Abiding in Love (1 John 4:15–21) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

The Apostle John treats assurance of salvation as a lively, conscious, and growing experience. He never looks at it as a decision that we make. Nor does he relegate assurance to reciting a prayer or raising a hand or making some kind of public decision to receive it.

He saw assurance of salvation as integral to our walk with Christ. Just as our walk is not static, neither is our assurance. It’s not a state of being but a lively experience of knowing Christ. While the believer’s walk goes through highs and lows, mountains and valleys, times of evident progress and times when progress seems to be a snail’s pace, assurance that we belong to God through Christ accompanies Christians to give encouragement to keep pressing on. If our assurance is lacking or diminished then it directly affects the way that we walk with Jesus.

In the letter’s setting, John writes on assurance due to everything appearing to come unglued around the Ephesian congregation. The group that had pulled away from the church likely claimed superior spiritual insight and better knowledge and even loftier experiences than those remaining in the church (1 John 2:19). Were they right? In that unsettling atmosphere, John takes the believers through a journey on assurance that we belong to Christ. They were despondent because of what happened and nothing could raise their hearts to keep pressing on more than the certainty that they belonged to Christ.

Here the Apostle doesn’t break new ground as much as he retraces what he’s written. Assurance of salvation grows in the love relationship with God and His people. How is that worked out into the realities of life? Let’s think about it.

I. Reiteration of the evidences of assurance

There are certain truths that we need to hold fast as we live out the Christian life. Instead of trying to come up with new methods for living as Christians, we’re to learn to remain steadfast in what God has spoken in His Word. These truths are plain.

1. Confession of Jesus

John writes, “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” Quite correctly, John Calvin notes, “Faith and confession are used indiscriminately in the same sense” [Calvin’s Commentaries, 22:244, italics original]. So they are interchangeable in John’s use. While I would add that the use of “confesses” might convey some kind of verbal agreement, such as openly declaring Jesus as Lord, yet even more, to confess something means to agree together. So what is the confession that we are we agreeing together? “That Jesus is the Son of God.” Does that mean that if someone just says those words, ‘Jesus is the Son of God,’ that there is a magical transference of divine power causing God to abide in him?

It seems that in the non-thinking, instant success mentality of our day, some would adhere to that kind of hocus-pocus version of Christianity. But confessing that Jesus is the Son of God means that we agree together with the apostolic declaration concerning Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

What did the apostles declare? John has just explained in verses 9, 10, and 14 the apostolic declaration that God manifested His love by sending His unique Son as the propitiation for our sins so that we might live through Him. And He did this to accomplish the far-reaching saving work as Savior of the world. To confess Him as the Son of God, we’re acknowledging that He is God, the second Person in the Godhead, who was sent by the Father to enter into the human race as a real person through the virgin’s womb. Living a sinless life, He went to the cross and took on Himself our condemnation and God’s judgment against us because of our sin. There He died, and in that death, He finished the saving act necessary to deliver us from judgment, atone for our sins, and bring us into relationship with God. His death became our death; His righteousness became our righteousness. Having satisfied et[...]