Grace Church exists to glorify our Heavenly Father by
 continually making more disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

The First Test of Real Life: The Moral Test 1 John 2:3-6 Get Real: A Study of 1 John Sermon #7 Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? That’s the new hot show hosted by Jeff Foxworthy and produced by Mark Burnett of Survivor fame. Perhaps you’ve taken a quiz that’s a spin-off of the show and found out unfortunately, that, “No, you’re not smarter than a 5th grader.”   I’ve always hated taking tests. Recently, I learned that there’s a name for a fear of taking tests, testophobia. Many years ago when I was ordained, I remember having knots in my stomach as I was questioned on what I believe. I don’t like tests. Several folk in our church family are in the midst of taking some hard tests. Some are working through the CPA exam. Dave Thompson has a test later this month to be board certified. It seems every profession has what are nearly impossible test questions that strike fear into the heart of any test taker. Even when we come across test questions that seem simple on the surface, we find that they’re often not as simple as we first thought. For instance, the answer to the question, How long did the Hundred Years War last? seems obvious. But the answer is 116 years. When a test asks Which country manufactures Panama hats? the correct answer is Equador. Here’s another: From what animal do we get cat gut? From sheep and horses of course. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? November. No wonder most test takers are glad to be out of school, far away from trick questions like that thought up in some teacher’s lounge.   Though we try to get away from the rigors of academic life, we find our lives are filled with other kinds of tests: driver’s tests, drug tests, polygraph tests, eye tests, entrance exams. People in law enforcement have to qualify on the shooting range every year. Many of you have to take a test for your chosen profession. Like it or not, tests are a part of life.   1 John is a book of tests, tests to determine whether someone is truly alive spiritually. So much so that Scottish preacher, Robert Law, wrote a whole commentary on 1 John entitled The Tests of Life. As we’ve seen already, it’s not our confession that demonstrates the validity of our Christianity, it’s our conduct. It’s not our belief, it’s our behavior. It’s not our words of life, it’s our way of life. Chapter 2 has three tests of true spiritual life. The first is the moral test, which is the test of righteousness. It’s developed in verses 3-6. Turn there with me (p. 862).   John’s point is that the one who knows God will increasingly lead a righteous life because God is righteous. It doesn’t mean that he’ll be sinless. John has already shown that anyone who claims to be sinless is lying. It simply means that he will be moving in a direction marked out by the righteousness of God. If he does not do this, if he is not increasingly dissatisfied with and distressed by sin, he’s not God's child. The second test is social, the test of love, 2:7-11. Finally, there is the doctrinal test, which is the test of truth, found in 2:18-27.   From what John has already said it’s easy to understand the importance of this moral test. If someone claims to know God and yet does not live a righteous life, then he inevitably comes to justify the sinful things he does. In other words he says that sin is not sin or that God does not really care about sin. He becomes a hypocrite. John calls him a liar. His very life begins to undermine true Christianity.    A congregation was singing as a closing hymn the old song, “For you I am praying.” The speaker turned to another man on the platform and asked quietly, “For whom are you praying.” This man was stunned. “Why I guess I’m not praying for anybody. Why do you ask?” “Well, I just heard you say, ‘For you I am praying’ and I thought you meant it.” “Oh, no,” said the man. “I’m just singing.” Too many professing Christians are just singing. John says that if it’s real, it will pass the tests. The First Test of Real Life is The Moral Test. It’s like the children’s song, “Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe.” Let me suggest then… 1. Knowing God is evidenced by a heartfelt desire to obey Him. Young Frank Abagnale was a multi-millionaire before he was 21. He stole every penny and then blew it in five frantic years as one of the world's most wanted men. But Frank Abagnale didn't use a gun or force in his now legendary life of crime. His weapon was his wit. With an I.Q. of 136 and just a 10th grade education, he successfully impersonated for extended periods of time, a pediatrician, a practicing attorney (fabricating a Harvard law degree but genuinely passing the bar exam), a sociology professor at a major university, a stock broker, and even an FBI agent. His notorious escapades as a pilot for a major international airline earned him the dubious title "The Skywayman" among authorities who chased him across 26 countries and all 50 states. And crime did pay, at least for awhile.  