Wilfredo Garza lived the life of an illegal immigrant for more than 35 years. Year after year, he eked out a living crossing the border from Mexico into the United States—some days finding work, some days not. Regardless, he was constantly looking over his shoulder. He was caught by the Border Patrol four times during that period and bused back to Mexico every time. Undeterred by each apprehension, he swam back across the Rio Grande to try again.
The cycle would likely have continued for several more years if not for an amazing discovery. One day, Wilfredo worked up the courage to walk into an immigration lawyer’s office. There, incredibly, he found out that his father was born in Texas and spent time working there, which meant that Wilfredo was actually a U.S. citizen.
For more than 35 years, Wilfredo Garza could have possessed the very papers—his father’s birth certificate and work records—that proved his citizenship, and yet he lived in guilt and fear. Now he has a certificate of citizenship. Now he does not have to sneak across the border; he can walk through the main gate.[1]
Many of us as Christians live like Wilfredo Garza, spiritually speaking. We have a tremendous citizenship, great privileges and benefits, but we do not realize it. Instead, we act like spiritual illegal aliens. God does not want us to live like that. God wants us to know that we belong to him and that he loves us. He wants us to know all the benefits of being his sons and daughters.
In this final section of his first letter, John tells us all about the benefits of being a Christian. Listen for God’s word to you from 1 John 5:13-21…
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. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.
We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them. We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We know also 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 by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.
In this conclusion to his first letter, John tells us about five benefits of being a Christian. The first is assurance of salvation.
John sums up the purpose of his letter by saying: “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.”
If we believe in the name of the Son of God, we can be certain that we have eternal life. That is one of the greatest benefits of being a Christian.
Believing in the name of the Son of God means believing in everything that his name, Jesus, stands for. Jesus means “Yahweh saves”. Have you entrusted your life to Jesus’ care? Have you put your life in his hands? If so, then you can be sure that you have eternal life, not simply a life that will never end. Everlasting life will be miserable unless it is a life lived in God and in his Son Jesus Christ. Eternal life is an entirely new quality of life that God gives to us the moment we believe in his Son. William Barclay describes it this way:
In God there is peace and, therefore, eternal life means serenity. It means a life liberated from the fears which haunt the human situation. In God there is power and, therefore, eternal life means the defeat of frustration. It means a life filled with the power of God and, therefore, victorious over circumstance. In God there is holiness and, therefore, eternal life means the defeat of sin. It means a life clad with the purity of God and armed against the soiling infections of the world. In God there is love and, therefore, eternal life means the end of bitterness and hatred. It means a life which has the love of God in its heart and the undefeatable love of man in all its feelings and in all its action. In God there is life and, therefore, eternal life means the defeat of death. It means a life which is indestructible because it has in it the indestructibility of God himself.
In every other religion, human beings try to reach up and grab hold of God. However, in Jesus Christ, God has reached down to us as struggling human beings and he says, “Here, let me help you.” Other religions say: “Do!” Christianity says: “Done!” Because that is so, Christians possess an assurance of salvation like no other religion.
Tony Campolo shared the following story in a sermon a number of years ago….
I went to my first black funeral when I was 16 years old. A friend of mine, Clarence, had died. The pastor was incredible. From the pulpit he talked about the Resurrection in beautiful terms. He had us thrilled. He came down from the pulpit, went to the family, and comforted them from the fourteenth chapter of John. “Let not your heart be troubled,” he said, “‘You believe in God, believe also in me,’ said Jesus. Clarence has gone to heavenly mansions.”
Then, for the last 20 minutes of the sermon, he actually preached to the open casket. Now, that’s drama! He yelled at the corpse: “Clarence! Clarence!” He said it with such authority. I would not have been surprised had there been an answer. He said, “Clarence, there were a lot of things we should have said to you that we never said to you. You got away too fast, Clarence. You got away too fast.” He went down this litany of beautiful things that Clarence had done for people. When he finished—here’s the dramatic part—he said, “That’s it, Clarence. There’s nothing more to say. When there’s nothing more to say, there’s only one thing to say. Good night. Good night, Clarence!” He grabbed the lid of the casket and slammed it shut. “Good night, Clarence!” Boom!
