adrianwarnock.com » 1 John

The Holy Spirit as Evidence of our Salvation « Scholarship in the Glory

hostmaster — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:09:20 +0000

I just had to share this quote with you, do pop by the blog I found it on to read the rest of the article. The writer is speaking about a verse in 1 John which says essentially that the Holy Spirit is directly involved in giving us assurance of salvation. There is some similar material in my book Raised With Christ, but to be honest, I think this guy says it more clearly than I did here, and much as I know many of my loyal readers would disagree, I am not ashamed to nail my colors to the mast on this point:

Notice that John isn’t saying if we are Christians, we know we have the Spirit; he is saying if we have the Spirit, we know that we are Christians.This reminds me of Acts 19:2, where Paul asks some men if they received the Spirit when they believed. Paul is assuming they know whether Almighty God came upon them or not; an assumption we no longer make. Lastly, there is the passage in Acts 8 where Simon goes to Samaria and leads many to Christ, but the apostles “…came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Forget for a moment that this passage is theologically incredible. For our purposes, just note that they knew the Holy Spirit hadn’t fallen on these believers. They could tell that the Spirit hadn’t come upon them. Maybe Christians shouldn’t assume the Spirit is present and acting when there is no evidence. According to the Bible we should be able to tell, at least some of the time.

via The Holy Spirit as Evidence of our Salvation « Scholarship in the Glory. (emphasis added)

NWA08 – Don Carson on 1 John and Assurance

adrianwarnock — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:24:00 +0000

Carson closed the conference with his final talk on 1 John. I was home by this time, but I was able to listen to it over the weekend. You can do the same by ordering CDs from the New Word Alive website. I will share some short notes of it here.

Because of his love for us, we should love others. If people can’t see God, they can see his love operating in us as we love one another.

In the previous talk, Don spoke of three tests—the truth test, the love test, and the obedience test. But, in fact, the three are connected—you can’t have one without the other.

If you are born of God, it’s because you recognize who Jesus is. If you recognize your sibling, you will love them, and you will want to do what Jesus says if you love him. In the New Testament, faith is not merely a subjective opinion or a synonym for religion. Biblical faith is a belief in the truth. We also trust and abandon ourselves to the risen Christ. We have to pass all three tests, not focus on one or two of them.

Transformed Christian living plays a role in Christian assurance—the “we know” words of 1 John.

We should be careful about how we lead people to assurance. The medieval Catholics said it was pride to think you were sure. Luther claimed that if you didn’t have assurance it meant that you did not really have faith adequately—so if you strengthen your faith it will become assurance. Calvin did say that the Spirit would bear witness. Also, in 1 John we see some grounds. Calvin did say that the cross is by far the strongest place we should go for assurance. The obedience test will never be sufficiently fulfilled in us as we will always feel we have failed and/or will trust in our own works. There is the confirming work of the Spirit. Genuine Christianity perseveres, and the change attests the reality. If there is no change, you should question the reality of your faith. There is matchless assurance for all Christians whose eyes are fixed on the cross and who show some evidence of change.

What do you long for and are most passionate about? Whose approval do you most seek? What gives you greatest joy? What would you most complain about losing? Carson urged us to keep away from idols, and to devote ourselves to God and following him.

NWA08 – Don Carson on 1 John, Part 3

adrianwarnock — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:00:00 +0000

I will share slightly briefer notes than usual on this morning’s talk—my fingers are getting tired!

Don Carson began his talk on 1 John 3 by making a claim that it is actually only because of the Bible that religion and morality were first strongly linked together. It is only because of Christianity that our culture believes that we should be consistent in our behavior. Sin is broad. Sin is not just lawlessness, it is also a lack of faith that you will be able to not do something you want to do. Because law is of God himself, breaking the law is devaluing God. But, of course, we cannot claim to not sin—even as Christians.

In the first century sonship was both familial and behavioral. Most sons and daughters ended up doing what their parents did. If your father was a baker, you became one. Jesus became a carpenter because his dad was a carpenter. So, for example, when Jesus says that people are “children of the devil,” he means that we are so much like the devil it is as if the devil is our father, not that demons mated with our mother! Therefore, in order to be called a “child of God,” we must act like the children of God. No one who is born of God sins. This is in the present tense, and it sometimes has the force of continuity, so we often translate it as “we don’t continue to sin,”—i.e. we cannot go on sinning. We tend to soften this to become “we cannot practice sin.” There is some truth to that, but we should not soften the sharpness of John’s language. John is shockingly stark in what he says.

