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John served as pastor of the church in Ephesus, which was founded by Paul. It has been the belief of the church down through the years that John wrote his gospel first, his epistles second, and finally the Revelation just before his death. However, in recent years some of us have come to the position that John wrote his epistles last. Therefore, he wrote his first epistle after his imprisonment on the Island of Patmos. This places the date about a.d. 100. John died in Ephesus and was buried there. The Basilica of St. John was built over the grave of John by Justinian in the fifth century.

1. There was an easy familiarity with Christianity. Many of the believers were children and grandchildren of the first Christians. The new and bright sheen of the Christian faith had become tarnished. The newness had worn off. The thrill and glory of the first days had faded. My, how exciting it had been to be a believer on that day when Paul had come to town and challenged Diana of the Ephesians! The whole town had been in an uproar. In Acts 19 we read of the effect Paul’s teaching had upon the synagogue at Ephesus and also the impact of his daily sessions in the school of Tyrannus for two years. How fervent their love and zeal for Christ had been in those days. But many years later, when the Lord Jesus sent a letter to the Ephesian believers through John while he was in exile on the Island of Patmos, He said, “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love” (Rev. 2:4). It was as Jesus had long before warned, “… because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (Matt. 24:12). The Ephesians’ devotion and dedication to Christ was at a low ebb.

2. The high standards of Christianity made the Christians different, and the children and grandchildren of the first Christians did not want to be different. The believers were called saints—from the Greek word hagios. The primary intent of the word is “set aside for the sole use of God—that which belongs to God.” The pots and pans in the temple were said to be holy because they were for the use of God. The temple was hagios; the Sabbath was hagios. Now the Christians were to be hagios—different, set aside for the use of God.

But the Ephesians had become assembly-line Christians, programmed by the computer of compromise. They had become plastic Christians. They were cast in a different mold from the disciples to whom Jesus had said, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19). And also in His high priestly prayer to His Father are these words: “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14). There was a breakdown of the Judeo-Christian ethics and a disregard of Bible standards.

3. Persecution was not the enemy of Christianity. The danger to the Ephesian church was not persecution from the outside but seduction from the inside. The Lord Jesus Himself had warned of this: “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matt. 24:24). And the apostle Paul had said to the Ephesian elders: “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30).

Gnosticism took many forms. However, one primary principle ran through this philosophy: matter or material was essentially evil; only the spirit was good. All the material world was considered evil. Therefore Gnosticism despised the body. They held that in the body was a spirit, like a seed in the dirty soil. The same principle is in modern liberalism which maintains that there is a spark of good in everyone and that each person is to develop that spark of good. The Gnostics sought to cause the “seed,” the spirit within them, to grow and tried to get rid of the evil in the body.

There were two extreme methods of accomplishing this goal as practiced by the Stoics and the Epicureans. The apostle Paul’s encounter with these two sects is recorded in Acts 17:18: “Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection.”

There were all shades and differences between the two extremes of Stoicism and Epicureanism, but all of them denied the messiahship of Jesus. I believe John had them in mind when he wrote: “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). They denied the Incarnation, reasoning that God could not have taken a human body because all flesh is evil. Therefore John distinctly declared, “And the Word was made [born] flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). And in his epistle he wrote: “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:2–3).

The early church fathers fought this heresy and maintained that “He became what we are to make us what He is.” It is my firm opinion that John wrote his first epistle to answer the errors of Gnosticism. Actually there is a fivefold purpose expressed in 1 John: (1) 1:3, “That ye also may have fellowship with us [other believers]: and … with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ;” (2) 1:4, “That your joy may be full” (3) 2:1, “That ye sin not” (4) 5:13, “That ye may know that ye have eternal life” and (5) 5:13, “That ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.”

First John has been called the sanctum sanctorum of the New Testament. It takes the child of God across the threshold into the fellowship of the Father’s home. It is the family epistle. Pauls epistles and all the other epistles are church epistles, but this is a family epistle and should be treated that way. The church is a body of believers in the position where we are blessed “… with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ” (Eph. 1:3, Translation mine). We are given that position when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Believing on the Lord Jesus brings us into the family of God. In the family we have a relationship which can be broken but is restored when “we confess our sins.” Then “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

First John is the book which I used when I began my ministry in a new church. (I didn’t at the first church I served because I was a seminary student and didn’t know enough to begin in the right place.) But in the four churches I served during my forty years of pastoring, I began the midweek service with a study in 1 John. I am convinced that this epistle is more important for believers in the church than the church epistles. When we moved into this wonderful book, I saw the midweek service attendance increase. We saw a phenomenal increase in attendance in the last two churches I served. During the time we studied this little epistle the attendance doubled, doubled again, and then doubled again, so that we had as many people in attendance at the midweek service as we had in the Sunday evening service. Sometimes the midweek service would surpass the Sunday night service. My friend, it is very important to understand this little book.

“That which was from the beginning.” What beginning is John talking about? In the Scriptures are three beginnings, two of which we are very familiar with. The first is found in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” That is an undated beginning. We do not know when God created the heaven and the earth. I have read book after book, volume after volume, on the questions raised by the first chapter of Genesis. If I stacked up all those books, I am confident that they would reach the ceiling of my study. And after reading all of them, I am convinced that not one scientist or one theologian has the foggiest notion when Genesis 1:1 really happened.

Now some scientists are moving away from the older dating of the earth and are setting a more recent date. Well, Genesis 1:1 would fit into either theory, a new earth or an old earth, since it is not dated. All that the first verse in Genesis declares is that God created the heaven and the earth. Until you are ready to accept that fact, you are not prepared to read very much further in the Word of God, because the remainder of the Bible rests upon that first verse. Did God create this universe or is it a happenstance? It is ridiculous to think that the universe just happened. As Edwin Conklin put it, “The probability of life originating by accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary originating from an explosion in a print shop.” My friend, there is intelligence behind this universe in which you and I live. As to the date of the beginning, we do not know; but if you need a few billion years to fit into your scheme of interpretation, it is here because we are dealing with the God of eternity. God has eternity behind Him. Although I don’t know what He was doing before He created the heaven and the earth, I know He was doing something. Then God created the heaven and the earth, and He did it for a purpose. He is working out a plan in His universe today which is bigger than any human mind can comprehend. When God recorded His act of creation, He wasn’t trying to give us a study in geology. However, He put a lot of rocks around for you to look at if you are interested in trying to figure out a date.

There is a second beginning which we find in the Word of God. It is the first verse in John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He adds, “The same was in the beginning with God.” Then he comes to the act of creation: “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1–3). My friend, go back as far as you can think, beyond creation, back billions and trillions of years, and out of eternity comes the Lord Jesus Christ. Way back there He is already past tense; He is the Ancient of Days. Notice that John has written, “In the beginning was [not is] the Word.” In other words, this is a beginning that doesn’t even have a beginning because He had no beginning. “In the beginning was the Word” means that you can go back in the past as far as you want to, put down your peg anywhere, and Christ comes out of eternity to meet you. That is big stuff; it is bigger than my little mind can comprehend. I am unable to grasp the immensity of it until I come to John 1:14: “And the Word was made [born] flesh….” That takes me back to Bethlehem where He was born, and I begin to catch on at that time.

The third beginning is the one we began with in 1 John 1:1—“That which was from the beginning,”which refers to the time Christ came into this world at Bethlehem. When He was about thirty years old, John became acquainted with Him. John and his brother James met Him in Jerusalem. Later they were with their father, mending nets, when Jesus came by and called them to follow Him. They left their father (probably a well-to-do fisherman) with the hired men and followed Jesus. Now John says, I want to tell you about Him, and he asserts the reality of the total personality of Jesus: (1) “We have heard” (through the ear-gate); (2) “we have seen” (through the eye-gate); (3) “we have looked upon” (lit., gazed intently upon); and (4) “our hands have handled.”

“Which we have seen with our eyes.” Not only had the apostles heard Him speak, but they also had seen Him with their own eyes. In our day we cannot see Him with our physical eyes, but we can see Him with the eye of faith. Peter told us, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet. 1:8). And the Lord Jesus said to Thomas, who would not believe He had been resurrected until he could see and handle Him, “… Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). We today are walking by, faith, and the Lord Jesus Christ can be made as real to us as He was to Thomas. As the hymn writer expressed it—

“Which we have looked upon.” The word looked is from the Greek word theaomai from which we get our English word theatre, meaning “to gaze intently upon.” The theatre is a place where you sit and look, not just with a passing glance but with a gaze—a steady gaze for a couple of hours. John is saying that for three years they gazed upon Jesus. It was John who wrote, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3:14). During the wilderness march, the people who had been bitten by the serpents were to look for healing to that brass serpent which had been lifted up on a pole. John is applying that to the Lord Jesus and saying that now we are to look to Him in faith for salvation. After we have done that, we are to gaze upon Him—and we will do that in this epistle. To look, saves; to gaze, sanctifies. John wrote in his gospel, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Many of us need to do more than simply look to Him for salvation. We need to spend time gazing upon Him with the eye of faith.

“Our hands have handled.” John says that they did, more than merely gaze upon Him from a distance; they handled Him. John himself reclined upon His bosom in the Upper Room. Speaking to His own after His resurrection, He said, “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet” (Luke 24:39–40),

Dr. G. Campbell Morgan takes the position that when the Lord Jesus held out His hands to Thomas and to the other disciples, they were so overwhelmed that they did not handle Him. Instead, they bowed down in reverence to Him. That would be the normal thing to do, but John makes it clear that they handled the Lord. This is one place where I disagree with Dr. Morgan, (and I disagree with him in a few other places, too,) but I dare not disagree with a man of his caliber unless there is a reason for it. But when John says that they handled Him, I think he means they felt His hands and fingered the nailprints which convinced them that He was indeed man, the Word made flesh, God manifest in the flesh.

