The Light of Belief
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1 John Bible Study Format (Bookmark)
Series Overview & Scripture Passages
Sermon Questions
We are taking this winter to walk through the book of 1 John, which is a little letter written by John the apostle around the end of the first century. And in the letter, he invites us to live our lives in a certain way, which is beautifully summed up in 1 John 1:7—here’s the invitation: walk in the light, as he is in the light. Would you say that out loud with me? Walk in the light, as he is the light. So just as Jesus is the light of the world, and there’s no darkness in him, we are invited to live our lives in complete unity with Jesus. No shadows; no hiding; no hypocrisy—walking in the light, as he is in the light. Isn’t that a beautiful invitation?
So today we come to chapter 5, and before we read the whole passage, I just want to read one verse. 1 John 5:11 says: And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. What does it mean to have eternal life? And before you answer too quickly, there’s more to it than you might think.
This past week I had the privilege of visiting a woman who’s nearing the end of her life. Her body is failing, and she knows it. So I got to sit at her bedside, with her husband and her caregiver in the room, and we talked and read Scripture and shared communion and prayed together. Thankfully, her mind is still sharp, so we were able to talk freely. So later that day I was in the Chapel office, and someone who knows this person asked me how she’s doing. And my answer was, “Radiant. There was this glow of joy around her.” And I have to be clear: she literally needed to be propped up by her aide; she’s on oxygen; she needed help peeling off the cover of the little communion kit, because her body is so frail. But I’m telling you, she glowed with joy and peace—you couldn’t miss it—it just radiated from her. No self-pity; no bitterness at all. I felt honored to be in her presence.
And here’s what I want to say: that is a person who has eternal life. Normally we think “eternal” just means “everlasting,” right? It’s life that never ends. And that’s true—thank God for the promise of heaven. But in the Bible it means something more than that. Look at John 17:3 with me. Jesus is praying to his Father, and he says Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Did you catch that? In the mind of Jesus, eternal life isn’t something that starts after you die; it’s a life right here, right now, on earth, defined by knowing God. So it’s eternal life because it’s a life that’s connected with the eternal God. This is what Jesus was talking about in John 10 when he said, “I’ve come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” So “eternal life” isn’t just about quantity of life; it’s also about quality of life. And in that house, on that bed, with oxygen tubes and medications all around, I was in the presence of eternal life…and it was beautiful to behold.
Do you have that? Do you have that kind of rich connection with God, so that even if everything else gets stripped away—which it eventually will—you’ll be good? There’s only one way to get that, and that’s what today’s passage is about. So let’s read the Scripture—1 John 5, verses 1 through 12. I invited you now to hear the Word of God…
1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has
overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given 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. This is the Word of the Lord.
Did you notice a word that got repeated over and over again in that passage? What’s the word? “Believe.” That word appears 10 times in the whole letter of 1 John, and six out of those ten are right here in this passage. So according to John, the key to having true eternal life is belief. Faith. Okay, but what does that actually mean, and what does it look like when you have it? Let’s talk about that.
First, let’s talk about The Object of Belief. We are living in a culture that celebrates belief and faith in a general kind of way. You hear it in sports all the time. How did your team pull off the upset and win and beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl? (You can’t tell who I’m rooting for, right?) How did you embarrass and crush the Eagles? We never stopped believing! You hear it in amazing survival stories: Your boat sunk in the Atlantic and you swam two miles through the icy water to safety—how did you do it? I just never gave up faith. And that’s inspiring, but the question is, Faith in what? Belief in what? See the thing that makes faith powerful isn’t the fact that you have faith; it’s all about whom you have faith in. Last week, out of the blue, my laptop crashed. Just dead. But I didn’t freak out, because I believed that everything on it was backed up to the cloud. It turns out, a bunch of it wasn’t, and I may have lost those files forever. So it doesn’t matter how much I believed it; if the thing I was believing wasn’t true, my faith’s not worth much. It’s all about the object of our belief.
