Grace Has Won the Battle of the Heart

You may know that over the past few weeks, we've been dealing with the topic of grace, God's grace. We've looked at various ways at how God's grace motivates us to live good lives, godly lives. We've seen how it saves us, how by God's incredible love, He's taken us. He's placed us into His kingdom through no action of our own. Nothing that we have done has warranted His love and His salvation of us.

This morning, we wrap up this sort of journey along the path of grace. I sort of liken it to, you know, walking your favourite trail when you go walking through the forest. This is a beautiful trail to go down every now and then just to understand God's love to us through Jesus Christ and His grace. And as we wrap up this sort of series, we're gonna look this morning at the question, have you received God's grace? It's one thing to understand how God's grace works, to understand the effectiveness of it, that it grabs an individual and it places them into the kingdom.

But have you asked yourself, have you received it? It's a test that the Bible actually does give us. It gives Christians even this test to think about, have we are we experiencing that saving grace of God? And so, let's look at the clarifying test that God's word gives us this morning from First John chapter two. First John chapter two, and we're just gonna read three verses this morning.

Verses 15 to verse 17. First John two verse 15. The apostle John writes, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever." This is the word of the Lord. Okay. So concerning the question whether you have received God's grace, we are given an opening proposition.

And that is that there is a battle waging all around us for our affection. There's a battle in the world, and the battle is over our hearts. You may have picked up on this, but in those three simple verses we've read, the word "world" comes up six times. What is John referring to when he talks about the world? Well, the Greek word used there is cosmos, which occurs 185 times across the whole New Testament.

That's a significant amount. Of that 185 times in the New Testament, the apostle John uses that word 105 times. It's a significant term for John. The word itself can simply refer to the physical order of creation. So the world around us, the things around us, creation itself, the world.

It can also refer to humanity that live on this creation, live on this earth collectively. So the people of the world. In this sense, cosmos can have a positive or at least a neutral meaning. But John also uses the word to refer to an evil order, which is what is happening in our passage. Here, the word "world" is an organised system operating through individuals who have set themselves up as God's enemies.

This cosmos is ruled by and deeply enslaved by Satan. If you have your Bible open, you can turn to First John chapter five, verse 19, and it reads there, "We know that we are of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one." So regarding this world, Jesus himself says in John's gospel account in chapter 15 verse 18 and 19 that the world will hate him and those who follow him. The world will hate him and those who follow him. So when John uses the word "world" in this context, he's talking about a system which has set itself up against God.

People, individuals, systems, orders that are against Him and are unwilling to submit to His authority, who instead choose to live in open rebellion against Him. And so when John gives a straightforward command, "Do not love the world nor the things of the world," he's referring to a love of this system which is directly opposed to God. And he goes as far as saying this implication, giving this implication, if anyone loves this world, the love of the Father is not in him. For John, as you read his letter here, everything is black and white. It's either or.

It's not both and. You love the world, you cannot love the Father. You love the Father, you cannot love the world. And between this love of the Father and the world, John sets up a tension. And what it boils down to is this, that the destiny of eternal life or eternal death lies in a battle for who we love.

Our eternal destiny, in other words, is decided over the battle of the heart. For this very reason, Jesus said that allegiance to God is summed up in a single command, and that command is not directed to the mind, not to your reason or even your behaviour. That command is summed up in what you love. Jesus said, "The greatest commandment for all humanity is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind." In other words, the most important rule in life pertains to who you love and how much you love Him.

This is why King Solomon writes in Proverbs 4:23, "Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life." Likewise, the redeeming work of Jesus in the Old Testament is framed as a radical overhaul of the heart. Ezekiel 36:26, "I will give you what? A new heart. I will put a new spirit in you, and I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

And this is such a consistent theme across the whole Bible that the great Puritan Jonathan Edwards argued that faith, the Christian faith, true faith, consists of holy affections, holy feelings, holy emotions. In other words, Christianity isn't so much about what you know. The truth of the gospel is felt in the heart. The truth of the gospel is felt in the heart. And that is why we find this dichotomy here between love for the world and love for the Father.

