So That You May Know
Rev. Res Spears
Walking in Truth and Love • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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I’m sure it’s just an indication that I’m a cranky old man now, but lately I find a lot of comfort in watching television shows I’ve watched many times before.
Seinfeld is one of them. Is anybody else here a big Seinfeld fan?
A couple of years ago, I binged Seinfeld and was reminded how much I’d enjoyed that show when it was on and then in reruns.
There was something about how the creators simply adapted Jerry Seinfeld’s standup comedy to the lives of four fictional New Yorkers and then wove it into a show about nothing.
And there’s a Seinfeld episode I was reminded of as I was preparing today’s message. Maybe you’ll remember it.
Jerry needs to rent a car, and he and Elaine appear at the desk of the rental agency. He gives his name to the clerk and says he has a reservation for a midsized car.
The clerk takes a moment to check her computer and tells him they don’t have a midsize car available.
Jerry says, “I don’t understand. I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation?”
And the clerk replies, “Yes, we do. Unfortunately, we ran out of cars.”
And Jerry says, "But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.”
The clerk, who is clearly miffed at Jerry by this time and exhibiting the renowned patience of New Yorkers, replies, “I know why we have reservations.”
“I don't think you do,” Jerry says. “If you did, I’d have a car. You see, you know how to ‘take’ the reservation, you just don't know how to ‘hold’ the reservation. And that's really the most important part of the reservation: the holding. Anybody can just take them.”
Now, if a show claims to be about nothing, I don’t think we need to spend a lot of time dissecting its deep meaning.
But there IS something to note here about assurance, which is one of the themes of the verses we will look at from 1 John today.
Jerry was under the understandable impression that having a reservation assured he would have a car available to him. He had a reservation, so he had assurance, however misplaced it turned out to be.
Now, a couple of weeks ago, we saw that the Apostle John told the recipients of this letter that the Holy Spirit, the water, and the blood all testify to the reality of who Jesus is.
The Spirit testifies within the hearts of believers, corroborating what was revealed about Jesus during His ministry here on earth — from the waters of His baptism to the blood He shed on Calvary’s cross.
John’s point was that Jesus’ entire life attested to the fact that He is both the eternally divine Son of God and the sinless and completely human representative of mankind whose sacrificial death and supernatural resurrection enable all who follow Him in faith to be reconciled to God.
And, as we’ll see today, it is the testimony of God through the Spirit, the water, and the blood that provides assurance of eternal life to those who have trusted in Jesus.
Let’s look at verses 12 and 13 of chapter 5 together.
12 He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. 13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.
Now, the first thing John does in these verses is to draw a line in the sand.
And it’s useful to remember that he wrote this message to the churches of Asia Minor, who had been dealing with false teachers who denied that Jesus was who He said He was.
Some of them were denying His deity, and some of them were denying His humanity. And they were saying that it wasn’t really necessary to believe that Jesus is who He said He is in order to have eternal life.
They were separating eternal life from Christ. You can have one without the other, they said.
And the thing is that this kind of heresy is still alive and well, even if it’s dressed up in different theological clothing these days.
There are plenty of people willing to follow the teachings of Jesus but UNwilling to confess Him as Lord, UNwilling to concede that He is God in the flesh.
And you might remember what John said about that: They’re calling God a liar.
There are and always have been plenty of people who believe in heaven but are UNwilling to believe that the only way to GET to heaven is through faith in Jesus.
Just like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time, they figure they’ll get to heaven on their own merits. Or maybe that they’ll bargain with God when they stand before Him. Maybe they’ll convince Him that they’ve been good enough to be admitted into His Kingdom.
John had something to say about that in this letter, too: If you say you have no sin, YOU are a liar.
In verse 12, John is only echoing the words of Jesus.
Jesus said:
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
Jesus said:
36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
Jesus is THE way. He is the ONLY way to the Father. He is the ONLY way to the life — to eternal life. There is salvation in no one else — and especially not in yourself. “There is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
Up until the early part of the 20th century, yellow fever was a disease that confounded doctors and killed great numbers of people all around the world.
Even after they finally understood that it was transmitted by mosquitos, researchers were long unable to develop an effective treatment, much less a way to keep people from being infected.
And then, in the 1930s, a blood specimen was taken from an African man who had survived the virus. Working with that virus, a man named Max Theiler was able to develop a vaccine that would protect people from yellow fever.
