The Joy of Fellowship – Part 1
1 John 1:1-4 (1)
December 5, 2021
This morning we begin a new Sunday Morning book study together.
We are going to study the book of 1 John.
I can’t really explain why I was compelled to go here next, but what I can say is that since I decided to go here and started studying it more thoroughly, I have grown more and more excited about it.
As we commonly do, before we dive into the text,
We need to give an overall sense of the book.
It’s that “Forest Approach” we talk about so much.
I’m a firm believer that you have to get the gist of the whole thing
Before you will ever accurately understand the parts.
So let me just give you THE THRUST of the book here right off the bat.
The main thrust of the book is what I’m going to call: CONVICTION
(Or perhaps you might prefer the word ASSURANCE)
John is simply setting out to solidify for you
What is Christianity and what is not.
And I think this is so valuable.
What is ABUNDANTLY CLEAR when you read 1 John
Is that heresy has surrounded the church.
1 John 2:18 “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.”
From John’s perspective there are any number of heresies and heretics
That are seeking to subvert the truth in any number of ways.
And we’ll get to some specific ones in a minute,
But what is helpful to understand is that 1 John is written to the church
In a time when “Biblical Christianity” had sort of gotten confusing.
There were any number of false prophets
Who were offering up their view on what it meant to be “Christian”.
We can sympathize there today I think.
There is no shortage of variations presented today as to
• What the gospel is,
• Who Jesus is,
• Or what the Christian life should look like.
It can lead to confusion and a lack of conviction.
No book in the Bible seeks to set the record straight more so than 1 John.
He is writing about what I have called “Obvious Christianity”
He is calling you back to the very basic and obvious points of the faith.
He is bringing back to mind the basic and simple truths that easily help us discern what we see and hear in the world.
• Things like who Jesus is as God incarnate.
• Things like what Jesus did as the sacrifice for sin.
• Things like the necessary Christian lifestyles of righteousness and brotherly love.
It’s basic stuff, it’s obvious stuff.
I was listening to R.C. Sproul this week
And he talked about a heckler who stood up in one of his Q&A times and yelled out that the message of the cross that Sproul was explaining was “Primitive and Obscene”.
Sproul said, “I agree on both counts”
• Any time you have all the sin of all the elect being imputed on one man and he
is bearing the full weight of that guilt and being punished before God, it is
certainly obscene.
• And while the gospel has a depth that we will never fully excavate, primitive or
simple is also a good word.
What else do you call simple truths like God commanding His people to get a goat, confess their sins over it, and then kill it, and poor it’s blood on the altar?
That is certainly primitive.
AND SO IS THE GOSPEL.
• It is not simply for those of high intellectual capacity.
• It is in so many ways simple and obvious.
• It is so simple that a child can understand it and be moved to faith in Christ.
And it is good to remember that.
Our world loves to question things and debate and rationalize
And at times that can even lead a believer into confusion.
John counters such confusion by giving a straightforward letter
Regarding what is obviously Christian and what is obviously not.
THE PURPOSE IS to solidify your faith;
To give you conviction, and to allow you enjoy assurance.
JOHN IS GIVING THE SIMPLE OBVIOUS TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY.
That is why you constantly get the words “you know”
• “By this we know…”
• “from this we know…”
• “we will know by this…”
1 John 2:21 “I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.”
1 John 3:10 “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.”
1 John 5:13 “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
In fact John uses the word “know” over 30 times in this letter.
He is not confused and from his perspective
There is NO REASON that you should be confused either.
And I am thankful for this.
There is a sort of CULTURAL MINDSET that is pretty popular today and sadly is even sweeping into the church.
It is the mindset that we might call RELATIVISM
“The doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute.”
You’ve likely heard statements like:
“That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me”
The sort of popular image or illustration of this (which drives me crazy) but I see shared on social media is two men facing each other, and on the ground in front of them is the number “9”. One guy is standing at the top of the number looking down the other is standing at the bottom of the number and is looking up. The man on the top confidently says “6” and the man on the bottom confidently says “9”
And the argument is made that this is how truth works.
Depending on your culture and your context and your position even in history
Is how you will determine what is true.
What may be a “9” for you is in fact a “6” for someone else.
Now, just to clarify that drawing you need to understand that the number on the ground is either a 6 or a 9 but it is not both. One of those two men is wrong.
How do you know which one?
• Well you don’t from that drawing, in that case you need more information.
• You need the input of the one who wrote the number.
