Christ the Atoning Sacrifice
CLASS 4 ISSUES
Study Scripture: 1 John 2: 1 – 6; 4:9 – 17
Background Scripture: 1 John 2; 1 John 4
Lesson 7 April 12, 2025
Key Verse
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins
1 John 4:10
INTRODUCTION
In the world of religion there are many voices.
All but one are untrue voices intending to deceive you.
There is only one true voice and that one voice is the subject of our Study today. This voice is that of the Apostle John, now an old man who was the only survivor of the twelve apostles selected by the Lord Jesus Christ.
He therefore is telling the brethren about the only way to life eternal.
Our Study Text Topic has us face and confront squarely with the father of lies who as the murderer from the beginning constantly attempts to seduce us with false promises about how we can find and develop an intimate fellowship with God. In his Books John will present us with a false claim saying “If we claim” and then he refutes it and gives us a right and valuable alternative.
We should note carefully each of the false claims the Apostle John deals with misrepresents what Scripture teaches us about Christ and what it means to know Christ and what it means to walk with Him.
It is most important therefore that we examine what the Apostle is saying carefully and focus on the alternatives he presents us with.
This is the only way we will avoid being deceived by false teachings and so drift from the truth.
John knows we tend to fal back into old habits and are susceptible to drift from the truth. He therefore writes to tell us we can have freedom from sin, and that if wefail we can have forgiveness and cleansing.
Hence he presents us with the fact Jesus died in our place and hence Jesus is the atoning sacrifice that sacrificed the demands of the law that we die for our sins and pay our debts for sinning.
This leads us to consider what faith is and what conquering means.
The Dictionary tells us that this participle means “to overcome and take control of a place or people generally by military force”.
It also means “successfully overcoming a problem or weakness, and the Dictionary illustrates this meaning by pointing to a saying “a fear she never managed to conquer”.
The Dictionary also gives us ‘synonyms’ or ‘words with similar meanings’ to conquer such as crush, overthrow, quell, rout, subdue, or subjugate.
This is a most interesting and needed Study when we realize that the Apostle John was writing in a very hostile world. After 60 years of ministry John was thinking about the overthrow of Jerusalem, the amount of people that died in Nero’s persecution, the dismal and oppressive world of Domitian the Roman Emperor, and his now exile on the Isle of Patmos.
It has often been pointed out therefore that when John was writing it was a very dark place for John and for the Christian church. But despite that the Apostle John’s word to the church was the word victory. He was without doubt recollecting the words of Jesus,
“In the world you shall have tribulation but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”.
The Apostle John as well as the other Apostles were very clear headed and realistic because they knew the secrets of God. To guide us John is going to give us insight into the conditions in which Christians fellowship.
The Apostle stresses that Christians are in fellowship in the light of holiness, in righteousness, and in the ultimate element, love. John is not talking about human love, sentimental or romantic love but he it is speaking about divine love, a love shown clearly in the propitiatory sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle John therefore is looking at the sphere of the conflict between Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Father in Heaven, and Satan, the Father of lies.
The Apostle John is making it absolutely plain that the work of God begun in Heaven, not on Earth and He continued His work following the Fall in the Garden of Eden when men became unable to turn to God. So divine work and divine salvation came to man and so the statement was required,
“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and everyone that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him”.
Obviously this gives rise to the need to test what is happening in the church. Then as now there was a manifestation of supernatural power and the claims of supernatural experience. Scriptures tell us that when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt there was a conflict between him and the Egyptian magicians and the magicians managed to duplicate some of the miracles of Moses. We also read about King Saul’s experience with the witch of Endor. Then we read in the New Testament of Simon Magus who managed to persuade many, using sorcery to bewitch the people of Samaria. In addition to this, we are also warned that in the time of the end there will be the ministry of the Beast who would perform miracles.
As we study therefore we have to pay special attention to the fact that the supernatural is not necessarily originating from that which is divine. Some in the early church claimed to possess supernatural power and were able to perform miracles and make prophecies using prophetic language. John therefore gives the warning that there are wheat and as well there are tares in the world, and wherever there is truth it will always exist with a counterfeit nearby.
So remember the warning. Some supernatural things are not divine at all.
But there are things that are supernatural as well as divine.
The Apostle John is often referred to as the ‘Apostle of love’ and a reading of his First Epistle gives the reason; the word ‘love’ is mentioned about forty times in its 5 short chapters.
One of the key tests of Christianity is love and John uses it to challenge the legitimacy of those who claim to be Christians, because true Christians do love one another!
