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Introduction
1 John

It is apparent from a casual reading through 1 John that someone has done something to disturb the audience to whom John is writing. As a matter of fact, they are threatening, by whatever they are doing, the very Gospel, the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are going to begin a journey into this book. We are going to begin to understand some of the things we must understand if we are going to get the message that John is trying to preach and teach in this book.

We are going to look at three things. First, there is the purpose of the writing of 1 John. Secondly, there is the passion with which it was written and then thirdly, the people to whom it was written. What we are going to be looking at is the structure beneath the surface.

You know there are three rules in Bible study (see Inductive Bible study). First is observation. So often when you hear wrong doctrine it is because somebody begins to interpret without first of all observing. The second step is the step of Interpretation. Interpretation comes from a proper observation. And third is Application. How many times have you heard someone start applying Scripture without ever observing it or without ever interpreting the text? So we are going to observe the text, not to the degree that you would do in your personal study, but it will give us an idea of what is underneath the surface of this book to help us understand it as we go through it.

No serious bass fisherman drives up to a lake, takes a little worm, puts it on a hook with a bobber, throws it out and expects to catch a fish. Some people think that is what fishing is all about. No, it has much more integrity than that. A serious bass fisherman wants to know something about that lake. Every lake is different. Every cove in that lake is different. He wants to know the structure that is underneath the surface.

Years ago when I was getting into bass fishing, I learned that you had to study topographical maps and find out the depths of the lake. In Brookhaven, Mississippi there was a lake that I wanted to fish. I found it by flying with the pastor I was working with at that time. I looked down and saw this huge lake. You couldn’t see if from the road. When we landed I began to inquire about this lake. A man told me the state record fish was probably in that lake. He was a writer for "Outdoor Life." I thought, "I have got to fish that lake."

I spoke to a church there in Mississippi one day and a man walked up and said, "I hear you like to fish." Do I like to fish!? He was associated with that lake. He said, "Any time you want to come bring whoever you want and fish all you want." Well, to make a long story short, the first day we went, we fished for two or three hours and had a couple of bass over five pounds, which wasn’t bad. But I was thinking, "I thought this thing was full of big fish." It was ten o’clock in the morning, and we were right in the middle of the lake. We knew nothing about what was underneath the water. We were doing what I told you serious bass fishermen don’t do. We had just been trying our best without knowing what was underneath the surface.

The fellow who was with me took a lure out of his box and said, "I am going to throw this lure out and catch the biggest fish in the lake." He threw it out, and I was laughing, "Sure you are." It was about time to go. He was cranking that lure back just as hard as he could crank it and all of a sudden it just stopped dead. I said, "Yes, you’ve caught the biggest tree in the lake." About that time the rod started going boom, boom, boom. I said, "That is a fish!" The fish weighed over eight pounds.

Well, we almost had a fight in the boat while he was bringing in the fish because he would not give me a lure that looked like his. I finally found one in my box that was similar, threw out in the same general area and had two more bass about seven pounds a piece in the boat before he got his in! To make a long story short, we caught seven bass that day that weighed a total of 49 pounds.

We went home, and I said, "What in the world happened?" I called the man who owned the lake and asked him, "Why is it that we caught bass out in the middle of the lake?" He said, "Oh, son, if you had known the structure underneath the surface, 20 feet down there are trees that are 20 feet tall. Where you were fishing it is 40 feet deep, but 20 feet down the big bass feed. That is where the springs are in the lake. You discovered the secret of the lake accidentally."

We went back the next Saturday and went to the very same spot, chose the same lure, caught seven more bass which weighed 51 pounds. Those were the biggest two stringers of bass I ever caught in my life. A couple of years ago I went back to the same lake after a hurricane. The structure had not changed and the fish were still there.

That is the way it is with God’s Word. You have to establish the structure underneath the surface. Don’t look at the Bible and say, "Oh, I have a great verse today. God spoke to me." You had better find out the context that verse was in before you go telling somebody that God spoke to you. If you’ll find the structure underneath the surface it will never change. Every time you go back, you will catch a bigger fish. What you are looking for is always there. Once you have observed you can interpret.

I just wanted to tell a bass fishing story so I told that one. But I want you to understand why I am doing that. Why do we always have these introductions to books? Why do you have to labor through all that stuff? Because what I am going to share with you won’t change and when we are in chapter 5 the structure will still be the same. You can’t make it be something else. You’ve got to know why the book was written, who wrote it, who it was written to and the author’s purpose. These things are critical to proper interpretation in any study of the Word of God.

First, there is the purpose of why 1 John was written. Why did the Apostle John, apart from his inspiration of the Holy Spirit, write the epistle of 1 John? Several times in the book the phrase "I am writing" or "I wrote to you" or something to do with writing appears in the text. The reason I say "something to do with that" is it depends on your translation. In the New American Standard, several times we find that phrase "I am writing to you." When he does this it seems to bring to the surface the purpose behind the book of 1 John.

Let’s just look at those places. We will come back to these verses in a verse by verse study. This is just an overview. In 1 John 1:4 we read, "And these things we write, so that our joy may be made complete." The New American Standard says "our" joy, but the King James says "your joy." When I find a discrepancy I go back to the Textus Receptus. It says, "your joy be made complete."

Now you can see why it could be "our." If something is disturbing these people and their joy is not being made complete, then obviously John’s joy is not going to be made complete. He is writing it to them so they can understand the truth. Once their joy is complete, his joy could be complete. The idea is the people who he is writing to somehow have lost their joy. The joy is gone. What has pulled away their joy?

Look in 1Jn 2:1. He says,

"My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin."

Now why in the world would he write to believers and tell them not to sin? Any believer knows that. Well, remember, there is something going on in that little community and it is threatening the Gospel of Jesus Christ. John is saying, "I don’t want you to fall into sin of any kind." The aorist subjunctive is used here. The subjunctive meaning is not that we don’t have the potential to sin, but we do have a choice of whether or not to sin. John is saying, "Stop making those choices. Don’t make those choices to sin. I don’t want you caught in a sin. But if someone is..." you see. That is the whole idea.

A believer has to deal with sin. Before you come to know Christ you chase sin. After you come to know Christ sin chases you. John is saying, "Some of you have lost your joy. I don’t want you to misunderstand. You must not fall into the trap of sin." What kind of doctrine would lead them into that kind of trap? 1 John 2:21 (sermon) says,

"I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth."

The word for "know" there is from the word eido. There are two words for "know" and very rarely are they ever translated properly in the sense that we can understand them. One is to know experientially. But there is the other word, to discern, to perceive something. Romans 8:28 (note) reads, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose." We don’t know from experience. Yes, we do, but that is not what he is saying. He is saying it is a built-in knowledge to the believer who loves God and is called according to His purpose. There is a discernment that God gives to him.