There are grades of sin, but it is all of the same stuff. There is a stark choice between this and the life to which Christ has called us—that of laying down our lives for others like Jesus did. We should love, and not love merely with words, but with our actions. If we pray and also watch porn, how can we expect an answer?

We are then told to test the spirits. In the Old Testament, one of the tests was whether something that was said came to pass, but also whether it was consistent with Scripture. Christians can be easily gullible. We don’t always discriminate and exercise discernment. We have to recognize that people and movements are sometimes mixed bags. We need to sift and weed out what is unhelpful, but accept the good.

We see that in the context of denying Christ’s coming in the faith by the gnostics, the key test to discern spirits was whether they believed Jesus came in the flesh. What is interesting is that elsewhere in the Bible there are other tests—for example, if the spirit declares “Jesus is Lord.” So often what is being denied in different generations varies. We need to be careful that we understand and are clear about issues that are being denied in our generation.

We recognize the spirit of truth by those who are “with us.” This can be dismissed as merely a sectarian spirit. No, we are speaking about the gospel which was taught by the first Apostles. John is one of those initial Apostles.

The tests of obedience, love, and truth are strong. Nowhere are they stronger than in verse 9. John is saying that we cannot sin if we are born from God. Yet in chapter 1 he has already said that if we say we haven’t sinned then we make God a liar. It’s not that we cannot sin, it is that it is inappropriate for us to sin. If we sin, we should not excuse it, but go for forgiveness. We should fight against it.

NWA08 – Don Carson on 1 John, Part 2

adrianwarnock — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Don Carson began by talking about the many ways in which the love of God is spoken about in the Bible. We are both always loved by God and commanded to keep ourselves in the love of God. We must not over-emphasize either of these. The Bible speaks about the love of God being general and sufficient for all. And it also speaks about the love of God being specific to those who are elect. Christ loved the Church and intentionally gave himself for her. It is definitely for those who are his people by eternal choice. But it is also, as here in 1 John, “for the sins of the whole world.” We cannot make absolutes of one or the other. It isn’t enough to say that here all is all without distinction rather than all without exception. No, here it says Christ’s death was for the whole world. God did die particularly and specifically for his people (see, for example, John 6), but here the emphasis is on the potential benefit for the whole world.

Don then read from 1 John 2.

We see here in this chapter a number of antitheses.

The first contrast is obedience versus disobedience. The test here is not feelings, but obedience. There are a number of verses where John says, “We know that we know him.” Don will target all of these together on the last day to look at Christian assurance. Is it God’s love for us that is completed by obedience? Or is it our love for God that is demonstrated by obedience? If we are a friend of Jesus we will do everything he commands us. Knowledge and experience have their place. But high intellectual or mystical claims without corresponding obedience are just spiritual humbug. We can’t claim to be in him unless we live like him.
The second contrast is between love and hate. Jesus did not avoid the cross. Through his love, he suffered for us. We must follow him. We do live in a battle, but if there is no love, how can we claim to be of God?
The third contrast is between God centeredness and man-centeredness. Christians come to know God, not because we earned it, but because we have been forgiven. People fritter away their lives running after other things. Whether old or young, it is shocking not to be focused on God. God loves sinners not for their evil. We do not love the world in the sense of admiring their sin. We are meant to love the world in a missionary sense. It is not that we are to hate creation. It’s just that we are to despise sin and godlessness. What we treasure will then determine where we end up. So treasure God and he will draw your heart. What do you talk about with friends? This world is passing away.
The final contrast is between Christians and antichrist. “The last times” characteristically refers to the entire period of Church history, i.e. between Christ’s first and second comings. Jesus is already reigning. This is the age of conflict. Christ and antichrists, which can be both against Christ or in place of Christ. There are those who claim to be redeemers. Teachers are not special mediators. Carson explained that he is not teaching because he is a special Levite.

There is only one way to God. We are either in or out. We are either on the rock or the sand. We must keep coming back to the cross. Eternity is drawing us.

