The Assurance of Eternal Life 1 John 5:1-21 Thesis: We can be assured of eternal life with God through belief in his Son Jesus Christ. My first job in a church was in Emporia, Virginia where I served as the Minister of Youth and Children. One Monday I was having a conversation with the pastor of the church and sharing with him that a teenager in the church wasn’t sure if he was saved. He had professed Christ at a younger age and had been baptized. Nevertheless, he was having the not uncommon doubts about the sincerity of his earlier decision and was questioning how valid such a decision was made at such a young age. I thought it was a rather complex question filled with theological as well as faith development issues surrounding child and teenage years. So I was taken aback a bit when my pastor said, “Send him to my office. I’ll talk to him a few minutes and then be able to tell him whether he’s saved or not.” I thought, “Wow. He can listen to a teenager for a few minutes and pronounce with certainty whether or not he’s saved.” Then I probably had some negative thoughts like, “Does he think he’s God? Who does he think he is to make such a pronouncement?” How can he know? How can he tell is the teenager is telling the truth, is genuine in his testimony?” I didn’t really like the certainty of his claim. The question of this teenager is, I believe, a common one among all Christians. I believe that most Christians, perhaps not all, but most Christians have questioned their salvation at one time or another. They have asked the question, “Am I really saved?” And of course, that’s an important question and one we want answered. There are people who are plagued with doubts and are seeking relief from their dilemma. There are others who, on occasion, wonder about their eternal destiny. Some of these fret over it some. Others simply resign themselves to the mercy of God and pray for the best. Can we know we have eternal life? That is the question I present to you today and will use John’s sermon as the jumping off point in addressing the question. As we come to the end of John’s sermon, we are by now, very aware of its context. John is writing to a young, Christian congregation that has experienced a recent schism. A group of the congregation broke off and left the church because they held different views about Jesus. The break off group believed that Jesus was divine but not fully human. He only seemed human. John’s group, no doubt, encountered the same kind of group dynamics that normally accompany such a schism in a small group. Even those who held on to the gospel John preached had been wounded. Perhaps some of their friends or even family members had left the church. They knew them and had cared for them. Now they are being told, “You guys are right. Those who left are wrong. You know God. They don’t. You have eternal life because you believe in Jesus Christ. They have made a liar out of God.” Group dynamic theory teaches the effects of small group schism linger. Just because one group leaves, doesn’t mean that suddenly all those who remain are fully on

board. There are probably some who are still wavering. Some are still perplexed. Certainly there are those who are convinced of the rightness of their position and they lived with confidence. But not everyone is so confident. John is writing to this small group of Christians. He’s writing to the ones who stayed, to the ones who still believe his message, even though that belief might be fragile. So in the closing sentences of his written sermon he is summarizing the heart of his concern and he does this by assuring his readers they have eternal life. His primary purpose in writing has been to offer pastoral encouragement, to instill confidence and hope by reminding his flock of their fellowship with God and with each other. He has comforted them with the thought that, despite the defection of some members of the community, his remaining flock can be assured of inheriting eternal life. Therefore, he urges them to stand fast and to remain loyal in their commitment to God and Jesus the Son of God. To get at our question, “How can I know I have eternal life” I want to begin with a word about the meaning of eternal life. I. Eternal life is more than heaven. I want us first to understand what eternal life is according to Scripture. The popular notion of eternal life is that it is equivalent to heaven. And therefore the question of “How can I know I have eternal life” is narrowed to mean “How can I know I will go to heaven when I die?” But that is not the meaning of eternal life. The daring goal of Jesus when preaching the gospel was not to get people into heaven. The goal of salvation is not to get us into heaven. Properly understood, heaven is not a goal at all, but a destination. Heaven is vitally important, and it is part of the package, if you will, but it must never be the center of our attention. Heaven is only a glorious byproduct of something far more central. Salvation leads to eternal life. The word for life in Greek is zoe. This zoe, this eternal life is something that begins when we believe in Christ. It is life with God. It is the life on display in Jesus Christ. John’s letter began with this description of Jesus: “The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us” (1:2). John is saying that Jesus is eternal life. When Jesus came into the world he came to share that eternal life with us. It is life that begins when we believe in Jesus. We can look forward to the greater expression of this life in heaven, but our focus should be upon the new order of life we now have in Jesus Christ. This may sound strange to our ears because this message preached by Jesus and then re-preached by John is radically different from the two views of salvation that reign supreme today. The first view is a theology from the right, which thinks of salvation primarily in terms of heaven after we die. This is the ground from which many Baptists have been nurtured in the faith. Getting saved means going to heaven, and that’s the great goal of religion. “How many souls have you saved preacher?” is the question that dominates the evaluation of the preacher or the church. The second view is a theology