After the death of Paul, about a.d. 67, a heresy arose in the church called Gnosticism. Gnosticism is the opposite of agnosticism. Agnosticism holds that the reality of God is unknown and probably unknowable. There are many agnostics in our colleges and universities, as you know. Charles Spurgeon used to say that agnostic is but the Greek word for the Latin ignoramus. So one might say, “I don’t believe the Bible, because I am an ignoramus!” The agnostic says, “I do not know.” The Gnostic says, “I do know.” The Gnostics were a group which came into the church claiming to have a superior knowledge which simple Christians did not have. They considered themselves super-duper saints, knowing more than anyone else knew.

The Gnostics came up with quite a few novel ideas, which I have dealt with in more detail in the Introduction. One of their heretical teachings was that Jesus was merely a man when He was born. He was just like any other human being at the time of His birth, but at His baptism, the Christ came upon Him, and when He was hanging on the cross, the Christ left Him. John refutes this teaching in no uncertain terms when he said in his gospel record, “The Word was born flesh.” And here in his first epistle, he emphatically declares that after Jesus came back from the dead, He was still a human being. In essence John says, “We handled Him—He was still flesh and bones.” You see, John is not talking about a theory. He is talking about Someone he heard, he saw, and he handled.

On one occasion after I had given a message, a man whom I would call a smart aleck came to me with this question: “You talked about eternal life. What is eternal life? I would like to know what eternal life is.” So I gave him this verse: “The life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.” Then I said to him, “The eternal life that John is talking about is none other than Jesus Christ. If you want a definition, eternal life is a Person, and that Person is Christ. It is so simple that even you can grasp it. You either have Christ, or you don’t have Christ. You either trust Christ, or you don’t trust Christ. If you do trust Christ, you have eternal life. If you don’t trust Christ, you don’t have eternal life. Now, since that’s eternal life, do you have eternal life?” He turned and walked away without answering, which was an evidence that he did not have eternal life, and he did not want to pursue the matter any further.

“And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” How are we going to have fellowship with God? It does present a dilemma. God is holy. Man is unholy. How can this gulf be bridged? How can you bring God and man together, or as Amos put it, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3). How are we ever going to have fellowship? To get over this seemingly impossible hurdle, John is going to present three methods. Two of them are man-made methods and won’t work. The other one is God’s method, and it is the only one that will work.

In our day we have lost the true meaning of the word fellowship. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Several years ago I used to go to Huntington Beach in Southern California and speak to a Rotary Club. A wonderful doctor who was the program chairman told me that they could probably take me once a year; so he invited me for either Christmas or Easter and told me to give them both barrels. (I tried to give them both barrels, and since he is no longer program chairman, they haven’t invited me back!) One of the things I noticed in the place where the Rotary Club met was a large banner over the elevated speaker’s table with the words, “Fun, Food, Fellowship.” Well, the food was nothing to brag about—embalmed chicken and peas as big as bullets. The fun was corny jokes. The fellowship consisted of one man patting another on the back and saying, “Hi, Bill, how’s business?” or, “How’s the wife?” Then they sang a little song together. That was their idea of fellowship.

Well, the Christian idea of fellowship is not much different. When you hear an announcement of a church banquet, it is almost certain that you will be urged to come for food and fellowship. What do they mean by fellowship? They mean meeting around the table and talking to each other about everything under the sun except the one thing that would give them true fellowship, the person of Christ.

Now let me give you an illustration of one place where the word fellowship is used correctly. I had the privilege of being at Oxford University as a tourist and seeing the Great Quad, the Wren Tower, and the different schools that comprise Oxford University. I visited one school which specialized in Shakespeare. Now suppose you wanted to know all about Shakespeare because you wanted to teach that particular subject. You would go to Oxford University and attend the particular school specializing in that subject. When you ate, you would sit down at the board, and there you would meet the other men who were studying Shakespeare, and you would meet the professors who did the teaching. You would hear them all talking about Shakespeare in a way you never had heard before. For instance, in the play Romeo and Juliet most of us think that Juliet was the only girl Romeo courted. It is shocking to find that when he said,

that fickle fellow Romeo was talking about another girl! You would hear many things that would alert you to the fact that you had a lot to learn about Shakespeare. So you would begin to study and pull books off the shelf in the library and go to the lectures. After you had been at the school for two or three years, they would make you a fellow. Then when you would go in and sit at the board with the other students and professors, you would join right in with them as they talked about the sonnets of Shakespeare. You would have fellowship with them, sharing the things of Shakespeare.

Now this is the second reason he mentions for writing his epistle: “That your joy may be full.”.How wonderful to have joy—not just a little joy but a whole lot of joy because we are experiencing fellowship. Koinōnia sometimes refers to the act of fellowship—the communion service in a church is an act of fellowship; giving is an act of fellowship, and praying is an act of fellowship. But in this chapter John is talking about the experience of fellowship, such as Paul had in mind when he wrote, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings …” (Phil. 3:10).

My friend, the ultimate aim in preaching is that, through conviction and repentance, men and women might come to salvation and that it might bring great joy to their hearts, like the Ethiopian eunuch who came to know Christ with the help of Philip. He didn’t continue his trip bragging about what a great preacher Philip was; he went on his way rejoicing. Why? Because he had come to know Christ. The purpose of John’s epistle is that you and I might share together these wonderful things of Christ, that the Spirit of God might make the Lord Jesus and the Father real to us in such a way that our fellowship might be sweet.

Now we return to the problem which I mentioned earlier. John has said that he has written these things so that we can have fellowship and so that our joy might be full, and our joy would naturally be full if we could have fellowship with God. However, there is a hurdle to get over. John faces up to a real dilemma which every child of God recognizes. The very possibility of man having fellowship with God is one of the most glorious prospects that comes to us, but immediately our hopes are dashed when we face up to this dilemma:

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” means that God is holy, and we know that man is unholy. How can the gulf be bridged between a wonderful Savior and Vernon McGee? What a difference there is! The canyon between us is steep and deep. How can God and man be brought together? The cry of Job was for a “daysman” who might lay his hand upon Job and upon God and bring them together (see Job 9:33). Through Isaiah God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways …” (Isa. 55:8). How is a sinful man going to walk with God?

John tells us that God is light. This is, in fact, a definition of God. I have divided this epistle into three parts and each part is a definition of God: (1) God is light; (2) God is love; and (3) God is life. But how in the world are we going to have fellowship with God? It looks as if we are going to have to do one of two things. We either have to bring God down to our level, or we will have to take man up to God’s level. Neither one of these things can be done, and yet men have tried it. John shows the impossibility of the first one and then gives us a great definition of God: God is light.

Modern science, I am told, is not quite sure what light is. Is it energy or is it matter? What is light? Oh, the source of light is one thing, but when you turn on the light in your room, the darkness lurking in the corner becomes light. What has happened? What was it that went over there in the corner and drove out the darkness? Or did it drive out the darkness? Because when the source of light up in the ceiling goes off, darkness returns to the corner. What is light?

First of all, light speaks of the glory, the radiance, the beauty, and the wonders of God. Have you seen the eastern sky when the sun comes up like a blaze of glory? A friend and I once camped on the edge of Monument Valley in Arizona. It was a beautiful spot. We spent the night in sleeping bags. When I awoke the next morning, my friend was standing there, watching as the dawn was breaking. I asked him what he was doing up so early, and he made this statement: “I am watching God create a new day.”.Oh, what a thrill it was to be there and watch God create a new day! All of a sudden the sun peeped over the horizon, then it came marching over in a blaze of glory. I must confess that it became pretty hot later in the day, but what a sunrise it was! God is light. Oh, the beauty and radiance and glory of God!

Another characteristic of light is that it is self-revealing. Light can be seen, but it diffuses itself. It illuminates the darkness. It is revealing. It lets me see my hands—I’ve been handling books, and I see that one of my hands has dirt on it, and I’m going to have to take it out and wash it. If it hadn’t been for the light, I would not have seen the soil. Light reveals flaws and impurity. Whittier put it like this:

Also light speaks of the white purity of God and the stainless holiness of God. God moves without making a shadow because He is light. He is pure. The light of the sun is actually the catharsis of the earth. It not only gives light, it is also a great cleanser. Many of you ladies put a garment out in the sun to clean it or to get an odor out of it. The sun is a great cleansing agent. Light speaks of the purity of God.

Light also guides men. It points out the path. Light on the horizon leads men on to take courage. It gives them courage to keep moving on. God is light. Let me go to the other extreme. Darkness is actually more than a negation of light. It is not just the opposite of light. It is actually hostile to light. The light and holiness of God are in direct conflict with the evil darkness and chaos of the world.

Now we are presented with this dilemma. I am a little creature down here on earth filled with sin. If you want to know the truth, I am totally depraved. Without the grace of God for salvation, I would be nothing in the world but a creature in rebellion against God, with no good within me at all. God has made it very clear that He finds no good within man. Paul says, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing …” (Rom. 7:18). Paul also says, “… There is none righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). Not only have they no innate goodness, but they are in rebellion against God.