NWA08 – Don Carson on 1 John, Part 1

adrianwarnock — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:00:00 +0000

This morning the expositional Bible teaching by Don Carson is totally packed. It was only by begging help from a steward that I got in. I think I’ve taken almost the last available seat in the entire main celebration event. Fortunately his talk will be repeated later this morning. It is exciting to see so many people gathered for a verse-by-verse examination of an entire New Testament book. I will have to get here earlier tomorrow morning to ensure I get a seat!

We began by reading some verses from 1 John 1.

Don launched in with a brief overview of the gospel, saying something like this:

“In the beginning God made everything good, but sadly we made a mess of everything. We have sinned and destroyed the world. We bring death. We bring decay. But God in his mercy has intervened in the world again and again. He intervened through Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. Jesus came and destroyed death. He opened a new beginning. Resurrection existence will happen in the future, but in the present we are bringing in something of God’s kingdom.”

There is nothing in that presentation that is false, but something can be left out, whether accidentally or on purpose. Doing that can lead us astray. What was missing from this description is God’s relationship with our sin. God intervenes to do something after standing outside the system watching the decay. But God is deeply and horrifically offended by sin! The wrath of God is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible. This is the righteous response of a holy God to his creatures defying him to his face.

What angers God is idolatry. The setting aside or “de-godding” of God. The fall was all about mankind taking on the role of God. He doesn’t want any competition! What is the chief problem in human history? If we don’t understand why we need a Savior, we will not understand what God has done to save us! If we pull out only a strand, we distort the entire picture. What starts off as mere silence on a theme finally has huge consequences. It has always been this way.

In its early history, gnosticism was one of the most critical dangers the Church faced. The main error taught that spiritual is good and physical is bad. If matter is intrinsically bad, how can a good God have made it? Also, how can a good Spirit, Jesus, become a man? Maybe he just cloaked himself somehow. John, in this book, stresses that his opponents deny that Jesus was the Christ.

Ethics were also affected. One branch became ascetic—wanting to whip matter down. This idea of “denying oneself” was very stringent based on the proposition that matter is bad. Another branch claimed that since bodies would die they have no significance, and therefore there was no need to be concerned about doing evil with your body—show your freedom by sinning with your body. Gnostics don’t understand that the cross as crucial, since instead of the biblical concept, the eternal son abandons the imperfect human, Jesus. A few strands here and there, and before you know it, you have lost the gospel.

John faced gnosticism in its earliest stages. We looked together at how he handled it.

What Does John Long For?

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” (1 John 1:1-4)

Here the beginning is the absolute beginning. There is a resonance with the opening of John’s other book—his gospel. John is saying that the eternal became a human that he has touched and met. It also seems to remind us of Thomas’ famous request to put his hand in Jesus’ wounds. Jesus was heard, seen, and touched as a resurrected being.

Jesus is the Word, but he is also the life (as there and also here). He comes back from the grave after slaying death. Fellowship is not just friendship with Christians. The word is stronger in the New Testmanet. A business set up between two partners is described as a fellowship. There is a commonality here, but it is partnership in an enterprise. We have a fellowship with the Godhead because we share in a purpose with him. If John’s hearers enter into partnership with them they will get partnership to God. According to John, the way we enter the partnership with the living God is through a relationship with people. [This thought struck me powerfully and I found myself drifting from what Don was saying and thinking about how astonishing it is that a form of Christianity has arisen that makes commitment to a local church optional. We say “I don't need other people in order to meet God.” There is a sense in which that is true, of course, but surely what John is saying here is that if we are partners with God already, how can we form a partnership with God without forming one with each other, too!]

Christianity, the apostle John goes on to say, is not about giving up something—it is about gaining God. In a way, reminiscent of John Piper’s book, God is the Gospel, Carson went on to stress that it is only through knowing God himself that our joy can be complete. We can be reconciled back to him. This is the source of our happiness. We exist for God. Because God is for us we can come back to him. He longs for us to share in that relationship with God.

What Stands in the Way of What John Longs For?

Sin gets in the way. But some are claiming they have not sinned. God is light. He has nothing to do with error, sin, corruption, decay, or ignorance of darkness. People call good evil and evil good. There is a twisting that happens. There is not any shadow in God. We cannot live in darkness and have fellowship with God. If we walk in light we will have a relationship, both with God and with each other. The truth is, we have all sinned. Jesus blood purifies us. To say the blood does something means that the life of Jesus violently ended is what does it. We are commended to God because of what Jesus did. When we become aware of anything that besmirches God’s glory we must come back again and again to the cross. God is holy, and the more we see this the more we will be aware of our sin.

