1 John 2:18–3:10 | Confess the Son and Overcome
Recently, my family, once again, watched the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the extended edition, mind you. You’ve got to do the extended edition. And about 12 hours later, I found myself amazed how once again, even after seeing these films many times, I find myself crying at the same spots, cheering at the same spots.
And one of my favorite moments is in The Return of the King, where you have the hero, Aragorn, who has royal blood in his veins, heir to the throne of Gondor, but who travels about in disguise as a wandering Ranger whose home is not a palace but the wild.
While his destiny is to lead the charge against the forces of evil, he’s very reluctant to fully embrace that role. And as the forces of evil seem to be at their strongest, Aragorn is confronted by the elf lord Elrond, who challenges him to quit hiding from who he is and fully embrace his calling. He says to Aragorn,
“Put aside the Ranger. Become who you were born to be!”
And I just want to cheer whenever I see that part, it’s so powerful and inspiring. And it illustrates the Christian life.
The whole Christian life is a life of “becoming.” You don’t start out as a perfect Christian. Rather, you’re in this state of becoming something different from what you were, while not yet being everything you should be. It’s a process of growing, maturing, learning, gaining increased victory over sin, increasingly realizing your true identity, and embracing who you really are.
And the scriptures are constantly calling you, as a believer, to lay hold of your true, glorious identity, because once you realize who you really are and accept it, it totally changes the course of your life.
In the book of 1 John, the apostle is writing to a church that is confused about who they really are. They’ve been rattled by people in the church who taught new ideas about Jesus and what it means to be a Christian, as well as new paths to be right with God. And it totally contradicted what they had been taught by John.
These false teachers eventually abandoned the church, taking with them any remaining followers.
And you can imagine how devastating and confusing this church split would have been for these Christians now experiencing a crisis of faith, not even knowing what to believe anymore, not even knowing if they’re actual Christians.
And John, as a tenderhearted, faithful pastor, is coming alongside this church he loves to encourage them to let them know that, despite everything that happened, they’re still on the right path. And John wants to remind them of their true identity, which will give them comfort and hope and motivate them to become who they are meant to be.
If you’re here as a Christian but insecure about your status with God, or a Christian who's discouraged because your ongoing fight against sin seems so hard to overcome, my prayer is that He would provide you with the same encouragement and hope He gave to this ancient church long ago as He reveals your true identity to you.
Now John is going to help us by answering three implicit questions.
Who is AntiChrist?
Who are you?
How now shall we live?
Who is the antichrist?
(Those who deny the Son)
Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.
1 John 2:18
I remember as a child, there were only a few things that creeped me out as much as Bible teachers talking about end times prophecy and the identity of the Antichrist. There was something about the idea of a human embodiment of evil that just unsettled me and made me nervous.
And yet there was also something very fascinating about the topic; it was like trying to solve a mystery, trying to put the pieces together, who this person might be? When will they come? Is this president, dictator, or world leader? If you add up the numerical value of the letters in his name, would it equal 666?
That kind of fascination has gone on for a long time.
And while on the one hand there’s much speculation about a future antichrist figure, John is writing with a greater sense of urgency, not about a mysterious future foe almost impossible to identify, but a clear and present threat that actually can be identified. He says you’ve heard that the antichrist is coming.
Now it’s bad enough to think about one antichrist that will come, but John is telling us that there are lots of antichrists, and what’s more, they’re already here. But John’s goal is not to creep you out, but to give you confidence and assurance that you have eternal life, and to motivate you in your pursuit of holiness.
John says the following about these antichrists.
“They went out from us, but they were not of us.”
1 John 2:19
This is shocking. When we think of antichrist, we tend to think of an evil force outside the church coming against us. But John says these antichrists went out. From where? From us! These antichrists were members of the church! They looked like everyone else. They talked about knowing God. About Christ and salvation. But antichrists, sooner or later, are exposed through breaking fellowship with the church.
If they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
1 John 2:19
Now, these antichrists aren’t simply moving to the church down the street where they like the music and programs better. Instead, they are abandoning everything essential about the Christian faith. The apostles’ teaching. the moral expectations for Christian living, the core doctrines of the faith.
