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IS JESUS THE ONLY WAY TO GOD? 11-5-2023
The world does not like the idea that one particular belief system is better than the others or is the only one that is right. This seems to be more true than ever before in our country. As an 83-year-old, I have seen this attitude and separation grow stronger over the years. From my childhood I was made aware of some political differences in my mother from my father, but they were closer together then, than I see in today’s country. Also, in my childhood there appeared to be more who were closer to God than there is today. Christians are often accused of being narrow-minded even today. Even though I think our country has changed for the worse, there has always been a major problem in the world as a whole when it comes to belief in God. Even in evangelical church today, known for its emphasis on salvation by faith in Christ, 19 percent of churchgoers believe there are other ways to God. I am not sure that the number is that low even with some church goers. I know for those in the world today, the number who belief that there are many other ways to God gets much closer to 100%. That is opposite of what God’s Word teaches. Because Jesus is the Son of God, He is the only one who can bring us to God.
Read 1 John 5:1-5
5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
John’s primaries focus in 1 John was to encourage love for other believers, to stress obedience to God’s ethical demands, and to provide a basis for assurance of genuine salvation through faith in Jesus. Our study stresses the basis for this assurance. The message in 1 John 5:1-5 is for 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. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. This is John’s method of saying we need to love “the children of God”. The child of God referred to in 1 John 5:1 is first and foremost Jesus, but the author also means to say any child of God, as verse two makes clear. Jesus is born of God, but everyone who believes in him becomes his brother or sister. Whoever loves the parent loves not just one of the parent’s children but all of them.
The community to whom 1 John was written was facing a crisis. Former members of the community were denying that Jesus was truly the Messiah, God’s flesh and blood, fully human, son. Like many churches facing doctrinal conflict, 1 John’s community seems to have been confused, afraid, and unsure what to do. Whom should they believe? How could they know what was true, and what was not? How should they react? 1 John’s simple, confident response is as relevant today as it was when the letter was first written: You know who you are, you know whose you are, and you know what you have been told from the beginning. God’s own Spirit shows us what is true. There’s no need to panic or argue. Focus on living your faith instead. God has the whole situation under control.
1 John reminds the community that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah — the anointed Son of God — has been born of God. They have no reason to be afraid, for they belong to God. As God’s children, they can rest assured that they are loved and protected by their divine parent. If they love God, then naturally they will love anyone born of God too, because how can one love a parent without loving the child whom the parent brought into being? The child of God referred to in 1 John 5:1 is first and foremost Jesus, but the author also means to say any child of God, as verse two makes clear. Jesus is born of God, but everyone who believes in him becomes his brother or sister. Whoever loves the parent loves not just one of the parent’s children but all of them. The consequences of this conclusion are enormous: every child of God is linked to Jesus. Every injustice done to a child of God echoes the injustice done to him. Every act of violence committed against a child of God recalls the violence committed against Jesus.
Loving God, loving God’s children, and keeping God’s commandments form inseparable links in a circular chain. In its depiction of this interwoven reality, 1 John echoes Jesus’ conversation with his disciples on the night before his death: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15); “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them” (John 14:21); “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:14). 1 John reminds its readers that God’s commands are not burdensome. Here again we hear an echo of Jesus, who denounces the religious leaders for loading people down with “heavy burdens hard to bear” (Matthew 23:4). The Greek word that NRSV translates as “heavy” is barus, the same adjective translated as “burdensome” in 1 John 5:2. By contrast, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens … For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30). Like Jesus, 1 John insists that God’s commands are not difficult. In essence, they consist in the call to love, “not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (1 John 3:18). Genuine faith, therefore, is firmly connected with active love.
Those with true faith also confess that Jesus is the Son of God. For 1 John, confessing that Jesus is the Son of God means believing that Jesus is the one who came through (dia) water and blood (1 John 5:6). The verse goes on to specify, “not in (en) water only, but in (en) water and in (en) blood” (my translations). Scholars argue about the precise meaning of this phrase. Some suggest that it refers to the blood and water that came out of Jesus’ pierced side after his crucifixion (John 19:34). Others see it as referring to the water in which Jesus was baptized and the blood that flowed from him during his crucifixion, or as encompassing his whole life from the breaking of his mother’s bag of waters to his bloody death. Whatever the precise meaning of the phrase, its basic point is clear: Jesus did not simply appear to be human. He was truly flesh and blood. Nor was he God’s Son only during his baptism and ministry. The fact that he was God’s Son did not mean that Jesus somehow escaped the full consequences of being human. He shared the whole human experience of living and dying. He remained God’s Son even in his agonizing death by torture on the cross. Jesus was born, baptized, and crucified to empower all of us to become God’s children, cleansed by his blood (1 John 1:7). This is not some inessential doctrinal point. 1 John insists that this is the heart of our faith.
Truly Christian faith conquers the world not by military might or doctrinal arguments or coercion, but by love. Christians believe in the Son of God who, rather than shedding the blood of others to prove that he was the Messiah, allowed his own blood to be shed. God’s children triumph not by inflicting suffering on others or by avoiding pain at all costs but by allowing God to work within and through them even in their suffering. What applies to individual Christians applies also to the Christian community. The Church triumphs over false teaching not by force or argument, but because of and through the suffering love of the crucified Messiah. This is the truth to which the Holy Spirit testifies: God’s son was tortured and broken for us. This is the faith that overcomes the world: God’s love brings life even out of brokenness and death. This is the victory to which we are called: loving God’s children, and thus living our faith in the crucified, risen Son of God.
