This morning we'll be in 1 John chapter five, looking at verses one through five. But before we start, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, you are the almighty God, the maker of heaven and earth. Father, your glory knows no bounds. Your perfection is limitless. Your holiness is without measure. You dwell shrouded in light as though it was an unapproachable veil. Father, it is beyond our imagining that we could ever come and appear before you to worship you and to enjoy you. Yet in Christ, you have opened up a way for us to come. And so Father, we thank you for that. Father, we praise you for that, that you have brought us near in Christ. And Father, our desire this morning is to come near, to come and taste the goodness of Christ. to see the joys of Christ, to see who Christ is and what He has done for us, and to treasure that, and therefore to worship You. Father, it's not in us to do that rightly or well. but we trust that through your Spirit we can come. And Father, our prayer is that your Spirit would be in our midst right now as we look at your Word, that as we meditate on your Word, that our hearts would be moved to love and worship Christ. Father, I pray for myself especially as I come to preach your Word. Father, I pray that you would guard my words, that they would be such things that are true and glorifying to Christ and things that are useful for all who listen to them. Father, I pray especially that Your Spirit would take my words and make them Your words, that I would speak truthfully the things of Your Word, and that Your Spirit would take them and apply them to all of our hearts, that they would cause us to love Christ. So Father, we dedicate this time to You and pray that it would be to Your glory in Christ. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So this morning we're going to enter the last chapter of 1 John and we're nearing the end of our study on 1 John. I think after this we just have three weeks left. Now as we've gone through John's letter, we've seen that John is helping us describe what a true Christian looks like. What characteristics will a true believer have? And John has given us a wide variety of different characteristics. A true believer is going to believe the truth about Jesus Christ. A true believer will live out the truth of Jesus Christ in obedience. A true believer will live out the truth about Jesus Christ in love for God and in love for each other. And a true believer will hear the truth of Jesus Christ and have joy. We've seen all of these scattered throughout John's letter. And as he's given us these attributes of the true Christian, alongside these, John has demonstrated that these attributes grow out of who Christ is. Who Jesus Christ is, is at the center of John's letter. And as we've gone through the book, we've seen that the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Christ coming and taking flesh, is at the center of John's theology. And so those who don't believe in the incarnation don't understand Jesus Christ at all. And therefore, those who don't believe in the incarnation, and therefore don't understand Christ, aren't going to live out the truth of Christ in their lives. And so that kind of summarizes the first four chapters in a very quick overview. And so we can turn to 1 John chapter 5. I'll read verses 1 through 5. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? So as we look at our passage this morning, my proposition, my main point this morning, is that those who place their trust in Jesus will assuredly win the victory. Those who place their trust in Jesus will assuredly win the victory, but faith that leads to victory is never alone. It is rooted in Jesus Christ, and therefore will imitate Jesus Christ. And for an outline this morning, I'll have three main points. We'll start by looking at two promises that lead to victory. Then we'll see three unities assuring victory. And we'll finish looking at one victorious union. So let's start by looking at two promises. Our passage this morning is actually structured or built around two promises. They act as kind of the scaffolding for our text this morning. And these promises come at the very beginning of our text and in the middle of our short passage. And everything in this passage is related to these two promises somehow. Either the truths of this passage are based on the promise, the truths flow out of the promise, the promise is true, therefore these things that John is teaching us is true. Or the truths in the passage lead to the promises. The promises are true because of the truth that John is teaching us. And so since these kind of form the basis or the scaffold for the passage, I want to start this morning by looking at the two promises in the passage. So our first promise comes in verse 1. It's just the first phrase that we see in the passage. It says, Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. So there's a simple promise there. Everyone who believes that Jesus the Christ has been born of God. And I think that that promise teaches us two things that make it a precious promise for us to hold on to. First, it tells us that our faith has a source. And then it tells us that our faith is a surety. Our faith has a source. And our faith is a surety. So let's start with looking. Our faith has a source. When John says everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, he makes an emphatic statement. If you believe in Jesus, you must be a child