Shock waves went over the congregation. As the preacher then lifted his head, you could see there was this smile on his face. He said, “Good night, Clarence. Good night, Clarence, because I know, I know that God is going to give you a good morning!” The choir stood and started singing, “On that great morning, we shall rise, we shall rise.” We were dancing in the aisles and hugging each other. I knew the joy of the Lord, a joy that in the face of death laughs and sings and dances, for there is no sting to death.[2]
Now that is assurance! Where else can one get that kind of assurance of salvation but in Jesus Christ?
The second benefit John mentions that comes to the Christian is confidence in prayer.
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
The word for confidence literally means “freedom of speech”. As Christians, we have freedom of speech before the throne of our heavenly father. We can approach him at any time of night or day. Furthermore, if we ask for anything according to his will, we can know with certainty that God hears us. John is not talking about God’s secret will that we cannot know, but rather God’s moral will, expressed in Scripture. Thus, if we ask for things God has promised to give to his children, we can know, not only that he hears us, but also that God will give us what we ask of him.
For example, 1 Timothy 2:4 says that God wants all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. George Mueller, who spent a lifetime caring for orphans, prayed for sixty-three years and eight months for the conversion of a particular friend. Late in life Mueller said, “He is not converted yet, but he will be! How can it be otherwise? There is the unchanging promise of Jehovah, and on that I rest.” When Mueller died, his friend was still not a committed follower of Jesus Christ. However, before Mueller’s body was buried, that friend came to faith.
As believers in Jesus Christ, we can have confidence in prayer.
A third benefit of the Christian life is power over sin.
One particular thing we can and should pray for as Christians is for our fellow believers who may be wandering from the Lord. John says,
If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.
There has been much speculation over the last two thousand years about what the sin is that leads to death. Many Christians worry that they may have committed the unforgiveable sin, or the sin that leads to death. I can tell you one thing for sure, if you are worried that you have committed the sin that leads to death, then you have not committed it! I believe the sin that leads to death is the sin of refusing God’s grace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. If we refuse God’s offer of grace, then there is nothing left for us but death.
The good news is that we serve the God of the second chance. God is always giving us more opportunities to receive his grace. Think of Peter. He denied three times even knowing Jesus on the night of Jesus’ arrest. However, Jesus subsequently gave to Peter three chances to re-affirm his love for him. Jesus restored Peter in such a way that Peter became one of the greatest leaders of the early church. If the Lord did that much for Peter, then surely, he will do that much and perhaps even more for us.
The bottom line is that God gives to every Christian through his Son and the Spirit, power over sin. John says,
We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them.
Now, obviously, as we saw in 1 John 1, Christians do sin. What John means by Christians not continuing to sin is that our lives are not characterized by sin; they are not dominated by it. Our Christian life may be one of three steps forward, two steps back, but we are making progress. That is true because the one who was born of God, Jesus Christ, keeps us safe, so that the evil one cannot harm us. We are no longer in the grasp of Satan, but rather, in the everlasting arms of our faithful God.
The fourth benefit of being a Christian that John mentions here is a right attitude toward the world.
John says, “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”
This can sound perilously like John is saying, “We Christians are right, and everyone else is wrong!” However, is this what John is really saying?
Let us look at this statement piece by piece. The first part of the sentence stresses that God alone is the source of our life. This is actually a humble statement. All that we have comes from God and thus we belong to God entirely—in our bodies, minds and spirits. By definition then, a Christian ought to act differently from the “world system” that is set against God.
In the second half of this statement, John tells us that the world system is under the control of the evil one. One only has to turn on the television or log on to the Internet to realize that Satan is doing a pretty good job of getting his message out to the world and dominating the world’s thinking.