The Apostle John is saying,

"I am not writing to you because you can’t discern the truth. You know the truth. Why are you allowing this thing to come into your midst and pull you off the track? You know the truth. You can discern the truth."

1 John 2:26 says,

"These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you."

Now the plot is thickening. That verb, "trying to deceive you," is in the present tense. It is not something that they did. It is something they are doing constantly. The word "deceived" (planao-word study) means to pull you off the track, to get you away from the faith, to lure you out from under the truth that protects you. John is saying, "I am writing these things because there are those that are seeking to deceive you."

Maybe this is telling us something of the agenda of the apostle. There is something going on. It must be some kind of false doctrine that has gotten among the people that has robbed them of their joy, that has somehow told them that they didn’t have to be accountable towards sin anymore. Now I am beginning to understand.

1 John 5:13 to me sums it all up. Now watch this because it is a tense we have got to see over and over in 1 John. He says,

"These things I have written to you who believe [that is in the present tense, "who are believing, who are in the process of believing right now] in the name of the Son of God [those who are believing daily, constantly, moment-by-moment, not those who once believed but now are being lured off the track] in order that you may know [intuitively] that you have eternal life."

I want to ask you something. Have you ever doubted your salvation? I’ll tell you why you have doubted. Somehow you have got your mind off of what God has said. You have listened to somebody else and what they have said. It is because you are not daily believing in Him and living in obedience to Him. That is where the doubt comes from. But to the people who are daily, moment by moment, practicing what they say they believe, doubt will flee away and they will know in their spirit that they have eternal life.

Someone used to say, "Do you know because you know because you know just because you know Jesus Christ is in your life?" If you don’t have that kind of knowing I guarantee you something has led you away from living your life built upon the Word of God. Somehow you are not believing Him.

The fact is you are not obeying Him. If you are not obeying Him you are not believing Him. I don’t tell you what I believe; I show you by the way that I live. Belief is something you do, not something you tell people about. You show them by the way you believe. And when you believe, God gives you a discerning, a knowing that you didn’t have before. You know just because you know just because you know. If somebody can talk you out of your salvation, you might not have had much to start with. And if you are not living it daily, very obviously you have a serious flaw in your thinking as to how salvation is to be lived out.

Why had they lost their joy? What was this doctrine that had gotten among them? What was it that had led them astray, misled them? What is it now that even tells them that they don’t have to deal with sin? In 1 John 1:1-5, we begin to get a hint of what is going on, what the doctrine is that has gotten among the people that is somehow threatening the very truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me tell you what it is first and then show you how he attacks it. First of all, we see that the Gnostic heresy was something that was very prevalent in the days of the writing of 1 John. Gnosticism is still around, by the way. It is just under a different cover. Many religious programs on television are preaching 21th century Gnosticism. It is not one single thing new. It has been around for a long time. It erodes the faith, the trusting of people in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Gnosticism came from a man by the name of Cerenthus. Cerenthus denied the truth that Jesus Christ ever came in the flesh. He started the heresy that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, not of the Virgin Mary, and that the Spirit of God, the true Christ, never entered Him until He was baptized at the River Jordan by John the Baptist. The Spirit of Christ lived in Him until just before the crucifixion and then departed Him. Now what does this do? It denies the precious atonement for our sins. It denies His death, burial and resurrection. It denies the major tenets of the Gospel. It denies the virgin birth.

A little later it migrated into a different form called Docetism. That simply said that Jesus was a ghost, that He never had a body to start with. He was a spirit, an apparition. It comes from the Greek word which means to seem or to suppose. They said, "He really didn’t have a body."

So then, I ask you the question, how can our Gospel be true if He didn’t have a body? Because it says in Hebrews 10:5 (note), "A body thou hast given me to do thy will, O God." He came to die for you and for me. It wasn’t just human blood that was shed and it wasn’t just divine blood that was shed. It was divinely human blood that was shed upon the cross. Gnosticism completely obliterated the truth of the Gospel of what we have just spoken. It denied everything that these young Christians knew. They were being beleaguered by the ones who were bringing this heresy in their midst.

This is a very dangerous doctrine. Gnosticism says to the Christian, "Because all of this is true, your flesh is evil." I would agree with that – the lust of my flesh is my problem every day of my life. Gnosticism said, "Your body is evil. But you are not accountable for sin because a body is going to do what it only can do. It is going to sin. You are spiritual. With mystical knowledge you live inside this body and the more it sins the more you kind of learn about the two different lifestyles." Have you heard the doctrine that is going around when people stand up and confess all these things? They say we are living in a carton. They even use the word "carton." They say, "My body is evil. Therefore, any sin that comes in my life is really not me, it is something outside of me that is causing me to do it and most of it is demonic." There is no personal accountability for sin. There is no personal dealing with sin. "Oh no, we live in a carton. And inside that carton we are like God. The body itself, the carton, is evil. God, you see, doesn’t have anything to do with those things that are flesh." Have you heard about this doctrine? It has been in a subtle way in recent years. You know what I am talking about.

John goes right to the heart of Docetism, not just the Gnostic heresy, when it says that Jesus is an apparition and He didn’t have a body to start with. In verses 1-5 look at what he says. "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life." Notice that, "we have heard, we have seen with our eyes, we have beheld and our hands have handled." If He didn’t have a body, how could we do that? He is trying to let them know, "I am an eyewitness and an eyewitness account is important. I am the apostle and I am telling you something. You had better hang on to what is the authority of the ones God has given it to."

Verse 2 continues, "and the life was manifested, and we have seen and we bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father [he shows the deity of Christ] and was manifested to us, what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ."

Jump to verse 5: "And this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all." All that John is concerned with in those first five verses is found in verse 1 when he says, "concerning the Word of Life." Who is the Word of Life? That is the Logos, the living Logos, Jesus Himself. That is John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God." He is speaking there of Jesus, the preexistent Christ, the fact that He is deity, the fact that He is God’s Son.

Then in 1 John 2:1 he seems to attack the whole fallacy of Gnosticism itself. He says in verse 1,

"My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin."

The Gnostics said that you didn’t have to fool with sin because you are not accountable for sin. John says, "Oh, yes, you are. I am writing these things that you may not sin." Then he says,

"And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

That "if" is almost "Oh, did somebody sin?" You see, what we have done is we have made sin so apparent that everybody is doing it. We forget that we are not meant to live that way. So many of us say, "Well, God forgives me." Certainly forgiveness was on the cross. But until we repent do we even understand cleansing and do we ever understand the reality of His presence in our life?

