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1 John: The Fruit of Fellowship with Christ Ray C. Stedman
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- Religion och spiritualitet
There are two of Jesus' disciples whom I would particularly like to have known in the days of their earthly life. One is Peter, and the other is John. I like these two men. I am especially impressed by the change that fellowship with the Lord Jesus produced in their lives. This is what intrigues me about these two.
Peter, as you know, was erratic, impulsive, brash. As someone has well said, "Whenever Peter enters a scene, it's always with a thud." He seems to have a gift for putting his foot in his mouth -- he suffered from hoof-in-mouth disease. Yet the Lord made him a steady, stable, dependable rock, as his name implies. He became a rallying point, a gathering point for the Christians in the days of the persecutions which broke out in the first century. It was only because he was with the Lord, and knew the Lord. Most of the change took place after the Lord's death and resurrection, however, so we do not need to feel that it was the personal presence of Jesus that changed these men. He changed them after he died and rose again, just as he can change us.
John was the other one who was dramatically changed by our Lord. He was a young man, the youngest of all the disciples. In fact, many scholars feel that he was a teenager when he first started to follow the Lord. Perhaps he was seventeen or eighteen years of age. Along with his brother, James, he was a hot-headed young man, given to sharp and impulsive utterances with a tendency toward blowing off steam. He was probably a loudmouth, because Jesus nicknamed him Son of Thunder. That was our Lord's gentle way of labeling John's problem. He just kept the thunder rolling all the time. So our Lord called both James and John Sons of Thunder.
But John became the apostle of love. He was noted for his gentleness and his graciousness and his goodness. He was called "The Virgin." As far as we know, he never married. There is no record that he ever did. But he was called "virgin" primarily because of the purity of his life. He became a man who was characterized by such an outstanding devotion and love for the Lord Jesus, that all his life he was singled out as the apostle of love.
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Christian Certainty (1 John 5:18-21)
Perhaps the most striking thing about the close of First John is the threefold occurrence of the phrase we know in the last three verses. Verses 18, 19, and 20 of the fifth chapter all begin with those words, we know. That is a phrase that has a bite to it in these days when we are told that we cannot know anything for sure. There is a quiet ring of assurance about it; especially when you discover that the apostle uses a word in the original Greek which refers not to knowledge gained by experience, but to an inward learning process. It is precisely that kind of knowledge to which the Apostle Paul refers in First Corinthians 2 when he speaks of a hidden wisdom from God which is not available to the world in general but which is imparted to those who are taught by the Spirit of God. That is the kind of knowledge John is talking about here.
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Counterfeits and Reflectors (1 John 2:3-6)
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).
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God is Greater (1 John 4:4-6)
Some months ago I received a letter from a friend of mine, a man with whom I once shared wonderfully deep and precious moments of fellowship together. In my opinion he had evidenced in his life a keen insight into the understanding of Scripture. We enjoyed talking with each other about the things of God. He was trained in the same seminary that I attended. Yet this letter brought deep sorrow to my heart because in it he renounced his Christian faith and declared that he was forsaking both the Christian ministry and the Christian church, no longer having any confidence in its message or in its power but was himself abandoning all pretense to Christian testimony.
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God is Light (1 John 1:5)
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.
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Growing in Grace (1 John 2:12-14)
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).
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Life with Father (1 John 1:1-4)
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.