By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him, for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
It’s easy to be distracted from the simplicity of the gospel these days. It’s also easy to get caught up into the latest tribal demands from a culture that desperately wants to be god. First century Ephesians dealt with false teachers coming into churches claiming that Jesus was not God Incarnate. Today we deal with false teachers who claim there is no God at all and to follow Jesus is the epitome of stupidity. Or we hear the false teachings of “spirituality” being more important than conviction. Or the false religions of environmentalism that touts false prophecies of the utter destruction of the planet unless people (particularly in the West) rely on “clean” sources of energy, eat only plants, and by all means, stop-reproducing. Every false teaching is a bastardization of Truth in some way, especially the nouveau-Gnosticism of the environmental movement. Not that there’s anything wrong about careful stewardship of the planet and its resources; the first commandment to humanity was to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28). There’s a vast discrepancy between caretaking and worshiping creation.
Who is the liar but he who denies the Christ?
1 John 2:22
All false religions, beliefs, and philosophies come down to the same lie John described earlier in the epistle: “Who is the liar but he who denies the Christ?” (1 John 2:22). Christians only need to maintain their confidence in the Truth by abiding in God. How? By keeping his commandments: believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another. Everything the Christian knows to be true is the person of Jesus. “The teaching of St John in his Epistle thus turns upon the Person of Christ. Under this aspect it is important to observe that it is intensely practical…The writer does not set before his readers propositions about Christ, but the Living Christ Himself for present fellowship”(Westcott, xxxvii). John’s argument is that followers of Jesus are of the truth, and even in difficult, confusing, or complicated times, God is greater and He knows all things. To continually abide in the knowledge of God is in the gift of His Spirit in us, and it is that same Spirit that motivates, inspires and enables God’s children to walk in confidence.
Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Galatians 2:20-21). We live to please the Father, not the creation nor the created beings that want to usurp His rightful place. Jesus is King. Jesus is Lord. Love for Jesus motivates, empowers, restores, fulfills, and satisfies as his beloved children abide in Him.
Resources
The ESV Bible. Crossway, 2001, www.esv.org/.
Westcott, Brooke Foss. The Epistles of St. John: The Greek Text, with Notes and Essays. Cambridge, MacMillan, 1886. Robarts – University of Toronto, robarts.library.utoronto.ca. Borrowed from Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/epistlesofstjohn00westuoft/page/n7/mode/2up
Defaulting to Grace 