And these loves are diametrically opposed to each other. You can't, you can't have both. It's either or. And a battle exists between the order of rebellion and the order of the Father as both seek to lay claim of the same thing, which is your heart. And then John wants to ask you the question, which camp do you sit in?

And the apostle John gives us a test to check the allegiance of our hearts. Verse 16 gives us a test of genuine faith. It reads, "For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world." And he gives this test to come to the outcome, to ask the question, do I belong to the Father or the world? And verse 16 explains what it looks like to be captivated, to be in love, to be enthralled by the world.

Starting with the word "for," which means this verse is explaining verse 15, we are given three categories which encapsulate all things from the world, which is not from the Father. Those three categories are the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the desires of the pride of life. And these three affections of the heart identify whether the love of the Father is in you or not. Why do these three things test the genuineness of your faith? It's significant that these three categories neatly align with the three temptations of Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Genesis three, you'll see that when Eve saw the forbidden fruit, this is what happened in her heart. Genesis 3:6. "The woman, Eve, saw that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree was good for food. Flesh, and that it was a delight to the eyes, eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. And she took of its fruit and ate, and also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate."

The fruit was good for food, an appeal to the flesh, a delight to the eye, an appeal to the eyes, and the fruit was able to make one wise, which was the appeal to be wise like God, to be your own God. And so all three aspects, interestingly, John highlights here are then also the ones that Jesus, remember, in Luke 4 was faced with in the wilderness. Remember when Satan came and tempted Jesus? That same pattern happened to Jesus. Satan comes to Jesus as he is forty days rather in the desert, and he comes to Jesus with the first temptation.

And what is it? To turn stones into bread. Jesus is starving after forty days of fasting. Desire of the flesh. Secondly, Satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth.

He shows them, Luke says, the glory of the kingdoms. And Satan says, you can have all of this, the lust of the eyes. And then thirdly, the final temptation, Satan encourages Jesus to jump off the pinnacle of the huge temple in Jerusalem to test whether God would save him, God the Father would save him if He was truly the Son of God. And Satan's tempting the ego of Jesus to prove himself.

And Jesus rejects Satan with the words, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." In other words, testing God is putting God's will under your will to bend Him for this wager that Satan had set up. The pride of life, the pride of the heart. Where Adam and Eve failed in their temptations of the flesh, the eye and pride, Jesus succeeds. That makes Him the perfect Adam.

But notice back here in our passage, those exact same categories are back again. And they are there to cripple the church. They are there to identify the lostness of the world. And if you think about those categories, you understand the incredibly broad array of sin that comes from those three categories. The drive for money, for sex, for status, the desire to overeat, the desire to undereat, the desire to abuse substances, the desire for bitterness, the drive for self importance, for vanity, for gossip, for rage, you can tie back all of those issues to those three desires of the flesh, the eyes, and the heart.

And the fact that they are called desires, the Greek word epithumia, highlights that we aren't talking here about a simple cognitive misunderstanding, that the salvation that we need is somehow just more education, moral teachings by which to live by, how to set up your life. No. These are desires grounded in the deepest part of the heart. It is not a misunderstanding of the meaning of the gospel even. It's not even fixed by having a clear theology.

These are passions, lusts, yearnings of the heart. Someone with a love for the world is ensnared with a vicious appetite that is never satisfied. The heart is filled with these desires which will make their life's purpose the pursuit of those things. And so the truth for the human condition is that it's our heart's desire that rules us. A few years ago, I remember watching a certain morning show.

I won't say which one. And at the time, a report had just come out, a study had just come out on alcohol abuse. The study found that it's now young women who are the greatest abusers of alcohol in Australia. And I remember my disbelief when each panellist on this morning's show attempted to give their commentary on that finding. Even as they tried to feign distress at the news, they all admitted to getting drunk every now and then.

