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| I WANT us all to leave here today with a
new certainty about our faith. I want us to be able to leave with a
renewed sense that Jesus has truly saved us and will keep us to the end. All of us here come from different backgrounds — Methodist, like me; Catholic, like Divina’s family; Presbyterian like Neph’s or Brethren like Gloria. Some are Charismatic, other are not. I always expected that this church should be a place where all varieties of Christian were welcome. Yes, we can disagree. In fact, we ought to disagree. That’s the way we learn and grow. But we are not here to fight each other. We are here to show that Jesus our Lord is bigger than denominations. But because we have different backgrounds, some of you may already feel uneasy that I said that we should all know that Jesus has truly saved us and will keep us to the end. Some of you may have been taught views which seem to contradict that statement. Don’t give up yet! At the very core of Christian faith are some very simple facts. In Jesus, God became human and lived among us. He went around teaching about God and his Kingdom, and doing good. When he was in his early 30s, he was arrested, brought before a somewhat illegal Jewish court hearing and then passed over to the Romans. Both courts condemned him to death, though without a clear and consistent finding of guilt. Jesus was taken out of the city and executed by crucifixion. After his death he was sealed into a borrowed and guarded tomb, but, early on the Sunday morning following his crucifixion, the tomb was found empty. Many people saw him alive, including a few who had been sceptical about him before the crucifixion. Within weeks, his scared band of followers were revitalised and enlivened by an experience of the Holy Spirit and began proclaiming him wherever they found a hearing. Their message was that God’s Kingdom age had begun through Jesus, and that all who had faith in his name would be saved. And that, in a nutshell, is what we still teach and declare to this day. I have heard many good things about most of you, and I know that your faith is genuine and positive. But I want to add to your faith the assurance that Jesus the Lord will never let you go. If you have the Son, you already have life; if you don’t have the Son, you don’t have life. It’s that simple. CHRISTIANS KNOW FOR SURE Some years ago, a Presbyterian minister, James Kennedy, devised a plan known as Evangelism Explosion, or EE. Quite a few Australians tried EE in their churches, but it was not as effective here as in the US. Kennedy’s own church grew phenomenally, using EE. In EE, Church members are trained to visit homes, door–to–door. They learn a series of questions and answers geared to guide a person towards a decision to follow Christ. One question is something like this: “If you die tonight, do you know for sure that you are going to be with God in heaven?” And that is an excellent question. I have never met a Christian — it doesn’t matter what church they are from — who doesn’t have some idea that he or she will go to be with God in heaven; and I have never met someone who is not a Christian who says, “Yes, I do know for sure.” But I will say that some Christians stumble over that question. I will say that some Christians are not as certain as they could be. I will say some Christians have even been robbed of their right of knowing that they are saved and sealed for all eternity. We read in our passage, 12
He who has the Son
has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
If you have Jesus, you have eternal life, and if you don’t have him,
you don’t have eternal life. Simple, direct, easily understood.WHAT DO WE MEAN, “I KNOW”? I know a few ministers who would raise an eyebrow if I said you can know you are saved. They would say I was too rash or too arrogant. They would say, “Wait until the day comes, and then you’ll know for sure.” Of course it’s good if they want to discourage you from being swollen with pride. The Bible is clear: pride is not good for us; it is not God’s plan for us. Paul writes, For by grace are you
saved through faith — and that not of yourselves; it is God’s gift: not
through works, lest anyone should boast.
We have nothing to boast of, except God’s incredible and totally
undeserved goodness to us in Jesus Christ.That is Paul’s point over and over: there is absolutely nothing that you or I can do to deserve salvation. It is the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ. All we can do is receive it as a gift by faith. There is no room for boasting or arrogance because there is nothing you or I can really do to secure salvation or a share in eternal life. So, it is good to discourage pride, as long as you don’t do it by downplaying the truth. But some ministers have a philosophical bent. Philosophers spend an enormous amount of effort on what they call epistemology. That sounds like unpleasant surgery, but it is really the science of knowledge. What do I know? What do I mean when I say, “I know?” It’s not as simple as it sounds. In German, two different words mean "I know". Ich weiß means “I know by learning or training”; ich kenne means "I know by experience.” But there are other ways of knowing. Think about these statements: “I know the first six elements of the periodic table.” — that’s knowledge I have by learning or training. I’ve never even seen some of those elements. But I know they are all there — Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron and Carbon. “I know John” — that’s a personal experience of John. It means that I have some experience of how John thinks, what he looks like, how he acts in different situations. “I know Joyce would never bash me up” — I only know this by prediction or anticipation. From what I know of Joyce, she would not have to beat me up, anyway. If she even tried, I’d probably get such a shock that I’d fall down in a faint anyway. I just have never seen Joyce act in a way which suggests that she would beat anyone up. You can tell me the real truth about Joyce afterwards, JR! But, in one sense, I don’t know that Joyce wouldn’t beat me up at all. No one has ever taught me or trained me to know it. I know Joyce in a similar way to how I know John. I have seen and experienced a lot of both people. I understand something of their characters and attitudes. But do I really know what Joyce might do in an unknown future? So my knowledge that Joyce won’t beat me up is anticipatory, based