Divine
Love, Unlimited Atonement; Deity of Christ; 1 John 4:15-18
1
John 4:15 NASB “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of
God, God abides in him, and he in God.” This is a key verse in understanding
the problem of the false teacher. It is going to apply abiding in Christ and
fellowship, and the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in understanding doctrine,
to the false Christology of these false teachers. “Confesses” is the verb homologeo, which means to admit or
acknowledge. “Whoever” is they who are in fellowship
and are able to understand this doctrine.
What
does John mean when he says “Jesus is the Son of God”? This is a key point in
the epistle. John uses the phrase “Son” in relationship to the Son of God 22
times, and 7 times in the epistle he emphasises the phrase “Son of God.” So
this apparently is a major issue that they were facing in terms of false
teaching, in terms of the deity of Christ. The phrase “Son of God” is used over
42 times in the New Testament to refer to Jesus Christ, and just the tern “Son”
itself is used many more times. The problem is that we tend to understand the
tern “son” in a creaturely sense of derivation, descent, offspring or birth.
This is the problem the early church faced in the fourth century when they
encountered the heresy known as Arianism.
The
issue at the Council of Nicea which convened in 325
was over two words: homoousios,
and homoiousios. It was called the
battle of the diphthong. What this meant was whether or not Jesus was of the
same substance as the Father, which would indicate that He is eternal God, or
whether He was of a similar substance. Everything depended on the difference of
one small letter. In the Greek it is the letter iota. At the Council of Nicea they clearly articulated the eternality of Jesus
Christ. But then things got political. The emperor Constantine died and his son
took over and the homoiousoios
crowd, the Arians, came along and got him on their side, Athanasius was exiled,
and heresy was in control of the church. Athanasius was exiled four times in
his life and it wasn’t until later on in the century at the Council of Ephesus
and then finally in the next century at the Council of Chalcedon that they
finally settled. Things went back and forth for about 70 years before they
finally settled on this. After 70 years they began to see the implications of
what Arius taught: that there was no salvation because you don’t have a real
saviour if He is not fully God. So Arianism finally
disappeared, except for a few instances that cropped up here and there until
Charles Taze Russell came along in the 19th
century and found the so-called Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The
term “son of” is a Hebrew idiom for describing the character of a person. For
example, in Numbers 17:10 NASB “But the LORD said to Moses,
“Put back the rod of Aaron before the testimony to be kept as a sign against
the rebels, that you may put an end to their grumblings against Me, so that
they will not die.” The word “rebels” is a translation but the Hebrew says
“sons of rebels.” It wasn’t that their fathers were rebels but that they were
characterised by rebellion. Psalm 89:22 NASB “The enemy will not
deceive him, Nor the son of wickedness afflict him.” The son of wickedness is
an idiom for wickedness. The point is that the term “son of” does not indicate
birth or derivation, it was a descriptive idiom and the second half of the
phrase, whether it is wickedness or rebellion of what ever, is what is being
emphasised. That is the attribute that is being assigned to the person.
2
Kings 6:32 NASB “Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders
were sitting with him. And {the king} sent a man from his presence; but before the
messenger came to him, he said to the elders, ‘Do you see how this son of a
murderer has sent to take away my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut
the door and hold the door shut against him. Is not the sound of his master’s
feet behind him?’” He is not referring to the king’s father as being a murderer
but that the king himself was a murderer.
Job
30:8 NASB “Fools [Heb. “sons of fools”], even those without a name, They were scourged from the land.” 1 Samuel 25:17 NASB
“Now therefore, know and consider what you should do, for evil is plotted
against our master and against all his household; and he is such a worthless
man [Heb. “son of Belial”] that no one can speak to him.” Belial was a
designation for someone who was worthless.
Proverbs
31:5 NASB “For they will drink and forget what is decreed, And pervert the rights of all the afflicted.” The phrase
translated “afflicted” is actually “the sons of affliction” in the Hebrew. Ezra
4:1 NASB “Now when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the
people of the exile [sons of the exile] were building a temple to the LORD God of
Israel.” That means they are the ones exiled.
Amos
7:14 NASB “Then Amos replied to Amaziah,
‘I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a
grower of sycamore figs.’”
Isaiah
19:11 NASB “The princes of Zoan are mere
fools; The advice of Pharaoh’s wisest advisers has
become stupid. How can you {men} say to Pharaoh, ‘I am a son of the wise, a son
of ancient kings’?” This indicates wisdom and loyalty.
Acts
4:36 NASB “Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also
called Barnabas by the apostles (which translated means Son of Encouragement).”
His attribute or character was that he encouraged people. James and John were
called the sins of thunder because they were rather loud and boisterous, it
didn’t have anything to do with their father Zebedee. Luke 10:6 uses the phrase
“son of peace” to indicate a person who is a man of peace, a peaceful
individual. Ephesians 2:2 talks about the “sons of disobedience,” describing
all humanity because every human being is born a sinner and disobedient to
God.
