Growing in Faith

Somewhere in this world, you may find the cutest little six-inch Christians walking around, swimming around in a little puddle of their sheltered, narrow, small life, when God, in fact, wants them in an ocean, wants them to grow, needs them to mature and develop. So this morning I want to ask you, how do you as a Christian know whether you are growing and developing in your salvation or whether you are stagnant in a smelly old fish tank? We may even ask, and some people do, is it important to ask this question: am I growing as a Christian? Someone might say to me, once you say you're a Christian, that's it.

There is no need to even ask that question, am I growing? But the Bible doesn't really make those sorts of statements. It doesn't really point to this truth that you can't ask this question. In fact, the Bible does very often ask this exact question of Christians, and it does so again this morning. The apostle John is writing to a church who have been upended, turned completely upside down by dissenters and conspirators against the gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, against the teachings of the apostles in the early church.

Now historians aren't entirely sure what teaching these dissenters and conspirators were bringing. There is no neat and tidy title we can give to their teachings, but it seems from this letter that there are a few emphases that were filtering through the churches of that time, including that supposedly true believers must know some special, very secret knowledge about the gospel, about Jesus Christ in order to be true Christians. That knowledge was only available to people on the inner circle. Now against this sort of backdrop where this is bubbling away, John finds Christians who are really scared, really struggling with whether they really do know the truth, whether they really are saved by the message that John and the other apostles preached to them years ago. And so John writes this letter that we are studying over the next coming months, and in this letter, writes a series of tests, a series of self-evaluation points that brings these sorts of questions before them.

What is Christian? Are you a Christian? Are you growing as a Christian? And this is not so much to cast doubt and fear into the Christians, but to bring comfort to them and to expose false teachers, to expose false Christians who say that they are part of the church when they're not.

So we're continuing our look this morning and we're going to read from chapter two. One John chapter two, verse three to eleven. One John two, verse three. We know that we have come to know him, who is Jesus, if we obey His commands. The man who says I know Him, but does not do what He commands is a liar and the truth is not in him.

But if anyone obeys His word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in Him. Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did. Dear friends, I'm not writing to you a new command but an old one which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard.

Yet I'm writing you a new command. Its truth is seen in Him and you because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining, shining. Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.

But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. He does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded him. So far our reading. Reading. So again, the question is, how do you know that you are growing in your faith?

How do we know that we are growing in God's salvation? Now the apostle John makes some points that boil down to this. You know that you are growing as a Christian when by obeying Jesus' commands, you love your fellow believer. You know you are growing as a Christian when by obeying Jesus' commands, you love your fellow Christian. There are three realities to this conclusion that John is making in our passage this morning, and they start very broadly with a broad concept, a theological statement, and over the three courses or the three points, they tapered down to some very practical application.

It starts broad and conceptual, and it ends in something focused and very doable. The first point that the apostle John is making in verses three to six is that a life centred on Jesus' teaching brings your heart in line with His. A life centred on Jesus' teaching brings your heart in line with His. It's clear from the opening passage that we are seeing another test of faith. This we know, sorry.

We know that we have come to know Jesus if we obey His commands. Here we find a test by which we can know whether we truly are, despite our failures, whether we are in fact in a relationship with the Father and with Jesus Christ. And this test comes down to whether we choose to obey Jesus' commands or not. If we really know God, this will have a very powerful effect on our lives. Now, as I mentioned earlier, the concept of knowledge, the concept of knowing was a big deal to these Christians because the false teachers knew the truth, a special insider truth.

They had special mystical knowledge. John says here, they don't really know the right stuff. John takes up these words and he runs with it. He hijacks it, in fact. The word, the verb to know, ginosko in Greek, is used 25 times in these five chapters.

That's a lot. And that's not adding the other word for knowledge, oida, the other verb, which is used another 15 times. So how's my maths? That's 40 times the word knowledge is used. Knowledge in one John is a big deal.

And what John is saying is that this knowledge is not some mystic vision. It is not some intellectual mind map. It's not some philosophical puzzle. It is manifested, made plainly visible when people obey Jesus Christ. And it's nothing spectacular, much to the chagrin of these false teachers.

It's no secret knowledge, only reserved for a special few? No. The clear teaching of Jesus, His life and His death, His personal ethics and the relationship of love that He talked about, these clear teachings on the meaning of His death and resurrection, this is the truth of Christianity. Now why is it important to know, with regards to these things, whether your faith is real or not? Because obedience to Jesus Christ reveals the inclinations of the heart.

Obedience to Jesus Christ and His teachings reveals what's going on in us. If you live to follow Christ, you live to have your heart fall in line with His. And this is the most fundamental test of a Christian. Are you desiring Christ and His ways? Before we ask questions of personal action, before we ask questions of theological knowledge, the fundamental test of a Christian is: are you desiring Christ and His ways?

Do you know that every Christian will do this? Every Christian will do this regardless of how wealthy or how famous they are or not, regardless of how disciplined they are in obeying Jesus Christ consistently or not, regardless of how long they have been a Christian or not. A Christian fundamentally will do this.

