Information Versus Formation

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Most of us know the difference between knowing something up here and being changed by it. Okay. We we know the difference. We're all humans. For example, like we know that sleep matters. There's a lot of science that shows how much sleep you should get every night, what you should be doing, or rather not doing the last hour or two before you're going to sleep, has something to do with those devices in all of our pockets. And yet we still blue screen ourselves until we're ready to pass out, usually getting less than the recommended amount of sleep that we need. We still stay up too late. We still do those things. We know the facts. I mean, this isn't a secret, what healthy sleep looks like. It's not a secret. It's all out there, and yet we still do it. We know what certain foods do to us anyway, and yet we still eat those foods anyway. And that list gets weirder and weirder every year. And what I mean by weird is all the different things the food does to your body and what you're putting into the food, and then what that food does after you eat it within your body. And yet, when you're on your way home from a road trip, we're still probably stopping at McDonald's because it's fast, it's convenient, and it's not terribly expensive. We know when our relationships need attention, and yet we ignore that for weeks, months, or some of you are really good and can do it for years. I'm impressed by you. An example of my own life is Tuesday night. One of the kids on a flag football team that I coached, he broke loose on a huge run. Absolutely huge run. And around midfield, he he came into contact with three other players on the defense, and the contact was made, and he came through the other side. All three flags were still on him. No whistle blown, but he stopped because the contact he thought, oh, one of my flags got pulled off. Even though, as a coach, we coach this from day one, run until the whistle. That's not unique to football, that's almost every sport. You go until the whistle. And I'm on the sideline yelling, run, run fast. And he took off again and he did score, but I mean, I was losing my mind on the sideline because it's like he knows this. Why doesn't he act like this? And I cannot say, and I will not confirm one way or another whether that was not just one of the kids on my team, but one

A Flag Football Lesson On Action

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of my sons. Information is not the same thing as formation. That's the that's my point. That's the point. That's something that you know. And the Christian faith is not immune to this. You're all aware of this. You see it every day. I mean, the things that you don't like about other Christians probably have something to do with that they know the right words or certain words about Jesus. They affirm the correct beliefs about Christianity. I'm using air quotes here, the correct beliefs, whatever their tribe thinks is correct. People become very good at explaining the gospel as they understand it, and yet their lives don't reflect any of that. Or they don't reflect it the way that you and I think that it should. Now, John, who writes this slaughter, he doesn't believe that these things can be separated, what we know and what we do. You can't separate the two. Even today, 2,000 years later, reading this. Because he writes things like anyone who continues to live in him will not sin. That should make us uncomfortable because I think a lot of us in here we are earnestly trying to follow Jesus, and yet we still mess up, we still sin. He says, When people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil. You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like I'm I'm trying here. Easy, John. John will write about practicing righteousness. He'll write about purity, he'll write about the difference between being the children of God and even the children of the devil. And depending on your background here today and how you were raised or your church background, any of those things, you can hear these words right now very differently. The person in front of you next to you were a small group in here today, but I think that there's kind of maybe a couple different ways. Some of you hear them and you instinctively start measuring what faithfulness should look like. This is what following Jesus actually looks like, in my opinion. And there are ways of living that fit with faith and ways that don't. And we talked about this last week a little bit, how people can really try to follow Jesus and do it well and arrive at different conclusions. So we're kind of talking about some of that stuff again today. Others of you hear these same words and you turn inward. You're not looking at outside and the different conclusions everyone has. Rather, you're asking, Am I am I doing enough? Am I good enough? What about the things I still struggle with? Am I disappointing God today? What if I'm not actually who I thought I was? I mean, am I really a Christian? And if any of these places where your mind goes today, then I want to just point out right from the beginning, John is

Remain With Christ For Confidence

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not trying to make you feel afraid. That's not why he writes this. Remember, he's writing to a hurt church. He's not trying to make them feel afraid. He's not trying to exploit their emotions or manipulate them to do what he wants. He's just trying to give them and you today confidence. Confidence and assurance and the faith that you have. John has had twin agendas throughout this whole letter. He was confronting the people who left the community and distorted what they received about Jesus. So he's confronting them while also reassuring those who remained, who are confused, who are divided. They had heard these competing claims. Watched people that they loved and that they respected walk away, disagreeing with them. And they were wondering, maybe we were the ones that got it wrong. And John keeps returning to the same encouragement in different ways. Remain, stay, abide, be rooted from what you have heard, seen, touched from the beginning. And that's where today's passage begins. In John 2 28, he says, And now, dear children, remain in fellowship with Christ, so that when he returns, you will be full of courage and not shrink back from him in shame.

