Sermon Tone Analysis

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/18 //Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

19 //By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 //for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.

21 //Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 //and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

23 //And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

24 //Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him.

And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us./

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We have found that one of John’s major purposes for writing this letter was to help those within the church have assurance that they were different from the apostates who left the church.

In other words, he wants them to know whether or not they have really experienced the new birth.

The Apostle John gives us three tests or proofs that form the basis for our assurance: belief in right doctrine, obedience to God’s commands, and love for other people.

Yet it is normal Christian experience to find ourselves lacking in these areas and so to experience doubt.

Christians continue to sin, and when we do we appear to be no different from anyone else in this world.

Or, our hearts grow cold, and we don’t feel any real affection for God or for his people.

At times like these we may find ourselves wrestling with our faith.

We may ask ourselves whether or not there is anything substantively different about us when it comes to our relationship with God.

What we find in this passage is that John expects Christians to have doubts.

Crisis of faith will come.

We will question some of the basic truths of the Bible.

Maybe it will come when you have miscarried the baby.

Maybe it will come when you lose your job or your house burns down or your spouse leaves you.

Maybe it will come when you receive the tragic phone call in the middle of the night.

There may be a million other ways it will come, but come it will!

And doubt is all a part of God’s plan for your life.

My aim today is to show how God is glorified both in our struggles with doubt and in our flourishing with assurance.

God has a good purpose and work to accomplish whether we are experiencing a crisis of faith or whether our affections for God are running red hot.

!

STRUGGLING WITH DOUBT

The very fact that this book is written for the purpose of helping true believers gain an assurance of their relationship with God indicates that doubt is a part of the Christian experience.

Doubt can arise within us even at unexpected times.

It can catch us off guard.

!! The believer’s need for assurance

Doubt is not the same as unbelief.

But doubt can become a dangerous enemy.

So while doubt is not a sin in itself, it is something that needs to be fought.

John’s letter is helpful for us in our battle against doubt.

The Apostle did not want his readers to continue to live in doubt.

So he gives us several ways that we can test ourselves and come to a knowledge that we are “of the truth” (v.

19).

With words like “know” and “truth” John is indicating that there is an objective certainty that true believers may possess.

This flies in the face of contemporary ideas of relative truth.

In verse 18 John commands true believers in Christ to love in truth; now he wants the same ones by their obedience to his command to know that they are of the truth.

As those who have been born of God, Christians have experienced the ultimate reality.

It is reality that is the key to us attaining assurance.

No one can be truly content without assurance.

Even the moral relativist contents himself on his belief that his relativistic theories are true.

The Apostle John’s opponents in this letter apparently claimed that they had found the real truth, but John is not afraid to challenge their ideas and contend that any true believer who practices radical Christian love is a possessor of the truth.

But here’s the point of what John has to say in this passage.

One can be a possessor of the truth and yet struggle with the assurance that it is so.

Therefore, we need to be able to “reassure our heart.”

Here in verse 19 John sets up a picture of our true selves standing apart from our heart.

The heart condemns.

But we are of the truth.

Our hearts in this situation need to be put to rest.

What does John mean by “the heart”?

He is referring to our conscience, that part of us that is sensitive to right and wrong and responds to both in our emotions, wishes, and desires.

Now the conscience is our ally in this sense.

So a troubled heart, or a troubled conscience, should not be ignored.

John wants us to look objectively at ourselves at times like these and see if we can defend ourselves from our condemning heart.

What’s at stake here is much more than trying to be at peace with one’s self.

The goal is not to merely satisfy the conscience.

The Apostle Paul tells us that it is possible to have a clear conscience and still be guilty (1 Cor 4:4).

What’s at stake here is attaining peace with God.

John’s concern is that we reassure our heart /before him./

God is the judge who will decide the case between us and our conscience.

John seems to have in mind the time when we will all meet God, and he wants us all to be able to meet him with assurance and confidence and not shame and doubt.

But if we have doubts now, how can we be sure we will not doubt then?

So John wants to help us with the doubts that trouble us.

!! Assurance known even when it is not felt

And here’s how he helps us.

He wants us to remember that our heart does not always tell us what’s right.

Feelings can change.

The heart can condemn.

So how do we know if our heart is correct when it condemns us?

How do we know if our doubts about our relationship with God are true or not?

John gives two answers to these types of questions.

First, we should look at the evidence.

The two words “by this” point back to our previous passage and suggest that the key to putting doubt to rest is truth and facts and evidence.

In a little book called /Doubt and Assurance/, pastor and scholar R. C. Sproul reminds us that doubt and assurance are matters of the mind.

We may experience feelings and other physical symptoms related to our doubt, but these symptoms come from the mind and not apart from it.

Assurance enters into us only when our minds are convinced of a truth.

So, Sproul contends, “when assailed by doubt it is time to search diligently for first principles that are certain.

We build upon the foundation of what is sure.”[1]

Everything the apostle just said in the previous passage is brought to bear upon this issue of assurance in our present passage.

“By this” (v.

19) act of demonstrating radical, Christ-like love, we will be able to put our hearts at ease.

And the second answer John gives is this: the /reason/ why we can look to the evidence of faith in our lives and quiet our hearts by it is because “God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”

At first this may seem even more unsettling, for if my own conscience is troubled, how will it help to remember that God knows even more about me than my own conscience?

Surely that will only trouble me more!

But this is clearly not John’s intention.

Rather, he wants us to reflect on the fact that, as one commentator writes, even “when believers are most aware of their shortcomings, in respect of God’s standards, the love and mercy of the Father are present to heal their troubled consciences.”[2]

In other words, we must not allow our feelings to be the sole indicator of our spiritual status.

Instead, we should remember that God is the final judge, and that “in his omniscience he knows that our often weak attempts to obey his command spring from a true allegiance to him.”[3]

That is why I said last week that what we should do when our feelings falter is resort to duty.

God will accept our duty when he knows our desire is not duty but love.

So read the Scripture even when you feel distant from God. Participate in the community even when you don’t feel any love in your heart toward others.

This ability to persevere when joy wanes will be a way for you to answer your heart when it condemns you for your failure to live up to God’s standards.

What then is the good that God wants to accomplish in our struggle with doubt?

I think the answer is this: Doubt forces us to see the greatness of God.

The only answer that we can give to the questions that trouble us is “God knows all things.”

This is true in tragedy: God knows why your child was born with a deformity.

And it is true in our salvation.

When we are troubled by our sinfulness, when we wonder why we still struggle with some particular sin, and when our conscience tells us that we cannot be a child of God when we feel the way we do, we should stop and ponder the fact that God is greater than our feelings.

He is there even when we do not sense his presence.