Note, Jesus set this command as the identifying trait for His disciples;
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another,” (John 13:35). (See Rom. 5:5; 1Thes. 4:9).
Love is the dominant theme in chapters 4 and 5, however the Study Text highlights verses that speak to the believer’s assurance and their right relationship with the Son of God. The important terms ‘faith’ and ‘truth’ are often linked to love and the Study verses also place some emphasis on these terms. Importantly, God’s love is the first cause of all the blessings that come to believers.
This will give us a conquering faith.
Note however that John will also deal in our Study with the marks of authentic believers for this is connected with the question of what is authentic Christian faith. This is of course a crucially important topic for us today for there are many believers who profess a strong Christian faith and yet there are multiple scandals in which they are involved.
These scandals give reason to question the authenticity of the faith they are professing. Some in the very highly regarded Christian circles have been involved in major financial and sex scandals yet they continue making a lot of money using the word of God. This of course brings the scorn of the world and Christianity suffers because people think that Christians and Christian leaders are always generally after only money.
The glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and the glory of the gospel suffer as a result of these shameful activities.
Our Study therefore also invites us to look at the many false ideas about “the love of God”. Unfortunately the love of God is generally interpreted among many Christians to mean something like sentimental love, or romantic love. For some of them it simply means that God is affectionate. Some think that God is like a loving grandfather who receives everybody on their terms. He is like a kind of Santa Claus.
But remember that the Bible gives us a completely different picture of God. We can never talk about the love of God if we do not at the same time speak of the propitiation that Christ has accomplished. That is the meaning of “God is love” and John identifies that love for us later in the chapter.
The Book of 1 John is widely accepted as being written by the Apostle John, though the writer does not identify himself nor the Christian community or locale to which he wrote. Still the content of the letter is sufficiently specific to apply to a particular situation, yet holds application to all believers in all ages. This much is clear, his intended readers were Christians, they appear to have been well-known to him and he to them and so no introduction was necessary, (2:1, 12, 28; 3:7, 18; 4:4; 5:21).
His readers were facing a serious threat from false teachers and the heretics were their former brethren (1 John 2:18-19). John’s use of the terms “antichrists” (2:18) and “false prophets” (4:1) as labels for his opponents, indicate both the depth of his feeling about them and also the seriousness of their departure from the apostolic teaching about Jesus.
Although the Apostle says:
These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God; (1 John 5:13).
The Study Text is also to be considered against the backdrop of an on-going controversy and split in a Christian community, to which he likely belonged. Doctrinal and ethical matters seem to have been the issues.
Thus, the Epistle deals with factions within and outside the church, which had begun to teach error
(1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3). These include the denial of the true humanity of Christ (and therefore His atoning death), the reality of sin in the lives of teachers and denial of the assurance of salvation for believers in Jesus Christ.
Another heretical belief was that salvation came through knowledge
(Greek = gnosis, from which we have our word diagnosis). They also believed that Christ was a spirit who did not exist in bodily form. He only appeared or seemed to be a normal man. Some other heretics stated that the Jesus taught by the apostles was simply a man on whom the Spirit of God came to empower them to do great miracles but when it came time for the Cross the Spirit of God left him and he died as a man.
Some viewed the spiritual as always good and the physical was viewed as always evil; thus, they argued, the physical Jesus Christ could not be the Incarnate Son of God.
To combat this false teaching, John emphasized the interconnection of right belief, right actions and right love. Put another way, it is the right involvement of head, hands and heart. The child of God can be assured of eternal life, must believe the truth, the word of God, obey the commands and love brothers and sisters in Christ. The Apostle’s message: true believers practice righteousness, follow the truth and love the brethren is squarely centred on the person and message of Jesus Christ, a true understanding of which, is the antidote to all heresy and error.
The Apostle adopts an adversarial stance, ‘we’ vs. ‘they’ (4:4-6) and this implies that the people to whom he wrote had not embraced the teaching of those who had withdrawn from the community and who were still seeking to win adherents to their own views. Some might have felt pressure to side with the opponents and this would give impetus to this letter, as John sought to reassure and strengthen the faithful members of that community and urged his readers to adhere to apostolic teaching.
Note, unity at all cost is not desirable. Error and false teachers must be confronted, exposed and refuted. There is to be no compromise with the error of the adversaries, which is condemned outright (2:18-19, 4:1-3).
The threat of false teachers has bedevilled the church from its earliest history and continues unabated to the present time.
The idea of overcoming, or being victorious, is a common subject with John and features in the Study Text. He discussed victory over Satan, (1 John 2:13–14); overcoming the pressures of the world, (1 John 4–5).
