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; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
Are you certain of the truth about God, man, and eternity; life and death? Do you know the true God? Do you want to know and be certain? This has been John’s concern in writing this letter. He wants us to know these things. As we close out 1 John today, we see three final ways that the believer knows Christ. As Christians we are to know Christ from our heads, to our hearts, to our holiness.
Heads
The first observation we make is that understanding comes from God. That is one of the very reasons for which Christ came, according to John. This is the foundation of Christian understanding and knowledge. It comes from Jesus Christ. The reason we know anything is because Jesus Christ has given us understanding. Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
This obviously communicates to us that our understanding of God does not come from within ourselves. It does not come from our own intellect or critical thinking. Apart from Christ we are darkened in our minds. There are other passages that spell this out very clearly such as Ephesians 4:17-18:
17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.
And also 2 Corinthians 4:3-6:
3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants[a] for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Thus is our condition apart from Christ, and thus our great need for Christ to enlighten our minds to the truth and give eyes to see, that we might have the light of Christ chase away the darkness of our depraved minds and understanding.
Understanding not only comes from Christ as it’s source, but it cannot be searched out or had apart from Christ. In other words, Christ is not only the beginning of wisdom and knowledge, as if we start with Christ and then move on from him into the rest of knowledge, but rather it is in Him that we understand all things. There is nothing that we do not need Christ for to understand. One of my favorite passages that gets at this idea is Colossians 2:1-4:
For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.
Allthe treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ.God cares about our minds and our intellect. He wants us to use it and apply it to the truth. We ought to be fervent in our study, and not fall prey to a mindless Christianity. Even more so in the context of 1 John we are to apply our minds to the truth so that we may know the truth of Jesus Christ and not be taken captive by falsehood or antichrist’s who would seek to shake our assurance. Knowing the truth and applying our minds to it helps to assure us in our knowledge of God and eternal life. So let us honor Christ with our minds, by 1) using them, and 2) seeking knowledge in a Christian way, which seeks it in and through Jesus Christ as the foundation and the beginning of knowledge.
Hearts
“The Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true…” This might seem as if John is repeating himself, but he is not. The idea of knowing Jesus Christ is more than mere intellectual knowledge. This has really been one of John’s running themes throughout the book – if we truly know God, we will not only know him in our heads, but we will know him in our experience. How do we know Him who is true experientially in our hearts?
- We will experience the new birth.
- We will experience His love shed abroad in our hearts – John experienced this, as the Apostle of Love, he calls himself in his gospel, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Do you know yourself to be loved by Jesus?
- We will experience the warm embrace of faith as we lean upon Christ, and as we love Christ in return.
- We will experience a disdain for sin that remains in our lives, which hinders our communion with Christ.
- We will experience the spirit of God indwelling us, guiding us in the truth of God’s Word and keeping us from falsehood.
- We will experience a love in our hearts for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
- We will experience a sense of the various benefits of the gospel that are afforded to us in Christ, as we get a sense of what it means to be forgiven, loved, justified, secure, etc.
Intellectual knowledge is meant to lead to experiential knowledge. The Christian life is one that is meant to be lived and experienced. To be sure, we do not build our foundation of faith and assurance upon our experiential knowledge. No, our foundation is the Word of God, and we filter all our experience through God’s Word. But we must also have this experiential knowledge, though it may ebb and flow throughout our lives, it is experienced. Christianity is not a lifeless, dead and cold religion. It is a life to be lived and experienced.
– But wait, there’s more! As Christians we not only know Him who is true through the gracious condescension of Jesus Christ, but we are in Him who is true. John here is getting at our union that we have with Christ as Christians.
The reason we have this experiential knowledge of Christ, is because have union with Christ. We are one with Christ. We are in Him. What does it mean, within this context, that we are “in Him”? First, it means that we are in the truth. Second, it means that we securely have eternal life – this is one of the great benefits of union with Christ that John is employing here. Union with Christ means that we are not just with Jesus, but we are bound up in Him, tied to Christ, or “swallowed” up in Him, as Edwards once put it. So unless Christ dies, we will not die, but we will live eternally, just as Christ lives eternally. Union with Christ is a great aid to our assurance. As Christ goes, so go we who are in Him. I can’t help but think of the conversion of the Apostle Paul when confronted by Christ, and Christ says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “ME” He said. But Saul wasn’t persecuting Jesus, he was persecuting Christians. Ah, but union with Christ. Saul didn’t know about that then.