Read 1 John 5:6-10
6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the[a] Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son.
Crucifixion of Jesus “not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood.”
– Completion of His Mission — “It is finished”, Paid the full penalty for our sins His Baptism and Death mark the two bookends of His earthly ministry. The Holy Spirit through the inspired testimony of the apostles continues to bear witness to the person and ministry of Christ. “If this is the meaning of these words, then two circumstances arising out of the context support it. First, John is obviously stressing the historical groundings of faith in this passage. And if that is so, then an emphasis upon the earthly ministry of Christ bounded in one sense and on one side by His baptism and on the other by His death is understandable. Moreover, at each of these God intervened in a miraculous way to bear a testimony to Him: by a voice at the baptism (‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased,’ Matt. 3:17), and by various miracles at the time of the Crucifixion. The second supporting circumstance is that throughout the letter John has been opposing the Gnostics, who, significantly enough, are known to have taught that the historical Jesus was not the Christ but rather only a man on whom the Christ descended at the baptism but who was deserted by Him before His crucifixion. If this is in view, then John would be emphasizing that there is only one Jesus, the Christ, who was then present on earth not only in and through the baptism but in and through the Crucifixion as well.”
Dominant Witness “And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth.” The record in the Scriptures (from the Spirit) speaking of the life and death and resurrection of Christ — especially focusing on His baptism and crucifixion. “The ultimate One bearing testimony, from whom all the apostles also derive their testimony, on whom their own faith also rests, is the Holy Spirit, none less.”
Impressive Witness
1. (:8) Impressive Agreement of 3 Witnesses
“For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.”
2. (:9) Impressive Character of the Witness
“If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for the witness of God is this, that He has borne witness concerning His Son.”
3. (:10) Blasphemy of Rejecting the Witness (which is self-authenticating)
“The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son.”
“If a person does believe God, he has an internal assurance that what he has believed is trustworthy. This is the work of God’s Spirit, the testimonium Spiritus Sancti Internum, as the Reformers termed it. It is in addition to the assurance provided on other grounds. On the other hand, if a person does not believe God, he makes Him out to be a liar; for in this way he eloquently testifies to his belief that God cannot be trusted. Here the heinous nature of unbelief is evident, for, as Stott writes, ‘Unbelief is not a misfortune to be pitied; it is a sin to be deplored. Its sinfulness lies in the fact that it contradicts the word of the one true God and thus attributes falsehood to him.’”
Read 1 John 5:11-13
11 And this is the testimony: God has given 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.
Verse 11. – “And the substance of the internal testimony is this – we are conscious of the Divine gift of eternal life, and this we have in the Son of God.” St. John’s ζωὴ αἰώνιος is not “everlasting life:” the idea of endlessness may be included in it, but it is not the main one. The distinction between eternity and time is one which the human mind feels to be real and necessary. But we are apt to lose ourselves when we try to think of eternity. We admit that it is not time, that it is the very antithesis of time, and yet we attempt to measure it while we declare it to be immeasurable. We make it simply a very long time. The main idea of “eternal life” in St. John’s writings has no direct reference to time. Eternal life is possessed already by believers; it is not a thing of the future (John 3:36; John 5:24; John 6:47, 54; John 17:3). It is that life in God which includes all blessedness, and which is not broken by physical death (John 11:25). Its opposite is exclusion from God.
12. the Son … life—Greek, The verse has two clauses: in the former the Son is mentioned without the addition “of God,” for believers know the Son: in the second clause the addition “of God” is made, that unbelievers may know thereby what a serious thing it is not to have Him. In the former clause “has” bears the emphasis; in the second, life. To have the Son is to be able to say as the bride, “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine” [So 6:3]. Faith is the mean whereby the regenerate HAVE Christ as a present possession, and in having Him have life in its germ and reality now, and shall have life in its fully developed manifestation hereafter. Eternal life here is: (1) initial, and is an earnest of that which is to follow; in the intermediate state (2) partial, belonging but to a part of a man, though that is his nobler part, the soul separated from the body; at and after the resurrection (3) perfectional. This life is not only natural, consisting of the union of the soul and the body (as that of the reprobate in eternal pain, which ought to be termed death eternal, not life), but also spiritual, the union of the soul to God, and supremely blessed forever (for life is another term for happiness
1 John 5:13. These things have I written unto you — The things contained in the former part of this chapter concerning the fruits of regenerating faith, and the water and the blood, and the witnesses in heaven and on earth, and especially concerning the things which they have witnessed, mentioned in the two last verses; to you that believe on the name of the Son of God — With a faith grounded on a saving knowledge of him, and productive of the fruits spoken of 1 John 5:1-4; that ye may know — On the testimony of all the evangelists and apostles, and of Christ himself; that ye have eternal life — That ye are heirs of it, notwithstanding your past sins and present infirmities, and the imperfection of your knowledge and holiness, and the various defects of your love and obedience; and that you may believe — That is, may persevere in believing; on the name of thev Son of God — May continue in the faith grounded and settled, and not be moved away from the hope of the gospel; knowing that the just man shall live by faith, but if he draw back, God’s soul will have no pleasure in him.
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. This states clearly that there is only one way to God!!!!