1 John, Part 14: Things to Know

We have reached the last week of our fourteen-part sermon series on 1 John. Let’s jump right in and read the last few verses, and then we will go back through it one verse at a time.

1 John 5:13-21 (BSB) says:

13 I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

14 And this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 

15 And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we already possess what we have asked of Him.

16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he should ask God, who will give life to those who commit this kind of sin. There is a sin that leads to death; I am not saying he should ask regarding that sin. 

17 All unrighteousness is sin, yet there is sin that does not lead to death.

18 We know that anyone born of God does not keep on sinning; the One who was born of God protects him, and the evil one cannot touch him. 

19 We know that we are of God, and that the whole world is under the power of the evil one. 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.

And that concludes John’s first epistle. As I’m sure you noticed, unlike many of the other books of the New Testament, there is no final salutation or benediction. Without a typical conclusion, that last sentence almost seems to hang there. But before we look at that sentence, first let’s look closely at all the other things he says as he ends his letter.

Not surprisingly, John restates some of his previous points, and he reminds his readers why he’s written to them. He says, in verse 13, “I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

His purpose in writing is to give them confidence in their standing before God. If they examine themselves and see that they are doing “these things” he’s written about, then they can know they have eternal life. “These things” he mentions are the things that make up what I’ve been calling John’s litmus test. Those things are believing Jesus is the Son of God who came in the flesh, practicing righteousness, and loving one another. If they are doing these things, then they can be confident in their salvation. And if we believe and do these things, then we too don’t have to wonder if we are saved. We can know that we have eternal life, too.

And, like we saw last week, we can testify that because we believe and follow Jesus, He has given us life, because the life inside of us testifies that we are born again and that Jesus is the Son of God.

But not only can we know that we have eternal life, we can know other things as well. There are even more benefits to this life that Jesus gives us. John says next, in verse 14, “And this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

This is a repeat of what he said earlier in 1 John 3:21-22, which says, “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and we will receive from Him whatever we ask, because we keep His commandments and do what is pleasing in His sight.” John wanted to remind them again of this benefit: God hears us when we pray, if we are praying according to His will.

Then, John expands on this and says in verse 15, “And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we already possess what we have asked of Him.” Not only can we know that we have eternal life, but we can know that God hears us and will give us what we have asked for in prayer.  

This verse is very similar to John 15:22, in which Jesus said, “If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Maybe John is thinking of these words of Jesus. But I wonder if this is where the idea of “name it and claim it” comes from? If you haven’t heard that phrase before, it’s a belief that says we can verbally name a blessing we desire and then claim it by faith. Now, obviously the name it and claim it idea gets misapplied, and people think if they just name and claim a new car, then they will receive it if they have enough faith. I think you can see the problems with that line of thinking. But what is true is that if we are praying for something that we know is in line with God’s will, then we can name it and claim it. Meaning, we can confidently ask in prayer and, as John says, “know that we already possess what we have asked of Him.” 

An example of this would be if we asked God to fill us with the fruit of His Spirit. Then we should not doubt that God will answer that prayer. We can name those fruits and claim them by His power. In fact, the only way we will receive the fruit is if “we know that we already possess what we have asked of Him.” For example, if we want God’s joy, we must be joyful. We must choose to be joyful even when we “feel” like being depressed. If we want to be filled with love, we must choose to love other people, even when we don’t feel like doing so. In fact, in order to have some prayers answered, we have to behave as though we’ve already received the answer in order to receive it. If we wait around for God to supernaturally fill us with kindness, I don’t think that’s going to happen. We have to start being kind, and then He will empower us as we act in faith.

Then next, still speaking about asking for things in prayer, John makes an even more confusing statement. He says in verse 16, “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he should ask God, who will give life to those who commit this kind of sin. There is a sin that leads to death; I am not saying he should ask regarding that sin.”

This is a confusing section because, as we saw last week, the Bible tells us the wages of sin is death. And Jesus said in John 8:24, “unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” So, is John saying there is only one sin that leads to death? And if so, what is that sin?

Well, just before this, in 1 John 5:12, John had said, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Well, what is the opposite of life? It’s death. So, when John says that if anyone sees a fellow Christian committing a sin not leading to death, he’s not excusing all but one sin that leads to death. Maybe he even knew he needed to clarify that, because next, in verse 17, he adds, “All unrighteousness is sin, yet there is sin that does not lead to death.”