As we consider this in today’s Study, we should distinguish among three ways the Bible speaks of ‘the world’:
a). As planet Earth in its physical sense (Acts 17:24; Romans 10:18)
b). As the world human inhabitants (Luke 2:1; John 3:16)
c). As a system of values opposed to God’s (John 14:17; Colossians 2:20)
John showed that threats to the faith must be dealt with firmly and without compromise, yet in a spirit of love. Christians should not respond to hate and abuse with more hate and abuse. Even in the most contentious relationships, love must prevail. Surely this applied to John himself, whose teachings were under attack by these heretics.
The Study Text highlights the critical role of the Holy Spirit in the assurance of true believers; their confession to the true nature of Jesus Christ and their empowerment to obedience to God’s commandments.
Importantly, the possession of the Spirit is the first ground of assurance for the believer. Conversely John alerts readers to the existence of the ‘spirit of antichrist’ which necessarily opposes the work of the Holy Spirit.
THE TEXT
Chapter 2:1. Sin is something that might occur in every Christians’ life (1 John 1:8 & 9), even though it does not have to be.
But as Christians we know if we truly repent and confess that sin to our Father, then our Father in heaven is loving enough to forget that sin, and help us not to fall to such temptations again.
John indicates that that is just one aspect of the challenges we face in dealing with sin. We in our current state will not be able to achieve a condition of being sinlessly perfect.
God does not make the believer to sin; it is the believer who fails to trust in God and the strength He provides that has the believer fall to sin.
We are born in sin and shaped in iniquity. This is a realization that the Christian must accept. However, He who created and sustains us is more than capable of teaching us and guiding us so that we can navigate our way around sin, just as how Jesus demonstrated that to us when He was on earth.
The advice and support given is that we do not have to yield to sin at all. It does not have to hamper our daily lives with worry as to when or if sin will happen.
But we must recognize situations where it may occur and petition our God for the strength to overcome it. The closer our fellowship is with God, I would say the greater our ability will be to continue to serve God in the pleasing manner in which He desires.
There is a great distinction between sinners in the world and sinners who are Children of God. Some people end up sinning, but this really means that unrepentant, worldly, non- children of God, sinners will remain in a state separate from God.
But those who commit a sin, AND are children of God, who have confessed and are repentant, are in a state where that sin is blotted out by the blood of Jesus, and God the Father does not see that sin, meaning He does not hold it against us.
So, sin is applied differently to the two groups. Our Advocate is sitting by the right hand side of God interceding for us daily, on our good and bad days, for us against our accusers and as well when we are the cause of the sin.
Our Advocate also works with seamlessly the Holy Spirit who works within us and with the Father to create that Fruit that the Lord requires.
Verse 2. Jesus is the expiatory victim, the propitiatory sacrifice that has been offered to the Judge for all our offences against His Majesty, and the law and government. The Mediator of intercession, the Advocate for us, is the Mediator of redemption, the propitiation for our sins. This is what John is trying to stress. Jesus’ blood has all-sufficient power and it will save all those that have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ as their saviour. His blood is still powerful enough to save His enemies who will turn to Him. If we confess He is faithful.
Verse 3. The evidence to the world and to others that we are children of God is in how we will conduct ourselves, when we are in the company of saints, and when we are not!
John here indicates that the evidence of someone knowing God, and having fellowship with Him is that that person keeps His commandments.
John also makes the point that we have a gracious Advocate in heaven with a specific and all-powerful role exercised on our behalf. Based on the work done by Jesus we can go boldly to the throne of God the Father, to deliver our request personally to the Father, but we have someone the Holy Spirit walking beside us. The Spirit and our Mediator Jesus ensures what we walk correctly and respectfully, so that our walk will be successful.
Verse 4. Here we have the opposite manifestation of those who do not know God, those who do not keep the commandments of God. John calls them out and calls them a liar.
Mature Christians and true children of God should appreciate the difference between the child of God and what the world considers to be perfected and mature. Sin will come in the lives of Christians, but the maturing Christian will one day achieve that perfected state where the temptations of sin no longer inhibit their fellowship with God. They continually under the guidance of the Holy Spirit seek to do the will of their Father over their own will. So one writer notes:
When one becomes a Christian, there is a change in his relationship with sin. Sin is not eliminated in the believer until he comes to glory, but his relationship to sin is changed when he truly become a Christian.
A Christian no longer loves sin as he once did.
A Christian no longer brags about his sin as he once did.
