In his sermon 'By This We Know Love,' Scott Brown explores the passage 1 John 3:16-24, highlighting the supreme definition of love as Jesus laying down His life for humanity. He emphasizes the importance of not just understanding doctrine but living a life of love, noting how theology should lead to practical expressions of love within the church. The sermon discusses the simplicity of the Christian life, which is often complicated by overemphasis on doctrine without action. Brown outlines two interpretations of conscience regarding assurance of salvation: one views condemnation as a tool of the devil, while the other sees it as a legitimate self-reflection. He stresses the role of the Holy Spirit in providing assurance and the evidence of salvation through obedience and the Spirit's testimony in our hearts. The sermon calls Christians to examine if they truly love their brethren, obey God's commandments, and have fellowship with God, which should be evident through actions of love and compassion.

This morning we'll be reading from 1 John chapter 3 verses 16 through 24. By this we know love because he laid down his life for us and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before Him.

For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God, and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment. Now he who keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given us.

Please pray with me. Father God, we do thank you for your perfect word of truth that you have given to us. We do pray that you would work in us by this word and by your Holy Spirit, that you would renew our minds. We do pray that you would work in us by this word and by your Holy Spirit, that you would renew our minds. We do pray that you would conform us to the image of Christ.

We thank you for him. We thank you for his great work of salvation. We thank you for the great love that you have for your people, that you have sent your Son, He would lay down His life for us. Lord help us to to follow in His example, help us to love your people also and to Be thankful and to praise and worship you this day because of what you have done Jesus name we pray When John says by this we know love because he laid down his life for us And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren He's spoken such a simple statement that the littlest child can understand it. And one of the things that happens to us as Christians is that the Christian life can get so complicated.

And there's so many issues to consider. You realize how little you know. And then you set yourself on a track to know more, which is the right thing to do. But you can get yourself in a trap and it really is a very bad trap to fall into. And that is when you think that all of this is about, you know, coming down to the right doctrine.

That it's all about getting the right theology, that it's all about locking into the right methodology, it's all about finding the right church, you know, it's all about learning and learning and learning and learning. But these things are important. It's important for us to fill our minds up with the knowledge of God. But the Christian life is simpler than that. And it's so easy to forget the simplicity of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the simple life that God has called us to live in this world.

And John is continuing to just bring us right back to the basics of the Christian life. You know when we began in 1st John we said that John, it's hard to outline John because he brings up a subject and then he loops back to it. And then he loops back again to it. And he continues to address a lot of the same things. You've already noticed that, I know.

But John is bringing us back to some of the basics he's already actually mentioned in his letter. And he's really illuminating what it's like to have fellowship with God. And what happens when you have fellowship with God. And really simple things happen when you have fellowship with God. You love.

That's what happens. That's the essence of Christianity. And you know, it's so easy to get all wrapped up in our studies, and we should study. It can happen to you when you're in seminary. It can happen to you in a lot of different contexts, where you're just all wrapped up in the study, and you don't remember that the goal of the instruction is love, like the apostle Paul said.

You know, this happens to our interns every year. We give them about 20 books to read, and an enormous amount of writing and contemplation of Christian theology. And the greatest trap that they fall into and every intern falls into it every year they just start skimming and they miss the love they forget that the goal of the instruction was love. Not to get through it. That wasn't the goal.

Well, they need to get through it. They have a deadline and they are going to get through it. But it's so easy to forget why you are even there and what the whole design was from the beginning. And that's very true about our life in the church. You know, we become so convicted about how we fall short, and so we scamper around, you know, trying to figure out how to get it all right, which is a good impulse.

But we often forget That the goal of it all is love, that we have fellowship with God the Father. And now John speaks about the fellowship that we have with the Holy Spirit in verse 24. And what we learn from John is that Christianity is more than a theology. It's more than a methodology. It's an attraction to the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's a transformation into his likeness and that's really the heart of this text here.

It's becoming like him. It's seeing that he laid down his life for us and somehow we have to figure out what it means that we lay down our lives for our brethren. It's really simple, because the goal of the instruction is love. And it's loving him. It's becoming like him.

