1 JOHN 3:18-24 - Gospel Remedies for a Burdened Heart

A couple of weeks back I got an email from a Kickstarter campaign that I had subscribed to for the production of a sort of “reunion album” of a one-hit-wonder band from the ‘90s that I listened to in college. (Yes, I’ve become part of that “nostalgia demographic” that drives so many band reunions and reboots…) In the course of this particular band’s process of producing their reunion album, the band leader shared news via the Kickstarter emails that their long-time bassist had come to the realization—in the middle of the project!—that he was no longer interested in playing bass guitar. Ever. So the band has scrambled to find another bassist to complete their project and still perform at the live show they have scheduled later this year.

A common way of describing what that bass player experienced is to say that “his heart wasn’t in it”—he no longer loved playing music, his delight and affection for performing was gone. (On the whole, I think it’s probably better for a musician at that level to step away from performing and recording if he gets to the point when he no longer has the “heart”—the passion or the joy—of playing. That kind of thing comes out in the music, doesn’t it?)

I guess I wanted to mention that this morning because it helps us focus in on what John is talking about here in our text—because it’s not just Boomer musicians who can find that their heart is no longer in what they are doing. John says here that believers can find themselves with a heart that is weary and burdened—a heart that needs to be “reassured”

1 John 3:19 (ESV)

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him;

A heart that can “condemn us”

1 John 3:20 (ESV)

for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.

A heart that needs “confidence”

1 John 3:21 (ESV)

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;

I don’t know where your heart is this morning—but I know that there are a lot of reasons why you may be weary and discouraged. You may be struggling with sin that won’t leave you alone, you may be weighed down by the consequences of other people’s sin. Perhaps you’re going through a season where it feels like “your heart’s not in it” when it comes to following Christ—your Bible reading has fallen off, your prayer life has gone stale, your enthusiasm for spiritual things has grown dim.

And if you’re not in a place like that today, you certainly have been in the past—and all of us will be there at one time or another as our lives go on! And so what I want us to take from John’s words here in our text this morning is to uncover some “Gospel remedies for a burdened heart”—I pray that God’s Spirit working through His Word would meet you in your weariness that you may

REASSURE your heart with the REALITY of God’s LOVE for you in Christ

There are at least four of these wonderful “Gospel remedies” that John lays out here in our text. The first Gospel remedy for your burdened heart this morning is to consider the fact that

I. God’s love that SAVED you is now TRANSFORMING you (1 John 3:18-19)

I say this because of verses 18-19:

1 John 3:18–19 (ESV)

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him;

We observed this last week, and it’s worth revisiting here today—John uses verse 18 to conclude his argument from the previous verses that anyone born of God would love with actions and not just words—and then he turns around and says that genuine Christlike love in our lives is a reassurance that we belong to Him! Do you see it? “Love in deed and in truth” is the way that “we shall know we are of the truth and reassure our hearts before Him!”

Reassure your heart with the love of God that saved you—this love is seen in the fact that

He SACRIFICED Himself for you (1 John 3:16)

A couple of verses earlier we saw the sacrificial nature of the love of God for you:

1 John 3:16 (ESV)

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us...

This is the love that saved you, Christian—when you were still a sinner, Jesus laid down His life for you! When you were unwilling to listen to Him, when you were set against Him, an enemy and oathbreaker by nature—even when you were an outlaw and rebel, Jesus willingly laid down His life for your sake!

And John says in these verses that this love that saved you is also in the process of transforming you! The rest of 1 John 3:16 says

1 John 3:16 (ESV)

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

In other words, the love by which Christ sacrificed Himself for you is the same love by which

You love others SACRIFICIALLY (John 13:35)

You can have the assurance that your salvation is genuine—that “you are of the Truth”—when you see yourself exhibiting the same sacrificial love for others that Jesus showed you! When your thought process naturally goes something like, “I can’t leave him in that fix; Jesus never left me!” Or “I can’t let her suffer like that; Jesus didn’t let me suffer!” or “I know it’s going to cost me dearly to get down into their mess with them; but Jesus came down into my mess to rescue me!” You can’t just shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, he’s getting what’s coming to him..., because Jesus didn’t let you get what was coming to you!

That is love that the fallen heart simply cannot produce, that the world simply has no mechanism for. When you love sacrificially like Jesus did, when the same love that saved you begins to transform you, you can be assured that you genuinely belong to Jesus Christ in salvation! After all, Jesus Himself said that this kind of love is how the world will know that you belong to Him:

John 13:35 (ESV)

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

And if that love is a sign for the world to know you are His disciple, surely it is an assurance to you that you are His disciple!

