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Reading 1 John 2:5-6 and talking about the assurances we are given to know that we are truly walking in the Lord Christ. Visit wwutt.com for all of our videos!
The Apostle John said, by this we may know that we are in Him. Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which Jesus walked. And how do we know how Jesus walked? Well, when we understand the text.
You are listening to When We Understand the Text, an online Bible ministry so that we may know all the riches freely given to us by God. For questions and comments send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. We are studying 1 John, this week in chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, and we have yet to exposit verses 5 and 6, and that's where we are today. Chapter 2, starting in verse 1, the Apostle writes, My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments.
Whoever says, I know Him, but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in Him. But whoever keeps His word, in Him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him.
Whoever says, He abides in Him, ought to walk in the same way in which He walked. So we've looked this week at verse 1, little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
And talked about how over and over throughout this letter, John gives various assurances to his readers and how they can know that they are saved. Just because you sinned does not mean that you have fallen out of favor with God.
It's not about your ability to be righteous or even stay righteous. It's about Jesus Christ who is righteous, who called us to Himself, who died for us, and that's the next verse, He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also the sins of the whole world.
It's His sacrifice that covers us, and so it is because of His blood, because of His atoning sacrifice that God receives us as righteous, not because of what we have done, but because Christ's righteousness has been impugned to us.
When we read previously in 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, He, God, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He is faithful and just. He's just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness because the price has been paid.
It's not that He expunges our sin, that we go before Him and we say, God, forgive me, and He goes, okay, and He just erases it, okay? He forgives us because the sin has been paid for. It's been nailed to the cross.
As Paul talks about in Colossians 2, starting in verse 13, you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.
This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. So because this has been done by the atoning sacrifice of Christ, God is just to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness because the debt has been paid, not because He expunges the record of debt, but because it was paid by being nailed to the cross.
And so that's what makes God both just and the justifier of us. So once again, Jesus Christ, the righteous, advocating for us before the Father. Verse 2, the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but the sins of the whole world.
Verse 3, and by this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments. This is the evidence that we can know that we are followers of Jesus, that He is advocating for us before the Father, that we keep His commandments.
Whoever says, I know Him, but does not keep His commandments is a liar and the truth is not in Him. And today looking at verses 5 and 6, but whoever keeps His word, in Him truly the love of God is perfected.
By this we may know that we are in Him. Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked. And how do we know how to do that? By the word of Christ. By reading what He did.
We read about that in the gospels and then we read about what Jesus did, expounded all the more in the epistles. The letters that then go from Acts all the way to Revelation. And the book of Acts is a letter.
It's a letter that Luke wrote to Theophilus. The book of Revelation is a letter. It's letters that John wrote to the seven churches in Asia Minor that are listed there in the book of Revelation. So everything that's written in the New Testament was written to somebody.
You have the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then everything else after that Acts through Revelation is a letter. And they are letters that were written so that we might know Christ and know Him all the more.
It is His word. His word that He gave to His apostles to be spread throughout the world. We know God according to what is written in His word, the Bible. That's how you get to know God. There is no other way.
There's a guy out there named John Pavlovitz, very dangerous blogger. In fact, he's probably the most dangerous anti-Christian blogger that is out there. And I say that because of how widespread his blogs are.
Famous individuals like Katy Perry even share John Pavlovitz's blogs on her Twitter account. Now I wrote about Pavlovitz years ago, warning about this guy and saying, hey, he is not a Bible-believing Christian.
As a matter of fact, he just wrote a blog saying there is no such thing as a Bible-believing Christian. That's probably the most popular blog that he's written this month. I mean, anything that this guy can say that is antithetical to the Christian faith, he will find a way to say it.
And people eat it up. His blogs get read by the millions. So since I wrote a blog warning about this guy, and it was so long ago, before he had kind of reached the heights of the blogosphere, whenever you type his name in and you type in the word Christian or you try to find out what it is that he believes, my blog will come up in like the first five Google search results.
And so I always know whenever one of his articles is starting to make the rounds, because I'll start to get hate mail from his followers. Last week, I got a letter from a woman that really makes little sense.
But there is a quote that she included here, and it's the reason why I bring it up. So she said to me, regarding your blog post about John Pavlovitz, it may be vanity to call others false prophets and yourself a true prophet.
Now, the reality here is that Pavlovitz is very high on himself. His blog is entitled Stuff That Needs To Be Said. So he thinks that he needs to say this stuff and you need to hear it. So it's ironic that she would call me vain when the very title of his blog is You Need To Hear Me Say What I'm Going To Say.
So anyway, so many interpretations, so many denominations. There is a Christian right that sees significant practice and interpretive differences than the religious right. The evangelicals versus the lesser evangelicals, I really don't know the point she's trying to make here.
Those that hold the Bible literal to the letter for every human action under the sun, despite contradictions, outmoded beliefs and the use of allegory and parables. So she thinks that there are contradictions in the Bible and you can't understand it because of the use of allegory and parables.
Jesus spoke in parables, and he specifically said to the disciples when they asked him, why are you speaking in parables? He said so that the things of the kingdom of heaven would be hidden from those who think they're wise, but revealed to little children such as yourself, such as the disciples said that was the reason why Jesus spoke in parables.
So, yeah, you can know what they are, but you have to have the mind of God to know what the parables mean. And this woman just does not. She thinks there's contradictions in the Bible, that there are outmoded beliefs, according to what she said here, and the use of allegory and parables means we can't really know what's in the Bible.
Anyway, she goes on because of this wide variation and interpretations. Some simply choose not to presume to really know the mind of God and do their best to believe and follow the basic message or command to love.