The purpose of writing the book seems to be that a doctrine had gotten into the church, a heresy that had threatened the very tenets of what our faith is all about. It had threatened the truth that Jesus was truly the Son of God, preexistent before He was ever virgin born. It threatens the very truth that He had a flesh body and that He went to the cross to die for our sins. It threatens so many of the things that we hold on to. And when you start listening to that kind of garbage, it causes immediately your joy to disappear. So John writes to his little children in the faith.

Secondly, I want you to see the passion with which John wrote it. We say that John wrote it. How do we know that it was John who wrote it? 1 John is the easiest Greek in the whole New Testament. Only 303 words are used out of the tremendous vocabulary of Greek words in the New Testament. Well, if you study 2 and 3 John you begin to realize that same pattern. You look at the language of it. It doesn’t say specifically but in another way it implies that John is the author of this particular epistle.

John is characterized by two words, one that the Spirit led him to announce of himself and one that Jesus gave to him. The one he announced of himself in his Gospel is "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Love is a real characterization of John. But there is another characterization of him and Jesus gave it to him, "Thunder." You have on the one hand "love", and you have on the other hand "Thunder". Let me show you that. In Mark 3 Jesus gives him and his brother James a name. It says in Mk 3:13,

"And He went up to the mountain and summoned those whom He Himself wanted, and they came to Him. And He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him, and that He might send them out to preach, and to have authority to cast out the demons. And He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom He gave the name Peter),"

What is that a prophecy of? One day he is going to become the Rock, obviously. "And James, the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James (to them He gave the name Boanerges, which means, ‘Sons of Thunder’)".

Now what is He saying? I think there are two things He is saying. One of them is their temperament. Let me show you why I say that. Look in Luke 9. I know it is a prophecy of the fact that they are going to be used powerfully like thunder one day. I think there is also something He is saying about their temperament, their personality, the explosiveness that they had. Over in Luke 9:51 Jesus is with His disciples going down to a village of the Samaritans. "It came about, when the days were approaching for His ascension, that He resolutely set His face to go to Jerusalem; and He sent messengers on ahead of Him. And they went, and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make arrangements for Him. And they did not receive Him, because He was journeying with His face toward Jerusalem." The Samaritans didn’t honor Jerusalem. They had their own Temple Mount. "And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’" They were really saying, "Kill them, Lord. Burn them. They won’t let you in. Boom, drop the fire on them." I love that about James and John. Jesus said, "You are Sons of Thunder." Boom, you are making a lot of noise and you sure do make some powerful statements. Jesus goes on to explain to them, "That is not really what I came for. Not to burn everybody up, but that men might be saved."

Now why am I bringing all this out? Well, I am talking about the passion with which the book was written, because I think you see both things come out in the epistle: one, the apostle of love as he protected the sheep that he is so affectionate towards; the other, the apostle of thunder, as he absolutely came head-on with the error that had gotten among them. Like a thunderbolt he comes out in the epistle and just directly hits right on the face the error that had gotten among the people.

I want to focus, though, on that word "beloved" that is used in this book. You find it over and over again. In that word is the passion with which this shepherd writes to these sheep. He loves them and he is trying to protect them and get them to where their joy can once again be made complete. Look at 1 John 2:7.

"Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you."

Now if you have a King James, it says "brethren." It does change the word. The New American Standard uses the word "beloved."

Look in 3:2:

"Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be."

In 1Jn 3:13 the New American Standard translates the word adelphos as "brethren." It is translated the same way the word agapetos is translated back in 3:2 in the King James.

"Do not marvel, brethren (or beloved), if the world hates you."

Look in verse 21, "Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God." Look in 1Jn 4:1.

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits."

In 1Jn 4:7 it says,

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God."

1Jn 4:11 reads,

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."

I think about that "Son of Thunder" with that personality he had. He wanted to burn the Samaritans. He had the opportunity to be with the greatest example of love you could ever have, Jesus Christ, who is love because He is God. He was changed where even his language to the people he is writing rings with, "Beloved, Beloved." It is the word in the Greek that is the most tender, precious word, dear, dear word. The True Shepherd, as Jesus told John in John 21, has a love for the sheep because he loves those whom the shepherd loves. When he asked Peter in John 21, He didn’t say, "Do you love the sheep?" He said, "Do you love me?" (Jn 21:15 - agapao; Jn 21:16-agapao; Jn 21:17-phileo)  If I love Him like I ought to, which is what this epistle is all about, then I can love others, the sheep that He loves.

Now I want to tell you what a shepherd does. He guides the sheep, guards the sheep and grazes the sheep because he cares about them. Do you know how he does all three? With the precious Word. He feeds them with the Word, he guides them with the Word, and he guards them with the Word. I say that for a reason. Sometimes being a pastor (and it is going to be this way until Jesus comes back) you get misunderstood. Sometimes I get adamant about what I consider to be error in the Word of God. You have seen it. You have seen it. I mean I just get livid. I’ve gotten letters so I know that people have seen it. But I want you to know something. I haven’t gotten any more livid towards error than this precious apostle did to the people who were beloved to him. I’ll tell you why; because the first thing that will steal your joy away from you is when you start flirting with anything that is not a part of this Word of God.

Nothing makes me any more angry than to see something that is perverted from what the truth has to say. I will make people who do it look like they are idiots if I have to in order to get my point across, to guard, to guide and to graze His sheep. Somehow there seems to be in all of us a little bit of this thunder and love. When you love somebody, you want to protect what they think because as they think, so shall they live. You see the purpose of the writing of 1 John, and you see the passion that he had. Beloved. He is so affectionate. All these terms are so affectionate from John. At the same time you see the thunder when he addresses those things that are wrong. He redefines what the truth of the Gospel is all about.

Thirdly, look at the people to whom he wrote. If you study 3 John you find he is writing to a person, Gaius. In 2 John 1:1, he is writing to the chosen lady and to her children. In this epistle he never really identifies who he is writing to. It is very difficult to make an adamant statement as to who these people are. We do know from the historians and people like Polycarp (Polycarp--Death) that he had a lot of power and influence in the area of Asia Minor, particularly the area of Asia itself which was one of the regions there in Asia Minor. You know in Revelation 1:11 (note), Jesus said, "Write to the seven churches of Asia Minor." I wonder why He chose John to do that? There was a lot of influence that he had, so most people think he probably wrote from Ephesus and he wrote to them. But we don’t know that from the text. You can’t say that is it. We just don’t know. It doesn’t tell us. But it does tell us the levels of maturity of the people that he is writing to. It does tell us that.

We know who can benefit from 1 John by something he says in chapter 2. Some of you are thinking, "You left this one out." No, I didn’t. I did it on purpose. He pulls out four major categories of spiritual growth. He starts from the very, very smallest and goes all the way to the most mature. In 1Jn 2:12, 13, 14 we see, "I am writing to you..." It doesn’t matter what level of maturity you are on spiritually. There is a message for you and for me in the book of 1 John.