Abagnale cashed over $2.5 million worth of fraudulent checks between the ages of 16 and 21. He was finally caught and sent to prison. You may remember the movie, Catch me if you can, which is based on Abagnale’s exploits. Frank Abagnale was a con man, a world class hypocrite.   John, too, is dealing with hypocrites. These individuals are trying to cash in on the faith but are no more real Christians than Frank Abagnale was a doctor or an airline pilot. John gives us a test for spiritual reality, “We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands” (v. 3).   “We know” is a phrase that recurs several times in this letter. A test of spiritual reality, that “we know truly Him” then is that we obey Christ, that He is our Lord indeed and not simply in theory. John is talking about a past experience of every true believer. The original Greek makes this even clearer. The original literally says, “by this we may know that we have known him [perfect tense--something done in the past], because we are now keeping his commandments [present tense]." The present willingness to keep His commandments is a sign of a valid relationship. It’s proof that an act of union with Christ has already occurred, that you’ve been born again. Your life has changed and you do not behave as you once did. Because you now desire to obey him, you can be sure you’ve truly been born again. The use of the present tense suggests that the keeping of God’s commands is the pattern of life for the person who truly knows God.   Remember Jesus told his disciples, “If you love Me, you will obey what I command” (Jn. 14:15). But as with many other of His statements, this isn’t a popular view today, even among some who call themselves Christians. To talk about obedience to God's Word is often caricatured as legalism.   When I first became a Christian, Christianity was too often defined by what you did, how you dressed, what entertainment you did or did not participate in. Basically, Christianity was defined as a list of do’s and don’ts. It was legalism and many of us, including myself, have discarded it because it’s not biblical. Legalism is a religion of fear that you never measure up or are doing the wrong thing, or pride that you are one of the faithful few that is really a Christian. John is not talking about legalism. He’s simply pointing out that if there is spiritual life, there will be a desire for and resulting obedience.   Sadly, what’s happened in the Church is just as deadly, though at the opposite end of the spectrum. The contemporary Church has succumbed to License, that anything goes and anyone who says that they are a Christian no matter how they live, is one. According to license, it doesn’t matter how you live but what you believe. Both legalism and license are wrong, and Biblical aberrations. It would be a tragic error if some who are not truly born-again reject John’s message, never checking their spiritual pulse because they reason 1 John is Legalism. But 1 John is about tests of true spiritual life. Jesus said “If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have obeyed My Father's commands, and remain in His love” (Jn. 15:10). Grace doesn’t abolish God's law; it internalizes it by writing it on our hearts.   The timelessness of Scripture never ceases to amaze me. Satan always has a counterfeit for true spiritual life. It looks like the real thing but it’s not. There were those in John’s day who said that you were a Christian if…   a) You just believed the right things. The Greeks believed that they could know God by the process of intellectual reasoning and thought. I have some dear friends who are lost but they are more orthodox than many believers. Some of them know the catechism backwards and forwards. They believe in the Trinity, the substitutionary death of Christ, that the Bible is God’s Word. Some are even fascinated with prophecy. But they don’t know the Lord. There has never been a change in their life. They are orthodox but lost. Others reason that you are saved if…   b) You just feel the right things. Under Alexander the Great a new concept entered the Greek world. It was the idea that God could be known through emotional experience. Ours is an “emotional reality” world. Many think they’re Christians because they feel close to God, or get teary eyed in a church service. Many measure their spiritual reality by how they feel. It doesn’t make any difference what they believe or what they do, as long as they feel right. Jesus spoke of them in the parable of the Sower. “The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away” (Mt. 13:20-21). American culture values feelings over faith.   Let me share a true story that powerfully illustrates this. There was a woman who spent some months serving God in South Africa. On her final visit to a remote township she attended a medical clinic. As the Zulu women there began to sing together, she found herself deeply moved by their hauntingly beautiful harmonies. She wanted to always remember this moment and try to share it with friends when she arrived home. With tears flowing down her cheeks, she turned to her friend and asked, "Can you please tell me the translation of the words to this song?" Her friend looked at her and solemnly replied, "If you boil the water, you won't get dysentery." True faith is not what you believe or how you feel, it’s demonstrated by how you live. The keeping of God’s commands is the pattern of life for the person who truly knows God. Obedience to God's commands then is proof that we know Him and that we love Him.   