And then she included this particular quote by a guy named Mark Allen Shelsky. And I had no idea who that was. I had to look him up on Twitter. And he mentions in his Twitter profile that he is a recovering fundamentalist.
That's always a red flag for me when a person identifies themselves as a recovering fundamentalist. I'm not big on fundamentalism myself, and I wouldn't encourage you to attend a fundamentalist church.
But nonetheless, whenever a person identifies themselves as a recovering fundamentalist, they've got a chip on their shoulder. Rachel Held Evans describes herself as a recovering fundamentalist. But anyway, my suspicions about Shelsky were confirmed when I noticed that he's retweeting false teachers like Brian Zond, Eugene Peterson, Christine Kane, Rachel Maddow, and even defended the shack.
So that tells you something about his theology. Anyway, here was the quote that she gave me from Mark Allen Shelsky. He said the following. Jesus didn't invite us to become theologians or Bible scholars.
He didn't call us to become more religious. He didn't ask us to join a club or a political action committee. He asked us to follow him. That is so generic a comment. It makes people nod their heads and go, hmm, but he doesn't actually explain what it means to follow Jesus.
He uses generic language that anybody can fit their paradigm into into whatever it is that he's saying, and they can all nod their heads and go, hmm, yeah, that's that's very profound. But the fact of the matter is that Jesus did call us to become theologians.
It's the very fact that Shelsky doesn't understand that word is why he makes such an ignorant statement the way that he does. Theology is very simply the study of God, and we are supposed to grow in our knowledge of God.
It's one of the purposes of the church that Paul outlines in Ephesians chapter four, verses 11 through 16. God gave the apostles and the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and the teachers to prepare the saints for the work of ministry, for growing in the knowledge of God.
And how do you grow in the knowledge of God? By reading his word, the Bible. Anything that we say that is about God, whenever you open your mouth and you talk about God, you are being theological. You know, there's no such thing as a person who says, well, I'm just not a theological person.
Very fact that you've said that makes you theological because the word theos means God. So any talk about God is theological. If what you're saying is not grounded, rooted in historically biblical orthodoxy, right teaching, then what you are saying is probably heretical.
So yes, you are a theologian. You're just probably a very bad theologian unless you read the Bible and you grow in the knowledge of God. And so that's simply Shelsky not understanding the very meaning of the word theology to make a statement as ignorant as Jesus didn't invite us to become theologians.
No, he commanded us to grow in the knowledge of God. Very simply here, we have it said in first John chapter two, whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected by this. We may know that we are in him.
Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Jesus said to us, John 15, five, I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he, it is that bears much fruit for apart from me, you can do nothing.
So abiding in Christ means that we bear fruit. We show evidence of the change that has happened in our hearts because Christ has forgiven us of our sins because he has called us to himself. And we are part of the flock of God following the good shepherd.
So what are the evidences? How can we know that we are truly a follower of Jesus, a genuine Christian should display these three things, an increasing love for others, an increasing holiness in our lifestyle and an increasing belief in sound doctrine.
We are studying the word of God and we are growing in the knowledge of that word. And so it increases our understanding of right teaching of who the Bible says God is, what the Bible says about Jesus and what he did and what he commanded.
And you can't know any of that except for what you read in the Bible. You can't just be walking along one day and decide, you know what, I think I'm going to be like Jesus and then just start doing things that you think Jesus would have done.
You fashioned a God in your own mind and are trying to be like that God, not the God that is described for us in the pages of scripture. We only know God by what is written in the Bible. It's the only way to know God.
The apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, this is 1st Thessalonians 3, beginning in verse 12. He says the following, may the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and father. When our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones, finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God as in fact you are living.
Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. You know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. Again, the word of the apostles is the word of Jesus Christ going on into into verse three here because I've, I'm sorry, I've moved on into chapter four of chapter four, verse three.
It is God's will that you should be holy, that you should avoid sexual immorality, that each of you learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God and that in this matter, no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.
The Lord will punish men for all such sins as we have already told you and warned you for God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man, but God who gives you his Holy Spirit.
Now about brotherly love, we do not need to write to you for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you brothers to do so more and more.
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands just as we told you so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
So in this section that I've read for you, that goes from chapter three, verse 12 to chapter four, verse 12, we see those three things. Paul is instructing the Thessalonians to grow in an increasing love for others, an increasing holiness in their lifestyle, an increasing belief in sound doctrine.
Those those three things should show up in the life of a genuine Christian. Mark Devers says the following. This is from his book. What is a healthy church? I'm reading on page 108, where he says one of the marks of a healthy church is biblical discipleship and growth.
And here he talks about growth and holiness. Here's what he says. How do we know when Christians are growing in grace? We don't ultimately know from the fact that they're excited, use lots of religious language or have a growing knowledge of scripture just because they exhibit an increased love for the church or display confidence in their own faith isn't determinative either.
We can't even be sure Christians are growing because they appear to have an outward zeal for God. All these may be evidences of true Christian growth. At the same time, one of the most important and most commonly overlooked signs of growth that must be observed is increasing holiness rooted in Christian self-denial.
The church should be marked by a vital concern for this kind of increasing godliness in the lives of its members. Neglecting holiness, like neglecting church discipline, results in hard to grow disciples.
In churches where unholy behavior goes unchecked, disciples become confused and unclear about the life that is honoring to Christ. It's like a garden where the weeds are never pulled or good things are never planted.
So one of the true signs of a growth of Christian faith in the life of a person who claims to be a Christian is a growth in holiness, a pursuit of the holiness of God. Once again reading 1 John 2 verses 5 and 6.
Whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which Jesus walked. Amen.
You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.
On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.