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Guarding Yourself from Idolatry, Part 2 November 23, 2003 1 John 5:18-21
This morning we are concluding our study of 1 John. It is the 40th message on this letter, and, I pray, it will bring to a conclusion all that has been said previously, tie it together, and bring you full joy as you more fully realize what God has done for you in His Son, Jesus Christ. Since Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, I want to begin by putting this message under the banner of Thanksgiving. In a sense we could say that all messages are related to Thanksgiving and they all give us reason to give thanks to God, but these verses this morning are especially relevant. The Apostle is, in these final verses, wrapping up his letter, and his closing exhortation is found in verse 21: Little children, guard yourselves from idols. To strengthen their resolve against idolatry, he gives them three truths that they need to know in their fellowship with God. All three of these truths are profound and beyond our full comprehension, and they all deserve our heartfelt gratitude and thanksgiving to God. The first truth is found in verse 18. The Apostle writes, We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. What the Apostle is saying is this: Know that you are kept from sin by the Son of God. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is guarding you and protecting you from sin. As a believer in Jesus, you will not, indeed cannot, live a life of unrestrained sin. Why not? Is it because you are too holy now? Or is it because you have been glorified and made perfect? Not at all! It is because the Son of God keeps you, He watches over you like a shepherd guards the sheep. He is the Guardian of your soul, and He will ensure that you persevere to the end. He ensures that you do not fall into a lifestyle of habitual and unrestrained sin. Certainly you will stumble in many ways and fall into various temptations, but Jesus Christ will guard you, and He is guarding you at this very moment. The result of this is that the evil one cannot lay hold of you. He cannot fasten himself to you or make you his slave. At one time you were his slave, and he had you captive to do his will, but no longer! The Son of God is now your Guardian, and He protects you from sin and even from the devil himself. The devil can shoot his fiery darts at you, but he can no longer have you because you belong to God if you are in Christ. Oh that we might give God thanks for this precious truth! As believers we know that Jesus Christ is guarding us and watching over us with love and care so that we do not fall prey to the evil one ultimately. He is caring for our souls and protecting us from falling into a lifestyle of sin! Give Him praise and thanksgiving because of His love for you! This Thursday when you sit down with your family and friends to enjoy a meal, give God thanks for Jesus Christ, His Son, because He is watching over you and protecting you. The second truth is found in verse 19. The Apostle writes, We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Here is what you must know: Know that we are distinct from the world. We are at odds with the world. We are at war with the world and in a deadly conflict. If you are a Christian you belong to God. You are God’s own possession. You are of God. Know that this morning! And also know that the whole world, every part of this world and its philosophy and system, is in the realm and domain of Satan; therefore, you will be at odds with the world at every point. There is no common ground. What do God and Satan have in common? You are of God if you are in Christ, and the whole world is in the realm of Satan. He has taken unbelievers captive to do his will, and he has blinded their minds so that they do not believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Do not be deceived into thinking there is a world out there that is neutral toward God. There are only two camps. Jesus said in Matthew 12:30, He who is not with Me is against Me. Either you are with Jesus, or you are against Him. Those who are of God are with Him; those who are of the world are against Him. There is no middle ground. Thanks be to God that we are not against God as Christians. What mercy has been shown to us that we are not against God, because I can’t think of anything more frightening than to be against God and have Him be against me. Nothing would more unnerve and utterly terrify me than to hear someone say, “God is against you.” Who can contend with the Almighty? Who can thwart Him or stand before Him? If you are against God, you are destroyed and undone forever and ever. But praise Him that we are of God. Praise Him that we are not under the power of the evil one. This Thanksgiving let your heart linger on this verse, and then give thanks to God that you belong to Him, and that He has rescued you from this present evil age, and that you do not belong to the wicked one. Let your heart and your mind taste and enjoy and delight in the infinite mercy of God that has allowed you to be with Him and not against Him, so that He is for you and not against you. Realize what it would mean if God were against you, and then be thankful that you can say, “I am of God.” Praise Him for His everlasting mercy.