Reassure your burdened heart with the reality of God’s love for you in Christ—be comforted that God’s love that saved you is now transforming you, and be comforted that

II. God KNOWS your HEART better than you do (1 John 3:20)

1 John 3:20 (ESV)

for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.

We noted earlier that Satan has no more power to bring formal charges against you—he has been permanently disbarred from the Throne Room of Heaven, where he used to accuse God’s people. But all too often the Accuser that hounds us isn’t Satan; it is our own heart! What do you do when it’s not the devil that is accusing you, but your own conscience? When it’s your own heart that recoils at the sin you still get tripped up by, when it’s your own voice muttering in your ear, “You ain’t no Christian!”?

Here is the great Gospel remedy for that weary, condemning heart: The love of God for you in Jesus Christ means that

He UNDERSTANDS all your CIRCUMSTANCES

He is “greater than your heart”—He knows your struggle. He has seen every battle you’ve fought and lost, He understands any and every “extenuating circumstance” that there could be, He “knows everything”. Including all the battles that you’ve won with that sin, and especially the genuine longing for holiness and grief over how far you have to go to grow into the Christlikeness that He has promised you! So reassure your condemning heart that God knows that your faith is genuine even when you feel like “you ain’t no Christian!”

The love of God in Christ for you means that He understands all your circumstances—whatever is excusable in your behavior, He excuses. But even better than that--

He FORGIVES the INEXCUSABLE (Romans 8:1)

This is the Gospel—that

Romans 8:1 (ESV)

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

When you are crushed by your failures to love, disheartened by losing a battle with sin, when your conscience is condemning you for your remaining corruption, remember this, beloved: God sees you with the eyes of a loving Father! He knows everything about your struggles, and He does not condemn you!

Reassure your burdened heart with the reality of God’s love for you in Christ—the love that saved you is even now transforming you; God knows your heart better than you do, and reassure your burdened heart with the promise that

III. God HEARS you and ANSWERS you (1 John 3:21-22)

1 John 3:21–22 (ESV)

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

The love of God that understands your heart better than you do enables you to grow in confidence before Him—you learn that He is not standing over you as a stern and implacable Judge; He looks on you with the loving heart of a Father who does not condemn you.

And that gives you confidence to call on Him in prayer! Here in this verse John is referring back to Jesus’ words that he recorded in his Gospel. John 15:15-16 reads

John 15:15–16 (ESV)

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

John says in both places that God hears and answers your prayers

When you are SERVING Him (John 15:16)

In his Gospel he writes that God answers your prayers “so that you may bear fruit and your fruit should abide”—here he writes that we receive whatever we ask from God “because we keep His commandments”. In other words, Jesus has appointed us to go out and obediently bear fruit for Him! He has commanded us to nothing less than bringing the entire world into the obedience of faith—and He has promised us all of His presence, power and authority as we do it!

In other words, when we are in the trenches of the warfare of this world, battling to destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, when we are striving to take every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:4-5), when we are going into all the world to declare this Gospel to every nation and teaching them to obey Christ, when we are seeking to battle our indwelling sin and strive for the holiness he commands in us—He has promised that we can always call in the artillery of His power through the walkie-talkie of prayer! (But, in John Piper’s memorable turn of phrase, far too many Christians are trying to use that walkie-talkie to call the maid to bring another pillow!)

God hears and answers your prayers when you are serving Him in the sacrificial love and obedience that He calls you to—but John is careful to point out that God doesn’t just love to answer your prayers because you are a “good soldier”—He also loves to answer your prayers

Because you are PLEASING to Him

1 John 3:22 (ESV)

and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

If we’re not careful we can miss what John is saying here, because it sounds like God is giving us what we ask because we are earning it by our good works: “Keep His commandments—be good enough, be holy enough, be obedient enough and God will give you what you ask for. But if you aren’t obedient enough, God will not answer your prayers!”

The remedy for this mistaken understanding is to go back to what Jesus says in John 15:5: antidote to this

John 15:5 (ESV)

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

In other words, it is not in your own strength that you are keeping God’s commandments or pleasing Him, is it? It is only as you abide in Christ that He can work all of His obedience and righteousness and holiness through you. See how the Gospel-love of Christ comforts your weary heart this morning! God dearly loves you and gives you everything you ask for as you serve Him in this world and seek His holiness in your life, and He does it because the perfections of Jesus Christ are yours through faith in Him!

