1 John 2:3-8 & 1 John 1:4-9 by Charles Clough
Series:1 John
Duration:47 mins 20 secs
© Charles A. Clough 2013
Charles A. Clough
1 John Series
Lesson 11 – The Preamble Continued:
Fellowship with the Father Distinguished from Fellowship with the Son
24 Nov 2013
Fellowship Chapel, Jarrettsville, MD
www.bibleframework.org
We’re in 1 John today—I hope we’ll finish that section from 1 John 2:3–8, which is the fellowship of the Son. We’ve done the Father, and have moved to the Son.
(Opening prayer)
On the handout today I’ve got a pretty extensive review of the first section from 1 John 1:5–2:2, which deals with our fellowship with the Father. The reason I’m doing that—and I’m going to ask some of you to read. I need four volunteers to read, if you’ll see down there where it says Psalm 32, Psalm 38, Proverbs 14, and Proverbs 17. If I can have somebody read those when we get down to that point—I’d appreciate it.
The reason we’re taking one whole sheet (one side of one sheet) this morning for this section on God the Father is because it dawned on me afterwards that this is a basic truth of the Christian life. We want to be sure we understand it.
This is sort of a spiritual first aid point, which is just confession. This is why on the handout where it says right under fellowship with the Father, we must come to terms with His holy nature. We’re trying to be specific on the different ways we interact.
It appears that John is presenting us with a situation where he’s saying that we interact with the Father in a slightly different way than we interact with the Son by the way he uses his vocabulary. We’ve already done 1 John 1:5–2:2 when it seems very, very clear from that section of text that we’re interacting with the Father’s holiness.
NKJ 1 John 1:5, “… that God is light …”
Then he emphasizes:
“and in Him is no darkness at all.”
So we look at 1 John 1:9, which is the central verse in that section as far as we personally are concerned in our Christian life.
NKJ 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
A little commentary there—I wanted to run through that—if you follow.
“If we confess our sins, …”
It’s the sins we’re confessing. We confess them as sins. We don’t confess them as mistakes. We don’t confess them as accidents. We confess them as authentic choices that we’ve made in defiance of His holy nature. That’s what confessing sin means.
The point here is that subtly there can arise because remember we are in an evil, hostile environment, so that means we’re constantly facing deceptive thoughts that are coming into our minds. One of the deceptive thoughts is that God won’t forgive us unless we vow, unless we pledge some—be good boys and girls or something like that. That doesn’t really count. The issue in confession is that we’re coming and we’re saying—we’re acknowledging personal responsibility for a bad choice. That’s what it’s all about. It’s not about vowing. It’s not about being a good boy if You’ll forgive me. That’s not what you read in 1 John1:9.
What we read is:
NKJ 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just …”
He’s going to do what He says. He’s going to do it justly, which means that He’s got to rely on the cleansing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ. It’s not an arbitrary forgiveness, as you would have in other religions, which say somehow God or Allah forgives if he wants to or if you’re a good boy or good girl. That doesn’t cut it because the issue isn’t us. The issue is God’s character. Is that character going to be compromised in the fashion in which He forgives? The answer biblically—no, because it says it’s the blood of Jesus Christ that is the mechanism here under which it goes. “He is faithful and just.”
Then if you’ll follow again where it says in italics:
“… to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
There’s a distinction going on there between sin and righteousness or unrighteousness. Commentators have generally felt that the sins are the sins and the unrighteousness—probably the best kind of understanding of this is attitudes and outlooks that are dangerous that are cycling around in our minds that could very easily sprout into sin. If confession is clear and we understand what it is we are doing at confession, then that acts as a deterrent against what we’ll call potential areas in our lives for sin.
Now going down the next step in that outline you’ll see where it says:
“Must recognize the reality of two category existence …”
Why have I put that in there? That’s in there to protect us from thinking in psychological terms. Confession is not a psychological device. It’s not something that is there to make us feel good. It’s there to deal with the problem in the throne room of God. That’s what’s going on here. It’s the Creator/creature distinction again [Slide 2]. This is the universe as the Bible presents the universe, not as psychologists present the universe.
We are living in two different worlds. We’re either living in the universe, the reality that secular psychology says, or we’re living in the reality that the Bible says. In the reality that the Bible says we are in this universe and there is a throne room of God and what we do down here has immediate application up there. [Slide 3]
We have to deal with what’s going on up there. We can’t smell it, see it, taste it. So, we have to go to the Word of God to understand what is going on up there. That’s why this is so important.