• And when you get more information there is the possibility that both of them are
wrong, but there is 0 chance that both of them are right.
BUT OUR CULTURE LOVES THIS MINDSET.
And in this culture the GREATEST SIN that can be committed
Is to be DOGMATIC.
You actually hear people say, “We cannot be dogmatic about this.”
In fact to be dogmatic is to be considered as arrogant today.
And that may be true of some things, there are to be certain some things that we cannot be dogmatic about, but it is not true of all things.
If I might quote Steve Lawson here,
“Regarding the gospel we are not just dogmatic, we are bull-dogmatic”
Well, that’s John.
• John is black and white
• John is bull-dogmatic
He is not confused in the least regarding
What is genuine Christianity and what is not genuine Christianity.
In John’s mind Christianity is OBVIOUS
For example:
1 John 1:6 “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;”
1 John 2:4-6 “The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”
1 John 2:9-11 “The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”
1 John 2:15 “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
1 John 3:10 “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.”
1 John 3:15 “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”
1 John 4:20 “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
You get the idea.
• There is no vacillating in John.
• There is nothing relative about truth to him.
He knows what is true.
He knows what is false.
He doesn’t mind telling you the difference.
Our world hates that sort of confidence.
And the problem even in the church today is that
Such thinking isn’t creeping in, it is gushing in.
There are quotes all over the place from leading “Evangelicals” (you can youtube it) who are asked about homosexuality for instance, and here’s the types of answers you get.
• “Well, like, that’s a tough one.”
• “I’m not sure”
• “I’m not God”
• “I’m trying to understand this too”
• Or the famous Olsteen statement, “I just try to stay in my lane”
People who claim Christianity are becoming master contortionists.
They are adopting the theology of relativism.
And this is obviously bigger than just homosexuality.
It comes in all forms.
• Is Jesus the only way to heaven?
• Are other religions false?
• Is hell real?
• Does God really judge sinners?
And a host of others.
The world doesn’t want you to answer definitively on any of those topics.
And so the world would absolutely hate the book of 1 John.
And incidentally, John knows that.
1 John 3:13 “Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.”
He gets it.
His brand of confidence and dogmatic theology is NOT POPULAR.
BUT IT IS NECESSARY
WHY?
On one hand, certainly, because it’s true.
• It doesn’t do anyone any favors to call it true if it’s false or to call it false if it’s true.
But the main reason John writes with such conviction
And dogmatism in this letter is not to warn the lost,
But it is because HE WANTS TO HELP YOU.
There are no doubt some hard and very direct and revealing passages in the book of 1 John.
• 5 times John uses the word “liar”
• 3 times he references something being a “lie”
That is direct and hard and polarizing language.
YET, THE INTENT OF THIS LETTER is quite possibly
The most caring and compassionate in the New Testament.
This letter is NOT some harsh and abrupt beat down with truth.
The purpose of this letter is to restore believers
To a place of confidence and conviction and assurance.
John is looking at a church who has just gone 10 rounds with a heretic.
• They were asked questions they couldn’t answer.
• They were given “facts” they couldn’t dispute.
• They were proposed scenarios they couldn’t handle.
And they walked away from that conversation in spiritual limbo,
Not knowing what was true or which way was up.
Maybe you’ve been in an argument like that.
• Someone got the better of you in a disagreement.
• And you were left timid and afraid and without any assurance or confidence.
That’s where John found many believers and his purpose in writing was very simply so that you may “know” what is true.
Now it does help in our understanding also
To get a little background on what THE DECEPTION of the day was.
John never names a specific heresy.
He never names a specific heretic.
However, from reading what he writes it becomes a little clearer
What the heresy of his day most likely was.
Most agree that the most prevalent enemy that John’s readers faced was GNOSTICISM.
If you’re not familiar with Gnosticism here is a crash course.
Gnostic comes from the Greek word GNOSIS which oddly enough means “to know” or “knowledge”
So the whole Gnostic heresy was a heresy that was derived around
The supposed acquisition of knowledge
Or in their case a special knowledge.
There is today what we might call ORDINARY KNOWLEDGE.
• That which we obtain through observation
• Or that which we obtain through intellectual reflection (reason)
The Gnostics weren’t after either of those.
They claimed a SUPERIOR KNOWLEDGE which came through a higher and direct mystical or intuitive apprehension.
They had a supposed higher knowledge than everyone else.
They had supposedly drawn closer to the deity
And thus knew what the average man did not know.
