Holy Affections
1 John 3:19-24
We are back tonight in 1 John chapter 3. If any one of you are new to our church, I basically am a Bible teacher, that's what we do around here. We open the Word of God and see what it has to say and mine into the rich treasures that are very often beneath the apparent surface of the text. We find ourselves in the wonderful epistle called 1 John. John the apostle wrote three of these letters known as 1 John, 2 John and 3 John, this is the lengthy one. This is a very, very important one.
We find ourselves in chapter 3 of this great epistle and looking at a text that really begins in verse 18 and goes to the end of the chapter, verses 18 through 24. The theme of these verses can be found in verse 19. In fact, in our last studies we've been sort of parking on verse 19. Let's go back to it. Verse 19, "We shall know by this that we are of the truth and shall assure our heart be for Him."
What John is talking about here is the matter of assurance. He says we shall know that we are of the truth and shall assure our heart before Him. This is about assurance, the assurance of salvation. Those who are saved have every right to enjoy the reality of that. They have every right to enjoy the assurance of that. They have every right to enjoy the confidence that indeed they are saved and they are headed for heaven.
Through the life of the church, through the history of the church assurance has always been a very, very significant issue. Through the years of the church, strong preaching of the Word of God, as we pointed out over the last couple of messages, strong preaching of the gospel, strong calls to holiness, strong teaching of the Bible have created an environment in which assurance can become a very fragile thing. Wherever you raise the standard of holiness, wherever you call people to obedience to Christ, wherever you call people to a true gospel of submission to the lordship of Christ and repentance from sin, the issue of assurance becomes important. People begin to wonder...Have I repented sufficiently? Have I believed sufficiently? Have I pursued holiness sufficiently? Do I really know the Lord? Am I really headed for heaven? And through most of the years of my ministry, as well as many other ministers before me, we have faced the issue of helping people to experience the assurance of their salvation.
I will confess to you that in my lifetime there is less of an interest in the assurance of salvation today then there's ever been. And I'm saying that not because I've done some survey, that's just sort of putting my hand on the pulse of the contemporary church scene. And I will tell you that I hear very little discussion, if any, about the issue of assurance. And the reason assurance is not an issue is because the preaching is so shallow, because the presentations of the gospel are so superficial and trivial. We live in a tolerant sort of anti-intellectual experienced-driven uncritical church environment. And the faith has been trivialized, if not romanticized. The local church becomes a religious experience center. The local church becomes a social rescue agency. And the gospel is reduced to a very minimal kind of thing. All you do is pray a prayer, say you believe in Jesus, and they run to surround you and give you psychological assurance that that's all that's necessary and you can be sure that you're a Christian and don't ever question it. People then are given a very shallow or superficial exposure to the gospel, hardly adequate in many cases to even bring them to a true understanding of what is necessary to be saved. Then they are psychologically assured that they belong to Jesus, they're in the Kingdom. That's all they need to know to settle that issue and assurance never becomes an issue to them because they do not understand the true gospel. They do not understand that it's hard to believe. They do not understand the high cost of discipleship. They do not understand the lordship of Christ. They do not understand the real depth and breadth of repentance. They do not understand the matter of obedience. They do not understand the pursuit of holiness. That is not what is taught.
So in that environment people aren't concerned about the assurance of their salvation because they're not under the kind of preaching that produces the kind of conviction that makes them question that. And so it's almost as if we have to go back and redo the gospel before we can create the need for people to understand the matter of assurance. But nonetheless, John does give us very, very critical and important teaching on the doctrine of assurance for those who have been exposed to the truth.
In fact, if you look at chapter 5 verse 13 you get sort of a summation of why this epistle was written. "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life." The whole epistle was written to the people who believe so they could know that they have eternal life. No sense having eternal life and not enjoying it. No sense in having eternal life and not being able to rejoice in the reality of it.
We have emphasized that salvation is forever. Salvation is forever, true salvation is eternal, irrevokable. We have also then emphasized that we can be assured that we possess that eternal salvation. And that is the issue that John addresses. True salvation is forever and we can know that we possess that true salvation. We can rise above doubts and fears and the lack of assurance.
Now this is not a new issue, as I said. In other eras of history in the church, when preaching was much stronger, this was a very, very important theme. In fact, Christian people were clamoring for this kind of teaching because they were frightened about the fact that they might not be true Christians. And as I said, under any kind of strong powerful biblical preaching, the issue of assurance is a major issue. You have an environment today where there's very little of that kind of preaching and so people don't question the validity of their salvation since it's typically attached to a prayer they prayed, a decision they made, quote/unquote, and nothing more was ever asked.
