Testing Points
1 JOHN 2 - TESTING POINTS (2)
You look through the strong bars of the lion enclosure and there sitting in splendid laziness is the finest lion you’ve ever seen. He looks so gentle and cuddly with his great paws stretched out in front of him, his big brown eyes, his huge mane just inviting you to run your fingers through it. That strong back just waiting for you to stroke it. As you’re lost in these appreciative thoughts you see your two year old daughter inside the enclosure zipping across the grass in the direction of the lion. He, in the meantime is licking his lips.
One of the hard parts about being a child is having to learn how dangerous things are that look quite good fun. And grown ups can be such alarmists and spoil sports. Don’t touch, don’t climb, don’t run, don’t pick that up, don’t go there, don’t play with him, don’t talk to strangers.
Sometimes, now and then, occasionally, these alarmists turn out to be right. And you have to hope that you’ve learned what they’re trying to teach you before it’s too late.
C.f. talking with paramedic about my not wearing a crash helmet on my push bike. I went out the next day and invested in one - I haven’t been on my bike since without wearing it. I'm trying not to care when my Christian brothers and sisters laugh at me wearing it. “If you were seriously brain damaged in hospital & I said you could get it put right for £45, would you think it a good deal?” Why not do it beforehand?
1 John was written by a caring spiritual father. His spiritual children were in deadly danger, they couldn’t see it. The peril was wrapped up in such a nice package that they couldn’t see that they were in danger of losing not their physical life, but their eternal life. I likened it last week to drinking the spiritual poison of the false teachers.
See 2:28 ...... 3:7a.... 4:1 Deception. It looks good, but it’ll kill you. It’s got big brown eyes, a cuddly coat, a gorgeous mane, but it’s deadly.
1. WHY POISON’S NICE
John, the apostle, the spiritual Dad, uses some pretty strong language to describe the people who are bringing this spiritual poison into the life of the churches - liar, antichrist, lawless, children of the devil, false prophets, idol worshippers. You’d think that you could spot these men a mile off with those little horns poking up through their hair, the three pronged devil fork in their hand, the smoking sulphur on their breath, and the yellow devil eyes that look like the eyes of a snake. Why they only had to walk through the door of the church and you could smell them.
But that’s not the case. Jesus calls them wolves in sheep’s clothing. At first you can’t tell them apart from authentic Christians. They have good manners, sweet smiles, and they speak with great courtesy. It could be that pair of good-looking, clean cut American Mormons who teach that you can’t be saved without Mormon baptism, the Mormon bible and the prophecies of Joseph Smith. Or it might be that Oxbridge educated vicar who teaches that everyone will be saved, that there’s no such thing as a virgin birth really, and that you don’t really need to be born again in order to enter the kingdom of God. They speak so warmly and invitingly about their beliefs. They seem so persuasive and sensible. The Apostle Paul spoke of these same people as deceitful workers disguising themselves as apostles of Christ ... even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, and it is not surprising that HIS ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness (2 Cor. 11:13,14)
The apostle John has written these 5 chapters in great alarm to his spiritual children not because these false teachers are so deplorable, but because they’re so believable. Look at Galatians 1:6 - deserting, turning to.
How can this stuff work? The answer is - it scratches where we itch - 2 Tim. 4:3 - the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires. False teaching scratches us where we itch. It gives us knowledge without holiness. It assures us of salvation without obedience. It helps us to treat sin lightly. It makes salvation easy. It offers us salvation on the strength of human performance. It tells us we have no need to worry, God is so merciful that it’ll be alright in the end no matter what kind of person we are. It tells us we can neglect the hard work of prayer and Bible study, and still pretend that we are pleasing God as his children. It can encourage us to think that because we do some religious things then God will be impressed with us.
That’s why it’s nice and attractive to us - it’s so in tune with our sinful, fallen nature. Sinful, fallen human nature tends to have a religious bent. It tends to come in two guises, two extremes - either it says you can earn God’s salvation by being very religious; or you don’t need to bother earning salvation because God gives it to everybody anyway. There’s something in both those extremes that appeals to human nature. It scratches the itch - there’s something I can do to save myself; or there’s nothing I NEED to do to save myself.