Back in the 1990s, members of the Heaven’s Gate cult believed they would never die, because they would escape the earth on UFOs. Remember that? They genuinely believed that. But believing it didn’t make it true. It’s all about the object of our belief—what we’re believing in.
So in this passage, it’s clear that John isn’t just recommending some general kind of faith; it’s very specific. Look at verse 1: Everyone who believes…but he doesn’t stop there…Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. So the object of faith has to be Jesus—believing that he’s the Christ—the Messiah. Then look at verse 5: Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes! Keep going…Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. So John isn’t extolling the value of faith in and of itself; he's talking specifically about believing that the man Jesus, who walked this earth in the first century, was more than a man—he was actually the Son of God, and the promised Messiah. And not just believing that intellectually. It says in James that even the demons know who Jesus is—they know he’s the Messiah—but they don’t accept him as their Messiah. So biblical faith isn’t just intellectually acknowledging something is true; it’s personally embracing that truth for yourself. Are you with me?
So to have true eternal life, not just eternal in length but eternal in quality, you have to personally believe and embrace Jesus as the Son of God and Messiah. The object of our faith has to be Jesus.
Donald Miller is an author who once gave a lecture at a Christian college. He started by telling them he was going to present the gospel, but he was going to leave out one important element. So he
described the rampant sin that plagues our culture: sexual sin, abortion, drug use, raunchy song lyrics, etc. He said the wages of sin is death, like it says in Romans; and how sin separates us from God. And then he spoke about what he called “the beauty of morality”—he told stories of how living for God was so much better. He talked about the greatness of heaven. He talked about repentance, and how their lives could be God-honoring and God-centered, if they would just repent and turn to him. And then he closed the lecture.
Here’s how he describes what happened: “I rested my case and asked the class if they could tell me what it was I had left out of this gospel presentation. Not a single hand raised. I had presented a gospel to Christian Bible college students and left out…Jesus. And nobody noticed.”
Isn’t that sad? Look: if you leave out Jesus, you’ve got nothing left. You’ve got niceness and love and good morals, but you’re leaving out the one thing that gives eternal life, and that’s faith in Christ. The object of our faith has to be Jesus.
Now: that’s pretty specific, and you might feel like it’s pretty narrow. So why should you make Jesus the object of your faith?
Let’s talk about that: The Reasons for Belief. Look again at verses 6 through 8: 6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. Anybody a little confused? This is probably the hardest thing to interpret in the whole book of 1 John, so don’t feel bad if you’re a little confused.
John is presenting this like a court case, and the thing that’s on trial is the believability of Jesus as the Son of God. In other words, is there enough evidence for me to believe that? And John presents these three witnesses that all testify to who Jesus is. So that’s easy enough, right? But the tricky thing is: what’s the meaning of “the water, the blood, and the Spirit”? Let’s take those one at a time…
The water is almost certainly talking about the baptism of Jesus—when Jesus waded into the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. That was an extremely significant day, because up until then, nobody really knew who he was—he had kept a very low profile. But that all changed at his baptism, because he was officially going public with his ministry. He was presenting himself as the Messiah. So that baptism was the official start to the ministry of Jesus.
So here’s what I believe John is saying: look at the public ministry of Jesus. Not just the day of his baptism, but the three years of ministry that his baptism kicked off. Look how he fulfilled Hebrew prophecy. Look at the integrity of his teaching—so unique that people said, “We’ve never heard anything like this.” Look at his courage in standing up to the hypocritical religious leaders of his day. Look at his compassion for suffering people—spending time with lepers and diseased people and foreigners. Look how he loved his disciples. Look at the power of his miracles. He never had formal education; never wrote a book; never traveled far from home; but he has impacted the human race more profoundly than anyone who’s ever lived—and there’s not even a close second.