It's so simple. It's beholding his face. It's so simple. And being transformed into the image of God's Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. It's loving people the way he loved, meaning that we love them in a real way because we have a real love for Him.

The love of God is planted within our hearts and we love one another. And so it's possible to get all caught up in a system and lose the heart of the thing. Because Christianity is far, far deeper, far, far more profound than a system that you get yourself locked into. It's a life of love. It's a life of love for God and love for one another.

It's simpler than we often end up making it to be. That's why John has already said in this chapter, behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called the children of God. John is talking about what it means to be to come into the family of love and he's talking about the kind of family that you belong to And he wants you to think about whether you belong to a family of love and are you a son or a daughter in that family? That expresses love And so in the most recent context just in the few first in the recent verses before this John has been really asking a question, are you in the family of Cain who hated his brother, or are you in the family of Christ who laid down his life for his enemies?" So he's speaking of this truth that you are part of a family and you become like your family and now he he turns to give a clearer definition of what love is and John has been speaking about what love is not. It's not hate.

Is that simple enough? Like I said at the beginning, the Christian life is a lot simpler than you might think it is. And so he's been speaking in the previous verses that hatred contradicts love and it marks you as an unbeliever Whoever hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murder has eternal life Abiding in him and He makes it very clear that hatred is a killing sin. It will cause your soul to be killed by God in hell. So he's just given this negative example of Cain, and now he turns to a positive example, a positive illustration.

It's God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and the family that they are creating as a result of the sending of the Son of God's love. And then you'll notice here that finally the Holy Spirit is mentioned. John's been talking about fellowship with the Father and with the Son and what it does and then he at the very end of this text he begins to talk about fellowship with the Holy Spirit and and he's also not just talking about the outworkings of love but he also addresses the whole trouble of our consciences and how we deal with our conscience and how we should take our conscience. It's a little bit of a confusing part. We'll get to that in a minute.

Our conscience is always speaking to us. Now our consciences can be seared, but John is saying here that our consciences talk. They yell at you about certain things. And so we often have our consciences yelling at us because we don't love like we know we ought to. But what does that mean?

What does it mean? So the answer, we'll get to it later. So during this entire letter, John's speaking of these two different families, the children of God and the children of the devil. And so now he gives a definition of love. And Again, John has not left the primary issue that he's dealing with.

He wants his children to examine themselves, to see that they're in the faith. It's such a disastrous thing to live in the church your whole life long and not know if you really are in the faith to just get involved in this system and to work the system to know the language of the system and do the stuff and look like you're a christian on the outside and then find Find that you meet him and he says, I never knew you. I never had fellowship with you and you never had fellowship with me. This is the most disastrous thing that can happen to a person who gathers among the people of God. To gather among the people of God and to sort of have a life in the people of God, but not really have the life of God in you.

This is the whole matter of John's exhortation. And he speaks so tenderly about this to his children. And so, and you'll see in this in the outline in front of you, I've divided this into five different subsections. And the first subsection is in verse 16, at the first part, how God demonstrates his love. And the second is in verses 16 through 18 how the church demonstrates love, and then in verses 19 through 21 discerning whether or not we have love.

And then the fourth section is in verses 22 and 23, how God promises to reveal our hearts to us. And then finally the work of the Holy Spirit in assurance in the final verse in verse 24. So that's how I've divided up our time here. So let's begin with this definition of love in the first phrase in verse 16. Here you find yourself, by the way, at the quintessential definition of love that occurs in the entire Bible right here, 1st John 3.16.

By this we know love because he laid down his life for us. There's your definition of love. This is the supreme definition of love. Everything else that is said about love is summed up in this statement. Everything in 1 Corinthians 13, everything in Romans 12, everything that speaks of love in the entire Bible is summed up under this one heading right here.

So there you have it. Congratulations. You found yourself at the supreme, quintessential definition of love. And it happens to be the love of Jesus Christ for sinners. And the Lord Jesus Christ performed the greatest act of love by sacrificing his life for sinners.

