Gooding, David: 4 – The Family of God

So then we spent our third session today considering together what the Holy Spirit means when he uses the term the world. And we thought in particular of the world in all its seductiveness and its attractiveness that appeals to our desires. We thought again of the world as it stands in contradistinction to the family of God. The love of the world on the one hand, the love of the Father on the other. Now let's use our last session today, thinking not so much of the world, but of its opposite, of the family of God. And in particular, we shall be looking at one John chapter two and the verses twelve to fourteen that list for us the various members of the family of God and the experiences that God has given to them of himself. Now, it is commonly thought by many serious students of God's word that verses twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, those verses about the children, the fathers, and the young men in the family of God, that these verses are a kind of parenthesis, where the Apostle John goes off from his main topic and for a while diverges to talk about the family of God. Well, of course, there's no reason why an inspired apostle shouldn't, if so he pleased, diverge for a moment to some other topic and then come back again. I myself sometimes diverge, so alas, very often I forget to come back again, but that's another story to see. But this afternoon I'm going to suggest to you, and it's no more than a suggestion, that these verses twelve, thirteen, and fourteen about the family of God and their experiences are not, strictly speaking, all that much of a divergence from what the apostle has been speaking about both before and what he will be speaking about afterwards. So let us notice, shall we, how these verses are put together. Verses seven of chapter two, seven, eight, nine, ten, and eleven uh are written with this major end in view that we should love one another. Beloved, says John in verse seven, no new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard. And we're not left long in doubt as we proceed down the verses that this commandment that we have been given is the commandment that we should love one another. Then in verses twelve, thirteen, and fourteen we have this topic of the family and the various members, the little children, the fathers, and the young men. Then when we come to verses fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, that end a paragraph, we come to the exhortation, love not. So that now we see that John is doing here what we found him doing earlier in his epistle. It is a mark of the teaching of this holy apostle that it is exceedingly balanced. Eternal life produces in us, if it is allowed its way, a behavior, an outlook that is marked by healthy, mature balance. We saw when it was a question of having fellowship with God and enjoying common possession of eternal life, that first of all, John stresses the importance of where we walk, and not so much in the first instance of how we walk. But then as he comes to the end of that paragraph that deals with this matter, then he comes full circle, and now it's no longer where we walk, but every bit how we walk. We must walk in the light, says the beginning of the paragraph. But at the end of the paragraph, it is he that abideth in him ought to walk even as he walked. Where we walk, and then how we walk. And now John turns from the test of right living to the test of love. If we are genuine children of God, if indeed we do possess eternal life, how shall we know it? What evidence will there be? The evidence now to be looked for is in our heart and our heart's affections, our heart's love. Mark, if you will, the balance of it. In certain directions, it will be a question of loving. We shall be marked by loving, and yet there's to be a balance put to that. In other directions, we shall be marked by not loving. Love the brethren, love our brothers and sisters in Christ, love the Father on the one side, but on the other side, love not the world. And if one might speak for another, it is perilously easy, my brethren and sisters, isn't it, to get the balance all the wrong way round and to love the world and not to love one's brethren. You'll see loving the brethren isn't the easy thing you might imagine it to be. I know I've been saved and in the family of God fifty years, so I should know. Loving the brethren is not something that we do because they are such charming, sophisticated, elegant, educated, civilized, and colorful people. No, if it were that, perhaps many of us could think of folks that are in the world and quite unregenerate that are very attractive as people. Loving the brethren is quite a supernatural thing. It is such a supernatural thing that if anybody loved the brethren, it is a mark that they have passed from death unto life. By this we know that we have passed from death to life. Amen. Amen, says somebody. Here's a man talks with experience, do you see? By this we know we have passed from death unto life because we do what before we wouldn't do. We love the brethren because they are brethren. We love the people of God because they are the people of God, not simply because they are charming, sophisticated, and very attractive. So then, in the test of our eternal life, where is the evidence? It lies, first of all, says John, in right behavior. Now it is to be found in the attitude of our heart, as we love the brethren and the Father, and we love not the world. So let us begin by thinking very briefly about these verses seven, eight, and nine. Beloved, says John, no new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard. Again, a new commandment write I unto you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light shineth already. So this commandment to love is said to be, in one sense, not a new commandment, but an old commandment. In another sense, it is said to be a new commandment. How shall we understand the apparent conundrum? First of all, in what sense is it not new, but old? People have thought two things about this. Some people have said this command that we love one another is an old commandment because it is to be found in the Old Testament. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself is a command taken from the book of Leviticus, if you please. It's a very, very, very old commandment, and if we don't love our neighbors as ourselves, it's not merely that we're coming below the Christian standard, we're coming below the Old Testament standard. And therefore, when John says this command to love is an old commandment and not new, some people think that he means that this is the old commandment given us in the Old Testament in the book of Leviticus, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And that is a possible explanation. We shall come back to it, uh, in the next verse. Other people say that John is not thinking in verse seven so much of the Old Testament commandment to love, but now as an apostle, but a very elderly apostle, when Christianity has been on its way now for several decades, that John writes to his, uh, uh, children, as he calls them, his fellow believers, to exhort them to love, and that what he is saying is this, my dear fellow believers, when I exhort you to love, this is so- not some novelty, some new idea that I am now introducing into Christianity, some super duper thing never thought of before. This is basic, authentic Christianity. This is the word that we heard right from the beginning, that is from the beginning of our Lord's own ministry. This is not some exalted level to which we have suddenly arrived. This is the basic thing we heard from the Lord Jesus himself right from the very beginning of his ministry. And if that is the true i- i- interpretation, it is important, isn't it? Because you'll see, as we face that exhortation this afternoon that we are to love one another, my brethren, my wicked heart needs to be reminded that this is not some super duper excellence that only the specially spiritual are expected to attain to. This is absolutely basic Christianity. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another. On the other hand, says John, though it is an old commandment which you had from the very beginning. In another sense, it is a new commandment. Verse eight: again, a new commandment write I unto you, which thing is true in him and in you. It is a new commandment. Our Lord Jesus himself described it as such, a new commandment I leave unto you, that you love one another, that you should do to your fellow believer what, uh, and as I have done to you. In what sense it is new? Well, says John, because you see the darkness is passing away and the true light now shineth. We pause over that adjective true. What does he mean when he describes our Lord and his gospel as the true light? Well, John is not thinking so much as of true as distinct from false, but true as the real complete, as distinct from the partial and imperfect. The Old Testament, you see, told us that we were to love one another, and that was beautiful light given us by God, nothing false about it. Ah, yes, but oh, how different the whole thing appears when we hear this command from the lips of the Lord Jesus, for the simple reason that none ever loved like he loved. And when I think of the way the Lord Jesus loved us, then in him have we an exhibition of the love of God, such as man never heard of or saw before. The true, the full, the complete exhibition of the love of God shown us in the life and death and resurrection of our blessed Lord, setting us standards way and beyond what any dreamed of in their Old Testament. And you find our Lord talking like that in the Sermon on the Mount right at the beginning of his ministry, don't you? You have heard it said of old time by the ancients, love your, uh, uh, uh, your brethren and hate your enemies. I say to you, love your very enemies. So this is the true light, the full flowering of the exhibition of the love of God. It is true in our Lord. It is true also in you, says John. Why so? Because the darkness is passing. Glad he didn't say it has passed, because when I look into my heart, I can discover some murky bits of darkness, you'll see, and some of my dear brethren get obscured sometimes in these murky depths of darkness when I think about them. La la, all the darkness isn't passed from my heart yet. Is it from yours? Good. Well, bad, my boy, you'll see. The darkness, however, is passing, and as I have the life of God within me, and I see the way the Lord Jesus lived and loved, and wake up to the possibility that I have the possibility within me of loving like that, then it begins to dispel the darkness from the horizon, doesn't it? As I see the possibilities of a light that begins to dawn and spread, and where there was but murky grayness and blackness, now there begins to be color and light, a dawning of a day that shall grow more vivid until the dawning of eternity. True light now shineth, which thing is true in him and in you. He that says he is in the light and hates his brother, says verse nine, is in the darkness even until now. Now, one of the questions I believe that somebody set you in your question time was a question that ran something like this, uh, to whom do you think, or about whom do you think the apostle is speaking when he uses phrases like this, he that hates his brother, or if we walk in the darkness, you'll see. Is he talking about believers or unbelievers? There's no doubt about this verse, is there? He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness even until now. He never was anywhere else, as you observe. He's still where he always was, says John. He is in the darkness even until now. Now, it is a common thing, and we shall meet it many times in this epistle and in our discussions, that with John the Apostle, there's no gray