I’ve probably shared with you that there have been times in my life that I’ve struggled with my faith. I’ve had big questions about certain things in the Bible, and certain parts of theology. And those things can keep me up at night. But at the end of the day, what always keeps me grounded is Jesus. I’m just so convinced that he’s the real thing. So no matter what other questions I have, I have no question that Jesus is the Son of God and the Messiah, and that he loves me. Ultimately, I’m a Christian because of Jesus. I just can’t get over him.
So those three years that were kicked off by his baptism are testimony that he really is the Son of God, and worthy of our belief.
The second thing that testifies is the blood. Verse 6: he did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And of course that’s talking about the cross, where Jesus spilled his blood. So when you’re considering the evidence for Jesus, don’t just look at how he lived; you also have to look at how he died. Throughout history, so many leaders have used their position, and used their followers, to enhance their own lives. And Jesus completely reversed that. Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd, and the shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” He said, there is no greater love, than for a man to lay down his life for his friends.” And that’s exactly what he did.
Eighteen years after I graduated from Virginia Tech, on a Monday morning in April, a gunman walked through a dorm and an academic building and gunned down 32 people. In one of the classrooms of that academic building, there was a professor named Liviu Librescu—he was a Romanian-born holocaust survivor, and he was teaching an engineering class. And when they heard the gunfire and shouts coming closer to their room, Professor Librescu told the students to jump out the first-floor window, while he braced himself against the door to stop the shooter from coming in. So the students hung out of the windows and dropped about ten feet to the bushes and grass below, but before Librescu could get out, the gunman forced himself in and fatally shot him. He literally gave his life so others could live. What an act of amazing love, wasn’t it? And on an infinitely larger scale, that’s what Jesus did for us. He gave his life so we could live.
When you honestly consider the way Jesus lived and the way he died, you start to realize how utterly unique he really is. Napoleon is believed to have said these words about Jesus: “I know men, and I tell you Jesus Christ was no mere man…Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon sheer force. Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.” I truly believe Jesus is unlike any leader who’s ever lived.
So…why is Jesus worthy of our belief? Look at the testimony of his life; the testimony of his death. And then there’s one more thing that testifies: the Spirit. What does that mean? Well, we can have all the evidence in the world, but ultimately, believing in Christ is a supernatural thing.
In John chapter 3, a religious leader named Nicodemus goes to visit Jesus in secret—he’s obviously spiritually searching, and he thinks Jesus might have the answers. And Jesus tells him, “You have to be born again,” which Nicodemus is just baffled by. And here’s what Jesus says—John 3:7… 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. In the Greek language, the word for “Spirit” and the word for “wind” is the same word—it’s the word pneuma. Isn’t that interesting? And by the way, it’s the same in Hebrew—same word for “wind” and “spirit.” So here’s what Jesus is saying: In order to truly know God, there’s a supernatural thing that happens, where the Holy Spirit moves in unpredictable ways, like the wind, and stirs in your heart, and draws you to faith. Which clearly was happening to this guy Nicodemus, right? He was spiritually restless, which is why he came to see Jesus.
When I look back on my own experience in college, it’s obvious that God was using my disillusionment with my academics and my athletic career and the loneliness I experienced—God was working through all of that to create this spiritual hunger in me that only he could fill. The Spirit was moving. So as you think about your life, I wonder if you have felt that pull, and you’ve resisted? He’s not giving up on you. He will continue to stir in your heart. Maybe that’s why you’re here today.
So here’s the point: when you consider the life of Jesus, and the death of Jesus, and the pull of the Holy Spirit—any one of those alone might not be enough to convince you. But when you take them all together, you start to realize that belief in Jesus makes so much sense. And when you get to that point, and you open your heart to Christ, you begin to experience this thing called “eternal life,” which I was so privileged to see at the bedside of a godly woman last week.
