[Music] Amen. If you’ll turn with me in your Bibles, please, to First John 4, beginning at verse 19. John writes, ‘We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, whom he has seen, he cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.’
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this, we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, 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. 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. 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.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Father, you testify to who you are with all of creation, creation surrounding us by the love that we feel and experience one from another in your name. And through the revelation of your word, help us to know you better, to love you, and to trust you when you say you are who you are. We love you and praise you, and we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So ever since the time of Martin Luther, the rallying cry of the Reformation, and consequently all of Orthodox Protestant Christianity, has been: we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone, for the glory of God alone. Here in First John, we find clear foundational support for that declaration in John’s argument. The saving act of grace was the atonement of Jesus, his propitious sacrificial death on the cross as the expiation of our sin. The act of faith is our response of believing and trusting that what Jesus has done, he did for us. And Jesus Christ, he is the object of our faith and the agent of our atonement, who acted out of his perfect agape for the cosmos.
Scripture, the testimony of God written by God, the Holy Spirit for us; the written words of the Bible and the proclamation of the Gospel—the good news about Jesus and what he has done on behalf of human sinners—is the only means and manner by which we learn who Jesus is and how we are brought to have faith in him. This original act of grace was done for the purpose of bringing us, the children of God, into koinonia with God so that he may be glorified by that work and through our worship, our devotion, and obedience.
Now earlier in this epistle, we explored the requirement of having consequential faith, of having faith in Jesus. But what exactly is it that a person must believe about Jesus to be assured of their status as a child of God and that they possess eternal life? We must believe the testimony; we must believe all of it entirely and without exception. But before John summarizes the testimony precisely what he considers the true essentials of our faith, he continues his conclusion of this epistle by reminding us how we know that we are born of God—the regenerated children of God who are born again by the Holy Spirit—and how this divine birth affects us.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. Everyone who is born of God believes that Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary and Joseph her husband, is the Christ—the Messiah, God’s anointed, chosen deliverer and the true king of Israel. Everyone who is born of God is loved by agape by everyone else who agapes God the Father. Everyone who is born of God also agapes God the Father.
By this, we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Since everyone who is born of God loves God the Father, they must also love everyone born of God—the children of God—and therefore they will obey his commandments. However, our obedience is not what makes us children of God; obedience is the consequence of our being born of God. Obedience is how we demonstrate our love for God.
God and his commandments are given to us as an expression of his love for us, and this non-burdensome commandment of God our Father is that everyone born of God will obey is that they must love their brother and their sister. But hold on now—wait just a minute. That doesn’t seem quite right, does it? Well, yes, it is true; it also seems to be somewhat less than what Jesus is recorded commanding in the other Gospels and what the law commands: where it says, ‘Love your neighbor.’ It’s not here.
Or is it? John actually never says that we should love our neighbors, nor does he recount Jesus directly commanding it either. Twice in John’s Gospel, and echoed here again, Jesus says, ‘A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another.” And this is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends.
See, unlike in the synoptic Gospels, John does not recount Jesus telling us to love our neighbor. Instead, he tells us to love one another and to love our friends. Now you may think that sounds an awful lot like what the Pharisees taught and which Jesus condemned in the Sermon on the Mount, where he says, ‘You’ve heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
And if you think that, you would be right; it does sound like that, but it’s not like that. When Jesus was born, when God the Son was incarnated into time and space, did we love God, or were we at enmity with God? We were sinners, and we were at enmity with God. We did not obey him or love him. Yet still, Jesus came into the world and loved us. He loved we who hated him. He loved us better than his neighbors. While we were his enemies, he chose to rename his enemy as friend, and then he loved us even as we hated him.
He loved us so much that he died for us. Jesus loves us so much that before we were born, before we knew who he is, before we could ever repent of our sins and sinfulness, before we could ever ask God for forgiveness and mercy, Jesus died as the atonement for our sins and adopted us as his brothers and sisters—fellow children of God.
Now for a pop quiz, just to see if you’ve been paying attention: when Jesus loved his disciples and commanded them to love one another as he had loved them, had he loved them as his enemies, as his neighbors, as his friends, or as his brothers? As his brothers! Jesus loved them as his brothers, even when they did not love him as their brother.