38 times in this short letter John uses the word “knowledge”. These nice men had come saying that God had given them knowledge. God had spoken to the apostles - OK - but now he had spoken to them. They were walking in the light of God’s truth; they had the secrets of God’s revelation. And they were scratching people where they itched. They were saying you could be in a right relationship with God without being serious about holiness and obedience. You could enjoy the lifestyle of the world around you without worrying too much about whether it was leading you into lust and spiritual compromise. You could have your cake and eat it. Enjoy the world and be right with God at the same time.
There’s something about that which appeals to our human nature. I’ve seen it again and again during my ministry. Young Christians, middle-aged Christians, even senior Christians swallowing the lie, that you could maintain fellowship with God and live a life of growing disobedience at the same time. I could take you to Tyneside and to men who were amongst the most serious and intelligent young Christians I have known. Men who were well versed in the Bible, who read Puritan books, could talk movingly about the teachings of John Calvin, who admired the evangelistic passion of Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones and George Whitfield. Men who would take me to one side after a service or a church meeting and point out the places where I had not been quite careful enough about the Biblical text. Some of those men are far from Christ now. At some point they began to drink poison. The bottle was labelled - knowledge without holiness. Enjoy Christianity without the hard work of godly living. Christian activity without Christ-like godliness.
What’s happened. A flock of Christ’s sheep have been scattered to the four winds. It’s so dangerous, but it looks so nice; it’s so appealing to our fallen human nature.
In a congregation like this, it’s almost certain that there are people here who are drifting into this kind of spirit. Day by day, you’re living without a heart desire for holiness. Is it the burning passion of your heart to grow in likeness to Jesus Christ. Do you live with a seeking heart; do you plead with God for the life-changing influence of His Spirit; do you come like a hungry child to feed on the Scriptures. Or are you living a careless, indifferent, compromised life, but somehow trying to persuade yourself that you’re spiritually all right. You’ve got knowledge after all. You know about the Lord. You know a lot of the Bible. You know the things you’ve been taught over the years. It’s just that you aren’t working it out at the moment. Holiness is OK for those who have time for it. Holiness is OK for people like ministers. After all you’re serving the church, in the set-up team, in the sound, in the youth work, surely that counts for something. You may have swallowed a lie. You can justify it all ways up - but it’s still a lie. But this idea that holiness is an optional extra, that you can justify your slackness because after all you’ve got knowledge, is such nice poison.
But why is this so important? Why make such a song and dance about these things?
2. WHY HOLINESS IS NECESSARY
And I mean necessary as in “It is necessary for me to have electricity to switch on a light”. Or “It’s necessary for me to have lungs to breath”. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t fall into the old trap of human nature of thinking that holiness is desirable if you’ve got the time. The medieval church fell into the mistake of thinking that in order to pursue holiness you had to go into a monastery or a nunnery. You couldn’t be a housewife or a farmer or a servant and be holy. You had to be a religious professional. So, there were several layers of Christians - the ordinary strugglers in the pew, the religious professionals who made it their life’s work to be holy, and the super-league professionals who became saints and were canonised by the church and fired into the highest parts of heaven.
The NT won’t have any of that. Every Christian is a saint because every Christian has been set apart by God for His glory. Holiness isn’t an option like air-conditioning on a car. Holiness IS the car. Saintliness isn’t something some Christians work for, saintliness IS Christianity. Sure you have to grow in it; you don’t come out of the new birth as a mature Christian; but when you’re born again you have the bud of holiness woven into your life, and your business is to encourage the full flowering. So, holiness is necessary. Let’s look at some of John’s reasons for saying this.
a. holiness flows from knowing
Now, by this we can know that we know Him if we obey His commandments, whoever says I have come to KNOW Him but does not obey His commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist ..... (verses 3-4)
As you’re all aware - I know Sir Cliff Richard. I stood on these very pieces of wood 18 months ago and we shared a joke with each other about short people and short tennis. Do I know him - of course. I’ve got a couple of his albums at home. I’ve seen documentaries about him on the television. But I can tell you this, and no doubt he’d tell you if you got chance to ask him - it’s not a relationship. I don’t understand his heart, I don’t share his burdens, I don’t have the affection of a true friend for him - nor he for me. But when the Apostle John is using this language of knowing, he’s thinking Biblically. He’s thinking about personal relationship. To know God isn’t to carry information in your head, but to care for a person in your heart. When Genesis says that Adam knew his wife, Eve, it means that he entered into intimate personal and sexual union with her.
