Podcast: 1 John: Listening to Your Heart

This is a transcript of one of our recent podcasts. To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here. To listen to the podcast without iTunes, please follow this link.

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
-1 John 3:19-24

If you ask people, “Are you a good person,” you’ll probably go a long time before finding someone who would say no. I would have answered “Yes” for most of my life. There were two reasons for that. First, I acted better than a lot of people I know, and certainly better than people I saw on daytime talk shows and the news. If you watch either daytime talk or the news, you’ll quickly come away with the impression that you are a very good person. You’ll see a bunch of people committing terrible sexual sins, murdering people, being cruel to others, selfishly suing anyone they can. You sit there and think, well, at least I’m not like THAT!

The other reason I thought I was a good person is because I didn’t actually do all the terrible stuff I wanted to do. My heart was filled with lust, hatred, and pride, but I didn’t act on it. I tried to be good. And that’s really all society asks of us. Just don’t do everything you would want to do. As long as you aren’t killing people or talking in the theater, the world says you’re okay.

But all these two things prove is that I wasn’t as bad as I could have been. If you showed people what was in my heart, everyone would recognize how evil I was.

Some people have gone so astray that they have seared their consciences. Most of us have not, thankfully, and your conscience will tell you the truth – we’re not good people. Just because our evil is restrained a bit by society and the laws does not mean we’re good. It only means we’re not letting our true selves out. The thoughts of your heart – that is the true you. We think and do things and our hearts testify against us.

Do not be fooled – God knows what is in your heart. He will judge you by what you think and say, not just what you do. We can all make up a quick list of things we’ve done that prove that we’re good people, but it’s your heart that will testify against you. What will its testimony be?

This part of John’s letter cannot be understood properly without the Gospel. Please remember that he is writing to Christians, and that he has reassured those same Christians that Jesus will be our advocate if we sin. There is an undercurrent of the Gospel here, and we will go drastically off course if we forget that.

All of our hearts will testify that we are not good enough for a holy and just God. The truth is that we do not deserve eternal life, but instead we deserve death. We are filled with all sorts of terrible desires and thoughts, and those things bear witness against our claims to be good. They tell the truth – if we were not restrained by the law and by society, we would act in atrocious and horrible ways. We hold ourselves back, but that is not the real us.

The question is not whether we are good enough for heaven. We’re not. The question is whether we can be forgiven. God is just, and so He requires a just punishment for sin. But in the death of Jesus, we have that punishment. He took our place in death so that we can live.

If we repent and believe in Him, we will be forgiven. That guilt that is proven by your heart will be lifted and replaced with the Holy Spirit.

So what does your heart say? Has that guilt been taken away, or are you still trying to hide things from God and the world. It won’t work. God created you. He knows your every thought.

If, instead, your heart testifies to the presence of the Holy Spirit, then you can have confidence in your standing with Him. Not by your own doing, but by His. Has your heart been turned away from that evil and toward God? Has your repentance shown up in the way you act and think? Has your heart been changed?

I’m not asking if you are perfect. You are not. I’m asking what is in your heart. Is the Spirit moving you toward obedience and away from rebellion? Is He moving you toward repentance for those sins you do commit and away from trying to justify yourself?

I’m also not suggesting that we are saved by our works. We are not. But it is the testimony of the Scriptures that a faith that saves manifests itself in us.

Please note what John says about the commandment: “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” This is a COMMANDMENT, not COMMANDMENTS. There is only one, and these two aspects are tied together. If you believe in Jesus, then your heart will be changed, and you will love. If you still only love yourself, if your heart is still filled with the same degree of wickedness, if you have no repentance for what you have done, then you do not truly believe.

It is that Spirit that brings both of these things about – faith and love. These things are spiritual, so without God they are ultimately impossible. Oh, the world may say that it loves, but the people of the world do not know love as God has revealed it – the love that put Jesus on the Cross for a bunch of rebellious, selfish, wicked, greedy, lustful, and prideful brats that have turned away from Him and toward our own petty concerns. That is the way we were, and He died for us anyway. By His Spirit He changes us into something more like Him, and we will begin to reflect that same love.