Let me show you. 1Jn 2:12 says, "I am writing to you, little children." The word there is teknion. It means little, I mean, birthed, brand new believers if you please. "I am writing to you brand new believers, you little children." It says he is writing, "because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake." He is just reaffirming what they should already know. Evidently this heresy is pulling them away from that. "Jesus is God’s Son. He did come and die for you. Your sins are forgiven you." The word "forgiven" there is in the perfect passive. You didn’t do it, He did it. They have been sent away from you.

In 1Jn 2:13 he is writing to the fathers and they, of course, are the older persons, those who are more mature. He says in verse 13, "because you know Him." Actually it should read "you have known Him, you are in the state of knowing Him." You knew Him back here and you are knowing Him now. Here the word "know" is not discerning and perceiving. It is the word for experientially knowing Him. You experienced Him back here and look how far you have come. Perfect tense means that you are in the state right now of experiencing Him daily in your life. You are the mature ones. So John is saying, "I am writing to you little babes. I am writing to you mature ones."

Then he uses a word in 1Jn 2:13, "I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one." The word "young men" is the word neaniskos, which means men in their prime, possibly up until about the age of 40. They are men who have overcome.

The Apostle John uses the term "overcome" more than anybody in the whole New Testament. Look in 1Jn 5:1 and look at how you overcome. "Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome." John is talking about a present tense obeying God.

Then he says in 1Jn 5:4, "For whatever is born out of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith." Separate obedience from faith and you don’t have faith anymore. Our willingness to surrender to that which we say we believe overcomes the evil one. John said, "You younger men, you have overcome the evil one." How did you overcome him? Because you have been willing to make conscious choices to obey Christ. When you obey Him, you immediately live in the ranks of the overcomers.

In 1Jn 2:13 he goes to one more word and says, "I have written to you, children, because you know the Father." That is a different word than teknion. The word used here is paidion. The word paidion has the idea of an immature child who needs instruction and needs training. "You know the Father," he says. "You have known Him. You are in the kingdom, but you are immature and you need training."

Look at the four different words. John is saying any believer who reads this, from the time he is birthed into the kingdom until the time he has lived and walked with God for a long period of years, whatever level they are on, this is written to them and they can benefit from studying it and from learning it. So we don’t know exactly where the people were from the text, but we do know something about them. They were believers from every category, from the very beginning, all the way to the most mature.

Verse 14 says, "I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning." Evidently there was another letter that he had written to them at some point. The key here is that in the writing of this book, we don’t know exactly who the people were. But we know the levels of maturity that they were on. It has something to say to all of them. John has a message for every believer of every spiritual level, a message of assurance, a message that believers are distinctively marked as those who believe and obey the truth, a message that if we live obediently to the truth, we can know Him experientially and we will overcome the enemy with our faith. Basically that is the bottom line message of 1 John. It is one thing to know about it. It is another thing to know it experientially.

I have always loved Tony Evans. He is one of my favorite people and I love to hear him preach. I had been hearing him use an illustration. Tony said, "You know, I am the chaplain of the Dallas Mavericks. I have four season tickets to every game. I sit right on the floor. When my wife and children don’t want to go, I call up my buddies, and I say, ‘Hey, guys. Do you want to go to the game and sit on the floor? You are with me. Come on.’ They will say, ‘Well, where are we going to park? We have to go early.’ ‘Hey, friend. You are with me. When you pull in the gate, tell them you are with me. Everything is fine. You are with me.’" Sure enough, they pulled in and there he stood and had a pass and they let him park and he walked in. "‘Well, what about the crowds?’ ‘Don’t worry about the crowds. You are with me.’" They don’t go in the regular door. They go in another door, a special door, just for the people with passes. They go over to an elevator and they don’t go where everybody else goes. "‘What about eating supper?" "Don’t worry about supper. You are with me.’" They go down this special elevator to a team room and there is the general manager and all the other people who have something to do with the team. Then when it is time to go to the game, I mean five minutes before it starts, they walk out. They walk out the same place that the team members walk out. They walk out on the floor and sit on the second row.

I have heard him tell that, talking about you are with Jesus. But you know, that illustration was sort of distant to me. I couldn’t understand what he was saying really. A friend called me up one day and said, "Your expenses are paid and we want you to go with us representing a group here in Chattanooga. We are going to Houston. Then we are going to Dallas and visit with Tony Evans. We are going to spend about two days with him and go through his church, etc." I said, "Oh, man. I’ll go."

We got to Dallas and that afternoon we met with him and his wife and some of his family members. We saw all the things he was doing there. He said, "By the way, guys, I want you to go to the ball game with me tonight." Wow! I heard the illustration and I was going to live it! He said, "Don’t worry about where you park when you get there, I’ve got a pass. Just tell them you are with me." I mean he was saying the same thing. We drove down to the Coliseum, pulled up and the guy said, "You can’t come in here." We said, "Hold it." Tony was standing over there and we said, "We are with him!" The guy said, "Okay, come on through." We parked in a special place. We walked up to the door. We went in a special door, got in the special elevator and went down and sat right next to the general manager of the Dallas Mavericks. We ate together. We had food already prepared. The time came for the game and we walked out the very entrance where the players walked in. We walked over to the second row. Everybody was looking and calling out, "Hey, Tony. How are you doing?" We were all waving, "Hey, how are you doing? We’re with him." We sat on the second row. You know, it was one thing to hear it and believe it. It was another thing to experience it for myself.

Do you have any doubts about your salvation? Are you wide open for false doctrine? You are when you are not living according to what is in this Word right here. "Oh, you are so hard on that." I am just telling you like it is. You are going to be messed up. Your joy is going to escape and I guarantee you that you will end up thinking you are not even saved before it is over. You won’t even know that you can know that you can know that you know Jesus Christ until you come back to what the truth is and build your life upon it.

1John 1:1
What Every Believer Ought to Know
Wayne Barber

Turn with me to 1 John 2:26. We are still just getting the feel of this book. The more you get the heart beat of it, the more you can start learning what John is trying to tell all of us as he writes this wonderful epistle. I want to entitle this, "What a Believer Ought to Know".

We have already seen that someone has been disturbing the audience of John, the people he is writing to. They have been disturbed and it is very obviously false doctrine. Look at 2:26: "These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you." Present tense: they didn’t just make one effort and leave. John is saying, "They are constantly seeking to deceive you, to lead you astray, to get you away from the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Go back to 1:4. They had lost their joy. He says, "And these things we write, so that our joy [really it should be "your" joy] may be made complete." What was the false doctrine that was getting in amongst the people? You will learn this as you study through it. You have to understand what Gnosticism is all about. You will see many facets of it come up in the epistle. John addresses those methodically as he writes to these precious believers in Asia Minor.

