Putnam Church Message – 11/02/2025

Last week, we continued through the letter of 1 John and explored how to have “A Confident Life: Believers, Overcomers, and Witnesses.”

This week, we will be exploring the final message in the letter of 1 John and exploring how to have “A Confident Life: Absolute Assurance” from 1 John 5:13-21 in the NIV, found on page 1903 of your Pew Bibles.

I read a story of two young men who grew up in the Northwest. Whenever they reach critical moments in their lives, they read letters written by their mother—letters in her familiar handwriting, sent to encourage and exhort her boys as they grow from childhood to manhood. Letters written for birthdays, for Christmas, for graduation from high school. To these boys, those letters from Mom are expressions of her endearing and enduring love. They are frameable.

Why do these sons hold these letters from Mom so dear? Because their mother died of cancer years earlier, when they were very young. The disease was taking its toll on her day after day, but instead of lying there wasting away, she spent her time writing letters to her two boys to be delivered to them at specific times in their lives. And on these occasions, the boys’ father would deliver the letters. They would hear from their mother, in her own words —words of endearing and enduring love.

Similarly, the apostle John has left all of God’s spiritual children a frameable letter—a letter of endearing and enduring love. A letter of encouragement and exhortation. A letter of warning and instruction. A letter of absolute assurance. This letter, 1 John, has been preserved for us through the centuries. It’s a simple, straightforward, but profound and practical, letter of love.

John ended the previous section with great words of assurance: And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. (1 Jn. 5:11–12). In 5:13, he concludes his letter with another pointed assurance worth remembering. John presents the purpose of this endearing and enduring letter to his readers in clear terms. He wrote I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life. (5:13). This assurance of the present possession of eternal life is limited, /though, /to those “who believe in the name of the Son of God.” Those who have placed their faith in Christ’s person and work alone can know that they have eternal life. Assurance of salvation is not only possible; it’s part of the gift of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

The verb translated as “know” (oida) appears in 1 John a total of 15 times. Almost half of these occurrences are concentrated in this final section. It’s evident that, as John concludes this letter, he wants to impart stable knowledge to his readers, providing them with a basis for confident assurance. What does he want them to know? (Bulletin)

Note that many of these things touch on themes John has already visited—and revisited—previously in his letter. But John wants to leave his readers with a powerful reminder of assurance so that we can grow in confidence in matters concerning our relationship with Christ. We maintain this confidence through constant reminders. As we walk through 5:14–21, let’s take a closer look at the things—in addition to eternal life—that John wants us to know.

John wants us to know that we can receive what we ask of God through prayer. We need to be careful here because John frames this statement in a particular theological and biblical context. Prayer is not wishful thinking, hoping against hope, dreaming big, or desiring to fulfill the longing of the flesh. God’s not a heavenly genie who operates at our beck and call, and prayer isn’t the Christian method of rubbing the lamp to get God’s attention. We must never fall into the unspiritual and dangerous trap of regarding prayer as a convenient means of imposing our will on God or bending His will to our will. Rather, prayer is a means of submitting our will to His. So, every true prayer is a variation of the theme, “Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” (see Luke 22:42).

In all cases, God holds the outcome of the prayer in His hands and answers it according to His plan and purpose—always for His glory and our good. Remember Hebrews 4:16: “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.” We don’t come groveling, pleading, begging, or bargaining. Entering His presence boldly, but with proper humility, we acknowledge that He has the power to give us what we ask … but also the right to answer however He pleases. And we know that, however He answers—“Yes,” “No,” “Wait,” or “Here’s something better”—And we know that God causes everything to work together[a] for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. (Rom. 8:28).

So, we approach Him with confidence according to His will. Not our will, His will. Of course, this means we need to be saturated with His Word to know His will. I’m convinced that this is why mature believers who have experienced a lifetime of learning and submitting to God’s>will can be such powerful prayer warriors. They know what to ask for. They know how to ask for it. They know—with the confidence that comes from knowing God’s will—that He hears them (1 Jn. 5:15). And if He hears them, they know they will receive what they ask from Him.

Because we can’t always know what God’s will might be or what answer He has in store for us in His own time, we need to be careful about expecting God to do things just because we ask Him. God never promised to make us rich. Or to move in our boss’s heart to give us a promotion. Or to heal us of our bodily infirmities. Or to take away this or that particular trial or tribulation. Because God has not explicitly revealed His will in these matters, we would overstep our bounds to “claim” them as answered according to our own will. Never promise somebody else that their prayers or your prayers will bring about something God has not specifically promised.

