Gooding, David: 1 – Introduction

Thank you for coming. It is a delight to see you. A little word to those that will be leading the groups. This year you will see that there are more questions than there have been other years. Most of them are quite mild. None is altogether ferocious. I have added more this year because people have suggested that in some of the groups, at any rate, they would like the opportunity not merely to go over what I have been saying in the course of my talks, but the opportunity to break fresh ground, to discuss other things beyond what has been discussed, the been discussed in the formal session. That's why you'll find on some of the question sheets rather a lot of questions, and at the end, if you'll notice, some things that I have not myself dealt with in the course of the talks. Let's begin our study by reading some verses, then, from the first epistle by John. Beginning in chapter one and verse one. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the word of life. And the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that you also may have fellowship with us. Yea, and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things we write unto you, that our joy may be fulfilled. And it would, I suppose, be a sensible thing to do, would it not, to ask ourselves at the beginning of our studies, what is it exactly that we are likely to receive if we spend three weeks studying this epistle in detail? So let's begin by selecting some of the formal statements that John makes as to his purpose in writing. Of course, you may discern purposes that are implicit rather than explicit in what he says. But now and again, John deliberately and explicitly tells us why it is that he has written either a particular paragraph or the epistle as the whole. Let us introduce ourselves by looking at those things. Says John in verse three: We declare this unto you, and this is our purpose, that you also may have fellowship with us. Yea, and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. As we shall see later in our studies today, when John says he is writing that we might, might have fellowship with him, he means not merely that we shall have a time of close, intimate communion, but that we might be and become common possessors of this thing that he writes about. To have fellowship with, to enjoy common possession of. And what he is talking about is enjoying common possession of eternal life. To that end, we shall find him from time to time pointing out to us all those things that are involved in this great thing that is the very life of God himself. He will tell us, for instance, in verse five, and this is the message. And on another occasion, and this is his commandment. And on another occasion, and this is the confidence that we may have. Many times over, and you may care to notice them in your private study, does he use that phrase, and this is... This is the message, this is the commandment, this is the promise, this is the confidence, and so forth. Like a guide taking you round a stately home or a museum, and as you come after, uh, to, um, exhibit after exhibit, he'll say, and now, and this is... Or the learned demonstrator, eh, in anatomy as he stretches out the body on the slab and points out this and that. Now this is, believe it or not, the brain, and this is the heart, and this is the liver, and this is what they do. Put them all together when they're working, and that spells the enjoyment of life. So John is writing to us now, that we might have and enjoy common possession of eternal life, and he will, in the course of his writing, point to us all the elements that are involved in the enjoyment and the working of that eternal life. And then he tells us in chapter two verse one, my little children, these things write I unto you, that you may not sin. Not only does he want us to be partakers in eternal life, but now he is writing to us that we might become progressively more holy. He writes to stop us from sinning. And we must keep it as one of our main objectives in the course of these three weeks of study, though we shall be rigorously exercising our minds. At the end of this three weeks, we ought to be more holy than we are this morning. I write to prevent you from sinning. Or again, let us look to the end of the epistle, chapter five and verse thirteen. Chapter five, verse thirteen. These things have I written unto you, that you may know that you have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God. And here is a delightful purpose in his writing. He writes to all who believe in the Lord Jesus, and he writes to assure them, not only have they eternal life, but they may know that they have eternal life. And this is a lovely verse of scripture to comfort and encourage believers in the Lord Jesus. For some there are who, because perhaps of real desire to be holy, not to be proud, not to be overconfident, have doubted whether it is possible to be certain of eternal life. So it is good here to see it in explicit and simple terms. This whole epistle is written that we may know that we have eternal life. And the tense of the verb is important. Not that we may know that it is possible, perhaps, to gain eternal life. Not that we may know that we shall have eternal life one day or another. Not that we may know that here in the present we have eternal life. So that as we go through our studies in these three weeks, it ought to mean that all of us, if we are believers in the Lord Jesus, all of us without exception, shall depart