Gnosticism was one of the major threats to the gospel during the day of the Apostle John. It was in several forms and is very difficult to describe it in its full sense because it depends on the sect that you were dealing with as to exactly which direction they went with it. However, Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. Regardless of what sect you dealt with, the Gnostics said a man was saved by knowledge, not because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, but by a mythological idea. It was based on some of the myths of that day. Once you had a revelation of this knowledge, that brought you into what they called a salvation experience. Salvation was of knowledge. Jesus was not necessary in the picture because He didn’t die. He wasn’t the propitiation for our sins.

You see, the Gnostics believed that all flesh was evil; therefore, God would never have inhabited a human body. Jesus came and died but He was strictly the physical, natural son of Joseph. He was not truly the Son of God.

The particular brand of Gnosticism that John is dealing with came from a man named Cerenthus. Cerenthus said first of all that Jesus was the natural born son of Joseph and one day, at His baptism, Christ, the Christ, the heavenly Christ came and indwelt Him and lived in Him until right before the crucifixion. Then it departed from Him. Therefore, Jesus when He died on the cross only died as a man. Poor, misfortunate creature!

This developed later into a more advance thinking at that time, Docetism, which said that Jesus was never really in any kind of human form. He was just a ghost. He was an apparition. He was a spirit. He never really had a body. Well, of course, this absolutely undermines everything we know of the gospel of Jesus Christ; that Jesus was God’s Son long before He ever came to this earth. He was preexistent. He is the second person of the Trinity. He has always been God and will always be God. He came to this earth, born of a virgin, and took upon Himself a human body without the nature to sin. As a matter of fact, Satan came to tempt Him one day but there was nothing in Him that he could draw out of Him. He did not have the nature to sin.

Don’t ever get hung up in the crazy argument, "Could Jesus ever have sinned?" If you will follow that out, that is the most ridiculous argument you could ever have because if He had sinned there would be no more second person of the Trinity which means there wouldn’t be a Trinity. How can God deny Himself? You see, Jesus lived a perfect life as the God-man on this earth. He took sin upon Himself, went to the cross, and paid a debt He did not owe. We owed a debt we could not pay. He became the propitiation for our sin. God was satisfied with His death and the shedding of His blood for man’s sin. He went there in our place. He resurrected the third day, ascended, and is glorified. That is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Gnosticism undermined all of that. They took away the deity of Christ. They denied that He was born of a virgin and they denied that His death upon the cross was ever necessary. Salvation was by this mystical, mythological knowledge. In fact, this knowledge was when you came to a full realization of your true self. Each sect had a different myth it seems. This knowledge that is apart from Jesus, apart from His Word, only a few had. Therefore, they were the saved ones. Once you became a saved person under their system, then you had to learn to deal with your flesh which was evil.

You could go one of two different routes according to the different sects. One was the sect of Asceticism, which means they would deny themselves. Paul dealt with those over in the book of Colossians. Then there was the other side of licentiousness. They believed since you can’t beat it, simply give into it. Live in sin, enjoy it. You are not accountable because you are spirit and by your knowledge you have been saved. You just live in a carton right now. You are not responsible for the sin that is going on in your life.

You can see what a major problem and threat they were to the gospel of Jesus during the New Testament time. John wants his readers to know that the only true knowledge, the only true spiritual knowledge comes from the Lord Jesus Christ and from His Word. We need to know this, too. Suppose somebody comes to you and says, "Oh, I have something over here that is not in the Book. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with Jesus but, oh, what spiritual knowledge it is." Back off and say, "Oh, God, when you strike him, don’t hit me at the same time." The only spiritual knowledge a man can ever have comes from Jesus Christ, revealed by His Spirit and in His Word. That is what John wants his readers to know.

As a matter of fact, the word "know" comes up in at least 25 different verses in the letter to 1 John. It is almost as if he is saying to the Gnostics, "You think you know something? Let me tell my sweet believers, if you want knowledge, remember Jesus Christ lives in you and that is the knowledge you need to have."

There are two words for knowledge that he brings up. One is the word eido. That means intuitive knowledge, perceived knowledge, the ability to perceive something you did not go to a class to learn. It is kind of like when you ask your wife something sometimes and she says, "I just know it." You say, "How do you know it?" She says, "I don’t know. I just know." That is the kind of knowledge we are talking about. It is the ability to discern and perceive without ever having been trained to do it. The Spirit of God lives in you, and He gives you that kind of perceiving power, that discernment in your life. That is one kind of knowledge used in 10 verses in the book of 1 John.

The other kind is ginosko. That is when you experientially learn it, either through a classroom or usually the classroom of life. It comes by obeying the Lord Jesus Christ. You don’t know it until you surrender to it. You learn it as you go along. I love that verse over in Philippians when Paul says, "I have learned, therefore, to be content." I love that! Do you know what that tells me? It tells me that Paul made some of the same bad decisions I have made. He did it and said, "Oh, boy, was that bad!" He did it again. "Oh, I am not going to do that again. I have learned, therefore, to be content." You don’t get it intuitively. It is not discernment, a divine perception, it is something you have to go through. It is something that you learn by experiencing the Lord Jesus Christ. That kind of knowledge is used in 15 different verses in the book of 1 John. So I want to show you what the believer ought to know. Intuitively or experientially? What should he know that will help him stand firm against the false doctrines of this world? What is it? What should every believer know?

Look over in Colossians. I just want you to see what Paul says in Colossians 2:1, 2, 3. He is talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. If you ever think there is knowledge, spiritually, outside of Him, then I want you to read these verses and memorize them. "For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf, and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (notes Colossians 2:1; 2:2; 2:3)

Do you want knowledge? Bow before the One who is the treasure house, the store house of all knowledge and wisdom. Come to His Word. Surrender to it. When you receive Him in your heart, intuitively you will know so many things. But then you will begin to experientially learn of Him and the knowledge we are looking for is found in a person. It is not found anywhere else. That person is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, what should every believer know? Obviously we will get to all of these verses in their context, but I just want to whet your appetite. What is it that a believer should know? Turn to 1 John 2. The word "knowledge" does not appear until chapter 2. I want you to see first of all what every believer should know intuitively. What is it that God gives you and me the ability to perceive and to discern that we don’t have to learn anywhere else? You can get saved today and have this exact knowledge tomorrow. It is something built in. It comes with the package of the Holy Spirit that comes into your life. What are the things we should know?