And here we learn that the love of Jesus Christ is demonstrated in an action. Love does stuff. And we learn here that, you know, Christianity is far more than a methodology or a theology It's an action. It's an Attraction the Lord Jesus Christ loved sinners and he gave himself up He was attracted to the unattractive and he laid down his life for his enemies This is the definition of love. You know, we have so many wrong definitions of love in our brains.

But here we find that love is far, far greater than our own understanding of love. Weeks ago I said that there are 2, 630 words in 1 John, and 756 of those words are dedicated to the subject of love. John wants us to hear about love, and he cannot Quit bringing it up in his letter. Have you ever written a letter where just the same old subject keeps coming up? You know, you keep repeating yourself.

This is the Apostle John he keeps repeating himself about love and so John is giving this definition and we're not left to ourselves to define what love is and he wants us to know if we know love. And while the greatest is love, the greatest act of love is the love of God who sent his Son. His son. And what we find about love is that the love of God is the kind of love that gives its best for the worst. God's perfect Son was given for the worst for the chief of sinners, of which we are all chief.

And love is shown by Christ and his death, by his humility, by his sacrifice, by his willingness to take undeserved punishment, to his being subjected to wrong. This is love. Love is far greater than we can conceive of in our own minds. You know, greater love has no man than this, than to lay down his life for his friends. And this is the delight of God toward rebels, that he, his delight is in the sons of men and he has compassion on sinners.

He has compassion on sinners and he sends his son to die for them. And by the way this isn't a love that just sort of pops up in his mind at a point of time, because the Bible makes it clear that God loved sinners before the foundation of the world. That is a very long love, and it's a love that sacrifices for others. You know, when we were discussing this in our Bible study, my dad brought up a sign that you find that Marines passed by when they were leaving the island of Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest battles in World War II, was absolutely astonishingly brutal.

The brutality that happened on the beaches of Iwo Jima is absolutely breathtaking. And I've spent quite a bit of time studying that battlefield. But when the Marines were walking back to the ship after this horrible battle, 27, 000 casualties, thousands just died on the beaches by machine gun fire. They were walking bloody, stinking off that battlefield to get on the ship to go away to go to the next battle and there was a sign that somebody wrote that said this when you go home tell them for us and say For your tomorrow we gave our today That's G. That's the love of Jesus Christ.

He he gives he gives his today for your tomorrow And that's what Jesus Christ did on the cross He died for sinners so that they would have a life so that they would have eternal life. And this is what love does. And it's expressed in so many places in the Bible. In Romans 5, there's this way that's described that the love of God is manifested in Romans 5-6. For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us And the Apostle Paul speaks of the love of God so frequently and like in Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 and 4 he says blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him. So this is the love of God.

It is love that gives and it's it's so easy to get caught up in a system and lose the heart of the thing because Christianity is more than a system. It's a life of love. It's a life of love for God. It's a life of recognizing that God loves you. You know, I hate to pass by this verse, 1 John 3 16, without mentioning something about 3 16.

Because a few years ago, a world renowned computer scientist was applying some methodology, his scientific methodology to studying the Bible, and he went back and he looked at what is said at chapter 3 verse 16 in every chapter of the Bible and And what he found is that there are astonishing things that are said in the 316s. And for example, in Genesis 316, to the woman he said, I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing. Your desire will be for your husband, he will rule over you." Leviticus 3.16, then the priest shall turn these into smoke on the altar as a food offering by fire for a pleasing odor. All fat is of the Lord's. 1 Samuel 316, but Eli called Samuel and said Samuel my son and he said here I am Proverbs 316 long life is in her hand in her left hand our riches and honor and of course John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life.'" Now, the 3.16s are really astonishing.

Second Timothy 3.16. All scripture is given by God, is inspired by God. Anyway, look at the 3.16s. Look at Revelation 3.16 when you get a chance and see if it connects in any way with this message of John because Revelation 316 says, so because you're lukewarm and neither hot nor cold I'm about to spit you out of my mouth. It really it's really very connected to 1st John 316.