area, there's no twilight. You are in the darkness or you are in the light. You are in one or the other. As we saw earlier, it doesn't mean if you are in the light that you are absolutely sinless. But if being in the light, you fall and sin, and the light exposes you, the mark of the true believer is that he remains in the light and allows himself to be exposed and confesses his sin, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. When sometimes we fall into sin, then of course we can act inconsistently, can't we? Like King David did when he sinned so abysmally. And first of all, he tried to cover it up and deny it and refused to admit it to himself or anybody else. And in that sense, in a practical sense, tried to be in the darkness. But in the end, it had to come out, didn't it? And he confessed his sin. That's the mark of a true believer, that he will, even though he acted temporarily inconsistently, he will come round to confessing his sin and, and uh, seeking the Lord's forgiveness. If somebody lives in sin without any intention of changing, and refuses to repent and refuses to confess and carries on walking in darkness, oh my dear brethren, John won't have it that he's a believer that, uh, well, he's not quite up to scratch. If he persists in it, it raises a very big question as to whether he's a believer at all. And he who makes a practice of hating his brother and has no intention of changing. Here the apostolic verdict on it. He's still where he always was. He is in the darkness. He that loves his brother abides in the light, says John, and oh, what an advantage there is in abiding in the light, for there is none occasion of stumbling in him, says the apostle. What do we mean, occasion of stumbling? You can read it in two ways, can't you? If I, as a believer, am abiding in the light, then as I walk, I shall not stumble. Whereas if I hate my brother, I shall be a cause of stumbling to other people, shall I not? As the world looks on and see Christians tearing each other to pieces vitriolically, what a stumbling block it is to them, isn't it? Whereas conversely, if I walk in the light, loving my brother, loving my brother will keep me walking in the light because it will keep my vision clear. And I shall not be a stumbling block to other people. So that verse, we notice verse ten, puts things the other way round and describes to us the benefit of loving. He that loves his brother walks in the light. Oh, how I have to try and, by God's grace, keep a hold on my emotions and my heart, haven't I? You'll see if I allow myself to be driven by anger or jealousy, how it perverts my very judgment and trips me up into doing all sorts of harmful and foolish things. Loving keeps me in God's light and helps me see things as he sees them. Then verse eleven tells us, in terrifying language, of the opposite extreme. He that hateth his brother, that is, as a practice, practices hatred of his brother and constantly lives in hatred of his brother. One, he is in the dark. So obviously he has no fellowship with God. Two, He walketh in darkness, and in consequence knoweth not whither he goeth. He can't see where he is headed. Would you say, where is he headed? Why, a man that lives in hatred of his brother, where is he headed to? He can't see it, can he? But oh, if the man could see himself where he'll end up uh ten thousand years from now. Sometimes we are asked, aren't we, by our unconverted friends, how can you possibly believe in eternal punishment? How could it be fair of God to take a man and for a sin that he's done in the brief span of a few years, punish him eternally? Very often, questioners have failed to realize, haven't they? There are people who live life without God and die without the Savior. It's not only that they have to face the wrath of God as the penalty of sin, they have to face an eternity with the consequence of sin. When a man persists in hatred and die unforgiven, he will spend an eternity in that fearful condition, unrepented, uncleaned, his heart full of darkness and bitterness, eternally. That a man spent his life in lust, not merely that if he arrives in eternity unforgiven outside of Christ, that he must bear the penalty of sin, or bear the consequence. In Christ's words, he perishes. A thing that once was a human personality, existing eternally, but so perverted, as all you could describe it as would be a thing that once was human, but now has perished. To hate, to live in hate is to walk in darkness and not know where you're going. And finally, the darkness has blinded his eyes. It perverts his moral. And we can tell that, can't we? Even as believers, when from time to time we get tripped up and temporarily feel ourselves blown with passions of rage. When we're in our temper, we feel it's right to do this, don't we? And we go and do something, and afterwards, oh dear. Then we feel ashamed of ourselves. Well, what happened, you say? So that temporary gust of temper blinded our eyes, didn't it? And made a thing look right and feel right, when it was, in fact, fearfully wrong. Oh, thank God that we can come and walk in the light. Thank God for the light that will expose us and show ourselves to ourselves. And there is cleansing and forgiveness. Ah, and cleansing from all unrighteousness, and knowing the truth and seeing the truth. That truth shall make us free. You know, sometimes temper, when we get involved in it, and hatred and wrath, they represent themselves to us, don't they, as our protector. It protects our rights, we say. And so we cling to it. Whereas if we saw the truth, the light of the Lord Jesus shone in our dungeon, we should see it not as our protector, but as our jailer. And it is when the truth and the light of God shows us what the reality is. Now we see our lust, and we see our hatred, and we see our anger for what it is. And seeing it is the first step to going free. So with that, we have the exhortation then to love one