these studies with the absolute certainty in our hearts that we have eternal life. But if we can grasp it quite clearly right now at the outset, that the purpose of this epistle is to minister to our assurance that we may be certain we have eternal life, then we shall be ready to notice that a great deal of this first epistle of John is given us to provide us with tests by which we may know that we have eternal life. Tests by which we may test ourselves. If we profess to have eternal life, then tests to test our profession. Is it genuine? Does it carry with it the evidence that our claim is true? What is the evidence? As the lawyers would say, the sine qua non. What is the absolutely essential evidence to back up a profession by anyone at all that they have eternal life. So we shall find it is a typical phrase in this epistle, such as you find, for instance, in chapter two and verse three. And in this, by this, we know that we know. By this we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. What John is doing is providing us with tests that we can apply to ourselves. I say, I know the Lord Jesus. Very good. But how do I know I know the Lord Jesus? Do I really know him? Or is it something I've imagined? Is it the Lord Jesus I know, or is it some psychological construct that I have constructed in my mind? It is so easy, isn't it, to construct ideas of the Lord Jesus commonly in the world outside. You will hear people saying, ah, you know, the Lord Jesus, he was so loving and kind. He never would condemn anybody. It's a very different Lord Jesus that we shall meet on the page of Holy Scripture, infinitely full of infinite love. But a Lord Jesus that could stand in the streets of Jerusalem or in the temple and in his holiness denounce some of his contemporaries. You generation of vipers, he said, how shall you escape the damnation of hell? And my point is this, that we must be careful not to be following some mere construct of our own imagination. We want to be knowing the real Lord Jesus, the objective Lord Jesus. And how do we know that, uh, we really know him? John is here giving us evidence, tests by which we may test our profession and that of other people. It will be important, I suspect, for our own practical spirituality that we understand this clearly, what he is doing. He is testing the evidence. Suppose you come out of these seminars one day, and there I am sitting in my, uh, my car, and you say to me, have you got petrol in your tank, old chap? Well, I could, if I wanted to, I suppose, undo the bonnet, unscrew the the lid, uh, find out, I don't know where it is, but there is somewhere in it a petrol tank somewhere, and get a tin open, open it, and prove to you that it's got petrol in. Well, that would be one way of doing it, wouldn't it? There is a simpler way. If you want to know the evidence that there's petrol in my tank, I just switch the ignition on, and all other things being equal, the engine goes, and you say, well, there must be petrol in this tank if the thing goes. Of course, that isn't how I got petrol in the tank to start with, is it? If your tank is empty, you can try switching it on a thousand times. That will put no petrol in the tank. If you haven't got any petrol in the tank, then you have to go and pay or beg or borrow or steal or something and get the petrol pump man to put it in. Now, if you haven't got eternal life, then you must come to the Savior and ask him to give you that gift, and he gives it. But when you've got it, there should be evidence that you have it, so that if somebody comes up to you and says, have you got eternal life, you can switch the ignition on or do something else that is laid down for us here as evidence that you really have it. And would it matter if the evidence weren't there? You say, would anybody ever be so personal as to come and ask me that, have, have, you know, what's the evidence that you are a believer? Yes, if you should happen to meet Saint James one of these days walking through Belfast, he will ask you point blank. He'll say, oh, you say you have faith? Jolly good. But now you show me your faith. Be nice to be able to say to Saint James, yes, I'm ready for you, Saint James, you'll see, heard about you, read about you, and uh, by this you may know that I have eternal life. Now, there was once upon a time a very famous commentary written on the, uh, epistle, the first epistle by John, by a certain Robert Law. And here is a brief summary of the way in which that great godly scholar approached this epistle. He decided from his study that the first epistle of John is in three cycles. And in each cycle, John is offering us tests of eternal life. In the, uh, first cycle, the matter at issue is the Christian life as fellowship with God. And he points out that this claim to have fellowship with God is thereafter tested in the epistle by three successive tests. The test of righteousness, the test of love, the test of belief or doctrine. And then he suggests that there comes a second cycle, from chapter two verse twenty nine to chapter four verse six, And this time it's a question of divine sonship, our being children of God. And this claim to be children of God is tested once more by the same three tests. The test of righteousness, the test of love, and the test of belief or doctrine. And he suggests that the final part of the epistle, chapter four, verse seven to five: twenty one, is concerned with a closer correlation of those three tests. I'll leave the fa- film on the projector so that