A Christian no longer plans to sin as he once did.
A Christian no longer fondly remembers his sin as he once did.
A Christian never fully enjoys his sin as he once did.
A Christian no longer is comfortable in habitual sin as he once was.
[Guzik, David]
Verse 5. When Christians keep the word of God, or of Christ, we will do all manner of tasks that God asks of us. All these actions will show others of the love and trust that we have in God. Each day that love and trust will grow within us and allow us to be used in even greater ways by God in accomplishing His goals. This is His design and the fruit that we bear will be evident to other brethren around us to inspire them to similar acts of glory for God. So one writer notes:
We are chosen, to be holy and blameless before him in love; we are redeemed, to be a peculiar people, zealous of good works; we are pardoned and justified, that we may be partakers of larger measures of the divine Spirit for sanctification; we are sanctified, that we may walk in ways of holiness and obedience: no act of divine love that here terminates upon us obtains its proper tendency, issue, and effect, without our holy attendance to God’s word. But the phrase rather denotes here our love to God. [Matthew Henry]
Verse 6. Jesus is our greatest example of how to live a life that is pleasing to God the Father. As Jesus Himself mentioned and had shown in His life, the life of a Christian will be difficult, but that is why we put our trust in God and do not lay our treasures down here on earth, but in heaven. Our walk in this life is about doing the will of the Father. Being obedient children who demonstrate to others the same love that our God has demonstrated to us, in hopes that they too might realize what God the Father has done and is doing for them, that they might repents and become joint heirs with us and a child of God.
We all do not have to demonstrate that God is with us through spectacular events like what Jesus did, but the spiritual power evident in the life of Jesus which flowed from a faithful, regular, disciplined life of fellowship and obedience will be still evident in us, as we walk as Jesus walked.
“The point here is that the one who knows God will increasingly lead a righteous life, for God is righteous. It does not mean that he will be sinless; John has already shown that anyone who claims this is lying. It simply means that he will be moving in a direction marked out by the righteousness of God. If he does not do this, if he is not increasingly dissatisfied with and distressed by sin, he is not God’s child.” [Boice]
THE TEXT
Chapter 4.
This Chapter is an extremely strong attack against false teachers. But it also gives some of the greatest teaching on love, pointing out love commends itself for love is the very nature of love.
The doctrines of Christianity lays great stress upon believing but it also stresses that there are times when unbelief is right.
Never forget what one writer says:
“ Faith is not a way of convincing yourself that something is true when you know it is not, as someone has defined it, but faith is believing something that is true. In order to be a Christian you must be a believer, because from faith comes life, strength, peace, and joy, and all else that the Christian life offers. But, that being true, it is equally true that every Christian is also called to be an unbeliever. There is a time when unbelief is the right thing and the only right thing. The very same Scriptures which encourage us to believe likewise urge us not to believe. In fact, they not only urge us, they command us not to believe. This is no contradiction, anymore than to say that in order to live it is necessary both to inhale and to exhale….
It is the same thing with the matter of belief and unbelief. You cannot believe truth without rejecting error. You cannot love righteousness unless you are ready to hate sin. You cannot accept Christ without rejecting self. “If any man come after me,” Jesus says, “let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16: 24, Mark 8: 34).
You cannot follow good unless you are ready to flee from evil. So it is not surprising, therefore, that the Scriptures tell us we are not to believe, as well as to believe. This is what John declares in the first three verses of Chapter 4”.
Verse 1.
… test the spirits … is to make a choice from among competing claims. His test question, whereby one can determine whether the Spirit of God or a spirit of falsehood possesses a person, was this: What does the person believe about Jesus Christ? This question is still a relevant test of orthodoxy today!
If a person denies the incarnation of Jesus Christ (He has come in the flesh), he / she has the “spirit of (the) antichrist (2:18-27). This was a heresy that false teachers were promoting among John’s original readers and it was a denial of the doctrine of Christ taught by the apostles. Any deviation from orthodox Christology evidences a spirit opposed to Jesus Christ.
One writer notes: “Notice that John did not say we can tell false spirits by their works. He said we can identify that they are false spirits by their message. This was the acid test of a false prophet under the Old Covenant as well (Deut. 13:1-5).