1Jn 2:20 says, "But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know." Actually that should be "you know all." The word "know" there is eido, and it is the word that means you perceive all things. There is someone in you that gives you a discernment now that you didn’t have before. Christ has come in His Spirit, lives in you and gives you a perception, an ability to discern that you didn’t have before.

Back up to 1Jn 2:18 and you will see specifically what he is talking about. "Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists (see antichrist) have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour." This is a different word for "know." 1Jn 2:19 continues, "They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ?"

Do you see how he is coming against that false doctrine? He is saying, "Listen, believers, don’t you listen to these people. You’ve got something built in. You know that the man, Jesus, is the Christ, the anointed One, the Messiah. He has always been God. Don’t you let these people come to you and shake your faith. You know that and you know it within."

If you truly are a believer, there is no excuse for you ever listening to any kind of error that ever questions the fact that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, the man Jesus, the Christ, the promised Messiah. It is built in. You already know that. Stand on what you know. You don’t have to be taught that. You know it in your spirit. Every believer should know that.

Secondly, in 1Jn 3:5 we know that Jesus came to take away our sins: "And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin." Look at 1Jn 3:6:

"No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him."

Immediately you know what sect of that Gnostic heresy you are dealing with here. It was that group of licentiousness, that group that said, "Hey, you live in a carton. Go on and live in sin, man. You can’t beat it, go on and join it." The Word of God says, "No, sir. You have a discernment within you built in by the Holy Spirit of God that says Jesus came to take away sin and the believer should never, ever allow sin to become a practice in his life."

Let me show you the difference. Before you became a Christian there was no one living in you to convict you of anything. You had a moral consciousness that was developed by society and you knew right from wrong but you had no clue about good and evil. There is a huge difference. You can teach your son right and wrong, send him to University, and when he gets there they change the standards. What was right and wrong in your house is no longer right and wrong there. It is always determined by the ways of society. But good and evil never change. Once you become a believer, you know good and well that it was because of the evil of your life that Jesus came to die. When you become a believer, you no longer pursue sinful living.

If you find somebody who says, "I am a member of Such and Such Church, but boy, do I ever love..." and he begins to name his sin, back off and say, "Wait a minute. God says in His Word that man cannot know Christ. There is no possible way. You don’t pursue sin and claim to be a believer." Do you know why that is not very acceptable in our society today? It is because we have so watered it down over the last 200 years. Nobody knows what a Christian is anymore. They think it is a member of the local church. That is about as far as they can go with it. You don’t pursue sin and claim to know Jesus Christ because you have a built in knowledge of the Holy One. He is letting you know that sin pursues you and you will deal with it until Jesus comes, but you no longer can pursue and claim to be a believer in Jesus Christ.

Thirdly, look at 1Jn 3:14, 15. What should we know? What is this intuitive knowledge? Every believer should know this. We should know that we no longer live in death. We have been moved into eternal life. Now watch this. Verse 14 says,

"We know [eido] that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."

That is a long one, and I can’t wait until we get into the context of that. But I just want to show you something. One of the things about the Gnostics was they cared about nobody but themselves. Selfish, arrogant, you name it. That was Gnosticism. The Lord Jesus said, "You have a built in knowledge here. Now come on, don’t be so off the wall. You have a built in knowledge. You know good and well that you no longer live in death." How do you know? You know by the love that God has put within you for your brothers and your sisters in the family of God.

When you become a believer, overnight God puts within you an affinity and affection for the family of God that is something that you cannot even explain to anybody. The day before you couldn’t stand people; the day after, you love everybody, especially in the family of God. You find people jumping from church to church to church, starting splits, causing problems. They don’t care about the people who are their brothers in Christ. I seriously question whether they even know Jesus.

We are going to get real serious about Christianity in 1 John. It cuts no corners and straight out puts it down. If you don’t love your brother, you had better check out your salvation. That is the way you know that you are in Him. That is the way you know that you are in eternal life. Every believer has that built-in discernment. How do I know I love Him? I know it by the love He has given me for the brothers and sisters in the family of God.

Turn to 1Jn 5:13. We ought to know that we have eternal life. Not only have we been transferred into it, but we have eternal life. Verse 13 says,

"These things I have written to you who believe [present tense] in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know [eido] that you have eternal life."

There was a man who was a principal of a school. We had a Bible study in his school. Finally, through some of the local priests of another faith, they got us out. They said we were preaching Baptist doctrine. This man came to me one day and said, "Listen, you can’t come over here and tell these students that they can know that they are saved, that they can know that they have eternal life. No man can know." I said, "I beg your pardon, 1 John 5:13 says,…" and I quoted it to him. He looked right back at me and said, "Say that again." It is amazing how the Word of God clears up a lot of our thinking.

Do you know you have eternal life (Eternal Life)? I’ll tell you what your problem is if you are truly a Christian and you don’t know: you are not believing. That is present tense. You are not daily obeying Him. You are not daily trusting Him. Two weeks ago maybe you were, but something has happened in your life and as a result you have slipped back instead of stepping forward. That will shut you down and you will doubt your salvation like never before. When you start believing Him, you will know that you have eternal life. Present tense is always used for people who are Christians, not past experience.

I want to tell you something. Talk is cheap. If you know Jesus Christ, it is going to be seen today, not 30 years ago in your life. The Holy Spirit of God lives in you. One of the epistles calls Him the divine referee. Do you think He won’t blow the whistle on somebody who says they have something that they don’t have?

Look at 1Jn 5:15. The word eido is used again.

"And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him."

I can’t wait to get to this one either. You see, we have a listening ear with the Father. Do you know that? Do you know the Father will listen to you? He gives you His undivided attention.

I want you to see something here. We will have to get to it in chapter 5, but I want you to see this. We know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him. Be real careful. It doesn’t say we have received the answer for which we were looking. That is not what the text says. People love to get on television and throw that doctrine out. "Ask for it. You are God’s child. He is your cosmic bellhop. He will do what you want." No way. Your Father will give you a listening ear. Go on and bring anything you want to bring before Him, but your Father will never grant a request that is not somehow within His divine perfect will for your life. Ask all you want.

We have individual requests. We can always bring anything before Him, but He looks for the heart and He examines it according to His divine purposes in our life. The believer knows he has a listening ear with the Father. He knows that He will give him His undivided attention. Do you know that?

Let’s look in 1Jn 5:18, 19, 20. It is all down through the last part of the book. Verse 18 says, "We know [eido] that no one who is born out of God sins." Now be careful. That is in the present tense. He means sins in a habitual way. We have already seen that. You don’t live in sin and call yourself a believer. The verse goes on, "but He who was born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him." We will get to that in context.

