#5 The Perfection of God’s Love

Blessed Assurance Sermon Series (a study of 1 John)

#5 The Perfection of God’s Love

1 John 2:3-6: “ We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. {4} The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. {5} But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: {6} Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”

Much of the world walks in constant uncertainty. In fact, fear is a constant emotion in most of the world. We are all buffeted by fear and indecision. Those who do not have the assurance of our Savior live in a constant state of uncertainty which causes them to fear, for fear often results from the uncertainties of the future.

We often sing the song “Blessed Assurance.” By faith, we know that what God has promised will truly be given to us. Paul’s great faith caused him to write, “For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day” (2 Timothy 1:12).

Again, when Paul and those shipwrecked with him were threatened by the storm, Paul’s faith came to the rescue. To those fearing for their lives, Paul cried, “Therefore, keep up your courage, men, for I believe God, that it will turn out exactly as I have been told” (Acts 27:25). Isn’t it great to have such faith? This is what John is telling those Christians.

The Christian can know of a certainty of his relationship with God because he is a partner with God. What a blow this was to those false teachers who were threatening the faith of those early Christians. They could not fathom how God in heaven could have any relationship with lowly mankind. But John declared that Christians can be “made complete in Him.” Christians actually enter into a special communion or relationship with God.

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he declared that we are “God’s fellow workers” (2 Corinthians 6:1). It is through us that God accomplishes His work of giving the gospel to the whole world, for “we have this treasure” in earthen vessels. It is through us that God is fulfilled. We are, according to John, the perfection of God’s love. Let us be assured that we can know that we know God, that we can come to know God, and that we know how God’s love can truly be perfected in us.

CAN WE BE SURE?

Many times we are asked if we are saved. When we answer yes, we then are asked, “How do you know?” or “Are you sure?” Is it really possible for us to know that we are saved? Do we really believe that we can be sure? We sing such songs as “I Know Whom I Have Believed.” If we cannot be sure, should we be singing these songs?

I believe that we can have an assurance of our relationship with our Lord. Paul said, “For I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day” (2 Timothy 1:12). Is Paul claiming something for himself that we all cannot possess? I believe not.

God can be known. This great truth differs greatly from what many have believed in the past. Most religions hold their gods afar off; they reverence them from a distance. But the Scriptures tell us that we can know. John repeatedly says that we can know God. In addition to our text, notice the following Scriptures: “We are from God” (4:6); “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (4:7); “We know that we abide in Him. . . .” (4:13). Thus, we do know God;God knows us. We have a close relationship with the Father of all humanity.

HOW CAN WE KNOW?

If God can be known—and we believe that He can be—then, the question is this: How can God be known? Many who believe in Christ have differing views on this. Many feel that God will speak to them in some sort of a “still, small voice.” Others, on the other hand, believe that God will provide them with some sort of a personal, supernatural experience that will, in turn, bring them into a more personal understanding and knowledge of God. Then, there are still others who believe that simply professing God will cause them to know Him. Paul told Titus that there are those who “profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him.” He then adds that they are “detestable and disobedient, and worthless for any good deed” (Titus 1:16).

Jesus spoke of those who profess to know Him. He said,

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father, who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons and in Your name perform many miracles?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Matthew 7:21-23).

The Scriptures tell us that there is a way we can come to know God. Jesus tells us, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4). John says, in our text, that “we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. . . . By this we know that we arein Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked” (2:3-6). This same truth is repeated in many other places in the New Testament.

Christians need to constantly examine their own private lives to be assured that they are acceptable to God. Paul admonishes the Corinthians to “test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test? But I trust that you will realize that we ourselves do not fail the test” (2 Corinthians 13:5, 6). We should not be concerned with what we were, but with what we are. God can make us what He wants us to be if we will let Him. The past is forgotten to the penitent person and the future lies as a challenge. But our present is secure as long as we can pass the test..

WHAT IS OUR GOAL?

In our everyday parlance, we tend to think of the words perfect and perfected as referring to that which is without error or flaw. The Greek word teleios means “to attain to the end of” or “to make complete.” (See Arndt and Gingrich.) This being true, then, we ask, “How can we make God’s love complete in us?” or “How can it attain the intended end in our lives?”