on what I already know of her character. In the same way, I haven’t yet experienced heaven. So, when I say that I know I am bound for heaven, I know in anticipation. I know the character of Jesus, so I know he will keep his promises. I take it on trust. I can only know the future on the basis of what Jesus is like. It all comes back to him in the end. If someone told you to be careful about being too sure of your salvation because he was making a philosophical issue about meaning, that’s alright; but it is pretty confusing for most people. We are ordinary people, talking ordinary English, and we know, when we say we have salvation, that we haven’t experienced its full impact yet. It’s that “now, but not yet” thing: we have it, but not all of it; we have begun experiencing some of what it means to have eternal life but we haven't yet come to the full experience. ENDURING TO THE END But some other people object. They say, “How do you know if you will endure to the end and be saved? What if you aren’t in a state of grace when you die? What if you backslide, and no longer merit salvation? How can you say you have eternal life, when you might not satisfy all the conditions when it comes to the crunch?” John doesn’t get tied up in all that kind of argument. He just says, God has given us
eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12
He who has the Son has
life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
He also explains very carefully what his purpose is: 1JN 5:13 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
He says, “If you are a believer, I want you to know...” We who believe
should also be persuaded that we now have eternal life. None of these
things is written in the future tense, It is all something we have now. You believe now, you have now, you know now.There are arguments among Christians about whether or not we will persevere in our faith until the very end. Basically, if you are Methodist or Salvationist or Catholic, you would say, “Perseverance to the end is not guaranteed: you have to watch your step.” If, on the other hand you are a Sydney Anglican or a Presbyterian, you would say, “Jesus will in no way cast out all who come to him. If you have saving faith now, you will endure to the end.” And, if you are a Baptist, you would say, “We’ll appoint a Committee, take a vote and get back to you.” Actually, most Baptists side with the Anglicans and the Presbyterians. But, for us, the bottom line is always, “What does the Bible say?” because there you get the teachings of Jesus and the original apostles, and that’s the foundation on which everything else is built. But this is not an easy question, because there are Bible passages which can be taken both ways. What I see is that the basic and essential position is that God has acted for our salvation by giving the most precious gift he could possibly give, as a sacrifice for our sins, so that we can have salvation. If God loves us so much, could he possibly give us up easily? I have been a Christian for 41 years. In that time, I have lied, cheated, stolen, coveted and lusted. I have practiced idolatry of TV, computer, camera, books, possessions and just about anything else you can name. In fact, I have been a pretty normal human being. And Jesus has never once cast me off or even threatened me. He still loves me with an undying love. There have been many times when my faith has been weak. I went through a period when I was surrounded by conflicts and deeply depressed. I could not pray; the Bible seemed to be meaningless words on the page. If God even existed, he couldn’t possibly love me. Jesus didn’t cast me off or even threaten me. He revealed himself once again to me. Never despair or give up. As the song says, I just can’t give up
now,
Some Christians even fear that they may have committed the unpardonable
sin. They live in a terrified limbo, afraid to trust, afraid to let go.
That’s the work of the devil!I've come too far from where I started from Nobody told me the road would be easy And don’t believe he's brought me this far To leave me. If there is the tiniest flash of faith, if there is the merest hint of Christian commitment, Jesus will honour it. It’s never a question of how big your faith is; it’s a question of how big is the God in whom you have faith. Jesus said he did not come to break a bent reed or to quench a smouldering wick. If you believe in the Son of God, you have eternal life, and you ought to know it! If you have the Son, if you have invited him to take control and reside within your life, you have eternal life. That’s all bottom–line stuff. There’s one proviso, where the Catholics and Methodists are right. There is one warning to heed: God can’t override a free and definite decision to have nothing further to do with him. All other failings and foibles are covered by the shed blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ. HOW GOD SEES US When God looks at you, he sees Christ’s light shining out from you. He no longer sees the blackness of your sin. The light shines in
the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
When God looks at you, he sees his beloved adopted child, forever
united by faith with his only begotten son, Jesus.When God looks at you, he sees you “in Christ”, so that the outer wrapping of Christ conceals any sin–stains on your own life. When God looks at you, he sees only a saint, fit for eternal life in his Kingdom. If you want to understand the importance of Advent, look no further! This is why ...the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
God wants you to live with him forever and to share in Christ all the delights which are his. Do you believe in Jesus, the only Son of God? Do you trust in the merits of his death and cling by faith to the one who bled and died for you? Do you repent of sin? Then you are a child of God and an heir of God, a joint heir with the Son. So, trust Him and rejoice! Give thanks forever more! You have the Son, you have life, and you should know you have life — eternal life, life to enjoy now and forever. However, if you don't yet believe, sorry — you don’t have life, and none of this applies to you. But it can apply to you. Hand your life to Jesus from today on, and you, too will have life! May we all enjoy that life forever more, AMEN! |
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| © Peter R. Green 2003. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. | |
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