another and not to live in hatred. Now come the verses about the family. And there are difficulties here, and I'm sorry that at this late stage in the afternoon, I just have to, um, mention them briefly to you. The trouble that the expositors have found when they have looked at these verses is simply as follows. I write unto you, little children, says John. I write unto you, fathers. I write unto you, young men. And when we look at it, our first reaction is to say, but he seems to have got the order wrong. He starts off with little children. All right, well then why doesn't he go to the young men next, and finally to the full grown up fathers? I start with the little children at one extreme, go to the fathers at the other extreme, and come in the third place to the young men. And so here again, little children, fathers, and young men. So some have noticed that where the Greek word for children in this first set is the Greek word teknia, and the Greek word for children in this second set is paideia. And that has made them think, perhaps, that we ought to look a bit more carefully and divide up the passage as follows. I write unto you, little children, teknia, as a general term of all the people of God. He will use that general term again when he comes to verse twenty eight. and now little children, applying to all believers of whatever age in the family of God. The general term here then in verse twelve the general term in verse twenty eight. And then after that he has three classes here and three classes here. Verse thirteen, I write to you, fathers, because I write to you, young men, because I write to you, but then in your Bible it may be, uh, it says somewhat different, but there are textual variants, uh, that allow us, if we want to, to read the present tense here. I write unto you, little children, with the word not teknia, but paidia, three grades of age, starting with fathers, young men, and then the little children. And again, I wrote to you, verse fourteen, fathers, I wrote to you, verse fourteen, young men, and this time, after some verses in verse eighteen, little children, once more equals paidia, the three grades in the family of God. And for those of you who are interested in such like things, you may care to notice the suggestion that some theologians have put forward. Even that one is not without its difficulty, is it? And I'm not going to spend longer upon that formal analysis. What I think I want to do as I come now to these verses is, first of all, to take the first set as they stand superficially on the page of scripture and ask what it's got to do with what he has been talking about. I write unto you, my little children, verse twelve, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. What's that got to do with loving one another? And I reasoned like this, little children, how did you get into the family at all? Why, the initial experience anybody would tell you when they were converted, when they were born again and became children of God and entered the family of God, the basic initial experience, they experienced the forgiveness of sins, all in the family of God know the delight of having their sins forgiven. From Mary, out of whom the devils had gone, from Mary, the dissolute woman on the street, all those many that came to the Lord Jesus and in that first moment of their believing in him heard the delightful message, your sins are forgiven you. Ah, let us notice what it says. Your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. For the sake of the Lord Jesus, our names are forgiven. What a delightful thing of the Father. When as prodigals we come home, he forgives us for Christ's sake. Now I'm supposed to love you, says John. Isn't that what he's been saying in those earlier verses? I'm supposed to love you. But you've done something against me, and I don't love you. And you seek my forgiveness, but I'm not prepared to forgive you. Oh, but wait a minute. Ha. My sins are forgiven for his name's sake. I get my forgiveness not because I deserve it, but because Christ deserves it. And the Father, having regard to the worth of the Lord Jesus, has forgiven my sins. And you come, you've done something wrong, maybe even against me, and you confess it, and your sins are forgiven for his name's sake, and I'm not prepared to forgive them. Well, what does that mean then? That I refuse to acknowledge the value of Christ. I repudiate his namesake. Well, how can that be? How can I be in the family of God? And owe my place in the family of God to the fact that I've been forgiven for the sake of the Lord Jesus. And then not be prepared to forgive my brothers and sisters for the namesake of the Lord Jesus. And I write unto you, fathers, says John, because you know him that is from the beginning. The exegetes ask themselves whether him that is from the beginning is a description here of the Father or of the Son. In the end, it comes very much to the same thing, doesn't it? This afternoon, I want to pick up this, that the fathers, as they have got to know the Son of God, as they have got to know the Father, they know him that is from the beginning. You see, this matter of the father's love for the family, this is not some newfangled thing, you know. This is something that has been true of God right from the very beginning. This is his eternal, unchanging character. Oh, what a delightful thing. The Father's love for the family is not some new novel thing. Goes back to the remotest ages of eternity and on into the future immeasurably. It is him that is from the beginning, the eternal security of the family of God. And then, says John, I write unto you, young men, because you are strong. You see, and have overcome the evil one because you have overcome the evil one. What's that got to do with the family of God and loving the family of God? Well, in chapter three we shall find how that Satan moved Cain to slay his brother. And our epistles will remind