3. Know that the Son of God has given you understanding to know the truth (v. 20)
As good as those two things are, and as much as they should move us to stay away from dumb idols, it gets better. The Apostle is still ascending to his climax and to the height of his exposition, and that climax is in verse 20. There are three truths you need to know to guard yourself from idolatry, and this is the third: Know that the Son of God has given you understanding to know the truth. Know that Jesus Christ, the Son of God has given you understanding to know the truth if you are in Him. Look at verse 20. And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true. The Apostle now takes us even higher as we climb this Mount Everest of truth. We, as Christians, must know that Jesus Christ has come and has given us understanding to know the truth. Once again John is talking about factual knowledge. He uses the Greek word for know that means a type of intellectual, head knowledge. This is not personal, experiential knowledge. This is the kind of knowledge like 2+2=4. It is to be something that your head knows and banks on every day. This is the third use of know in a row, and this is the height of everything in the Christian life. This knowledge consists of two facts. Fact number one: The Son of God has come. That is so basic, yet it is perhaps one of the most profound and mysterious truths in all of Scripture. Think about what it means for a moment. Christmas is coming, and it is just over a month away, and we have a time to remember and celebrate our Lord’s birth. What are we remembering at Christmas? What are we celebrating? It is this, that the Son of God has come into this world of sin and suffering and pain and death. He did not stay in heaven, using His deity to condemn and tyrannize a world of sinners. Rather, He came into this world to save sinners. He has come. Think about what John means by the Son of God. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Who is the Son of God? He is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), and He is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature (Heb 1:3). In Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form (Col 2:9). By Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible (Col 1:16). In Him all things hold together (Col 1:17), and He upholds all things by the word of His power (Heb 1:3). He is before all things (Col 1:17), and all things have been created through Him and for Him (Col 1:16). When you see who Jesus is, and you stand and you look at Him through the eyes of Scripture, the view is breathtaking. Can you read these verses and not be utterly blown away by the incredible majesty, glory, and power of Jesus Christ? What a glorious person is the Son of God! How amazing is His glory, how infinite is His power, how merciful is His love, and how worthy is He of our praise and adoration! He is the one for whom this world was created, and He is all the fullness of God in bodily form! Now take that picture and think of Christmas morning. The Son of God was born in a manger in a stable in Bethlehem. I have just described who the Son of God is from Colossians and Hebrews, and this Person, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, came as a baby. He came helpless, utterly dependent for safety, food, shelter, and nurturing on human beings whom He had created. He grew up and learned everything the way we learn everything, yet He was without any sin at all. He was tempted by Satan. He was rejected by men. He was mocked and He was hated. The Jews were always seeking to kill Him. He was, Isaiah tells us, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Is 53:3). This glorious Son of God came into the world. And He died, beaten beyond recognition, unable to carry His own cross to Calvary, crucified between two thieves, and all of this without ever committing one sin. Jesus Christ, the Son of God came. If you are a Christian this morning, you must know this truth and build your life upon it. The man Jesus of Nazareth was not just a man. He was and remains the Son of God. This is a truly glorious and remarkable truth. It is worth ten thousand Thanksgiving celebrations. Yet, the astounding thing about it all is that it would do us no eternal good if the rest of verse 20 was missing. The Apostle says, We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true. The fact that Jesus Christ has come is mind-boggling and glorious and infinitely magnificent, but it is utter foolishness to the world. What is just as incredible as the Incarnation is that the Son of God…has given us understanding. He has given us the ability and capacity to know God. This is vital. Without this gift from Jesus, you would never know God. The Incarnation would be utter foolishness to you if this were not true. You would not comprehend the importance and the significance and the glory of the Incarnation if the Son did not give you understanding to know God. The Apostle Paul teaches this very thing in 1 Corinthians 2:14. He writes, But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. The natural man is the man who is not a Christian. The unbeliever is the natural man; he is not spiritual. This type of person, the person who is not a believer in Jesus Christ, cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God. In other words, he cannot understand the Incarnation. He cannot understand the glory of God. He cannot understand sin and repentance and salvation by faith alone. He has no spiritual understanding. His mind is natural and it thinks along the lines of this world. But notice the glorious statement at the end of 2:16: But we have the mind of Christ. Jesus has given us understanding, and that understanding is to know His mind. We know His thoughts and we understand them. We have understanding directly from Him through His Word by His Spirit. We have the mind of Christ! This is infinitely significant, because