Living Coram Deo

Graham Phillips

1 John • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

Commandments of the Church

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How can we know that we truly know Christ? Is it enough to know that at one point in our life we did have faith? We believe as the apostles believed that one can have assurance of their faith. True faith bears fruit. What is the evidence of true faith? Obedience to Christ's commandments.

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Living Coram Deo

Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 28th Edition Chapter 2

3 Καὶ ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκομεν ὅτι ἐγνώκαμεν αὐτόν,* ἐὰν τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ ⸀τηρῶμεν.* 4 ὁ λέγων ♦°ὅτι Ἔγνωκα αὐτὸν* καὶ τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ μὴ τηρῶν ψεύστης ἐστὶν,* °1καὶ ⸂ἐν τούτῳ ἡ ἀλήθεια⸃ οὐκ ἔστιν·* 5 ὃς δʼ ἂν τηρῇ αὐτοῦ τὸν λόγον,* °ἀληθῶς ἐν τούτῳ ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ τετελείωται· ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκομεν ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐσμεν⸆.* 6 ὁ λέγων ἐν αὐτῷ μένειν ὀφείλει, καθὼς ἐκεῖνος περιεπάτησεν,* καὶ αὐτὸς ♦°οὕτως περιπατεῖν.

English Standard Version Chapter 2

3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

OPENING REMARKS

For the past few weeks we’ve been walking through the book of 1st John. A short sermon-like epistle written by John the apostle to a group of house churches located in modern day Turkey warning them against the false teachings of the gnostics and encouraging them in love and holiness.

Already we’ve been brought to the dazzling beauty of God’s holiness, we’ve learnt the importance of having an apostolic profession of Christ, we’ve seen Jesus both as our high priest and last Sunday as our propitiatory sacrifice; thank you, Buky.

This week, brothers and sisters, we move from considering the work that Christ has done for us to considering the work He is doing in us.

What is it to live the Christian life? And how can we know if we are truly living it? These are the primary questions the apostle is pressing upon us.

These are questions that will lead us to consider the great doctrine of assurance. Is there an assurance of salvation? Can we know, I mean really know that we are saved? John seems to suggest that we can, and that this ‘knowledge’ of the truth of our salvation is important. Assurance; to be assured of a fact, to have certainty about something. Having an assurance about your faith is something that brings an immense amount of peace and security to us. Are you certain of your salvation? What makes you certain? How do you know that you are a Christian?

Some may say; ‘I know I’m saved because I’ve been baptised.’ Yet I know a good few people who’ve been baptised into Christ who are now living a life that gives the lie to their baptism. There will be many people who have been baptised who on that great and terrible day of judgement hear these words ‘away from me, I never knew you.’

On the other hand someone might say, ‘I know I’m a Christian because I had an encounter with Him and I asked Jesus into my heart’. The tragedy as Paul Washer has pointed out is that this response has become the litmus test of true Christianity in the modern church. One of my best friends in secondary school came with me to a Bible week one summer. I’d invited him along and was hoping that he’d get to meet God in the same powerful way that I had at the same Bible week just a few years before. Well, my prayers were answered! I remember him going forward for prayer after one meeting and inviting Jesus into his heart, he then received prayer and after that he hit the deck screaming, laughing, crying. We had to carry him out after an hour and he was still writhing and sobbing. A guy actually prayed that the Holy Spirit would release him because it was out of control. After he came around we chatted for hours, it really seemed like he’d had an encounter with God. When we got back home I encouraged him to come to church with me, he used to come with me to home group every week and I genuinely believed he was beginning to follow Christ. But soon enough he began to make excuses and stopped coming to home group. He drifted further and further away from me and other Christians and eventually went on to pursue a homosexual lifestyle. I hope one day that he really does come to know God, but whatever we might want to believe, having once prayed a prayer isn’t assurance. It isn’t the proof of our Christianity. Neither are seemingly supernatural experiences proof of salvation. We all know people who claim to have had the most incredible encounters with God but who are either no longer walking with God or who’s lifestyles aren’t very Godly.

So if our baptism doesn’t provide us with full assurance of our faith, and if the fact we once invited Jesus into our heart doesn’t give us assurance then what does?

If we keep His commandments...

The proof that we have truly come to know Jesus is that we are keeping His commandments! That is our assurance, that is how we know that our relationship with Him is the real deal. A real, living faith always bears the fruit of obedience. Our keeping of Christ’s commandments isn’t what saves us, but it is what reveals that we have really been saved. If we aren’t presently shaping our lifestyle according to the example set for us by Jesus, then that’s not a good sign. The verb ‘to keep’ used by john here in verse three is in the present tense, giving the sense of ‘if we are keeping His commandments. There ought to be an active, daily conforming of our will to His will for our lives.