David in Psalm 51:4—when David confesses sin—Psalm 51 is a key confession psalm. It’s a model of how King David dealt with his personal sin. There are three psalms actually that are David’s confession psalms. But Psalm 51:4 has this very important point and people misunderstand this, when it says:
NKJ Psalm 51:4, “Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight …”
We have some people at work in local city government that see the county court system. When a crime is committed, technically is the crime against the victim or the crime against the State of Maryland? Ever hear a court proceeding? It’s against the State of Maryland—not against the victim. You’ve injured or hurt the victim but that would not be a crime if there were not a law that says it’s a crime. The law that says that is a crime is the law of the State of Maryland. So the issue there is between the criminal and the state. That’s why it’s in court.
That’s analogous to what David’s saying, that yes, he did evil, yes, he had her husband murdered. Yes, but the sin is against God and only against God because God is the one who set the standard. The injury is to the victim; but the crime is against God. That’s why confession is so important, because it deals with the crime just as the local court system deals with violation of local law.
Now if someone will read Psalm 32. If another person will start turning to Psalm 38 to volunteer to read that. Somebody pick up Psalm 32. Let’s all turn there, verses 2 through 4.
NKJ Psalm 32:2, “Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit.”
3 “When I kept silent, my bones grew old Through my groaning all the day long.
4 “For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah”
The reason why we’re reading those four selections in Scripture is another aspect of this confession thing. That is when we’re on the outs spiritually with God; we are also injuring our personal health.
In all the talk about health insurance and healthcare and so forth, people are forgetting the fact that in our country, it’s not just a healthcare problem. It’s a health problem. You wouldn’t have to have healthcare if there wasn’t a health problem to need to be cared for. So let’s push the logic back further and talk about health.
One of the testimonies here is, and it shouldn’t surprise us if you think about what was just read here in the text, if our bodies are in God’s image and if our bodies are designed the way the Bible says they are designed and we’re not living the way our Creator wants us to live; is it any wonder that when we’re out of sorts with the Lord we’re also injuring ourselves?
So this is self-induced misery. Sin not only deals with what’s going on in the throne room of God above us; but it also deals with the damage we’re doing to our bodies.
I was reading in research last year where some of the neuro-cardiologists that are watching the brain-heart connection are pointing out that when we get angry, there are 1,500 chemical reactions that go on between the time you want to be angry and the time the hormones and everything else get going in your body. Fifteen hundred chemical reactions are triggered just by anger. So this is why you can ingest toxic substances into your body; but you can also create the same reaction through a toxic substance by the way you live, if you’re not in league with God.
So David is recording this.
He says: (I am reading the New King James Version here.)
3 “When I kept silent, my bones grew old Through my groaning …”
the Hebrew word is almost a constant moaning.
“… all the day long.
4 “For day and night …”
This is 24-hour stuff.
“Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer.”
If that isn’t talking about a health problem, I don’t know what it is talking about.
Let’s go to Psalm 38 and look at verses 1 to 8.
NKJ Psalm 38:1, “A Psalm of David. To bring to remembrance. O LORD, do not rebuke me in Your wrath, Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure!
2 “For Your arrows pierce me deeply, And Your hand presses me down.
3 “There is no soundness in my flesh Because of Your anger, Nor any health in my bones Because of my sin.
4 “For my iniquities have gone over my head; Like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me.
5 “My wounds are foul and festering Because of my foolishness.
6 “I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long.
7 “For my loins are full of inflammation, And there is no soundness in my flesh.
8 “I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil”
Is that a health problem or not? It’s interesting what happens in a secular culture. When you think of a health problem, you think of going to the doctor and getting a pill. But the Bible says that we’re not just bodies. We’re also souls and bodies. The soul can affect the body. Ironically in this concern about health, what we as Christians—biblically we ought to do self-examination as to whether we’re creating half of our health problems ourselves with our attitudes.
Let’s go to Proverbs 14:30. Turn over there and see what the topic there is in Proverbs 14:30.
NKJ Proverbs 14:30, “A sound heart is life to the body, But envy is rottenness to the bone …”
Health problem here? You wonder—the health problems in our country will eventually bankrupt us if it hasn’t already. We’re talking billions and billions of dollars here. Now wouldn’t it be an interesting study for someone to research what percent of the billions and billions of dollars we’re spending on healthcare are due to this kind of problem?