We’re told in verse 22,
This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
1 John 2:22
These false teachers believed that the material world (matter, the earth, our flesh-and-blood bodies) was evil and that only immaterial, spiritual things could be good.
Christ was divine, they said, but Jesus of Nazareth was a mere man. And the Christ spirit came upon Jesus, and that’s why He could do supernatural things and had all this wisdom, but the Christ left Jesus before His crucifixion.
So these teachers vehemently denied that Christ was the flesh and blood, Jesus the Man. But in chapter 4, John says,
“Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess this is the spirit of the antichrist.”
1 John 4:2-3
Christ, who is God, becoming Man, is the centerpiece of Christianity. As John teaches us elsewhere, in the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. But the enfleshment of deity would have been a scandal to the Gnostics. And so they denied this, and John says that exposes them as antichrist.
Now, in our 21st-century pluralistic culture, it seems a bit over the top for John to make a big deal about this. Who cares what details you believe about Christ? Why make it a big thing?
The reason why it’s a big thing is that Jesus makes it a big thing. Jesus says,
“Unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.”
John 8:24
You can’t make it a bigger deal than that. The stakes couldn’t be higher! What you believe and deny about Christ is a matter of eternal life or death.
John says,
“No one who denies the Son has the Father.”
1 John 2:23
In other words, if you don’t embrace Jesus for all that He is, you don’t have God. And that’s very relevant because you have plenty of people who claim to have God who deny the Son, even while trying to have some version of Jesus in their theology.
Muslims have a Jesus. He’s a prophet. He did miracles. But, they don’t see Him as God in the flesh. They deny that, and so they don’t have God. Jehovah’s Witnesses have a Jesus. They acknowledge He died for sin, they call Him a god, but they do not regard Him as THE God, capital G. Therefore, they deny the Son, so they don’t have God.
Millions of people all over America claim to have some sort of connection with God, and yet they reject the kingship of Jesus over their lives. They won’t submit to or follow Him as supreme. And indeed, that is what it literally means to deny that Jesus is the Christ. because Christ is a royal title bestowed upon the Man who is God’s special king and representative.
And the key issue ultimately isn’t all the opinions out there about Jesus, who others say Jesus is; it is instead the penetrating question that Jesus once asked His disciples when he turned to them and said,
“But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Matthew 16:15-16
That’s the crux of the matter for everyone here this morning. Do you receive Jesus as the Christ, the divine King, or are you remaking Him into what you want Him to be? You don’t make the king conform to you. You must conform to Him.
The Gnostics denied that Jesus was the Christ. They denied the Son, and John says,
“No one who denies the Son has the Father.”
1 John 2:23
But right after that, John says,
“Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.”
1 John 2:23
Now that is glorious news!
Friend, if you’re unsure about your status with God, that He has actually received and accepted you, maybe you’re concerned because you know that you’re far from perfect, you don’t always obey God as you should, maybe you even now are depressed and discouraged because of a recent fall into sin, and so you get insecure about your relationship with God, know this.
While obedience to the king is important to John, and while obedience is evidence of where we’re at spiritually, your ultimate spiritual security and identity do not ultimately rest in how good you are at obeying God. I don’t know about you, but that would be depressing for me because I mess up and blow it all the time!
For John, your security and identity ultimately come down to whether or not you confess the Son. Genuine believers receive, embrace, and cherish the truth about who Jesus is and seek to respond accordingly. That is the main thing that separates believers from the spirit of antichrist.
Now, if those who deny the Son are antichrist, what then is the true identity of those who confess the Son?
Who are you?
(Spirit-filled Children of God)
I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything.
1 John 2:26-27
John’s essentially saying you don’t need these false teachers who are saying, “I have secret knowledge about Christ. I have a new revelation about God. And you’ll never be on the inside track unless you listen to me!” John says you’ve already been equipped by the Spirit to know and discern what’s true. There’s nothing you lack that these antichrists can provide. And then John turns our attention to the coming of Christ.