They will desire. They will strive to obey Jesus with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their mind. Do you know that Martin Luther, who many of us know, the great church reformer, the man who arguably rediscovered the gospel of grace, who went about his entire life trying to correct the church that he had grown up with, preaching everything but the gospel of grace. Luther, who one day in his office in a bell tower read Romans one seventeen, that the righteous shall live by faith, and meditating on it realised that this verse was talking not about the active righteousness that God demands, but a passive righteousness, an imputed righteousness that He freely gives to those who believe the good news of Jesus, His death, and His resurrection. Resurrection.

This Martin Luther who wrote later of that moment as a conversion experience where he says, and I quote, that he felt altogether born again as if I had entered paradise itself through open gates. That place in Paul, referring to Romans one seventeen, was for me truly the gates of paradise. Do you know what Martin Luther preached most on during his preaching ministry? You would have thought Romans. It was the gospels.

It was the teachings of Jesus. It was the truth about Jesus. His sermons, you can go and look for yourself. It's on public domain. Google it.

His sermons are on Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. The father of the reformation centred on the writings of the apostle Paul preached on Jesus. Why? Because every Christian, whether a history maker like Luther or not, whether a mailman or the prime minister, every true Christian will find their heart moving towards Jesus and His teachings. John writes in the second half of verse five: this is how we know we are in Him.

Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did. Whoever claims to be a Christian, whoever claims to be part of this fellowship with God will walk as Jesus did. And so friend, do you find your heart desiring obedience to the Lord Jesus? Do you find your heart bruised and saddened when you realise you haven't? Or do you find your heart surprisingly dormant and cold to Him?

Is the Christian life something that you can easily slip on or off, like a pair of old slippers? A life concerned with Jesus' teachings even held to imperfectly shows the inclinations of the heart, and it shows that you are moving in line with His heart. What's it like to find yourself moving closer in line with God's will? What's it like? John goes one step further and he comes to his second point.

He says that the gospel has brought a new dawn to your life and you will find new motivations seeping into your heart. Dear friends, John writes in verse seven, literally, beloved ones, I'm not telling you something new, but something you have heard since the beginning. The message you heard when you first became Christians. Friends, be careful about new insights and new teachings that try to tell you something hard, special new revelation. I see Christians fall into this all the time, tripped up in so many ways, by a special new insight.

A knowledge about the truth that only a few people know about in the church. It can be an end times preacher having worked out mathematical formulations, exactly how and who and when we'll be saved. It can be some sort of self-appointed prophet who wants to tell you what your future will look like. It can be a widely published author whose books sell in Koorong. Watch out for these new teachings, John says.

The cross of Christ is old. The message of a gracious God even older. New does not mean better. A small narrow following does not mean truer. It probably means cult.

Dear friends, I'm not writing to you a new command, but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. And then in verse eight, yet I am writing you a new command. Now we have to ask what's going on here? It seems a bit contradictory. Not a new command, yet a new command.

And John deliberately plays on words here because he wants to have his readers think. And we'll see what he's getting to in verses nine to eleven where he really says there's nothing new to say. What he's intending by this formulation, this structure is to actually say: here is a fresh reminder of the old message. A fresh reminder of what has been said before. And what is that reminder? Verse eight.

This truth is seen in Jesus and in you because the darkness is passing and true light is already shining. You know, one of the nicest things about winter is being woken up by that beautiful, soft, golden winter sunshine as it moves across your window. There's no blasting, searing, laser-like heat, but a gentle yellow glow and a comforting warmth that filters through the cracks of your curtains or your blinds. This is the image I get when John talks about the power of the gospel here. It's like warm light filtering into our hearts.

You want to know whether you are a Christian? You want to know the power and the truth of the gospel? This truth is seen in Jesus. This truth is seen, has been touched, has been heard in Jesus, been shared with believers for two thousand years. But more importantly for us, this truth is seen in us, experienced in our lives because John says the darkness in us is already passing and the true light is already beginning to shine.

What John is saying here is that if you are a Christian, you will be changing for the better. It's inevitable. It's already happening even if you don't recognise it. Although God's grace in the gospel came to us without a condition, purely from God's love and mercy for you and me, this scripture indicates that the expectation of your life is that you will change. Grace came to you with no bargaining power or no merit on your own part, but it is expecting change in you.

Not only will you change because of God's grace, you will do so in noticeable ways. The darkness will fade away and the light will shine, and it has already started doing so. That's the promise. So then the question we ask is, does this mean that the work of sanctification, the work of becoming holy, the work of becoming more like Jesus is now not our responsibility anymore? Are we removed from that somehow?

John says no and he leads us to our final point. He says that you are in fact encouraged to help this process, to be involved intentionally in this process. In fact, for the first time, he says, for the first time in your life, before you came to Christ, you were able to help. What will this look like? Our third point, our final point.

