Sermon: Full Assurance

First John is where we're at this morning. One of the main themes of this book, we've seen it already come up and it will repeat itself as we continue to study and read through this book. John wants us to know God. That's a, a major theme that this book, in fact, this word to know is used 34 times in 28 verses just in this short little letter. And as we look through the book of one John, there's really two ways that John brings this out for us,

that we know God theologically through revelation what God is like. John tells us what God is like, but we also know God experientially through our fellowship with him, through our communion. And so if you want to know God this morning, if you want to know what he is like, and if you want to experience God and in all parts of your life, then this is a book for you. Now that raises an important question, how do I know if I really know God?

How do I know if I know God? Now, some of you have been a Christian for a long period of time and for others maybe you're new to the Christian faith, but no matter where you are on this journey, on this, this journey of faith, this is a question that you will or have wrestled with. Do I really believe? Am I really born again? Do I really have a true faith in God? Our text this morning deals with this issue of assurance.

Can a Christian, should a Christian have a personal assurance that he or she is a child of God? In John's answer to that question is an emphatic yes. He wants us. He wants you to know that you are counted among God's children because he doesn't want us just to have an intellectual knowledge or comprehension of God. He wants us to delight in God. He wants us to have confidence that we are walking on the right path. He wants us to build

and establish our assurance so that our joy and his joy may be complete. So before we read our passage this morning, join me as we pray and ask for the Lord's help. Father in heaven, the unfolding of your words gives light, it imparts understanding to the simple. I pray you'd give us all ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts to believe, and minds that comprehend all the riches of your grace that you have given to us in Christ and whose name we pray.

Amen. Follow along as I read. This is one John chapter two starting in verse seven.

Beloved, I'm writing you no new command but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard at the same time. It is a new commandment that I'm writing to you, which is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light

and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he's going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. I am writing to you little children because your sins are forgiven for his namesake. I'm writing to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. I'm writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one.

I write to you children because you know the Father I write to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one. Amen. Well, assurance as the Puritan William Perkins once said is the greatest case of conscience. That is, it's the greatest issue for the believer because if you are convinced, if you are assure,

if you have certainty in your deepest thoughts and feelings, that's your conscience, that God's favor is truly upon you, then you will live victoriously in whatever condition you find yourselves in. So John is writing this letter first John, so that you may be assured that you know God and having assurance of this, that you had increasingly deny delight in God and in all the blessings in has given to us in Christ. And so as we come to our text here in one John,

we're gonna start here. That assurance of faith is grounded upon the divine truth of all. The promises of salvation. Assurance of faith is grounded upon the truth, the divine truth of all of the promises of salvation. We're gonna look at the second portion of our text this morning verses 12 through 14. Now in this letter, John uses this word to write 13 different times in our passage this morning. He uses it eight times

and here in these three verses 12 through 14, he uses it six times. He says, I'm writing, I am writing, I am writing and then slightly switching the tents. I write, I write, I write. Now why does John do this? Well, here we see John pleading with his recipients. So you remember this is a letter that would be read among all the churches. It was a circular letter and you can see here in the ESV how the format is slightly different.

It shows us there's a unique structure to these verses. It seems John here is appealing not just to an audience in general, but he pauses in the middle to make his personal appeal. And so he addresses little children. Now he uses this particular word to refer to all of his audience. He uses it six times in fact throughout this letter. But here he seems to be addressing those young in the faith. Now perhaps you have just begun to believe in Christ

and your Christian journey is just beginning. Well, John wants to remind you, to remind you personally that the most fundamental of all the gospel promises are for you. He writes, he tells us in verse 13, all of your sins, past, present, and future, they are all forgiven. And because your sins are forgiven, he wants you to know that you indeed have been reconciled to the father. Here is where the Christian life begins.

So little children know this, be certain of this and fathers verse 13 and 14, those who have been in the faith for a long period of time, perhaps you've believed in Christ for 30 years, 40 years, maybe 50 years or or longer. He wants to remind you personally of your greatest delight. It's not in the accomplishments you've made, it's not in fun experiences or vacations that you've taken. No, he's reminding you that you truly know him.