And finally let’s turn to Proverbs 17:22.
NKJ Proverbs 17:22, “A merry heart does good, like medicine, But a broken spirit dries the bones.”
Again body-mind interaction going on here. I present those to show that confession, while it deals vertically with God because we are made in God’s image, the connection with health comes through the fact that we are created in His image. Our bodies are created with a chemistry and a physique that is intended to walk in fellowship with God, so if we don’t walk in fellowship with God, a price is paid in our health. There are physical results.
Now the last part in this section is on the Father here. Let’s turn to Psalm 139. Stay in this section of the Bible. Psalm 139 I’ve always found to be a nice prelude to 1 John 1:9. 1 John 1:9 says:
NKJ 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins,”
Well, how do I know what sins to confess?
Psalm 139:23 is a useful verse in executing this procedure.
NKJ Psalm 139:23, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties;
NKJ Psalm 139:24, “And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.”
Verse 23 is a prayer request where you ask the Lord to show you these things. This takes time. It takes quiet time. You can’t be sitting there listening to radio, watching TV, and texting and executing this verse. It doesn’t work. You have to have some quiet time where you turn off the email and shut off the electronics and relax and ask the Lord to show you where you sinned so you can confess it and deal with it.
Proverbs 6 is a great passage, a small passage. The emphasis in Proverbs 6 shows you something about sin’s scope. In Proverbs 6:16 is a list. I broke the list down there in the outline.
NKJ Proverbs 6:16, “These six things the LORD hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
17 “A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood,
18 “A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil,
19 “A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren.”
Those are seven things. Two of the things are thought patterns or mental attitude sins, three are sins of the tongue, and two are overt. If you look at the distribution statistically of those seven, the emphasis isn’t just on overt acts. The emphasis is on mental attitudes and sins of the mouth.
So that also says something about the pattern of sins in our lives. At least 5/7ths, statistically 5/7ths of sins in this list, have nothing to do with overt acts. They have to do with mental attitudes and running off at the mouth. This also is a great profile. All of this is part and parcel of 1 John 1:9 and the ramifications of this.
Finally I’d like to turn over to the New Testament Matthew 6. This is one area that’s the hardest I think because you get so involved with personal interactions. But in Matthew 6:14 Jesus warns us of something about our interactions with other people. This is always very delicate hot button issues. But Jesus said in verses 14 and 15:
NKJ Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
NKJ Matthew 6:15, “But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
So that creates a block to executing 1 John 1:9. The reason for this is that if we don’t forgive others, we don’t understand grace. If we don’t understand grace; we can’t understand grace through us. Caution in verses 14 and 15, Jesus is adamant about forgiving others their transgressions against us. He illustrated that at the Cross.
NKJ Luke 23:34, “…Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do …”
But forgiving someone a sin is not saying you approve of the sin. That’s where we get confused.
People say, “I’m not going to forgive him. That was wrong.”
That’s right. That’s why we forgive them. The act of forgiveness is not saying that what’s out there that led to what created the problem, isn’t sin. Yes, it is. Jesus wasn’t saying when He said:
NKJ Luke 23:34, “Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.’ ”
… that the Cross was not a justice issue. It had nothing to do with sins being laid upon Him. Of course, it did.
The point here is from our side (verses 14, 15) is why hurt ourselves unnecessarily by refusing to forgive someone? If they’ve done some injury to us, that’s their problem. And maybe it’s the state’s problem, government’s problem. Somebody that’s assaulted someone, raped them, or insulted them in some way. That’s a sin and the state will deal with that. And God will deal with that. We let Him deal with that or we let Him work through the state. It’s not wrong to bring a charge in a lawsuit against that if there’s a bonified wrong. But there can’t be bitterness—what it’s getting at we can’t be bitter here and harbor resentment and we’re going to be the ones that straighten everybody out. That’s not going to happen. We might as well relax, forgive them, move on and trust the Lord with it. It’s too much hassle to bother with it otherwise.
All of this today, this quick hasty run down here on this side of the sheet, is just to expand a little bit on the practical side.
(Question)
Paul’s bringing up a point here not to confuse here what deals with the relationship and what deals with salvation. That goes back to—remember what we said last time—the three phases of salvation: phase 1 justification, phase 2 sanctification, phase 3 glorification. We’re not even dealing with phase 3 other than knowing that it’s going to happen and to be absent from the body is to be face-to-face with the Lord.
