Joy Made Complete (1 John 1:1-4)
Be Assured, So Your Joy Will Be Made Complete
We are the people of God who have been given this tremendous mission to go out into all the world and take the good news of our Conquering King into enemy occupied territory where Satan prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). So, we find ourselves in a bit of cosmic warfare. Though our King has already conquered, and our victory is assured, we are amid a battle against the forces of darkness. And if we are going to be faithful in this battle, one thing we need is confidence that we are one of God’s people.
My wife and I had a conversation last week concerning the full armor of God. She had heard a sermon from John Macarthur about the helmet of salvation and that this helmet that we were to go into war with was not only our salvation, but confidence in our salvation as well. The courageous warrior needs to be equipped with confidence in his salvation.
This is especially true in a day like ours. Our society seems to be coming apart at the seams. We have lived through a period of months with cities around the country burning and the capital building was stormed just a few days ago. And this isn’t even the most troubling of things happening. The family structure is falling apart, chaos reigns in our country because chaos reigns in our homes. Paganism believed that the world started with chaos and the “gods” did some things and the world was as it is. And it’s no surprise that as Western Society becomes more pagan it acts more pagan. Children are slaughtered on the altar of the goddess convenience all while the number of women and children abused in our society grows to look more and more like the horribly abusive ancient Rome that Christianity improved. And as the seams are removed and hostility to Christ grows we find ourselves within a warfare that we need to be equipped for. So to be courageous warriors within this society we will need to be people equipped with confidence in our salvation.
The week previous to this discussion I’d been pondering and praying about the direction for the sermons. After this conversation I knew what we would be discussing in the weeks to come. We would be looking at the Book of 1 John. The Book of 1 John was written so that we would have that confidence.
Introduction to 1 John
I want to begin this series by giving some color to this book.
John was very young when he was a disciple of Jesus. The disciples would have all been relatively young, probably between the ages of 13 and 30. And the images we find in the gospel accounts of John let us know that he was the youngest. He was paired up with the oldest of all the disciples, Peter, and is portrayed more delicately than the others. I believe he was likely under the age of 16 when he began as Jesus’s disciple, but we can’t go too young with his age because by the time Jesus died on the cross, he was old enough to take care of Jesus’s Mom.
Most people agree that the Gospel of John was written around AD 90. That is the consensus today, but there are some really good arguments for it having been written earlier than that. And after this, the letter of 1 John was written. Interestingly, the Early Church was already quoting the Letter of 1 John by AD 110 in the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp who were themselves disciples of John.
The reason for the writing of 1 John is obvious. There were a group of people named docetists, “dokeo” means “to seem”. They taught that Jesus didn’t really die in the flesh, but only seemed to do so. This heresy was the seed of “Gnosticism”, which you can find in bookstores today claiming to be Christian and ran horribly rampant a few hundred years after the writing of 1 John. The Gnostic writings are things you’ve likely heard of such as, “The Gospel of Thomas” and “The Gospel of Mary”. And they believed that they had a secret understanding of how the world worked that others did not have. John was not alive to see Docetism turn into Gnosticism, but he began fighting it before it was full grown. These people were travelling around the area, teaching a false gospel and causing the believers in the area around Ephesus to have doubts about their salvation and totally misunderstand the Christian life. John was attempting to help these believers have gospel certainty amid the uncertainty all around them.
I would like to insert a little humor into this background from John’s life that helps us to understand the context of the Book of 1 John. John lived a long life and personally discipled many of the biggest names in the Early Church. Ignatius and Polycarp are two named that you may have run across in your reading. This is a description of an encounter John apparently had with a man named Cerinthus who was one of these false teachers.