Paul goes on to tell us about the rebellion that is in the human heart. He says, “… the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7). We are living in a world today that is in rebellion against almighty God. God is holy. I am a sinner. I am saved by grace, yes, but how am I going to have fellowship with Him? How am I going to walk with Him? Men have attempted to do this in three different ways which are presented here, and two of those ways are wrong.

“We lie, and do not the truth.” Do you understand what John says in this verse? He is rather blunt, don’t you think so? He says that we lie. It is not a nice thing to call another man a liar. John says that if you say that you have fellowship with God and you walk in darkness—that is, in sin—you are lying. I didn’t say that. I am too polite to say that, but John said it. We always think of John as being that little ladylike apostle who carried a handkerchief in his sleeve. I don’t know how the rumor got started that John was that kind of a man, unless it began during the Middle Ages when an artist painted him with curls! I suppose the artist got the idea of curls from the fact that John is called the apostle of love. But our Lord never called him that—He called him a son of thunder! If John and that artist meet on the corner of Glory Avenue and Hallelujah Boulevard in heaven, I tell you, that artist is going to know what thunder and lightning both are, because I think John is going to level with him, “What is the big idea of giving the world the impression that I was a sissy-type individual?” John was a great, big two-fisted, rugged fisherman, and he is the one who says, “If you say you are having fellowship with God and you walk in darkness, you lie, because God is light; God is holy.”

We hear so much about sin among Christians today. One of the headlines in a newspaper here in Southern California told of some members of a cult committing adultery. (I don’t know if that report was accurate or not, but I don’t think the paper would have risked a lawsuit by printing it if it had no basis of truth.) Yet this cult brags about keeping the Mosaic Law and having reached a wonderful level of life. Of course, one of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exod. 20:14), but they would attempt to explain that away in some manner. My friend, if you are going to walk with God, you are going to walk in light. And if there is sin in your life, you are not walking with Him. You cannot bring Him down to your level.

“If we walk in the light,” that is, if we walk in the light of the Word of God. Dr. Harry Ironside tells of his own confusion of mind relative to this verse. Noticing that the cleansing of the blood depends upon our walking in the light, he read it as though it said, “If we walk according to the light, the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” He thought it meant that if he was very punctilious about obeying every command of God, God would cleanse him. Then he noticed that it does not say if we walk according to light, but if we walk in the light. The important thing is where we walk, not how we walk. Have we come into the presence of God and allowed the Word of God to shine upon our sinful hearts? You see, it is possible to walk in darkness, thinking you are all right.

Let me illustrate this. I went squirrel hunting several years ago when I was holding meetings in my first pastorate in Middle Tennessee in a place called Woodbury. After the morning service a doctor came to me and asked me if I would like to go squirrel hunting, and I told him there was nothing I would rather do. After lunch he brought me a shotgun, and we drove out to his farm and parked in the barnyard. We walked along by the creek there and had some good hunting. Finally we came to a fork in the creek, and he said to me, “I’ll take the right fork, and you take the left fork. It will lead you around the hill and back to the barnyard. We will meet there.” In the meantime it looked like it was going to rain. It had drizzled once or twice and stopped. When I started out by myself, it started drizzling again. I kept going, and I made the turn around the hill. I noticed quite a few caves in the hill, and when it started to really rain, I knew I was going to get wet; so I crawled into one of those caves. I went into the largest one I could find and sat in that dark cave for about thirty minutes. I began to get cold and decided I needed a fire; so I gathered together a bunch of leaves scattered on the floor of the cave and put a match to them. I soon had a small fire going, and when I looked around the cave, I found out that I wasn’t alone. I have never been a place in which there were so many spiders and lizards as there were in that cave! Over in one corner was a little snake all coiled up, just looking at me. My friend, I got out of there in a hurry, working on the assumption that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and since those creatures had the cave ahead of me, it belonged to them. I proceeded down to the barn and really got soaking wet, but I wasn’t going to stay in that cave!

Now let me make an application. I had been sitting in comfort for about thirty minutes while I was in darkness, but when the light of the fire revealed what was in the cave, I could no longer be comfortable there. My friend, across this land today are multitudes of folk who are sitting in churches every Sunday morning but are not hearing the Word of God. As a result, they are sitting there in darkness, hearing some dissertation on economics or politics or the “good life” or an exhortation on doing the best they can. And they are comfortable. Of course, they are comfortable! But if they would get into the light of the Word of God, they would see that they are sinners and that they cannot bring God down to their level. John has said that if a person says he is having fellowship with God but is living in sin, he is lying.

During my many years as a pastor I have encountered a great deal of this. I think of a layman who was a good speaker and went about giving his testimony to different groups. Then it was discovered that he was living in adultery—for several years he had been keeping a woman on the side. When it was discovered, my, the damage it did to the cause of Christ. And that man still insists that he is having fellowship with God! I recognize that we are living in a day when moral standards are changing drastically and folk rationalize their sinning and try to explain it away, but they cannot bring God down to their level. If you are living in sin, God will not have fellowship with you. If you think otherwise, you are fooling yourself or using a psychological ploy to put up a good front. And many of our psychological hang-ups today center around this very point. As someone commented, after hearing me speak on this subject, “What you mean, Dr. McGee, is that there are hypocrites in the church.” And when you come right down to the nitty-gritty, that’s what we are talking about. Hypocrites. They profess one thing, “I’m having fellowship with God,” and all the while they are walking in darkness. John says that they are lying.

Now, suppose you are a child of God, and you are living in sin—but you see it now in the light of the Word of God. Have you lost your salvation? When the light in my study revealed that spot of dirt on my hand, I went and washed it off. And John says, “And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” That word cleanseth is in the present tense—Christ’s blood just keeps on cleansing us from all sin. You haven’t lost your salvation, but you have lost your fellowship, and you cannot regain your fellowship with God until you are cleansed.

You see, John is talking about family truth. At the time I am writing this, there is abroad a great emphasis on what is known as body truth. Some folk have stumbled onto it for the first time and have gone off the deep end in their overemphasis of it. Body truth is great and it is an important part of New Testament teaching, but family truth is also important. If you are in the family of God and have sin in your life, God is not going to treat you like the sinner outside of Christ. He is going to treat you like a disobedient child. He will take you to the woodshed for punishment. Remember that He took David to the woodshed, and certainly Ananias and Sapphira didn’t get off easily. My friend, our attempt to bring God down to our level simply will not work. However, that is one method which is often used in an attempt to bridge the gap between a holy God and sinful man.

I ran into this problem very early in my training for the ministry. When I went to college as a freshman, my first roommate was a young man who was also studying for the ministry. He was a sweet boy in many ways. The only trouble with him was that he was perfect. When I found the room which had been assigned to me, my roommate was not at home, but when he came in, he introduced himself and informed me that he had not committed a sin in so many years—I have forgotten if he said one, two, or three years. It shocked me to meet a fellow who didn’t sin. I had hoped he would be my buddy, but he wasn’t a buddy. You see, in every room where I have lived, things go wrong once in awhile. And there I was living in a room in which there were only two of us and one of us couldn’t do anything wrong. So when something went wrong, guess who was to blame? Now I admit that usually it was my fault—but not always. Although he was a nice fellow, he hadn’t reached the level of perfection which he claimed; he wasn’t perfect. After the first semester, a freshman was permitted to move wherever he wished, so I told him, “I’m moving out.” He was greatly distressed and said, “Oh, no! Where are you going?” I told him, “I have met a fellow down the hall who is just as mean as I am, and I’m going to move in with him.” So I did move out, and I understand he didn’t get a roommate after that. My new roommate and I got along wonderfully well. In fact, I still visit him down in the state of Florida. We are old men now and we still have wonderful times together. Neither of us is perfect although we have mellowed a bit down through the years.

My friend, if you feel that you have reached the state of perfection, I really feel sorry for your spouse because it is hard to live with someone who thinks he is perfect. John says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” We cannot bring ourselves up to God’s level. It is impossible to reach perfection in this life.

Let me give you another instance of this because I think it is important. When I first came to Pasadena, I knew a man who served for a while as chaplain at the jail. He was a wonderful, enthusiastic Christian. I certainly had no criticism of him. But one day he met me on the street and said, “Brother Vernon, I got sanctified last night.” I said, “You did! What really happened to you?” He told me that he had reached the place where he could no longer sin.

Well, I didn’t see him for a while after that, but one of the officers of the church I served at the time lived next door to him. The son of the man who had reached perfection came to visit and parked his trailer in the back yard with part of it on the property of the man who was an officer in my church. He said nothing for a while, but the time came when he had to build a shed on that spot. The neighbor knew he was intending to do this, but he made no mention of it. Finally, when it looked as if the son was going to stay and he felt that he could wait no longer to build, he went to his neighbor and asked him to move the trailer. Well, the fellow lost his temper and really told him what kind of a neighbor he thought he was. The man who was the officer in my church casually mentioned the incident to me one day; so I couldn’t wait to meet that fellow and finally I looked him up. I said to him, “Didn’t you tell me that you got sanctified?”

My friend, whom do you think you deceive when you say that you have no sin? You deceive yourself, and you are the only person whom you do deceive. You don’t deceive God. You don’t deceive your neighbors. You don’t deceive your friends. But you sure do deceive yourself. And John says that the truth is not in a man like that because he can’t see that he is a sinner and that he has not reached the place of perfection. Yet a great many folk are trying that route in their effort to bridge the gap between themselves and a holy God.