All of our attention is on phase 2 unless we’re not saved yet, which would be salvation. The context of Matthew remember is the Sermon on the Mount context and He’s talking to a Jewish audience and He’s showing them what should have been their lifestyle under the Mosaic Law. Now many of them may not be saved; and that’s convicting. But Jesus is here addressing the whole Mosaic Law situation, which is addressed to sanctification.
We are going to move on because we want to get to 1 John 2 and finish the section. Now we’ve moved from the Father to the Son. So let’s go to 1 John. In your outline I’ve put the verses you want to look at here in the New King James. I’ve outlined them because you can circle them, underline, and show relationships—sort of using this as a worksheet.
Let’s point to some things. What I’m going to do is let’s read 1 John 2:3–5 again. Then I want to point out certain features of the text. For some of you this may seem picayune and going down to the microscopic level. Why I want to do this is to show that when we read the Scriptures we want to pay attention to details, particularly when you deal with New Testament epistles. It’s a little easier when you’re reading narrative in the Old Testament or you’re reading narrative in the Gospels. You can kind of get the sweep of the text. When you deal with these epistles, epistles were written to teach. They were necessarily compressed. So there are details in the details of the text that we want to look at. [Slide 4]
So, in 1 John, John is now saying:
NKJ 1 John 2:3, “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.”
The “Him” in this case is the Son, because in verses 1 and 2, he’s moved from the Father to the Son, who has propitiated the sins of the world.
NKJ 1 John 2:4, “He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
5 “But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.”
Now we want to stop there and look at the sheet for a moment. The text is on the sheet—want to look and observe certain things in the flow. Look at verse 3 and look at the first four words in verse 3. Then look down to verse 5b. I have divided a and b because a and b refer to clauses. You see an a and b—translators use that so they break up the clauses. So 5b is the last clause in this section. Look at the first four words in 5b. Do you notice something? They’re the same. This should trigger our observation. Wait a minute. Why does John repeat himself here? In fact, these four words are used several times throughout the epistle.
“by this we know”
Remember we said the verb “know” occurs 25 times in this epistle. That’s a lot of times in a small epistle. That tells you—just the statistical frequency of the word—tells you that John is after knowing. He wants us to know. The theme is going to be, as we’ll see later, confidence before God. We can’t have confidence before God if we don’t know and are sure of our faith. So know is important. If knowing is important, then isn’t it important to know how do we know? So that’s these four words.
How do we know? He’s telling you that you should know this and he’s also telling us how you know this. And he repeats it. There is another little feature to this. In the Greek text it’s en touto. Work has been done in this with Greek scholars. They discovered something.
When you see these four words with the Greek equivalent en touto when you see that, the next thing you need to look for is the clause in which that expression is found—is that clause—remember clause, subject, and predicate. So we have “by this we know”, subject and predicate. “By this” is hooked into a clause. Here’s the question. Is that clause in which you see that connected to another clause or not? That determines whether “by this we know” is looking forward or whether “by this we know” is working backwards.
Let’s look at 1 John 2:3. “By this we know” is connected to the clause
“that we know Him”
Then we follow it with another clause.
“if we keep His commandments.”
In this case “by this we know” has its own clause. That clause is hooked to another clause. Therefore, we know that “by this we know” is talking about something that is starting there and flowing forward in the text.
Now verse 5b:
“By this we know that we are in Him.”
Same thing, en touto in the Greek. It’s connected to a subject and a predicate so it’s hooked into a clause. But that clause doesn’t have any connecting clause to it. It ends. So that tells us that the second “by this we know” is looking back. It’s a summary. If that’s the case, verse 3 and verse 5b form brackets. The technical word for this by the scholars—they’ll use this word. It is an inclusio. That means it’s a chunk of text that is meant to be a unit. John is showing us that it’s a unit by the way he’s constructing this. So now what does the unit teach? If that’s a unit of text, what is the emphasis?
“By this we know that we have come to know Him.”
Then verse 5b:
“By this we know that we are in Him.”
What does that teach about how he uses a locative “in”? See what I’m saying? If you look at verse 3:
NKJ 1 John 2:3, “Now by this we know that we know Him,”
Then verse 5b says:
NKJ 1 John 2:5, “... By this we know that we are in Him.”
What does that say about the two clauses “we have come to know Him” and “we are in Him”? They are the same thing. This is saying—this is one of those cases where you look carefully at the text and now you understand when John uses “in Him,” this is what he means by the expression “in Him”—that we know Him, that we are familiar with Him.