Love is the very essence of God. Later on in this epistle, John says that “God is love.” (Cf. 4:16.) Agape has the meaning of “unselfish concern for others.” Certainly God showed an unselfish concern for us when He sent His own Son to die for us (John 3:16). We must, therefore, recognize that if God’s love is demonstrated in our lives, we must demonstrate an unselfish concern for others in our own lives. If we love God, we will be concerned for His will; we will want to be involved in “unselfish concern” for God and His will.

Jesus has made it clear that we must be obedient if we expect to be pleasing to God. If we want God’s love to shine in our lives, we must have a concern for God’s will for us. “The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked” (2:6). Again, in John 14:15 Jesus is quoted as having said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Again, in the same chapter, we read, “He who has My commandments, and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him” (John 14:21) and “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word” (John 14:23). Thus, if we want to perfect the love of God in our lives, we will walk as He walked (2:6) and be careful to obey the teachings of Jesus, for they come from “the Father.

The apostle Paul speaks of the perfection of God. He sees us as the perfection of God. Christians who properly conduct their lives are God’s “epistle,” for we “are known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” When our lives demonstrate the life of Jesus, we will truly be epistles of God. When we love like Christ loved, we will be demonstrating—or per-fecting—the love of God. We are the earthen vessels through which God demonstrates to the world His “all-surpassing power” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Walking in the light involves honesty, obedience, and love; it also involves following the example of Christ and walking as He walked (1 John 2:6). Of course, nobody ever becomes a Christian by following Christ’s example; but after we come into God’s family, we are to look to Jesus Christ as the one great Example of the kind of life we should live.

This means “abiding in Christ.” Christ is not only the Propitiation (or sacrifice) for our sins (1 John 2:2) and the Advocate who represents us before God (1 John 2:1), but He is also the perfect Pattern (He is “Jesus Christ the righteous”) for our daily life.

The key statement here is “as He is” (1 John 2:6). “Because as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). We are to walk in the light “as He is in the light” (1 John 1:7). We are to purify ourselves “even as He is pure” (1 John 3:3). “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous” (1 John 3:7). Walking in the light means living here on earth the way Jesus lived when He was here, and the way He is right now in heaven.

This has extremely practical applications in our daily lives. For example, what should a believer do when another believer sins against him? The answer is that believers should forgive one another “even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32; cf. Col. 3:13).

Walking in the light—following the example of Christ—will affect a home. Husbands are supposed to love their wives “even as Christ also loved the church” (Eph. 5:25). Husbands are supposed to care for their wives “even as the Lord” cares for the church (Eph. 5:29). And wives are to honor and obey their husbands (Eph. 5:22-24).

No matter what area of life it may be, our responsibility is to do what Jesus would do. “As He is, so are we in this world.” We should “walk [live] even as He walked [lived].”

Jesus Himself taught His disciples what it means to abide in Him. He explains it in His illustration of the vine and its branches (John 15). Just as the branch gets its life by remaining in contact with the vine, so believers receive their strength by maintaining fellowship with Christ.

To abide in Christ means to depend completely on Him for all that we need in order to live for Him and serve Him. It is a living relationship. As He lives out His life through us, we are able to follow His example and walk as He walked. Paul expresses this experience perfectly: “Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20).

This is a reference to the work of the Holy Spirit. Christ is our Advocate in heaven (1 John 2:1), to represent us before God when we sin. The Holy Spirit is God’s Advocate for us here on earth. Christ is making intercession for us (Rom. 8:34), and the Holy Spirit is also making intercession for us (Rom. 8:26-27). We are part of a fantastic “heavenly party line”: God the Son prays for us in heaven, and God the Spirit prays for us in our hearts. We have fellowship with the Father through the Son, and the Father has fellowship with us through the Spirit.

Christ lives out His life through us by the power of the Spirit, who lives within our bodies. It is not by means of imitation that we abide in Christ and walk as He walked. No, it is through incarnation: through His Spirit, “Christ liveth in me.” To walk in the light is to walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (cf. Gal. 5:16).

