Spirit, Water, Blood

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family. 

We’re coming to the end of John’s letter. One more Sunday after today. And we’re going to finish strong with a text that is both encouraging and challenging. Chapter 5 verse 1:

1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.

This is a simple statement. Faith in the person and work of Jesus, faith anchored in truth, is proof of new life – new birth. We are God’s children if we believe.

But connected to that faith is also love – love for God and love for God’s children.

2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.

John adds obedience into the mix. Faith, love, and obedience – these things go hand in hand.

3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

What John corrects here is our tendency to exalt some Christian virtues over others. And if you look at the greater Church, you will clearly see this tendency.

Some Christians focus almost exclusively on the need for good doctrine, minimizing the importance of love or the need for obedience.

Some Christians want to be known for their love, but they ignore the importance of good doctrine and the need for obedience.

Some Christians are experts in the law… they can tell us what we should be doing, but they are weak on doctrine and weak on love.

If you follow the argument John is making, it’s clear that the people who left the church loved to argue about doctrine (even though they were wrong about it) and yet they failed to love others and they refused to practice obedience.

This lack of love and the failure to pursue godliness was evidence that they were not really people of faith.

John says that loving God looks like obedience! It’s not a burden, but a joy! We find delight in God’s law. It shows us a better way to live. We begin to recognize our sin as the source of death and destruction in our lives. We want to be better because we love God and hate sin.

God’s love at work in us gives us the desire to love and please Him.

4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.

5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

John is showing us how these things are connected. Faith – Love – Obedience. Faith is not a simple head knowledge of some facts about God. It’s a form of trust in God that always results in victory over the world. It’s a powerful force at work in our lives!

To put it simply, faith loves. Faith obeys. Love believes. Love obeys. People who obey believe. People who obey love. Do you see his point?

You can think of it almost as a triangle.  Three aspects of the Christian life. Faith. Love. Obedience. All connected to each other.

But here’s the key… who’s at the center of the triangle, according to John? Jesus.

The entire Christian life is an overflow of response to Jesus. The writer of Hebrews calls Jesus the author and perfector of our faith, who went to the cross BOTH for love of His people AND ALSO in obedience to the Father. The cross itself is a blend of these three ingredients. And the faith, love, and obedience we experience as Christians is all anchored in Him.

John continues:

6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

7 For there are three that testify:

8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.

John argues that Jesus is the anchor of our faith because Jesus in more than an idea. He’s a person who lived. We have internal evidence that Jesus lived – the work of the Spirit. And we also have external evidence – a historical reality… the water and the blood.

Most likely, John is referring to the baptism and the crucifixion of Jesus. In those two moments, Jesus most clearly identified himself with us in our humanity. Visible, public, historical realities. A lot of people witnessed both events.

9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son.

At his baptism in particular, the Father spoke and blessed Jesus for everyone to hear – “this is my Son in whom I am well pleased.”

10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.

In other words, our faith is confirmed in the evidence – the internal work of the Spirit, the external voice of the Father, the visible work of the Son. Our faith in not blind. It’s not a leap into the unknown. For the Christian, it is a concrete reality. And it has real, tangible benefits.

At the center of it all is a relationship with a real Person – flesh and blood, but also perfect and eternal. He can be known and experienced and trusted, today. And forever.

11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

This is really John’s final word to the people who left the church. Jesus is life. No Jesus, no life.

And notice the adjective. God promises ETERNAL life to everyone united in Christ. Eternal life!

John mentions the promise of eternal life more than any other Bible writer. Incidentally, John also lived longer than all the other apostles. He was the only one not to die as a martyr, instead dying of old age. But he still died.

Truth be told, we don’t really know what to make of this promise… eternal life… Our experience is that everyone dies. You took a first breath, and you will take a last breath.

But we all live with a nagging feeling that it’s not supposed to be this way. People aren’t really supposed to die. Death is not natural.

If you remember my semi-depressing Easter sermon, I told you about the science of death.

We think aging is natural because it happens to everyone, but there is no law in biology that explains the aging process. We actually have genetic mechanisms that are capable of regulating and repairing our aging cells indefinitely. At some point, these mechanisms start to malfunction in every single human and there is no scientific explanation – not even a solid theory.

But the Bible explains it… We die because we sin. Underneath the physical death we all experience is a form of spiritual death. If Adam had never broken covenant with God, then he would never have died. He rejected the authority of God’s Word, making a choice that severed his life-giving connection with the Creator.

And I believe this is the best explanation for what we experience. It explains why death feels so wrong. It’s not the way things are supposed to be.

The Bible’s explanation also tells us something important about God. He means what He says. God said we would die if we sinned, and He meant it. Not trusting God led to death – and it still does.

But that’s not the end of the story. It doesn’t have to be. God made it possible for us to trust Jesus and live. If we die IN CHRIST, we will rise IN CHRIST. And we will share in eternal life with Him.

This is the point of Christianity. But if that is not your hope, then you have no real motivation to believe or to love or to obey. Without Jesus, you might as well eat, drink, and be merry… for tomorrow you may die. But this life… it is in God’s Son.

And He invites to a different table… an eternal fellowship. No more temporary joys…