if we did not have the mind of Christ, we would have crucified Him along with the enraged mob 2000 years ago, given the chance. I know that because the reason the authorities crucified Jesus is because they did not have understanding from Him. Notice verses 7 and 8: But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. The rulers of this age did not have understanding. Because they did not have understanding, they rejected the wisdom of God, and they manifested that rejection by crucifying the Son of God. Without this understanding we are helpless and hopeless and we would also crucify the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ, given the chance. This understanding only comes from one source: Jesus Christ. John says, the Son of God…has given. He has given it to us. It is a gift from Him of His grace to us. We did not earn it. We did not deserve it. It was not something we understood because we studied hard or because we were smart enough or intelligent enough. The wisdom of this world can never understand the wisdom of God in Christ. To understand it you must receive understanding from the Son of God. Have you understood God’s wisdom? If you have, then be thankful to the Son of God for giving you this understanding! Be lost in gratitude to God’s Son for His incredible mercy to open your mind to understand the Gospel. Revel in the fact that God has shown the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ in your heart! God has given you understanding through His Son if you believe this morning. It is a gift of His free grace, something you cannot understand unless you receive it from Him. This gift is so amazing because of the purpose it achieves in our lives. John gives us the reason for this gift. He says, the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true. The reason that Jesus has given us this understanding is so that we might know God. The whole point of the Incarnation, and the whole point of God opening your heart to receive the Gospel is so that you might know Him. He did it all to establish a relationship with you, to bring you into His family, and to make you His child. He did it so that you could have fellowship with Him. This is the fourth time John has used the English word know in our translation. It is significant, however, that in Greek, this is not the same word as the previous word translated know that John used three times. Here John uses a word for know that is not an academic, intellectual knowledge. The word used for know here is a personal, relational knowledge. It does not imply that we know about God, or that we know the fact that God exists. Rather, the word implies personal knowledge gained by experience of relating to God and having fellowship with Him. It is the knowledge of relationship. Abbott-Smith describes the difference between these two types of knowing like this. He says that this type of knowing is “to know by…experience” and “is thus properly distinguished from [the other word for know]” which means “to know” something “based on…information.” The knowledge we have of God is not based on information only; it is based on experience with God. To know someone through learning information about them is drastically different than to know someone by meeting them, talking with them, watching them live their life. The type of knowledge Jesus intends for us to have of God is experiential knowledge, firsthand knowledge, personal knowledge because we have fellowshipped with God, not simply because we have learned information about Him. It is so vital that we understand that the purpose of our salvation is to bring us into this knowledge of God that is real, personal, and experiential. It is not to make us theologians, as important as correct theology is. It is not so that we can escape hell, as wonderful as it is to know that we are saved from hell. It is not so that we can be made much of and praised and have our self-esteem boosted. It is not to make us the center of the universe. To the contrary, it is to make us lovers of God because we have had a personal encounter with Him. It is to give us everlasting joy in the presence of Almighty God who has known us and given us understanding so that we know Him. Do you realize that the purpose of your salvation is so that you can know the one, true, living God? Do you see your salvation revolving around God, or revolving around you? Your salvation is not primarily about you, it is about having fellowship with God. It is about knowing God. It is about relating to God as a son relates to his father. There is nothing greater than knowing God. There is no greater gift God could give us than Himself, and the reason the Son of God gives us understanding is so that we may know God. He gives us understanding so that we many know Him who is true, in other words, God the Father. Has His work been effective? Has this knowledge become a reality in our lives as Christians? If we are real, authentic Christians, then it has. The Apostle goes on in verse 20 to say, And we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. If you are in Christ, if you know Jesus Christ and you have called on His name for salvation, you are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. That is John’s way of saying that we abide in the true God by abiding in His Son Jesus Christ. As we abide in Christ, as we fellowship with Christ and know Him, we abide in God and know God. For John there is no distinction between knowing God and knowing the Son of God. That is why he adds the sentence, This is the true God and eternal life to the end of verse 20. This is a clear reference to the deity of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the true God. The word this at the beginning of this sentence refers to Jesus Christ. Grammatically in the Greek it is most natural to take this as a reference to Jesus Christ. Logically it also makes sense, since John has already told