Confidence Before God (1 John 5:13–15) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

The word confidence shows up in regular conversation. With the football season approaching, coaches will talk about certain players, musing, ‘We’ve got a lot of confidence in Joe that he will perform well for us.’ By that he means, we’ve worked Joe a lot at his position and we really hope that he comes through, but who knows if he will!

Other times we hear someone trying to bolster a student or musician as they prepare for a test or a concert, ‘Come on! Be confident! I know that you can do it!’ What we mean is that you need to believe in yourself. You need to approach your task with the idea that you have prepared well and have the ability necessary to perform it.

Still other times we use confidence as a synonym for cockiness. With a bit of swagger, as I read one up-and-down athlete recently saying, ‘I have confidence that I can run a 4.3 forty.’ Even though he has not been clocked at that speed, he had enough swagger to claim that he could do it.

But that’s not how John uses the word confidence in this letter. There’s no bravado or cockiness or wishful thinking. In 1 John 3:21, we find an example similar to our text. “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” Then John moves forward with encouragement in prayer. So does he mean that if one’s heart doesn’t condemn him then he can approach God with swagger? Or that he has great confidence in his own abilities, so he can come before God with expectancy? Surely not.

This idea of confidence does convey boldness or an idea of a joyful heart instead of one sullen, withdrawn, and despairing [BDAG]. But that’s not found by looking inward and finding how much untapped ability lies waiting to spring forth before God. Instead, John sees confidence before God as the fruit of assurance of salvation. That’s why he spends so much time weaving and circling back to the necessity of assurance in relationship to God. If we lack assurance then we’re paralyzed in spiritual progress, prayer, witness, worship, fellowship, and battling sin. But assurance that we belong to Christ gives us confidence before God to live the Christian life with fullness. How does confidence with God change the way that we approach the Christian life? Let’s think about it.

1. Confidence with God flows out of assurance

John’s recipients felt the sting of lost confidence. That loss resulted from some, maybe a good number and maybe some quite popular, leaving their fellowship to embrace another teaching (2:19). Those that departed did so with swagger and confidence in their experiences (4:1–6). They lobbed verbal assaults and amplified innuendos at the church that they’d left, all in an attempt to crush their zeal and confidence with God.

So these believers struggled to move ahead and continue the race of the Christian life. At the root of their struggle was the assurance that they belonged to God through Christ. That struggle didn’t end in the first century. We face it today. What keeps us from assurance that we truly know Christ and the eternal life in Him?

Quite obviously, some have no assurance because they’re not born of God. That’s why John gives characteristics of the new birth: “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (4:7); “whoever believes [goes on believing] that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves [continues loving] the Father loves the child born of Him” (5:1); “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world” (5:4). Loving God and loving His children, believing Jesus Christ revealed in the gospel, and battling sin give evidence of the new birth. Absence of those characteristics gives reason for doubting.

Struggles with assurance

Generally, though, we struggle with assurance for a number of reasons. It may be that some particular sin has snared us and left us wondering how we could belong to Christ with that kind of grip by sin. Or there is a persistency in several s[...]