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I Believe in Life Eternal - February 26, 2017 1 John 5:1-13 (Luke 15:11-32) Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. 9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. Introduction The final phrase of the Apostles’ Creed tells me that, as a Christian, I believe in “life eternal”. That’s a kind of stilted way of saying I believe I’m going to live forever. And working backward through the phrases of the Creed, 1. I believe I will live forever, 2. following a bodily resurrection, 3. in restored fellowship with God (because my sins are forgiven) 4. and in fellowship with all other believers (because we are the Bride of Christ); 5. one church set apart for all eternity, all of it through the Holy Spirit, by the work of Christ the Son, by the command of God the Father. Do you believe you’re going to live forever? In the Creed I confess that I believe in eternal life. Very well. But do I believe that all human beings live forever? If I claim to be a Christian, I don’t believe that all human beings share the same eternal destiny; that all human souls live forever and that some will be eternally happy and others eternally miserable. C.S. Lewis, writing in his book Mere Christianity, says, “Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse -so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.” The Essential Story The essential Story isn’t that God made us all to live forever, all with the same destiny. If that were all of it, then it wouldn’t matter at all what I do with my allotted time on the planet. In fact, if all of us are guaranteed eternal life of the sort we assume Heaven to be; I would be absolutely wasting my time here if I did not take, enjoy, possess, amass, and in every other way accumulate to myself all that I can in this life. If death is nothing more than an assured doorway into eternal bliss, I may as well “eat, drink, and be merry” throughout. While I don’t know what good thing awaits me on the other side; it may not include the pleasures of this life; but I -- and everyone else -- am “going to a better place;” nothing I do or don’t do here has any impact on hereafter; so I may as well live it up. NO, the essential Story is that God made us all to live forever and all of us squandered the joy of that asset. Stolen Pleasure, Squandered Joy We stole pleasure for our own that was God’s own and went, as the Prodigal Son did in Jesus’ parable, to a far country where we believed we could be masters of our own fate. You may be the most disciplined, intellectual, frugal – even magnanimous – person on the planet; but if you live your life separated from the pleasure of God’s company, you can expect to spend eternity separated in just that same way. Lewis was right: you may live a disciplined eternity in Hell, you may live an intellectual eternity in Hell, you may live a frugal eternity in Hell, you may even live a magnanimous eternity in Hell – forever giving away vast sums of money, but never receiving the approval of the one being in the universe whose approval matters. You will live forever separated from “the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” But the essential Story doesn’t end there; that’s the beauty of what the Creed points us to. The essential Story is that we were made by God, for God, and that even when we squandered all the eternal joy that was meant to be ours, God still wanted us. Do not make a mistake at this point: there are not good people God saves and bad people God destroys as if God was going through an apple harvest and letting the rotten ones fall to the ground while lovingly picking the good fruit to bake into an amazing pie. The truth is we are all of us bad fruit. The whole tree from which we sprung is diseased; the tree of Adam can yield no good fruit. And yet most of us look around ourselves and the other apples hanging on the tree and say, “Oh, this isn’t so bad. Actually, I think all of us are getting better; bruises, worms, and all.” Calling God a Liar We have a problem: Look at 1 John 5:10, the second half of the verse. It says, “Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.” John nearly began this letter by saying, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” The sin and blackness of my heart always shows itself as I call God a liar by thinking I can improve myself into heaven. My need is to call God “true” in all his judgments. But my heart denies him because I say he has violated “my rights.” What I need is what I’ll never ask for on my own: I need to love God, love others, and make disciples for Christ, because that is what I was created for. Each of these requires me to give up my rights, return from the far country penniless, and receive the intolerable blessing of a joyful reunion with God, bought at the intolerable, excruciating expense of the death of his only true Son. Impossibly Born of God John calls this in chapter 5 of his letter what it means to be “born of God.” His thesis is this (look at verse 1): “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.” The Son – Jesus – is eternally born of God, and John is telling us here what is normative for the Christian. Jesus is born of God. When we receive Christ, John says in his Gospel, God gives us the right to become Children of God and we are born of him. There were two main things Jesus did while he during his life. He loved the children of God – yet to be adopted and born of God; but he loved them. And he loved whatever was his Father’s will. Jesus loved to obey God the Father. John says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” THE demonstration of the new birth in you and in me is that we begin to love what God loves. This takes a special work of the Holy Spirit; because you and I are completely unable to love what God loves; in our sin we continually buck against what God loves. Pulled toward Christ We’ve talked before about the centripetal love of God. Agape. The love that draws us God-ward. The Holy Spirit is the one who pulls us in toward Christ when our own will would pull us away. That is how John can say that his commandments are not burdensome. In Christ, we overcome the gravitational force of the world and all its pressures and attitudes. The victory is our faith. But John is quick to prove to us that “our faith” isn’t ours at all. Look at verse 6. 6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. Do you know what that’s saying? What we call “our faith” is actually the Spirit of God witnessing to the person and work of Jesus Christ. The way you and I are “on our own” is separated from God three ways: 1. We’re separated in our spirit, our soul, which never testifies to Christ and always testifies to our own. 2. We’re separated from God in our mind, polluted and dirty toward God in our thoughts, our hopes, and our aspirations. 3. We’re separated from God in our body, which we make a servant of sin rather than a servant of God. What John calls “our faith” is God’s redress for all that disobedience. 1. When we receive Christ we receive God’s own Spirit, who always testifies to Christ. 2. When we receive Christ, he washes our mind; cleanses our thoughts, our hopes, and our aspirations; he makes us able to see the folly of our selfishness; like taking a good bath, we are baptized into Christ. 3. When we receive Christ, he renews all the systems of our body. That’s why a bodily resurrection is vital to making you and me fit for eternity with God. A body polluted by sin is no more able to stand in the presence of God than an unwashed spirit. That’s what this enigmatic phrase means, “there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood.” When Jesus died on the Cross, nearly his last word was a word of utter obedience, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Moments later, a Roman soldier approached Jesus and pierced his side and out came pure water and pure blood, signs of the pure obedience of Jesus toward his Father. There are three that agree in Christ’s death; there are three that agree in my life. My spirit testifies with God’s Spirit, my mind is cleansed by the washing of regeneration, and the blood of Jesus renews my body; because God tells us in Hebrews 9:22, “without the shedding of blood there shall be no remission of sin.” I Believe When I say, “I believe…” I’m doing more than just giving mental assent to truths about the Triune God. We who believe bear the testimony to the world and bear the testimony to our own heart: “10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself,” “11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” Beloved, everyone lives forever; it is just a question of whether you will live forever with God, or separated from him for all eternity. Can you truly say: I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth: I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered. Under Pontius Pilate he was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day He rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting? If you can, believing must work its change into every fiber of your being. As John said, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” Beloved, when you say “I believe…” you are testifying that you bear Jesus, spirit, mind, and body; Jesus when you sit in your house, Jesus when you walk by the way, Jesus when you lie down, Jesus when you rise; Jesus when you teach your children, Jesus when you are at work and Jesus when you retire; Jesus when you paint your house and when you plant your garden; Jesus when you sing; Jesus when you dance; Jesus when you play; Jesus when you are sick; Jesus when you suffer; Jesus when you buy; Jesus when you sell; Jesus when you marry; Jesus when you are single; Jesus when you speak; Jesus when you are silent; Jesus every moment you live; Jesus in the hour of your death. And when you awake in his presence, raised in body, cleansed in mind, restored to full union with God, Jesus for all eternity.