1 John: Christ Alone

So I want to begin with talking about a principle.

I think perhaps it's a principle that might explain something in your life.

Maybe perhaps it might explain why a relationship has not been as good as it could be, or perhaps as good as you thought it would be, or maybe why you haven't quite been able to connect with a certain person in your life, or maybe even why you haven't necessarily understood God or understood some things that have happened in your life.

So up until three years ago, up until three years ago, the last three years I've been okay with this, not perfect, but okay.

But before that, I would get home from work, and Christy works on and off throughout the week.

And but most of the time she would be at home before I would, and we have little girls that make our house a mess.

And so most days she was there before me.

I would get home and I'd walk in the house, and if the house was straight and orderly, out would come my love and affection, and you know what a great day this has been.

And uh you are such a wonderful wife.

I do, in fact, love you.

Uh, this is what well done, honey.

Well done.

You you have done a good job today.

And if the house was a wreck, I would open the door and there's just like chaos and you know, dishes in the sink.

I mean, I would quietly place my bag in the chair, uh, passively withhold perhaps affection, maybe not a full hug, maybe just a little side like, hi, how are you?

Not a big I love you would come out, and then I would get to work because I would passively want to show her how much I could get done in 15 minutes.

You know, and maybe be a little bit loud while you do it, make sure she's taking notice that I am doing something, and look at how much I can accomplish in 15 minutes.

And here's what I didn't understand.

Took me 12 years of marriage.

I don't know why it took me that long, but it did.

Took me 12 years of marriage to realize my wife's a helper.

She she she wanted me to be happy the whole time.

She wasn't like leaving the house messy, a thing that she knows kind of bothers me.

It's kind of a neat freak.

She wasn't doing that to spite me.

She's a helper, but she's not just a helper for me, she's a helper for other people.

Right?

So maybe I get home and the house is not clean, it's a little messy.

By the way, it only takes about five minutes for a family, a whole family is straight in a house.

It's not really that big of a deal.

But maybe it's a little bit messy because maybe she was playing with our children.

Or maybe she was having a conversation with one of them.

Maybe she was on the phone with a hurting friend, maybe she went for a walk with somebody who needed to talk.

Maybe all those things are possible.

And she maybe she wasn't leaving it messy despite me.

Maybe she just hadn't gotten to it yet.

Maybe it was bothering her more than it was bothering me.

And so just that understanding, that changed everything.

Because now, here's what I know now.

Took me 12 years.

Here's what I know now is that first off, I can straighten the house, and she has just as much right to leave it messy as I have the right to leave it messy.

That groundbreaking took me a little chauvinist progress here.

The second is this is if if I walk into the house and she's been at home, I I I already know, I already know that she she wants it to be straight because she knows like that kind of when I get home after maybe some stressful day or something, and she knows that I kind of like that when I walk in and it's straight.

I mean, she knows, so if it's not that way, I I know she had a busy day.

I know she had a day, she had something.

So I don't have to like move into like this action of like like show her how great I am and how fast I am, and look what I can do, and I can hug my child and do the dishes.

Like, I don't have to do that, right?

I can just I can just say, hey, like, how was your day?

What happened?

What's going on?

Right?

Because I didn't grasp the fullness of who she is, I couldn't properly relate to her or embrace her regard to me.

Because I didn't grasp the fullness of who she is, I couldn't properly relate to her or embrace her regard to me.

I was just in a reactionary stance the whole time.

So here's the principle.

We'll put it up on the screen.

You can have the wrong understanding of something or someone, and all the while that thing remains true.

But moving into the right understanding can change your life.

Change your relationship.

It can change how you think about God.

Because some of us have been given, perhaps you've been given a um your best life now, God.

And you were told certain things about God and what he would do for you, and those certain things haven't happened.

And you've had to come to grips with that.

Everything was supposed to be easy, hadn't been easy.

Maybe you were given like a bodyguard God, you know, protect you from horrible stuff and suffering and illness, and that hadn't happened.

That hadn't worked out.

Or maybe you were given a put put you to work, God.

And maybe it was cloaked in a lot of Christian language, so you didn't pick up on it for a while, but over time what happened was is you just kept feeling more and more kind of exhaustion and shame and condemnation because after all, you know, you weren't as good as Cindy Joe and all her missional work who you're comparing yourself to, and so you just slowly felt like just not as good as other Christians, because this God you were given was a put you to work God.