So while personal holiness is not the basis of our salvation, it is the clearest assurance of our salvation. The converted slave trader John Newton said of himself, “I am not what I ought to be; but I am not what I once was. And it is by the grace of God that I am what I am.”23

So what are the commandments which John is referring to? What is sure is that John isn’t referring to keeping the mosaic law, since when referring to the law He uses a different phrase, so what we have in view here are the same commandments which Jesus tells His disciples to keep in John 15

English Standard Version Chapter 15

10 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.

Keeping God’s Commandments. Bede: The person who really knows God is the one who proves that he lives in his love by keeping his commandments. Love is the sure sign that we know God. We know that we are truly children of God when his love in us persuades us to pray even for our enemies, as he himself did when he said: “Father, forgive them.”33 On 1 John.34

If love is the fulfillment of the law. So to abide in God’s love is to keep Christ’s commandments, and to keep His commandments is to love God. Verse 5 gives us another angle on this same proposition; whoever keeps His word, in Him the love of God has truly been perfected.

John clarifies which commandments are meant in verse 3 later in this same letter in chapter 3:23

English Standard Version Chapter 3

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.

So through obedience to God’s word, to scripture we show that we know Him. To be obedient to God’s word concerning Jesus and in particular to follow his example is to love God, and then the love of God is then perfected in us.

There are varying views on what is meant by the phrase ‘the love of God’ found in verse 5. Some take it to mean, God’s love to us, others take it to mean our love to God and some believe it to be substantive ‘a Godly love’. The majority view is that it means our love towards God which is over time being perfected in us.

1 John 2:5 ENTVIIII

but here it is to be understood not actively, but passively, of the love wherewith God is loved by his people; and intends not the absolute perfection of it in them, in whom it often waxes cold, and is left, or the fervour of it abated, but the sincerity and reality of it; for by keeping the word of God, both his truths and his ordinances, it is clearly seen that their love to him is without dissimulation, and is not in tongue only, but indeed and in truth: - John Gill

Whichever way you look at it we see that our Christian faith is evidenced by a real love of God which is being perfected, and this love is borne out by obedience to His word, and a conforming of our life to the example set by Jesus.

1 John 2:5 Calvin Cath Epist

He now defines what a true keeping of God’s law is, even to love God. This passage is, I think, incorrectly explained by those who understand that they please the true God who keep his word. Rather take this as its meaning, “to love God in sincerity of heart, is to keep his commandments.”

However, amoungst the many people who say they believe in God, even that they are Christians there seem to be a thousand different interpretations of what keeping His commandments looks like. One question that often dogs new believers is this; ‘why is it that so many Christians disagree on so many things?’ When they see the Archbishop’s vain attempts to unite a church utterly divided over sexuality. How is it that Christians could read the same Bible and yet come to radically differing views? Well herein lies the danger of knowing about God and yet not truly knowing Him. It’s possible to gain an extraordinary volume of knowledge about the Bible, about theology, about Hebrew and Greek and yet not know God. It’s possible to so delude yourself that you on one hand say that you love God but on the other hand hate His commandments, so much that you have to twist and schew and obfuscate the scriptures to suit your view. To the point that it isn’t God that you love, but yourself.

“If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”

by St. Augustine of Hippo,

To attepmt to change, reimagine or blur God’s word is to hate God, not love Him. Give me someone who hates God’s word for what it is and rejects Him over someone who says they love Him but who denies His word and tries to change it.

The proof that someone is truly a Christian is not whether they say they are a Christian. The proof that someone is not that they say the know God, or that they love God. The proof is in whether they love God in their obedience to His word! The proof is in whether they love their brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re not talking about some gooey, sentimental feeling here, but about acts of charity. Helping out brothers and sisters in Christ in their need. As the love of God is perfected in the heart of a believer, as their love towards God grows, and their knowledge of His love for them is revealed their love for their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ grows also.

This should be the sign by which they should know whether they are true Christians or not. Where Christ dwells through faith, there He makes that person conform to Him; that is, He makes him humble, gentle, and ready to help his neighbor in any need. - Sean Douglas O Donnell

If someone is giving it the big one about how much theology they know, or how many amazing revelations they have but you don’t get a whiff of love, you have cause to doubt whether they really know God. Since John says in verse 6 that those who abide in Christ ought to walk in the same manner as He walked.