Jesus loves us as his brothers and sisters, even when we do not love him as our brother. Did Jesus ever treat them as his enemies? No. Did Jesus ever treat them like the enemies of God, which they were? No. Did Jesus ever treat anyone like the enemy of God that they were—the chief priests, the Pharisees, or Judas Iscariot? No. He even washed Judas’s feet!
So did Jesus treat his disciples as if they were his friends also? No. See, they had a teacher-student relationship, which was a close relationship but not necessarily that kind of friendship. But Jesus named them as his friends, particularly because they did what he commanded, and so Jesus loved them as his friends when he died for them and for us.
But I’m not being inconsistent here. I know that just a few moments ago I said that Jesus loved the disciples as his brothers, and now I just said that Jesus loved them as his friends. So you should be asking me, ‘Well, which is it?’ My answer would be both.
Now me, I’m an only child, but I’ve usually seen this to be true. How many of you, how many of y’all with siblings love them as friends? Go on, you can raise your hands. Yeah. And to everyone else here, how many of you have friends that you love as siblings? The answer I expect to both those questions really is all of us. We all do.
And there is no inconsistency or contradiction in it. Truthfully, when we really think about our friendships, our truest and best friends are actually the ones we think of as family anyways, as our brother or sister. So Jesus loved the disciples, and he loved us as friends and family.
Before any of us became his friend or were adopted into the family of God, Jesus loved each of us as his brother and sister, while we were still enemies of him. While we were still enemies of him, Jesus loved us as his brothers and sisters. So Jesus commands us, ‘Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.’ It says that we must love our brother and sister; that means we’re supposed to love everyone—our fellow Christians, our families, our friends, our neighbors, and also our enemies.
We are supposed to love them as if they are our brother or sister because they very well may be. See, John spent this entire epistle explaining how we can know who belongs to the family of God and who belongs to the devil, explaining how we can know who our spiritual brother or sister is. But what he does not explain is how we can know who may yet become our spiritual brother and sister.
And the good news for you and I—the good news because it makes our response of love even easier—is that we cannot know. We cannot ever know whether someone might yet prove to be saved by Christ. We can know who has been saved by the power of God, and we can know who is not yet saved, but they still might be one day according to God’s providence and his sovereign unconditional election.
So this means that we have the wonderful opportunity to love everyone as if they are our brother or sister, even those we would consider to be our own worst enemies, because they very well might have been chosen by God before the foundation of the world, and we just don’t know it yet. So really, John does not shorten the list of everyone we’re supposed to love as compared to Matthew, Mark, or Luke.
He makes the list just as long, if not longer, and even more inclusive. This is why we pray for and love those whom we believe are lost, because while they continue to draw breath in this life, there is hope that they may yet be found like the one sheep out of a hundred. This is why the Southern proverb came to be: we can love them into the kingdom. Meaning that through engaging others as if they are already our brothers and sisters in Christ, we’re proclaiming the agape of Jesus to them and showing his loving character, God’s attribute of agape, so that they may repent and answer Jesus’s electing call, turn to Christ, and accept his gracious love and the forgiveness of their sins, so they may be brought into the loving fellowship of koinonia with God and thus be included in Jesus’s triumph over death and the devil.
This brings us back to John’s explanation of the benefit for someone born of God. Therefore, for everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except for the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? So everyone who is born of God also overcomes the world. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Son of God, trusting in everything that that implies for us, also overcomes the world.
Therefore, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Son of God is born of God, and everyone born of God believes that Jesus is the Son of God. No ifs, ands, or buts! Therefore, by our faith in him, Jesus Christ grants us the victory, meaning a sharing participation and enjoyment of his victory, enabling us to overcome the world. This means that we do not succumb utterly to the temptations, sin, and depravity of the cosmos, the fallen creation because he has rescued us from our previous slavery to Satan and all his antichrists.
So the core truth which we must believe as Christians, which we must have faith in, and which the testimony testifies to is that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, and that Jesus is the Son of God. As the Christ, Jesus is the man chosen, appointed, and anointed by God for the purpose of delivering God’s elect Israel. And as the Son of God, Jesus possesses within himself, as God, all of the authority, power, and ability necessary to accomplish his purpose. That is the truth which is testified to by John.
But what is the actual testimony? What is the evidence being presented which justifies our faith in Jesus Christ? What is the testimony that we must believe? This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ—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.