of God. The two are equivalent. Or, in other words, if you believe that Jesus is the Christ, it's evidence that you have been born of God. That God has worked in you to change your mind, to change your heart about Jesus Christ. So, consider Christ's words to Peter. This comes from Matthew 16, verses 15 through 17. He's asked Peter, who do people say I am? And he's given a long list. But then Jesus said to them, who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. So when Peter confesses who Jesus is, he says, Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the confession that John's bringing up in our passage this morning. Jesus says that the source of that statement was not Peter. It was not men who revealed, flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but the source was God. God had worked in Peter and revealed to Peter the truth about Jesus Christ. And now John folks, what he heard that interaction between Jesus and Peter, and he applies it to the rest of us as well. The source of our faith is not us, but it comes from God. If we believe that Jesus is the Christ, we know that God is working in us, because that's the only way we could believe who Jesus is. And so our faith doesn't rely on us. It's not our goodness, or our wisdom, or our power, or whatever else we might rest in. Anything that we have done that has caused us to grasp on to Christ, and trust Him as the living Son of God. Only God's immeasurable power could cause such a radical change in us. And so our faith has a source. If we believe that Jesus is a Christ, we have been born of God. And then our faith is a surety. If faith that truly believes that Jesus is the Christ could only come from God, then our faith assures us that we are truly God's children. This has been kind of the continuing purpose of John's letter. As we've gone through, we've seen that John writes so that we may know. He writes because he wants us to have confidence. He writes so that we would have assurance of our status before God. And in the end, our faith is the ultimate assurance that we are God's children. Because such a faith only belongs to God's children. Such a faith can only be produced by God working in your life. Now, we need to qualify that. And I've said this before in other messages. When John talks about believing something, he never means mere intellectual assent. Agreeing with a statement. It's not hearing Jesus as the Christ and saying, yes, that's true. When John says believe, he means that we base our lives on this truth. We agree with it in our mind and in our hearts and therefore we live it out in our lives. So if you have an abstract or merely mental faith in Christ that doesn't affect you to the core of your being, the promise doesn't apply to you. But if you have a living faith, an active faith, a faith that only God could have produced in your life, then you know that you are a child of God. You have assurance of your status before God. If you believe that Jesus is the Christ, you have been born of God. It's that simple. Now, because it's that simple, John's going to flesh it out for us in a minute. John's going to rigorously define faith throughout the rest of the passage, and we'll look at that in our second point. But we need to start here. Our faith is our surety before God, because our faith could have only been produced by God. And so our passage starts with a great promise, a promise of assurance before God. If we believe that Jesus is the Christ, then we can know, we can be sure of our status before God. If we believe that Jesus is the Christ, we know we are God's children. We are children of God. And if we believe that Jesus is the Christ, we know that our faith doesn't, in the end, depend on us. It depends on the mighty work of God that is working in us to make us His children. So, if we believe that Jesus is the Christ, we can rest in that. We don't have any reason to fear because we are sure that we are now God's children and we are sure that we will never fail in faith because God's infinite power is what is causing faith in us. It's not up to us. It's up to God. So everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Our second promise comes in verse four. So we'll skip over a little bit. We'll come back to that in a minute. But it says at the beginning of verse four, everyone born of God overcomes the world. And so he makes this promise. Those who have been born of God, the result of the first promise, are going to then go ahead and overcome the world. But as we approach the second promise, I think the first thing we need to do is ask, what does overcoming the world mean? So as we step back and kind of take a wide-angle view of John's letter, John is promised that we're going to overcome many things through his letter. As we went through chapter 2, we saw that he wrote to the young men because they had overcome the evil one. In chapter 4, he tells that those who believe the right spirit, the spirit of God, that they're going to overcome the false prophets. And now in chapter 5, he promises that those who are born of God will overcome the world. As we look at each of these things, we can say that overcoming, to John, means that we'll have the ultimate victory over these things. These things won't beat us, we're going to beat them. Whether it's the evil one, the false prophet, or the world, as we're talking about here. And continuing in this wide angle view, we've already talked about the world in John's