us twice that God the Father is the true God. There is no need for him to emphatically repeat it here. Plus, the Gnostics certainly would have no problem with God the Father being the true God. This statement is the nail in the coffin of the Gnostic heresy. Jesus Christ is the true God and eternal life. Because Jesus is the true God, when you want to know God and understand God and His ways, just look at Jesus. Jesus is the true God. That is why Jesus could say to Philip in John 14:9, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” If you know Jesus Christ, you know the Father. Jesus put it like this in John 10:30: I and the Father are one. God the Father and God the Son are one God, and to know the Son is to know the Father. Jesus is also eternal life. John must have had Jesus’ words in John 14:6 ringing in his ears when he was writing 1 John 5:20. In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Jesus is the life. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. To know Jesus and to have Jesus is to have eternal life. He is the true God and eternal life. To know Him is to know the Father. Jesus Christ is the true God. When we know all of this and we live our lives in light of these three truths – that the Son of God protects us from sin, that we are at odds with the world, and that the Son of God has come and given us understanding to know the truth – when we know these things, the final exhortation is, Little children, guard yourselves from idols. Some commentators have seen this as a last exhortation disconnected from the rest of the letter, but it seems to flow right from what the Apostle has just told us that we must know. If the whole purpose of Jesus coming and giving you understanding is so that you might know the true God, then the natural response would be to guard yourself from any counterfeits! If God has done what He did for you so that you might have a relationship with Him, then make sure you stay in that relationship and you don’t go after an idol and worship it! The final exhortation could be put like this: Don’t break fellowship with the true God for a false god. Don’t substitute an idol for the living God. You have the true God in Jesus Christ, so don’t reject Christ and leave the truth about Christ for any other teaching or any other so-called god. If you do, you don’t have the true God. We are commanded to guard ourselves. That means to protect ourselves. To stand watch over our hearts, as it were, to make sure that no false god and no idol creeps in. Why this admonition? Why should we guard ourselves from idols? John Calvin gave the reason when he wrote, “Dry wood will not so easily burn when coals are put under it, as idolatry will lay hold on and engross the minds of men, when an occasion is given to them. And who does not see that images are the sparks? What! Sparks do I say? Nay, rather torches, which are sufficient to set the whole world on fire.” Our hearts are so inclined to idolatry that they will sooner fall in love with an idol than dry wood would burn when coals are put under it. Idolatry, as I said last week, is insidious and deadly. It can mean worshiping a false god in physical form. That is, you can have statues and pictures of false gods, and that is idolatry. It can mean worshiping a false god in non-physical form. That is to say, it can mean either worshiping a false god that is not a statue, such as money or prestige or pride, or it can mean worshiping a god that we call Jesus or we call the God of the Bible that really isn’t Jesus or the God of the Bible at all. Mormons do this. Jehovah’s Witnesses do this. They say they worship God, but they really worship idols, and they are idolaters. It can also mean worshiping the true God in the wrong form, in images and pictures and statues and icons. This was seen in Exodus where the Israelites had Aaron make a molten calf and then had a feast to the Lord. Idolatry, then, can take many different forms and many different outward expressions. We must be on our guard against all of them. We must be careful not to set up a false god in any form, physical or non-physical. We must be careful not to worship a false god and call that false god Jesus or the God of the Bible. We must take time to know our God so we worship Him aright. And we must be careful not to put up images of God and think of images when we think of the Trinity or any of its members. Images can and they will corrupt your heart. The worship of the true God must be spiritual. It must never consist of images or pictures or icons or statues. Someday we will see Jesus Christ face to face, and He will give us the exact picture and image of the invisible God, but we must be content to wait for that glorious day of His appearing! Let me close with this: let your hearts be thankful this week for these truths. Let your hearts just get lost in wonder at what God has done for you in Jesus. Do you know these three truths? Do you use them in your battle against idolatry and all other forms of sin? Do you take the truth that Jesus Christ is protecting you from sin and Satan with you in prayer, with you into work every day, with you at home or at school, so that you can fight with confidence and victory? Do you realize that the world is different from you, and count this as a cause for rejoicing that God has saved you rather than as something to try to minimize? Do you know that Jesus came into this world and that He has given you understanding to know the true God, even Himself? Do you realize that your salvation is about you knowing God and abiding in His love and His joy and His presence for all eternity, glorifying Him as you marvel at His infinite grace and mercy? And as you meditate on the depths of these breathtaking truths, guard yourselves from idolatry, and be thankful that you know the true and living God, Jesus Christ. Let’s pray. [Home page] [ ]
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