So the first thing that John declares in this verse is how God demonstrates His love. He defines love. Love is defined by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, And his sacrifice sums up every single thing else that is said about love in the Bible. Okay, the second thing that we notice here is that John turns very quickly from the demonstration of love by Jesus Christ to how the church demonstrates love. So he gets very detailed and practical about this.

And so he says, and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. So again, Christianity is not just a theology. It's not the sending of God's own Son is not an intellectual category that you just believe in the same way the demons believe. They believe that and they shudder. Christians believe that and they love.

That's the difference. And This is consistent with the whole teaching of scripture about the likeness of Jesus Christ. Christianity is about the likeness of Jesus Christ, which is why Paul said to the Colossians, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. And so you receive Jesus Christ by repentance and faith, and you walk by faith, and you learn of Christ. You put on the new self, and you become like Christ.

And so love isn't something that you wait for other people to perform for you. It's something that you perform for others. You are like the Apostle Paul who said, I am spending my life. I'm being spent for your sakes. He said that because he understood the love of Jesus Christ.

That love was spending yourself for someone else's benefit and that's the Apostles teaching here You know, there's so many examples of this in Scripture Do you remember that great couple in the Bible Priscilla and Aquila? They risked their necks for the apostle Paul. They had a church in their house. They were sacrificing their resources and their reputation for someone else, literally for the apostle Paul. And this is how God demonstrates His love for us.

He sends his Son and He who lays down his life for us. And love is always demonstrated in acts of tangible mercy. It's not just a thought, it's not just a theology, It's not just a feeling, it's something that you do, just like the Lord Jesus spoke of the sheep and the goats in Matthew chapter 25, that the sheep love the brethren, and they lay down their lives for the brethren, and they give cups of cold water for their brethren, and they give food for their brethren and clothing for their brethren. Because in the Church of Jesus Christ, the brothers and the sisters don't go hungry, and they don't go naked. Of course, if they don't work, they might go hungry because the Bible says if a man doesn't work, don't let him eat.

But I don't believe it could ever happen in this church that somebody would go hungry. Somebody might go through hard times, but ain't nobody going hungry in this church. Because that's what Christians do. Because Christianity is more than gathering together to give mental assent to various doctrines. It's more than an immersion in theology.

The theology actually is designed to create love, and if the theology isn't creating love, you're treating your theology wrong. All of the reading, all of the learning isn't going to really fulfill the love of Jesus Christ. We're getting ready to go through a, it'll probably turn out to be a year and a half journey through the Baptist Confession of 1689. It would be such a tragedy to go through that and not have love inflamed, that it would just be another doctrine. These are remarkably powerful and beautiful doctrines, but what do they do to you?

What do they do to you, really? You study the Bible, but what does it really do to you? Does it make you love? That's the whole matter that John is bringing out because because the study of doctrine is really designed to transform your life to make you like Jesus And it's just so easy in the Christian life to just do the things and not be transformed. And I think John is pointing out a reality that you've all observed in this world, and that is that there are different kinds of churches in this world.

And There are churches where the people lay down their lives for one another, and there are churches where you can hardly even see that. Here's an example. There are churches that you can go to all over the world that are without community and the people come and they have very little connection with one another and they appreciate the teaching but they don't have much to do with one another. And this happens in some of the... It even happened with Martin Lloyd Jones and his church.

He preached there for decades. And then when it was announced that he was going to leave because he was aging, that 700 people left the church right away. Well, they did not have love. They did not love the brethren that they were sitting next to. It is so easy to have a sound doctrine in a church and have no love.

But you can have a church where people aren't sharing their lives together. They can be devoted to the meetings but not the people. And when you go to a church like this, the people don't talk to you because when the service is over, they leave right away because they don't really want to be connected with people. This is not what the Lord Jesus Christ has designed for His church. Now you can also have a church that has a lot of community, but it's a closed community.

And this is a tragedy that happens in churches as well. There's so much fellowship going on. The people really enjoy talking to each other and it's it's they have a good time They come and they're all talking you can hardly get them to sit down and you can hardly, you know Get them to leave but If there's a visitor that comes in, well, they're ignored because everybody's all wrapped up in their little community. And the visitor just eventually leaves because the rest of the people are having such a great time. Have you ever been here or in a church where you just see someone and they're just standing there and they're a visitor and they're just standing there?