from the left, which understands salvation primarily in terms of social and economic liberation on earth. The goal of salvation is that social justice occurs on earth as it was intended. The social evangelists want converts to their church to bring social equality and adequate food and water to all people. These fragmentary half-gospels miss the heart of the salvation that is in Jesus Christ, which is a radically new life-a daily life we receive from God. Eternal life isn’t just about going to heaven or creating social justice. It is a life with God, through Christ, that transforms us and drives us toward Christ-likeness. The failure on the right is a blindness to the fact that salvation is for here and now as well as for there and then. The failure on the left is its inability to have any redemptive word for life beyond the grave. Most striking of all, both fail to address the means for transforming the human personality into Christlikeness, and neither gives sufficient attention to the radical fellowship-forming power that comes from rightly understanding and proclaiming the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ. Well, now that we understand eternal life is more than heaven and more than social justice on earth, what about the assurance issue? II. There is assurance we have eternal life Our focal point is John’s statement near the end of his sermon in 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 is telling them they can know that they have life in God, life today, life tomorrow, and life after they die. He is telling those who believe in the name of Jesus they can know they have eternal life. Belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of Man and Son of God, son of Mary and Son of the Spirit, is the gateway to eternal life. John said something similar in the first verse of chapter 5: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” Born of God means born again, born into new life, born into eternal life. But what is belief? Is it believing that Jesus was a historical figure? Is it mere assent to a few doctrinal statements about Jesus? If we can say “Yes” to a few questions about Jesus, does that mean we believe in him? Belief, in this verse, means “trust.” It means “trust to the point of placing your life in the hands of another.” In the case of Jesus, belief means that we are willing to follow him and go where he goes. We are willing to hear his commands and obey them. Listen to what John said in his sermon in 5:3: “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.” John wants his congregation to be assured of eternal life. He teaches them that all who believe in Jesus have the assurance of eternal life. But this isn’t an easy belief, a mere assent to a doctrinal formula. It is a belief that is grounded in trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord. It’s a trust evident in obedience to the commands of Christ. And these commands are not burdensome as were the legalistic interpretations of the Mosaic laws. The 10 Commandments had grown to be 613 commands by the time Jesus reads the scrolls of Moses. The commands of Jesus are not burdensome because they can be

summarized into two simple commands: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself. Love God and love your neighbor. It’s not a burden to do that. It’s difficult at times because our neighbors can be difficult. But it’s not burdensome. John, then, is teaching us that we can be assured of eternal life because we believe in Jesus. We can be assured we have fellowship with God because we have fellowship with his Son. We believe in his Son, meaning we place our trust in his Son, and we obey his Son’s commands. We don’t have to worry and waiver, “Do I have eternal life?” if we trust in Jesus. And if we trust in Jesus we will obey his commands. Now when I say “obey” I don’t mean that we lose eternal life if we disobey Jesus on occasion. We don’t always love people as we should. Eternal life that is dependent upon our perfect obedience is too fragile to hold. That’s a works righteousness mentality that is a burden and unscriptural. Obeying Jesus is a disposition to obey, a regular practice of obedience. It emerges from a grateful spirit aware of the new life we have in Christ. It doesn’t mean we will never sin or fall short in our obedience. John has built this in to his theology by providing a means of confession through prayer. But it does mean that we are driven by obedience, and we are aware of our disobedience, and we confess our disobedience to the Father, and we care about our disobedience. When does disobedience become a sign that we don’t have eternal life? When it doesn’t matter. When we don’t care. When our consciences are so seared there is no sense of sorrow and guilt and brokenness when we fall short of Jesus’ commands. Disobedience that leads to apathy about following Jesus or a repudiation of Jesus indicates we do not have eternal life. Eternal life is life with God, and apathy about obedience and a repudiation of Jesus isn’t life with God. Eternal life leads toward Christ-likeness. III. Examples of Non-Zoe The Bible gives us some examples of those who walked in the Christian community but then left the eternal life found there. When Paul was languishing in a cold dungeon he wrote to Timothy a warning about Demas, a former colleague of Paul. Paul wrote, “For Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica” (2 Tim 4:10). In an earlier imprisonment Paul wrote a prior letter to Timothy speaking about two people who abandoned their faith. He wrote, “Some have rejected these [faith and a good conscience, v 19a] and so have shipwrecked their faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme” (1 Tim 1:19b-20). Then we have that terrible passage in Hebrews that has aroused so much debate over the years: “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away to be brought back