For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. Are you confused yet? It’s okay if you are, because I would be more surprised if you were not uncertain about what that means. However, what is unclear to us was clear to John’s original audience. And our problem in understanding this really stems from the difference between their first-century culture, context, and mindset and our present—how they thought about things and how we think about things, especially because of how we have been taught to think about the Bible and Jesus as 21st-century Christians.
John tells us that the Christ, Jesus the Son of God, is he who came by water and blood, and that sure sounds strange to our ears. What does he mean by water and blood? What water and blood? The key to unlocking this puzzle is actually found in John chapter 3 and Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus, where Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ And Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’
Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’ Now many people interpret that passage as relating to baptism, with water signifying our entrance into the visible covenant family of God and sealed by the Holy Spirit in our regeneration. That is a close interpretation, but it’s one that also plainly misses the mark when the next verse is also considered, where Jesus says, ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.’
Here, Jesus equates being born of water with being born of the flesh. Together, water and flesh refer to a physical human person. That important fact about Jesus, which John has been hammering home, is that the base human condition is of one born spiritually dead, whereby they also need to be born of the Spirit to be made truly alive in Christ. Regeneration is this birth by the Spirit; it’s the moment when our souls are made alive and our dead heart is replaced with a living heart of flesh, and the moment from which ever after we are born of God.
So the first part of the testimony, that Jesus came by water, means that God the Son was physically born and lived a truly human life. He was born; he lived; he breathed; he ate and drank; and he did everything that every other human person does or can do, except sin, because even while he was fully human, he was also fully the Divine Son of God incarnated in the flesh.
And John argues this fact against both the docetic heretics, who suggested that God the Son, Jesus, did not have an actual human body, only seeming to be human, and also against a gnostic teaching of adoptionism, which stated that the man Jesus of Nazareth received and was possessed of, or possessed by, God’s Holy Spirit at baptism so that then they could consider him as both being Divine and human, but not by nature—a possession which then ended before he died on the cross. They were falsely teaching that God the Son, the divine nature, was never truly man, merely in a man, and that he did not actually truly die in the flesh.
So the second part here is more challenging to interpret, but knowing the arguments that John has been making throughout this letter, the blood can only refer to one thing: Jesus’s propitiation for our sins. His atoning work of his blood on the cross, his death. So the blood means two things here: first, that Jesus, God the Son, actually died a human death on the cross, and second, that the blood from his willing sacrifice was the complete and total satisfaction for our moral debt of sin.
See, the language surrounding atonement is used and scattered throughout sacred scripture but always and only ever completed through the shedding of blood and a covering or the application of the blood that was shed. Back in Genesis 3:21, ‘And the Lord made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them.’ See then, animals were killed to make the clothing, which covered Adam and Eve’s nakedness, when the Lord mercifully and graciously allowed them to continue to live. Animal blood was shed to cover their shame and guilt for their disobedience and sin against the Lord.
Leviticus 17:11 says, ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.’ The shedding of innocent blood—the taking of another life as a substitute for the guilty sinner—was the means God provided and commanded to make atonement. Leviticus 16:14 states, ‘And he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat on the east side, and in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.’
The high priest on the Day of Atonement would take blood from the sacrifice and put it on all the implements in the temple or the tabernacle as part of this atonement. Isaiah 52:14 says, ‘As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind; so shall he sprinkle many nations.’ The suffering servant of Isaiah, who by his sufferings and shed blood would make atonement for many nations.
Therefore, the testimony which everyone born of God must believe is this: that Jesus is the Son of God who physically lived and died as a man, and that his death satisfied God’s wrath as the atonement for their sin. That is simple, straightforward, and plain. And according to John—the beloved disciple—that is the most essential thing for us to believe. That is the firm foundation for the Christian faith and religion.
Do you believe this? Sounds easy enough, right? However, for everyone not born of God, it sounds like absolute and utter nonsense to them. It sounds like crazy talk. Who can believe that rubbish? They’ll say. This is what Paul was talking about when he told the Corinthians, ‘For the Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.’
This is why John continues on and reminds us of the third and most important piece of evidence justifying our belief: the indwelling presence, counsel, and conviction of the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree.