You know him who is from the beginning, the co-eternal son who was with the father from the beginning. Fathers, remember that this is your greatest delight and young men, you believed in Christ now for a few years, you're no longer an infant in the faith. Know your faith is now being tested. You're facing trials and temptations of this world. Our text next week in verse 16, John says there, these are the desires of the flesh, the desires

of the eyes, the pride of life. He's writing to you young men. He wants you to grow and to remember because you are strong. The word of God is abiding in you and you have overcome the evil one. And so press forward. Keep going in your faith in these six different couplets. Here in these verses, John is repeating and he's retelling all of these great promises of salvation that we receive simply by faith in Christ. All of these indicatives are meant to carefully call us back

to contemplate the grace of Christ and they should minister to all of us no matter where you are in your Christian walk. So hear them again. Verse 12, your sins are forgiven for his namesake. You truly know him who is from the beginning. You have overcome the evil one. You know the Father and you know him who is from the beginning, the co-eternal son. You are strong. The word of God truly abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

John is proclaiming these indicatives to us so that we can stand upon them and be established in them. And these divine truths are what ground our assurance. If your faith is in Christ this morning, then find here assurance from God himself that you truly know him. I write to you, John says in chapter two, verse 21, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth. Friends, if you feel like your faith is weak,

if you feel like doubts and questions have begun to cloud your mind, if you feel like the weeds and thorns of this life are beginning to choke out the joy of your salvation, then come back to these great promises. This is God himself speaking to you. He's the one that's making these eternal and good promises to you. You know it's remarkable when you talk to people from other faiths, other religions, how different it is in this particular area.

So you think of the Hindu or maybe perhaps the Buddhist. There are certain techniques, there are certain paths that you're supposed to follow. There's ceremonies and sacrifices that you offer to the gods, but there's no clarity of who God is. There's no certainty of his favor for you personally. There's no confidence that this particular path is the right one. In Islam, religion is all about submission to Allah. And so you try to be a good person and try to be sincere.

You try to be morally better than others and there's hope perhaps one day that maybe you'll be accepted for all these good things you tried to do. But for the Muslim, there's always this lingering doubt. What about not just my bad actions, but my bad thoughts, my bad feelings, my impure motives? What about all my UNC cleanliness? How do I offset all of these things? How do I know if I've truly done enough or or for the secularist, did I do enough in my life?

Did I truly make a difference? Will it amount to anything in the end? In all of these systems, there's no certainty. There's no ultimate assurance of what will happen when we face death. But in Christianity it's entirely different. The Bible is full of these indicatives, these great promises, and John spends a significant portion of his letter simply reminding his listeners that if they are in Christ by faith, there is this

glorious mountain of theological truth of who God is and we get to explore it. We get to know it. And from this fou to change the metaphor, there's this overflow of comfort and strength and hope. As we experience God in all of life, we are given full assurance of this, not because of the goodness or the sincerity of our efforts, but simply because of the truthfulness and the power of God. If God has spoken these promises to us, who can undo them?

Who can reverse his eternal decrees, who can alter his unchangeable will? Paul writes in the book of Colossians chapter two, he, his desire for the Colossians is that they would reach all the riches of full assurance, of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. Hebrews six 11. We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness, to have the full assurance of hope until the end again in Hebrews chapter 10.

Since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. Full assurance describes the riches of the Christian life. It conveys a certainty in our knowledge of God. It gives us a fullness of hope and it gives confidence that we can truly draw near to God through Christ our great high priest, John, is writing to bolster our assurance by reminding us personally of all the promises of salvation

that are ours in Christ. I write these things to you, John says later in chapter five, to you who believe in the name of the son of God that you may know and that you may personally know that you truly have eternal life. So our assurance is grounded upon the divine truth of all the promises of salvation. Here's a second thing we see in our passage about assurance. Assurance of faith is established from inward evidences of grace.

Assurance of faith is established from inward evidences of grace. We've seen this already in this book. We'll see it come up again later on. This is what some have called the moral test for assurance. Does your life match your words? Does my obedience match my confession? John makes this case in verse seven by taking us back to the basics. We might call this Christianity one oh one. Here's the basics. John writes in verse seven.