Some achieved this through drunkenness or through starvation or through other various means, but somehow through their communion with this higher deity that had a more perfect understanding. They were “in the know”.
To a Gnostic salvation was not acquired by faith but rather by knowledge.
And so those with the special knowledge were saved
And those without were lost.
You can see how this might have upset various believers who didn’t claim such esoteric knowledge.
It also helps you understand passages like:
1 John 2:20-21 “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.”
1 John 2:26-27 “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you. As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.”
John was reminding believers that this supposed special knowledge was a myth. Through the Holy Spirit every believer has the full knowledge of the truth.
Now there are a lot of other aspects to Gnosticism
But for the perspective of 1 John the main thing you need to understand is regarding what is called DUALISM.
Dualism basically states that spirit and matter are not compatible.
More specifically it is the spirit that is good but all matter is evil.
SO TO A GNOSTIC if the spirit is good and all matter is evil and the two are not compatible then you can do whatever you want in the flesh because it is only the spirit that matters anyway.
And thus you understand why John would write things like:
1 John 2:29 “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”
1 John 3:7-8 “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
You see how John is confronting the lie
That how you live in the flesh doesn’t matter.
But Gnosticism didn’t just affect their practical living
IT ALSO AFFECTED THEIR THEOLOGY OF JESUS.
If physical matter is evil then there was no way that a Gnostic
Could believe in something as profane as the incarnation.
There is no way that a holy deity would put Himself into physical flesh.
So there were a couple of heresies that arose about Jesus.
One group of Gnostics called the DOCETISTS
• Believed that the body of Jesus wasn’t a real body, it only appeared to look like
a body (DOKEO means “to appear” or “to seem”)
• Jesus was like a phantom, not really in the flesh.
Another group of Gnostics called the CERINTHIANS
• Believed that there was a body but the “Christ Spirit” descended on that body at
Jesus’ baptism but departed from Jesus’ body before His death.
Both of those are problematic from the standpoint of the gospel
Since Jesus is only a mediator between God and men
If He is both God and man.
• He had to be human.
• He had to suffer as a human.
• He had to pay for human sin.
But maybe you can see
How all of this (and there was much more to it) had begun to confuse believers.
SOME GUY APPROACHES
Who claims to have had a special communion with God,
And thus knows more than you know.
• He knows the truth about Jesus which you don’t know…
• He knows what is really important in life…
• He knows how to really be saved…
And you know if you’re just a simple guy in a simple world who just loves Jesus but who has never had some special meeting with a deity or don’t have this secret knowledge, there’s a chance you could be really confused regarding the truth.
• I’ve always thought Jesus was a human, he wasn’t?
• I’ve always thought being righteous was important, it’s not?
• I’ve always thought faith was how to be saved, it’s not?
• I thought the main thing was loving your brother, it isn’t?
So you see how these Gnostics had come in
To supplant the apostles and turn Christianity on its head.
JOHN WRITES A BOLD AND DOGMATIC EPISTLE
To silence such foolish notions, expose such nonsensical knowledge,
And to restore assurance to those who have had the truth all along.
So I know that’s a lengthy introduction but now perhaps you understand what we’re trying to gain from this study.
If I might simply state it, the goal is just to convince you
That what you already know is absolutely true.
It is to comfort you.
It is to give you assurance.
And as we see in these first 4 verses,
It is to restore to you “The Absolute Joy of Fellowship.”
Well, let’s start looking at these first 4 verses. There are 3 things here.
#1 THE REALNESS OF JESUS
1 John 1:1
Here we are at Christmas time
And what a glorious truth to begin 1 John.
John clearly has A SUBJECT IN MIND here in this first verse.
That subject is “concerning the Word of Life”
One could perhaps argue that
JOHN MERELY REFERENCING THE TRUTH HERE
But verse 2 makes it obvious what he means.
When John says, (2) “and the life was manifested”
John is clearly harkening back
To the exact same way in which he opened his gospel.
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Or like what we see in the upper room (and by the way in some ways you could call 1 John a commentary on the upper room because there is so much complimentary doctrine here)
John 17:6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.”
So this is what John is referring to here again right off the bat.
“the Word of Life” is Jesus.
John starts off his letter by reaffirming
A fundamental and foundational Christian truth about Jesus.
WHAT IS THAT TRUTH?
Jesus is real
JESUS WAS A REAL HUMAN
He is talking about the glorious truth of THE INCARNATION.