So let’s talk about what this eternal kind of life looks like—last point: The Results of Belief. We’ve actually walked through this passage in reverse order, so let’s close by looking at the beginning—1 John 5:1…1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
So, two results of believing in Christ. First, deep love for people. Verse 1 says everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. You hear this all the time around The Chapel, don’t you? Loving God and loving people. When you’re truly connected with God, you will be a lover of people. I don’t care how many verses you have memorized or how strong your theology is or how much money you give; if you don’t have a tender, compassionate love for people, you don’t really know God. And we talked about this last week, remember? Loved people love people. When we allow ourselves to be loved by God, and filled with his love, we will look for ways to give out love to others. When I think of the end of my life, when I’m lying in a rented hospital bed in my living room, I hope to God that I will look back and say I loved people well. And the more I walk with God, the more I find myself loving people. The two just go together.
And then here’s the second result: joyful obedience to God. Verse 3: …this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is so important. Because there is a spiritual enemy of your soul who wants you to think God’s commands are burdensome. When people give us rules and restrictions, our tendency is to resist and feel confined by that, right? Jesus said the Pharisees would tie up heavy loads and put them on people’s shoulders. So obeying God was miserable! But look what John is saying: when you believe in Jesus, and you have this eternal kind of life, you look at God’s commands totally differently! The world says God’s commands are dreary and heavy, but John says you’ve overcome the world! So all of a sudden, you have a desire to please God, because you’re so amazed by his love.
I encourage you to find someone who served on Friday at the Night to Shine, and ask them, “Wasn’t it just a real hassle to do that on Friday? Wasn’t that a drag?” You know what they’ll tell you, right? They walked on air out of that place. Come with us to Paterson and spend the morning serving the homeless. And then join us right afterwards, as we circle up and debrief the morning. And around that circle of 30 people or so, you’re going to hear so much energy and excitement…because obeying God isn’t a burden; it’s a joy. His yoke is easy and his burden is light.
See, when we believe in Jesus, eternal life begins right now—and it’s a life of deep love for people and joyful obedience to God. There’s no better way to live.
And it all starts with believing. And I realize that some of you are struggling to believe. Some of you are listening to this sermon because a friend asked you to, because they know you’re struggling to believe. And believing doesn’t come easy sometimes—I get that. In fact, today, there are more and more people who say, “It’s impossible to really know, so I’ll just live as an agnostic. Maybe God’s real;
maybe now; I’m just going to live my life.” And I want to strongly encourage you to push past that. Don’t get stuck in perpetual agnosticism.
There’s an author I admire named John Ortberg. He wrote about a friend of his who was a hang glider, and one day he Invited John him to come and watch him hang glide. And his friend said, “I have something I want to give you when we’re up on the mountain.” So he went up there, and he met some other hang gliders, and they told him how the equipment works and how strong the harnesses are and how the aerodynamics of a hang glider work. It was fascinating. And then his friend said, “Okay, now here’s the gift I’m giving you. You’re going hang gliding today.”
So they walked over to the edge of the cliff and stood there. And this thing that sounded so cool—when it was about other people—suddenly seemed terrifying. He started thinking about everything that could go wrong: the harness could fail. A tornado could blow in. He could be attacked by a large bird. He imagined his body splattered on the ground. He envisioned his children without a father. He pictured his wife without a husband…dating other men. He didn’t like any of it.
And he told this story as an allegory of faith. Because it’s easy to talk about faith in church. But when you step out of this bubble, and you’re looking over the edge, it becomes personal. And it’s so easy to retreat to our comfort zone, or just blend in with the world. And here’s what Ortberg wrote: “If I leap, if I trust, I do not know for sure what will happen. What I do know is this: if I don’t leap, if I don’t trust, if I don’t hope, if I don’t ask, I will never soar. I will never know. I will live and grow old and die standing on the side of that cliff.” In case you’re wondering, he decided to leap.
And my prayer for you today is that you will be so dissatisfied living life on the safety of the cliff, and that you will be so convinced by the life of Jesus and the death of Jesus and so moved by the Holy Spirit, that you will leap toward him. Because if this is real—and it is—he’s going to catch you, and he’s going to give your life that quality of eternity that I admired in that godly woman, and that every single one of us can have. We just have to believe.
