With this message, we begin a study of the first letter of the Apostle John. You will remember that from Paul we learned it was the task of the apostles to lay the foundation of the church, the only foundation which men can lay, which is Jesus Christ. But each of the apostles has a specific function in laying this foundation. Paul does not do the same thing as John, Peter has a different task than Paul or John, and Jude is called to yet another ministry. They all have a very important task, but God commits something original to each of these men to be passed along to us.
We are continuing our studies of the great letter from the hand of the Apostle John -- John the Mender -- the man who was called to follow Christ as a teenager when he was mending his nets. That act became symbolic of the ministry of this man, the one who mends things, who calls us back to fundamental matters. As we saw in the last message, John began by presenting to us a life, a life which appeared in history in the form of a person, a person who was touched and seen and heard and handled. He was, therefore, no mere figment of the imagination. He was not an invented person, a composite of the longings and desires of men, projected by their wishful thinking upon a being who never really lived. He is a man who lived, and walked among us, John said. We touched him, we saw him, we heard him, we handled him.
We have learned from the Apostle John that life without fellowship with God is like being shut away from the light; it is dark and cold, depressing and filled with illusions. God is light. This is the message of the life of our Lord Jesus, John declares. This is what he came to tell us and to show us. As light, he warms, fills, and fulfills us and unveils reality to us by showing up the false.
We are now experiencing the unique ministry of John the Mender, the apostle whose particular function it was to call men back to fundamentals. This was foreseen, in figure, in the act John was performing when he was called by Christ, for he was found mending his nets. The ministry of a mender is very much needed in any hour of weakness and attack. This is why the Holy Spirit chose the Apostle John to be the last writer of Scripture. His writings came at a time when the Church had begun to be infiltrated by various false concepts and ideas, and strong persecution had arisen.
In this present series in the First Letter of John we are concerned with the great and pressing question of maintaining an intimate and, therefore, powerful and fruitful fellowship with the Son of God. It is fellowship which makes Christian life vital, compelling, effective, and worth the living.
We are considering John's great analysis, in his first letter, of the way to maintain unbroken fellowship with the Son of God. Such fellowship is described to us by Jesus himself as the flowing of rivers of living water out of the center of life. It is something that cannot be hindered by anything outward because it comes from within. Jesus said, "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. ... 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water,'" (John 7:37-38 RSV). John adds, "this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive," (John 7:39a RSV).
One often hears today the saying that Christianity has been rejected by the world on the basis of a caricature which has been mistaken for the real thing. We 20th century Christians tend to say that as though it had never happened before. But we need to realize this is something that has been true ever since the 1st century and is not new at all. We have seen it in a new form, perhaps, in our own generation, but the phenomenon is a common one and has been true in every century. The work of the devil is always to distort and to twist truth, and to make it appear something which it is not. This, of course, is what we are experiencing today.
It has been our privilege to sit under the ministry of the Apostle John, the Mender, the one to whom it was given by our Lord to restate the foundations of the church. This is the ministry of the Apostle John, both in his gospel and in his letters. In this first letter his primary concern has been to restore to Christians, in every age and place, that intimacy with and restful confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ himself, which John calls fellowship. Remember Jesus himself had spoken of this. He said that if anyone came to him he would put in him "a well of living water" John 14:4 KJV) which would be "in him." It would be impervious to circumstances, could not be touched by anything outside. He also spoke of "rivers of living water" that would flow from within (John 7:38).
To me, the true glory of the Christian message is not the fact that it is a way to get to heaven, (though there was a time in my early Christian life when that was all important to me, and it certainly is the way to get to heaven), but the richness of the Christian proclamation to me is that, in Christ, I discover a way to become a man. That is the really tremendous thing. God is not interested in making saints, period. He is interested in making saints, but only as one step in the process of producing men. After all, that is what God is after -- men and women. The goal is not sainthood, but manhood and womanhood, as God intended them to be.
It is significant that the first subject John chooses to instruct upon is that which is supreme in Christian experience because it is the fountain from which both truth and love must flow -- fellowship with the Son of God, the shared life. This is also the way to maturity, as we have seen. We learned that we do not achieve maturity by some sudden certain experience. It does not come in one moment of time. We achieve it in fits and starts, as we do physical growth, in varying degrees and through varying experiences. These experiences and moments of growth can be divided, as the apostle divides them, into three general stages of Christian life, marked by these terms, "little children," "young men," and "fathers."
