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Intro
We’re going through the book of first John, and as I said last week, there are a few things we’re going to cover throughout this letter.
Some what we talk about will deal with fellowship, some of it deals with love, and a lot of it John talks about us knowing.
John wants us to know and to be sure that we know Jesus.
There are two important qualities that we need to have as followers of Jesus: obedience and assurance.
If we aren’t sure that we know Jesus, then following him is nearly impossible.
Why follow someone you aren’t sure that you know?
Why live the life that Jesus tells us to live if we aren’t sure that we’ve been saved by him?
This morning, we need to ask ourselves “Do I know Jesus?” And, thankfully, John gives us a test of assurance.
Tests are terrible.
I’m an awful test taker.
In undergrad, I spent three days cramming for an accounting mid-term.
The night before I stayed up until 4:00 AM, then woke up at 6:00 AM to cram some more, and I drank a ton of coffee before my 10 AM exam.
I got into the class room, and at this point I’m shaking from all of the caffein and lack of sleep.
I look at the first problem, and my mind just goes blank.
It was like a curtain came down over my brain.
I pulled it together enough to scrape by with a D. So when I think test, I think of that accounting final.
The last thing I want to preach about is a test, but here it is… and this is a test that is vital for us to take, because it allows us to see if we’re truly following Jesus.
Scripture
If We’re Saved, We’ll Obey God’s Commandments
The test that John gives us is one of obedience.
The word “know” occurs 4 times in this passage.
God wants us to know something.
Our salvation is not something we have to wander about or guess at.
We can know if we’re truly saved.
We can know if we follow Jesus.
We can know if our lives are really surrendered to him.
We shouldn’t ever have to wonder this.
God wants us to have assurance that we belong to him.
The first “know” in verse 3 is in the present tense in Greek.
The idea is a progressive knowledge that is gained by experience.
The sense is, “we are continually being able to know that we have come to know God.”
The second “know” is in the perfect tense, emphasizing that we have come to know him in a real, genuine, and complete way.
One writer interprets it as: “This is how we maintain the awareness that we have come to know him fully.”
God wants us to know that we know him.
But what does John mean by know?
To know God doesn’t just mean to know facts or truths about him.
If you were to ask me “John, who’s your dad?”
And I responded with “He’s 5 ft 11, 60 years old and has brown hair.”
You’d probably conclude that I don’t really know my dad.
Knowing God is this concept that covers more than what we know about God; it includes a personal relationship with God that begins with faith.
It also includes an ever-deepening relationship and fellowship with God, that is evidenced or made known by our love for him and obedience to him.
John says that we know that we know him “if we keep his commands.”
The word keep is in the present tense, and it means to continually do, to regularly do.
We need to be in constant obedience to God’s commands.
If you have no desire to obey God, then it’s likely that you don’t know him.
There are seasons where our desire is weak, but if there’s never or rarely a desire to obey the Lord, you probably don’t know him.
But what commands?
What is John talking about?
Because he doesn’t list and commands right after this.
If you look at verse 5, John uses “obey his word” synonymously with commandments.
So when John says keep his commands, he means in one sense everything Jesus ever talked about and commanded, and then in the context of this letter, he means the command to love one another.
We’ll get to that next week or the week after.
But the important thing for this morning is keeping Jesus’ commands.
Doing what Jesus said to do.
Living how Jesus taught us to live.
And Jesus, when he summed up the everything said “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Every command Jesus ever gave dealt with loving God and loving others.
And I’ll talk about this a lot more over the next few weeks, but John wants us to know that we know that we know who God is.
And that’s tied to keeping what he commanded us to do.
And the way that the word know is used indicates a progressive knowing that only comes through experience, through the experience of being obedient to the commands of Jesus.
So, you can know that you know Jesus, but as you do what he says, you’ll continually be drawn into a deeper relationship with him, and you’ll be assured that you know him.
The word keep that’s used here literally means to look upon something as your treasure and therefore guard it as your treasure.
The way we view God’s commands should be to treasure them.
And to keep God’s commands involves the outward act and the inward attitude.
As we live as followers of Jesus, what we do outwardly should flow from what is going on inwardly.
It’s possible to be obedient to God with the wrong motivation.
When we do things, when we’re nice to people out of an obligation, or a fear of letting others down, or anything that isn’t from the love of Jesus in us, then we’re hypocrites.
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day did good things, but they did them so that others would see them in a certain way, they did them so that they would be glorified.
Not because of a work that God was doing in them.
If God is working in you, then you’ll follow Jesus’ commands.
So again, we have to check our hearts: are we motivated to obey because of the work that God is doing in us, or is our motivation fear? or is it so we look good?
If we don’t obey, we’re liars
Look at verse 4.
Here is somebody who claims in summary “I have come to know Jesus.”
The one who says that and yet does not with some sense of regularity keep God’s commandments John calls a liar!
Some may read this and think, “I don’t always keep the commandments of God.
I wish I could, and I try, but sometimes I fail.
In fact I failed just this week.
Does that mean I’m not a Christian?”
That’s not what John is saying.
We should not take John’s statement and press it too far in either direction or we will get into something that is false that he is not trying to say.
He doesn’t say, “If you keep God’s commandments perfectly and flawlessly, then you can know you’re saved.”
Every Christian is going to fail to keep one of God’s commandments in word, thought, or deed at various points.
No one has reached sinless perfection.
John has already made it clear that we will commit sin along the way.
When we do, we have to apply 1 John 1:9 to our lives.
Christians are not immune from sometimes breaking God’s commandments.
We are not immune from “cracking” one on occasion either!
When we do, we need to practice 1 John 1:9.
What John is talking about in verse 4 is a consistency of life and a direction of life that is characterized by obedience.
If I fail to love my fellow Christian while claiming to love God, I am a liar, because it is not possible to do both at the same time.
A Christian will have a trajectory of behavior that is characterized by obedience to God’s commands.
The word “walk” in verse 6 signifies a pattern of behavior.
Although there will be times when you stumble, the basic trajectory of your life will be one of obedience to God if you are a Christian.
On the other hand, if the trajectory of your life is away from God, you may still do some good things along the way.
You may get a little prickly in your conscience and go to church one Sunday.
You may do a little good work here and there, but the problem is that the trajectory of your life is away from God.
So the question is: what is the trajectory of your life?
That is why John employs these present tense verbs.
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