Here is something else we know. We know that we don’t habitually sin. We can’t live in habitual sin. Verse 19 says, "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." We can know that we are out of God. We are not of this world. We are out of God. Big difference. 1Jn 5:20 reads,

"And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, in order that we might know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life."

I can know that I am in Him and He is in me. He is in this world because I am here. He lives in me. "How do you know that?" I don’t know, I just know. He lives in me. I am in Him. He is in me.

There are things the believer knows. You ought to check these things out. We ought to know some things. It is built in. We didn’t have to be taught this in a class. We know it. We just know it. Now, that is intuitive knowledge.

But he also brings out some things that are experiential knowledge. What do I mean by that? You can know some other things, but you are going to have to obey the condition to get it. In other words, you are going to have to obey Him. If you do this, you can know this. That is experiential knowledge. That is ginosko. Paul said in Philippians 3:10, "I want to know Him and the power of His resurrection." That is experiential. He knew Him intimately as his Savior and Lord, but he wanted to experience Him on a day by day basis.

Now, with that in mind, what is it that we can learn from Him? What knowledge does God have for us? I haven’t studied it all the way through yet, but every time he puts down the word "know," I guarantee you, somehow it is refuting some tenet of the false doctrine that is coming against the people there in Asia Minor. I can’t wait until one of these days when I have enough time to work it all out and find out all that he is saying. It is beyond my understanding or comprehension at this time.

What can a believer know experientially? Now look in 1Jn 2:3, 4, 5. The first thing he can know experientially is we can know beyond any doubt that we know Him. And that is only by our willingness to obey. We said that a while ago but here we find it with the right word. Look at verse 3: "And by this we know [experiential knowledge] that we have come to know Him [in the past], if we keep His commandments." Now, if there is an obedient spirit within me to do what God wants me to do, I know then that I know Him.

I don’t know how many times Christians have come to me and said, "I don’t think I am saved." I say, "Why?" "I just don’t know." I say, "Why do you come to me?" They say, "Well, I just want to obey Christ. I want to do what He asks me to do." I thought to myself, "Well, why would a lost person want to do what Christ wants them to do?" It is something within you. It is built in. You want to obey Him. Obedience is not something somebody has to knock you over the head to do. It is built in.

He says in 1Jn 2: 4,

"The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him."

I like the way he put that. John says, "He is not mistaken. He is not a little bit off the wall. He is a liar!" I like that. He is a liar and the truth is not in him. He is lying. Verse 5 continues, "but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected." So we can know that we are in Him, but how do you know? Because you want to obey Him. It is something inside of you. You want to obey Him. There is the "want to" within you. It doesn’t mean you always do it, but the "want to" is there. When you don’t do it, you run to Him. Why? Because you are obeying Him and doing what He told you to do when you don’t do it. Did you get all that?

Now look again at 1Jn 2:18:

"Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour."

How can you know that it is the last hour? You hear people talking about the last hour, the last days. How do you know we are in the last days? You can look around you and see all the people who are antichrist arising daily. Daily they are coming on the scene. Because of this, you have this knowledge that you didn’t have before. You know now. You know the days you are living in because all you have to do is look around you at the people who reject and are antichrist.

Look at 1Jn 3:16. We can know how to love:

"We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

How can I know how to love like Christ? How can I know what love is? Well, by learning that it is not in word, it is in deed. Look in verse 17:

"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? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth."

How can I learn to love others? It is not by telling them, it is by meeting a need that they have in their life. You learn it by experience. You learn to love. It just doesn’t happen. You learn it. You know love by this.

Look at 1Jn 4:2, 3, 4, 5, 6. "By this you know the Spirit of God." John tells them to test the spirits. How do I know the spirit? How do I know when I am dealing with somebody who is led of the Spirit?

"Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world."

We can know when we are dealing with somebody who is led of the Spirit of God and we can know when we are dealing with somebody who is not led by the Spirit of God. We learn it by experience. The more you are around these kinds of people, the more you listen to what they say, denying the fact that Jesus came in the flesh, the more you learn to test the spirits in somebody’s life. We will get to that in the context.

1Jn 4:11 tells us we can know that we abide in Him and He is in us. Watch this:

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world."

Look at verse 16:

"And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."

How can we know that we abide in Him? Again by loving one another.

Well, we could go on and on, but each time we look at it, there is something I can intuitively know and there is something I can learn by experience. But the place that I need to come to and learn from is at the feet of Christ who is the treasure of all knowledge and all wisdom and His Word. There is nothing spiritual I can learn outside of Him. I learn from Him. I learn from His Word. I learn from obeying His Word. There is no mystical knowledge. All this other stuff is all bound up in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is incredible to me how many people want to go someplace else to find knowledge. It is incredible to me how many people think they have knowledge apart from knowing Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.

When you start listening to some of this doctrine that is floating in from everywhere, you had better remember, if you are a true believer, there are some things you know, you already know it and nobody has to remind you. You know it. So quit denying what you are sensing in your Spirit. Then secondly, get busy and start living out what you tell other people you have because the more you live it out, the more experiential knowledge you are going to have and the more protected you are going to be from error ever getting into your life.

How many times have we said it! Get in the Word, obey the Word and that becomes a protection in your life. What does Ephesians tell us? The garment that comes from surrender is our armor in chapter 6. That is almost the same thing John is saying. He is writing to these believers in Asia Minor and saying, "Guys, you want knowledge? Quit chasing after those guys. Come to Christ. Get in His Word." You have knowledge built in that you don’t even know you have yet, but it is there. You have been denying it. Start learning to obey Him. The more you obey Him, the more knowledge you will increase in. As you walk in Him, you learn of Him. I am thankful I don’t have to go anyplace but to Jesus to find knowledge. Oh, now if I want to learn how to fly a jet plane, I can go take a course. If I want to learn how to run a factory, I can go take schooling on that. But we are talking about spiritual knowledge. The only place you are going to find it is at the feet of Christ with a humble spirit saying, "Lord, I want to surrender to all Your Word has to say." Over in Matthew He says, "Come unto Me and learn of Me." He will show us everything we ever needed to know.

The next time you watch a program on television, listen. Not everything is bad on television. But when you are listening, listen to what you are hearing and see what the Spirit of God inside you says. Does it bear witness or does it not with what God has said? You are going to be surprised how protected you already are because of the treasure, wisdom and knowledge living within you.

1 John 1:1-4
That Our Joy May Be Made Complete!
Wayne Barber

We have introduced the book now for a couple of times and we want to get right into 1Jn 1:1, 2, 3, 4. I am going to take my title from verse 4, "That Our Joy May be Made Complete!" You know and I know that our joy is found in a person and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. As we obey Him, as we cling to His Word, that is where our joy comes. It grows. It is an ever increasing joy as we focus our lives only on Him.

