by his approach to the present. Does the present also drive you to holiness and love? And I won't comment much on this, but let me go ahead and read it, beginning at chapter three, verse 11. For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brothers righteous. Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murder has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us, and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth." So he's saying, whether you're looking at the future, you're embracing the present, it all should lead to a transformed life. but it's in the heart of the book that we see where everything flows from. Don't just look at the human teachers, whether they're good or bad, look behind those teachers to a heart that is influenced by either Satan or by God. Satan will move people toward more and more sin, less and less love, less and less consistency in their doctrine, whereas God's gonna be moving people toward the truth that he loves, toward the people that he loves. toward the righteousness, the law that he loves. And he does it from the inside out, from the heart. As Jesus said, for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Here's how John words it, beginning to read at 1 John 3 verse 4. Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness, and you know that He was manifested to take away our sins. Well, that means He was manifested to take away our lawlessness, right? And in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. People are either children of God or children of the devil. They either have an evil heart or a regenerate heart, and you can tell the heart of these teachers by their sin, their lack of love, their false teaching. You can tell the heart of the elect by their righteousness, love for the brethren, and their alignment with Christ's purposes, which is to destroy the works of the devil. Now, some people get hung up on the words in verse 9, whoever has been born of God does not sin, for his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. And they look inside and they say, well, obviously I've got sin inside of me, so I must not be born of God. Well, they're forgetting 1 John 1, verses 8 and 10, which says we're liars if we say that we do not have sin. Now let me give you a little Greek lesson here. The phrases does not sin and cannot sin are in the Greek present tense, a tense that denotes ongoing habitual action. And most versions actually draw this out better than the New King James. Here's the ESV. I think it's a much better translation. It says, no one born of God makes a practice of sinning for God's seed abides in him and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. When God has given you a new heart and he's placed a seed of life within you, then it's impossible to stay dead to righteousness. It's impossible. You will grow in righteousness. You progressively start saying no. to sin more and more consistently, and you progressively start saying yes to righteousness more and more consistently. That all flows from a new heart. So the heart of the matter is the matter of a heart, and a new heart always results in new life, and the tests of that new life are the presence of the same three tests, righteousness, love for the brethren, and increasing knowledge of the truth. Now, you're not going to be perfect, but neither will you cover over and justify your sin. On the other hand, if you have no interest in growing in righteousness, no interest in loving the brethren, no interest in theology, it may be an indicator that your heart has not been changed. And so you can see why John says this was a book to help us to stop sinning. It motivates us to say, Father, I don't want to be a fake Christian. I want to be like you, like my father. You can also see why he said he wrote this book to help you to put your faith in Jesus, not in yourself, because you realize you let yourself down all the time. So it drives you to Christ. And you can also see why he said he wrote this book so that you would have full joy. Our joy is robbed when we fail the three tests of this book, and our joy grows like crazy when we begin to see little evidences of those three tests, of life within us from those three tests. And we've barely scratched the surface of this marvelous book, but I encourage you to memorize it. It's one of the early books that our family memorized. I think it yields the fruits of righteousness the more that you meditate on it. May each of us see our joy increase as we fix our eyes on Jesus. Amen. Father, thank You for Your Word. And there is so much packed into 1 John, but I pray that by the illumination of Your Holy Spirit, Your chrism resting upon each believer here, that they would have an increasing insight into what your word means and how it applies to their lives. Do bless this, your people, in Jesus' name, amen.