This is the first of a new series on a new subject in First John: Maintaining Truth. Of recent weeks, the attention of the Christian world has been captured by certain attempts to bring heresy charges against Bishop Pike because of his public denials of such important doctrines as the virgin birth of Christ, the Trinitarian character of the Godhead, and other headline-catching statements which he makes from time to time. Such attempts at heresy trials are not new in the Christian church. In every century there have been ecclesiastical leaders who have been charged with heresy. Such charges point up the concern of the church for maintaining the truth of God for which it has been put in the world.
We have already noted that the first note of this letter of the Apostle John is one of power, the power of a Christian. And the power of a Christian is Jesus Christ himself, living within a human being today. It is Christ living in you, being God again in you, expressing his life in terms of your personality. Therefore, the key to this is fellowship, the sharing of the life of Jesus Christ. This is the note on which this letter begins.
In considering this letter we have already seen how John recognizes the existence in his day (as it is also in ours) of a counterfeit Christianity. He has described its general characteristics. It makes its appearance in cycles in human history. It is always characterized by an attack upon the person of Christ and those who teach along these lines eventually depart from New Testament Christianity, though they begin within the circle of the church, the fellowship of faith.
You who have followed with us through these studies together in the great First Letter of John know that the concern of this apostle is to share with everyone the fellowship he himself enjoys. He said at the beginning of his letter,
Our last time together in this letter was to see what John had to say about the tremendous adequacy of the Word of God to bring us, if we submit to it, to the full experience of vital, fruitful living. It never fails to thrill me that Christianity is not trying to produce religious plaster saints, but thoroughly human individuals who operate as God intended them to operate. The whole thrust of the Christian message is to the end that we experience life as God intended life to be. And the instrument that will do this is the Word of God. It is designed to that end.
This is the last message in the section of John's epistle on Maintaining Truth. In this section, which began in Chapter 2, Verse 18, the whole problem John has been facing here is how to live as a Christian in the midst of a confused and confusing world -- a world no different in his day than it is in ours; no different in ours than it was in his. In this section we learned many things: We learned that error appears in cycles of deceit throughout history. That is why, proverbially, history repeats itself. We learned that error arises first within the church, through church leaders, and then moves out to infect the world. It is most interesting to trace this fact through history. Religious error never originates with worldly, secular thinkers, but within the church.
We begin, with this message, a new series in the first letter of John. We have traced John's major themes thus far concerning the necessity of maintaining fellowship with the Son of God, the shared life. Then the theme of maintaining truth in the midst of an exceedingly deceitful world. And now a new series on maintaining righteousness.
Beloved, we are God's children now, it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. (1 John 3:2-3 RSV)
As we begin this fifth biennial Missionary Conference with its theme, "Across the Street and Across the Seas," ordinarily it would be expedient to interrupt our studies in the Epistle of First John and bring a special message in line with the missionary thrust. But I shall not do that largely because the passage at which we have arrived in John's letter offers an ideal text for a missionary conference. I am sure that is more than mere coincidence. We are looking at First John 3:4-5. These two verses give us the most penetrating analysis in the whole Bible of the reason for human distress and darkness. They also declare in one mighty sentence the answer of God to this human distress. Thus, they describe the message which for 1900 years has laid hold of hearts, both young and old, and compelled them to go out across the street and across the seas in the name of Jesus Christ.
It is my great hope that there is coming to all, as we study together in First John, a growing awareness that every Christian must be a revolutionary because Christ is a revolutionary. God does not like the status quo. He is grieved and hurt by racial hatred, by war, by poverty, by unhappy homes, by human strife. God is a revolutionist: he is determined to protest these conditions, whenever and wherever they occur. But more than that, he is determined to correct them, to deliver men from them. Speaking generally, it would not be wrong to say that God is in full sympathy with most of the goals of the radical groups that exist today. He sees clearly the same things against which they are protesting. But there are two things that mark the difference between God's revolutionary methods and those of the radicals: