First John Chapter Three Commentary by
Pastor Ron Beckham
Audio
Believe And Receive
Do you feel left out by God? Have there been events in your life that make you wonder if He really loves you? If you do, read Verses 1-2 of this chapter carefully: “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.”
Have you given your heart and life to Jesus Christ? If so, you are a child of God, the beloved son or daughter of God the Father. Your relationship as His carefully chosen one has already begun, but there is even more. At the end of this life you will see Jesus Christ as He really is and you will be amazed, for you and I “will be like Him.” It’s incredible and absolutely true.
If someone really important like a President or a famous movie star gave you a personal phone call and said “You’re really a great person – let’s get together for lunch,” you’d likely say “yes!” And if you had intended to vote for the other guy, you might change your affiliation and vote for the one who thinks you’re great. And even if you don’t go to the movies you probably would start going to the ones with the famous movie star. You would now admire them and want to be like them. You might even find yourself wearing clothes like they wear and using speech inflections like they do. Almighty God is contacting you through His Holy Spirit and He wants to be your Friend. So what should you reasonably do? You would, as it says in Verse 3, place your “hope” in Him, and you would discover that He is so wonderful you would start to become pure in what you say and do, “just as He is pure.”
There really is a Law of God. He is sinless, holy, and we are held to His standard, which is utter perfection; no flaws at all. To break His Law, even in the slightest, is “sin.” We can see how doomed we are in humanity because of Verse 4 – “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.” We have broken His Law and there is no hope, except for Jesus Christ. John the Apostle wrote to an audience who knew Jesus, and he comments in Verse 5, “You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.” Jesus Christ the Son of God is clean and pure, without sin, and when we simply BELIEVE in Him and what He has done, His holiness is shared with us. We become “like Him.”
Similar to children learning to walk, we stumble and fall. But walking is important and God is patient while we try to “stand” in Jesus Christ. We know from 1 John 1:8 & 10 that all who are in Christ will sin because we are mere humans, and yet Verse 6 says, “No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.” As the context continues into verses 7-9 of this chapter, the black and white “pictures” by John are actually about choices. Yes we are human and we sin, but our response is 1 John 1:9 – We choose to confess, find forgiveness and gradually become “righteous” because God is “righteous” and He loves us.
Verse 8 presents a deep problem. “The one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” There is an enemy of God and mankind called “the devil.” In John 8:44, Jesus said to a group of false religious leaders, “You are of your father, the devil.” Not all who are outwardly religious are of the Lord. As it says in Verse 9 of 1st John, we will not practice or continue in sin. Instead we will be grieved by it, turn to the Lord in faith and be delivered. This gift of grace will occur in our lives, not through deserving it, but because we are “born of God.”
Paul taught us in 1 Corinthians 13:13 that three qualities of our walk with God will persist and will reveal who we really are: “faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of this is love.” The writer of Hebrews Chapter 11 emphasized the importance of “faith” and John focuses on “love” in Verse 11 – “we should love one another.” Love will express itself in and through us. As 1 John 3:12 points out, it was the opposite of love, hatred, an emotion that comes from “the evil one,” which caused Cain to kill his brother Abel, as seen in Genesis 4:8. Hebrews 11:4 reveals that a basis of Cain’s problem was that he had no faith, no trust in the Lord. Abel did have faith and followed the Lord because of it. Cain's unbelief led to jealousy and murder.
Much like Cain hated Abel, John cautions us in Verse 13, “Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.” It’s said that the opposite of hatred is indifference but the reality is that the opposite of God’s love is hatred. Verse 14 shows us that if we don’t love, we are dead, but coming to Him, we find “life.” From God’s perspective, to hate, to be angry, is like murdering the one you dislike (Matthew 5:21-22 & 1 John 3:15). John continues in Verse 15 that “no murderer has eternal life abiding in him,” but we return to the wondrous words of 1 John 1:8, noting that the person who confesses the sin of murder is forgiven and made clean, just like it is for all other sins. We are being healed in thought, word and action.
John now continues by defining love for us. We are to be taken out of hatred and resentment to the extent that we will be drawn to actually lay down our lives, not only for friends, but also for the former enemies who have become our “brethren” in Christ (Verse 16). We will begin to see, feel and care about the needs of those around us and be drawn to help them, as seen in Verses 17-18, even giving up what we have to help someone else. Verse 18 continues by cautioning us that our expressed love is more than mere words; it is “in deed and truth.”
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). We who were not of the truth have received Him and He is deeply in our hearts. John observed: “We will know by this (by our love) that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him” (Verse 19). John saw that we would fall short of the glory of God, and feel condemned, but he gave us the truth: Though imperfect, our love does grow and “in whatever our heart condemns us… God is greater than our heart and knows all things” (Verse 20). He knows that we are His.
”Our heart does not condemn us (and) we have confidence before God” as it says in Verse 21, because God’s Holy Spirit is inside us. We are children of God, not because we deserve it, but because God makes it so. Stop listening to depressed feelings and voices from the past, and instead trust in God. As in Verse 22, “whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.”
How do we keep His commandments? What are they? He tells us in Verse 23: “This is His commandment that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.” This is not merely our love that comes and goes depending on how we feel; this is His eternal love in us. Believe in Jesus Christ and His love will grow in and through you. Jesus said, “Come to Me” in Matthew 11:28, and the one who does, “abides in Him and He in him,” as in 1 John 1:24. The extraordinary evidence of this is the Spirit of God who comes into those who trust in the Son of God. “The one who keeps His commandments” as it says in these verses is the one who believes and begins to love others. John continues, “We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.” As we go through years and decades in Christ, we recognize more and more that God’s Spirit is in us. He is the One who is prompting us to trust and to love. Let’s believe and receive right now:
Dear Lord, I believe in You. I receive You and Your love. Please forgive my unbelief and my lack of love in the past. I trust in You now. Thank You. In Jesus Name. Amen.