It is rather striking that cult groups, or religious movements that win support always does it in the name of love. But remember that the word love is used in many, many different ways and describe many different reaction and impulses. One writer therefore notes:
“Love means one thing to a hippie in Haight-Ashbury; love means quite a different thing as when it is used by a psychologist in his counseling room. Love is still something different on the lips of a movie-struck teenager; love is different yet when used with reference to the relationship of nations. There is no word, perhaps, in our language, that is capable of being stretched in so many directions as this word love. Yet so many people seem utterly gullible about it. If someone comes talking about love, this to them is the earmark they must be of God, they must be “of the truth”, despite the fact that the oldest trick in Satan’s bag is to show a spirit of friendly concern and appear to offer the fulfillment of love and desire”.
Therefore we will have to keep on pointing out that the message from God is the most important thing.
So the Apostle wants us to first test, and don’t jump to believe anyone who comes along.
We must point out the critical importance of this advice for us today for in our modern age we are in a much greater danger than the people in the days of John the Apostle and even before him, for in those ancient days everybody knew that there were invisible spirits and invisible realities lurking right behind the scenes of life. Those ancient people made all kinds of legendary figures and mythological figures worshiping them as demigods for they recognized that man did not exist in the universe by himself. There were superior beings that would influence Kings, rulers, and ordinary people, controlling and determining attitudes and bringing fertility and prosperity to every man alive.
But nowadays we think that we are smart and we have grown beyond that ancient approach. We therefore expose ourselves without any defense at all and so we easily come under the control of these evil spirits. But Jesus made it clear that there are a great host of evil spirits. The Apostle Paul warns us in Ephesians 6:12 that we are not wrestling against flesh and blood but against principalities, powers, and wicked spirits in high places.
So do not fool yourself. Behind the rulers and important people in every country there are wicked spirits who are affecting the minds of men from top to bottom.
Our generation is proud and arrogant and therefore we do not understand the reasons behind the chaos and anarchy that is steadily increasing for they reject the whole concept of evil spirits and demons as intellectually unacceptable.
Often heretical teaching masks its deviations from the truth by simply failing to affirm important biblical truth. Rather than proclaiming, “Jesus is not the Christ,” they fail to affirm that He is the Christ.”
Verses 2. …Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God …this statement immediately follows John’s stress on the need for discernment (vs.1). Is on the fact that Jesus became flesh (2 John 7).
Why was it important that Jesus’ had a real, physical body? Until the destruction of the Temple in
A.D. 70, animals were sacrificed yearly there on the Day of Atonement to among other things remind the Jews that the shedding of blood was necessary to atone for their sins (Leviticus 16; Hebrews 9:22). Those sacrifices pointed to the sacrifice that Jesus would one day offer as He gave Himself on the Cross (Matt.26:28). If Jesus did not come in the flesh, then He did not have a body to sacrifice or blood to shed. Thus, it was essential that Jesus be not only fully God but also fully human in order to make salvation possible (1 Timothy 3:16). As well, He had to be fully human to be our ‘representative’ in His death, burial and resurrection.
Thus John provides a method to identify false prophets in this regard: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.
Note therefore that it is only through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit that one can confess that Jesus is come in flesh, saying it and meaning it. One writer notes the specific meaning of what John is saying:
“You might think, “Well you mean that is all there is to a true confession, to confess that Jesus Christ has come in spirit”? But think about it for a moment, what he is really saying, He doesn’t say he has come into the flesh. You see a Cerinthian Gnostic might say that. “For he thought of Jesus as just an ordinary man who at a point in time, his baptism, there had come upon him power from God, under which power and by which power he ministered until before his work on the cross when the power departed from him and he died just as a man”.
So John says it’s not that we confess Jesus Christ as having come into the flesh but in flesh, a true incarnation.
Furthermore, he doesn’t say that we confess Jesus Christ as one who came in the flesh, as if our Lord came in flesh and that was an event that happened a long time ago and it has not particular significance for us today. Not, not, he says that the true confession is the confession of Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh and still being in the flesh. That’s the particular expression that he uses. It’s a permanent thing. It’s not a when our Lord appears in his incarnate days, that’s not an exhausting of the fact of the incarnation.
In other words, the Lord Jesus is in flesh at the present time, glorified flesh as a result of the resurrection, but in flesh. Listen to the Apostle Paul,
“There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”.
He’s still a man in glorified flesh at the right hand of the father in heaven. The incarnation has not been completed, as a matter of fact permanent”.
People were disseminating false teaching about Christ and departing from the apostolic faith.
And this is that spirit of antichrist, … the word antichrist occurs only four times in the New Testament and only in John’s letters (1 John 2:18a, 22; and 2 John 7). The term can encompass all that oppose God, ideas and personalities
And even now already is it in the world. The spirit that was already at work in John’s time thrives today. The world to John usually refers to sinful humanity. In this sense, the world (that is, humanity) is largely opposed to God (John 3:19).