Now, just like some Christians get creeped out by a coming antichrist, others get unsettled thinking of the coming of THE Christ. We associate His return with judgment and terror. And indeed, Jesus will return with the sword of justice. John himself foresees a day when kings and generals and mighty men are cowering, shrinking back in fear, calling to the mountains and rocks, saying,
“Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?
Revelation 6:16-17
That’s a good question. Long before John wrote that, the Psalmist likewise asked,
“If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, who could stand?”
Psalm 130:3
If God is perfect, which He is, and if His standard for us is perfection, which it is, how can any of us stand in the presence of a holy God?
Well, John says,
“Abide in him, so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.”
1 John 2:28
And how do you abide in Him? John answers
“If what you heard from the beginning abides in you,”
(Not a new, novel, gnostic thing, but an old thing, the old gospel story. That Christ, God’s Son, came into the world in the flesh, lived the perfect life you couldn’t live, died the death you deserved to die. And if you would but repent/turn from your sin and trust in Him, then His death on the cross counts for payment for your sins, so you don’t have to pay for them in Hell. You’ll be totally forgiven, and you can be in right relationship with God!
That’s the good news! And John says, if you, even you today, in this room, let that message abide in you, if you receive it, embrace it, and don’t depart from believing it, banking all your hopes on it.)
John continues,
“Then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.”
1 John 2:24
And what is the result of abiding? Here is the answer:
This is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.
1 John 2:25
If the foundation of your hope is personal performance on how often you do what is right, on how religious you are, if your confidence is based on anything else outside of the gospel, then you will not stand in confidence on that last day. You will shrink back in shame.
See how the Psalmist asks and answers his own question.
If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, who could stand?
But with you, there is forgiveness.
Psalm 130:3-4
That’s beautiful, isn’t it? There is forgiveness. And there’s also transformation, John says,
“If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.”
1 John 2:29
The person who is abiding in Christ and the gospel is moving away from unrighteousness and increasingly practicing righteousness.
And why? John says because you have been born of Him.
Or as Jesus puts it, you’ve been born again. Made into a new creation. You were once a child of darkness bound up in sin, but now you have become a child of God. And if you’re a child, you won’t shrink back in fear at the coming of God. You will run towards Him.
Some of you have bad earthly dads who treated you horribly, whom you would shrink back in fear from, but imagine having a father who is perfect and good and kind.
That’s what God is. And that’s why Paul says in Romans 8,
“You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry, 'Abba! ' "Father!”
Romans 8:15
I remember when my son Ethan was a toddler. And I would come home after a long day of work, and Dana would open the door, and I would see in the distance this little tiny figure eagerly running towards me. You know how toddlers run! He’s going as fast as his little legs could take him, tripping over himself, and he didn’t care how funny he looked. There was this joyful confidence and freedom, a bold abandon. Not shrinking back in fear. Why? Because the one he’s been waiting for, the one he loves, and the one who loves him has finally returned! He’s my child, and I’m his father, and he knows it!
Friend, all who abide in God, in the hope of the gospel, can enjoy that kind of freedom and confidence in their relationship to God. And that’s why John then bursts into spontaneous praise!
See how great a love the Father has given us, that we would be called children of God.
1 John 3:1
He’s blown away by God’s love! And He wants you to be as well.
Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him.
1 John 3:2
God loved you so much that he saved you where you were, as you were, in all your mess, dysfunction, and sin. That’s a beautiful thing. But it gets better! He also loves you too much to leave you where you were. If a parent adopts a child who is in poverty, abuse, and neglect, that parent isn’t going to leave that child in that situation. The whole purpose of adoption is to bring them into something better.
Christian brother, Christian sister, God adopted you from spiritual poverty, not simply to leave you there. Instead, God’s glorious purpose for you is to become just like your father.
You know, the older I get, the more I resemble my earthly father. I’m the same height and have a similar face. My hair is even receding the exact same way, which is why I just shave it all off. I look like my dad; I bear the family resemblance.