Their moral high ground by which to fake this distress was built on cow dung. They couldn't see the irony of projecting a concern for an abuse that destroys lives on the one hand while abusing it themselves, while being victims of it themselves. They couldn't, they couldn't understand. The reality is that human existence isn't steered by our thoughts, our logic, our reasoning. Our life is driven by our heart.

Think of the gambler who knows that his addiction is bringing him to ruin. Think of the adulterer who knows that his affair is leading to the destruction of his family. Think of the young woman who has heard a thousand times that her life isn't made up of the sum of the photos on her Instagram account. And against all reason, perhaps with the guiltiest of consciences ever, the disordered passions of their hearts have taken control of their lives. Human existence isn't steered by our thoughts.

So if you were to ask yourself, why do you do what you do? What is it that makes you happy? What is it that gives you deep satisfaction? What is it that makes you sad? If you were to go away today finding a quiet place to honestly plumb the depths of your heart, and if you could answer these questions, what is it that makes you happy?

Whatever answer you come up with, you'll find that is the driver of your life. This is how stark the test of genuine faith is that John puts before us, to check our hearts. Do I belong to the Father or to the world? And you answer that by being able to answer, who do I love? And then finally, in verse 17, we are given the enlightened words that might just pull us out of that quicksand, the quicksand of our disordered affections.

John gives us this sobering statement. He says, "It is foolish to sell your heart to the world because, verse 17, the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." All along, it's been about the heart. And the deepest desire of the heart, whether you are a Christian here today or not, is actually the desire to continue forever. You can call it the desire to live forever in peace.

We know people probably who desire to end their life. People, however, I would argue only wanted to end because they are experiencing something today other than peace. But the human heart, both the spiritual heart, the worldly heart, the ordered heart or the disordered heart has, at its deepest desire, a desire to continue forever, to live and to keep living. Yet, says John, there is only one possibility to live forever. To abide, he says, which is an old English word to simply mean remain, to live.

We live forever, he says, by doing the will of God. Alternatively, the way of this world, he says, is passing away. Now, what does that all mean? It's interesting that the verb "passing away" is in the present tense. It is.

The world is passing away. That verb means literally to depart, to move on. John is saying that there's a transience to this order that's around us. There's an existence that is ebbing away. Now, talk to many Christians, however, you might get a different impression.

You might hear Christians say that the evil of this world is actually gaining speed. It's it's growing. And all that we as Christians are doing now is to hold on to the final judgment, to hold on till God comes to rescue us. But the truth is, says John, it's the world, not God's kingdom. It's the world that is passing away.

The Christian abides forever. Have a look, a few verses earlier to this in verse 8. Interestingly, the same verb, "passing away," is found there, and we find almost a mirror statement. "The darkness," he says, "is passing away, and the true light is already shining." Verse 8 and verse 17, therefore, go together.

They give detail to each other. And what is God saying between those two verses? He's saying that the dark order of this world, the order of sin and rebellion and all its powerful desires that wages war on the heart is dying. It is losing ground inch by inch to the one who is the light, namely Jesus Christ, who said, "I am the light of the world." And so the reality for the Christian, the one who has found out what is the will of God and who obeys the will of God, the Christian is not simply holding on in this world until God comes in the final judgment.

No. The Christian is assured that it is the world that is losing its power and that they themselves have now already started living forever. In other words, the deepest desire of the human heart to continue forever is already the Christian's. Eternity for the Christian has started now. And so the final question to ask is, what is the will of God?

What is it, this thing that we need to obey, to do as John puts it? And again, the word for "will" in the Greek, thalema, occurs only a handful of times in John's writings. And importantly, it's in John's gospel account that we hear his definition of the will of God. And it comes to us in the words of Jesus himself in John 6. Jesus said, "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of Him who sent me.