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Again, John wants confidence, not fear, courage, not shame.

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I read this passage and and the the shrink back and and shame. I think we can think about that in our earthly and and relationships with one another and people we used to know a long time ago. I was I was talking to someone the other day, and I remember thinking, oh my gosh, like my my 20th high school reunion is next year. And I was thinking, like, do I want to go to that? And I remember instinctively being like, no, I don't, because I I was kind of a punk in high school. Maybe some of you can relate to that, but like I did things that young people do that are common. I know they're common. I would tell my kids that, you know, you made mistakes, you said things you shouldn't have, you hurt people. And sometimes you even did it on purpose, you little jerk. Okay. And I'm like, I don't want to go. And I realized like I'm shrinking back. I'm doing what John is saying in this passage. He doesn't want us to have that feeling, the like, I don't want to go back to my high school reunion because, like, gosh, what if they remember? Like, what if they call me out and I need to be called out? I'm not saying like I'm above that, but like I'm shrinking back. And John is saying that I don't want that relationship with Christ. He's gonna talk about Christ returning. He says, when Christ returns, I don't want you to have that feeling of like, oh my gosh, I'm so ashamed. I can't believe I did those things. I can't believe I said those things. He wants you to have confidence. The way that I have confidence when I walk into a room of current friends, because I'm not a punk or as much of a punk, you know, and when I hurt people, it's it's usually not on purpose anymore. And I don't want to say exclusively, but like I have confidence, and that's what John is talking about. I want you to have confidence. So this isn't about fear and shame. He's not threatening you with what he writes next. He wanted to kind of lay that foundation out. He writes in chapter three, verse one, see how much our father loves us. And kind of the original Greek here is like, how deep, how great, how lavishing the father's love is for us. And he says, Dear friends, we are already God's children. Not something you necessarily have to work for. Your belonging in God's family isn't waiting, it's not depending on anything. It's not, you know, it's not like, well, when once you become spiritual enough or mature enough, or once you get through some of those kind of like basic sins and you get more into like the deeper, harder ones, and then you're accepted, he says, No, already past tense, the job is done. You are part of the family because of what Christ has already done for you. And this is where Christian ethics begins for John. Again, he wants you to be confident, not fearful, not proving yourself, but with belonging. You can have assurance of your faith, who you are today, because you already belong. This is whose you are. But John also tells us that while we are God's children now, he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. This is that tension. If you're if you're a follower of Jesus, this is the tension of like already and not yet, here and now, then and there, and living kind of in this overlap of just not quite yet. John says that when Christ appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he really is. In verse 3, that everyone who carries this hope begins to purify themselves just as Christ is pure. Our hope for the future, in other words, should shape how we live in the present. What we think about then and there changes how we live here and now. Theologian N.T. Wright puts it this way in his book, one of the best books on theology, and it's accessible. You don't have to have like gone to college or seminary or anything to understand how great this book is. But he says, what is to be true in the future must begin to be true in the present. His whole idea is like the Christian faith isn't like this escape pod, this like hellfire insurance, like just now we okay, we found Jesus, now we just gotta wait till he comes back, or wait until you know we cross over. He that's not what this is that he's saying we know where God is taking us, we will see Christ, we'll be like Christ. And so our Christian life today, as we live today and we're thinking about formation and developing the things we should do and we shouldn't do, is learning how to live now in anticipation of what God has promised to complete then. We're not trying to manufacture the future. We're not trying to create something that isn't authentic. We're just learning how to participate in what God is doing today. I think a lot of the Christian literature, the popular Christian literature out there today really is very future focused and it's so future focused that we miss like God is doing things today. I mean, as a matter of fact, today was the future somebody was talking about 10 years ago, 20 years ago. What does it mean to be present here today? Now, after establishing all of this, you should have assurance and be courageous and remember you're you're children of God, and the future is coming, but today matters.