That’s how it works in the physical realm and in the spiritual realm. Notice again what John says,
“What we will be has not yet appeared.“
1 John 3:2
In other words, no Christian is perfect. We still stumble and fall into sin. There are times when we don’t look like our Father, and it’s frustrating. I get it. But take heart, John reminds you that you’re not stuck, you ARE going somewhere! There is a plan that your Father has for you. Look at the end of verse 2.
But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him.
1 John 3:2
Isn’t that wonderful?? You’re going to be like Jesus, who is the image of God the Father. Which means one day you’re going to look exactly like God! Totally sinless, perfectly bearing the family resemblance. I know that’s hard to believe now, as you’re in the thick of waging war with your sin, but this is your identity! This is your destiny! It’s why God adopted you in the first place! To look like Him to reflect His glory and goodness! By God’s grace, you are not what you once were, and by God’s grace, you will be far more than you are now because you’ll be like Him.
The late evangelist Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, had written on her tombstone the words, “end of construction, thank you for your patience.” That’s pretty good, I like that.
So we have this hope for the future, but what does this have to do with now? That’s where John takes us next.
How then shall we live?
(Become who you were born again to be)
The Bible never says, “Oh, well, one day in eternity in heaven you’ll be like Jesus, so it doesn’t matter what you do now.”
Heaven forbid. Again, the Christian life is a life of becoming. Just as Aragorn had to put aside the Ranger and be who he was born to be. The Bible constantly calls you to put aside the old ways of thinking and living and embrace your true identity, striving to live in a way that increasingly reflects who you really are. Striving to bear that family resemblance even now.
Biblically, there are only two families in the world: the children of God and the children of the devil. Now, in the physical realm, there are scientific paternity tests where you can connect a child with her father.
In the spiritual realm, John tells us there are likewise tests that will reveal your spiritual father.
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
1 John 3:4,6
Now, when you’re reading 1 John, you have to constantly remember that he’s never talking about perfection; he holds up the standard for Christian living and simultaneously reminds us that even the best of us are still sinners. In chapter 1, John barely gets going before he says if anyone says he has no sin, he’s lying to you.
So then, when John says
No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
1 John 1:6
The key phrase is “keeps on sinning.” Or as he puts it in verse 4, “makes a practice of sinning.”
John isn’t thinking about the genuine believer who occasionally falls into sin. John already told us in the last chapter that for that person, there exists an advocate, Jesus Christ, who is the propitiation for our sins. John’s thinking is, instead, that of someone whose life is dominated and characterized by a continuous, unbroken, willful rebellion against God. Such people are children of the devil because you inevitably look like your spiritual father. But the child of God goes down a different path. John says, " No one who abides in him keeps on sinning.”
The child of God, while vulnerable to sin, is nonetheless characterized by an overall rejection of rebellion and a desire to live for God. In short, the child of God practices righteousness because they look like their spiritual father.
Consider King David, a man after God’s own heart, a real child of God who also fell into some heinous sins. But sin did not continuously dominate David’s life. He could never make total peace with his sin.
In Psalm 32, he prayed,
“I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you.”
Psalm 32:5-6
Or consider Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, while one arrogantly bragged about his fake external piety, the other would not even lift his eyes to heaven but humbly cried out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Jesus then says,
“This man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Luke 18:14
So the child of God is not sinless. But is honest about his sin and offers prayers of confession, desperate for change, striving to practice righteousness even while flawed, why? Because you look like whoever your father is. That’s why John says,
Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.
1 John 3:7
This idea of looking like your father was even better understood in the ancient world, as John was writing to a culture where people didn’t just look like their fathers but literally did whatever their father did. If your father was a farmer, guess what you were going to be when you grew up? A farmer. If your father was a carpenter, that’s exactly what you were going to be. The scriptures are telling us that’s actually how it works in the spiritual realm, too. You do what your father does.
For example, Jesus said in Matthew 5,
“Love your enemies so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
Matthew 5:44-45
When you love your enemies, you are looking like your Father, who loves His enemies and sends Christ into the world to save them.
Paul writes in Ephesians 5,
“Be imitators of God, as beloved children.”