Remember therefore that there is a practical confession of human moral conduct, and then there is a confession of spiritual belief. So John we know in the next verse reminded brethren that they are God’s little children and so they do not have the spirit of antichrist, for that spirit is in the world. As children of God they have the victory because they can stand against the seducers and because they have the might of God. The One in them is greater than the one in the world.
1 JOHN 4: 9-17
The context of this section is the emphasis on ‘truth’ as well as love’, repudiating the tactics of the ‘enemy’ of God and refusing to believe him and his attempts at deception. The particular love from God must always be maintained.
Verse 9. John reminds his readers of the irrefutable love that God has for them, evidenced in the gift of him sending of his Only Begotten Son, (one-of–a-kind, unique one). God’s all encompassing love and concern for believers, meeting their every need on every level, is stated here as the motive for sending his Son, that we might live through him. The life commanded by God must be lived through ‘given’ Christ. By into the world.. John ties believers’ salvation to Jesus’ earthly life and ministry, including especially, his sacrificial death on the cross.
Verse 10. Almost as a definition, John identifies the essential elements of God’s love for believers as gracious, unselfish and unmerited and all this ably demonstrated in God’s divine giving of his “only begotten Son“, to save people from eternal death. The love here originates with God and is directed toward believers.
Note the character of this love of God. It is love for the unlovely. This world that God loved and for which he sent his Son, is a very ugly world, abounding in much evil. God rightly should have dealt with the hatred, insolence, rudeness, stubbornness, quarrelling, hypocrisy and violence, by destroying the world. But instead he responded with what has been called “the most costly of all loves. He gave Himself. He sent his Son”. God is just and holy and will not tolerate sin. Christ’s death satisfied God’s requirements for dealing with sin. This satisfaction is related to the blood on the ‘mercy seat’, on the Day of Atonement in Old Testament times, to cover the sins of the people and satisfy a Holy God.
One commentator notes:
“Inherent in the meaning of this Greek word is the idea of turning away the divine wrath, so that “propitiation” is the closest English equivalent. God’s love for us is expressed in his sending his Son to be the propitiation (the propitiatory sacrifice) for our sins on the cross”.
God’s attributes of holiness, mercy and justice find expression in His love, as the sacrificial death of his only begotten Son, becomes the propitiation for our sins. A holy and just God must punish sin and on account of his love for us, his Son is sacrificed.
Verse 11. John continues to make the argument for believers to love each other as demonstrated in God’s love for us. Both the gracious selflessness of His love and the great extent to which He loved believers, is presented here as the pattern for Christians to follow in their relationships with each other. Jesus said, “Love one another; as I have loved you” John 13:34, and how has He loved us? By giving of Himself in self-sacrifice, and that’s how we’re to love one another. God’s act of love in sending his Son into the world to be the atoning (propitiatory) sacrifice for our sins, ought to motivate us as believers to love one another in a similar sacrificial fashion.
Verse 12. … No one has ever seen God … the visions of God reported in the Old Testament (theophanies) are to be seen as partial and incomplete in the light of John’s statement in this verse. In fact, these are Christophanies, appearances of the pre-incarnate Christ.
The fact is, God is invisible in His nature and incomprehensible in His being and perfections
(1 Tim. 1:17; John 4:24), so that normal, familiar relations as exist say between friends, is precluded with God. In light of this, Christians ought to love the saints and people of God, who are visible, in our realm and with whom relations are natural. This is the defined vehicle to effect the love of God and in the fashion He has demonstrated, sacrificially.
God indwells believers by His Holy Spirit, as a guarantee of their eternal life (Eph.1:14) and as the enabling power in obedience to the commands of God, at the heart of which is the command to love one another. The love for one another resident in the heart enjoined on believers is only possible as the fruit of God’s indwelling Holy Spirit.
Note, it is the in-dwelling of the Spirit that produces the love and not vice versa, thus love is the confirmation of the presence of the Holy Spirit, God, in the lives of believers. This dwelling or visibility of God in us is seen most clearly when we love those who are unkind to us.
By His own gracious design, His love is considered to reach its proper, genuine and realization in the love of Christians for each other, for in so doing we are most like Him.
… perfected in us … God’s love for us, reaches perfection (maturity; completion) in our love for others, which is what God wants and what believers are commanded to do.
Note therefore as the Apostle speaks of the love of God in Christ we are now looking at the marks of an authentic believer. We should therefore ask ourselves after each of these verses, Am I really an authentic believer?
