I Believe in Life Eternal - February 26, 2017

1 John 5:1-13 (Luke 15:11-32)

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been

born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves

whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that

we love the children of God, when we love God and obey

his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that

we keep his commandments. And his commandments

are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born

of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that

has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that

overcomes the world except the one who believes that

Jesus is the Son of God?

6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ;

not by the water only but by the water and the blood.

And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit

is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit

and the water and the blood; and these three agree. 9 If

we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God

is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has

borne concerning his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the

Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does

not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not

believed in the testimony that God has borne

concerning his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: that God

gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever

has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of

God does not have life.

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of

the Son of God, that you may know that you have

eternal life.

Introduction

The final phrase of the Apostles’ Creed tells me that, as a

Christian, I believe in “life eternal”. That’s a kind of

stilted way of saying I believe I’m going to live forever.

And working backward through the phrases of the

Creed,

1. I believe I will live forever,

2. following a bodily resurrection,

3. in restored fellowship with God (because my sins are

forgiven)

4. and in fellowship with all other believers (because

we are the Bride of Christ);

5. one church set apart for all eternity,

all of it through the Holy Spirit, by the work of Christ the

Son, by the command of God the Father.

Do you believe you’re going to live forever?

In the Creed I confess that I believe in eternal life. Very

well. But do I believe that all human beings live

forever? If I claim to be a Christian, I don’t believe that

all human beings share the same eternal destiny; that all

human souls live forever and that some will be eternally

happy and others eternally miserable.

C.S. Lewis, writing in his book Mere Christianity, says,

“Christianity asserts that every individual human being

is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or

false. Now there are a good many things which would

not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only

seventy years, but which I had better bother about very

seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad

temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse -so

gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be

very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million

years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely

correct technical term for what it would be.”

The Essential Story

The essential Story isn’t that God made us all to live

forever, all with the same destiny. If that were all of it,

then it wouldn’t matter at all what I do with my allotted

time on the planet. In fact, if all of us are guaranteed

eternal life of the sort we assume Heaven to be; I would

be absolutely wasting my time here if I did not take,

enjoy, possess, amass, and in every other way

accumulate to myself all that I can in this life.

If death is nothing more than an assured doorway into

eternal bliss, I may as well “eat, drink, and be merry”

throughout. While I don’t know what good thing awaits

me on the other side; it may not include the pleasures of

this life; but I -- and everyone else -- am “going to a

better place;” nothing I do or don’t do here has any

impact on hereafter; so I may as well live it up.

NO, the essential Story is that God made us all to live

forever and all of us squandered the joy of that asset.

Stolen Pleasure, Squandered Joy

We stole pleasure for our own that was God’s own and

went, as the Prodigal Son did in Jesus’ parable, to a far

country where we believed we could be masters of our

own fate. You may be the most disciplined, intellectual,

frugal – even magnanimous – person on the planet; but

if you live your life separated from the pleasure of God’s

company, you can expect to spend eternity separated in

just that same way. Lewis was right: you may live a

disciplined eternity in Hell, you may live an intellectual

eternity in Hell, you may live a frugal eternity in Hell,

you may even live a magnanimous eternity in Hell –

forever giving away vast sums of money, but never

receiving the approval of the one being in the universe

whose approval matters. You will live forever

separated from “the presence of the Lord and from the

glory of his might.”

But the essential Story doesn’t end there; that’s the

beauty of what the Creed points us to. The essential

Story is that we were made by God, for God, and that

even when we squandered all the eternal joy that was

meant to be ours, God still wanted us.

Do not make a mistake at this point: there are not good

people God saves and bad people God destroys as if God

was going through an apple harvest and letting the

rotten ones fall to the ground while lovingly picking the

good fruit to bake into an amazing pie. The truth is we

are all of us bad fruit. The whole tree from which we

sprung is diseased; the tree of Adam can yield no good

fruit. And yet most of us look around ourselves and the

other apples hanging on the tree and say, “Oh, this isn’t

so bad. Actually, I think all of us are getting better;

bruises, worms, and all.”

Calling God a Liar

We have a problem: Look at 1 John 5:10, the second

half of the verse. It says, “Whoever does not believe

God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in

the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.”

John nearly began this letter by saying, “If we say we

have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in

us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive

us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If

we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his

word is not in us.”

The sin and blackness of my heart always shows itself

as I call God a liar by thinking I can improve myself into

heaven. My need is to call God “true” in all his

judgments. But my heart denies him because I say he

has violated “my rights.” What I need is what I’ll never

ask for on my own: I need to love God, love others, and

make disciples for Christ, because that is what I was

created for. Each of these requires me to give up my

rights, return from the far country penniless, and

receive the intolerable blessing of a joyful reunion with

God, bought at the intolerable, excruciating expense of

the death of his only true Son.