God has made provisions for us in these ways to conquer sin. We can never lose or change the sin nature that we were born with (1 John 1:8), but we need not obey its desires. As we walk in the light and see sin as it actually is, we will hate it and turn from it. And if we sin, we immediately confess it to God and claim His cleansing. By depending on the power of the indwelling Spirit, we abide in Christ and “walk as He walked.”

But all this begins with openness and honesty before God and men. The minute we start to act a part, to pretend, to impress others, we step out of the light and into shadows. Sir Walter Scott puts it this way:

Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive!

The life that is real cannot be built on things that are deceptive. Before we can walk in the light, we must know ourselves, accept ourselves, and yield ourselves to God. It is foolish to try to deceive others because God already knows what we really are!

All this helps to explain why walking in the light makes life so much easier and happier. When you walk in the light, you live to please only one Person—God. This really simplifies things! Jesus said, “I do always those things that please Him” (John 8:29, italics added). We “ought to walk and to please God” (1 Thes. 4:1). If we live to please ourselves and God, we are trying to serve two masters, and this never works. If we live to please men, we will always be in trouble because no two men will agree and we will find ourselves caught in the middle. Walking in the light—living to please God—simplifies our goals, unifies our lives, and gives us a sense of peace and poise.

John makes it clear that the life that is real has no love for sin. Instead of trying to cover sin, a true believer confesses sin and tries to conquer it by walking in the light of God’s Word. He is not content simply to know he is going to heaven. He wants to enjoy that heavenly life right here and now. “As He is, so are we in this world.” He is careful to match his walk and his talk. He does not try to impress himself, God, or other Christians with a lot of “pious talk.”

A congregation was singing, as a closing hymn, the familiar song, “For You I Am Praying.” The speaker turned to a man on the platform and asked quietly, “For whom are you praying?”

The man was stunned. “Why, I guess I’m not praying for anybody. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I just heard you say, ‘For you I am praying,’ and I thought you meant it,” the preacher replied.

“Oh, no,” said the man. “I’m just singing.”

Pious talk! A religion of words! To paraphrase James 1:22, “We should be doers of the Word as well as talkers of the Word.” We must walk what we talk. It is not enough to know the language; we must also live the life. “If we say—” then we ought also to do!

Test 1: Keeping God’s Commandments, 2:3-6

(2:3-6) Introduction: How do we know if we really know God? We live in a day when many people are not even interested in knowing God. They could care less about know-ing God. They want to live like they want and get all the possessions and enjoy all the pleasures of the world they can. To know God is the furthest thing from their minds. But this is dangerous ground, for if God really exists then the rejectors of God are going to miss out:

Þ They are going to miss out on the purpose, meaning, and significance of life; they are going to miss out on real love, joy, and peace and the abundance of a rich and full life both now and eternally. If God really exists and they fail to know Him, they are going to miss out on all of what life really is. Why? Because God created life and He knows what life should be. Therefore, if we do not know God, God who gave us life, then we miss out on everything that God meant life to be. But this is not all that the rejectors will face if they do not know God.

Þ If God exists, then it means that all those who reject Him must face His holiness and justice. They must stand before Him having rejected Him and face His judgment.

The point is clear: we must know God. But how can we tell if we really know Him? There are seven tests that will show us. The first test is the discussion of this passage: Do we keep God’s commandments?

1. The test: do we keep God’s commandments (v.3)?

2. The professing man: says he knows God but does not keep His commandments (v.4).

3. The obedient man: keeps God’s Word (v.5).

4. The responsible man: lives up to his profession (v.6).

(2:3) Commandments—Knowledge, of God—Believers: How do we know if we really know God? There is a test that will show us. Do we keep God’s commandments? Man faces an enormous problem, a problem that any thinking and honest person can see. If God really exists, man can never know it—not by his own reasonings and energy or effort. No matter how much thought or creative thinking and inner feelings man may have, man can never know for sure if God exists—not in and of himself. There is a clear reason for this. Man lives in a physical and material world, and the physical and material world cannot penetrate or cross over into the other world, that is, into the spiritual world. If man is ever to know the spiritual world, if he is ever to know God, then God has to enter the physical and material world and reveal Himself to man. And note: this is exactly what God has done. God has sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world to tell man the truth: the truth about God, about man himself, about the world in which man lives, and about the world to come. This is exactly what Jesus Christ and His followers said time and again. This is exactly what Jesus Christ and Scripture declare:

Þ No man has ever crossed over into the spirit world and returned, no man but Jesus Christ.