you can take the references, if you please. But just let's pause to notice. One, the what the tests are, and two, that according to the Apostle John, anybody who claims to have eternal life must be able to pass all three tests. It won't do simply to be able to pass one of them or two of them. We must be able to pass all three tests. It is obvious, isn't it, from our Lord's own words, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. If I claim to have eternal life, if I claim to be a child of God, then one of the first and obvious tests that will be applied to my life is, do I show in my life the love of God? And if instead of loving my brothers and sisters, my life is marked by bitterness and hatred. Then John will tell me it's no good you're claiming to have eternal life. He who constantly hates his brother is not of God. He is, in fact, of the devil. So that if I claim to be a child of God, to be living in fellowship with God, I must be able to pass the test of love. Yes, but I must be able to pass the test of righteousness as well. And let's take a practical instance of it to show how important it is. In the sixties, there was a breed of theologian that told the world that so long as we love one another, it doesn't really matter what we do, that fornication and adultery could on times be quite right. So long as we love, that is the main thing. But the Holy Apostle will not have it that way, will he? We must certainly be able to pass the test of love, but simultaneously we must be able to pass the test of righteousness. For love, as Saint Paul explains, love will lead to my fulfilling the law, and if you find me constantly breaking God's holy law, then it raises a very big question mark over my profession to be a child of God. And not only must I be able to pass the test of love and the test of right behavior, but I must also be able to pass the test of doctrine for what I believe matters. You see, there are some people that will say, particularly nowadays, but then they have always been around, that so long as we love one another, what we believe doesn't matter all that much. Sometimes people argue, and understandably, is it not doctrine that has caused all the divisions in the church? Why don't we soft pedal doctrine? What does it really matter what you believe, so long as you love one another? Well, John will show us in the course of our studies why it matters what we believe. The great object in writing this letter is that we might have fellowship not only with the apostles, but with the Father and with the Son. It is nothing less than the very life of God that God invites us to share with him, and that life as manifested in his son. And the whole point of it is that Jesus Christ is the eternal word. He is the son of God. He is God incarnate. He is that eternal life. But suppose I am led to believe that Jesus Christ was an ordinary man like the rest of us, that he was not born of the virgin, that he didn't rise from the dead, that he was just an ordinary but rather holy man. Then you will perceive that immediately the whole of our salvation comes to nothing. There is no eternal life to be shared. And the whole message that the apostles offer us dissolves in dust and ashes. And therefore, if I am a child of God, if I profess to have eternal life, of course I must show the love of God in my life. Of course I must show right behavior, but I must, in the third place, also pass the test of correct belief, of true doctrine. Of course, it is easy, isn't it, to be absolutely correct in your doctrine. Uh, the man who's absolutely correct in his doctrine but fiddles the income tax at work. The man that is correct in his doctrine but has no love and compassion for his fellow believer. How dwelleth the love of God in him? These then are rigorous tests, and perhaps we shall need courage given us from the Lord in the course of the d- today and the other two seminars to bare our breasts to the Holy Spirit, and with him to apply these rigorous tests three times over to our own. Now, when we come to the detail of the epistle, it has often been felt that the first epistle of John is a little bit difficult to comprehend, because in the first place, there seems to be a lot of repetition. And then in the second place, it doesn't always immediately appear in what kind of logical order John is talking to us. Here is a table of contents by Professor Howard Marshall. And he tells us that the first epistle of John has a prologue in which it talks about the word of life, and then about walking in the light, and then about keeping his commandments, and then the new status of believers and their relationship to the world, and a warning against antichrists, then the hope of God's children, then the sinlessness of God's children, and then brotherly love, and then assurance and obedience, and so forth and so on. Professor Marshall despairs, in actual fact, of having any kind of structure in the epistle and says that we must be prepared to take the things as they come. And if that is so, that is perfectly, uh, a- all right, isn't it? For instance, there's a book in the Old Testament called the Book of Proverbs. I don't know what your experience is in reading the Book of Proverbs. You start the chapter, oh, it's going to be talking about, uh, good ladies or sometimes bad ladies and rebellious sons. You think this is about the family, and lo and behold, after the first six verses, no, you're talking about something completely different, and you scratch your head and say, where are