Look at your heart. Is the Spirit there, working in your life to form you into something better than you were? If so, then have confidence in your faith! If not, then fall upon your knees and seek repentance with everything you have. There is no more important question to have answered in this life.

Finally, if the Spirit is working in you, then have some confidence in your prayers. If your heart reflects God’s own heart, then what concerns Him will concern you also, and you will be of one mind in seeking His will. Pray with passion and confidence for His kingdom, for His will, for forgiveness, for provision, knowing that your Father in Heaven loves you and will provide for you. Let your requests be made from faith, not from selfishness or fear. We are His children, and we will be heard.

Podcast: 1 John: What Is Love?

This is a transcript of one of our recent podcasts. To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here. To listen to the podcast without iTunes, please follow this link.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
-1 John 3:16-18

Welcome to the Christian Pilgrimage Podcast; I’m your host, Paul Lytle. Today we’ll try to learn “What Is Love?”

I think this is one of the biggest problems facing our culture today. Not as big as, you know, denying God and such, but it’s a pretty big one. That is the complete misunderstanding to what love is.

Love today just refers to some vague feeling that you want to be around someone. We throw it around as though it were some sort of general affection. There is no sacrifice to this sort of love. In fact, it is very often selfish. There is no submission between people who claim to love one another. They just like one another. They will still fight tooth and nail to get their own way, of course. They will still demand their rights and freedoms. But they love one another.

You talk to the normal married couple today, and certainly they will claim to love one another, but ask them about the sacrifices they have made. They are still living their own lives, doing their own thing. The wife does not respect the husband or submit to his leadership. The husband does not live his life for the benefit of the wife. If they have too many conflicts, they will just split up.

There’s something askew there. If you want proof, just try telling people that they are sinners in need of a Savior. There are few more loving acts than to try to save someone from eternal damnation, but see what people think of that. They will call you hateful, judgmental, and extreme.

Love, under this definition, cannot include any sort of correction, confrontation, or conflict. These things are not seen as loving anymore, and yet can we say it is loving to NOT try to save someone’s life, even if it means confrontation?

Jesus died for us. This is how the Bible defines love. He died on our behalf, while we were still sinners. We were in rebellion against God, seeking our own pleasures, our own lusts, pride, and greed, over His glory. Even when we had rejected Him fully, He came to earth in the form of Jesus and died on our behalf.

How does that definition hold up in your life? Let me be frank here. Jesus came to die for me, even though I have spent most of my life disobeying and dishonoring him. That sort of love makes whatever love I claim seem like a middle school romance that will disappear on a whim.

The very fact that we rejected Him was why His death had to take place. In our sin, we had earned for ourselves a punishment of death. It was no minor infraction that we have committed, but crimes worthy of capital punishment. Just because you don’t think you’re so bad doesn’t mean that you haven’t offended a holy and just God.

Jesus took our place in that punishment. He died so that we could live. If we repent and believe, we can be reconciled with the Father, though we don’t deserve it.

When we become Christians, we are given a new heart, and we are given the Spirit to guide us. Encountering Jesus changes us. In the new birth, we are made more like the image of the Son.

That is why John keeps telling us that we can be confident in our salvation by looking at our hearts. Has there been a change in you? Have you turned away from your focus on yourself and toward Him? Look at your heart! Do you love?

We will not have the perfect love that Jesus had, and yet we should be moving in that direction. Of His twelve Apostles, eleven were martyred for the faith. Paul had his head chopped off. Peter was crucified upside-down. Tradition says that John was boiled alive, but he didn’t die, so they imprisoned him on the island of Patmos. Throughout the Bible we find men who died for their faith. They love God and us so much, that the love proved greater than their love for their own lives.

You say you love people. How do you know? Is it something you say, or is it something you do? If it is only words, then you don’t have the foggiest clue as to what love means. Love put Jesus on the Cross for you! That is love! It wasn’t some emotion He felt, but a choice that He made, to love us to death, even while we mocked Him and rebelled against Him. That is love!