Reassure your weary heart with the reality of God’s love for you in Christ this morning—the love that saved you is the love that is transforming you, God knows your heart better than you do, He hears and answers you, and

IV. God MAKES His HOME with you (1 John 3:23-24; cp. John 14:21, 23)

It’s almost more than we can believe—but it’s true! Look at verses 23-24:

1 John 3:23–24 (ESV)

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. 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.

This is the first time John writes about the Holy Spirit in this letter—not because He hasn’t been important, but because the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is the essential proof that our faith is genuine. In the next few verses (as we will see next time, Lord willing) John says that it is through the work of the Holy Spirit that

You have CONFESSED Christ as LORD (v. 23; cp 1 John 4:2)

The only way you are able to obey God’s commandment to “believe in the Name of His Son Jesus Christ” is because of the work of the Holy Spirit in you:

1 John 4:2 (ESV)

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,

Have you confessed the Lordship of Christ? Have you called on the Name of Jesus Christ as your only hope for salvation from the penalty of your sin? Do you live your life moment by moment by faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave Himself for you? That is evidence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you! Your obedience to God’s commandment to “believe in the Name of His Son Jesus Christ” is guaranteed by the loving work of the Holy Spirit in you!

The Spirit’s work in you is the ground of your confession of Christ as Lord, and His work in you is the means by which

You LOVE the BODY of Christ (v. 23; John 15:12)

We are commanded by Christ to love one another as He loved us:

John 15:12 (ESV)

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

And when, by the power of the Holy Spirit that dwells in us, we obey that command and love one another as Jesus loved us, we have the blessing of God’s intimate presence with us! Jesus said it powerfully in John 14:21 and 23

John 14:21 (ESV)

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

John 14:23 (ESV)

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

Let this reassure your weary heart today, Christian—that because you have been empowered by His indwelling Spirit to confess Jesus Christ and love His people, God Himself - Father, Son and Holy Spirit—makes His home with you! You have been invited into the fellowship of the Trinity!

Let me try, in the best manner that I can (which is still wholly insufficient) to help you see the incalculable blessings that God’s authoritative, powerful Word promises you here. John is saying the the eternal, Triune God—the eternal and infinite love and fellowship and joy and delight that flows between Father and Son and Son and Father and Spirit from Father and Son and back again, uninterrupted and unceasing, untouched by any darkness or sin or tragedy or loss—God Himself invites you to join in that fellowship! Jesus says, “My Father and I will move in with you, and we will bring our Spirit—our love and delight and joy and peace and fellowship—with us!

Christian—can you see the growth in your life of Christlike sacrificial love for others? Are you standing fully convinced and persuaded on the Name of Jesus Christ for your eternal salvation? Then reassure your weary heart with the reality of the love of God for you in Jesus Christ—He is transforming you moment by moment by His love. He knows your condemning heart better than you do and He does not condemn you! He hears and answers you when you cry out to Him for power to serve Him and grace to battle sin. He promises to dwell with you as you keep His commands to believe in Christ and love His people and then He guarantees that obedience by the presence of His Spirit in you!

Here are those precious Gospel-remedies for your burdened heart this morning—the love of God manifested in the presence of His Spirit in your life. His love is poured out on you in the midst of your weariness, in the battles with sin that never seem to end, in the weaknesses and infirmities of a broken world and people broken by sin. Trust in your Savior—call on His Name in prayer, ask for His strength and peace. Let the sacrificial love of Christ that saved you continue to transform you as you love His people the way He loved you. Bring your weary, anxious, troubled heart to Him today, and rest in the never-failing love of the Father who loves you and makes His home with you through His Spirit that dwells in you and the finished work of His Son, your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Ephesians 3:20–21 (ESV)

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

What are some reasons a believer might have a “weary heart”? Are there ever good reasons for a Christian to have a condemning conscience? Why or why not? How does this passage address that question?

How does our love for one another give us assurance that we are saved? Read John 15:12 and 1 John 3:16—what are the marks of love for one another that gives us that assurance?

Why is the Holy Spirit such an astounding gift to you as a Christian? How does His presence in your life show itself? Spend some time this week praying that God’s Spirit will bring you into deeper obedience to His Word and love for His people!

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