Sin As Slavery And New Allegiance

SPEAKER_01 11:57

John then turns towards sin. And I like that because what we see biblically, and not just with Jesus, or sorry, not just with John, but also with Jesus and also with Paul, and we'll get there to that in a moment, is that like before he talks about sin, he establishes so many things. And I think of how different that is modern day. And this I am kind of I you know, I mentioned earlier when I was talking about our church, I don't want to like compare and contrast, but here I will say this is this is pretty damaging when you have people start with sin and start with the separation from God and all of that. All that does is practically speaking widen. If you've talked to people who are disenchanted with the church, they're gonna talk a lot about judgment, hypocrisy, they're gonna talk about how mean and angry Christians are. But that's what happens when you start this way. The biblical way, if you will, is to start where John starts. Hey, God loves you. Hey, Jesus came to make you part of the family of God. Now, that doesn't mean he skips what's next, because I think that that we can flip the spectrum and go the other side where we just Jesus loves you and don't worry about anything else after that. John's gonna hold both truths, which makes us all comfortable to some uncomfortable to some degree. In verse 5, he says, Jesus came to take away our sins. John's point is that sin is not something incidental to the Christian life. It's not incidental. Jesus came to deal with it. That's how big of a deal sin is. Sin separated us from God, sin separated us from one another. Sin damages the world and the people who live in it. And not only that, but it damages our relationship with God. Sin is both spiritual and physical, and we can't unglue those two things together. Remember, back in chapter one, John said, if we claim to have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves. He says, despite your best efforts, and no matter how much you love God and love people, and no matter how good of a person you're trying to be, you're still sinful. It's still there. It's all around you. He said that when we confess our sins, that God is faithful and just to forgive us. In chapter two, he said that when we do sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ. I mentioned both of those things in chapter one and two because whatever John means here in chapter three is not suggesting that Christians never sin, and he's not suggesting that you will ever stop sinning. Okay, that's important. He's already laid some kind of groundwork. It's going to happen. But what John refuses to accept is this idea that we can belong to Christ while making peace with sin. I mean, does that make sense? He's not going to let you say, Well, I belong with Christ, so now just whatever happens, happens, and I'm not going to worry about my choices or how I think.

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You're still going to struggle. But there's a new allegiance in your life, and that allegiance is to Christ.

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I think of this idea that children resemble their family and not always the parents. The kids resemble their siblings, aunts and uncles, grandparents, the church they're involved with, who they go to school with for better or worse, and more times in my experience, it's not for the better. They begin to resemble those all around you. And John is saying, Well, your resemblance, your family now, you're your brothers and sisters of Christ, and you have this heavenly parent, so your life should begin to resemble that of them. And that is precisely where John believes his opponents, those opponents have gone wrong. They were beginning to find ways to separate their spirituality from ethics. They claimed we believe the right things about God, and now it doesn't matter what you do or what you say. Which is a modern Christian problem that we began with today. I know the right things, I don't do them. You'll be relieved to know these were happening, these things were happening 2,000 years ago, and even the first apostles were trying to deal with it, just like we are today. In verse 8, John writes, the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. John wants them to recover a steady confidence in what God is doing among them. He says, You are deeply loved by God, and his righteousness is taking shape in your lives today. And even the alienation they feel from the world doesn't mean they've lost their way. Yes, your friends left. That happened. And yes, the world doesn't understand sometimes why you do the things you do and why you live the way that you live. But all of this gives you reason to look forward to Christ's return with confidence and joy.