Verse 13. By this we know … confirmation and assurance of their relationship with the Father, comes to believers through the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives; (3:24). Love is the primary manifestation of the presence of the Holy Spirit. As a result, continual acts of love are evidence of salvation. Where God’s life is, there we will find God’s love.
The indwelling Holy Spirit is evidenced by the fruit that He produces in us: “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,” and other great virtues, (Galatians 5:22-23). Love is the primary fruit, (Galatians 5:22). The remaining fruit of the Spirit are expressions of love; the fruit is the clearest evidence of the possession and working of the Holy Spirit in our life.
Our love provides our assurance. The Spirit is witness to our salvation.
Note, in this sense it is the giving of the Spirit by the Father that assures believers, while we know the resulting acts of love are enabled by the Spirit. The believer is assured on all sides.
… and He in us … there is a reciprocal aspect to the relationship; we dwell in Him, and He is us, it is God who graciously works from both sides.
Note we are now looking at
“A union between the Father in heaven, the Son in heaven, the Spirit in heaven, and the believer upon the Earth. We call it covenantal union”.
Verse 14. We have seen … possession of the Spirit will inevitably lead God’s people to testify. John follows the internal evidence of the indwelling Holy Spirit, with the external evidence that the Apostles were eyewitnesses to the fact that God had sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.
The incarnation is the most profound evidence that the Father had really manifested His love. John insists that we must understand that the Father sent the Son.
This in turn is the teaching of Scripture that Jesus the Christ is the eternal Son of God. He was always the Son and their relationship is an eternal relationship.
It is interesting to note that John does not say that Jesus came to save the world, but John states that He came as the Savior of the world. This means that only those who believe in His name would be saved. Those that do not believe in Him will not be saved. This is ‘world’ in the sense of men from all races, kindred, tongue, culture …
John evidently laid great importance on this subject and thus he repeats for the reader’s sake the gravity of this subject, restating the evidence by which we are affirmed and in which we can find assurance.
… and testify … The Church has no more effective way to testify to the world about the Saviorhood of Jesus than by the re-display of the Savior’s love in the fellowship of His disciples.
Verse 15. “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God…” John has given us the test for the internal evidence, the presence of the Holy Spirit and the fruit produced by Him. However, this test does not stand alone, but is accompanied by the doctrinal test, that is a restatement of verse 2.
“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God” (1 John 4:2).
He stresses the importance of sound doctrine, for it is also evidence of one’s possession of the Holy Spirit and true love for God. The proper confession is a ground of assurance that God resides in a person and he / she in God.
John gives us a measuring stick whereby we can determine whether or not one possesses the Spirit of truth or the spirit of error. This is the first test of a true teacher: they acknowledge and proclaim that Jesus is God incarnate, God in human flesh.
It is not a mere confession that Christ came to earth, but they confess that He came in ‘flesh’ to the earth. Thus, His human body was physically real. Both the full humanity and full deity of Jesus must be equally maintained if one is considered to be genuinely led by the Spirit.
The spirit of the antichrist is that which distorts and denies the true nature of Christ. Thus, if one performs acts of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, etc. and yet deny the true humanity and deity of Christ; these acts are not the fruit of the Spirit, but are counterfeit.
Confessing that “Jesus” is God’s “Son” is not the only condition for abiding in God. It is one evidence that someone might be abiding. One not abiding may or may not make this confession. Confession is the last step, the step of bearing witness (1:9; 2:23; 4:3; Rom. 10:9-10).
To ‘remain’ or ‘abide’ in Jesus’s teaching is to be His true disciple (8:31). A disciple will be informed and steered by all that Jesus commanded and taught. God the Father ‘remained’ or ‘abode’ with Jesus during His earthly days (14:10). The Father was the source of the very words He spoke, and Jesus ‘remained’ continually in the Father’s love (15:10).
Abiding’ describes a reality involving Father, Son, and Spirit. In this context, “abides” refers to salvation, rather than to the fellowship that results from salvation.
Verse 16. This verse succinctly presents the teaching of the foregoing text. God is the source and giver of the love exhibited by the brethren, and this love is itself assurance of the mutual relationship that exist between God and true believers.
Previously the Apostle asserted a full assurance and knowledge of and faith in God; the love He has shown for believers, especially in sending His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, and that we might live through Him and all confirmed by our continued acts of love to the brethren.
… come to know … John was speaking of intimate knowledge and close fellowship (remains).
‘We’ includes the readers with the Apostles.
‘For us’ should be ‘among (or in) us,’ as in verse 9.