There are three motives for obedience. We can obey because we have to, because we need to or because we want to. A slave obeys because he has to. If he doesn't obey he’ll be punished. An employee obeys because he needs to. He may not enjoy his work but he does enjoy getting his paycheck! He needs to obey because he has a family to feed and clothe. But a Christian is to obey His heavenly Father because he wants to, for the relationship between him and God is one of love. John then gives three tests... 2. There are three tests that determine the reality of our faith.   a) The Lie Test: Disobedience demonstrates that we are deceitful. “The man who says, ‘I know Him,’ but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (v. 4). “Actions speak louder than words” we often say. What we mean is that they’re a closer indication of the real person, a better window into the soul. Words are cheap and easily deceive. Whatever he may claim, the person who disobeys God does not truly know Him. If he did, he would bow unquestioningly to God's authority, wisdom and power. He’d say, “God knows best and that is the way I want to go.”   Pastor David Jackman tells of a young couple told who told him that they were living together, although unmarried, because they had prayed about it. They felt God was saying it was all right for them but they were flatly contradicting the fact that God had already said in Scripture that it was not all right. Either they didn’t know God's character or they didn’t love Him enough to obey Him.   Have you ever seen a counterfeit bill? I do not know that I’ve ever had one handed to me. I may have, and, if so, I passed it along without knowing it. But I do know one thing about counterfeit bills. Contrary to popular expression they never come in $3.00 or $7.00 denominations. You’ve heard the phrase, "phony as a $3.00 bill," but I’ve never seen a $3.00 bill and probably never will. Counterfeiters are smarter than that. At a superficial glance a counterfeit bill appears perfectly normal and real. But there’s always something bogus about it, there’s always something phony. There is a lack of exact correspondence or a blur somewhere, or something is omitted from it which marks it as a counterfeit bill. It’s the same with a phony Christian. They say the right things. If you were to judge them by what they say, you’d never know they were phonies. They go to the right places, mingle with the right crowds, and look like the real thing. They say "I love God," but as John indicates, there’s something wrong with their lives. They disobey His commandments. They have no apparent desire to do what He says or to keep His word. Their lives are unchanged. Their actions are no different than they were before. As a dairy farmer said, “They preach cream, but live skim milk.”   Paul also warns of this in his letter to Titus. He speaks of some who, he says, “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good” (Tit 1:16).  Charles Spurgeon said, "An unchanged life is the sign of an uncleansed heart." Scripture is very clear about this: If the thief has not stopped his stealing, if the liar has not quit lying, if the alcoholic has not stopped drinking, there is no good in his claiming that he/she is a Christian. If there has been no basic change in his life, there’s nothing that indicates to him or to anyone else, that he has been delivered from bondage to Satan and the power of evil into the kingdom of God.   Now let me make something clear. You can stop all these things without being born again. There are many reasons why men quit something evil, if for no other reason than that it is bad for their health. You can stop these things without being born again but you cannot be born again without stopping them. As Howard Marshall insightfully writes, “Obeying God’s commandments is not the condition but rather the characteristic of the knowledge of God.”   It’s important too to clarify that John is not talking about perfect obedience. He’s already told us that no matter how spiritually mature we become, we’ll still struggle with sin in our lives. That’s as sure as death and taxes. If we claim our struggle against sin has ceased, that we’re obedient to all of God’s commands, we’re deceiving ourselves. We  just need to ask our spouse or our children, and they’ll set us straight.   What this test is describing is an overall direction of life, a lifestyle characterized by obedience to God’s commands, not perfect obedience in every detail of life. Peter denied Christ in Caiphas’ hall but that was a brief episode, not endemic of his life. If you’re here today and your lifestyle isn’t characterized by obedience to God’s commands, if you’re not making forward progress in your spiritual life, John would challenge you to evaluate whether or not you really know God through Jesus Christ.   