Christus Victor And Living Free

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Now, theologians have often described this dimension of the gospel as Christus victor. Okay, this is an idea of atonement for those of you who want to deep dive, take a picture of this slide, and I promise I've kept you busy for the next six to eight months. But it's this idea that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, that in all of these things, God acts decisively against the powers, specifically the powers of sin, death, and evil. This is why Jesus came. It was because there's this power, this stronghold over creation to which you are a part of. There was this power that enslaved you, it chained you up. And Jesus came to overcome these things. Not because God was like pissed and needed some sort of vindication for that. It was that we were enslaved. Christ not only deals with the guilt of our sin, but the power over our lives. That sin that distorts, enslaves us, and takes a hold of us. Jesus forgives and frees us, yes, but he also cleanses us and begins forming his righteousness in us. John wants us to know the Father's love, to witness God's righteousness, and increasingly be aware of how they are working within us. Jesus himself spoke about sin this way in John chapter 8. He says, Everyone who sins is a slave to sin, and then if the Son sets you free, you are truly free. John is not passing along some theology that he picked up. You probably recognize the name of the book I just cited as John. So we have John, the gospel, we have 1 John, I believe, same person. I'm not in the majority in this thinking. So again, if you want to deep dive this week, you can find out all the different theories about who wrote these books, but I believe they're the same person. And the themes are the same, I think, here. Where he's passing on. Hey, I heard Jesus say this. Jesus once told me in a group of 11 other guys and some other followers that everyone who sins is a slave to sin, and if the sun sets you free, you are truly free. And he's reminding them this is what I heard. I'm passing this on to you. Not third hand, fourth hand. I was in the room. And then for those of us who have the benefit of living in a post-New Testament world, we hear from Paul, who in Romans 6 says, Do not let sin control the way you live, because sin is no longer your master. You're no longer your master. You don't report to sin. King Jesus is who you go to. Across the New Testament, grace does not make the way we live irrelevant. It creates the possibility of living a different type of life. And I think that this is where John presses us beyond a version of Christian kind of ethics, like do's and don'ts, focused on mainly, again, what's allowed and what isn't allowed and what's forgiven. Because I think that that's the, and I've I've written about this and I've gone into this a lot other places, so I didn't want to do it today. But you know, essentially we can begin to see sin as like these are the bad things we shouldn't do, and the Bible is the list of things we shouldn't do or the good things we should do. That's not the case here. What John is trying to show us is that faithfulness is more about just staying within a certain set of rules. It's more than that. It's allowing the life of Christ to shape you from the inside out. If God is making us like Jesus, then the ordinary choices of our everyday lives are never entirely neutral. They shape who we become. I mean you might think about the the the the most you know, the simplest thing going on in your life. Are we asking God, you know, what do you think of this? What do you have an opinion on this? And perhaps he doesn't. I'm a part of the school of thought that I don't think God has a hard yes, a hard no, uh a right and a left. I think sometimes God's like, you choose. And I think that that's the case, but are we at least approaching

Practicing Grace Through Examen And Communion

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God, not assuming he doesn't care, not assuming that we already know, but are we coming into it with like an earnest desire? God, where are you at in my life and and and what do you want to have happen? So I think the application for us today, as we as we've looked at the text and we've kind of extracted some theology, I think as we think about what we're doing here today, it the application is bigger than just avoiding something that's wrong. The application is learning to bring our actual lives under the transforming work of Jesus. Your habits, your relationships, our reactions to whatever it might be, the news, the news feed, our families, our kids, our coworkers. Are we submitting those things before Christ, our time, our money, the things that we pay attention to, the ordinary choices that shape slowly who we are? Pastor theologian Dallas Willard has a line I've always appreciated. He says that grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning. And so as we walk through this week and we're we're thinking about the things that we need to ask God about and submit to God, I don't want you to go into it thinking I need to earn it. You can't earn it. Grace is freely given. You already have it. But I want you to remember that you know, grace is okay with me putting in the work, putting in the effort. Not because it'll make God love me more, because God will somehow love me less if I don't. It's not that. But it's because grace works in us and it helps us to participate in what God is doing, which is making heaven come here on earth now. So this week, again, we're gonna go into this prayer of examine. I think it the prayer is gonna help us notice what is already happening in our lives this weekend, this week, what's going on, and how we might be resisting what God is trying to do. We slow down in silence and we look honestly at our lives so that we can posture ourselves and put ourselves into a position to respond to God better this week than we did last week. Have a greater awareness of where God is working that we don't yet see Him, a greater openness to what the Spirit might be telling us, a greater willingness to surrender the things that we may hold dear that God is asking us to let go. And then after this prayer of examine, we go into communion and it gathers the Christian life into one meal. We remember what Christ has accomplished, we receive his grace in the presence, and we look ahead to the day when we will see him as he truly is. We come to the table trusting that Christ's work is sufficient and that the future he has promised is secure. We are already God's children, and we are not yet everything we will be. It's good news now, and it's good news then. We know where things are going. One day we will see Christ. Heaven and earth will fully be intertwined. The not yet will be now. That will happen. And John says that when we do, we will be like him.