“Iranaeus records in Adversus Haereses, (Against Heresies) the famous anecdote told by Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, that ‘John the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cernthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming “Let us fly, let even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth is within!””—John Stott, The Letters of John, Intervarsity Press, 2009, p. 49
Iranaeus described Cerinthus as having,
“represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation, while he nevertheless was more righteous, prudent, and wiser than other men. Moreover, after his baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler, and that then he proclaimed the unknown Father, and performed miracles. But at last Christ departed from Jesus, and that then Jesus suffered and rose again.”— John Stott, The Letters of John, Intervarsity Press, 2009, p. 49
So, to sum this up in a more succinct manner, Cerinthus and the Docetists separated Jesus the man from the divine. And the human Jesus separated from God at times during the life of Christ. And John fiercely fought against this false teaching…and so should we.
I can think of a good number of modern beliefs that claim to be Christian that are similar to what John was fighting here.
Mormons believe that God the Father and God the Son were once mortal and grew into their divine status. So, they believe that Jesus was not always God, but they also believe that the rest of the Trinity was not always God.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that God the Son was not eternal, but a created being and that Jesus was not God in the human flesh, but a mere human. This is modern day Gnosticism. This is the full grown version of the Docetists heresy that John stood against and it has survived even to today.
Many Pentecostals are “Oneness Pentecostals”. They teach that God exists in one person and has revealed Himself at different times as different persons.
The “Word of Faith” preachers that you oftentimes catch on television asking for money are very similar to Gnostics in their understanding of a secret knowledge and secret revelation from God that only they know.
So the dangers that John saw in Cerinthus, that led him to flee the bath-house in Ephesus still survive today.
We usually call 1 John a letter, and at some point it began to function that way, but it is not structured like a letter. It was probably a sermon written by John that was taken to different churches in the area and given as an address. And it was probably a sermon that was delivered by other people and then circulated among the churches. There is an intimate closeness in this message to those who would hear it. If John was 16 when Jesus died then this letter would have been written when he was around 84 years old. And given the distance between churches and the terrain around the area it would have been difficult for him to take this message to all of these churches himself.
The reason he wanted this message to go forth to the churches is given at the end of 1 John.
“These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”—1 John 5:13 NASB
The Christians in these churches had been upset by the teachings of these heretics and it caused them to doubt their own relationship with Christ. And though the heretics had already left the church, they had enough contact with the true believes to still be upsetting them. John, like a good pastor would, wanted them to be assured of the truth and assured of their relationship to Christ.
Insecurities like this cause insecurities about delivering the life-giving message of Christ and also about being able to live out the teachings of Christ. We need gospel certainty of we are going to live faithfully amid the uncertainty that surrounds us. That is what John wanted to give his hearers and readers. That’s what I hope you all have at the end of this series of sermons. It’s what God desires His people to have, and that’s why He gave to us the Book of 1 John.
Now, let’s begin to dig into 1 John and see how John begins to give these believers gospel certainty amid the chaos that surrounded them. He wants them to be assured so that their salvation would be complete.
Be assured, so your joy will be complete.
Read 1 John 1:1-4
Be assured, so your joy will be complete.
Be Assured, God The Son Came In The Flesh (Vv. 1-3)
These first three verses are one long sentence in the Greek text. That is a little difficult for us to render into English, but some translations did a better job at it than others. The emphasis of this long sentence is the person of Jesus Christ and not the proclamation. The New Living Translation and the New International Version change the emphasis of the text when they move the proclamation to early in the sentence. It just seems to fog up the meaning a bit, though it reads more like an English sentence that way.
The first thing we notice is that God the Son has always existed. What or Who was it that was from the beginning that was heard, seen, looked at, touched? John starts this letter in a very similar way to the beginning of the Gospel of John, which was itself a call back to Genesis 1:1.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”—John 1:1 NASB
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”—Genesis 1:1 NASB
Way back before time began, God the Son was there. God the Son has always been there. He is “what was from the beginning”. And He did not remain hidden.
God the Son revealed Himself to the Apostles, this includes John who is the person writing this text. God the Son came, and we just celebrated that at Christmas time. We celebrated God the Son taking on human flesh and dwelling among us. And here John says over and over that he and the other disciples saw Him, heard Him preach, teach, give words of encouragement, rebuke people, and touched Him…John laid his head on the chest of the Word of Life (John 13:23), and the Word of Life washed his feet.