we now? And the answer is that it doesn't really matter. Proverbs, by their very nature, are short, sharp formulations of wisdom. We can take them, and it doesn't all that much matter in which order we take them. If you've got to take three aspos, it doesn't matter which one you take first, really, does it, you see? Ha. And some people say, well, the Epistle of John is like that. It talks about one thing, then it talks about another, and if that is true, that is perfectly valid. On the other hand, some people find that kind of thing a little bit difficult to remember, and so I am going very, very arbitrarily to divide this epistle for the sake of our studies into three parts, and I stress this is exceedingly arbitrary. It is done simply as a convenience. So let me just explain it now too, just before we go to our studies. We shall be dividing the epistle into three parts. One, not one each week, some parts contain more than others, so that we shall be spilling over as far as the weeks go, but the epistle divided. We notice at the beginning of the epistle, John talks to us of the manifestation of the life eternal. When he comes to chapter, the end of chapter two and the beginning of three, he talks to us about the manifestations of the Son of God and of the children of God. Our Lord's manifestation when he came to earth, his coming manifestation at his second coming, and then he talks to us about our manifestation one day, when it will be finally manifested, what it means that we are children of God, and we shall be exactly like the Lord. So we hear in chapter one it's the manifestation of the life eternal, and here it is the manifestation of the Son of God and of the children of God. And then when we come to chapter four verse seven we shall read about the manifestation of the love of God. In this was the love of God. Then we shall notice that at certain points in his epistle, John issues very serious warnings. In chapter two, verses eighteen to twenty seven, he warns us against antichrists who deny that Jesus is the Christ. When he comes to chapter four and the first paragraph of it, he warns us against believing the spirit of falsehood as distinct from the spirit of truth. And in his final verses in the epistle, he warns us against putting idols in the place of the true God. You will see that the warning is comprehensive. In the first place, it's a warning against false Christs, and in the second place, it is a warning against false spirits, and in the third place, it's a warning against false gods. And it will help us, just as we compare the manifestations, the one with the other, and ask ourselves, what is the special point of each of those manifestations? So we shall have to ask ourselves, what are the distinguishing features about those warnings? And if you will permit me, in that very arbitrary fashion, to divide up John's epistle, then it could have another helpful practical, uh, point. For two of the major themes of this epistle, we shall find, are the family of God, and then the world. And John will make great prayer the fact that all who have trusted the Lord Jesus and who possess eternal life, they, by God's grace, belong to the family of God. And may God's spirit grant that as we meet in our seminars, in the course of these three weeks, our studies of his word will foster in our hearts this delightful sense that we are all members of the same great family of God. But standing over against the family of God and opposed to it is the world. And in each of those three parts of the epistle, we shall find the family of God and the world in their different aspects. We shall see the family of God and its members united in the love of the Father. Over against the family of God and its delightful circle of love, its love of the Father for us and our love of the Father in return, John will depict the world in all its attractiveness and its seductiveness, trying to steal our hearts away from the Father. And we shall be told that if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in. In the second part of his epistle, John will, uh, continue to talk of the family, and here he will talk of its origin. How does the family come to be? From where does it derive its life and its character? And will tell us it gets both its life and its character from God, the family and all its members are of God. And over against that he will depict the world, not now in its attractiveness and seductiveness, but in its sinister hatred of all that is of God. And he will remind us of the solemnity of the world, its origin and character. It is of the evil one. And in the last section, he will talk about the family and its victory. This is the victory, namely of faith, that Jesus is the Son of God. And with that, he will represent the world to us, not now in its seductiveness, nor in its hatred, but in its opposition to the keeping of the commandments of God, a world that has to be overcome. And just let me repeat, I have, uh, troubled you with these things this morning, these formal analyses, so that in day- times to come we can use these as is appropriate, so that we may get a clearer grasp on these great things that are being told us as we compare the one section and its peculiar emphases and details with another section and its peculiar slant on the topics that it has in common. Now, without further ado, um, to our study groups, and seeing you are starting ten minutes late, then, uh, may we have the chairman's permission to carry on until, uh, a minute past a quarter past.