Transcript & Slides: Children of God (1 John)

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Children of God (1 John)
By David Feddes

We’re going to begin a series of messages on the book of 1 John. John is the person who wrote the Gospel according to John, that great account of Jesus’ life. He wrote three letters and also the book of Revelation.

As we think about 1 John, we come to it with our own situations and questions. We also need to keep in mind what the purpose was for writing the letter. If we come to this letter with certain kinds of questions, it will be very helpful to us.

One of the basic questions that many people have is, Who is God, and what does God do or what has God done? Do I belong to God? Am I born of God? Am I eternally alive? How can I relate to God? Can I commune with God or have fellowship with him or know him in an intimate way? How should I relate to other people? How do I know what’s right and wrong? There are so many opinions about what’s right and what’s wrong—how in the world am I supposed to know? How can I detect lies and reject the lies that are all floating around out there? Why in the world is the world the way it is?

Those are the kinds of questions that you’ll find answered in 1 John.

Who is God? God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is light. God is love. God sent his Son into the world so that we would live through him. He sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Those are the big answers to who God is and what he’s done.

Am I born of God? Anyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Anyone who loves has been born of God. Anyone who does what is right has been born of God. Anyone born of God overcomes the world. Those are some of the statements we find in 1 John about what it means to be born of God and how you can know, and we’ll explore what those mean in greater detail.

How can I commune with God? John talks about fellowship with God and being in God and God in us, and knowing God—not just knowing a few factoids about him, but knowing God in a relational way.

How shall I relate to others? The short answer is love. If you don’t love your brother whom you can see, how can you love God whom you can’t see? If you’ve got material goods and don’t use them to help other people out, how can you say that you have the love of God in you? Those are the kinds of statements John makes.

How do I know right and wrong? Obey God’s commands and walk as Jesus walked. If God commands it, do it. If he prohibits it, don’t. Is it like Jesus, or isn’t it? Those are the kinds of guidance that we get in 1 John about knowing right and wrong.

How can you detect and reject lies? All throughout this book there’s a lot about liars. This is the liar; this is the lie. This is how you lie to yourself; this is how you call God a liar. You learn how to tell the difference between lies and truth.

Why is the world the way it is? He says a lot about the world. “The world and its desires pass away” (1 John 2:17). There are a lot of antichrists loose in the world. The world listens to the people who are of the world; it listens to its own. “The whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). Would that maybe explain a couple of things? Why is the world the way it is? If you’ve got this cheery little program that the world’s going to be better in the next couple of years and then stay better and keep moving onward and upward, John will give you a wake-up call. The world is under the control of the evil one, and it’s going to be the way it is because it only listens to those who are of the world.

Those are the kinds of statements and answers we find in John to some of the very biggest questions that people have about God and life and the world.

As we look at 1 John, our main theme is “Children of God.” That’s a theme that comes up again and again. John talks at least six times, depending on your translation, about being children of God; five more times at least about being born of God; and at least twenty-nine times he uses the word know. You’re not supposed to use that word in religious matters, are you? You’re supposed to say “think” or “believe” or “it’s a possibility” or “have an opinion about.” John says no—we know. He says over and over again, “This is how you know.”

The purpose of writing this book is: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).

If you read the Gospel according to John, he gives his purpose statement there: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). He wrote that book so that you would believe in Jesus, so that you would trust in him and receive eternal life in his name. He wrote this letter to build on that—so that when you believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and receive life, then you know that you have eternal life.

We know we are the children of God. We live in a very foggy time where you’re not supposed to know for sure anything related to spiritual things or moral matters. But by the time you get done reading this book, you just might know something for sure.

When you go through John, you’ll notice also the clear contrasts. He does not operate in foggy conditions. He says it’s light or it’s dark, it’s sin or it’s righteousness, it’s truth or it’s lies, it’s love or it’s hate, life or death.

By the way, when you’re learning Greek for the first time, you go to John’s Gospel and to 1 John because they’re the simplest. The vocabulary is very simple, the words are short—it’s by far the easiest material to read in the New Testament. Somebody has said that John’s writings are such that a child can wade in them and such that an elephant can swim in them, because the more you read and the more you ponder and the more you think, the more you discover the depth of these writings.

He uses simple words and sharp contrasts. There are the eyewitnesses, like himself and his fellow apostles, and there are the false prophets. There is Christ, and there are antichrists. There is God, and there are idols. “Keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). You love God or you love the world. You’re children of God or you’re children of the devil.

He’s not your average mumbler. And if you want to get over the mumbles, this is very important, because we need to be able to live and die with confidence—not with a little bit of wishful thinking here or there. We need to be able to witness with clarity and with authority, because nobody gets saved by mumblers.

So I want to begin 1 John simply by listening to the whole book. There are many different ways to study the Bible and read it. Sometimes you study it a sentence at a time, even a word at a time, but it’s also helpful first to hear it the way it originally was read—as an entire letter.

David Feddes then recites 1 John.

Children of God (1 John)
By David Feddes
Slide Contents

Big questions

• Who is God? What has God done?
• Am I born of God, eternally alive?
• How can I commune with God?
• How should I relate to others?
• How do I know right and wrong?
• How can I detect and reject lies?
• Why is the world the way it is?

God’s children know

• “children of God” (6x)
• “born of God” (5x)
• “know” (29x)

I write … so that you may know that you have eternal life… We know that we are children of God. (5:13, 19)

Clear contrasts

• light or dark, sin or righteousness
• truth or lies, love or hate, life or death
• eyewitnesses or false prophets 
• Christ or antichrists, God or idols
• love God or love the world
• children of God or children of devil