And many of us have walked away from God.

Not physically, you're here.

Not physically, but in your heart.

You've just sort of moved away from God.

Because the God that you were given has not lined up with the disappointment and the condemnation you've experienced in life.

But, and here's what I wonder.

Here's what I'm wondering.

What if?

Just consider it, consider it this morning.

What if?

What if the problem is not with God?

What if the problem is with your understanding of God?

So we've been looking at John's letter, 1 John, but we can also look at John's writing the Gospel of John.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, that book, the Gospel.

Here's what we're reading, John 14, 7.

And this is John writing Jesus' words.

Verse 7, this is Jesus.

If you had known me, you would have known my father also.

So Jesus talking to a group of his disciples.

If you'd known me, you would have known my father also.

From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

Now the disciples are always a little bit slow.

It's good for us.

We're just like them.

Philip's not picking up on all this.

So, verse 8, Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.

Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip?

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

Right?

I mean, so disciples are saying, Hey, we want to know what God is like.

We want to have an understanding of God.

Can you do that for us?

Jesus, you seem like a pretty enlightened guy.

You're doing some miracles.

We're impressed.

Apparently, you're from God.

Can you tell us?

Can you show us what God is like?

And Jesus, so radical, says, I'm God.

Just look at me.

I'm the manifestation of God for you to know.

Just look at me.

If you want to know, there's gonna be a whole bunch you don't understand, but if you just want to know, you can look at me.

Look at my life.

Look at how I love people.

Look at how I treat people.

Look at what I stand for.

Look at how I love.

Verse 9, how can you say, show us the Father?

Jesus talking.

How can you how can you say that?

Do you not get it?

Do you not get that I'm I'm the picture for you?

Verse 10, do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.

Says it again, that's the main point here, or else believe on account of the works themselves.

Now that last phrase is a real gift to us.

Man, that last phrase, believe on the account of the works themselves.

So Jesus is saying, I know all of this is a lot to embrace.

The idea of God who created everything manifests himself into his own creation in the form of a human being.

I know that's a lot, is what Jesus says.

So just look at the works themselves.

Just look at my life.

Just look at my death and look at my resurrection, which will come.

That is a great gift for us to be able to work to look at the works themselves.

When I was in the sixth grade, I began to lose sight of uh the blackboard.

Anybody else?

You know that?

Right?

You didn't want to get glasses, you know, and so you put it off, and you put it off, and you put it off.

Finally, you go to the doctor.

I went to the doctor, sure enough, you know, failed the test, can't see anything out there.

Uh I could read, so anything close in I could see, and so I was nearsighted.

I could see close up, couldn't see far away.

And a lot of us have a spiritual nearsightedness because we had some bad church experience.

We're so emotional about it, rightfully emotionally about it.

That we don't see the entire narrative of God and the world and the entire narrative of the scriptures because we are so reactionary in the emotional wound that we have.

Or maybe you have some woundedness from life and from a person and something that happens shouldn't have happened, and it taints your understanding of God.

You can't see the whole story because you're so emotional, it gets you so nearsighted.

Or maybe it's just a like a Bible story.

Like you read in the Bible, you keep reading stuff in the Bible, stuff in the Old Testament, you keep reading again, like I can't reconcile this.

And so you just like move away.

You're like, I'm not even gonna try to reconcile it, or you don't investigate it, you don't study for it.

You just go like, oh, I can't, you know, none of that makes sense.

How could a God of love do this?

I'm you know, I'm out.

And you lose sight of the entirety of the biblical story that God is revealing Himself over time for us.

Yes, there in the beginning we're learning about the power and the justice and the holiness, and all of that's coming into fruition as we move into the New Testament to understand how deep and great and unbelievable this love and this grace of God is, that he could be this and he is also this for us.

But when we get nearsighted, we lose sight of the entirety of that biblical narrative.

Now, here's today's text.

That was our introduction there.

Today's text is 1 John 5, 6.

This is he who came by water and blood.

That's a phrasing to talk about Jesus.

His baptism by water and then blood, that he will one day die.

He'll be the final sacrifice.

We don't have to keep sacrificing ourselves or making our own sacrifices.

We are made right with God by himself, Jesus.

Not by the water only, but by the water and the blood, and the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth.