Christian hearts reflect an identity forming outwardly expressed love for their fellow Christian. And so what we're seeing here is this broad theological concept. A life centred on Jesus' teachings brings you in line with His. This broad theological concept of God's love at work in us narrowing down to: this is how it looks like in reality. Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.

Whoever loves his brother lives in the light. For John, this is the clearest way to know whether you are growing in faith. When you obey Jesus' commands and you love your Christian brother or sister. Now becoming a Christian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, is something that you must do alone. Becoming a Christian, you must decide for yourself alone.

But living as a Christian, you will never do alone. You end up with a bunch of people who have also at one time made a personal, lonely decision. But now as a family, you are being brought together to encourage and to spur one another on to greater acts of worship, to greater acts of service to your God. And friends, this is so wonderfully healthy. I want to stress this.

This is so powerful for a Christian's life and their faith. True Christian growth comes from being stretched in a church of unlike-minded individuals. It's often the way that God takes stunted little 15-centimetre Christians wrapped up in the small tank of their worlds and he pushes them into a bigger tank to grow. John says that if you live by the light of the gospel, you will love your brother. You will love your sister deeply.

Whoever hates a brother, and the Greek word is that strong, whoever hates a brother is on the wrong track. And this is something we have to hear as well. Say what you will, if you hate your Christian brother or sister, you are on the wrong track, friend. Something must be done about that situation.

It cannot continue. To live in love towards your Christian brother or sister is to walk in the light. It is to walk surefootedly because love rids the heart of all that would make us stumble. And therefore, love and light go hand in hand. Not loving our fellow Christian leads to darkness and blindness and causes all sorts of complications.

It causes all sorts of stumbling. Now for some of us, this is definitely not a new commandment. We've heard it before because we've been Christians for a while. But today, there is a fresh reminder to do what is necessary to bless, to benefit our fellow Christian. It is not a new commandment.

It is not a new commandment because we may have heard it first when we listen to Jesus, and we hear those words and even as we read this, we're reminded of that John thirteen verse thirty-four. And the apostle John is deliberately playing on these words to make us remember what Jesus said then. Jesus said this: I give you a new command. A new command I give you, love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another.

And then He adds, by this love, all men will know that you are My disciples. The implication of this fundamental test of our faith is amazing. The outcomes, the implications of this, Henry Nouwen put it this way. He said, the mystery of ministry, this ministry that we have towards one another in brotherly love, is that we have been chosen to make our own very limited, very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited, unconditional love of God. Our love for one another becomes a testament to the truth of the gospel.

On the one hand, it shows that the gospel is truly taking root in our lives by this love. It is truly at work in us, and therefore is verified in outward actions of love. But on the other hand, as Jesus declared, our love for one another becomes a witness to the world. By this will all men know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. It means that we can't expect the world to believe that God the Father sent Jesus' Son into the world.

We can't expect that people will believe that Jesus Christ is true and His claims about himself are true, that Christianity is true. We can't expect the world to believe these things unless the world sees some reality of the oneness, of the unity of true Christians. Love for your Christian brother or sister therefore has two implications. It shows the gospel truly lives in your heart. And secondly, it tells the world that the gospel is true.

Today's passage ends on a practical note, however, and so should we. How do we practically love our brother? There are a hundred different ways, and I'm not going to spend any time on them. But as a starting point, as a starting point, we have to make time for one another. We have to make time for one another.

You can't love someone if you don't share space with someone. So join a small group. Join a small group. If you prefer, start a small group. Get involved in a more focused three-person discipleship group.

But don't say it's too hard because it's not impossible. And I don't want you to be discouraged this morning either because it is happening. We've got a very, very angry baby. I don't want you to be discouraged this morning because God's light is already seeping in. That's what I wanted us to finish with.

God's light is already seeping in. I want to encourage you this morning with a wonderful testimony I saw this week of brotherly love that happened. I was invited to a small group, Brian's small group, where they celebrated his eightieth birthday. Brian is eighty, I didn't know that. John already mentioned just how much he's been moved by the love and support.

He's just gone through knee replacement surgery. Brian is doing really well. Brian is feeling loved. There's so much power when Christians love one another in these sorts of ways. And think about it, all your Christian friends, what would they say?

What would they think about this? No one is related to Brian. No one is married to Brian. Brian can be stubborn sometimes, but he is loved. What witness is that?

What incredible testimony is that? If anyone obeys His word, God's love is truly made complete in him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the fact that you loved us first. The fact, Lord Jesus, that you came and you gave us grace and eternal life.

Lord, I pray that we may in turn love our brother and our sister, love our church people like ourselves and Father, practically, if we need to, as introverts, be more courageous and come out of our fortress of solitude. Give us the courage. Give us the willpower, the determination to do so. But Father, I pray that all of us may so understand and grasp your great love for us in Jesus Christ.

The great implications of this, Lord, that we will do nothing, that we will stop at nothing to do this for our fellow brother and sister. Father, continue to develop this love, this commitment in us, and I ask Lord that above all, through this many may come to know you as their loving Father, as their redeemer, as their saviour. The world may know that you are true, that you are real through our love for one another. Amen.