The sequence of John’s thought to this point have now emerged clearly. Faith (acknowledging Jesus as God’s Son, (v 15); and trusting in the love which God has for us, (v 16a) leads to mutual indwelling between God and the believer. Such a personal relationship is consequently expressed in and perpetuated by ‘living in love’ (v 16b). The believer’s love, for God and for other people (or for God in other people, v 12), is to be active and sustained.
John’s point was that his readers had personally ‘seen’ God in a sense similar to how the Apostles had seen Him. The Apostles had seen God in that they saw Him in His Son, Jesus Christ. God revealed His love to the Apostles through Jesus Christ. The readers saw God in that they had seen Him in His Spirit-indwelt abiding believers who loved one another. Consequently, John’s readers could bear witness to the truth as the Apostles did and they could enjoy the same intimate fellowship with God as the Apostles.
Verse 17. How can a believer know that his love for the Father is being perfected? 1 John 4:17—5:5 suggests four evidences namely, confidence (4:17-19), honesty (4:20-21), joyful obedience (5:1-3), and victory (5:4-5). By this, love is perfected… implies fullness, maturity, and completion, not sinlessness. The meaning is, the love that is within us, or in us, is made perfect. The expression is unusual; but the general idea is, that love is rendered complete or entire in the manner in which the apostle specifies. In this way love becomes what it should be and will prepare us to appear with confidence before the judgment-seat.
Our ‘love’ becomes complete (‘is perfected’), in the sense that we can now have ‘confidence’ as we anticipate our ‘day of judgment’ (i.e., the evaluation of our works at Christ’s judgment seat;
(1 Cor. 3:12-15; 2 Cor. 5:10; Rom. 14:10-12). The characteristic of God and Christians in view here is our love.
…That we may have boldness on the day of judgement… Judgment Day holds no fear for those in Christ. (Matt. 25:31-46; II Cor. 5:10; Rev. 20:11-15). The influence and operation of the love of God in our hearts frees us from the fear of the wrath to come.
We do not need to fear the judgment seat of Christ if we have demonstrated love to others. By loving God and others, we demonstrate our likeness to Jesus Christ our righteous Judge (‘as He is, so also are we’). Therefore, to give love is to gain boldness (confidence).
As Jesus abode in His Father, and consequently had confidence in the face of trials and death, so we can abide in Christ, and have confidence in spite of the world’s hostility. Abiding in God gave Jesus confidence, and it gives us confidence.
Jesus is in the world unseen, and our office is to make Him visible. We are to Him what He was to the Father in the days of His flesh.”
…with us… this preposition (meta) can be understood as “in us” (TEV, NJB), “among us” (NKJV, NRSV, NIV, REB), or “with us” (NASB).
Because as he is, so are we in this world – the ways of the believers’ confidence are that we have and demonstrate the same character traits as our Saviour. When Jesus was here, He was fearless, faced the plotting, false accusations and rejection with no uncertainty about what He had to do. He knew that He was dependent on and protected by His Father.
We are like Him. We too live in dangerous situations but we do not have to be afraid, for the love of God drives out fear. We do not fear the world and we do not fear judgment.
CONCLUSION
John’s message is stark, clear and unequivocal, believers must love one another, or they are not true believers.
Now that we have come to know Jesus Christ as our Saviour our gratitude should continue and addressed to the Father as Jesus taught us to embrace the Father who sent the Son. Our gratitude should not stop at Christ. The Father was the one that sent and the Father does His ministry through the Son.
Truth does not change. And truth regarding Christian conduct is just as unalterable as truth regarding Christ. A person who claims to be a Christian but does not habitually practice righteousness and love is no Christian at all. When one becomes a Christian he/she is no longer dominated by sin; but the tendency is to do righteous things and begin to love our brothers and sisters in Christ.
There will be occasions when we will not love one another, but the habit of our lives will be to love one another.
It is a source of comfort and assurance that we have eternal life when we have a continuous and habitual love for other Christians.
God’s love realizes its perfection in us only when we obey the Word of God.
Let us examine our hearts, for where there is no love, there is no salvation. Do we love other Christians?
Do we seek the fellowship of Christians? If we do, we have passed from death to life. If we do not, we are still dead in our sins.
God’s plan of salvation centers on the life, death, resurrection and ascension of His beloved Son, Jesus. The plan remains the same today as in the first century A.D.
In His life, Jesus proved His identity; in His death, Jesus paid the penalty for sin; in His resurrection, Jesus defeated the power of death; in His ascension, He reigns forevermore.