Certainties of the Word of Life, Pt 2

1 John 1:1-4 

We live in a time when certainty and conviction about what is true is not tolerated.  The politically correct attitude is one of uncertainty with nothing absolute.  There's a new hermeneutics, a new science of interpretation called the Hermeneutics of Humility, and this is serious to the people who espoused this and their Hermeneutics of Humility say, "I'm too humble to think that I could ever know what the Bible really means and so I can only offer my opinion and I certainly can't say that this is in fact the truth."  They pat themselves on the back congratulating themselves for such intellectual openness.  Opinions and feelings tend to rule the mood of our time.  And the church as always it does fall prey to this sort of post-modern inclusivism that wants to embrace everything everybody thinks as truth for them.  And so the church has lost its convictions, its lost its certainties and this is a perfect time for us to turn to the epistle of John because he is the Apostle of certainties and this is a very certain epistle.

I mentioned to you before that 36 times you're going to find some form of the word "know" here.  I know, we know, you know...there is an absoluteness in that.  There's no vagueness or equivocation.  Also, there's another key word that appears in the epistle and I can show it to you in several verses.  Chapter 2 verse 28, "And now, little children abide in Him so that when He appears we may have confidence..."  The word is "confidence."  Chapter 3 verse 21, "Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us we have confidence."  Chapter 4 verse 17, "By this love is perfected in us that we may have confidence."  Chapter 5 verse 14, "And this is the confidence which we have before Him."  This is the word parrhesia in Greek and it just means that.  It means boldness.  In fact it can mean boldness of speech.  But it is the defining Greek word for confidence.  John knows whereof he speaks, and so he has confidence.  He's absolutely certain about what he writes.  He is confident in it and he wants us to share that same confidence.  The Bible exalts dogmatism in that sense, confidence, boldness of speech because one knows the truth.  This is so contrary to the mood today as to almost seem insensitive, unloving and out of touch.  But this is exactly what John in his epistle lifts up and exalts.

More than that, he normalizes it.  We should know and we should have confidence.  Now the major matters of certainty in this letter could fall into three categories.  The first one would be the theological certainty of the gospel...the theological certainty of the gospel.  John wants us to know that he is certain about the gospel, that it is firm and that it is true and there are a number of verses scattered throughout this epistle that affirm that.  We're going to see the opening three verses affirm the truths of the gospel.  We're also going to find in chapter 2 verse 1 there is an affirmation of the gospel that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, verse 2, who is the propitiation for our sins. We're also going to find again that anybody in chapter 2 verse 22 who denies Jesus is the Christ, this is antichrist.  Again that's sort of a backward affirmation of the gospel.  We're going to find again in chapter 5, "Whoever believes...in verse 1...that Jesus is the Christ is born of God."  And again toward the end of the chapter, verse 20, "We know that the Son of God has come and this is the true God and eternal life."  So the first category of certainty has to do with the theological certainty of the gospel and John will repeatedly hit that issue.

The second is the moral certainty of the law...the moral certainty of the law.  And John wants us to understand that God has given a law and that we are bound to that law and to the obedience of that law.  Chapter 2 verse 4, "The one who says I have come to know Him and doesn't keep His commandments is a liar."  Theologically we have to be certain about the gospel.  Morally we have to be certain about the law of God.  And John says I'm not writing, in verse 7 of chapter 2, some new commandment but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning, the old commandment is the Word which you have heard.  That is the law of God.  Yet on the other hand, I'm writing a new commandment to you.  It may be new to you but it's old.  Calling you to obedience to that which God has revealed as His law.  At the end of chapter 2 and verse 29 he writes, "If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him."  There again is the moral issue.  Practicing righteousness means obeying God's revealed law.  And over in chapter 3 verse 9, "The one who is born of God doesn't practice sin because God's seed abides in him, he can't sin he's born of God.  By this the children of God, the children of the devil are obvious.  Anyone who doesn't practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who doesn't love his brother..." and so forth.  So there is moral obligation which John recites.  Again down in verse 22, "Whatever we ask we receive from Him because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight."  All the way to the end of chapter 4, "This commandment we have from Him that one who loves God should love his brother also."  Chapter 5 verse 2, "By this we know that we love the children of God because we love God and observe His commandments." 

So again you have a theological component in this epistle of certainty, and you have a moral component.  The theological component is the certainty of the gospel.  The moral component is the certainty of the law of God.  We are bound to believe the gospel and to obey the law of God.  So there is a theological certainty, a moral certainty, and thirdly there's a relational certainty...there's a relational certainty.  John wants to affirm to us the relational certainty of love...of love.  And that, of course, as we've already noted in some of what I just read you is scattered throughout the entire epistle.  I think most notably chapter 4 features this, starting in verse 7, "Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God."  And then he goes on to talk about this all the way down to the end of the chapter.  And then he continues to talk about it into chapter 5 and verse 3, "This is the love of God that we keep His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome."  So he ties this love toward God with obedience to the commandments.  And then off of that love toward God and obedience comes obedience to the command to love others.

And so you can say that just about everything in this epistle, in fact everything in this epistle, falls under one of those three headings.  It is either in the category of theological certainty regarding the gospel, or moral certainly [meant certainty] regarding the law, or relational certainty regarding love.

Now these categories are categories of certainties.  They are categories of absolutes.  They are categories of unequivocal, unarguable divine truth.  But also they are categories of absolutes that become the tests of one's spiritual state.  They are categorically the areas in which one is tested as to their spiritual state.  And anyone, listen carefully, who fails to pass the test in any of those categories is exposed as a fraud and a liar and a deceiver and an antichrist so that John is going to lay down some absolutes in those three categories, he is going to lay them down as tests by which anyone's life can be measured as to its true spiritual condition.  There is, as I said earlier, a graphic illustration of how these tests can be applied in the current scandal of the Roman Catholic Church.  If you measure the priests against the theological certainty of the gospel, they fall short, don't they, because they do not believe in salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but theirs is a salvation of works, a justification in which grace cooperates with human works to produce a right relationship to God.  They failed the theological test.  Secondly, it's pretty clear they're failing the moral test, isn't it?  </