letter as well. We could go back to 1 John 2.15. John told us not to love the world or the things in the world. We talked about the fact that the world is those things that are opposed to Christ and opposed to Christ's kingdom. And in a way, it's wrapped up in this physical sphere which we call the earth. The rebellion is centered here, and so we can't fall in love with stuff that's here in the midst of the rebellion. We can't love the world, the essence of the rebellion against God, nor can we love the things in the world, the things that are in the rebel provinces which are going to be destroyed by Christ. Things which tend to draw our focus away from Christ, our love away from Christ. And so if we put those things together, when John says that those born of God will overcome the world, he's saying that we're going to have the ultimate victory over the world. That is, we will defeat the power of this world and we'll throw off its yoke. The power of this world lies in its ability to make us fall in love with it. To love things that are other than Christ. To love things that are actually antithetical to Christ. To love things that even deny who Christ is. But if we have been born of God, then we will have the ultimate victory over these things. The world will not finally entice us. Ultimately, we will perfectly love the things of Christ. We will overcome the world and its loves. Now, when John makes this promise to us, those who have been born of God, overcome the world, he's probably recalling several things that he heard Jesus said. So, John probably recalled Jesus' words before his crucifixion. In John 16, 33, we read these a few minutes ago. Jesus said, I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world. Now, we need to put this in context. This happens right before the crucifixion in John. And so it happens right before what we would, in earthly terms, call the low point of Jesus' ministry. Jesus told John that he had really overcome the world. Yeah, he was going to be crucified. He was going to be killed by an angry mob wielding the power of the state. He would be sealed in a tomb. But really, he had overcome. And the proof of Jesus overcoming happened three days later when he destroyed the bonds of death and raised back to life, conquering death and sin forever. But I'm sure that as John meditated on what Jesus said before the crucifixion, he started to put some things together. Jesus didn't say he would overcome the world. Since there in John 16.33 is not a future tense. I'm going to overcome the world because I'm going to raise back to life. It's actually a type of past tense. He said he had already conquered the world. In effect, he's saying, yes, I'm about to be crucified, but you know what? I have conquered the world. They think they're beating me, but I have already beaten them. And so John would have looked back and said Jesus had conquered the world because the world had not conquered him. He had stood fast in the face of temptation. As Peter tells us, He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten. In everything, He perfectly kept His Father's will. The world tried to overcome Him, but could not. Jesus stood firm in the face of the world. And so Jesus went to the cross a victor. And He went to the cross in order to purchase our victory. He didn't have to go to the cross to win Himself. He went to the cross so that we could win in Him. He had already had victory over the world. And by going to the cross, He can give us the right and the ability to have victory over this world as well. And then going to some other things John probably meditated on as he wrote this. John probably recalled Jesus' words to the crowds at the feast in John 8. We read this earlier too. We'll just look at verses 34-36. Jesus answered them, truly truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. And so Jesus had promised John he had overcome. But Jesus not only told John that he would overcome, he told him what this overcoming would look like. And that overcoming would look like freedom. Freedom. Overcoming would be freedom from loving things, freedom from loving sin, freedom from loving the world or the things that are in the world, freedom from loving anything that is less than Christ, and therefore freedom from being bound to sin. And so if we have been born of God, we will overcome the world because Christ overcame the world. And He purchased our victory from the world at the cross. We aren't going to be enslaved to the things of this world anymore. We're not going to be trapped by sin. We're not find ourselves enmeshed in temporal loves. Instead, we'll be freed to love Christ and to love the things of Christ. And that really forms the basis for the rest of our message. We are free to love the things of Christ. And so as we look at these two promises, and as we go on this morning, you'll notice that faith is at the core of these two precious promises that John makes here. He says that very clearly in verse 1, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, believes that Jesus is the Christ, has been born of God. Then in the second one, for everyone born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Faith is at the core of both of these precious promises that John makes. But John wants to make sure we understand these promises well. And therefore, he wants to make sure that we understand this faith well. What does this faith look like? The faith that causes us to be children of God. The faith that causes us to have victory in this world. And so around these two promises, John is going to describe three unities. Three things that are equivalent to each other. And these three unities are going to describe the faith that John is basing his promise on. The faith that John is talking about will be a loving faith, an obedient faith, and a joyful faith. And so let's turn to our next point and look at these three unities. Three unities describing what the faith that John is talking about is. So, we'll start with unity number one. Unity number one is going to be faith and love. Faith and love. So, we'll go back to verse one again. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. So as soon as John makes his first promise, he moves into his first unity. And like actually most of the unities here, it's a three part unity. The logic is something like this. Faith demonstrates that we are God's children. But if we're God's children, we're going to love God. And if we love God, we're going to love his children. And so John says that faith and love are in union with each other. Faith cannot happen without love, and love doesn't happen without faith. Now, this should be, in some ways, a self-evident truth, and I think we see it in two different ways. First, and this is what John makes very plain in the passage, if we're God's children by faith, if in faith we've been given a familial relationship with God, then love is the natural and unavoidable consequence of that relationship. Love is the outworking of a relationship. If we've been granted a relationship with God, we should love God. Love is a demonstration of that relationship. It's the medium of that relationship. And a lack of love is a lack of evidence of that relationship. And, moving to the second step, our relationship with God has given us a relationship with everyone else who loves God, who has been born of God. And so our love, again, naturally and unavoidably extends to our fellow believers. We have a familial bond, and so we should love one another. Faith and love should be equal. But, second, not only does the natural familial relationship exhibited through faith breed love, faith invariably leads to love because faith's object is love. Faith leads to love because faith's object is love. And this is kind of what John has been building up in his whole letter. And so, we can step back into chapter 4. First, he defined that God is love. We saw in 1 John 4, 8. And then again in verse 16 he says the very clear statement, God is love. And then John says that we know God's love in Christ. We saw this in 1 John 4, 9. In this the love of God was made manifest among us. That God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. And then at the beginning of our passage, the object of our faith is Jesus Christ. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And so our faith is in Jesus Christ, the Son of God who is love, the representative of God's love to us. And so if our faith is in Jesus Christ, then our faith is resting in God's love. Our faith is grasping on to God's love, and therefore will invariably lead to love. And so as we look through the New Testament, faith and love are equated over and over again. They're put together throughout the New Testament. I'll just list several of them. Ephesians 1.15, ever since I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints. Colossians 1.4, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints. 1 Thessalonians 3.6, but now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought brought us the good news of your faith and love. 1st Timothy 1.14, And the grace of our Lord overflowed from me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. And I could go on and on and on. In fact, faith and love happen together all the way throughout the New Testament. But I'll finish with Paul's words in Galatians 5.6 because they make the connection really clear. Paul says, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. Faith's action is love. Faith works itself out in love because faith is rooted in Jesus Christ who is love, and faith expresses the new relationship that we have gained through faith, the new relationship we have with God and the new relationship we have with each other. And so a true faith will always be exhibited in a true love, which leads to two truths. And these two truths target what we could call two different errors about faith and love. That faith could exist without love or that love could exist without faith. So first truth, any faith that does not produce love cannot be true faith. because it ignores Jesus Christ. Any faith that does not produce love cannot be true faith because it ignores Jesus Christ. Like we said, our faith is in Jesus Christ who is God's love. He is love himself. So there's no way we could be truly united to Christ. and not have love. If we can't love our fellow believers in truth, we're demonstrating we have no union in Christ. And so if you claim to believe that Jesus is the Christ, then we must live out that truth in love. Work hard to love one another, especially your brothers and sisters in Christ, but not only in word, but as John has said, in deed and in truth. So that's a first truth. Any faith that does not produce love is not true faith. Second truth, any love that does not come from faith cannot be true love because it ignores Jesus Christ. Any love that does not come from faith cannot be true love because again it