Ephesians 5:1
If you’re a Christian, the world should see in you the family resemblance, some sort of reflection of the very character of God. They should see love and purity and faithfulness and patience. They should see us loving what our Father loves and hating what He hates. People should see you and be reminded of God because you’re doing exactly what your Father does. But it won’t be perfect. I know you struggle, so do I. John has already said, “What we will be has not yet appeared.”
But there’s also embedded hope in this passage because John is telling us that you don’t have to wait until heaven; you don’t have to be stuck. Even now, you can begin to bear the family resemblance and experience greater victories over sin. and get even closer to being who you were born to be again. Even today!
Now I can imagine there are some here who are Christians. And yet you feel very defeated because you fail so often. Maybe you have a besetting sin that keeps coming back. Like anger, addiction, pride, or lust. And you're likely to feel stuck. And you want to give up because you think, “Well, this is just who I am .” Friend, if you think that you will be stuck, the devil wants you to think that you are defined by your sins, that that’s your identity .he wants you to think, “I will be an angry person for the rest of my life, I will be forever bitter, or lustful, or unloving until I die. I’ve tried to change, I never will.”
Christian brother, Christian sister. That is simply not true.
John says,
“You know that he [Christ] appeared in order to take away sins to destroy the works of the devil.”
1 John 3:5,8
Friend, Jesus has come, died, and risen. not just to give you a ticket to heaven in the future but to break the power of sin in your life NOW, so you can be who you were born again to be. That’s why Paul says,
“He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
2 Corinthians 5:15
Friend, did you know there is no sin you have to obey? That might be a new and refreshingly beautiful thought for you, and you’re wondering how that can possibly happen. How can I stop living for myself and start living for Him and others?
John says that the child of God does not make a practice of sinning because
God’s seed abides in him; he has been born of God.
1 John 3:9
John’s essentially saying that you are a partaker of God’s divine nature. There is something of God in your very spiritual DNA. And the devil, the enemy of your soul, does not want you to know who you really are if all you think you are is a porn addict or short-tempered. Or hopelessly greedy. That kills motivation to even try to break free because what’s the point?
But John wants to come alongside you, put a loving arm around you, and lift your eyes up. And have you gaze upon what is true that you are God’s child. And your destiny is to be like Him, and you have everything you need, even now, to begin living differently.
To put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:24
One of my favorite scriptures about the hope the Christian has for real change is Paul’s words to the Corinthian church, a church full of people with checkered pasts and skeletons in their closets, people who surely felt the temptation and pull to return to their old lifestyle. But Paul encourages them,
Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:9–11
You were that way, but that’s no longer your identity. You are something different, something more, and God has given you all the resources you need for real change. Starting today. You have His Word, which has the power to change your heart. You have His Spirit, which has the power to produce godly fruit in your life, like love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, and self-control, and you are surrounded by Christians in this church who would love to come alongside you.
To encourage you, to pray for you, to hold you accountable, to counsel you, to root you on, and to be in your corner, the Christian life was not meant to be lived in isolation, because part of your identity isn’t just being an only child, a solo son or daughter in God’s household. But a sibling to many brothers and sisters in Christ, who God exhorts you to do life with, so that we may mutually help one another to be who we are meant to be.
I would love to personally help you in your quest to be who you were born again to be. Reach out to me anytime, grab me after the service, or send me a message, or talk to one of the elders in this church, or reach out to a Christian friend that you trust, and we would love to help and encourage you to live according to who you really are.
There’s more that could be said about the nuts and bolts of the Christian life but my time is done suffice to say in this passage ..John’s main goal is simply to lay the foundation to remind you of who you really are because really believing and receiving that is the very first step on the path to real growth and change to becoming all you were born again to be.
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
1 John 3:1
I want to invite the worship team to return. And as they do and as they begin to play quietly, I encourage you to prayerfully respond to what you’ve heard.
If you’re a Christian, have you truly embraced your identity as a child of God? How should that truth practically affect your life right now?
What is one way you can grow in bearing the family resemblance? Seek help from Him and others today!
Have you received Christ as your Lord and Savior? Place your trust in Him and join the family of God today!