He says, I'm not writing a new command but an old one, one that they had had from the beginning, which he says is the word that you have heard. And this word is the simple gospel that John had proclaimed to them. So look back in chapter one, verse five. There he writes, this is the message. This is the word that we have heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If you go back to the beginning of chapter one there,

John writes about the light, the word of life, and he tells us that it was made manifest and we have seen it and we have testified to it and we proclaim to you the eternal life. You see, John is not saying anything new. He's not making some novel novel religion or novel idea. No, this is the simple gospel message that he had heard. And now that he's passing on to the churches now at the same time in verse eight of our text,

it's a new command. So how, what do we think of that? It's old and new. What, what? What to make of this? Well, John's not contradicting himself. What he's doing is recalling the words of Christ. John 13, A new commandments I give to you that you love one another just as you have, just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. So John is saying here, I'm reminding you of the old commandment, the simple gospel, which I proclaim

to you from the first day. But this old commandment is also a new commandment because it came from Christ himself. Now, later on in the book one John three, verse 23, John tells us explicitly what this commandment is. He writes there, this is his commandment that we believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he commanded us. Friends, this is Christianity 1 0 1. We believe in the name of the son Jesus Christ.

And when we do being immediately united by faith in the eternal love of Father, son and spirit, we now live a life of love. John says this commandment is true in him, verse eight, because he Christ is the full revelation of the love of God, but it's also true in us because he now lives in us by his spirit. And so Christianity 1 0 1 is this, if you believe in the sun, you will love one another. It's, it's a certainty. Gospel indicatives create gospel ethics.

It's the definition of Christianity. It's a moral test for us. Verse nine, John says, you can't say that I know God and yet hate those whom the gospel has united by faith into this fellowship of love. You. You can't say that it doesn't fit, it doesn't work. We've seen this before. If you look back in chapter one verse six, you cannot say, I have fellowship with God and yet walk in darkness. John says, that's a contradiction. It's a falsehood.

Chapter one, verse eight. You cannot say, I'm a Christian and there's no sin within me. You're deceived. You make God out to be a liar. Or chapter two, verse four, you cannot say, I know God, but then not keep his commandments. John says, again, that's a lie. The truth is not in you. These are moral tests of assurance because they seek to discern the nature of your heart from the fruit of your life. And that's exactly what Jesus taught us.

Matthew seven, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the disease tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear good fruit, nor can a disease tree bear good fruit. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. And so as you consider your life, what is the fruit that you see coming from your own heart? And in our passage, John gives us only two options. These are the only two options because these two heart conditions define

the trajectory of our lives. And so is the overflow of your heart, light and love, or is the overflow of your heart to darkness and hatred. Now, let's pause here for a minute on this idea, this word of hatred. I think it's easy for us in this room to read over this and and skip over it. You might think, well, I'm, I'm good on this front. I may not really like people that much, but at least I don't hate them. Well, later in our letter, first John three verse 17,

John writes this, If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? This phrase closes his heart. This is what links to our word here of hate. You see, hate is the impulse to close your heart against others. Hate begins with the seeds of envy and jealousy. And the flower of it is to dismiss others, to bypass over them, to overlook them, to trample upon them.

Hate is hoping for the worst for someone else. Hate is keeping a record of wrongs. Hate is withholding grace on purpose in order to harm another's reputation. John tells us in verse 11, hatred is the fruit of living and walking in darkness. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

I wonder if you've ever had the experience. You wake up in the middle of the night, you are still half asleep, it's pitch dark, and you set off to walk down the hallway to find the bathroom. But you're actually still in your room and you, you can't seem to figure out how to get out of the room in in your head. You think you're walking the hallway, but you're actually just stuck in your room. This is what it's like to be in darkness.

If you allow the darkness of hatred to shroud your heart to be warned that you are on a dangerous trajectory, darkness blinds us. And when we walk in the darkness, we can't see where we're going. We don't even realize the harm that our sin is causing because we're spiritually blind. That's why hatred is, but, but think of the contrast. Love. Love actively seeks the wellbeing and the good of others. Love is quick to overlook an offense.

Love does not envy. It is not proud. It does not boast. Love is the fruit of light. In the light there is truth. And when you live according to the truth, what does Jesus say? The truth will set you free. And so John says verse 10, when we abide in the light, when we align our hearts and minds according to this rule of love, there's no cause for stumbling. No cause for stumbling. This word to stumble is the Greek word scandal on it's the

word you hear in our English scandal. Originally this word meant a part of a trap for animals. An animal would come in and stumble and and trip and fall into the trap. And John says, the one who loves his brother and abides in the light in him, in that person, there is no cause for stumbling. And the stumbling here, I think has two different indirect objects in view. It's both for ourselves but also others. Love is the default which safeguards our own souls even

as it keeps others from stumbling as well. And so if you want to keep from stumbling, if you want to keep others from stumbling, it's pretty basic. Live in the light, live according to God's truth. Live a life of love. Use your freedom not with a motive of hatred, but rather with a motive of love. John tells us one John three 16, by this we know love that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Now let me offer a, a brief word of caution here as we think about discerning these evidences of grace within our own lives. John is not talking about an endless inward introspection. I know some are, are wired this way. It's, it's hard to see anything you've done and think that it's good. You're, you're constantly looking at your life and finding fault. Well, John here is not setting up a standard of moral perfection.