ignores Jesus Christ. This error really addresses the presumption of the world. The world that believes it can love without Christ, but in reality there is no love apart from Christ. As John has showed us, Jesus Christ is love and he is the expression of the Father's love. And so anyone that ignores Jesus cannot have love. Any emotion or action or statement or any feeling that claims to be love is in reality an imposter if it isn't rooted in who Jesus Christ is. The world likes to rest in counterfeit loves, but neither their motives nor their goals are truly loving. In the end, the world without Christ can only serve itself and will never love others. And so faith will always be worked out in love, and love will always come from faith in Jesus Christ. Any separation of the two invalidates both. So first unity, faith and love. Then we can look at our second unity, love and obedience. Love and obedience. Looking at verses two through three. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. So, John has said faith and love are equal to each other. And now he adds one more link to the chain. If faith is equal to love, then love is equal to obedience. True obedience and true love must be in union with one another. And so we'll actually start with verse 3. John makes a very simple equivalence in verse 3. This is the love of God that we keep as commandments. Very straightforward. This is the love of God that we keep His commandments. Loving God is exactly equal to obeying God. But why is this true? In the world, to love someone is to make them free, to allow them to follow their own passions. To the world, obedience and love cannot go together. In fact, in many ways, they're antithetical to each other. And so, to understand how this is true, we need to stop and start defining what is love. We need to get the definition of love right. Love isn't some fluffy emotional state that has its ultimate roots in shallow affection or even attraction. It's not what the world often thinks of as love. Love, as we noted earlier, is the evidence of a relationship. And love could be well defined as the desire to act rightly in a relationship. Or even maybe make it a little stronger, the desire to act lavishly in a relationship. To do your very best to relate well to the object of your love. And so to understand what love should do. We must decide first how a relationship should be, what one should do in a relationship. And so, if we're going to love God, we need to decide what is the right way to act in relationship with God. And there's clearly a right way to act in relationship to God. God is our creator. He's our maker. He's our sustainer, our savior. He's the ultimate judge and lawgiver. So, by very virtue of being God, the right way to act in relationship towards Him is obedience. So love is obeying. But I'm not sure that John is really thinking so much about that truth as he's thinking about something that he's brought up several times in his letter on the term he uses for God over and over again. He says that God is our father and we are his children. And I think this is where we start to really grasp onto the truths about love. A child who loves his father will want to obey his father. He will want to make his father happy. He will want to please his father by doing what his father wants. Children, listen to that. But if we are children of God, then it's the same thing. Our love is expressed in a willingness, even a desire to obey. We will want to make our father happy. We will want to do what our father wants to do, and we'll be happy about it. And so, to love God would mean to obey God. But then we go back to verse 2. Verse 2 actually adds a dimension to this. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments. And so, obeying God isn't only the basis for loving God. It's also the basis for loving each other as well. Now this is again true for at least two reasons. First, loving each other is obeying God because it is God's command. This takes us back to the statement John made at the end of chapter four. In this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. So loving one another is quite literally and directly obeying God. So if we're obeying God, we will love one another because loving one another is one of God's commands. But second, I think there's a deeper truth associated with this. Obeying God is how we love each other well. It's not merely loving each other is God's command. That's true. But obeying God is how we love each other well. That's because God's commands teach us how to love each other well. Think about 1 Peter 4, 8-10. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's very grace. Or Ephesians 4, 2-3, be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bonds of peace. So God's commands are, we need to love one another, show hospitality, serve one another. We need to be humble, gentle, patient, forbearing. We need to be peace seekers. Those are the ways that we love each other well. When we obey God, we will end up loving each other well. But again, that's not all. It teaches us how to love well. But second, we love each other well by obeying God because our best good is in obeying God. Our best good is in obeying God. And so the best thing we could ever want for another person is for them to be in a right relationship with God. And so the most loving thing to do for another person is to encourage them in obedience to God. And we do that, or at least we can't do that without