As John has been explaining in this letter, if any of us say that we don’t sin, we are liars. We all sin because not one of us is perfect. If we are practicing righteousness and we slip up, then we can confess our sin and even have other Christians pray for us, having confidence that Jesus will forgive us and cleanse us. And we Christians who see our brother or sister in Christ committing a sin that is simply a mistake can have confidence in proclaiming to them that their sins are forgiven.

But there is a difference between making a mistake and willfully practicing sin. If we willfully practice sin, then it will lead to death. James 1:15 says, “Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” Unrepentant sin will eventually grow and lead to death.

So, that’s why John warns, “There is a sin that leads to death; I am not saying he should ask regarding that sin.” He’s saying that willful, deliberate sin that is not repented of is clearly going to lead to death. God can’t forgive someone who doesn’t repent. So, if someone hasn’t repented, we shouldn’t think that if we pray for them to be forgiven then they will be forgiven. They can’t be forgiven if they have not repented and are still continuing in their sin.

In reading different commentaries on these two verses, though, it seems like everyone wants to know if there is a particular sin that leads to death that John is speaking about. Some people wonder if John is speaking about the “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit”? It’s possible.

In the Old Testament, many sins led to death. But the only example I can find in the New Testament of believers who commit a sin that leads to death (and immediately they die, I might add) is Ananias and Sapphira. In Acts 5:1-3, it says, “Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds for himself, but brought a portion and laid it at the apostles’ feet. Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that Satan has filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and withhold some of the proceeds from the land?’” Peter says more and then concludes, “You have not lied to men, but to God!” and Ananias falls down and dies. Then Sapphira walks in and also lies about the property, and Peter tells her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord?” and then she dies, too.

Barnes’ Notes on the Bible says about this that, “The sin here committed was one of special magnitude - so great as to be deemed worthy of the immediate and signal vengeance of God. Yet the sin against the Holy Spirit is uniformly represented to be of this description.”

The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, which Barnes’ is referencing, comes from something Jesus said in Matthew 12:31, which is, “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.”

So maybe it’s possible John is speaking about that or thinking about Ananias and Sapphira, but regardless, what we should understand from John’s text is that God doesn’t answer all the prayers we pray. There are prayers that either go against God’s will, or against the expressed will of a person. I really like what theologian Charles Ellicott says about this verse: “John only means that though prayer can do much for an erring brother, there is a willfulness against which it would be powerless; for even prayer is not stronger than freewill.”

I agree with his commentary because look at what John says next in verse 18. He says, “We know that anyone born of God does not keep on sinning; the One who was born of God protects him, and the evil one cannot touch him.”

Ellicott goes on to say, “John means strongly to insist, in this the solemn close of his Letter, that the true ideal Christian frame is the absence of willful sin. Stumbles there may be, even such as need the prayers of friends, but intentional lawlessness there cannot be.”

As John said, “We know that anyone born of God does not keep on sinning.” That’s another thing that we ought to be confident of. We are to know this. We don’t need to fear that the devil or the world is going to make us keep sinning. Jesus protects us from the devil’s attacks. We can be confident that He will empower us to resist temptation and keep us from being forced to sin.

We can be secure in this knowledge because, as John says next, in verse 19, “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world is under the power of the evil one.” Unlike the world, we are not under the power of the evil one. That’s why only those who are born of God can overcome the world.

Remember back to when he was giving specific instructions to fathers and young men in chapter two, but he was really speaking to Christians at different stages of faith? John, from his point of view as an older and wiser leader in the Church, wants the believers to stay true to God’s Word. He wants them to hold on to the message they had heard from him and the other Apostles. He wants them to keep abiding in God’s love so they can continue to have fellowship with other true believers and with the Father. He wants them to walk in the light and not walk in darkness like the world does. He doesn’t want them to love the things of the world.

So, now at the end of his letter, he’s telling them to pray for those in fellowship who are struggling to do this. We who are confident that we are of God can pray for those who are new in faith or are trying but failing to obey God’s commands. As we saw last week, recalling the illustration of the ship that Alexander MacLaren wrote about, we can pray for fellow believers who are still hanging out on the edge of the deck instead of the interior of the ship. Part of loving others is praying for them.

Then, John says in verse 20, some more things we can know and be confident of. He says, “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.”

Three times John uses the word “true” in that verse. If we do all these things that John has been saying true believers do, then we can be confident that because we believe in God’s Son Jesus Christ, we can know these three things are true. We can know Him who is true; we can know that we are in Him who is true; and we can know that He is the true God and eternal life.

And now we reach the last sentence. John concludes this first book by saying in verse 21, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

Does it seem out of place? It’s actually the whole point of John’s letter.