What is Satan’s message? Jesus says in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.”
If this is true, if those of us who are in Christ have life to the full, and if Satan is stealing from, killing and destroying those under the domination of the world system, then what ought to be our attitude towards those who do not yet know Christ? Should our attitude not be one of wanting to share life in all its fullness? Should we not be like beggars telling other beggars where to get bread?
David Jackman says, “What is inexcusable is for the church to concentrate on trying to preserve its distinctives in a hermetically sealed environment of detachment from the world and its problems. That is a luxury Christ has not afforded us. Indeed, it is not a luxury at all, but a quick route to death by suffocation. If we live under Christ’s lordship, we must remember that he has commissioned us all to go into the world, not to withdraw from it. Our new attitude is not one of indifference or separation, but one of involvement and compassion, after the model of our Saviour.”
I saw an example of what our attitude toward the world should be when I logged on to Facebook a few years ago. I have a friend on Facebook whose name is Paul Gurung. He is an evangelist in India. A photo on Facebook showed Paul cleaning the wounds of Indian children who have many cuts on their feet because they walk around with no shoes. As Paul was cleaning the feet of these children, he was also praying for each child. Another photo showed him cutting the long hair of some street children, and again, while he was doing so, he was praying for each one. A third photo showed Paul and his team feeding the street children of Kalimati. They were seated in rows on the sidewalk, each with a plate of food in front of them.
Three photos, three glimpses of what our life as Christians ought to be like in this world. Perhaps we cannot go to India to feed the street children, to cut their hair and wash their feet. However, we certainly can support people like Paul Gurung who are doing this sort of work, and we can ask the Lord what needs he wants us to fill in the world right around us.
The final benefit of being a Christian that John talks about, as he wraps up his letter, is the benefit of a new awareness of God. John says,
We know also 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 by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Christian faith is grounded in history—the Son of God has come. Furthermore, Christ’s coming has given us understanding, not primarily intellectual understanding, though it involves the intellect, but personal knowledge of him who is true, that is: God. We are in God by virtue of being in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, and being in God means having eternal life.
However, John ends his letter on a curious note: “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” Why does John end this great “love letter” in this seemingly strange fashion?
I think the reason is this: though our faith is grounded in history, our God is not one whom we can see at present. Therefore, it is all too easy for us as Christians to get frustrated with the mystery, to become impatient with our invisible God and long for a God whom we can see with our physical eyes, hear with our physical ears, and touch with our physical hands.
This is where idols come in. An idol is anything that occupies the place of God. An idol is an imitation, a substitute for God, not the reality. Down through history human beings have made idols of wood, stone or precious metals. Thus, we may tend to think we do not have idols because we do not bow down and worship such things.
However, what about power? What about money? What about sex? What about certain human relationships in our lives? Do not some of these tend to occupy the place of God for us? If so, then they are idols, and we need to remove them from the pedestals on which we place them and put God back in the highest place. As David Jackman says, “Anything that squeezes God out of the central position towards the margin of my life must be ruthlessly toppled.”
David Foster Wallace was an award-winning, best-selling novelist who committed suicide in 2008. Before his death, Wallace gave a commencement address in which he said this to the graduating class:
In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism… Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And … pretty much anything you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough… Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you… Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.[3]
What is the alternative to worshipping idols and ending up broken, defeated and empty? The alternative is to turn to the one who promises to give us life and love, meaning and purpose, in all of their fullness.
[1] Anderson Cooper, “360 Degrees, On the Border” (aired 5-25-06), CNN; submitted by Jay Caron, East Wenatchee, Washington, preachingtoday.com
[2] Tony Campolo, in the sermon “The Year of Jubilee,” PreachingToday.com
[3] Adapted from Timothy Keller, The Insider and the Outcast (Dutton Adult, 2013); original source: David Foster Wallace, “David Foster Wallace on Life and Work,” The Wall Street Journal (9-19-08)
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