It is a love that puts me to shame, but it is a love that also inspires me. God loved me so much that He died so that I could have a place in eternity with Him. What need do I have to fear from this life? What need do I have to count my own life more worthy than the lives of the brothers? He has bought me with His Blood, and He will not let me go.

If you are timid in your faith, if you count our own life more worthy than the spreading of the Gospel, if you are afraid of being rejected and embarrassed because of His name, if you are too worried about money to give to others, then look to the Cross. Look to the Cross and learn what love really means. You have benefited from that great love. That sacrifice has given us freedom to love as we ought. Don’t just try to do better out of your own strong will. That doesn’t come from the heart, and it is not love. First turn to the Cross. Confess your sins and repent of your terrible failure to love. In that repentance and guidance of the Holy Spirit, learn what love is truly about.

The world’s reaction to that love may not be a great one. After all, the world killed Jesus. John warns us in the previous passage that the world will hate us. But let us love in action anyway, because it is no longer our goal to please the world. We are secured in Him. We need not worry about what will be done to us, because it is not our security. He first loved us, and nothing can separate us from that love.

That is a great reason to quit talking about how we love others so much, and get to showing it.

Desire and commandment

“[The commandment is a light] to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.”
-Proverbs 6:24

When it comes to sex, it seems that more and more people are using the DESIRE as justification for the ACT. When asked why its okay to be in a homosexual relationship, or to sleep around outside of marriage, or to have an affair, or to have multiple partners, people will use a lot of reasons, mostly based on desire – “That’s the way I am,” “You can’t choose who you will love,” “God made me like this,” “I can’t help it,” etc.

I have read on many occasions testimonies from people who grew up in conservative churches who reject the biblical teachings on sex because they like it, or their desires are pulling them in some direction. They reject all those old “rules” because their desires are telling them something else.

Of course this doesn’t work in any other area of life. Everyone agrees that there should be laws against rape and murder, no matter what the criminal’s desires are. We think there is a difference here because there doesn’t seem to be a victim.

Whether or not there is a victim, this one thing should become very clear to us – not all desires are for the good. I can’t help but to think of that truth when someone else tells me that what they are doing must be right because they “love” that other person. Surely God wouldn’t condemn love, right?

Desires are not the best judge of right and wrong. Just because my heart is telling me something doesn’t mean it’s okay. Frankly, the definition that God gives for what is right is a bit different. God tells us that we should love Him above all others. Anything less than that is sin. So we should be looking to God’s Word for guidance on our relationships before we look to our own hearts. The “God wouldn’t condemn love” line isn’t going to work with Him when your love has only been toward your own desires.

Here is the truth of it – God gives us guidance in His rules. He didn’t make them because he’s a sourpuss who needs to lighten up. He didn’t give them to a particular culture and then forget about them today. He gave them to us for our benefit for all time.

The Law is established to convict us of our sin, to drive us repentant to the Cross, where we can obtain the forgiveness of our sins by the Blood of Jesus. He uses it to point us to the greatest good in all of the universe – Himself. We take it and make excuses. “I know the Bible says that, but we live in a different culture, and that was really for a certain people at a certain time, and the Greek word means something different, and Paul wasn’t really inspired at that point anyway.”

In the end, those are excuses, and they will not get you through the Day of Judgment.

Turn away from sinful sex. Sex between a man and his wife was made by God to be enjoyed, but do not take what God has given and drag it through the mud of your own uncontrolled desires. Look to Him for your satisfaction. Look to the Cross for your salvation. In Him you will not be disappointed.

Podcast: 1 John: Love and Hate in Technicolor

This is a transcript of one of our recent podcasts. To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here. To listen to the podcast without iTunes, please follow this link.

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
-1 John 3:11-15

Many of you know this already, but I grew up in the church, and remained there for about twenty years when I realized that I wasn’t a Christian. It wasn’t a bad thing at all to learn, and it’s something that is actually encouraged by the Bible. Paul tells us to “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves” (2 Cor 13:5). This is largely discouraged in the church today. We tell each other that as long as you walked up during an altar call and prayed a prayer then you’re cool with God. The attitude of the New Testament writers was quite the opposite – they really thought it better to realize that you’re not a Christian while there is time to do something about it.