What does it mean to confess our sins? The word confess is from the Greek verb homologeō, meaning “to say the same thing.” Logeō means “to say” and homo means “the same.” You are to say the same thing that God says. When God in His Word says that the thing you did is sin, you are to get over on God’s side and look at it. And you are to say, “You are right, Lord, I say the same thing that You say. It is sin.” That is what it means to confess your sins. That, my friend, is one of the greatest needs in the church. This is God’s way for a Christian to deal with sin in his own life.

The other day I talked to a man who got into deep trouble. He divorced his wife—he found out that she had been unfaithful. He lost his home and lost his job. He was a very discouraged man. He said to me, “I want to serve God, and I have failed. I am a total failure.” I very frankly said to him, “Don’t cry on my shoulder. Go and tell God about it. He wants you to come to Him. Tell Him you have failed. Tell Him you have been wrong. Tell Him that you want to say the same thing about your sin that He says about it. Seek His help. He is your Father. You are in the family. You have lost your fellowship with Him, but you can have your fellowship restored. If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins.”

After we confess our sins, what does God do? He cleanses us. In the parable, the Prodigal Son came home from the far country smelling like a pigpen. You don’t think the father would have put a new robe on that ragged, dirty boy, smelling like that, do you? No, he gave him a good bath. The Roman world majored in cleanliness, and I am confident that the boy was bathed before that new robe was put on him. The next week he didn’t say, “Dad, I think I will be going to the far country and end up in the pigpen again.” Not that boy.

Now don’t make God a liar. Why don’t you go to the Lord, my friend, and just open your heart and talk to him as you talk to no one else. Tell Him your problems. Tell Him your sins. Tell Him your weakness. Confess it all to Him. And say to your Father that you want to have fellowship with Him and you want to serve Him. My, He has made a marvelous, wonderful way back to Himself!

This chapter is a continuation of the thought begun in the previous chapter regarding the manner in which “little children” may have fellowship with God. We have seen that we can have fellowship with God by walking in the light, that is, in God’s presence. The second thing we must do in order to maintain that fellowship is to confess our sins to Him. When we walk in the light, we know that the blood of Jesus Christ keeps on cleansing us from all sin, but we also know that there is imperfection in our lives and that we must go to Him in confession.

In chapter 2 we come to the matter of the advocacy of Christ. We will now see the conclusion of that which began with 1 John 1:5, where John said, “This then is the message.” What is the message? It is the message of the gospel of the grace of God that takes the hell-doomed sinner and by simple faith in Christ brings him into the family of God where he becomes an heir and joint-heir with Jesus Christ. It is the relationship with the Father that is all important.

“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.” John is writing these things to us because God does not want His children to sin. Although God has made ample and adequate provision for us not to sin, our entrance into His provision is imperfect—because of our imperfection. Notice that this verse does not say that we cannot sin, but John is writing to us that we may not sin. God wants us to walk in a manner that is well pleasing to Him; that is, He wants us to walk in obedience to His Word.

Let me remind you that 1 John is a family epistle; it emphasizes the relationship of the family of God. I mention this again because there is so much emphasis in the contemporary church on “body” truth; that is, that all believers are part of a body. “Body” truth is the message of Ephesians, and it is wonderful, but now we need to move out a little farther into “family” truth. We need to recognize that we are in God’s family and that our relationship is all important. We need to have fellowship with our heavenly Father.

“These things write I unto you, that ye sin not.” None of us has reached that exalted plane, although there are those who claim sinless perfection. I am reminded of an occasion when a speaker was emphasizing the fact that nobody is perfect. Finally he became very dramatic and oratorical and asked, “Is there anybody here who has ever seen a perfect man?” No one responded until one little fellow in the back of the auditorium, sort of a Mr. Milquetoast, put up his hand.

Several years ago a speaker was telling a story about a family that was going to take a trip for a couple of days. They did not want to take their little girl along, so they left her with neighbors, who had four boys. When they returned, the little girl said to her daddy, “There are four boys in that house where I have been staying. They have family worship there every night. Each night their father prays for his four little boys.”

If we are honest with ourselves, we too will have to say that God hasn’t made us perfect yet either. We have not reached that exalted plane of sinless perfection. John says, “My little born ones, my little bairns, I write these things unto you that you may not be sinning.” God doesn’t want you to live in sin. We are going to find later that John is going to say, “Whosoever is born of God sinneth not” (1 John 5:18). This means that whosoever is born of God does not practice sin; that is, live in sin. The prodigal son got up out of the pigpen and went home to his father. He did not stay in the pigpen. Why not? Because he was a son and not a pig. Also we need to realize, as it is stated in Ecclesiastes 7:20, “For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”

Today you and I may be able to say, “I don’t think I have done anything real bad.” But how about doing good? James says, “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17). There are sins of commission and sins of omission. You and I are to walk in the light. When we walk in the light, we will see just how far we have fallen short of what God wants. Every sincere child of God wants to have fellowship with Him, and yet he knows within himself that he has fallen far short of the kind of life he should have. There is sin in his life, and sin, be it ever so small, breaks communion with the Father.

They need to know that they have not lost their salvation, because in the next breath John adds, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Notice that John says, “We have an advocate with the Father”—John doesn’t call Him by the impersonal name God because He is still our Father even though we have sinned. Therefore we need to recognize that our salvation rests upon what Christ has done for us, and that is a finished work. Someone has expressed it like this:

Advocate—a paraclete, a helper—is a legal term. It means “one who will come to your side to help in every time of need.” We have a wonderful heavenly Father, and we don’t lose our salvation when we sin, but there is somebody up there who wants us to lose it, and that is Satan. Satan is the accuser of the brethren. In Revelation 12:10 we are told that he accuses us before our God day and night. Satan is there at the throne of God accusing you and accusing me. Remember how he accused Job. In effect, he said to God, “If you will let me get to him, I’ll show You that he will curse you.” When that happens in our case, the Lord Jesus is able to step in as our Advocate. He died for us! Yet the accuser is there, and some folk are very disturbed by that. But the Advocate is far greater than the accuser. Someone has expressed this in beautiful poetic language:

“And he is the propitiation for our sins.” The word propitiation, as it is used here in John’s epistle, is a different word from that used in the Epistle to the Romans. In Romans the meaning is “mercy seat”—Christ is the propitiation, the mercy seat, the meeting place between God and man. However, here in 1 John propitiation means “an atonement or an expiation.” It means that sins have been paid for by the suffering of Another. Christ is my Advocate, interceding for me, and He Himself is the propitiation.

Notice that John does not say that if anyone repents, he has an Advocate nor if anyone confesses his sins, he has an Advocate. Neither does he say that if anyone goes through a ceremony to get rid of his sins, he has an Advocate. What he does say is that if any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father. Before we even repent of that cruel or brutal word we said, the very moment we had that evil thought, and the moment we did that wrong act, Jesus Christ was there at the throne of God to represent us as Satan was there accusing us.

Dr. Harry Ironside has illustrated the confession that God requires with an incident in his own home. He had trouble one evening with one of his boys, so he sent the boy upstairs and told him not to come down to supper until he confessed the thing he had done wrong. The boy would not admit anything at all. Finally the boy called for Dr. Ironside to come upstairs and asked if he could go down to supper. His father said, “It depends upon you.” The boy said, “If you think I have done something wrong, I am sorry.” His father said, “That won’t do.” Later the boy called him upstairs again, and this time he changed his story a little. He said, “Well, since you and mother both think I have done something wrong, I guess I have. I want to come down to supper.” Once again his father told him that that wasn’t good enough. Dr. Ironside went downstairs, and later on he heard the boy almost weeping. He said, “Dad, please forgive me. I know I have done wrong. Please forgive me.” Then the lad came downstairs, and the family had a wonderful supper together because fellowship had been restored.

My friend, if you are a child of God, you are in the family of God, and He wants to have fellowship with you. I don’t care about these little rules you are following. You think that some way you are going to be able to live the Christian life by following rules. My friend, God doesn’t want you to be a programmed computer. He is not trying to do that to you. You are a human being with your own free will, but you are a member of His family, and He wants to have fellowship with you. We can talk to Him like we can talk to no one else.

Up to this point, John’s subject has been that God is light and how God’s dear children may have fellowship with Him. Now in this second section, the subject is that God is love and how God’s dear children may have fellowship with each other. Before, he was talking about walking in light; now he will be talking about walking in love. Love is the very heart of this epistle. The word occurs thirty-three times, and there is a great emphasis upon it.

“If we keep his commandments” does not refer to the Ten Commandments. John is not dealing with any legal aspects; he is dealing with family matters. The Ten Commandments were given to a nation, and on these commandments every civilized nation has based its laws. The Ten Commandments are for the unsaved. Now God has something for His own family, and they are commandments for His children. For example, in Galatians 6:2 the family is told, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” In 1 Thessalonians 4:2 Paul tells the family of Christ, “For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.” Some of those commandments are mentioned in the last chapter of 1 Thessalonians. I have counted twenty-two commandments in that chapter, and here are a few of them. “Rejoice evermore”—God wants you to be a joyful Christian. “Pray without ceasing” refers to an attitude of prayer. That is, when you get off your knees, you still are to walk in a prayerful attitude. “Quench not the Spirit”—don’t say no to Him. These are some of the commandments which the Lord Jesus has given to believers, and if we are to have fellowship with the Father and enjoy it by having assurance in our own hearts, we must keep His commandments. We do not feel that we are free to do as we please. The Christian doesn’t do as he pleases; he does as Christ pleases.