Just to take you back to another era. Perhaps the greatest theologian in the history of our nation was Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards, as you remember, was involved in preaching at a crisis point in American history which developed into what we call the Great Awakening, one of the great revivals in the history of our nation, under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, as well as George Whitefield. Now because of the strong preaching of Edwards and the strong preaching of others, and Edwards' preaching was very strong, i.e., sinners in the hands of an angry God where he literally dangles the sinner over the gaping fires of hell on the spider web, his preaching was very powerful, it was very strong, it called for the purest and truest kind of repentance, it called for obedience, it called for a longing to abandon sin and embrace holiness, and there were many other preachers whose preaching was like that. In that environment of preaching, the Great Awakening burst onto the scene as people fell under conviction as they repented, as they embraced the gospel.
And then the issue of assurance became a major issue. These people were literally so overwhelmed by the demands of the gospel to repent, to believe, to obey, to submit, to follow Christ, to pursue holiness, that it was very natural for them to question whether they were actually doing that and whether they had the manifestation of true salvation, the true work of God in their hearts. And in response to that in the year 1746, Jonathan Edwards wrote his classic, A Treatise on Religious Affections...A Treatise on Religious Affections. That absolutely critical and monumental document was directed at the matter of evidence for true conversion. It was to be a help to people who were wondering whether their salvation was true because the standard was so high people were prone to think they couldn't reach it. The thinking of that Treatise on Religious Affections, by the way, is profound. It is biblical and it is also very practical. If you ever have occasion to read it, you should do so.
But Edwards concluded that the accurate proof of salvation, summing it up, was the presence of religious affections, were...let's call them what he did...holy affections. Another way to say it is a passion for righteousness, a zeal for holiness. Edwards said that where true conversion takes place there is a new nature, there is a new inner man. And that new inner man has a driving passion for holiness. He isn't always what he should be, he doesn't always say what he should say, doesn't always think what he should think, but his passion is toward holiness. And so Edwards says true salvation is demonstrated in holy affections. Edwards was concerned about Satan counterfeiting conversions and was careful to distinguish between what he called saving operations of the Holy Spirit and common operations of the Holy Spirit. He said the common operations of the Holy Spirit may, quote: "Sober arrest and convict men and may even bring them to what at first appears to be repentance and faith, yet those influences fall short of inward saving renewal," end quote.
That is to say people can be struck by the gospel. They can be drawn to the gospel. They can have some kind of positive reaction to the gospel, like the soils of which Jesus spoke in His parable. And yet come short of inward saving faith, inward conversion. And the main thesis of his classic work is that you know when the conversion is real by the holy affections. He writes, "Grace planted in the heart in a new birth is a principle of holy action and always produces an abiding change of nature in a true convert. Therefore whenever a profession of conversion is not accompanied by holiness of life, it must be understood that the individual concern is not a Christian," end quote.
Jonathan Edwards didn't invent that idea. He simply drew that idea out of all the prior teaching that was faithful to the Word of God because that's what the Bible teaches. James summed the same thing up by saying, "Without works there is no real saving faith." And those works would be the works which he calls "holiness of life."
Now let me give you a sort of a context for where we are today. If you go back and look at the history of theology, there have been really two alternatives in this discussion. There is the reformed alternative, as we typically identify it, and it kind of goes like this. The Reformed view presents the permanent nature of regeneration manifest in the reality of experience. The permanent nature of regeneration manifest in the reality of experience. In other words, you're saved, you're saved permanently and it shows up in your life.
The other view is the Arminian view, sometimes called the Wesleyan view. This is the view that affirms the temporary nature of regeneration, temporarily manifest in experience. So you have the permanent nature of regeneration, permanently manifest in experience, that's Calvinism or Reformed Theology. You have the temporary nature of regeneration manifest in temporary experience, that's the Arminian Wesleyan view that essentially says salvation is not forever, you can lose it, you're likely to lose it and therefore losing your salvation you would lose the ability to do good works and so the whole thing would disappear. And those were basically the options through history. You either believed in a permanent salvation that had permanent manifestation, or a temporary salvation that had temporary manifestation.