John’s command to guard ourselves from idols is a warning to make sure that we know and are following the only true God. Because unless we are abiding in Jesus Christ, we don’t know the true God, nor do we have eternal life. And if we don’t know the true God, then we are worshiping idols.

If we understand this, we understand this letter. John had started off by talking about the people who had been a part of the fellowship of believers but then left. They left to follow false idols. We, too, must be on guard so we don’t let the false arguments and ideas of the world infiltrate our minds. The world seeks to snare us into worshiping its many, many idols.  

If we believe in the true God, then our job is to keep ourselves from idols. We must actively do this. John says, “keep yourselves.” He doesn’t say that God will do this for us. We have to keep ourselves from idols. And throughout this letter, John’s been telling us how to do just that.

We must remember John’s test of how to tell if someone is a believer or if someone is an antichrist. Antichrists tell us there are many paths to God, sin doesn’t matter, and loving people means empowering their sin. Those are all lies of the devil. As John warns, the devil has the world under his power, believing and proclaiming those things. We must be on the lookout to identify that spirit of the antichrist, so we don’t fall victim to believing the lies, too, and end up worshiping false idols. I think now, more than ever, we need to be on guard and evaluate everyone who is speaking about God by this litmus test. If two thousand years ago John considered his age to be the end-times, then certainly so should we.

Think of all the false gods that our world presents as substitutes for the one true God. Many people claim to believe in God, but the god they are believing in is not the God of the Bible. This is the test. Is the God they believe in the God who sent His only Son to earth to be born of a woman, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for all of mankind’s sins and rose victoriously from the grave? This is the only God. It’s only if we believe in Jesus that the Spirit of God lives in us and we have access to the Father. All other ideas and beliefs about God are actually idols.

But if we know this one and only true God, then we can know that we have eternal life. Then we can know that God hears our prayers. Then we can clearly know the difference between children of God and children of the devil. All because we know that the Son of God has truly come and given us understanding of who the true God is is how we can know all these things.

We’ve reached the end of this letter, so if I were to summarize all that John has said, it would be this: John has made it clear that God is both light and love, (1 John 1:5 says, “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” and 1 John 4:16 says, “God is love”) and so we have to walk in the light and love Jesus and each other in order to abide in Him.  

I really love how MacLaren summarizes that truth. He says, “We must not so conceive of the love of God as to darken the radiance of His righteousness, or to obscure the brilliancy of that pure light which tolerates no admixture of darkness.” That means that just because God is love does not mean He overlooks darkness. And that is why if we want to abide in Jesus, we must both walk in the light and in love.

If we are abiding in Christ, then our love for Him and others is going to progress. We will walk in the light and our tolerance for darkness is going to progressively decrease. Part of knowing that we are in God is that we will know that we are not like the world, which is under the influence and power of the evil one. We will know that we are practicing righteousness and not practicing sin. We will see that we’ve made progress and live differently than the world.

In the same commentary the ship illustration is from, MacLaren says this: “And so as we advance in obedience we shall see unreached advances before us, and each new step of progress will declare more fully how much still remains to be accomplished…Character is built up, for good or for evil, by slow degrees. Conscience is quickened by being listened to and stifled by being neglected. A little speck of mud… on a swan’s plumage will be conspicuous, while a splash twenty times the size will pass unnoticed on the rags of some travel-stained wayfarer. The purer we become, the more we shall know ourselves to be impure…And at last we may hope to come to the new Jerusalem, and drink the new wine of the Kingdom, and yet find that the old love remains, and that the new Christ, whose presence makes the new heavens and the new earth, is ‘the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,’ the old Christ whom, amid the shadows of earth, we tried to love and copy.”

John and MacLaren are both saying that we must progress. We must practice righteousness, not practicing sin any longer. And as we do so, the division between light and darkness becomes more and more clear, and the things of the world will not be appealing.

We are to walk as Jesus walked. Isn’t that what our goal in this life should be? Our purpose on this earth is to hold to the teachings of Jesus Christ, advancing in obedience, until at last we see “Christ whom, amid the shadows of earth, we tried to love and copy.”

We will only be able to do this if we keep ourselves from idols.

Prayer:

 David has a beautiful prayer we can pray in Psalm 19:12-14, which says, “Who can discern his own errors? Cleanse me from my hidden faults. Keep Your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless and cleansed of great transgression. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.”

Heavenly Father, this is our prayer. Please forgive us for the sins we commit and cleanse us from all our hidden faults. Please help us to turn from sin and walk in righteousness as we abide in Your light and love. May the words we speak and the thoughts we think bring glory to You. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.