“And hereby we do know that we know him.” Remember that throughout this epistle John is answering the Gnostics who claimed to have a superior knowledge that no one else had—and generally it was heresy. The apostle John is saying that the important thing is to know Jesus Christ. And how can we have the assurance that we know Him? My friend, although a great many folk believe in the security of the believer, they don’t have the assurance of salvation, and the reason is obvious. We cannot know that we are children of God if we are disobedient to Him. Obedience to Christ is essential and is the very basis of assurance. You cannot have that assurance (oh, you can bluff your way through, but you cannot have that deep, down-in-your-heart assurance) unless you keep His commandments.

I would call this very plain talk! In the previous verse John has said that we know that we know Him—this is the positive side. We know by experience in contrast to the esoteric knowledge of the Gnostics. Now he presents the negative side: disobedience to Christ is a proof that we do not know Him. This is plain and direct language. Disobedience to Christ on the part of a professing Christian is tantamount to being a liar. In other words, his life is a lie.

There are a great many people who say they are children of God, but are they?. It is one thing to say you are a child of God, and it is another thing to be a possessor of eternal life, to have a new nature that cries out to the Father for fellowship and wants to obey Him. You cannot make me believe that all of these church members who have no love for the Word of God and are disobedient to Christ are really His children. I do not believe they have had the experience of regeneration. John is making it very clear that we know that we know Him because we keep His commandments.

Let me repeat that John is not talking about the Ten Commandments that were given to the nation Israel in the Old Testament. John is talking about the commandments that Christ gave to the church. If a child of God does not have a love for these commandments, he is in the very gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity, as the Scripture says (see Acts 8:23).

The Lord Jesus, when He was here in the flesh, said of the Father, “… I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29). I can’t say that, but I can say that I want to please Him, and I have dedicated my life to that end. Although I sometimes stumble and fall, I want to please Him. While it is true that “he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life …” (John 3:36), it corroborates his faith when in his heart he knows that he wants to do God’s will. The natural man never did want to do God’s will. Oh, boy, this is a strong statement which John makes! “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” And John will tell us that the Holy Spirit is the one who prompted him to say it. The truth is not in a man who claims to be a child of God but does not keep His commandments.

I want to make a distinction that I find very few expositors make. Even The Scofield Reference Bible does not make this distinction. I feel there is a difference between the Word of God and the commandments of God. Somebody is going to call my attention to the fact that the commandments are the Word of God. Well, commandments are the Word of God, but the Word of God is not all commandments. It is more than that. I hope you see the distinction. There are commandments in the Word of God, but the Word of God is not only, commandments. The Word is the expression of the will of God, either by commandment or otherwise. In the Word of God you have His complete revelation to us about His will for our lives.

In John 14:15 the Lord made this statement: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” In John 14:23 He said, “… If a man love me, he will keep my words….” What is the distinction here? Let me illustrate this. Suppose the home of a young boy is in the country. His father is a farmer. One day, when the boy is on his way to school, his father says, “Son, I’ll milk the cow when I come in from the field each day, but when you get home from school, I want you to chop wood, put it on the back porch, and tell your mama so she can make a fire in the cook stove and in the fireplace.” When the boy comes home, he obeys his father’s commandment that he chop wood. He spends about an hour and a half chopping wood after school, and he stacks it on the back porch. Then one morning at the breakfast table, the father says, “I don’t feel well today. I feel so bad that I don’t think I can go out and work in the field today.” But he goes out anyway. Now when the boy comes home from school, although his only commandment is to chop wood, he knows that his father is sick and doesn’t feel like milking the cow, so he not only chops the wood but he milks the cow also. He chops the wood because he was commanded to do so, but he milks the cow because he loves his father.

In just this way a child of God not only wants to obey the commandments of God but he also wants to obey the Word of God. He wants to please his Father in everything that he does. I get the impression from many folk that they want to live as much like the unsaved as possible and still be Christians. I would never give an answer to a young person who asked me if a Christian could do this or that and still be a Christian—because they were asking the wrong questions. The right question to ask is this: “What can I do to please my heavenly Father?” You see, a genuine child of God wants to please Him; he does not try to live right on the margin of the Christian life.

There are many Christians in our day who feel that they need to be broad-minded. They are against whiskey, but they use beer and they use wine, which gives them the feeling of being broad-minded. And, of course, they feel that I am very narrow-minded. Well, it is not a question of a thing being right or wrong—I hope you are above that plane, my Christian friend—the question is: does it please my heavenly Father? I want to do the thing that will please Him, bring joy to His heart and fellowship and joy to my own life. All of this, you see, is on the basis of love: “If you love me, keep my commandments,” and “If a man love me, he will keep my words.” If you love Him, you will do more than keep His commandments; you will do something extra for Him.

I feel that a great many folk have in their thinking only the sins of commission and forget about the sins of omission. James said, “… to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17). There are many things I know I should do, but I neglect to do them. These are sins of omission. The Bible makes no distinction between the gravity of sins of commission and sins of omission. They are equally bad.

I suggest that you take an inventory of yourself. What is your attitude toward sin? Does it trouble you? Does it break your fellowship with the Father? Does it cause you to cry out in the night, “Oh, God, I’m wrong, and I want to confess the wrong I have done. I want fellowship with You.” On that basis God will restore fellowship with us, and the assurance of salvation comes to our hearts.

I hear the word commitment a great deal these days. When an invitation is given after a message, the question is asked, “Do you want to commit your life to Christ?” What do they mean by that? Well, let me tell you what John means by full commitment. It is to love Christ. And if you love Christ, you are going to keep His Word—you can’t help it. You want to please the person you love. You don’t want to offend; you want to please. This is the reason I send a dozen American Beauty roses to my wife occasionally. You see, the question is not “Are you committed to Christ?” The question is, “Do you love Christ?”

“An old commandment which ye had from the beginning.” From what beginning? Well, the “beginning” in 1 John is the incarnation of Christ. It began in Bethlehem, then worked itself out in a carpenter shop and three years of public ministry. The “commandment which ye had from the beginning” was what the Lord Jesus gave to His apostles when He was with them on earth—which He repeated many times. For example, in John 13:34–35 we read, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” And in John 15:10, 12, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love…. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”

Believers are to do the will of God; and the will of God, first of all, is to love Him. This identifies a believer. A believer is one who delights to do the will of God. Because “the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth,” the believer ought to be able to say that he is getting to know the Lord God better and that he is understanding His will more perfectly. Schiller, the great German poet, said, “I see everything clearer and clearer.” And that should be the experience of every child of God. Every day we should be growing, and it is impossible to grow apart from a study of the Word of God. The written Word reveals the living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is the Bread of Life and the Water of Life. We will famish if we don’t feed upon Him.

Let me repeat that the great problem in the world today is that the majority of believers are trying to follow a few little rules and regulations; they are programmed like a computer. They feel that they are living the Christian life if they do all those little things. Oh, my friend, you are not a computer; you are a human being. If you are a child of God, you have a new nature—although you still have your old nature in which “… dwelleth no good thing …” (Rom. 7:18). But your new nature wants to do God’s will; it wants to please Him.

“The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth” would be better translated, “the darkness is passing.” As you look around you today, you will see that the darkness has not passed yet. Ignorance of the Word of God is still much in evidence. The “true light,” who is the Lord Jesus Christ, is breaking upon this world. He still is the most controversial person who has ever lived on the earth.

It is impossible for you as a child of God to walk in the light and hate your brother. If you do hate another Christian, it means there is something radically wrong with your confession of faith. This doesn’t mean that there are not some people whose manners and habits will be objectionable to you. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be some believers who have certain habits that you don’t approve of—that is understandable. But to hate them reveals that you are in darkness. Hatred of a fellow believer is evidence that a person is not in the light. This is something we need to keep in mind. There is the natural darkness in which all men are born. Paul talks about it in Ephesians 4:18, where he says, “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” That is the condition of mankind by nature. But our condemnation is not because of what we are by nature. “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). This is important. Don’t let it slip by you. We are not responsible because we are sinners by nature; we are responsible if we reject the Savior. We are not responsible because we were born in darkness and because our understanding is darkened; we are responsible if we reject the light that comes to us through the Word of God.

If you walk in the light, it will chase away all darkness. Instead of turning from its searching rays, let it search your heart. If a man keeps on rejecting this light, there will come a day when God will withdraw the light altogether. Or that man will become sunburned. Esau was that kind of man. He was red. He was sunburned. He was not only sunburned physically, he was also sunburned spiritually. What is sunburn? It means the skin will absorb all the rays of the light except one particular ray, and that is what burns. The soul that will not accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, the Light of the World, will become sunburned, just as Esau was.

When the Lord Jesus was here on earth, He said, “… I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). My friend, we need to apply John’s test to our own lives. Have you really trusted Christ? Is He your light? Is He the one who is so guiding you that you are not hating your brother?

When I was attending seminary, I roomed with a fellow who had some of the meanest habits I have ever seen in a Christian. He would start singing at night after I went to bed and was asleep. He wouldn’t sing all day long, but at eleven o’clock at night, he was ready to tune up. He had a lot of mean habits like that. So one day I told him, “You know, you are the greatest proof to me that I am a child of God.” He asked, “What do you mean?” I replied, “You are the most nauseating, the most sickening Christian that I have ever met, but I do want you to know something—I love you.” He looked right at me and said, “I want you to know that you are the most abominable Christian I have ever met, and I also want you to know you are the hardest person in the world to love, but I love you.” Years later that fellow got into some trouble. I made a trip to see him, to see if there was anything I could do to help him. When I met him, I found that he wasn’t any more lovable than he had been when I roomed with him. He was even more objectionable, and I think he found me the same, but I didn’t hate him. That man was a child of God, and God marvelously used him in the ministry. In many ways he was a great fellow. I don’t know why it is that when a Christian finds he doesn’t like somebody, he thinks the only alternative is to hate him. You don’t have to hate him at all; you are to love him as a child of God.