Impossibly Born of God

John calls this in chapter 5 of his letter what it means to

be “born of God.”

His thesis is this (look at verse 1): “Everyone who

believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,

and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has

been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the

children of God, when we love God and obey his

commandments.”

The Son – Jesus – is eternally born of God, and John is

telling us here what is normative for the Christian.

Jesus is born of God. When we receive Christ, John says

in his Gospel, God gives us the right to become Children

of God and we are born of him.

There were two main things Jesus did while he during

his life. He loved the children of God – yet to be adopted

and born of God; but he loved them. And he loved

whatever was his Father’s will. Jesus loved to obey God

the Father.

John says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his

commandments.” THE demonstration of the new birth

in you and in me is that we begin to love what God

loves. This takes a special work of the Holy Spirit;

because you and I are completely unable to love what

God loves; in our sin we continually buck against what

God loves.

Pulled toward Christ

We’ve talked before about the centripetal love of God.

Agape. The love that draws us God-ward. The Holy

Spirit is the one who pulls us in toward Christ when our

own will would pull us away. That is how John can say

that his commandments are not burdensome.  In Christ,

we overcome the gravitational force of the world and all

its pressures and attitudes. The victory is our faith.

But John is quick to prove to us that “our faith” isn’t

ours at all. Look at verse 6.

6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ;

not by the water only but by the water and the blood.

And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit

is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit

and the water and the blood; and these three agree. 

Do you know what that’s saying? What we call “our

faith” is actually the Spirit of God witnessing to the

person and work of Jesus Christ. The way you and I are

“on our own” is separated from God three ways:

1. We’re separated in our spirit, our soul, which never

testifies to Christ and always testifies to our own.

2. We’re separated from God in our mind, polluted and

dirty toward God in our thoughts, our hopes, and our

aspirations.

3. We’re separated from God in our body, which we

make a servant of sin rather than a servant of God.

What John calls “our faith” is God’s redress for all that

disobedience.

1. When we receive Christ we receive God’s own Spirit,

who always testifies to Christ.

2. When we receive Christ, he washes our mind;

cleanses our thoughts, our hopes, and our aspirations;

he makes us able to see the folly of our selfishness; like

taking a good bath, we are baptized into Christ.

3. When we receive Christ, he renews all the systems of

our body. That’s why a bodily resurrection is vital to

making you and me fit for eternity with God. A body

polluted by sin is no more able to stand in the presence

of God than an unwashed spirit.

That’s what this enigmatic phrase means, “there are

three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the

blood.” When Jesus died on the Cross, nearly his last

word was a word of utter obedience, “Father, into your

hands I commit my spirit.” Moments later, a Roman

soldier approached Jesus and pierced his side and out

came pure water and pure blood, signs of the pure

obedience of Jesus toward his Father. There are three

that agree in Christ’s death; there are three that agree in

my life. My spirit testifies with God’s Spirit, my mind is

cleansed by the washing of regeneration, and the blood

of Jesus renews my body; because God tells us in

Hebrews 9:22, “without the shedding of blood there

shall be no remission of sin.”

I Believe

When I say, “I believe…” I’m doing more than just giving

mental assent to truths about the Triune God. We who

believe bear the testimony to the world and bear the

testimony to our own heart: “10 Whoever believes in the

Son of God has the testimony in himself,” “11 And this is

the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life

is in his Son.”

Beloved, everyone lives forever; it is just a question of

whether you will live forever with God, or separated

from him for all eternity. Can you truly say:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven

and earth: I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our

Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of

the Virgin Mary. He suffered. Under Pontius Pilate he

was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to

the dead.   On the third day He rose again. He ascended

into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the

Father Almighty, and he will come to judge the living

and the dead.  I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy

Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the

forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life

everlasting?

If you can, believing must work its change into every

fiber of your being. As John said, “I write these things

to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that

you may know that you have eternal life.”

Beloved, when you say “I believe…” you are testifying

that you bear Jesus, spirit, mind, and body; Jesus

when you sit in your house, Jesus when you walk by the

way, Jesus when you lie down, Jesus when you rise;

Jesus when you teach your children, Jesus when you

are at work and Jesus when you retire; Jesus when you

paint your house and when you plant your garden;

Jesus when you sing; Jesus when you dance; Jesus

when you play; Jesus when you are sick; Jesus when

you suffer; Jesus when you buy; Jesus when you sell;

Jesus when you marry; Jesus when you are single;

Jesus when you speak; Jesus when you are silent; Jesus

every moment you live; Jesus in the hour of your death.

And when you awake in his presence, raised in body,

cleansed in mind, restored to full union with God, Jesus

for all eternity.