To me as a pastor, that is one of the most terrifying scenes in a church. And it happens every once in a while. Because people are just such good friends, you know. And they are a community, but they're actually a closed community. This is not a picture of the unfolding love of Jesus Christ for the stranger.

Now a church can be an unfolding community where there is an embracing of the visitor and they gravitate toward the visitors because they love people. And they're not afraid to leave their friends because they know their friends are going to be there. And it's not such a problem. They don't mind extending their hands to a stranger. They're willing to entertain strangers and they're not afraid because they believe that God has sent a new person for a reason.

But John is saying here that true churches are filled with people who lay down their lives for Now, my sense of our church is that it is a community, it is an unfolding community. But let's make sure of that. Let's make sure we don't fall off of that. And then he gives an illustration in verses 17 and 18 of how this works. So he makes this broad statement about this kind of love in a church and then he says, but whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?

My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. By the way, Jonathan Edwards has a really brilliant section on this in his book Charity and its Fruits on 1 Corinthians 13, where he talks about how love does things. And it's very helpful. And it's incredibly hard to read because it reminds you of how little you do or it reminds me how little I do. And now of these verses there are three things I'd like to extract from them.

First of all, John identifies a common problem. It's a heart problem, and it's something that you do with your heart. You shut it up. You shut up your heart. It's like you slam the door on your heart and you're just gonna keep it to yourself.

How easy it is to get hurt in this world and just shut up your heart. And you're not going to open it up anymore. It's a great sin and it's a great misdirected thought that causes you to shut up your heart because you got burned somehow. But there's this thing that happens that you shut up your heart so that it cannot give and it it happens so often when people are wrong and they say I'll never trust anyone again I'll never help anybody again they'll just turn against you now here's a here's a better way to think I don't know who's going to turn against me. I don't know who's going to betray me.

I don't know. Only God knows. And so I should open up my heart to everyone, everyone. And don't shut it up. Now, the shutting of the heart can happen in a lot of different ways.

It happens in children. If you have children who are mean to each other, their hearts are gonna shut. And you better ask yourself if any of your children's hearts are shut. And they've shut up their hearts for one another. It happens in churches when people become bitter and they shut up their hearts.

And they have everything prejudged and no one can do anything right because the heart has been shut. And what happens is that you have no, the result is you have no compassion because you've closed your eyes to the needs of those around you. And you forget that that person who hurt you is also a person. Like they're a dad, right? Or they're a mom too.

You know, they're also people who have troubles and sorrows and things. They are also children too, you know? They're human beings, right? And to shut our hearts is such a contradiction to the love of God in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, who opened his heart to his enemies, and he suffered, And he received the suffering that was there he received it willingly just like the people in Hebrews They suffered the plundering of their property gladly That's Christianity.

It's a heart. That's open not a heart that shut And I would just urge all of us to ask, have I shut my heart to anyone, anyone, Even the person who's hurt you the most If you've ever been sinned against if you've ever been criticized or lied to or lied about or disappointed or hurt or offended Or betrayed or let down Has it made your heart to shut? And you walk around like a loveless, compassion-free zombie. And you don't even have love for the people who've hurt you like Jesus did You know the Apostle Paul At the end of second Thessalonians. He tells a bunch of stories about some of his troubles I mean really super heartbreaking things that happened.

Like Alexander the coppersmith did him, he says, much harm. He said everybody abandoned me. And you know what he says? Let it not be charged against them. Alexander the coppersmith.

Let it not be charged against them. All the people who abandoned him. He's being stoned and he says the same thing. It's like Jesus, you know, when he said on the cross, Father forgive them. Do you know the rest of it?

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. So there's such a danger in shutting up your heart. That's the first thing I want you to recognize in these verses. And then there are two kinds of people. There are those who have the world's goods and those who don't.