My friend, John has given here a tremendous statement: “He that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.” If you want to know for sure that you are a child of God, apply this test to your own life. If you are hating your brother, you are dwelling in darkness. If you are loving your brother, you are dwelling in light.

The Christian life is like a triangle. Let me diagram it for you (see below). God is at the top of the triangle, and the light of God comes down into your heart and life. Your love for God goes up, for you love Him because He first loved you. If you are walking in the light down here, it means you are going to love your brother also. You cannot say you love God and hate your brother. That is absolutely impossible, and John will make this very clear later on.

“Fathers” are the saints who have known the Lord Jesus for many years and have grown and matured. Personally, I think that David wrote Psalm 23 when he was an old man. He could never have written that psalm as a young shepherd, because it is a psalm which had grown out of life’s vicissitudes. David had faced all sorts of problems and dangers, and he had lived in fellowship with God. He was a matured child of God and would certainly fall under John’s classification of “fathers.” I have called Psalm 23 the psalm of an old king. I believe David wrote it as he was seated upon his throne, looking back over his life. He remembers that shepherd boy who would take the flocks out to pasture on the hills of Bethlehem, how he would protect them from the bears and lions. Then he remembers when he was made king and became the shepherd of a people. As he looks back over his checkered career, he recalls his wonderful friendship with Jonathan, his flight from King Saul, then his reign in Hebron, and finally when God made him king over all twelve tribes. Then he remembers his awful sin and God’s gracious forgiveness when he confessed it to Him. He recalls the trouble in his home (because God had taken him to the woodshed), especially the rebellion of Absalom, the son whom he most loved. He recalls his flight from Jerusalem and being holed up again and then receiving the news of Absalom’s death, which had been a heartbreak to him. With these things in mind, the old king says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1). As a mature child of God, he recounts how God led him in green pastures and beside still waters and restored his soul. It is folk like David whom John is addressing as “fathers.”

“I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one.” The “young men” are not as mature as the fathers, that is, they haven’t had the experience the fathers have had, but they have learned the secret of overcoming the enemy by the blood of Christ. They have learned how to live for God. Don’t tell me that a young person cannot live for God in this day.

“I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.” The “little children” in this case is the Greek paidia, immature little folk. They are the ones who know they are the children of God, but that is about all they know—and some of them feel that is all they want to know. Oh, how many children of God fall into this classification! In some churches you feel as if you are in a spiritual nursery! Although the folk are physically fullgrown, some of them with gray hair, they are still spiritually immature. They never did grow up.

“I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning.” John doesn’t add anything to that because you can’t go beyond that. As Paul expressed it, knowing “… him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (Phil. 3:10) is what makes one a father in Christ.

My friend, how do you get to know somebody? By living with him day by day. I have discovered that my wife knows me. She has been living with me for over forty years so she knows me very well. And the summer I was forced to stay home because of illness, she and I sat on our back patio and really got acquainted with each other. We talked about many things from the time we met down to the present. Although I was sick during that time, it was the greatest summer I have ever spent. I know her better now, and she knows me better.

Now how are we going to know the Lord Jesus Christ? My friend, the only way you can know Him is in the Word of God. That is where He is revealed. Many folk feel that if they go to a Bible study once a week, they will become super-duper saints. But the Word of God is like food. I’ve conducted Bible studies once a week over the years, and I certainly approve of them, but imagine going in and eating a good meal and then saying, “I’ll be back for another meal in a week.” Well, if you don’t get any food in the meantime, you will be in bad shape. This is the reason I have maintained a daily Bible-teaching program by radio. The Word of God is the Bread of Life. If we are to know Christ, we must live with Him in His Word as we go through the joys and sorrows of this life.

Now John addresses the second group—“I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.” In the previous verse John said that the young men were strong and they were able to overcome the wicked one. But now he gives the secret: “the word of God abideth in you.” My friend, how can you and I overcome the wicked one? With the Word of God. In Ephesians 6 the Christian’s armor is listed, piece by piece, and the weapon of offense is the “… sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17). If you are going to be able to defend yourself against the Devil, you will have to have a good knowledge of the Word of God. The reason so many believers are succumbing to the sins of the world is that they are not studying the Word of God. You eat three times a day—you need physical food to be strong—and, believe me, you need spiritual food to be strong also.

This is a section which a great many would separate from what has gone before, but I feel that it is very much a part of what John has been talking about. John has been telling us how we as God’s children can know that we are His children. He has said that the way we can know is by the fact that we love Him and keep His commandments. Later on, John is going to say that His commandments are not grievous. We are not talking about the Ten Commandments here but about the commandments which the Lord Jesus gave, for we have been brought into the Holy of Holies in a very personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Someone has made this division which I like: The Epistle to the Romans deals with how we come out of the house of bondage; Ephesians is how we enter the banqueting house; Hebrews is how we approach the throne of grace, but 1 John is how we approach the divine presence.

The way in which we can have assurance and be a proof not only to our neighbor but also to ourselves that we are genuine children of God is by our obedience to Him and our desire to please Him in all we do. I feel that there are some folk today who more or less grit their teeth and say, “Yes, I’ll obey Him.” But their motive is not love, and love should be the motive for obedience to Him. The Lord Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

My friend, when you obey the commandments of Christ because you love Him, a great many of the family problems will be solved and a great deal of the uncertainty in your own heart will disappear. If someone is offering a little course to follow in living the Christian life, people come running. A great many folk like to lean on something—even if it is a poor, broken reed which won’t hold them up.

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” What “world” is John talking about? He does not mean the world of creation, that is, the system and order found in the physical creation. In spring the flowers bloom and the trees put out leaves. In the fall the leaves begin to turn all kinds of beautiful colors, like yellow and gold and red. Then the leaves fall off, and winter soon comes. This is not the world we are warned against loving. This is the world God created for our enjoyment.

Believe me, there is a world system in operation today, and it is satanic. John mentions this in his gospel where the Lord Jesus says, “Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (John 14:30). “The prince of this world”—the prince of the world system, which is included in the civilization that you and I are in today. The world system belongs to Satan. He offered the kingdoms of this world to the Lord Jesus, and I don’t think he left out the United States when he made the offer—it all belongs to him, and we are not to love this world. We read in John 16:11, “Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” Again, the Lord Jesus is referring to the satanic system that is in this world today. In Ephesians 1:4, when Paul speaks of “…the foundation of the world…”, he is talking about the material creation, but when we come to Ephesians 2:2, he says, “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world….” What is “the course of this world”? This is a world that is filled with greed, with selfish ambition, with fleshly pleasures, with deceit, and lying and danger. That is the world we live in, and John says that we are not to love the world. We are living in a godless world that is in rebellion against God. Our contemporary culture and civilization is anti-God, and the child of God ought not to love it. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. Many of us must move in the business world, many of us must move even in the social realm, but we do not have to be a part of it.

We need to recognize that we are going to be obedient to one world or the other. You are either going to obey the world system and live in it and enjoy it, or you are going to obey God. Listen to Paul in Galatians 6:14: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” In effect Paul is saying, “There stands between me and this satanic world system, a cross. Both are bidding for me and, as a child of God, I am obedient unto Him, and I glory in the cross of Christ.” You can be sure that the world today is not glorying in the cross of, Christ!

Peter also speaks of this: “For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world …” (2 Pet. 2:20, italics mine). He spoke earlier of the corruption of the world. We live in a world that is corrupted and polluted. We are hearing so much today about air pollution and water pollution, but what about the minds which are being polluted by all the pornography and vile language? What about the spirit of man that is being dulled by all these things?

In Romans 7 Paul describes his own struggle as a Christian. He says in effect, “I have discovered that in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. I have found that there is no power in the new nature. What I would not do, I’m doing. What the new nature wants to do, the old nature balks at—the old nature backslides and will not do that thing.” So there is a real conflict which goes on in the heart of the Christian as long as he is in the world with that old nature. For the old nature is geared to this world in which we live; it’s meshed into the program of the world.

1. “The lust of the flesh.” Eve saw that the tree was good for food—if you were hungry, it was a good place to eat. Scripture condemns gluttony and the many other sins of the flesh. So many things appeal to the flesh. There is an overemphasis on sex today both in the church and out of the church—it is all of the flesh. Satan brought this same temptation to the Lord Jesus: “And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread” (Matt. 4:2–3). The Lord Jesus could have done that. The difference between the Lord Jesus Christ and myself is that if I could turn stones into bread, I suspect that I would be doing it, but He didn’t. He was being tested in that same area in which you and I are being tested—the desires of the flesh. We are being tested, and there is no sin in being tested. The sin is in yielding to the temptation. This same principle applies to sex or to any other realm of the desires of the flesh.

2. “The lust of the eyes.” Eve saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes. Remember also that Satan showed the Lord Jesus Christ all the kingdoms of this world. Let me tell you, they are very attractive, and they are in the hands of Satan. There is a godless philosophy which is trying to get control of the world today. There will come a day when Antichrist will arise—he is coming to rule this world for Satan. This is an attractive world that we live in, with all of its display, all of its pageantry, all of its human glory.