I keep calling Jesus the Word of Life because that is what John is doing in the text. God the Son is identical to the message they’ve delivered. That is the gospel. Our message is Jesus. Jesus is the message. Jesus is what we are all about. What is the Word of Life that John delivered and that we deliver today? It is the message of Jesus.
And this message of Jesus did not end with a delivery to the Apostles. This message of Jesus was revealed to the Apostles and proclaimed to us as well. God the Son was revealed to us through the Apostles. They were uniquely qualified as those who were with Jesus to deliver the message of the true Jesus.
Against the backdrop of Cerinthus and the Docetists John says, “We saw Jesus, we heard Jesus, we felt Jesus. We are the people who know who Jesus is and Cerinthus and his followers do not. We have the message that can be trusted. We have the message of the Word of Life.” Anyone who thinks about court cases knows that eye-witness testimony is a huge deal. And here, John says, we are the eye-witnesses, they are just making stuff up.
The accounts of Jesus are not a random mass of myth that came down through history. Jesus was a historical person, God the Son who took on human flesh. He was seen by people in history who wrote down eye-witness testimony concerning Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. These are eye-witness accounts that were in circulation during the lifetime of other eye-witnesses. And not only were they willing to write preach and write down this testimony, but it was a testimony that most of them died for. And the one person who lived to old age is here declaring that the testimony of the Apostles concerning Jesus was trustworthy and true. Despite what you have seen some people say on the History Channel or YouTube, you can be assured that Jesus is who the Scriptures say that He is.
God the Son came to Earth, took on human flesh, taught in human flesh, lived in human flesh, and this was seen and testified to by other people. And we have the testimony of that in the Scriptures. There were competing messages about who Jesus was, and that same thing happens today. But these are not questions that are mysterious or that we don’t have enough information on. The accounts we have in Scripture are trustworthy eyewitness accounts of the Word of Life. God the Son has always existed. He came to Earth, took on human flesh and was heard, seen, looked at, and touched by the disciples. The Word of Life was manifested, or revealed, to the Apostles.
As a church we can live and work in confidence because God the Son actually came to Earth in the flesh. There are many people today that scoff at this fact, but we can work in confidence knowing that Jesus is who the Scriptures say that He is. We know what He was like. We know what He taught. And we know the salvation that He accomplished. This means that we can be assured that He really accomplished the salvation that we trust in. You are holding the eyewitness testimonies of who Jesus is in your hands every time you pick up your Bible. And that can give us great assurance and joy.
Be Assured, You Have Eternal Life (Vv. 2-3)
A helpful thing to consider when looking at these verses is what John understands eternal life to be. What does John tell us that eternal life is?
“This is eternal life, that they may know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ who You have sent.”—John 17:3 NASB
Eternal life is being united to God in fellowship. Now notice what John says at the beginning of this message. John and the other Apostles were eye-witnesses to the Word of Life and they proclaimed eternal life, or fellowship with God that had been revealed to them.
The life that God has always had in Himself, this perfect fellowship and unity within the Godhead was extended to the Apostles when God the Son came to Earth. Eternal life was revealed to the Apostles at that time and they proclaimed that message and since then, as people come to faith in Christ, person after person has been brought into that fellowship and proclaimed that message. God’s perfect fellowship has expanded and expanded until now and it includes us and many other people around the globe.
All the world fell in Adam. The human race is now a rebellious race and God is perfect, holy, and will not tolerate sin in His presence. Rather than just allowing the entire human race to go its own way and be destroyed by His just wrath, God made a way for us to be brought into fellowship with Him. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ to come to Earth and accomplish salvation for us. We can be brought into fellowship with God through the finished work of Christ. He lived a perfect life, doing everything that we should have done. Then He died on the cross and took the entire punishment for the sins of everyone who would ever believe upon Himself. Then, three days later He rose from the grave victorious over sin, death, and Hell. Now, those who trust in Him are credited with His perfect obedience, our sins are taken away from us and cleansed in Christ, and we are given resurrection life all because Jesus came and perfectly achieved and accomplished our salvation for us. And we are united to God in perfect fellowship. What wonderful good news!