Point number one is this God shows himself in history as a spiritual teacher, but more importantly, is God our Savior.

So he's not just one that teaches us how to live, but he's also our Savior.

So here in this setting, we have John writing, he's writing to a church.

If you remember this setup, this situation, he's writing to a church, and this church has gone through a real issue because there's been a group of people who decided they believe something different about Jesus, and so they leave, and then while they leave, they're causing problems.

John's writing back to this church to say, hey, be loving to those people, be loving to yourselves, and he does that.

He says, hey, be loving to them, be loving people.

But what's interesting is he doesn't just like keep hammering them to love.

He says, hey, love them, but the way in which that he empowers them to be people of love is to draw them back to Jesus.

This is a huge point for us.

This is a huge point for our personal lives and for our church.

And this is why, this is why our church doesn't have a new vision every year.

We don't have a new vision.

We always have the same vision.

The vision is the gospel, the vision is the good news.

You are made right with God by Christ's death and resurrection.

Your sin is put upon the cross, his righteousness is given to you, and you are made forever beloved.

That's our only vision.

It'll be our only vision because that's the very thing that birth fruit.

That's the thing that keeps people motivated, empowered, and united.

That's what John is doing.

Yeah, be people of love.

Be people of transformation, but you gotta come back to Jesus.

It has to start with Jesus.

That's our heartbeat.

It is not, and we'll put this up on the screen, it is not Jesus plus everything I do.

I'm approved by God.

That is not it.

The vision is always the truth, the good news is always Jesus plus nothing.

Equals our belovedness.

Verses seven through nine.

For there are three that testify, the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.

If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater.

For this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his son.

So point number two is this God shows himself in history in Christ.

That's a real gift to us.

We have something reliable, objective, historic for us to rest our faith in.

God shows himself in history in Christ and speaks to us by his Holy Spirit.

So John is saying that belief comes by faith in the historic reality of Christ manifested, lived, died, resurrected.

That's something for us to be grounded in, apart from our emotional ups and downs, the strength and the weakness of our faith.

And John says, and that faith, the creation of it, the sustaining of it, that is the work of the Holy Spirit inside of you.

And all of this is good news because it sort of removes us away out of this kind of vicious religious cycle of like faith in your own faith.

Like, oh, you're in the family of God by grace, but now you're sort of like put to work in the faith of your own faith.

So you just you put you just have your own faith in your own faith rather than faith in Christ.

And these two things are different.

Because one on a day in and day out rests deeper and finds your identity growing more and more in God's love for you and Christ, and the other is you just becoming more and more religious by what you do.

It's not Jesus plus everything I do equals belovedness, it's Jesus plus nothing equals belovedness.

So anything that we do in faith is rooted back into Jesus over and over again.

Verses 10 through 12.

Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.

Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his son.

And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life.

And this life is in his son.

Whoever has the son has life.

Whoever does not have the son of God does not have life.

So point number three is this we have life here, now, and forever with God, by belief in Jesus, nothing else.

This is what John is hammering over and over and over again.

In verses 11 and 12, John says, Hey, you really need to contemplate this.

Like you need to treat this seriously.

Whatever culture says, you know, is what culture's saying, but you need to contemplate this truth right here of what you believe about Jesus.

Because this affects all of life and all of time.

This affects here, now, and forever.

And John's asking this question.

He's doing it here in 1 John, he's doing it in his gospel, he's asking this question.

He's looking at all that he knows based on his life and the Old Testament, the scriptures he has, the Hebrew scriptures, and then he's looking at this guy, Jesus, that he knows of, and he's asking this question like, what is God like?

How do I sum that up?

How do I understand this?

How do I understand all that Old Testament, some of the stories that you have a hard time reconciling?

And then this person, Jesus, who's claiming to be God, and this person of love and acceptance.

Like, how do I reconcile that?

And what John finally gets to in the middle of his letter, which we've already talked about a couple sermons ago, is just three words, and it was a radical Christian thought.

It's a little more common now, but at the time, this was an unbelievable thought about God.

Other nations' gods were they weren't saying this about those gods, but John says, God is love.

Here we have the scriptures, the entirety of the scriptures, the full blackboard, progressively revealing who God is.

So we get through the Old Testament and the Old Covenant, we get into the New Testament, we see New Covenant, and we see a God who is powerful and just and holy.