And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those He has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life." Friend, in evaluating your heart this morning, you may realise that you are frighteningly gripped by the love of this world. Perhaps you feel like you are losing to the desires of the flesh, the eye, and the pride of life, and you wonder if you could truly be right with God. In fact, listening to the phrase, "do the will of God" leaves you with a stone in your chest because you think, I cannot.

I cannot do it. But this is God's will, that you may look to the Son whom He has sent that you may have eternal life in your belief in Him. That you may look upon the Son and see His death on the cross and see it as a death for you. And that you may also look at how He was raised back to life, having conquered sin and death, and that you may believe that you will be raised at the last day. That it is something you can have.

God's will for you is that you may pass from death to life in the midst of a passing away world and to believe and know that you will continue forever. And so to do the will of God is simply to believe in Jesus Christ. "The world is passing away," says John. It is foolish to put your flag in that camp. It is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

The nineteenth century Scottish minister Robert Candlish put it beautifully in his commentary on First John. He said, "The world with its lust is passing, but the Christian is in possession. The world, as it were, has forfeited its title and is tolerated on sufferance merely for a time and for a temporary purpose. But the Christian is a proprietor, having a good and valid reason to remain forever. The world must go.

He stays. The world has notice to quit, but he abides." Doing the will of God, therefore, are already in your abiding state, in the state in which you are to abide forever. No essential change is before you. There may be stages of advancement and varieties of experience, a temporary break, perhaps in the outer continuity of the thread of life between the soul quitting the body to be with Christ where He now is, and it receiving the body anew at His coming.

But substantially, you are now as you are to be always. You are now what you are to be always. The destiny of eternal life lies in a battle for who you love. As we come to the end of our series on God's grace, we hear that that battle has been won for you. The question of your life is not a question of how much you know.

In fact, right now, it's not even a question of how much you love. It is a question of how much you have been loved. And as soon as you understand that, as soon as you understand that your life and your deepest desire of living forever has been granted to you in Christ, simply by looking upon Him and believing, you receive that love, and you cannot help but love Him in return. And so the best Christians are not the Christians who are the most cognitive or intelligent. You and I won't think our way to godliness and holy living.

Christianity is about who you love. And that love drives you to live for them. And so a test is put before us. Do I love the world or do I love the Father? And perhaps it's been dawned on you today that you have always just loved the world.

But maybe you realise that you are tired of its desires that are ruling over you, that these desires are terrible masters when you've only just wanted to love a Father. Listen to His word and receive Him today as your Father. And perhaps you are sitting here and you know deep down that the Father has sent the Son for you. Take comfort this morning and be glad that you have won with Christ, that the world is losing its ground, that the battle over your sin is not gaining speed. To the Christian, to the non-Christian comes a question, why align your heart with the world and its passing desires when your heart's desires have been met by a loving, gracious Saviour who is your abiding.

My Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him will receive eternal life. Let's pray. Lord, we try so hard. We try and we fail, and we don't know why our actions seem so often a shadow of Your desire for us. Help us this morning to know and to be convicted that it is a desire and a battle all over our hearts and who we love.

Help us, Lord, to then grow in that love. Help us, Lord, to understand with sobering clarity how much You have first loved us and what a great thing it is for us to love You back. Lord, I pray for those in our lives who love the world, who are very far from You and have succumbed to all sorts of desires that wage war against their hearts, and we pray, Lord, for them and their salvation that they may come to a true and lasting understanding of what they have received. For those who have walked away but still are called Your children, Lord, that they may understand that You are their Father. And for those that have never been a part of Your family, Lord, for them to receive the adoption, the born again status that is available to them by Your Spirit through Your grace.

And then for us, Lord, who know You and call upon You as our God and Father, who profess to love You, Lord, may our lives reflect that love. Grant us the confidence this morning that the passions, the desires, the lusts of this world are passing. They are losing their power over us. Help us to see that. Help us to notice that, and help us to have peace that we will abide with You because we have done the will of God to believe in Jesus.

We pray these things in His name. Amen.