To this day, all of the yellow fever vaccines that have been used have been developed from the viral samples taken from that first African man.
To be saved from yellow fever, you have to receive a vaccine made from a version of the virus that originated with that man.
Similarly, to be saved from the judgment and wrath of God for your sins, you "must receive an application of the unique precious blood that was shed by the Son of God alone.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), 1 Jn 5:11, quoting Blair.]
There is no other way to be saved. Not by church membership. Not by reading the Bible. Not by doing work around the church. Not by helping little old ladies across the street. Not by giving everything you have to the poor.
Only through faith in Jesus and the blood He shed in your place and on your behalf at the cross can you be saved. Only through faith in Him can you have life.
What matters in the end is whether you have a relationship with Him. Whether you HAVE Him, as John puts it here.
If you have Jesus, you have life. You have THE life, because Jesus is the way, the truth and THE life.
As John Stott puts it, “God has borne witness to his Son, in order that we may believe in him and so ‘have’ him, and having him may have life.” [John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 19, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 183.]
So, let’s talk about this term, “life,” for a few minutes. Clearly THE life John mentions in verse 12 is the same as “eternal life” in verse 13. But what is eternal life?
The first thing I’d say is that when we think of eternal life as simply everlasting life, we oversimplify it. Surely, it means that, but it means much more.
You’ve heard me say before that eternal life is life the way it was always meant to be, in fellowship with and in the presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And that’s a good description of how the Bible presents eternal life, but it’s only a shorthand description.
So, let’s take a look at what Jesus says about eternal life. He’s the best one to describe it, after all, since He IS the life.
Look at John 4:14:
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
This was what Jesus said the the woman at the well in Samaria. She was looking for a way to quench her physical thirst, but Jesus offered her something far more important and far more satisfying: a way to quench her spiritual thirst.
Look at John 6:35:
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.
This is what Jesus said to the people He’d miraculously fed the day before from a young lad’s five loaves and two fishes. He’d fed them the day before, so they had followed Him to Capernaum, hoping to be fed again.
But he was offering them something far greater and far more satisfying: a way to satisfy their spiritual hunger.
So, what we see from these verses is that to have eternal life is to have one’s spiritual hunger and thirst satisfied. To have eternal life is to have that emptiness inside of you finally filled.
Now, look at John 6:40:
40 “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”
Eternal life is the promise of resurrection. We were created to be enfleshed immortal souls. Our souls were never meant to be separated from our bodies. It is only because of the curse of sin and death that we experience such separation.
But we know because of Paul’s writing that all who die in the faith will spend a period of time as souls separated from their bodies. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord,” he said.
And so, if I die before the Lord returns, my soul will be with Him in Heaven, while my body rests in the earth. But all of us, whether believers or not, will be bodily resurrected at some point in the end times, and we will rejoin with our departed and waiting souls.
Unbelievers will be raised for judgment and cast into hell, apart from God’s grace and mercy forever.
But believers will be raised to LIFE by Him who IS the life. And we will spend eternity in the very presence of all grace and mercy.
What is eternal life? It’s having our spiritual hunger and thirst satisfied. It’s the promise of being physically raised from the dead to be made whole and experience life in the presence of God.
And it’s receiving the light of life and no longer having to walk in darkness. Look at John 8 12:
12 Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”
Throughout the Gospel of John, darkness is a metaphor for spiritual blindness. The Pharisee Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, signifying that even though he was a great religious teacher in Israel, he was actually blind to the things of God.
But when we step into the glorious light of Christ, we find that HE is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. We no longer have to stumble over and into sin, because He is there in the person of the Holy Spirit to guide us in the paths of righteousness.
So, eternal life is having our spiritual hunger and thirst satisfied. It’s the promise of physical resurrection and life in the presence of God. It’s the experience of having the light of the world to guide us through the darkness. And it’s the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise of abundant life.
Look at John 10:10:
10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Satan may promise wonderful pleasures, great riches, and even the adoration of the world. But what he delivers in the end is death and destruction.
Even if he gives you the things he’s promised here on earth, the deception is that they have absolutely no significance in eternity. “For what does it benefit a person to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?”
The promise of Jesus, on the other hand is just the opposite. “In this world, you will have tribulation,” He told His disciples. The historically normative experience for the follower of Jesus hasn’t been comfort, but suffering, just as our Savior suffered.
But His promise is also life, abundantly. Now, this word that’s translated as “abundantly” here means "superior, extraordinary, surpassing, or uncommon.” It means “more remarkable or more excellent.”