Þ Jesus Christ came to save man from perishing and to give man an abundant life both now and eternally.

Þ Jesus Christ said that God had sent Him to make God known.

This means something very significant: if we are to know God, we must know Jesus Christ. God has revealed Himself and made Himself known through Jesus Christ and through Christ alone. Therefore, to know God we must know Jesus Christ whom He has sent. How do we know if we know God? If we know Jesus Christ, then we know God.

Now, note exactly what the verse says.

This verse says explicitly that we know God if we keep God’s commandments. What are God’s commandments?

God’s chief commandment is this: that we believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another. There are two things said here.

1. First, to know God we must believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ. If we believe in Christ, then we come to know God, for Jesus Christ came to earth to reveal God. By believing in Jesus Christ we keep God’s commandment.

2. Second, to know God we must love one another. Love covers all the commandments of God. If we love one another, we will not hurt or cause pain for one another; we will not offend or sin against one another. We will be keeping all the commandments of God. This is exactly what Scripture declares.

The point is this: How do we know if we know God? Take a test: Do we keep God’s commandments? If we keep God’s commandments, then we believe in Jesus Christ, that he is God’s Son, and we love one another. We surrender all we are and have to Jesus Christ and to loving one another. Unless we are doing these two things, we do not know God. No matter what a person may say, he does not know God if he has never given his life to Jesus Christ. And he does not know God if he criticizes, grumbles, and backbites his brother and commits adultery, kills, steals, lies, covets, or does anything else against his brother. If a person really knows God, then he wants to please God. He wants to know more and more about God, and the only way he can know more and more about God is to follow God. He has to do the things that God does, to walk and love as God walks and loves. The more we walk and love as God does, the more we will come to know God. Therefore, if we keep His commandments, we know Him. This is the way we can tell if we know Him, the only way.

Some people seek to know God. They seek after God, but they do it in the wrong way.

1) Some speculate about God. This is the route most people take in trying to know God. They imagine what God is like and hold that image in their mind and try to live by what they imagine. They have their own teachings and their own images of what God is like, and they govern their lives by that image.

2) Some try to seek and know God by mystical or emotional experiences. They seek to know the spiritual world and its focus through spiritists, astrology, seances, magic, and a host of other man-made mystical experiences.

(2:4) Profession, False: there is the man who makes a false profession. Scripture is direct and pulls no punches:

“He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4).

It is absolutely impossible to know God and not to keep Him commandments. Why? For one clear reason: if God really exists, then He created us. We came from God. He created us for some purpose; He put us on earth for some reason. Therefore, He is bound to tell us why He created us; He is bound to tell us what He wants us to do and exactly how to do it. He would defeat His purpose if He did not. Therefore, God would never leave us in the dark, groping and grasping and trying to find out the truth. He would be a God of hate if He left us in the dark, and He is the farthest thing from hate. Jesus Christ has shown us that God is love, that God loves us so much that He has given us the Holy Scriptures to tell us what to do. But more than this, God has shown us His love by giving His Son to live the truth out right before our eyes. God has not only given us His written Word that tells us how to live, He has given us the Living Word in the life of His Son. God has sent His very own Son to live the perfect and ideal life upon earth so that we might know how to live. Jesus Christ lived out the will of God; He lived just like God commands man to live. Therefore, He knew God perfectly. He had perfect communion and fellowship with God.

The point is this: if a person says that he knows God and does not keep God’s commandments, he is a liar. The only way a person can know God is to follow Jesus Christ, to walk in fellowship with God just like Jesus Christ did. A person has to follow the perfect and ideal life of Jesus Christ. The person has to walk and live as Jesus Christ walked and lived; he has to follow Jesus Christ and do exactly what Jesus Christ says in order to know God. This is what Jesus Christ did: He kept all the commandments of God; therefore, He knew God perfectly. This is exactly what man must do. Man must follow Jesus Christ and do exactly what Christ did: keep the commandments of God. When man keeps the commandments of God, then he will come to know God.