And look at how John defends that obvious truth.
“What was from the beginning”
That DOESN’T MEAN from the beginning of time.
• He is talking about the beginning of the gospel.
• He is talking about from the moment Jesus entered earth.
1 John 2:24 “As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.”
In other words John is going to restate
What has always been proclaimed about Jesus.
You can ignore all of those knew and supposed revelations regarding Jesus being a phantom or whatever.
Do you remember what you learned about Jesus at the very beginning?
Do you remember the first truth about Him?
THAT HE WAS GOD MADE FLESH.
And how does John defend that obvious truth?
“what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands,”
WHAT IS JOHN SAYING?
To claim that Jesus was just some sort of phantom spirit who merely appeared as human is stupid!
• I lived with the man.
• I heard Him with my own ears.
• I saw Him with my own eyes.
• I looked at Him (which means I pondered Him and thought about Him)
• I touched Him with my own hands
I’m telling you this notion that He wasn’t a human is absolutely foolish!
• He was fully human!
• He was totally human!
• He was truly human!
I don’t know what guy walked in here
Or what special knowledge he claimed to have,
But take it from me, Jesus was no mere phantom.
So in the VERY FIRST VERSE John has just laid to rest
Perhaps what was most confusing to the early church.
They had always heard that Jesus was God made flesh.
They had always been taught that He was fully human.
• But that guy was pretty convincing…
• He said he had a vision…
And John explodes it.
• Church, don’t go there.
• Church, this is obvious.
1 John 4:1-3 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.”
Don’t let such a deceiver lie to you and upset your faith.
I lived with the Man, I walked and talked with the Man, I touched the Man.
Jesus was a human.
And John will totally attest to the fact.
John 21:24 “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true.”
Do you see how comforting that is?
• Just because a guy claims to have special knowledge doesn’t mean he actually does.
• Just because a guy can propose riddles and mysteries doesn’t he knows something you don’t.
Don’t buy everything you hear.
And I think you can just see a corporate exhale from the church who must have been actually upset by these gnostic heresies.
Can’t you see them when they read verse 1?
• “Duh, right!”
IT IS OBVIOUS.
Now, obviously we can’t get through the next 3 verses this morning
But here we are in December approaching Christmas
And if nothing else this morning we rejoice in
What has always been a foundational truth regarding Jesus.
We read it to our youth Wednesday night:
Philippians 2:5-11 “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
• Jesus was God.
• Seated as God.
• Honored as God.
• Obeyed as God.
But He chose not to hold on to that
And instead took on the form of a bond-servant.
• He didn’t quit being God He just gave up being treated like He was God.
• He embraced humility and reproach and shame.
• He took on humanity.
Hebrews 2:14-18 “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.”
He took on “flesh and blood”
He became a human.
He became human under the Law so He could fully obey God as a human and earn the righteousness He would impute to us.
He became human so He could suffer God’s wrath on humanity and thus atone for our sins.
He became human so He could die as a human and conquer death.
I love some of the Christmas songs that have been written in recent years
To ponder this marvelous truth.
“Who is This?”
https://sovereigngracemusic.org/music/songs/who-is-this/
Who is this, divine and tender, hailing from eternal shores?
Once arrayed in highest splendor, now in poverty adorned
He is Jesus, God made mortal, Word in flesh, the Light of Life
From a throne room to a stable, hope is born this holy night
Who is this of might and meekness, given all authority?
With a word He stills the tempest, at His touch the blind can see
He is Jesus our Messiah, long awaited, long proclaimed
Sing “Hosanna in the highest!” Christ the King has come to reign
Who is this reviled and stricken broken on a cursed tree?
Son of God by God forsaken, drenched in our iniquity
He is Jesus slain for sinners, laden with our guilt and grief
All our praise to Him we render for His wounds have won our peace
Who is this entombed in darkness, cast into the bitter depths?
He whom grave nor Hell could harness rose and tore the sting from death
He is Jesus, God triumphant, risen to the Father’s side
All will bow in awe and reverence at the name of Jesus Christ
O come let us adore Him, O come let us adore Him
O come let us adore Him, Christ the LORD
IT IS A GLORIOUS TRUTH.
Our glorious God became human that He might bring salvation to us.
• This is a truth from the very beginning.
• This is a truth that you all know.
• This is a truth on which we rest.
Jesus became human, don’t let anyone tell you any different.
And we’ll talk about it more next time.
