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?  It's pretty clear that they're not obedient to the law of God.  It's very clear that no fornicator or adulterer or homosexual shall inherit the Kingdom of God.  They fail the theological test.  They fail the moral test.  And they fail the relational test.  Believe me, you don't love someone that you sexually abuse.

You can take these tests and you can measure them against any life...any life.  And you're going to find out whether or not a person is truly in the Kingdom of God, whether they're truly saved by the measurement of those tests.  Certainly all the Roman Catholic priests would claim to belong to Jesus Christ.  They would claim not only to belong to Jesus Christ but they would claim to have reached the highest and noblest and purest and most devout level of consecration to Christ.  They would claim literally that they stand between sinners and Christ at a higher level.  As priests they are able to mediate between the sinner and Christ because of their exalted position.  The truth is theologically they fail the test.  Their gospel is perverted by works.  Morally they fail the test, their virtue is perverted by the flesh.  Relationally they fail the test, their love is perverted by lust.  No matter what they say, John tells us they are false teachers, they are deceivers, they are liars, they are antichrists.

So what John is going to give us is categories...categories by which we can measure anybody, not just Roman Catholic priests but anybody.  These categories need to be certain in their establishment.  If we're going to measure somebody by the gospel, if we're going to measure them by the law of God, if we're going to measure them by love then we have to know that those are in fact established by God.  And so John is going to show us through this epistle that indeed these are from God.  It is God who has given us the gospel.  It is God who has given us His commandments which we are to obey.  And it is God who has given us love and the example of love, having first loved us we are to love Him in return, and others as well.  So what you have there are the certainties of the Christian faith: theologically, morally and relationally.  As we will learn, they are revealed in history, witnessed by the Apostles, and confirmed by the Holy Spirit.  You want evidence?  There's the evidence, the truths of which we can be certain are basically experienced by the Apostles in history and confirmed by the Holy Spirit in the believer.  That takes us then to the first four verses.

And when John begins to write he skips all the amenities, all the introductory material, doesn't identify who he is or who he's writing to, he just launches into this.  But his theme here is the Word of Life.  You notice the Word of Life mentioned at the end of verse 1, it's about the Word of Life, it's concerning the Word of Life that John writes.  The Word of Life, of course, is the person of Jesus Christ and the gospel of Christ, all there is about Christ, His person, His work and the gospel.  John then is going to tell us about the Word of Life.  This is where he starts.  He starts with the theological category of certainty.  And as he speaks of the Word of Life, as he addresses the living incarnate Word who is the theme of the written Word, as he addresses the person of Jesus Christ he presents to us some of the features of the certainty of the Word of Life.

First, I'm just going to give you some words that you can kind of hang your thoughts on, the first way that the Word of Life is certain, that the Lord Jesus Christ is certainly the Savior and the gospel is certainly the saving message is indicated by its permanence...its permanence.  He starts out in verse 1, "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with out eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the Word of Life."

The first thing he says is it was from the beginning.  Not new, John says, not new.  The Word of Life has not and never will change.  John says, and you remember now he's an old man, this is the last decade of the first century, he's the last man standing among the Apostles, the last living Apostle, he's near the end of his life and he's saying what I'm going to tell you about the Word of Life is what was from the beginning.  The beginning of what?  The beginning of the proclamation of the gospel, the beginning of apostolic proclamation of Christ.  I'm giving you the same old message that was preached by the eleven, and probably by Mathias, and certainly by Paul, the same old message that really was launched by John the Baptist and then by Jesus, repentance, the Kingdom is at hand, forgiveness is available, reconciliation with God.  Nothing changes.  This is a direct shot at the heretics with their new truth.  He's saying I'm not giving you anything new, avoid anything new, new is wrong.  Stay with the apostolic proclamation of Christ.  Always the heretics have something new, some new revelation, some new vision, some new insight.  And I told you last time that there was developing at that time around the churches an incipient Gnosticism which was an elevated knowledge in which people thought they had transcendent knowledge, access to divine information that the hoi-polloi the common people didn't have and they were trying to come into the church and tell them they had been given secret knowledge, new things from God. 

John says...I don't have anything new, what I have is the same old message.  When somebody comes along and says there's a new revelation, it's called the book of Mormon, or the Pearl of Great Price, or the Doctrines and the Covenants, run!  When somebody comes along and says there's a new revelation from God through Mary Baker Eddy called Science and Health and Key to the Scriptures, turn and go the other direction!  When Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford come along with their studies in the Scripture and tell you they are the true Jehovah's Witnesses who have received down from heaven a document called The Harps of God, turn and leave!  Anybody comes to offer you some new revelation, it's not going to be true.  This is the first thing John wants to establish that this is the message that's been given from the beginning.  It's the permanent timeless and eternal message.

If you look over at Jude which is just a few little books to the right, after 3 John, Jude in verse 3 writing to believers called "beloved in God and kept for Jesus Christ," in verse 1 says, "Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints."  What you're going to have to do, Jude writes, is you're going to have to fight for the once-for-all, delivered-to-the-saints faith.  That's the apostolic faith, that's the New Testament.  You have to fight for that.  "You have to earnestly contend for that for certain persons, verse 4, have crept in unnoticed who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ."  There are always going to be people coming in with new information and the new information is that the Apostles were wrong, and Paul was wrong, and Jesus is not God.  We must guard this once, hapax, once-for-all, delivered-to-the-saints faith.  There never will be another faith given.  Mark that.  The faith was once-for-all given.  Hapax means once for all, never to be repeated.  We have been given the once-for-all faith, there never will be another faith.  Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever."  There's not going to be any change in the gospel.  So Hebrews 13:9 says, "Do not be carried away by varied and strange teaching."  If it's new, it's wrong.

In writing to the Galatians the Apostle Paul in chapter 1 says, "I am amazed," verse 6, "you're so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ."  And then he says, "Even though we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed."  He repeats it, "As we said before I'm saying again, if any man is preaching you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed."  There's no room for another gospel...none whatsoever.  Paul says, "I absolutely marvel, I am thaumazo, do you know, I'm stunned.  I'm astounded.  I'm astonished that you've transferred your allegiance to another gospel rather than the once-for-all, delivered-to-the-saints faith. 

So John starts out in a simple statement, "What was from the beginning," affirming that the Word of Life, the message concerning the Word of Life, Christ and the gospel is the same message preached since the Apostles began, since our Lord began, since John the Baptist began to preach it.  It is the hapax, the once-for-all, delivered-to-the-saints faith and there will never be another one delivered.  The Word of Life then is permanent...permanent.

Secondly, it is sensible.  And I mean that in this sense, it is perceived by the senses.  It is perceived by the senses.  There were some, of course, who wanted to cast religion into a mystical paradigm, who wanted all religion to sort of exist only in some ethereal imagination, neo-orthodoxy has done that in more modern times in the Hileiga-Shick-Dalickta[????] the super-duper history that somewhere other than the real history we live in.  But John wants us to know that our senses can apprehend this Word of Life, that it's not mystical, it's not transcendent, it's not reserved only for the gnostics, the people in the know, the people with super knowledge, elevated knowledge.  Always those kinds of people are around us, religious gurus of all sorts who think they