In
John 17:12 Judas is called the “son of perdition,” and that is the noun of the
word apollumi, apoleia, which is “destruction.” Judas is
characterised as one who perished. That means he was an unbeliever. “While I
was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which
You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son
of perdition…” This is a clear statement that Judas was lost.
The
conclusion is, having gone through all these idioms, is that the title Son of
God does not emphasise Jesus’ birth, does not mean that there was a time when
Jesus was not but that it emphasises His deity. Te word that follows the “of” tells
us what the characteristic is. When Jesus is called the Son of Man it
emphasises His humanity; when He is called the Son of God it emphasises His
deity; when He is called the son of David that is indicating that he is in the
class of the Davidic heirs. So when we come to 1 John 4:15 which says whoever
is convinced that Jesus is the Son of God, i.e. whoever admits that Jesus is
fully God, undiminished deity, God abides in him and he in God. That indicates
that there is no such thing as fellowship among folks like the Jehovah’s
Witnesses. They are probably not even saved because they don’t have a true
Saviour.
1
John 4:16 NASB “We have come to know and have believed the love
which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God,
and God abides in him.” The first verb, translated “we have come to know,” is
the perfect active indicative of ginosko.
As a perfect tense verb it emphasises present results, an action that has been
completed. (An intensive perfect emphasises the present results of a past
action. So John is emphasising a present tense reality in the life of the
apostles—“we [the apostles] have come to know.” We have reached this
state in the past and we still believe the love that God has for us. In the first
part of the verse we see that coming to know is not related to salvation but is
related to spiritual growth after salvation.
But
it only comes as a result of studying the Word and the Holy Spirit producing
maturity in the believer. We saw this in 2:3, “By this we know that we have
come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” So how do we know if we have
come to know God? Because we are obedient; we are keeping His commandments.
2:4, “The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments,
is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” It doesn’t means he is not a believer
but He is still an immature believer and has not reached the point of learning
enough doctrine to really know who God is. Once we learn doctrine and know who
God is it affects our behaviour. We are now obedient to His commandments. 2:5,
“but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been matured. By
this we know that we are in Him.” How do we know that the love of God has
matured in us? It is related to keeping His Word. To keep His Word we have to
know His Word. To know His Word we have to make doctrine a high priority in our
life. Keeping commandments is central to spiritual growth and it is a
consequence of the filling of the Spirit, it is not a cause of the filling of
the Spirit.
In
1 John 4:16 “we have believed” is a perfect active indicative of pisteuo, emphasising a present reality
from a past action. We hot spiritual adulthood and we believe the love that God
has for us. We have now come to understand it and are
believing the mandates, the commandments, related to that love, i.e.
that we are to love one another. In the second half of the verse: “and the one
who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
Notice
how John weaves this thread again and again, he keeps repeating this, tying
each thread together showing how it relates to the concept of enjoying
fellowship, i.e. abiding in Him. When we have come to know Him, have advanced
to spiritual maturity, then we are abiding in God and God is abiding in us.
This
is the process: We take in the Word under the filling of the Holy Spirit; we
meditate on it, we understand it, believe it. God the Holy Spirit then takes it
and breaks it down and converts it into spiritual growth, making it usable
doctrine. Then we use it while we are abiding under the filling ministry of God
the Holy Spirit. Spiritual growth takes place—maybe it’s slow; maybe it’s
fast. One day there is a demonstration of love in our life. Personal love for
God is motivating us and we are beginning to recognise what it means to truly
and personally and unconditionally love people who are obnoxious to us. What
has happened? Love has been brought to maturity.
1
John 4:17 NASB “By this, love is perfected [matured] with us, so
that we may have confidence in the Day of Judgment; because as He is, so also
are we in this world.” John ties it right back to the theme of this section in
1 John 2:28 where he had warned that believers needed to abide in Him so that
when He appears we may have confidence and not be ashamed at His coming. Here
inv. 17 we see that love must be perfected. We must hit spiritual adulthood so
that we can have confidence at the Day of Judgment. He concludes: “as He [God]
is [in terms of His love], so also are we in this world,” i.e. we are
manifesting His love in this world.
1
John 4:18 NASB “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out
fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected
in love.” Two mistakes are made here. 1) Taking the word “perfect” here in some
sense of virtue, of flawlessness, of an absolute state of being without sin. It
is the same word we have seen all along, teleios,
and in this verse 17 love is brought to completion. When love is brought to
completion we are going to have confidence before the judgment seat of Christ
and so we won’t be afraid of being ashamed. Matured love casts out fear because
if we have maturity in love we are not going to have anything to be afraid of
at the judgment seat of Christ.
“Fear
involves punishment” isn’t fear in abstraction. It is not contrasting fear of
anything with love, it is saying fear in a particular context; and the context
is the judgment seat of Christ. And the fear is related to a loss of rewards
and shame at the judgment seat of Christ. So what John is saying in context is
that if we reach maturity in love we are not going to have anything to be
anxious about, to be fearful of, to be ashamed of, at the judgment seat of
Christ. Therefore mature love is going to remove that fear from us. Fear
involves what kind of punishment? Punishment at the judgment
seat of Christ—loss of rewards. The one who fears is not matured
in love.