And that helps us to see, oh my God, it's unbelievable.

This manifest God would be so vulnerable and accepting and loving.

Maybe he could accept me.

We look at this Jesus, and Jesus called all people on their sin.

But he didn't shame any of them.

Jesus moved toward the broken while calling anybody who thought they were put together to realize you're not really that, not really that put together.

Jesus welcomed and pursued thieves and whores.

He ate and drank with sinners to the point where the religious people were so offended.

Jesus loved people fully from the beginning.

And as he loved them, he out of that love, he called them to honor God.

But never, never with shame.

Never with condemnation.

I don't know your understanding of God.

I don't know where you got it from, where it came from, who put it on you.

Maybe you're still trying to shake off like a judgmental God, a non-loving God, or kind of like a half-loving God, but not like half-loving and like half, like really, really putting you to work and keeping score on you.

Maybe you're trying to shake that off a little bit, and like even being here is like you're not quite sure if you should go somewhere else because you're not quite sure about all this.

Or maybe you just never considered that God revealed Himself over time in the scriptures, and then all the scriptures give us the fullness of God.

But what Jesus and John are saying is that can be hard to hold on to all that.

And John says, if you need something a little bit more simple to hold on to, God is love.

And Jesus says, Oh, if all of that's hard to get your mind around, hey, I get it, just just look at me.

Just look at me.

That'll be enough.

So we learn about justice and the holiness in big ways in the Old Testament.

And they lead us to understand even more about the love and the acceptance that we know from Jesus in the New Testament.

And we can talk about God as just and powerful and all-knowing and all-powerful and all of time and the attributes of God.

We're going to talk about all that.

We will talk about that.

That is good to talk about.

We can even talk about how an all-loving God allows suffering.

We can talk about that.

There's answers for those things, but those answers will never give you peace in your heart.

At the end of all those conversations, it's still possible for your heart to not be at peace.

Those conversations inform you, maybe they equip your faith, but they cannot deliver you.

The grace and the love of God is what delivers us.

John's considering all that.

All that he sees in Jesus.

It just keeps pointing us back, drawing us back to Jesus.

John's going, like, how do I how do I motivate a broken church?

Isn't that amazing?

John's going, how do I motivate a broken church to be loving?

How do you do that?

Well, God is love.

Back in that John 14 where Jesus is talking, there's something in there we could easily pass over.

I mean, Jesus is saying, look at me.

Like if you need if you need an understanding of God, look at me.

And I would just say, you know what, like for you, maybe you don't even need to trust me this morning.

Just go read the Gospel of John.

That would be great.

Just go read the Gospel of John just to yourself.

Say, who is this?

Who is Jesus showing himself to be?

What is he like?

The entire time in John 14, I don't know if you picked up on it when Jesus is talking, he keeps referring to God as Father.

And we pass that by a lot of times, and it wasn't a new thought to the people listening, the Jewish listeners there.

That wasn't a new thought.

I mean Jewish people would call God Father at times, but it wasn't the dominant way they thought about God.

But then when Jesus shows up and he's teaching and he's relating and he's referring back to God, he just keeps saying, Father, Father, my father, my father's in me, I'm in my father, father, father.

We pray to the father, pray to the father, father, God, I'll have a father.

He just does over and over and over again.

And here's what Jesus is saying: Jesus is saying, look at me, look at me.

If you need an understanding of God, look at me.

What am I like?

And if you need an idea about what God is like, it's gonna be hard, it's not gonna be easy, but the best way, the best way to think about God is the most perfectly loving Father you could dare to dream of.

I don't know what understanding you have of God, but I know moving into the right understanding can change your life.

My brothers and sisters, this is our vision.

Christ Jesus alone and a God who is love and is our Father.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for this good word that in the midst of being called to love people and to be people united as a group, John calls them back to Jesus.

That our understanding of you should be entirely wrapped up in your manifestation to us.

What you were like, how you treated people, how you loved people, how you welcomed people, how you accepted people, how you called people out of their sin, you never shamed them.

Would we understand and know that more to ourselves, to our own hearts?

We have so many questions when it comes to this life, to hurt, to doubt.

But in the love of God, would we be at peace?

Would we move forward in peace?

Confident that you love us, even when we do not understand all things.

That you are our perfectly loving Father.

More than we could ever dare to dream.

In Jesus' name and power, we pray.

Amen.