He's not seeking to create doubt. If we can identify examples of anger or, or even dislike for other people. Now when that happens, as he's already instructed us, we confess our sins and God who is faithful and just He will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But what John is doing is warning us. He says, look, if if you say you know him, if you say you have fellowship with the triune God, yet your heart is continually marked by distrust,

suspicion, cynicism, anger. If it's marked by this fruit of hatred, then you should have reason to doubt your salvation. How can you taste the goodness of God's eternal love and joy and yet extend hatred to your brothers? It's more than a contradiction. It's an impossibility. If the latter is present, it means the former perhaps was never there. We should not expect high levels of assurance from low levels of obedience.

So how does this moral test help us to find assurance? Well, one, it gives us a test, an outward test to measure the inward condition of our own hearts. Do you see an increase of love or do you see an increase perhaps of hatred? It gives us a test, but and it, and it gives us a warning as well. If you do see the fruit of darkness marking your life, then you need to repent. You need to confess it. You need to turn away from it

before it leads you down a path of destruction. But it could also and should also give us comfort that if we see evidence of love, if we see our affection, our concern, our care for others growing, then we should find comfort that God, by His grace, has delivered me from darkness and has placed me in the kingdom of light. His word truly is abiding in me and he is leading me down the path of light and love. So assurance of faith is, is established

and also encouraged from inward evidences of grace. Lastly, assurance of salvation is found only when we see the true light. John uses this phrase in verse eight because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Well, this phrase takes us back to John's gospel. John chapter one, where there John writes about a man who is sent from God, whose name was John. This was John the Baptist, who came as a witness

to bear witness about the light that all my belief through him, he, John the Baptist, was not the light, but came witness but came to bear witness about the light. But John writes, the true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. The true light John tells us was in the world and the world was made through him. Yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.

The true light John tells us in this letter is already shining. And that's because the son of God came into the world. He was manifest. He came to his own, and yet his own did not receive him well. Why was that? Well, because they were blind. They couldn't see. They were in the darkness. They claimed to know God, but they didn't. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. They rejected the true light that had come to them.

But John goes on to tell us all who did receive him. Those who obeyed this commandment to believe in the name of the Son of God. He gave the right to become children of God. And what happens when we believe, when we obey this simple commandment, John tells us we're born again not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And in this new birth, we are transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light

for God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You see, when we come to the true light by faith, then God does this supernatural work of renewal in our hearts. He spiritually enlightens us. He shines his eternal light into our hearts. He renews our minds and he grows our hearts that we might experience more peace

and more joy. And our assurance of this is not something that we will ever find when we look introspectively within for within our hearts, our only caverns of darkness. But when we look without, when we see and embrace the true light who came into this world of darkness, we can find the power of God for salvation. The voice of the true light is more powerful than any doubts and fears that may grip our minds. And so when we look to him, when we hear his voice,

we can have confidence and full assurance that he who began a good work in us will complete it on that last day. The darkness of this world is passing away and soon will come the day when our faith will be made sight. Whatever doubts remain, whatever fears or in insecurities we may have, they will all along with the darkness of this world pass away and our faith will be made perfect as we see with unveiled face, the radiance of the Son of God.

John is writing to you dear children, brothers and sisters in Christ, so that you would know the security and the satisfaction of knowing God. So strive for the full assurance that he offers grounded upon all these divine truths of his promises, established from the inward evidence of his work in your life, and continually look to the true light who was manifest for us so that we would fully and experientially delight in the eternal fellowship

of love from God. In this friends, may you find strength, joy, and ultimate rest. Amen. Join me as we pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you that the true light indeed came into this world and he came so that we might know you and Jesus Christ, whom you've had sent, and we thank you that you assure us of this. You give confidence to us of this not based on anything we have done, but by your own power, your own truthfulness and your own goodness. Thank you for speaking to us and for assuring us. I pray for any here who wrestle

with doubt, with uncertainty. Would you assure them? Would you assure us of your love for us that we might know you and walk with you and delight in you? We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.