He's concerned with people in need and how the church responds. And like I said, let it never be that anybody goes hungry without clothing in this church. We don't do that to our brothers. We don't let our brothers starve. You know, we have so many resources in this church, it's not even funny.

Nobody's gonna starve here. And then the third thing is that it's easier to be full of talk and no action. So love is not just a word or a feeling, it's demonstrated. And that's why he says in verse 18, my little children, let us not love in word or tongue, but in deed and truth. So words are cheap, You know, and it's easier to talk about categories of doctrine than it is to picture the doctrine by loving, because the goal of all instruction is love.

Every word of Scripture is a word of love. Every word of Scripture is designed to create love in the heart. Christianity is much simpler than you might think because whether you understand everything about everything, You can understand one four-letter word, love. The whole law is summed up in that one word. And all Christian instruction is summed up in that one word.

And all that is said in the Bible is summed up in that one word, and Jesus Christ brings it all together. You know, the rich young ruler, he knew the doctrine, he knew the practices. Remember that he came to Jesus and he said, Lord, what should I do to inherit eternal life? But he went away sorrowful. And the reason he went away sorrowful is because He had shut up his heart.

He couldn't see how God gave him resources for the purpose of love. He didn't see it. And so he didn't see his resources as means of love. God gave him this stuff for the purpose of love, and because he didn't know love, he went away sorrowful because Jesus said, you should give your resources away. He wanted to show his love in other ways.

It was all theological. It was all practical. It was all kind of in his head. And He demonstrates that Christianity is more than a theology, it's more than a methodology. It's an attraction to Jesus Christ and a transformation that makes you love people.

You can think about the individual who goes to church with no love. And I've encountered many of these people in my life. And they will come into a church and they will keep to themselves And they don't reach out to the people around them and they do not love and you know what they do Often they depart and they say there's no love in this church Nobody talked to me Nobody came to see me, But the problem was really they had no love in their hearts. They didn't reach out to anybody anyway. They just stood there too.

They just stood there like a bump and a log expecting people to come and take care of them. They had no love. They had no proactive desire to go love someone and see if they could bear someone's burden somehow today. And so you find many people that come into the church, they're just waiting passively for someone to reach out to them. That's a loveless person.

And so they just die in their loneliness, and their bitterness about other people who didn't love them. In this is love that he laid down his life for his friends and his enemies. So love is selfless. It has very little to do with chemistry. It has to do with the life of Jesus Christ, fellowship with God, fellowship with the Son.

It's an upwelling of love. Love is not a decision, it's an outflow of the love of Jesus Christ. And it's demonstrated in Jesus Christ who left His heavenly glory, He went out of His way, He passed through the heavens, He took on a mantle of humility, and He became weak so that we might be made strong, and He became poor that many might be made rich. That's the love of Jesus Christ. So in those verses, John identifies the problem, people shut up their hearts, He identifies two kinds of people, those who have the world's goods and those who don't, and he makes it really clear that it's easier to talk but with no action.

Now, then he brings us to a matter that's really very logical in the sequence of his letter. Because when you think about yourself, You see how little you love. A true Christian will look at himself and say, I'm nothing. Lord, Lord, help me. I don't love like I ought to.

And so he begins to address this matter of assurance. And so in verses 19 to 21 we read this, And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. Now the first thing I want you to notice about these verses is the tenderness that's embedded in it.

He begins with the word beloved, agapitoy. It's one of John's favorite words to speak of his children, his brothers and his sisters, beloved, beloved. What a marvelous address. So he's speaking to those whom he loves and he's concerned about those who are struggling with a condemning conscience and how to interpret their conscience that's condemning them. What are they supposed to do?

Now, these verses to me are difficult to understand, and they're two main interpretations that are given of these verses that are here. And I have come to realize that I have great and mighty theological heroes on each side of the matter. And so, two great reformers took opposite sides. Luther took one side, Calvin took another, and from then on, you know, men have agreed with Calvin and some with Luther. And so I'm going to give you the two interpretations and then I'm going to try to give my best understanding of how to interpret it because I hate to say it, I'm not exactly sure which one it is.