So, at first blush, this looks like a contradiction. How can we be promised suffering AND a more excellent life, a life that is superior and extraordinary?
What it comes down to is this: Jesus isn’t promising that His followers will have health and wealth and comfort in this world.
What He’s promising is that they will have HIM. And having HIM is a greater thing than having all the wealth in the world.
That’s exactly what Solomon learned. Read the Book of Ecclesiastes sometime. What you’ll see there is a man who had anything and everything he ever wanted. And in the end it was all vanity. It was all worthless.
Only when he remembered God did Solomon find peace. “Fear God and keep His commandments,” he writes in conclusion to that depressing book. Everything else is empty. Everything else is worthless. Everything else is vanity.
So, eternal life is the satisfaction of our spiritual hunger and thirst. It’s the promise of bodily resurrection. It’s the experience of walking in the light, rather than in the darkness. It’s the promise of abundant life. And it’s the experience of knowing God and knowing His Son, Jesus Christ.
Look at John 17:3:
3 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Now, the Greek word that’s translated as “know” here is ginosko. This isn’t knowledge attained from books or instruction.
This is knowledge gained from personal experience. It’s an understanding that comes from close association and fellowship.
In fact, the Hebrew word that’s translated as “ginosko” in the Greek version of the Old Testament is often used as a figure of speech for sexual relations between husband and wife.
And so, the idea here is that eternal life is an intimate and extremely personal relationship with God and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
If this isn’t an incredible concept to you, then you’re not really thinking about it.
The Creator of the universe — He who spoke into existence the sun and the stars — allows us to know Him personally and intimately. In fact, He WANTS us to know Him that way.
Jesus, who suffered at the cross, bearing your sins and mine, WANTS for us to know Him this way. Knowing our sins — past, present, and future — bearing the shame and guilt for them — and taking upon Himself the punishment WE deserve to have received — He doesn’t then turn His back and say, “OK, I’m done with you.”
No, He turns to us with His arms spread wide and calls us into this intimate relationship, to be known by us as HE knows us.
What a wonderful Savior!
And finally, eternal life is the assurance that even our physical death will not separate us from the love of God. Look at John 11:25-26:
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Jesus said this to Martha, after her brother, Lazarus, had died. She understood the doctrine of the resurrection —that Lazarus would be raised from the dead — but Jesus was testing her faith, not her doctrinal understanding.
And He was reminding her that those who believe in Him are eternally secure, that they cannot be lost, not even to death.
To go back to the Seinfeld illustration, a reservation made with Jesus is held absolutely. And anyone who has made that reservation by placing their faith in Him for their salvation can have absolute assurance in all of the promises of eternal life.
That’s what John is getting at in verse 13.
Notice he says he’s writing to those who have believed in Jesus. He’s writing to believers, not unbelievers.
But because of the false teachers who have been in their midst, some of those believers have begun to question whether they will receive the promise of eternal life.
And what he wants them to know is that they CAN be assured of it, because of their faith in Jesus. They CAN be assured of it because of God’s testimony in the water, in the blood, an in the Spirit.
They CAN be assured of it, because they have already received it. Notice it says “you HAVE eternal life.” It’s in the present tense.
The present experience of having our spiritual hunger and thirst satisfied, of resting in the promise of bodily resurrection, of walking in the light, of living life abundantly even through its trials, of knowing God and knowing Jesus, and of the promise of eternal security — All of those things are God’s testimony of the wonderful gift of His Son, who IS the life.
There aren’t many things we can be assured of in this world. Even reservations sometimes aren’t held.
But for the follower of Jesus — for those who have truly turned to Him in faith — you can be absolutely assured of this: You belong to Him, and He will not let you go.
As Paul said, “NOTHING can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.”
Now, as I mentioned earlier, this letter was written to believers. THEY can have this assurance. But if you’re not a believer — if you’ve never put your trust in Jesus that He alone can save you — then what you need most is not assurance but salvation.
What you need is the only one who can fill the spiritual emptiness that nothing else seems to satisfy. What you need is a relationship with the one who created you and died for you. What you need is LIFE from the one who died to GIVE you life.
You can have that today. You can begin to have the experience of ABUNDANT life. But you can’t do it yourself.
Only Jesus can do it for you, and only if you admit you’re a sinner and place your faith in Him and His completed work at the cross for your salvation.
Will you take that step today?