The Apostle John was an eyewitness of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, if you will turn to the book of Luke with me, he would be included with those that Luke mentioned in Luke 1:1,2. Luke says as he begins his gospel,

"Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word have handed them down to us, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus."

He speaks of those who became eyewitnesses and as a result, became servants of the Word, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As a matter of fact, Jesus said something of those men who were eyewitnesses, those apostles. Look over in Luke 10:23, 24. By the way, if you are studying and you just want something to thrill your heart, get into this passage and fill in the blanks. Oh, what a beautiful passage. The Lord Jesus says in verse 22, "‘All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.’ And turning to the disciples, He said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.’"

The Apostle John was an eyewitness of all that the prophets had prophesied. He saw the Lord Jesus in human form, the Lord Jesus come in the flesh here to this earth. Now John must have been upset when he found out that the believers over there in Asia Minor were being deceived into something that denied everything of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn to 1 John 2:26. I want you to keep remembering why he is writing this epistle. It is very important. There were those who were seeking to deceive the believers and anyone else who would listen to them. In verse 26 it says, "These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you." That is in the present tense. It means that they are constantly, constantly trying to deceive and lead those people astray.

Here is the Apostle John, one who had both seen these people birthed into the kingdom and had ministered to them in Asia Minor. Now somebody is coming in and telling these precious believers and others who will listen that Jesus was not really a man, that Jesus was a ghost and you don’t need Jesus in your life. Can you imagine how upset you would be if somebody was doing that to people you had labored over and prayed for and seen birthed into the kingdom of God!

Evidently the false teachers of that day followed the New Testament pattern. Now let me explain. When you go through the epistles you begin to realize that false doctrine was something that everybody seemed to have to deal with. As a matter of fact, whenever you find a second epistle, it is usually dealing with false doctrine: 2 Corinthians, 2 Peter, all the way through. The whole book of Jude deals with false teachings. But there is something that is very common. There is a common denominator with all the false teaching that was going on during those days, and I want you to see it. We won’t look at all of them, but just enough to give you an idea.

Look at 2 Peter 2:1. The question comes to your mind and should come to all of our minds, "Were these false teachers, these Gnostic teachers, these followers of Cerenthus, were they in church? Were they among believers? Or were they out here someplace trying to lure the people out of the church?" I want to show you that the common thread, the pattern in the New Testament about false teaching is, it doesn’t usually stay outside the church. It comes inside the church. That is where you have to watch it. People will sit next to you and sing and cry at the right time. But as soon as they see you vulnerable, as soon as they see you open to what they want to tell you, they will pull in their error which will lead you astray and cause you to lose your joy in Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 2:1 reads,

"But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves." (see note)

I am not going to take that passage and develop it, but I want to show you a few words out of 2 Peter 2:1 that will help us see the pattern of how false teaching was a constant problem among the Christians of that day. The word "secretly" there in verse 1 is the word pareisago (word study). Para, means alongside, and eisago means to introduce or bring in. The idea is they bring in their error but you don’t see it. They are not out in a big tent trying to get people to be persuaded to follow them instead of Christ. Oh, no. They very secretly bring it in. They gain your confidence. They win your confidence. They join the church. They learn your language. They always have their error, and they will put their error right beside the truth. A false teacher will not say wrong things 100% of the time. He will say 90% of the right things and then take 10% of what is wrong and destructive and deadly and begin to mix it in. If I had a thousand bottles of milk and somebody poisoned one of them and I didn’t know which one it was, they may as well have just poisoned all thousand of them! That is the danger of these people. They may be 90% correct, but the 10% is the damnable, destructive, fatal thing that will lead you away from anything that will bring you joy in Jesus Christ. You had better be careful and know the gospel and stand upon those things that God has said. They secretly bring it in. When you are not looking, they lift up the error and you think it is truth and before you know it, your joy is gone and you don’t even know why.

They are destructive heresies. The word destructive (word study) means damnable. It is the word apoleia, which means totally fatal. It is that which will take a believer and steal everything away from him that God wants to give him. It is that which takes a person who is not a believer and sends him straight to hell. That is what we are talking about. That is how destructive they are. They are not just something that will bother you for a while and go away. They are things that are fatal to bringing you joy in the person of Jesus Christ.

The word heresy (word study) means based on opinion instead of truth. Actually the word means to select, to choose. It is when someone will look in the Bible and say, "I like this verse, that verse and this verse and that verse. And I tell you what I am going to do. I am going to mix my opinion into that." That is where you get the idea of what a heresy is. It is not as if there is no truth. It is polluted truth. They know 90% of what is right to say. The 10% is where you find the problem.

I want you to notice again in verse 1. He says, "But there were false prophets also among the people." They will be in the body itself. It is not going to be just out there. Oh, they are out there. But they are going to come in the body. In Philippians 3:18 (note) Paul says almost the same thing in a little different way. He is talking about people who are right there with them. He says, "For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even now weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ." These people are all around us at all times.

Have you ever gotten to be friendly with somebody who doesn’t understand and believe the doctrine of the Word of God? They don’t adhere to what God says. After a while your friendship seems to develop and you are having a great time with them. Then suddenly one day you notice that your time alone with God has disappeared and your joy is gone. All of a sudden, even though you weren’t aware of it, you have been led astray. Watch out because these people are everywhere. They are rampant. They are among us, enemies of the cross, legalists, even those who would be like the Antinomians that Paul had to deal with. It is always somehow mixed in.

The licentiousness is there. The Gnostics said, "Since you can’t fight sin, join it. It doesn’t matter. You can sin a little bit. If you want to go out and drink on the weekend, it’s okay. Help yourself. It is alright. You can participate in immorality. You are just dabbling in it a little bit. It is alright." All of a sudden your joy is gone because somebody has deceitfully and secretly and privately led you astray from what the Word of God says will bring you joy in your life.

Look at the book of Jude. The whole book is about false teachers. I want you to see again, they are among us. Now you are wondering why I am doing this and I’ll tell you in a minute. Jude 1:4 says,

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those 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.

They have crept in! Secretly, they are among us. Next time you lose the joy in your salvation, ask yourself, "Who am I fellowshipping with? What do they believe? Have they somehow gotten me out of the will of God by their conversation, by whatever else they are doing?" Look out. The enemy among us is the person who doesn’t adhere to what this Book has to say.

You may ask, "Why are you bringing all that out?" I’ll tell you why. Because I think when John writes this, he has in his mind the knowledge that this letter is going to be read among the Christians there in the area where he is ministering. He knows that when he writes this, he is writing it to believers, the immature ones, the fresh ones born into the kingdom, the young men, those that are mature ones. We know that. But he also knows that when they stand up to