So one interpretation goes like this. If your heart condemns you, it's the devil. It's the accuser of the brethren. He's taking advantage of your weakness to condemn you. And so to this condemnation of the heart, the Christians should say, God is greater than my heart.

Christ has set me free. He set me free from the law of sin and death. My name is written on his hands. I am written in the book of life. I've turned to him.

I love him. I desire him. I fall short in many ways, but my heart so desires his kingdom. And the devil is nothing but an accuser of the brethren, and he tells you how stink and lousy rotten you are every day. And he's always pointing his bony finger at you telling you how lousy you are.

So that's one interpretation. And that The response is to say that no, Christ has set me free. My heart might condemn me because of the weakness of my heart because of my lack of insight, but God does not condemn me because there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That's one great interpretation. And the other interpretation is this, that your heart will tell you whether you have love or not.

Whether, because John is asking, do you have love? That's the question. That's the mark of a Christian is love. So his whole argument is, do you have love? You know, do you keep the commandments?

Do you love the light? Do you love? And So the other interpretation says that your heart is going to tell you Whether you love or not now John uses the same word as conscience heart conscience same thing your conscience is telling you something it's yelling at you something And this interpretation says that you should listen to your conscience and your conscience will tell you whether you have love and whether you are a Christian or not. And one of the writers says this, if your own corrupt sinful heart is condemning you, how much more do you think God is? Because he knows way more about you than you do.

Even yourself know who you are and God knows even more. And so, so those are the two interpretations. Now both interpretations affirm that John is speaking to you about love and whether you love and whether you can know if you're a Christian or not. So each interpretation acknowledges that one thing that it's really about discerning. Now I don't think that I'm going to be able to solve this controversy in interpreting this verse today, world without end, amen.

But let me give you just some thoughts that might draw even from both, because I think that you can make both of those cases from scripture. Both of those things are true in scripture, and they may seem somewhat contradictory, but both of those things are true. The devil is the accuser of the brethren and he tells you how stinkin' lousy rotten you are and you might as well just shut your mouth and go hide in a corner. You're nothing, you can't hold your head up. The devil does do that.

On the other hand, you have been given a conscience, and it's your friend. You can prove that from Scripture. You can sear your conscience to such a degree that you don't know right and wrong like you should, but your conscience speaks. So those two things are true. And now let me just walk through a few things that I think we should consider on encountering these verses.

And the first is this, it's possible for a real Christian to doubt their salvation. And I, you know, I'm sure we've all encountered people who are plagued with self-doubt, and maybe you're one of those people. And they say, I'm not what I should be. I'm not what I want to be. I struggle with sin.

I fail to love people like I ought. I wish I loved my children better. I wish I loved my husband or my wife better. I wish I loved my friends better, and I can see so many ways that I failed my children and my wife and my friends, and I failed to love my brothers." So a person can say that and drive them, and their heart drives them to despair and lack of assurance. The problem with the conscience is this, and by the way you have to work this out on your own because nobody's going to be able to figure it out for you.

Your conscience might be too lenient on the one hand and your conscience might be too condemning on the other. That's a problem. Pastors rack their brains to try to help people think through this without trying to give them false assurance or false condemnation. And John does say something here that I think is helpful either way. John gives direction.

He says, if your heart condemns you, God is greater than your understanding of your heart. He is greater. God knows you. And if your conscience condemns you, here's my advice. Don't completely ignore it, but also don't objectify it and absolutely conclude that you're not a Christian.

You should take the activation of your conscience as an opportunity to cry out to God in humility, that he would help you to understand who you really are, whether you really are a Christian. And so that you would you would be before God and if you you would know that if you are of Cain or you are of Christ. And is the evidence is the evidence that the slander of the soul is using because of the devil's hatred of you designed to send you in despair? Is it that? You should answer that question.

Is this a ploy of the devil Or is this God trying to convict me of something that is still wrong, that I still need to address? You know, there are ways that I've shut up my heart that I haven't seen before and now I see them and I want to, Lord, I want to make progress. It's like the man who said, Lord, I believe, but help me. Help me in my unbelief. This is a way that a real Christian works with God.