Coming to the understanding that I wasn’t a Christian was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Until I realized that I was not saved, I wouldn’t have been able to be saved, if that makes sense. As long as I thought I was okay, I had no interest in truly becoming okay.

We haven’t reached this passage yet in our study, but John is going to eventually us the reason for his letter. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).

When I was in the church before I was a Christian, I really didn’t have a concept of Grace. I thought I was fine with God because I was working hard at being a good person. What is so powerful about 1 John is how it rips away that self-righteousness and shows you the truth – that God is looking at your heart, and not just at your actions.

John doesn’t tell us that we can be confident in our salvation because we do the right things. Doing the right things is actually not impossible. You can summon up the will to act well in all sorts of situations. John ignores that sort of thing completely. What John tells you is that you can only be confident in your salvation if you love.

Looking back, I certainly wasn’t loving. I did the right things, but my heart was wicked and dark. Sure, I would claim that I loved everyone, and I probably even believed it at the time. But if I would have been honest, I would have told you that my heart was filled with lust, pride, selfishness, greed, and hatred. If you put me on a crowded highway, I would have proven that hatred really fast.

It is for this reason that John will link hate and murder. Look, human law only really cares about what we actually do. We can hate people so much that we will think about murder all day long, but human law doesn’t care. But God looks to the heart. It is what is within us that He cares about. God is not fooled if we can keep our external behavior in line. He doesn’t reward those who simply have better power of will than others. He’s concerned with who you are.

Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:21-22). This is what John is talking about. It’s not enough to merely refrain from killing someone. We should love that person too.

And here’s where the real issue is. I can force myself by my own will to not kill someone. I’ve actually been doing rather well on this point. But I cannot force myself not to hate them. That is something that only God can do.

The evidence for that is everywhere. Watch television for a while and see what people say about Christianity, and then tell me that John analogy to Cain is not appropriate. In John’s day, Christians were being killed for their faith. John’s own brother was murdered for being a Christian. That still happens today, but in America we don’t see it that much. Still, we can see the hatred in the books being published, the people on talk shows, and the general attitude of people. They see the righteousness of Christ, and that righteousness shines light on their own evil actions, and so they want the light put out.

How many times will you hear these phrases – “Don’t judge me;” “Don’t push your morality on me;” “Stay out of other people’s bedroom;” “Keep your religion in the church”? It is the light of God that exposes all unrighteousness, and the unrighteous do not want their deeds exposed.

We should not be like that. We should not be like Cain, who killed his brother. Do you know this story? It’s in Genesis 4 if you do not. Cain was jealous over his brother’s righteousness, and he killed him. Is your anger sometimes like that? May it not be, for we were reborn in Christ to love. We were not saved in order to walk as the world walks, but as Jesus walks.

Let me stress this point – this is not something you can do out of force of will. Look at what John tells us. He does not tell us, “Love others and you will then pass from death to life.” No, he says, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers.”

Our love is the evidence of our heart. If we still have the worldly heart of stone, we will not love as we should. If that heart of stone has been replaced by a heart of flesh, something that only God can do, then we will no longer be like Cain.

Our love is a barometer of our faith. If you want to know whether you are in the faith, look to your heart. Has it been changed by the Holy Spirit? Is it being formed even now into something that looks more like Christ?

I’m interested that John uses the word “message” here: “For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” This passage mirrors something he said before in 1 John 1:5: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

And that’s really the point. Are we in Him? Then we are in the light, and the darkness is being banished from us. It is not that we will not sin. John is not trying to make that point. It is that before we were in darkness, and now we are in light. It is that before we were like Cain, and now it God has turned our hearts toward love. It is that before we were driven by greed, lust, pride, and selfishness in all ways, but now we have been turned toward the Cross and away from ourselves. We may still fall to those temptations, but our hearts have been basically changed by grace.