Walking like Jesus...

I anticipate the question; How can anyone walk as Jesus walked? Is John expecting that we ought to be able to stride out across the canal to be sure that we are Christians? I’ve certainly heard it preached that way. I think even I have preached it that way. That to walk like Jesus is to walk in His miraculous signs and wonders. Even that unless we are walking in these miraculous signs and wonders that we don’t truly know God. Though I believe in the gifts of the Spirit and have personally seen God move supernaturally in my life, that isn’t what is meant by John here. To insert that meaning is to read our own preferences into the text. As Luther said;

‘It is not Christ’s walking on the sea, but His ordinary walk, we are called on to imitate’ (Luther).

Or Augustine;

Therefore, “he who says that he abides in him ought himself also to walk as he walked.” How, brothers? What advice is he giving us? “He who says that he abides in him,” that is, in Christ, “ought himself also to walk as he walked.” Is he perhaps giving us this advice, that we walk on the sea? Far from it! This then, that we walk in the way of justice. In what way? I have already mentioned it. He was fastened on the cross and was walking in this very way: it is the way of love. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” So then, if you have learned to pray for your enemy, you walk in the way of the Lord.

So two weeks ago we preached Jesus the High Priest, last week we preached Jesus our Propitiation and this week we preach Jesus our great example.

Though we understand what Luther meant by Christ’s ordinary walk, we must also recognise that His ordinary walk is anythng but ordinary. It is extraordinary to our carnal flesh.

When we consider the example He has set for us in His self denial, His endurance of suffering, His service, His faithfulness, His love, His patience, His forgiveness, His gentleness and humility, His purity and His prayer, we are immediately reminded that but by the power of the Holy Spirit no immitation of Christs walk would be possible.

But praise God! Here we have it in verse 5 and six, our ability to walk in His footsteps, isn’t something that comes out from the natural man, it flows from our union with Christ. This spiritual, mystical union that the believer has with Jesus; that we were baptised into His death, raised to new life with Him and now live in Him. Our walking like Jesus isn’t what earns us union with Him, it’s the evidence of our union with Him.

Of course John isn’t contradicting what he has already said in verse 8 of chapter 1. He’s not suggesting that this obedience we walk in is going to be perfect, we’ll stumble on the way. But the proof of our union with Him is in our getting back up again.

It’s like this; I heard a preacher tell a story of how he used to help his Dad clear the drive of snow as a young boy. His Dad was his role model and everything he wanted to be in life. Where they lived they would get deep drifts that would block the roads. His Dad would lead the way out of the door and trudge off into the unspoiled snow, and as a little boy he would try to walk in His fathers footsteps, often falling as his dad’s footprints were much further apart than he could manage to stretch. The point is, he was trying. Our obedience looks like trying, it looks like a consistent, steady occasionaly bumpy ride towards emulating Jesus.

1 John 2:3–6 Calvin Cath Epist

But there is no one who in everything keeps them; there would thus be no knowledge of God in the world. To this I answer, that the Apostle is by no means inconsistent with himself; since he has before shewed that all are guilty before God, he does not understand that those who keep his commandments wholly satisfy the law (no such example can be found in the world;) but that they are such as strive, according to the capacity of human infirmity, to form their life in conformity to the will of God. For whenever Scripture speaks of the righteousness of the faithful, it does not exclude the remission of sins, but on the contrary begins with it.

This is what is known as Life Coram Deo; or living life before the face of God. It’s when we are aware of God’s presence in all the banality of everyday life. We live our life from Him, to Him and through Him. This is the Christian lifestyle, it’s what it means to be a Christian. God is the source and aim of our life. We are conscious of Him in this moment, we live to please Him, to love Him. Leaning on His grace when we inevitably stumble, pulling ourselves up in the Spirit to go again.

So let’s examine ourselves today, do we find in ourselves that striving towards holiness? Is the example of Jesus what we are aiming at in all things? Perhaps the best proof that it is is when we are disappointed with our behaviour and have to say sorry! That’s what happens in my life, anyway. The evidence that I am keeping his commandments is in my dismay whenever I break them.

So, yes there is an assurance for the believer. There is security for the Christian. If there is love in our heart for God, which though it occasionally waxes and wains is shown by our love of His word and our obedience to His commandments.

The one who says they love God but who has no interest in the Bible and who never feels remorseful over their sin is in danger of judgement. As John says, they are lying. If there is no love in your heart towards God or towards His children again we need to examine whether our relationship with Him is real.