Friday, July 22, 2005

That You May Believe

These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God … that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. (1 John 5:13)
Here is the final reason John offers for writing his letter: That you may believe in the name of the Son of God. Or as you may have noticed in the NKJV, “that you may continue to believe.”

This is the same purpose he gave for writing his Gospel:
And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. (John 20:30-31)
John is passionate about Jesus. He is not speaking theoretically, but out of personal experience, his relationship with Jesus Christ, the Living Word.

But there were false teachers about, then as now, creeping into the midst and leading believers away from this personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. These teachers denied that Jesus is the Son of God, that the Son of God came in the flesh. These were antichrists, denying that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Christ.

So John very purposefully brings forth his testimony about Jesus. His purpose from the beginning has been to bear witness and declare what he had looked upon with his own eyes, heard with his own ears, touched with his own hands, to declare of Jesus
  • That He is the Son of God, that is, He is fully divine.
  • That He has come in the flesh, that is, He is fully human.
  • That He is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God.
John writes, “That you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.” For he desires to have fellowship with his readers, all of them together enjoying deep and intimate fellowship with the Father and the Son. This is where fullness of joy is found, in continuous fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Faith in Jesus Christ is not a matter of the mind, giving mental assent to some theory. It is a matter of the heart, entering into personal relationship with who Jesus really is — the Son of God come to bring us back into fellowship with the Father.

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