to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace” (Heb 6:4-6). There’s been a long-standing debate, we might even say controversy about these texts. There are some Baptists who hold onto to the doctrine of “once saved, always saved.” Another name for it is the perseverance of the saints. There are other Baptists who believe you can fall away from grace. They are sometimes called “free will Baptists.” They take the position that you can freely receive grace from God and therefore you can freely renounce your salvation after you have claimed it. I don’t want to delve into the abyss of that debate, but I would point out, from a practical matter they both agree that there can be those who have accepted Christ, been baptized, and been active in a church who can be outside the faith. The “once saved, always saved” crowd would say such a person had a false faith. They were never real Christians to begin with. The free will crowd would say such a person ended up without faith, outside of grace. And so both agree this straw person that I have drawn is outside the faith; they do not have eternal life. They have no assurance of eternal life. They may be like Demas, and loved this world. They may be like Alexander who rejected faith and a good conscience and so shipwrecked his faith. They may be like the person spoken of in Hebrews 6 who has fallen away from grace. They have moved away from the community of faith, like those who left John’s community. They do not have life in the Son. Therefore, they do not have eternal life. IV. To the believing community So how do we answer our question, “How can we know we have eternal life?” We can know we have eternal life if we believe in the Son. And if we believe in the Son we will obey his commands. If we believe in the Jesus, the Son of God, who came in the flesh and yet was fully divine we will follow his commands to love God and one another, our life is in God. When we do this we are already living within eternal life. Yes, there are those who believe, and at some later point in life reject the faith and repudiate Jesus as their Savior. How can they have eternal life in Christ if they reject and repudiate him? Eternal life is life with God and if you reject God there is no life with him. Some might say of these people, well they never really had faith. Whether they did or didn’t have faith at some point is a difficult one to assess. But it is not so difficult to say that those who reject Christ, God, and the church do not have assurance of eternal life. Remember, eternal life is not something only in the future, it is life with God now. So those who persevere in their faith, those who continue to believe in Jesus have assurance of eternal life. Believing in Jesus is evidenced by obeying his commands to love. So here is the summation of the teaching of John, and the teaching I’m offering to you. We can know we have eternal life if we trust in Jesus and if we trust in Jesus we will obey his commands to love God and others. This doesn’t require perfect faith or perfect obedience. Jesus once said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed say to

this mountain, ‘Move,’ and it will move.” And it doesn’t take perfect obedience to love without fail. It only takes a willingness to love, and when failure happens, to confess our sin, get up, and love again. Conclusion I once had a young man in my church who came to me with a troubled heart. Because these sermons go on the web, I’m going to give him the fictitious name of “Joe” but this man is no fiction. For years he had confessed his anxiety about his salvation. The young man was slightly mentally handicapped. His handicap wasn’t severe. He could work, keep a job, have a marriage, and a child. But he was a simple person and was caught up in all this drama about the “Left Behind” series, written by Tim LaHaye. Joe was a sweet person, a faithful church attender, had been baptized as a teenager. Yet, he was still plagued with worry about Jesus coming again and leaving him behind. For years, I tried to listen to his story and walk him through his fears. But finally, I addressed him like John addressed his original community of believers. I believed that God wanted me to offer him pastoral encouragement and instill some confidence of faith in him. So I said, “Joe, you believe in Jesus don’t you?” “Yes.” And you believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and rose again on the 3rd day don’t you?” “Yes.” “Joe, you love God don’t you.” “Yes.” “Joe, you love these people don’t you? (as I pointed to the other members of the church leaving the morning worship service). “Yes.” “Joe, I want to tell you that God loves you and you have eternal life with him. I don’t want you to worry about all this stuff about who Jesus is and isn’t going to take. He’s going to take you because you are his. You are his now and you’ll be his forever, because of his claim on your life. You’re a child of God, and God’s not going to forget his children.” That was my pastoral word to a man I knew and with whom I shared Christian community. I might not say that to every Joe who walks up to me off the street, but I said it to this Joe. God wants you to trust in his care for you. He wants his children who trust in his Son to be assured of eternal life. So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, live in the confidence of what God has already done for you. He has gifted you with eternal life now. Be assured of that. “ So dear children, keep yourselves from idols” (5:21, the last words of John’s sermon).