So, it’s a foreign idea to the Bible that you would know someone in this way without wanting to please them, to bring joy to their heart, to remove anything that would hinder or spoil the relationship. How we older ones smile when we see a teenage man suddenly become interested in teeth cleaning, body odour, personal appearance, the way his parents behave. “Ah, ah. A relationship’s forming, and he wants to remove anything that might get in the way”. He stands in front of the mirror and looks and in his mind is a fundamental question - “How will this look to her”?
When you know God, you look in the mirror of the Scriptures and ask the question, “How does my life look to Him? How can I please Him?
Just look at the language as it’s used in two passages of the Bible:-
Jeremiah 31:33-34
Matthew 7:21-24
God has told you what He likes, what He enjoys, what displeases Him, what glorifies Him. So, to know Him is to care more deeply about those things than anything else in life. As John points out here - ... but whoever obeys his word, truly, in this person the love of God has reached perfection ...” (verse 5). How do you demonstrate that you are living in the light of God’s mighty love for you? How do you demonstrate that you have begun to feebly but really love Him in return? You seek to please Him by doing the things that are important to Him. If I told you that I really appreciated that my wife loves me, and that I love her, you’d think me a hypocrite if I consistently failed to take her feelings, needs, and wishes into account. If I consistently ignored the things that are important to her, to always pursue the things that are important to me. “He says he loves her but I can’t see it”.
b. Holiness flows from abiding
Whoever says “I abide in Him” ought to walk just as He walked. The Greek word for “abide” is used 120 times in the NT - John uses is 24 times in this little epistle. He’s obviously concerned about this whole issue. It formed a large part of his report of Jesus’s ministry on the night before the Crucifixion. “Abide in me, and I in you”. To be a Christian is to enjoy the most important and privileged status in the Universe. It’s more important than being on the English cricket or soccer team, more important than being the President of the USA, or the most famous rock musician. To be a Christian is to be joined to Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit who lives in Him and with Him and flows from Him, lives in the true Christian. When a baby is in its mother’s womb it shares the flow of life from her body. That baby lives because of its union with the life of its mother.
To be a Christian is to be personally connected with the life of Jesus Christ. As an unborn baby abides in the mother’s life, so the Christian abides in the life of Christ. I am connected to Jesus, to His person. One of the Apostle Paul’s favourite phrases covering this truth is IN CHRIST. If any man is IN CHRIST.
So, when that baby emerges from the mother’s womb the characteristics of that union are there for all to see. The baby has all the signs of life. It breathes, it moves, it cries, it sucks, it has a heart beat, electrical brain energy, and so on. Those are the signs it’s been in a state of life-giving union with its mother. The sign that you are abiding in Christ is that you will have a heart to approach life as He approached it; to walk as He walked. How did He walk through life? In loving obedience to His Father. THE priority of His heart was to please His Father, to honour His Father, to glorify His Father. That’s why Jesus says to you, If you keep my commandments you will ABIDE in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love. You don’t earn the love of God by living a holy life - you’ll never ever be able to do that. You live a holy life BECAUSE God loves you and you want to abide in His love.
You’ll never be perfect in it in this life. You’ll fail many, many times, every day. But it will still be the priority of your heart. It will still be the thing you pursue before anything else in life. Your whole life, your decisions, your actions, your thinking, your priorities, your everything will be affected by this union. Obedience flows from abiding.
Does Father God love you? Did God the Son die for you? Has the Holy Spirit come to live in you in a life-giving ministry? Then does it show? Are you more serious about holiness than anything else in your life. More serious about walking through life as Jesus walked through it than anything else. If you’re not don’t say you are. If you’re slipped away from it, now is the time to come back to it with all your heart.