us how Satan tries to disrupt the family of God and put brother against brother and sister against sister. Thank God we have the encouragement from the inspired apostle that the God of peace is going to bruise Satan under our heel one of these days. But it is easy, isn't it, to be deceived? For his satanic majesty is a past master at deception. And we don't always see from where the attack is really coming, as Satan provokes one to do this and another to do that, and presently we are all at sixes and sevens. Write unto you, young men in the family of God, because you have overcome the evil one. We need to be on our guard, don't we? The family of God has been taken out of the world. Hasn't, as we shall be told in chapter five, overcome the world, because it has found the secret of overcoming the world, faith that Jesus is the Son of God. They have heard the name of the Father declared. Oh God, give us that strength. When first we trusted the Cr- the Lord Jesus, that was the initial victory. God help us to go on achieving victory day by day. So we are to love. But then, as you come to the end of the paragraph, verses fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, as we noticed in the previous section, are going to tell us not to love. Love not the world. And as I read them, here once more comes an address to young children, fathers, and young men that will give us reasons for not loving the world. In the, if in the first place they were reasons for loving the family, now here come the reasons for not loving the world. I have written unto you, little children, because you know the Father. So when I say love not the world, I got good grounds for saying it, haven't I? I'm not like Pharaoh asking you to make bricks without straw. Here's a child, and it's playing with a knife, and how will you get it out of its hand? If you go and try to pull it out, it will grasp it and cut itself. So you come along with some beautiful toy, all full of colors, and you give it to the child, and the child go, ooh, and it goes for this, and it can't have both at the same time, so it drops the harmful thing and takes the new thing, yes. And I've written unto you, love the not the world. You say, oh, John, isn't that rather killjoy stuff? No, no, says John, because you know the Father, don't you? And if you know the Father, oh, you'll love the Father. And automatically the love of the world will recede. Isn't that so? If you know the Father, you know his love and you love him, do be careful not to hurt his love, won't you? Because if you love the world, you cannot simultaneously be loving the Father. And I write unto you, uh, fathers, do you see, I've written unto you, fathers, because you know him, that is, from the beginning. He is the great eternal that was from the very beginning, is now, of course, and ever shall be. And how will that help me not to love the world? Because, as John now points out, the world, my brethren, says he, is passing away. What a tiny little thing it is when it's all said and done, this world. Even in the observable universe that we can observe as we go out on a starry night, what a tiny little thing our world is, and it's passing, brethren. Oh, what it would be to lose fellowship with the eternal for the sake of something that is merely temporary and passing. You know him that is from the beginning, let the glory and grandeur and eternity of it save you from loving a passing world. I've written unto you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one, love not the world. And here John gives us the secret of overcoming the evil one, and that is knowing the word of God. And all of us who have any hopes of being young men in the family of God should take notice of it, shouldn't we? We have the example of our Lord. What tactics did he use when led of the Spirit into the wilderness, he was tempted of the devil? How would you remember, did he overcome the evil one? Well, the answer is he stood there and to each temptation cited the word of God. It is written. If I may be forgiven so for speaking of him as a boyhood in the home of Mary and Joseph. Wasn't that lovely? When Mary and Joseph in the home read him the Holy Scripture. What a lovely situation. They read of it as they rose up and as they sat down, as they came in, as they came out, till the word of God was part of his very fiber. When the days of testing came, he could answer the devil and overcome him, saying, ah, but it stands written. And if our blessed Lord needed the armory of the word of God, how much more we, to save us from the sophisticated temptations of the devil. For do you see how skillful was the devil, wasn't he? He first of all tried to get the Lord to create, uh, to make the stones into bread, and our Lord said no, our Lord would live in dependence on the word of God. So not being able to turn him into ungodliness, he got hold of him at the spiritual level. Oh, he said, I see you are a very holy, spiritual young man. Ah, yes. Now you wouldn't be tempted by bread. Of course not. But now look, why don't you go on the temple, and you could have such a marvelous exhibition as you jumped off the temple and show the world how dependent on the Lord you are? Because he says, the Bible says that, uh, God will give his angels charge. You only have to step out in faith, he said. Step out in faith of the temple. Take God at his word. It sounded so good, didn't it? It was hideously deceptive. Our Lord countered him by saying, but Satan, it is written. And if to that relentless foe, our Lord posed the word of God and overcame him, we too, as he comes to try and drag away our love of the Father to ourselves in things of daily life, in things of the spirit, in matters of worship, in matters of public life, we shall need the word of God to inform our minds, to expose Satan's deceits, so that we may constantly overcome him and serve and love the Father. With that, let us turn to our classes.