See that’s different than Paul when he says that we are in Christ. That’s a forensic discussion. That’s a legal discussion. That’s totally different. Paul is using “in” differently than the way John uses “in.” You get to that conclusion by watching details of the text like this. We all know now that verse 3 and 5b are meant to be the same thing. They are talking about the same thing.
Now there is something else to notice. Look at the subject of the verbs in verses 3 and 5b and the subject of all the verbs in verses 4 and 5a. What do you notice different about the subject of the verbs in verses 3 and 5b on one hand and the subject of the verbs in 4 and 5a? Yes. Eventually yes they are. But let’s back up one before we get to that conclusion.
In verses 4 and 5a it’s a singular subject, is it not? It’s what we call third person. Remember back in English class—first, second, and third person? Let’s see. You’re teaching home school. You got ’em? First, second, and third person. The first person is I or we. The second person is you. The third person is he. Now look at the structure.
Verses 3 and 5b it’s we. Does “we” include John? Yes. This is a first-person plural. He’s including himself in this. So these are things that are true for the apostles themselves. This is sanctification. They are being sanctified, too.
In verses 4 and 5a he uses the third person. When he uses the third person in verses 4 and 5a he’s using that like we would. It’s a principle. It’s what you would say—a person does this, boom, boom, boom. The woman did that, boom, boom. A woman that does that, blah, blah, blah. A man that does that, blah, blah, blah.
In other words, verses 4 and 5a are teaching the principle. They are teaching an example. They’re teaching an example so we can look and say, “Okay. I understand this”. But it’s bracketed in verses 3 and 5b by “we” because that tells us the overall thrust of the passage.
The reason why I am making a big point about this is because when we read further in the epistle, you won’t see the bracketing any more. You won’t see the “we” on both ends. You’ll just see principle. You’ll use third person, third person, third person, third person. How do you understand the third person? Those are examples. He’s not even in verses 4 and 5a—it appears he has no one particularly in mind, does he?
Are these indefinite in their look? Yes. Verse 4 is indefinite. It’s he. It’s whoever. The translators in verse 5a—in fact the translators helped us out there because the translators have decided in verse 5a to use the translation “whosoever.” So, you can kind of understand these third persons as “whoevers”. Whosoever does this …
(Question)
Yeah, that’s true; but we use the sentence the same way he’s using it. We know it’s cold outside if the temperature is ... I’ve used the same construction.
(Question)
That’s right, but when you say, “I am”, that’s a conclusion of the temperature. I’m saying, “If—I know it’s cold outside if the temperature is below 30 like it was this morning.”
(Question)
But that’s not John’s point. John’s point is we can tell we know Him if we are keeping His commandments. He’s using this to modify the word “know”. How else is he going to modify “know”? See that’s the problem. The verb here is know. What he’s trying to say is, “How do I know?” I know only if something happens. I’ve got to have an observation.
Remember something else we studied. What was the first verse of this epistle? Let’s go back to the first verse of the epistle. What does the first verse of this epistle stress? Observations. This is tremendously important for John. Remember we said this guy, for some reason this particular author of the text, is very much obsessed almost with the sense of sight, sound, and touch [Slide 5].
He is the only man that goes in detail that famous passage on the doubting Thomas. What was it that helped Thomas no longer doubt? Touching. For some reason John was watching this and it registered with him that you can touch Jesus. You can see Him. That’s the glory of God. That’s why John, when he says, “We saw His glory,”—nowhere in his Gospel does he bring the Mount of Transfiguration up. How come that is? All the other guys talk about the Mount of Transfiguration. John doesn’t.
He says, “I saw the glory all the time.”
So obviously he’s talking about daily walking with Jesus—daily listening to Him. That to John is seeing the glory of God by John.
(Question)
John does write a unique Gospel; but John probably wrote it later. It’s almost like John filled in the gaps where the other men had done their jobs.
(Question)
Joel is pointing out the evidential thrust of it. Look for example in 1 John 1:2. Look at one of the verbs there. He uses that verb a lot. See the verbs, verse 2.
NKJ 1 John 1:2, “the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness …”
There you go. He uses the word testify. See he’s emphasizing this.
“I am reporting this to you.”
