Sunday – August 3, 2014 – Read the Word on Worship
1st John 2 verses 3 to 6 from Sunrise Community Church on Vimeo.
Word On Worship – Sunday – August 3, 2014 Download / Print
1 John 2:4-5
“The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected.”
Judas knew Christ. Lots of unbelieving scholars today know more about Christ than many Christians. There must be a different kind of knowledge than merely factual or technical knowledge. The Lord said in Hosea 4:1–2, “There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and committing adultery.” So Hosea has the same view of knowing God that John has: there can’t be knowledge of God where there is persistence in sin.
When a soldier comes back from combat, he may say to those who stayed at home, “You don’t know what war is like.” He means, “There is a knowledge that only comes from experience. There is a knowing that only comes from taking a reality into yourself and tasting it fully.” So here John not only says that this disobedient person does not know God; He goes on to say, “The truth is not in him.” This is why his knowledge is not knowledge. He carries it on the surface, but it has never sunk in. He has never tasted the truth he mouths so easily. So the knowledge John has in view is an experience of Christ and God the Father in which they are taken into the depths of our life and change the way we live.
John’s whole case hangs on the certainty that knowing God produces obedience. If a person could know God and still live in disobedience, then John could not say to this disobedient man in Verse 4 that he is a liar when he claims to know God. So how does this knowledge guarantee obedience? 1 John 4:16 says, “So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love.” To know the love God has for you means to trust it. For John it is unthinkable that a person could know the love of God and not trust the love of God. Not to trust it must mean that you don’t think it is really love. All John can say to someone who will not entrust themselves to the omnipotent love of God is: You can’t know it or you would trust it.
So when God commands you to do something and you ignore it or go against it, John can only conclude one thing: You don’t believe that God is love. For if you believed that God is love, then you would believe that all his commandments were the very best thing for you and you would follow them. When you turn away from the commandments of God, you say in effect, a loving God wouldn’t command me to do that. And so our disobedience displays our lack of trust in the love God has for us. And sadly, it confirms we do not know God.