b) The Love Test: Obedience to God produces a mature spiritual life. “But if anyone obeys His word, God’s love is truly made complete in Him” (v. 5). This phrase, “God’s love,” is ambiguous. It could mean “God’s love for us” or “our love for God.” Or, it may refer to God-like or divine love. Scholars are divided between the first two options, and it’s hard to decide. But perhaps it does not really matter, in that if God’s love for us is matured in us, we will also love God. No one can really love God without first experiencing His love. The two concepts are intertwined. “Made complete” means, “brought to maturity.” It means the love of God has “fulfilled its mission,” or “reached its goal” when it is consummated in our obedience      Corrie Ten Boom shares this true story in her book, The Hiding Place. She writes: “It was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there -- the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie's pain-blanched face. He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. "How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein," he said. "To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!" His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness. As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” Real life produces even a love for our enemies.      c) The Life Test: Obedience to God is demonstrated by living as Jesus lived. Although some take the last phrase of verse 5 to point back, I understand it to point forward to verse 6. It would better read, “This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.” John equates being “in Him” with “abiding in Him.” Abiding is John’s term for fellowship or a close, intimate relationship. As with the phrases, “keeping His commandments” and “the love of God,” this term abiding goes back to the Upper Room Discourse, to Jesus’ words about the vine and the branches. There Jesus said (John 15:4), “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.”   1 John 2 teaches that if we are abiding in Christ, we’ll walk as He walked. This means Jesus is our supreme example for living. He showed us how we should live in total dependence on the Father and in complete submission to His will, no matter how difficult. Jesus claimed, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19). And then in John 8:29 He said “for I always do what pleases Him.” While no one can make similar claims, everyone who claims to abide in Christ should have the same focus and direction, not to act in independence from God, but in total dependence on Him. We should not live to please ourselves apart from God, but to do the things that are pleasing to Him.   Also, John’s words show us that the Christian life is a walk. That’s a helpful metaphor that Paul often uses. Walking is not as spectacular or swift as running, leaping, or flying. It’s a steady, sure movement in one direction. It implies progress toward a destination or goal. A walk is made up of many specific steps. It points to the overall tenor or general quality of a life, not to any one step. To walk as Jesus walked means that our lives should be characterized by daily dependence on God, submission to Him, and obedience to His will. Our overall aim in life will be to seek first His kingdom and righteousness. We will seek to please Him by our attitude, our thoughts, words, and deeds. While we will never perfectly walk as Jesus walked, it should be our constant aim and effort to do so.     When walk as Jesus did, there is a power in lives that affirms that we truly belong to God. As John Stott said, “We cannot claim to abide in Him unless we behave like Him.”   My friend, to walk as He walked is something we can’t accomplish in our own strength. It’s supernatural. It’s impossible for a man to imitate Christ. This is the very reason He has given us the Word of God and has given us the Spirit of God Who indwells us. It’s impossible for the man of the world to live the Christian life…and it’s impossible for us apart from Him. The only way this life is possible is by yielding our lives to God so that He might live His life through us. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Conclusion: In his classic book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer penned the words, “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”     Cheap grace means living as though God ignores or condones our sins. Forgiveness means that sin is real and must be dealt with. We can’t ignore it because God does not ignore it. Cheap grace means living without the demand of obedience to God upon us. The test of our faith is our obedience to God. It is not our confession that demonstrates our Christianity, it’s our conduct. It’s not our belief, it’s our behavior. It’s not our words of life, it’s our way of life. Obedience is the very best way To show that you believe. Doing exactly what the Lord commands, Doing it happily. Action is the key, for immediately Joy you will receive. Obedience is the very best way To show that you believe.     Obedience to God is the test of the reality of our faith. Friend, do you pass? Is the reality of your faith being demonstrated by your obedience to God and His Word?