He’s talking to a generation. He seems to be talking to people that weren’t there. He’s defending the validity of what he has seen to an audience who apparently did not touch Him. In fact, if you look at verse 1, there’s a subtlety in the verb tenses that tells you this. In verse 1 it says:
NKJ 1 John 1:1, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, …”
Perfect tense
“which we have seen with our eyes,”
Those two verbs “hear” and “see”, he uses in verse 3, doesn’t he? See 1 John 1:3. There are those two verbs again. But in verse 1 there are four verbs. Verb #3 and verb #4 he does not use in verse 3 because verb 3 is we “gazed” upon Him and the fourth verb is we “touched” Him. Neither verb #3 nor verb #4 would be true to the generation to which he wrote. They couldn’t gaze upon Jesus any longer; and they certainly couldn’t touch Him. But they could be recipients of what John had seen and heard. We begin here to appreciate John’s thinking and that this was written by a real person.
We said already the verb “keep” is watch over, guard, or treat with respect. The thrust here is our relationship with Jesus Christ as we saw in John 14. Jesus says:
NKJ John 14:24, “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.”
So keeping His commandments is not just a legalistic “keep His commandments” kind of thing. It’s keep respecting the fact that Jesus’ words are identical to the Father’s words, that when we read Jesus’ words, it would be as though we were personally at Mt. Sinai and we were listening to God the Father speak. That’s the thrust of what he’s talking about here. It’s recognizing the deity and authority of Jesus Christ that He stands above everyone.
A couple of more comments—the other one is when it gets down to verse 5a.
NKJ 1 John 2:5, “But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him.”
We will deal later with this love of God, so I’m just going to pass by it right now. “Love of God” can be interpreted two different ways. We can talk about “of God”. In the Greek it’s a genitive. We can think of it as a subjective genitive. That is the love that God shows. In other words, “of God” means the love that comes out of God to me. That’s the subjective genitive, meaning the subject is God who is loving down to me.
But it can also go the other way. It can be an objective genitive, can it not? We love God. In that case the thing reverses. Why that’s important is because in John 14 Jesus does it. He says, “You will love Me and We will love you,”—a reciprocal arrangement, which is fellowship. So it can be an objective genitive here; it can be a subjective genitive because the relationship is reciprocal. It’s not always easy to separate these, but John 14:21–23 is the reference if you want to check reciprocity issue out for the objective and subjective genitive.
Now the other issue there in 1 John 2:5a is “perfected.” What does that mean? Perfection? Not really.
If we turn to John 4, let’s see how he uses that word. Always good when we are puzzled about a verb or a word is to go to the context. The nearest context is the same epistle written by the same guy.
NKJ 1 John 4:12, “No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.”
That’s not talking about perfection because verse 12 is talking about empirical observation. He has made the statement that no man has ever seen God. So how do you see God? You see God manifested among Christians. John makes this stunning claim that it is seeing God. So perfecting, the way verse 12 is using the word, suggests that the way John uses “perfection” means becomes operational. It becomes empirically observable. We will see this as we go on.
Going back to this in verse 5a:
NKJ 1 John 2:5, “But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is operational, is functioning in him.”
That’s important to John. It’s functioning. We can see it. We can observe it.
Finally, if you go to 1 John 2:6–8, we’ll finish this section.
NKJ 1 John 2:6 He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.
What do we know about abiding in Him? Verse 5 told us. Hereby we know that we are in Him, or we are abiding in Him. How do we know? He just said that; so it’s not a mystery. What’s he saying is, he who claim that he abides in Him ought to walk even as He walked.
What does 1 John 2:6 tell about the necessity of why there are four Gospels written in the Bible? How does this verse relate to the four Gospels? Let’s suppose our Bibles don’t have the four Gospels. They only have the epistles.
(Comment)
Exactly! This verse tells you why the God Holy Spirit has put four Gospels in here—so we know how He walked. How else would we know how Jesus walked? We can’t know unless there are some Gospels that tell us how He walked.
Finally, in verse 8:
NKJ 1 John 2:8, “Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.”
Know what we said a couple of weeks back? Secular scholars always talk about the Age of the Enlightenment with Descartes, Emanuel Kant. When does this verse say the Age of Enlightenment began? With Jesus Christ. So, it’s a claim of history.
NKJ 1 John 2:8, “Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.”
It doesn’t say the world is totally convinced here. It says now the true light is available. The highest revelation of God is now on the scene. There is no improved version ever again. Jesus is it. This is the finality of divine revelation.
Our time is up folks so next time we’ll move on to the last section in the first part of this epistle.
(Closing prayer)