And the message does not end here. We are also brought into fellowship with other believers. John says we are brought into fellowship with God and also with the Apostles. We are brought into the circle of fellowship with God and with one another through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
The eternal life that Jesus Christ gives, that has been testified about by the Apostles and faithful witnesses throughout the ages is not a “Get Out Of Hell Free” card. It is being brought into fellowship with God and God’s people through the finished work of Christ. Yes, those in this relationship are saved from the wrath of God that falls upon all who reject the Savior, but it is much, much more than that. If you have eternal life then you have fellowship with the Triune God and His children.
Christian, Jesus Christ has purchased eternal life for you. This eternal life is fellowship with God and fellowship with one another. There is both a vertical and horizontal element to eternal life. If you have fellowship with God then you will also have fellowship with other believers. The people that John was speaking against believed that they didn’t have to have fellowship with other believers because they had a secret and special knowledge. John begins attacking that idea and will waylay it quite a few times before this letter is finished. These things cannot be separated. The Church is not a country club that came together because we all liked similar things and could afford to do those things with each other. We are “one in the bond of love”, united to Christ and united to one another. We are not united by political affiliations, shared hobbies, ages, we are united in Christ within this eternal life.
And we share the message of Christ with others so that others will be brought into fellowship with God and with other believers. This is an expanding circle of eternal life that has been accomplished by Christ, but we proclaim to others just as others have proclaimed it throughout the ages. And we want to share this message with others in our neck of the woods and beyond.
I would like to quote John Stott here, this is from his commentary on 1 John,
“This statement of the apostolic objective in the proclamation of the gospel, namely, a human fellowship arising spontaneously from a divine fellowship, is a rebuke to much of our modern evangelism and church life. We cannot be content with an evangelism which does not lead to the drawing of converts into the church, nor with a church life whose principle of cohesion is a superficial social comeraderie instead of a spiritual fellowship with the Father and with the Son Jesus Christ.”-John Stott, The Letters of John, Intervarsity Press, 2014 p. 68
Eternal life is about more than avoiding the heat of Hell. It’s about fellowship with God and one another. And when we go to the world with the message of the gospel we are declaring to them that they have offended God and can be in fellowship with Him again. And being in fellowship with God means that they will be in fellowship with one another.
Be Assured And Have Joy Complete (V. 4)
When John wrote 1 John he was likely in his mid 80’s – early 90’s. And he has known the people in these churches for a very long time. As we progress through this letter that is something that will come out plainly. He cares deeply for them and has for many years. These people were hurting. As the letter progresses we will find that a good number of people have left their church because they were following the teaching of these false teachers. And John comes to these people with a message. He wants them to have joy complete. Many of these believers now doubted their salvation because of the different things that had occurred and John comes to them, wanting them to know they have eternal life and have joy complete.
The Christian can have assurance of their relationship with God and have joy complete. This is harder for some people than for others, I will admit. But it is attainable and something that we should desire. Jesus purchased a relationship with God and with His children. And the tremendous blessing of this and knowing this with certainty gives to the believer joy complete.
Christian, you may be here today and having serious doubts about your relationship with God. John wrote this letter for that very purpose. And it is my desire that everyone within this church that is a true believer will have full assurance of their fellowship with God. I want for you to feel the full blessing of the gospel and its effect on your life. When we are assured of God’s love for us and the love of our brothers and sisters in Christ we can have a special kind of joy in this life.
I also want for you to be equipped to take on a harsh and dangerous enemy that prowls around like a roaring lion. How are you going to take on Satan and his attacks without that assurance?
How are you going to lean faithfully upon Christ in the heard times if you don’t have that assurance, if you do not know you are His?
How are you going to withstand persecution if you do not know that you are His?
How are you going to be a faithful witness for Him if you don’t know for sure you are His?
And here, in the first part of 1 John, it is declared to us that we can have joy complete because we are assured that God the Son came in the flesh and brought fellowship with God and other believers to us.
R. Dwain Minor