John underscores this fact in 5:16-17, in which he refers to two kinds of sins—“a sin not leading to death” and “a sin leading to death.” For the former type of sin, prayer on a person’s behalf is entirely appropriate and will result in God’s healing and forgiveness. For the second kind of sin, prayer on a person’s behalf will be ineffectual. This much is clear from the text: For some things, prayer is according to God’s will, but for other things, it’s not.

But what, exactly, does John mean by “a sin that leads to death” and “sinning in a way that does not lead to death”? To what sin, specifically, is he referring? Is it a single sin? Or a category of sins? And what kind of “death” is this? Physical death? Spiritual death?

I have racked my brain for years over these two verses. Though I may not be able to untie this knot of a passage completely, let me offer a few comments that at least might help loosen it a bit.

First, we need to determine whether John was referring to a specific sin … or to a type of sin … or to a certain duration of sin. If this is a specific sin, it could be a reference to what Jesus said in Mark 3:29 Anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences. I have concluded that this is someone who knowingly rejects Christ as the incarnate Son of God and refuses to listen to the Holy Spirit's prompting to salvation and has committed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

However, it is equally plausible that John was referring not to a specific kind or quality of sin, but to a situation in which a person’s persistent sin ultimately results in their being punished by physical death as judgment from the Lord. We see examples of this in the New Testament, as in the cases of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) and those in Corinth who were judged with physical death because they sinned against the corporate body of Christ in mistreating the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:27-30). James may also allude to this kind of scenario in James 5:14-16: Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.

Suppose John had in mind a similar situation in 1 John 5:16-17, in which a person presumed to be a believer is not just sick but is actually judged with physical death for their sin. In that case, John is simply saying that after a person has died, there is no need to pray for that person. This would call into question the Roman Catholic doctrine of prayers on behalf of the dead or any opportunity for repentance or forgiveness after death. A person may be prayed for all the way up to their death, but “And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27).

This discussion has only scratched the surface. I agree with commentators who suggest the key to unlocking this riddle was likely lost in the first century with John and his original readers, who may have had a clearer understanding of what John was writing about. However, let’s not lose sight of the big picture: Praying according to God’s revealed will is effective. We can have absolute confidence that He hears us.

John returns to his assertion that those who are truly born again do not live in perpetual sin (1 Jn. 5:18). I understand the present tense of the verb “to sin” as a reference to continuous action, emphasizing the person’s lifestyle. It doesn’t mean that we never slip into acts of sin (see 1:8–10). It means that we don’t permanently persist in sin. Thus, John is simply reiterating the teaching from 3:9: Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life[a] is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God.

As harsh as it may sound, the implication of John’s teaching here is that we can know with a fair amount of assurance that if a person’s lifestyle—start to finish, dawn to dusk, day in and day out, month after month—is characterized by stubborn wickedness, that person is not truly born again. Habitual, unrepentant sin and the new birth are incompatible.

John explains why a truly saved person cannot continuously sin: because “We know that God’s children do not make a practice of sinning, for God’s Son holds them securely, and the evil one cannot touch them.” (5:18). Those who God’s Son holds securely are freed from the domain of death, We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one. (5:19). If a person is genuinely born of God, Satan has no power over them. We are children of God,”—we are ultimately able to keep the saved child of God out of the grip of the devil. How? As John has said before, “You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.” (4:4).

The last thing John says is that we know that the Son of God has come, and he has given us understanding so that we can know the true God (5:20). This line sums up so much of what John has been teaching throughout the letter—our union with God through an intimate knowledge of Him, and Jesus’>true identity as the God-man who has come to earth as our Savior. John then says, He is the only true God, and he is eternal life. (5:20).

Anything else we might be tempted to rely upon for our salvation is an idol. It may be a different “Jesus” other than the God-man. It may be a different “gospel” other than the atoning death and resurrection of Christ. It may be a different means of salvation other than by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Anything we might conjure up ourselves that replaces “the only true God, and he is eternal life.” is an idol.

 

Thus, John leaves his readers with this final warning: Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts (5:21). Idols can be anything in our hearts, minds, or lives that we elevate above the living God:

 

For those of us who have absolute assurance of our salvation, Christ and Christ alone should be the object of our priorities, passions, and pursuits. All other things must take second place to an intimate, obedient, and loving communion with Him. Such fellowship with the Father, through the Son and by the Holy Spirit, will result in a confident life.

Before we turn the page on 1 John, let’s pause, step back, and take one last look at the letter as a whole to reflect on the journey we’ve taken. In so doing, we’ll glean some final practical applications. Remember that John wrote this letter to remind his readers that Spirit-enabled fellowship with the Father and Son produces a joyful life (1:1–10), a clean life (