But note: the converse is also true. If a man does not keep God’s commandments, then he does not know God. This is exactly what this verse says. Note it again.

“He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4).

Note: this person makes a false profession. His knowledge of God—what he thinks God is like—is false. His image of God and the ideas within his mind of God are not true. They are false, counterfeit, not genuine. The person does not know God at all. How can we tell? Because he does not keep the commandments of God. He has not truly believed in Jesus Christ, nor is he loving his brother like God commands. He is not walking like Jesus Christ walked, not obeying God nor doing what God says to do. The verse is clear; note it: the person is a liar and the truth is not in him. He is making a false profession.

(2:5) Profession, True—Obedience: there is the obedient man. The obedient man keeps God’s Word and knows God and loves God. Note how obedience is tied to knowing and loving God. All these things are involved in knowing anyone. The only way to know anyone is...

· to get near them.

· to study them, learn all about them—all about their will, desires, and wants, their nature and thoughts and behavior.

The same is true with God. The only way to know God is to get near Him and study Him, learning all we can about His will, desires, and wants; all about His nature and thoughts and behavior. But how can we do this when God is in the spiritual world, another whole dimension of being, a world that is far removed from this world? By Jesus Christ. Remember: Jesus Christ came to earth to reveal God and to show us how to draw near God. Therefore, to know God, we must draw near Jesus Christ and follow the example He left us. We must follow the Word of Christ; we must keep the Word of Christ, living exactly as He lived. This is the person who knows God.

Note a most wonderful result: the person who keeps God’s Word has the love of God perfected in his life. What does this mean? When we draw near God and begin to keep His Word, we begin to establish a relationship with God. It is just like a boy who meets a girl and begins to draw near her. He begins to know her and to develop affection for her, and the more he associates with her, the more he loves her. So it is with God. The more we draw near Him and keep His Word and please Him, the more we learn about Him and love Him. The word “keep” (terei) is continuous action. It means to continue on and not to stop. It means day by day obedience. If we keep God’s Word day by day, then we learn more and more about God; we learn to love Him more and more. His love becomes perfected, completed, and fulfilled in us.

The obedient person is the person who knows God and loves God. He is the person who knows the love of God; he knows all the fulness of life that God’s love brings. No matter what a person may profess—no matter how religious a person may be—if he does not obey God, he does not know God. Neither does he love God.

(2:6) Believer, Duty—Walk, Spiritual: there is the responsible man, the man who lives up to his profession. The word “walk” (peripatein) is continuous action. It means to keep on walking; to continuously walk. If a person says that he abides in Christ, he must be a responsible person. He ought to walk as Jesus Christ walked. In fact, the word ought means debt, constraint, obligation. The person who professes Jesus Christ, who claims that he knows God, is obligated to walk as Jesus Christ walked. He is in debt to walk as Christ walked. How did Christ walk upon earth? He walked...

· believing and trusting God

· worshipping and praying to God

· fellowshipping and communing with God

· giving and sacrificing all He was and had to God

· seeking and following after God

· teaching and telling others about God

· loving and caring for others just as God said to do

· obeying and keeping all of God’s commandments

This is the responsible man, the man who lives what he professes. If he professes to know God, he walks even as the Lord Jesus Christ walked upon earth. He believes and trusts God; he worships and prays to God, and he does all the other things that Christ did. He walks in the footsteps of Christ, doing exactly what Christ did. This is the person who knows God.

CONCLUSION

So, the question is this: How is the love of God perfected on earth? Can the world truly see the love of God? We are the perfection of God’s love, for when we demonstrate our love, we will demonstrate God’s love. The only picture of God that much of the world will see will be through the life that each of us lives. If we do not live sober, righteous, and godly lives, the world will never know the love of God. In the words of John “if anyone obeys His word, God’s love is truly made complete in him” (2:6).