And it's proper to answer the accuser with the truth of God that says, my name is written on his hand. My sins have been put into the bottom of the sea, and I do love Jesus Christ, and I don't want to walk like Cain, and I have failed, and I have sinned, but I know, I know that the power of the Holy Spirit as a result of my regeneration, that the power of sin has been broken in my life. I know that. I know that. I know that.

I know that. But I know that I still struggle with sin. And we should do what David said in Psalm 139 verse 3, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my ways and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. That's the cry of a true Christian.

It might be an anguished cry, but recognize it's right to be in that place to cry out to God. You know, our confidence should not be just placed entirely on our own hearts and our own conscience because we've messed up our hearts, haven't we? We have. We've messed them up. We did a lot of stuff to mess up our thinking and we often don't respond to things.

We don't evaluate things right. We don't put the right names on things because of the world we grew up in. And Our confidence is not in our hearts. And I think we should think about an incident that happened in the life of Peter, the apostle. Remember Peter denied the Lord three times, and the Lord Jesus Christ came to Peter and he said, do you love me?

And then he came back again and said do you love me and then the third time he came back and said Do you love me and do you remember what Peter said he said Lord you know all things? You know that I love you you know that I love you He was throwing himself on the knowledge of God, not on his own, but he did have a sense that he did love him, even though he had just denied him. And yet you can deny him and still be a Christian, just like Peter. So our confidence rests in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. He paid for our sins.

His blood hides your transgressions. Your transgressions are buried. So then after John brings up this question, He turns to infallible tests of salvation in case we're confused. And he speaks of the fact that God will reveal our hearts to us. And whatever we ask, we receive from Him because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.

And this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as He gave us commandment. So we have prayer to help us understand whether we belong to Christ. We go to Him in prayer. We ask. We go to Him and we receive.

He's a good Father and He does give in prayer. He's given us prayer to help us to figure out whether our hearts are truly in him or not. It's a blessing that he's given prayer for that. And then finally, he speaks of the work of the Spirit and assurance. And he gives two infallible proofs of salvation here in this last verse in verse 24.

Now he who keeps his commandments abides in him and he in him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given us. So there are two infallible proofs. He's already stated one of them, that we keep His commandments. Our obedience and our desire for obedience shows that we love Him.

Because Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. And The second is the witness of the Holy Spirit, that it is the Spirit whom he has given that will tell you whether you abide in him. He has given you his Spirit. And how does that work? It works in the same way that the Apostle Paul spoke of in Romans 8 verses 15 and 16.

He said that the Spirit that you have received and has given you an Adoption as sons. What does it do the spirit cries out the spirit speaks within you you have your conscience But the Holy Spirit also speaks and what is it saying? Abba father and by him we cry Abba father the spirit himself Testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. That's Romans chapter 8 verses 15 and 16. The Spirit testifies that we are the children of God.

So do you keep his commandments and does your spirit cry out Abba Father? Those are tests. Those are infallible tests of salvation And no outside person can tell you whether you have that assurance. This is something that you must determine yourself. After having walked through the various tests, There are at least 16 tests in 1 John.

Okay, so what does all this mean? Is all of your confidence in Jesus Christ and in his shed blood and Do you believe do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and do you love your brethren? And do you obey? And here's And here's how John is leading us to the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because it's so easy to get caught up in a system and lose the heart of a thing.

Because Christianity is far more than a system. It's a life of love for God and a love for one another. It's more than a theology. It's more than a methodology. It's an attraction to Jesus Christ and a transformation into his likeness.

And the questions that you are to ask are really very simple from this text. Do you believe? Do you love the brethren? Do you obey? And does the Spirit cry out in you, Abba, Father?

Christianity is a lot simpler than we like to make it. It really is about the love of God that's in Jesus Christ and how it's expressed in a church. Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord, we thank you for your word. Again, it's so deep.

It's beyond us. And we pray, oh Lord, that you would drive the truth of it into our hearts and that you would make us a people of love above all else. Amen. Let's take a few moments of silent meditation and then we'll continue to extend the teaching. Thank you.