obeying ourselves. When we obey ourselves, we are an encouragement to obey God. If we don't obey ourselves, we cannot be an encouragement to obey God, except perhaps in a negative sense. Look at that guy, don't do what he did. And so we can obey God together, loving God with each other. And so we love each other well by obeying God because our best good is in obeying God together. And so again, true love will be exhibited in true obedience, which again leads to two truths. So truth one, you'll start to see these have a pattern. True love will always work out in true obedience. True love will always work out in true obedience. Love for God will always be a love that wants to obey, that wants to please our Father. If we claim to love God but refuse to obey, or even if we don't care to obey, we're like a disrespectful child, a child that disdains their father, that would even desire to deny their relationship to their father. That's not an aspect of love. So love for God will always be a love that wants to obey. And again, love for others will always be a love that wants to obey God. Love for others will always be a love that wants to obey God. If we claim to love others but are not careful to live in a way that encourages them to love and obey God, we don't love others because we aren't ultimately seeking their good. If we claim to love others but disregard sin in their lives that would separate them from God forever, then we don't love others. We aren't seeking their best good. And so all love finds its root in obedience to God. So that's the first truth. True love will always work out in true obedience. Second truth. True obedience will always work out in love. So sometimes we think of obedience as a harsh or maybe a haughty act. An activity that leads either to a coarseness or to pride. But obedience that really works out in these things isn't obedience. True obedience will always be clearly seen to be based in love. Love for God and love for others. Any obedience that isn't full of love isn't real obedience. If obedience isn't rooted in love for God and expressed in love for others, it's not Real obedience. True obedience will always work itself out in love. So we've had two unities. Faith and love. Now love and obedience. We'll turn to our third unity. Obedience and joy. So we'll continue with verse 3. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. So, we've done this chain, faith, love, love, obedience, and now he's gonna add one more, obedience, joy. They're equivalent to each other. They're in union with one another. So, John shows us this by saying that God's commandments are not burdensome. That we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. It's not a hardship to obey God. First, let's talk about what he doesn't mean. John does not mean that we don't have to work hard to obey God. He's not saying that obedience is always easy or simple. There are many places we could go to. correct this misconception, but one place could be 2 Peter 1, verses 5-7. Peter says, For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. Peter tells us that it takes effort. Make every effort. It takes effort to turn faith into obedience and love. And John isn't contradicting Peter. He's not saying the opposite of what Peter has said. So what John does mean is that God's commands are not a drudgery. They're not a dour task to perform. It's not a hardship. John is saying that God's commandments aren't a burden. No, in fact, they're a joy. It's a joy to obey God. And we see this again in two ways. First, because it's the very nature of God's commands. Second, because it's the very nature of obeying. So let's look at God's commands. God's commands are a joy for us to obey because of the nature of God's commands. God's commands aren't arbitrary or capricious. His commands are not merely a list of minutia that an impersonal force has commanded that we must do. His commands are not purposed merely for us to obey. He's not an arbitrary slave master that's causing people to obey him for no reason. God's commands represent His perfect will. They're a representation of who God is. God's commands demonstrate who He is. And who He is is an infinitely happy God. We could look at 1st Timothy 1.11 where Paul says that this is in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. That word blessed there could be translated happy. This is the gospel, the glory of the happy God. Our God is infinitely happy and if His commands represent who He is, then His commands represent that He is a joyful God. But not only is He a joyful, happy God, He wants us to share in that joy. We can go to the end of the parable in Matthew 25.21. His master said to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. And so scripture tells us that God's laws are perfect. Psalm 19, 7. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. And if God's commands are perfect, Scripture also tells us that God's laws are for our good. Psalm 119.39, turn away the reproach that I dread, for your rules are good. Or Psalm 119.68, you are good and do good. Teach me your statutes. So God's laws are perfect and they're for our good. And therefore, Scripture teaches us that God's laws are for our joy. Psalm 119, 16. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. Or Psalm 119, 20. My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times. So, obeying God's law should produce joy because they're designed to lead us to joy in Him. God's law is a path marking the way to finding joy in Him. So the very nature of God's law should make obedience a joy. But second, the nature of our obedience should make obedience a joy. As we talked about the last point, our obedience is the obedience of loving children for an infinitely good father. Such obedience rooted in love cannot be a drudgery. It can't be marked by grumbling or resentment. Unhappy, unwilling obedience isn't really obedience. We all know this. I think parents especially probably know this. Unhappy, grumbling obedience is not obedience. Obedience that is rooted in love will always find its expression in joy. It will spring from the heart. It will be obedience. It comes from what we love to do. And so Paul tells the Romans in Romans 6, 17, but thanks be to God that you who are once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching which you are committed. And Paul tells the Philippians, the corollary statement of Philippians 2, 14 through 15, do all things without grumbling or disputing that you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world. Loving obedience cannot be unhappy obedience. We experience that with our own children. If they grumble and complain and act upset when they do what we ask them to do, we know it's not real obedience. It's not obedience that came from the heart. Real obedience wants to obey. The heart of real obedience is joy. Obeying is our joy. What better joy could we have than to make our father happy? So true obedience will always be exhibited in true joy, which again leads to two truths. Truth one, true obedience will always be marked by heartfelt joy. True obedience will always be marked by heartfelt joy. Many might claim to obey Christ, but those who truly obey will be marked by an unquenchable joy. An unquenchable joy in who God is, an unquenchable joy in what he has commanded us. Any obedience that doesn't spring from joy, any obedience that doesn't produce joy is a false obedience. a legalistic puffery. If obedience comes from pride or leads to pride, it's not obedience. If obedience leads to sourness, to a dour attitude, to a living asceticism, it's not obedience. Obedience comes from joy and leads to joy. Any other obedience is a false obedience, puffing yourself up with pride. Then second, true joy must always find its root in obedience. Many might claim to have joy again, but any joy that isn't founded in obedience and is seeking obedience is a false joy. We could say a licentious lawlessness. True joy can only come from the God who is pure joy. The God who radiates joy from himself and his law is the only path to take hold of that joy. So those who claim or act to have joy without caring for obedience are merely deceiving themselves. They have traded joy for a cheap counterfeit. A counterfeit that will never produce the joy that obedience does and will ultimately fail in the end. It will never produce real and lasting joy. Joy must always be founded in obedience. Any other joy is a false joy. If you take pleasure in anything other than obedience, you take pleasure in something that is nothing. So obedience and joy are in union. So we have faith and love, love and obedience, obedience and joy. As we close, we'll move to our last point and look at one victorious union. And we'll look at the last couple verses. I'm actually gonna read verse one again, and then we'll read verses four through five. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And skipping to verse four. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? So as we finish the message this morning, what I want to do is actually look at the organization of John's thoughts in this little paragraph here. And I think John very carefully organized this statement because notice it begins and it ends with a very similar phrase. It begins, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ. We go through everything, verse 5. The one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. John, in fact, starts with Christ. And John ends with Christ. His thoughts are centered on who Jesus Christ is. In fact, his thoughts here form kind of an interesting cycle. It starts with faith in Jesus. He then says, we have been born of God. He talks about the attributes of the Christian life. He comes back and says, we are born of God. And he ends with faith in Jesus Christ. We have one of those chiasm structures there. We have an A, B, C, B, A structure. The faith that John has been talking about here is faith in Jesus Christ. He makes that very emphatic. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ. The one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. The faith we're talking about here is faith in Jesus Christ. A faith that rests in who Jesus Christ is as he has been revealed to us and what he has done for us. A faith that grasps on to Jesus Christ and won't let go. And so everything that John has taught us here in this passage is springing from who Jesus is. And so let's just go back to our points and show that every point comes from who Jesus is. So we'll go back to our middle point, the three unities. The unified attributes in this passage, faith, love, obedience, and joy, are unified in the believer because they are unified in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the great unifier. Through His being, in His work, He has made it so that we can have these attributes without any contradiction. The world can't have these attributes without contradiction. The world can't have faith and love and obedience and joy. They're always going to contradict each other. They're always going to clash into each other. But Jesus has come and brought them into this world. And this is because these qualities are already perfectly united in Him. He is completely loving. He is completely obedient to His Father. He has been completely faithful to His cast and has entrusted Himself to His Father in all things. And He is completely joyful. We see these qualities in union at all times, but especially at the cross. Just think about the cross. Let's look at Hebrews 12.2. Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." We look at the cross and we say, at the cross, Jesus obeyed his father. Not my will, but your will be done. At the cross, Jesus was faithful to his task. He did what he came to do. At the cross, he entrusted himself to his father. He said, into your hands I commit my spirit. At the cross, He showed us the depths of what love is. And the amazing thing is, at the cross, He did it all for joy. He did it all for joy. All those things are united in Jesus Christ. And in His incarnation, He brought these unified attributes, these characteristics that belong to God, He brought them into the world in His incarnation. He bought what was impossible and made it possible in this world. And through His propitiation, through His sacrifice at the cross, He has provided for us to be like Him, as Peter says, to share in the divine nature, to have these attributes in perfect unity, just as He has them in perfect unity. And so, as I said at the beginning of John's letter, John's theology is rooted in the incarnation. We see that even in the attributes of a Christian that we went through here. These attributes belong to the Christian. Because these attributes belong to Jesus Christ. And by taking on flesh, He has united those attributes to us as well. And so we can't have these attributes. We can't have faith, love, obedience, and joy unless we grasp onto Christ. Unless we take Him for who He claims to be. Unless we agree, yes, Jesus is the Christ. He is the Son of God. Because these attributes belong to Him. So the attributes belong to Jesus Christ. The promises, assurance, and victory belong to the believer because they belong to Jesus Christ. Our assurance before God is rooted in who Jesus is and what he has done for us. We can be sure of our status before God. We can be sure that we are children of God because Jesus Christ is the perfect son of God and we have grasped hold of him. Our victory over this world is rooted in who Jesus is and what he has done for us. Jesus overcame this world, John 60, 33, but take heart, I have overcome the world. Jesus overcame this world and he has offered his victory to all who would come to him in faith. And so, what John says is true, our faith is our victory. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Because by faith we grasp on to Christ. We take hold of what Christ has taken hold of for us. Paul says in Philippians 3.12, I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own. He's taken hold of me and given me what He has. So faith isn't victory because faith is strong. Faith is our victory because Christ is strong. Our victory is found in Him. So the attributes belong to Jesus Christ. The promises belong to Jesus Christ. And so this passage calls the Christian to be something. It does call us to be something. It calls us to put on love. It calls us to put on obedience. It calls us to put on joy. It calls us to put on faith. But it has to be firmly rooted in who Jesus Christ is. We must put on faith, love, obedience, and joy because Christ is all faithfulness. He is all love. He is all obedience. He is all joy. We must put these on because Christ brought them into the world in His incarnation. We must put them on because Christ has bought them for us in His propitiation and His sacrifice at the cross. If you aren't putting these on, you're not united to Christ. You aren't in union with the victorious conqueror. And if you're not united to Jesus Christ by faith, then these things can't be true of you. You can't have true love. You can't have true obedience. You can't have true joy. And therefore you have no hope in sharing in the promises of this passage. You can't be confident of your status before God. You have no reason to hope for victory over the world. But if you're not united to Christ by living and abiding faith, Jesus calls out one thing. Matthew 11, 28. Come to me. Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that Christ has won the victory. We thank you that Christ was willing to obey even to the point of death. even death on a cross. We thank you that he did it with great joy so that when he won the victory he could hand it to us. Father, that's a glorious truth, a truth that transcends our meager understandings, our meager visions of who you are and what you have done for us. But Father, in the limited amount that we can see that right now, we praise you, we worship you, we bow before you with thankfulness, and we pray that what Christ has done would be made true in us, that we would take hold of what Christ has taken hold of for us, that we would be made like our Savior. Father, we pray that your Spirit would do this in us. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. I'll open it up if any of the men have any questions or comments or anything else that you brought to share with us. Now I'll turn it over to Dan.