Remember, Jesus promised that he would send us an advocate, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. This promise was initially fulfilled on the day of Pentecost and continues to be fulfilled as people are constantly being redeemed, regenerated, and added to the kingdom of God. The Lord continues to pour His Spirit into all of those who were born of God as our source of comfort, as our sanctifier, and as the one who testifies and confirms the truth about who Jesus is to us.
Without the Holy Spirit’s confirmation, no one could or would ever believe. They wouldn’t believe that God chose to become a man, that God chose to die as a substitute for creatures who hate the very idea of him, that God would do this because he loves those very same creatures, that he would do this because he wants to bring those creatures into fellowship with him.
That God would do this because he wants those creatures to love him as he loves them instead of hating him, that is something utterly unreasonable, illogical, and completely unbelievable apart from having the truthful testimony of God the Holy Spirit affirmed. God the Holy Spirit is the best, most trustworthy, and reliable source because he is the divine author of Scripture who breathed out God’s word and inspired the human readers to faithfully record and preserve the truth of God. It’s this Holy Spirit who dwells within every believer and testifies to the truthfulness of both the water and the blood and that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
All three of these evidences testify to this, and all three of these evidences agree about who Jesus is, what Jesus has done, and why Jesus has done this. This, again, is why it is so important for each of us to know how to test the spirits so that we can know that what we feel and what we think the Spirit says to us is right, good, and aligned with the truth of Jesus Christ. We can only know this by whether or not it agrees with or contradicts what is written in sacred Scripture, the written testimony of the Holy Spirit.
Finally, John supports the testimony of the Spirit dwelling within those born of God. 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. 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 about his Son.
We regularly accept the testimony and evidence of men as being reliable. We often gauge people’s truthfulness based on whether or not we are right in our conclusions. We do it with court cases; we do it when we watch the 24/7 news cycle; we do it when we watch political debates; we do it in our medical and forensic labs. We receive testimony and evidence from people, and then we make decisions based on how reliable we consider them.
We have no problem accepting the testimony of men, but we seem to have difficulty accepting the testimony of God. God has given a script—the Bible, the inspired written word—not the words of fallible, flawed men. And we have God the Holy Spirit dwelling within the temple of our hearts, testifying to God’s truth. If God is transcendent and imminent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, sovereign, truthful, loving, and merciful, then if we are willing to accept the testimony of selfish, self-serving, deceitful, fallible men, then why will we not accept testimony from the greatest source?
We need to trust the Holy Spirit, especially when he affirms Jesus and builds up our faith in him, the Son of God. Clearly the testimony of God is greater than the testimony of men. The testimony of the indwelling Spirit is greater than the testimony of the written Scripture because he is the one who confirms Scripture as being true. He puts God’s stamp of approval onto sacred Scripture, and we only recognize God’s sovereign authority in his written word because of the testimony of his indwelling Spirit.
The Bible is authoritative because of what it is, but we can only recognize and accept that authority because of the Spirit’s work in us. So if you honestly believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then you have the testimony of the Holy Spirit dwelling within you confirming that fact, and you are therefore born of God. Or if you do not honestly believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then you call God a liar because you refuse to believe, trust, accept, or find reliable the only trustworthy source—the word of God—and confirm that you possess the spirit of antichrist.
So we must trust and believe the testimony. We must believe that Jesus is who he said he is, who Scripture and all the testimony of the apostles and prophets say he is, who the Holy Spirit says he is—the Son of God, God the Son. We must believe that God the Son is also human, that he lived, died, rose again, and has now ascended into heaven, where he reigns over us even now.
If you believe those things, then you prove that you’re born of God. If you’re born of God, then you will agape God, and if you agape God, then as a consequence of that love, you will obey him by loving others and sharing his love with them and telling them the good news about Jesus—sharing the testimony that you believe. If you believe it, then you will do it.
So do you believe it? Then go do it! Prove that you believe it by living it. You don’t need to prove it to me or to your husband or wife or your children or your parents to be assured of your salvation. You don’t even need to prove it to Jesus because he already knows who belongs to him. You do not have to prove anything at all, but the proof of your spiritual fruit will come naturally one way or another because of whatever you truly and honestly believe.
So do you believe the testimony? Then do what your belief in the testimony compels you to do. If you believe it, then agape for Jesus is saved, because you have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ according to the testimony that you believe—all for the glory of God alone. Amen.