But today we have a third view that has come on the scene and we could call it the permanent nature of regeneration and the temporary nature of experience. That is to say you can be permanently saved but only temporarily manifest the evidence of it. This is what the No Lordship people teach, that you can be a believing unbeliever, that you can deny the faith, reject Christ, live in absolute outright sin, have no desire for holiness and still be a Christian. That really doesn't find any kind of wide adherence in the history of theology. But this is what we're dealing with today. The idea that once you're saved you're saved permanently, although there may be only a temporary manifestation, if any at all, in terms of your works. Well no self-respecting Calvinist would accept that and neither would any self-respecting Arminian accept that. The Calvinist would reject the idea that you could be permanently saved, and only temporarily manifest that salvation. And the Arminian would reject the fact that you could be permanently saved all together. The Calvinist would say you could be permanently saved but not temporarily manifest it. The Arminian would say you couldn't be permanently saved at all, that would be temporary, therefore you could manifest it only as long as salvation lasted.
But we have this new and bizarre idea that if you go through some motions at a service or pray a prayer, decide for Christ, or do whatever you're asked to do and affirm some belief in Jesus, you can have permanent salvation and it may or may not manifest itself in any kind of righteous works, any kind of holy affections not only in the moment but lifelong. The Bible says if you're justified, you're going to manifest that you've also become involved in a process the Bible calls being sanctified. Those who are justified are sanctified. So where you come to Christ genuinely, you're given a new nature, transformed, new birth, new creation, regeneration, you have ongoing manifestation of that new life.
Let me quote from Jonathan Edwards from Religious Affections. He said this, "Natural men have no sense of the goodness and excellency of holy things, at least for their holiness. But for the saints, holiness is the most amiable and sweet thing that is to be found in heaven or earth. When persons are possessed of false affections and think themselves out of danger of hell, they very much put off the burden of the cross, save themselves the trouble of difficult duties and allow themselves more of the enjoyment of their ease and their lusts," end quote. That's what we have in the church today. People are coming and affirming that they've been delivered from hell and since they're delivered from hell, that's all taken care of, they can basically go out and give little regard to the burden of the cross, little regard for the duties that should be theirs as the servants of the Lord and allow themselves the enjoyment of their ease and their lusts. Edwards says this is a dead giveaway of false conversion.
He further says, "There is a holy breathing and panting after the Spirit of God to increase holiness which is as natural to a holy nature as breathing is to a living body. If you've been given a new nature, then the longing for holiness is natural. The true believer loves God in the first place for the beauty of His holiness. Instead of being something separable from salvation, holiness is the very purpose of salvation. And once a person is renewed, a life of holiness is instantly begun and a transformation of nature is continued and carried on," says Edwards, "to the end of life until it is brought to perfection in glory," end quote.
Not everybody bought in to what Edwards said. In the very year that Religious Affections was published, 1746, Reverend Philemon Robbins attacked it and he said, "The only real evidence of true salvation is an inward feeling based on an experience." Edwards said it's based on a life of manifestation of righteousness, holy affections. Robbins said the only real evidence of true salvation is an inward feeling based on an experience. That would sort of be the modern approach to it, I think.
Well the Apostle John is on the side of Jonathan Edwards, or better, Jonathan Edwards understood what John was teaching. The pursuit of holiness is the proof of salvation. Edwards writes, quote, "Godliness in the heart has direct relation to practice, as a fountain has to a stream, or as the luminous nature of the sun has to beams sent forth, or as life has to breathing. Holy action...he says...is ten times more insisted as a note of true piety throughout Scripture than anything else."
How do you know you're a Christian? Edwards would say, "Holy affections." You don't look back to a feeling. You don't look back to an experience. You don't remember an event. This was a huge issue in his time. It should be more of a significant issue than it is today, but in the shallow preaching of today people don't know the gospel well enough to be frightened that they might not be really saved.
So we come back to verse 19 in our text. "We shall know by this that we are of the truth and assure our heart before Him." We have talked about that verse now a couple of times. Let's dig into it and grab one little phrase, "by this," I told you we'd get to that phrase and we have finally arrived. Verse 19, "We shall know by this that we are of the truth and assure our heart before Him." By this...by this.
Drop down to verse 24. "And the one that keeps His commandments abides in Him and He in him. And we know by this that He abides in us by the Spirit whom He's given us." So the passage is bracketed by that little phrase "by this," it appears in verse 19, it appears again in verse 24. John is then giving us the means, the reasons why we know we are saved, "by this." To exactly what does he refer? Let me give you a handful of things that are caught up in this text.