Holiness
In verse 21, the Apostle ends his epistle by exhorting his readers to keep themselves from idols. This is contrasted with the end of verse 20, “He is the true God and eternal life.”
Keeping ourselves from idols is the practical application of knowing, experiencing, and being in Him who is the true God and eternal life. What is one way that we know and experience Jesus Christ? By keeping ourselves from idols. By maintaining allegiance to Christ as Lord.
What is an idol? Anything that takes the place of Christ in your life. Anything that is worshiped other than the true God. It is something that you love or enjoy more than Christ. It is something that you are more committed to than Christ. An idol is whatever sits on the throne of your heart that governs the decisions you make and the way you live your life. Implied in John’s exhortation to keep ourselves from idols is the fact that Christians can fall into idolatry from time to time. It will not be the rule of their life, for a true Christian, but it can occur.
When a Christian falls into Idol worship it:
- Robs our experience and fellowship with Christ
- Fills our lives with falsehood
- Shakes our assurance
- Makes us hypocrites
- Steals our joy
Is there anything in your heart that governs your life other than the Word of God? If so, throw it down from the throne of your heart, and may Christ dwell in you richly. I am afraid that in much of our experience in the Christian life, we have a desire to really know have communion with Christ. But so often, other things end up hindering our discipline or commitment to spending that time in prayer and in the Word. And so often, those other things that get in the way have done so because we’ve made them little idols in our hearts. That thing, could be a good thing, could be a straight up sin, has become more important than our true Lord, Jesus Christ, in those moments.
In our experience we may confess that Jesus is our Lord, and yet we want to keep around other little idols in addition, or we don’t want to give up all of them. Sometimes we are kind of like Rachel in Genesis. She wanted to leave her father’s home and go with her husband Jacob, but she took with her some of her father’s household gods. And it nearly cost her her life. Is there any household gods that we’ve hidden in our hearts? We must throw them out lest they weigh down our bags and sink us to hell. It is Christ and Christ alone who must be our God.
As much as Jesus Christ has come to give us understanding and knowledge of God, He has come to rid of us our sin and idolatry. In one sense we can say that all sin is idolatry, because in that moment of sin we are worshiping something else other than the Lord Jesus Christ. All sin, is treason against the King of King’s and Lord of Lord’s. We are great sinners and thus we are great idolaters. And more than anything in this world, we need Jesus Christ to come and deal with our sins and our idolatry, lest we perish in our sins and are lost forever. Our idols will kill us. They will betray us. They do not love us. But you see the good news of Jesus Christ is that He has come into this world over 2000 years ago. He lived a live totally free of idolatry and sin. And yet He went to Calvary and was crucified, died, and resurrected again three days later in order to shed his blood to make propitiation for the sins and idolatry of His people. And He lives today, and He reigns in the hearts of His people who have come to Him in repentance and faith, and is working in their lives to make them holy, and He is sanctifying His people, freeing them from the idols that would seek to rule their lives. Jesus would not have His people die in their sins. Little Children, keep yourselves from idols.
What an incomparable privilege it is to know the true God and His Son Jesus Christ. He has come and made Himself known to us. Yet we often take it so for granted. Our minds were once darkened by sin and the god of this world, but Christ has come to us and has given us understanding to know Him. What should be our response to this? We should keep ourselves from idols, knowing what a traitorous thing it would be to have the knowledge of God, and yet worship idols. It ought to cause us to give ourselves to knowing the One who has made Himself known to us. We ought to do this in the intellect of study and the experience of life, as those things go together. You can’t have the life without the knowledge, and the knowledge without the life is useless.
But Christian, do not despair and lose heart when you fall into sin, but look to where John pointed us to look early on in chapter 2, to our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins. And let us be confident that in our frailty and weakness, we are not cast off as strangers, but we are loved by God as His children that we are. “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little Children, keep yourselves from idols.”
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