This is what John is saying – look to your heart. What is there? Has God changed your focus away from yourself and toward others, not for reasons of ambition or to make a name for yourself, but out of love? Maybe it hasn’t been all that much, but when you look upon your life, you can see the change. Can you trace a distinct movement toward God since the hour you first repented to Him? Do you love when before you hated? Do you have compassion when before you had anger? If not, turn to the Cross. Repent and ask His forgiveness in faith. It is because of Jesus’ sacrifice that we can be changed, not by the power of our own wills.

We have the tendency to believe that we are doing okay on our own. It’s not terribly hard to be a good person according to the world’s standards. For this very reason does John tell us to look within. If your heart has borne fruit in keeping with your repentance, then you can have confidence in your election as a child of God. If not, then go to Him.

Let us not overdo this. Let us not think of every sin as “proof” that we are lost. We will still sin as Christians, but once we are in Christ, we know that, in the words of John, “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” It is by Him alone that we can be forgiven. Confess to Him in faith and true repentance. We are saved by His righteousness, and not our own. It is that same righteousness that will change us, and one day perfect us.

Good Friday video

Good Friday

This is a transcript of one of our recent podcasts. To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here. To listen to the podcast without iTunes, please follow this link.

The Scriptures say that, just before His death, Jesus was in a garden, praying. This wasn’t a serene moment with flowers and butterflies. Outside the garden, Judas was bringing the soldiers to come and get Him. Jesus’ disciples couldn’t seem to stay awake. For Jesus Himself, He was flat upon His face, so distressed that blood was coming out of Him like sweat. He was praying for an alternative. He was praying that, if there was another way, the Father would allow that other way.

But there wasn’t, and the guards came for Him.

One of the most understated verses in the Bible is John 19:1, where it says, “Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him.” The readers of that day would have known what that meant, and they would have cringed in horror. We pass it by. The Passion of the Christ did it justice, and it’s hard to watch. To flog someone, they would use a cat of nine tails, which is a whip with metal balls and hooks weaved into the straps. It was designed to strip away the skin and break the bones. Many people died from the flogging alone. Jesus survived it. Once His skin was battered and torn, they put a robe against His exposed flesh and forced Him to carry His own cross upon that bloody back.

We call it Good Friday. We call it good that Jesus walked across the city, His blood flowing onto the street behind Him. We call it good when He was nailed upon that Cross and lifted up into the sun to bake until He was dead.

Most Christians can quote to you why it happened. They say He died to forgive us of our sin. That’s true. I wonder if we’ve ever questioned what sin really means, if God had to come to earth and endure that punishment for it to be forgiven.

Do you have any idea what sin means? Do you know why Jesus had to have the skin scraped off his back in order for it to be wash clean?

May I suggest that our sin is more grave of a matter than we normally think? May I suggest that it is more vile, more offensive, more wretched than we would like to admit? Frankly, if I were a good person who just needed a little help to finally reach Heaven, Jesus could just stretch out His arm to me. If I were but a mile away, He could come and carry me. But I was so far away, so utterly and completely incapable of even getting close, that He had to chase me into death itself.

Your little lies here and there are more terrible than you think. Your lust is more offensive than you want to consider. Your pride is the very sort of thing that got Satan thrown out of heaven, it was so terrible, and you think it’s just part of being human. Maybe. Maybe it is, but that doesn’t make it okay.

We deserve death for what we have done. We deserve to die for our sins. That’s the point. If someone was going to take our punishment, it was a punishment of death. If someone was going to take our sins upon Himself and pay the price for them, that price was death!

And God Himself was the only one who could pay that price for us, because He’s the only one who didn’t owe it Himself.

God died. God died that day, and we call it Good Friday, because He was doing it for us. He took the worst atrocity in human history and uses it so that we can be forgiven.

Some of you will be going to church for the first time in a long time this Easter. Some of you go every Sunday, but it’s just something you do. Some of you are really into the whole religion thing, and you think you’re a good person. Some of you are saved, but you need to be reminded of the Gospel, the good news, that we can be forgiven. That we are so evil that it took the death of God for us to be forgiven, but that God loved us so much that He died to make that happen.

Dwell on this. Dwell upon the Cross. Let its meaning sink in. Then repent of those sins that put Him there. And believe that He was there for you. Trust in Him, and you will be forgiven.