It is not just that God will somehow overlook our sins. God bore our sin, as John goes on to explain. If Jesus bore our sin, then God is just to forgive us our sin. Christ was condemned for me so I will not be condemned again! He died on my behalf. That is our hope. We cannot claim that we have not sinned. If we say that, we make God to be a liar.

What Brings About What John Longs For?

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2)

If sin is inevitable, we might get the wrong idea and become less upset by it. We might decide to give up the fight and not strive to be holy. John says, I am not trying to give you an excuse to go on sinning. I want you to stop sinning! Christians must not go on sinning, but if we do, what is the solution? What brings it about? We have one who is speaking to the Father in our defense. He is our propitiation, which means that act by which God becomes propitious. It is that act by which he becomes favorable. God stands against us. Therefore, the object is God, whose attitude towards us is changed by propitiation. Expiation has as its object our sin, i.e. our sin is removed.

Many people don’t like the concept that the cross makes God kindly and favorable to us. Through this human reasoning people try to explain away the concept of “turning away the wrath of God.” They argue that God already loved us enough to send his son in the first place. Some argue that the wrath of God is only a metaphorical way of saying that bad things have bad consequences, which are just somehow designed into the universe. They claim God is not against us. Dodd was a major promoter of this theory. Leon Morris and others responded clearly and demonstrated the link with turning aside the wrath of God in the Old Testmanet sacrificial system.

God DOES stand over against us in wrath. To simply ignore our sin would make him unrighteous. But he ALSO stands over against us in love because he is that kind of God. God doesn’t love us because we are lovable. We are not lovely. We are sinners. He loves us in spite of ourselves. He sent his son to bear our guilt, to stand in our place, and thereby God’s justice is satisfied. His standing against us has now changed entirely so he is now completely favorable to us. Christ’s death in the New Testament does a lot of things—it reconciles us to each other, defeats death and Satan, and removes sin, but at its heart, it reconciles us to God. It is not that Jesus had to persuade a reluctant or ambivalent detached God.

In our legal system the judge always has to be impartial. He is never the offended party and must be neutral. But when we stand before God, he is always the most offended party. His knowledge is perfect, his justice is exact. God’s law is not somehow separate from God.

Disagreeing less than I anticipated

adrianwarnock — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 21:05:00 +0000

There seems to be an outbreak of grace hitting the blogosphere. An example of this that struck me earlier this month came from David Warnock. More recently, I have opened two cans of worms in two days and in neither case has the row that I feared developped. On gender and bible translations I decided not to comment myself in a rare moment of wisdom overcoming valour, and as requested there has been a gracious discussion in my comment box.

Earlier today, I criticised the pyromaniac’s interpretation of a particular bible verse and wrongly assumed that his view of the atonement must have been heading towards hypercalvinism. It turns out that despite our differences over 2 John 2:2 ( it turns out he feels I am guilty of exegetical gymnasitics myself!), his view of the extent of the atonement really is very similar to my own. Phil cites a book available online which supports the need to freely offer the gospel to all, which I really must read someday.

My little interaction with Phil highlights that actually not only is it rare for doctrinal error to spring from a wrong translation of a bible verse, provided we try to allow the entire bible to speak to us, it is unlikely that differences over the interpretation of an individual verse will dramatically effect ones doctrinal beliefs either.

The bible is written in such a way that it confounds our attempts to fully explain it in logical terms and yet it draws us ever closer to similar views if we will allow it to speak to us. I must never allow myself to substitute a system for the bible, and I must always be willing to learn about the bible from those who hold to different systems to me. We must honestly handle every verse in the bible and allow ourselves to constantly be held to account if we are guilty of trying to explain away any part of Gods revealed word. Because it brings together people who may never speak in the real world the Blogosphere may have a part to play in this process.

I still believe that Gods words in Ephesians 4 will come to pass. There are clearly two aspects to these words- the diversity of the Ephesians 4 ministries and the potential for diversity of doctrine. This notion of growing closer to Christ and thereby closer to each other is vital to any truly Christian notion of church unity.

Ephesians 4: 11-16 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.