Number one, here are the components of religious affections. The first component of religious affection, of holy affection that manifests true salvation is love for other Christians...love for other Christians. And all you have to do is back up to verse 18. "Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue but in deed and truth we shall know by this that we are of the truth." Now we've gone through the passage prior which deals with that kind of love that is the mark of Christians. Go back to verse 10, "By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who doesn't practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother." Verse 11, "This is the message which you heard from the beginning that we should love one another." Verse 14, "We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. He who doesn't love abides in death." That just reiterates what we were learning when we went through that whole passage. And it is summed up in verse 18 with a call to that kind of love which is true, not just in word and tongue, but in deed and truth and thereby demonstrates that we are of the truth and as a result of that gives assurance to our hearts before God.
Jonathan Edwards said that this, in fact, was the chief holy affection. This was the chief sign in zeal for holiness and that is love toward the brethren, that this is the chief manifestation of the regenerating work of God. All of a sudden people who had no affection for, no interest in, people you saw as strangers, as odd, as outside your social structure, outside your interest, people you virtually wanted nothing to do with because you couldn't connect, all of a sudden you find yourself loving those people. This is the change, the alteration of the heart. This is part of the new affection that you have, that affection for the people of God. And you love them not just in word, that is it's just not talk, it's just not with the tongue, it's not a hypocritical superficial love, but it's a love that finds expression in what you do. It is a love indeed and in reality. The word truth in that sense means reality. It's real love, it's demonstrated love more than just what you say. In fact, if you want to know how it's demonstrated, go back to verse 16. "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world's goods and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?" This love is manifest not in what we say, but in what we sacrifice. If we have something and a brother has need, we give them what we have to meet his need. If it comes to laying down our lives for the brethren, we do that. This is the magnanimity of that love. It is not shallow. It is not superficial. It is not selective. It is a kind of abandoned love in the sense that it yields up everything, even if necessary life itself for the benefit of those who are in Christ. This is the uniqueness of our love. And this is celebrated, certainly, by our Lord in the fifteenth chapter of John, it is affirmed by the apostle Paul many, many places throughout his writings. It is advocated by the apostle Peter. It is enjoined upon us by the writer of the book of Hebrews. It is the mark of true salvation. We all of a sudden have this consuming holy affection for other believers to the point of sacrifice and to the point of giving our lives, if necessary. This is the mark.
If you know someone who says they believe in Jesus, they've received Him, accepted Him, whatever language they use, they've prayed a prayer, or they call themselves Christians, you can, first of all, and perhaps most importantly, determine the validity of that claim by how sacrificial, how involved, how passionate, how affectionate they are toward other believers. If they do not attend a church, if they have no desire to be with the people of God, if they're not consumed with the joys of Christian fellowship, you have every right to question the validity of their salvation. That's what we have just learned in the prior passage and is rehearsed for us in verse 18.
Let me take you to a second because we've covered that one in some detail. There is a second holy affection, this is part of the demonstration that we have a new heart. It starts with love for one another and it moves to gratitude for God's grace...gratitude for God's grace. Look at verses 19 and 20. "We shall know by this that we're of the truth and shall assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us for God is greater than our heart and knows all things." You can see that verse 19 goes both ways, it picks up verse 18 and flows into verse 20. As we look again at verse 20 we read this, "That we shall assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us for God is greater than our heart and knows all things." This is a powerful, powerful truth and a greatly encouraging one as well. We're Christians. Our salvation is real. We have love for the brothers. We have a longing to be with other Christians. We find in our heart affection toward them, a desire to meet their need when we have what they need and they don't. It may be to the point where we're even willing to make sacrifices to the most extreme level on their behalf. And yet we have sin in our lives, we fail, we fall short. And so as a result of that our conscience is activated and that's in the phrase "whatever our heart condemns us."
There's another element to being a Christian. If you're a true Christian, you're going to find that you have a very active conscience, right? Very active conscience. It is a conscience, if you sat under good teaching as a Christian, that is well informed...well informed. And your conscience is going to function the way it should function. I have to give you a little background on this. Every human being is born with a mechanism called a conscience. Every human being is born with a mechanism called a conscience. The word "conscience" just means self-knowledge, an ability to recognize yourself, an ability to recognize what's going on in you. And if you look at Romans chap