3. “The pride of life.” Eve saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. Many people like to pride themselves on their family. They pride themselves on the fact that they come from a very old family and upon the fact that they belong to a certain race. There are a number of races which are very proud of that. That was the appeal which Hitler made to the German people, and it is an appeal to any race. That is a pride of life. It is that which makes us feel superior to someone else. It is found even in religion today. I meet saints who feel they are super-duper saints. As one man said to me, “I heartily approve of your Bible study program on radio.” In fact, he has given financially to our program to help keep it going. He said, “I know a lot of people who listen to it, and they need it,” but he very frankly told me, “I don’t listen to it.” He felt that he didn’t need it, that he had arrived, that he was a very mature saint. Of course, it proves that he is a very immature saint when he even talks like that. Satan took the Lord Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and said, “Cast yourself down. A great many people will witness it, and You will demonstrate to them Your superiority.” It was probably at a feast time when many would have seen Him, but the Lord Jesus never performed a miracle in order to demonstrate His superiority.

These are the three appeals that the world makes to you and me today. But when we make our tummy our goal in life, when we attempt to make beauty our goal, or even when we attempt to make that which is religious our goal, it leads to the most distorted view of life that is possible. These things are of the world, and they become deadly. We are told that we are not to love these things because God does not love them—He intends to destroy this world system someday. What is our enemy? The world, the flesh, and the Devil. This is the same temptation which Satan brought to Eve and to the Lord Jesus. He has not changed his tactics. He brings this same temptation to you and to me, and we fall for it.

I have always enjoyed going to England and visiting such places as the Tower of London, Tewkesbury Castle, Warwick Castle, Hampton Court, Windsor Castle, and Canterbury. Many of us have ancestors who came from over there, but those folk were a bloody, cruel, vain, and worldly people. Just recall the way Henry VIII took Hampton Court away from Cardinal Wolsey who was the one who had built it. Poor old Cardinal Wolsey before he died said something like this, “If I had only served my God like I served my king, I wouldn’t be here today.”

My, how Henry VIII could eat! And when he got tired of a wife—he had several—he just sent her to the Tower to be beheaded. Go and look at all of that today—“the world passeth away.” What a story of bloodshed is told at the Tower of London, of the pride of life and of the lust of the flesh. The lust of the eyes also—how beautiful Windsor and Hampton Court are! Even the arrangement of the flowers was made by Sir Christopher Wren, the wonderful architect who also built St. Paul’s Cathedral. There is a glory that belongs to all of that, but it has already passed away. England is just a third-rate power in the world today and maybe not even a third-rate power. All of that has passed away and the lust of it. Where is the lust of Henry VIII today? It is in one of those tombs over there. Just think of all the glory which is buried in Westminster—all of that has passed away.

The word translated “little children” here is slightly different from the word that is translated in the same way back in verse 12. There it is a term of affection and implies all who are born into God’s family, God’s little born ones, little bairns as the Scottish term is. These little children here indicate the first degree of spiritual experience which we have seen in verses 12–14: the fathers at the top, then the young men, and then the little babies. Here John is talking to the little babies again. The little babies haven’t grown up yet. They are passing through this world, and the chances are that they have been tripped up by one of these three things which John has just mentioned.

“It is the last time.” We are living in the last day here upon the earth. It has been the last time for a long time. This is the age when God is calling out a people for His name. You can say at any time during this period, “Now is the acceptable time. Today if you will hear His voice.” Why the urgency about salvation? Because, my friend, you might not be here tomorrow. Tomorrow I might no longer be heard preaching on the radio. It just might be that we will not be around, so it is important that I give out the Word, and it is important that you hear the Word.

“As ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.” Many antichrists had already appeared in John’s day, but there is coming the Antichrist. What do we mean by antichrist? I think that this word has been misunderstood and, as a result, the person who is coming has been misunderstood. Antichrist is made up of two words: the title Christ and the preposition anti. It is important to see that anti has two meanings. It can mean “against.” If I am anti-something, that means I am against that thing. Anti can also mean “instead of, an imitation of.” Therefore, it can be a substitute. It can be either a very good substitute or just a subterfuge for something.

The question arises, therefore: Is the Antichrist to be a false Christ or is he an enemy of Christ? Where does Scripture place the emphasis? There are several references to Antichrist in 1 John, but the only things we can derive from this verse is that there is going to be the Antichrist and that there were already many antichrists in John’s day. What was the thing which identified an antichrist? He was one who denied the deity of Christ. That is the primary definition of an antichrist which we are given in 1 John, as we shall see when we come to verse 22. This is the emphasis in 1 John, but you will recall that the Lord Jesus said, “… many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many” (Matt. 24:5). That is antichrist—instead of Christ, claiming to be Christ.

I personally believe that there are going to be two persons at the end of the age who will fulfill both of these types—being against Christ and claiming to be Christ. Scripture presents it that way in Revelation 13. There we have presented a “wild beast” who comes out of the sea, and Satan is the one who calls him forth. That is the political ruler, and he is definitely against Christ. There is a second beast who comes out of the land. He appears to be a lamb, but he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He pretends to be Christ who is “… the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He will be a religious ruler. The political ruler will come out of the gentile world, the former Roman Empire. The religious ruler will come out of the nation Israel—they would not accept him as their Messiah unless he did. So that you have actually two persons who will together fulfill this term antichrist. They are coming at the end of the age, and both of them can be called Antichrist—one against Christ and the other instead of Christ.

This is very solemn. John says that some who had made a profession of being Christians in that day had all the outward trappings of being Christians. They bore the Christian name, and they identified themselves with some local assembly, some church. They were baptized, immersed, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They took the bread and the cup at the communion service. But John says that the way you can tell whether or not one is really a child of God is that eventually a man will show his true colors and will leave the assembly of God if he is not a child of God. He will withdraw from the Christians, the body of believers, and he will go right back into the world.

We see in 2 Peter what I call “the parable of the prodigal pig.” Peter speaks in that epistle of “… the sow that was washed …” (2 Pet. 2:22). Not only did a son get down in the pigpen, but also a little pig got washed. A little girl pig went up to the Father’s house, became very religious, got all cleaned up with a pink bow around her neck and her teeth washed with Pepsodent, but she found she didn’t like the Father’s house because she was a pig. So one day she said, “I’m going to arise and go to my father, my old man.” Her old man was down in a big loblolly of mud. The little pig went home, and when she saw her old man, she squealed, made a leap, and landed in the mud right by the side of him. Why? Because she was a pig. “They went out from us, but they were not of us.” That’s a harsh, cruel statement, but it happens to be a true statement. There are many who make professions of being Christians, but they are not really Christians.

Remember that the Lord said of Judas, “But, behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table” (Luke 22:21). Right there, at the first communion service, there was a traitor, Judas Iscariot, and he was one who was identified with the group of faithful disciples. We read in John 6:70, “Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a demon?” Judas was never anything else although he looked like an apostle, he acted like an apostle, and he had power, I believe, to perform miracles. He went out with the others, and they were not able to identify him as being a phony, but he was.

John makes a very solemn and serious statement here, and he makes this statement to us today. The Lord Jesus said to a very religious man, Nicodemus, that he must be born again. He said to him that night, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). John says here, “They went out from us, but they were not of us.” They looked as if they were true children of God, but they actually were not, and the real test, of course, was the Word of God. This ought to cause every Christian, including this poor preacher who writes this, to ask himself the question: Have I really faced up to my sins in the light of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ? Have I come to God in repentance, owning my guilt and acknowledging my iniquity? Have I cast myself upon Him and Him only for my salvation? Have I evidence in my life of being a regenerate soul of God? Do I love the Word of God? Do I want the Word of God? Is it bread to me? Is it meat to me? Is it drink to me? Do I love the brethren? And do I love the Lord Jesus Christ? These are the things which we need to consider, my friends, and the Word of God enjoins us in this particular connection.

After presenting justification by faith in no uncertain terms, Paul goes on to make it clear in Galatians 6:15, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” You cannot even boast of the grace of God and say, “Oh, I don’t trust in church membership. I don’t trust in baptism.” Well, whether or not you believe they are necessary for your salvation, the essential question is: Have you really been born again? Or, perhaps you are one who is trusting in these things. Again the important question is: Are you a new creation in Christ Jesus?

Paul spoke to the Corinthians, some of whom had reason to believe they might not be children of God: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Cor. 13:5). My friend, it is very important that you really know that you are a child of God. Paul also wrote earlier to the believers in Corinth, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13). Friend, how are you doing with the Christian life? Are you really a child of God today? Is there evidence in your life that you are a child of God? I’m not talking about whether you have committed a sin or not, but what did you do after you committed the sin? Did you continue on in sin? The prodigal son got into a pigpen, but he did not continue there—that was not his permanent address. If you had mailed him a letter after he had been there a few weeks or months, unless the pigs had forwarded it, he wouldn’t have gotten your letter. That was no longer his address; he had gone home. The child of God, after he has sinned, is going to go to God with hot tears coursing down his cheeks and crying out to Him in confession. If he doesn’t do that, he’s not God’s child.

Let me pass this little story on to you. I have heard it told several different ways, and I don’t know which way is accurate. Years ago in London, living down in the slums, there was a woman of the underworld, a prostitute. She had a little son, and she became terribly sick. She was frightened because she knew she was dying, and she sent her little son to get a minister, as she put it, “to get me in.” She told the little fellow, “You go get a minister to get me in.”

The little fellow went out looking for a church. He had to go a long way before he found a very imposing looking church. He went around to the rectory, and the minister came to the door when he rang the bell. The minister looked at this little urchin and said, “What do you want?” The little boy replied, “My old lady is dying. She wants you to come and get her in.” At first the minister thought the boy meant that his mother was out drunk somewhere, so he said, “Get a policeman. It’s raining tonight, and I don’t want to go out. Get a policeman to get her home.” The little fellow said, “She’s already home. She’s not drunk. She is home in bed, and she is dying. She wants somebody to get her in, and she wants me to get a minister. Would you come?” That liberal minister was stunned for a moment. He knew that he should go, that he couldn’t turn down a request like that, so he got his coat and umbrella, and he went with the little fellow. They walked and walked and came finally to a very poor section of London and found the creaky stairs which led to an upstairs bedroom.

All the way over, the minister had thought, What will I say to her? I can’t say to her what I have always preached to my people. He had always told his congregation that they were people of culture and refinement, that they were to keep that up and continue to be very cultured and refined. He thought, What in the world can I say to her? I can’t even tell her to reform. She ought to be reformed, but it is too late now. What can I tell her? Then he remembered that as a boy his mother had always quoted John 3:16, and in desperation he turned to that verse when he sat down beside this woman. It actually wasn’t too familiar to him, but he read it to her: “… God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The dear woman wanted to go over the verse with him. She said, “Do you mean that in spite of the type of person I am, all I have to do is just trust in Jesus?” He said, “Well, that is what it says here. It says that God gave His Son to die on a cross. It says, ‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up’ (see John 3:14). That is, what I read here, and so that is what you are to do.” This dear woman, before she died, right there accepted Christ as her Savior. The preacher himself told the story afterwards, and he said, “That night I not only got her in, but I got myself in.” My friend, are you sure that you are in? Are you sure that you have trusted Him and that He is your Savior?

Some people will write me and say, “You have no right to ask questions like that because we have been members of the church for thirty years.” Well, I think you ought to examine yourselves and see whether you are in the faith or not. It is wonderful to make an inventory and find out where you are. There was a time in the Thru the Bible radio ministry when we didn’t know where we were financially because our accountant became too ill to help us. When we got an accountant, we found that, although we had thought we were sailing along on nice, blue seas, we really weren’t. Thank the Lord, we found it out in time—but it was only because we examined our condition. A great many church members need to examine themselves. Are you really in the faith? Do you really trust Christ? Someone will say, “You are robbing me of my assurance of salvation.” My friend, I believe in the security of believers, but I also believe in the insecurity of make-believers. We need to examine ourselves to see what kind of believer we really are.

At the beginning of this chapter, John made it very clear that we can know that we are God’s children and that we can have fellowship with Him. In spite of the fact that we are His feeble, frail, faltering, falling little children, we can still have fellowship with Him because the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, just keeps on cleansing us from all sin. We have an Advocate up there with the Father, and He’s for us—He is on our side.

Then beginning at verse 3 we saw that God is love. This is the very heart of this epistle. Love is mentioned about thirty-three times. John said that the dear children may have fellowship with each other by walking in love. In other words, the little children must recognize that they are called to live a different kind of life. They now have been given a new nature. They now can live for God. Obedience is the test of life. We can know whether we really have life or not if we keep His commandments—and not only His commandments but His Word. Obeying His Word means we are willing to go even farther than anything he had commanded.

The difference between law and grace is brought out by what John has said. The law said: If a man do, he shall live. But grace says the opposite: If a man live, he will do. That is, a man must have a life from God before he can live for God. He cannot by the old nature live for God. This is the radical difference between law and grace. The law says, “Do,” but grace says, “Believe.” It is a different approach to the same goal. The only problem is that law never did work for man because it is impossible for the old nature to please God. We all have come short of the glory of God. John showed that the real test is: Do I delight in the will of God? Do I love His commandments? If you are a child of God, you have a new nature, and now you want to please Him. It has been expressed like this in a little jingle:

Proverbs 28:13 says, “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” Though we know that the blood of Christ does indeed cover us from all sin, we cannot walk and live in sin and at the same time have fellowship with God and with other believers. If you and I have a life which commends the gospel, it is another assurance that is given to us. I personally do not think you can have real assurance down deep in your heart unless you are obedient unto God. I believe that you can know beyond the peradventure of a doubt that you are a child of God. Such assurance is not presumptuous, it is not audacious, it is not being arrogant, it is not effrontery, it is not a gratuitous assumption, it is not overconfidence, it is not self-deception, it is not wild boasting, it is not self-assertion. In fact, it is true humility. Knowing that you are saved and the eternal security of the believer are not the same; they are not synonymous, although they are related. The Lord Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28). If you are His sheep, you will hear His voice. You are not boasting when you say that you know you are saved. You are saying that you have a wonderful Shepherd. You are not saying that you are wonderful but that your Shepherd is wonderful. What a tremendous truth this is!

“But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” The Holy Spirit indwells every real believer and is able to reveal to him all things. “… Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit …” (1 Cor. 2:9–10) so that we have someone dwelling in us who can reveal to us these things which are in the Word of God. We have an anointing, and every person can have the assurance of his salvation. If you really want to do business with God, if you really want to get right down to the nitty-gritty with Him, come to Him, ask for light, ask for guidance, and ask for His assurance.

“And ye know all things.” John means that all the things that you should know as a child of God are potentially yours to know. This does not mean that you have suddenly been given a Ph.D. degree in spiritual things. It does mean that by the Holy Spirit you can study the Word of God, and then through the experiences which God sends to you, you have the possibility of growing in these matters.

Many a child of God grows in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. I have been amazed at the number of lay people whom I have met in my ministry who have done so. The first time I discovered this was when I was a student in my first year in seminary during the Depression, way back in the late 1920s. I was asked to go to a little Baptist church in the cotton mill section of Sherman, Texas. I went up there and preached four times that Sunday. I never will forget that! Because the cotton mill hadn’t been operating for over a year, they gave me thirty cents for an honorarium! A friend of mine, a fellow student, went with me, and on the way home he asked, “Why are you so quiet?” I told him, “The offering I got was thirty cents!” He said, “Well, this is a real event for you. This is probably the only time that you will ever be paid exactly what you are worth.” Thirty cents—but, gracious, that had to be spread over the four sermons which I had given!

We had dinner, that is, the noon meal, that day in a home where there was an elderly woman whom everybody called “Grandma.” (There were about twenty people there, but I don’t think she was a grandmother to everybody!) She told me that she had come in a covered wagon in the early days and that she had loaded the rifle for her husband as he had shot at attacking Indians. She had been a real pioneer. But she had never learned to read nor write, and she wasn’t able to go to church. The people asked me, “Would you read something to Grandma?” Being a first-year seminary student, I thought I would give her the benefit of my vast knowledge of Scripture (which, by the way, wasn’t so vast). I thought I would take something easy and familiar so I began to read John 14. As I went along, I wanted to explain it to Grandma—after all, she couldn’t read nor write, and I thought I should help her. I made a comment or two as she sat there, and I thought she looked a little bored. After a few minutes she said, “Young man, had you ever noticed this?” Frankly, she made comments to bring out some things in that passage which I had never heard before. In fact, there was no professor in school who had ever mentioned what she mentioned about that passage of Scripture. Before we got through the chapter, she was telling me and I was listening.

This friend of mine who had come with me was sitting over in the corner, and I knew he was really going to get me for this. On the way home that night, he made another comment. He said, “My, you sure were helpful to Grandma today!” I said, “Where in the world do you suppose that woman learned so much about John 14?” He replied, “Did it ever occur to you that maybe the Holy Spirit is her Teacher? Maybe you and I have been listening to the wrong teachers!” John is saying here that we need to let the Holy Spirit be our Teacher. “Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” That’s potential—it is up to you whether you are going to learn or not.

“Who is a liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.” John gives us now the definition of antichrist. This will be the embodiment of the Antichrist, but there are many antichrists. There were some in John’s day; there have been some down to our day, and there are many today. Who are they? They are easy to recognize—they are those who deny the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, those who deny that Jesus the man is the Christ, the Messiah, the one who is God, the one whose name is Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the one who is pictured in the Old Testament. To deny that is being antichrist.

We have many systems in the world today which deny Him. They are against Christ, and they also imitate Him and try to take His place. In the early church it was Gnosticism. Irenaeus made this statement, “They [that is, the Gnostics] say that Jesus was the son of Joseph and born after the manner of other men.” That is the way Irenaeus identified the Gnostics in his day.

Liberalism and all of the cults and “isms” today have also denied His deity. Very candidly, I do not mind saying that the rock opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” is antichrist. It does not by any means present the Jesus of the Bible who is the Savior of the world. Many years ago Dr. William E. Hocking, who was professor of philosophy at Harvard University, wrote Living Religions and a World Faith. He made this statement, “God is in His world, but Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed are in their little private closets, and we shall thank them, but never return to them.” You can see that that is simply a direct, rank denial of the deity of Christ. The one “that denieth the Father and the Son”—that will be the sure mark of the Antichrist, and there are many antichrists even today, of course.

John has identified antichrist for us as the one who denies the Father and the Son. Now he will make it clear in verse 23 that you cannot deny the Son without denying the Father. You see, the deity of Christ is essential to your salvation because if He is not God, the man who died on the cross over nineteen hundred years ago cannot be your Savior—in fact, He could not even be His own Savior. None of us as human beings can die for the other. It was necessary for God to become a man in order that you and I might have redemption. Therefore, John says—

McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1981, S. 5:753-822