1 John 5:13-15
13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
Jesus Loves Me, This I Know
Can you finish this sentence: “Jesus love me, this I ____.”
Jesus Loves Me is one of the most popular Christian songs of the last 160 years. It was written all the way back in 1860 by Anna Bartlett Warner and has been sung in Christian homes, by Christian children, ever since. It’s Hymn 584 in our hymnal, in case you were wondering.
I think the thing that makes Jesus Loves Me so powerful and popular is that it expresses such a simple and yet still very strong confidence in the love of Jesus. Miss Warner didn’t write, “Jesus loves me, this I think.” She didn’t write, “Jesus loves me, this I hope/wish.” She wrote, “Jesus loves me, this I know.”
Would you rather hope that you’ll have chicken wings for dinner tonight, or know that you will? I know that I’m going to have chicken wings tonight, and that makes me so much happier than if I just hoped we would. Would you rather wish that your mother would get better and come home from the hospital, or know that she will? Of course, you’d rather know!
There is certainty with knowledge. Knowledge can give you conviction and courage and confidence. Knowledge can empower and embolden you. But it all depends on what you know. Today, I want to look at the three verses of our second reading from 1 John 5. Three times in those three verses the Apostle John uses the word “know,” and each time he tells us a truth that empowers, a truth that gives us confidence and courage and conviction. First, John says:
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.[1]
If you are a Christian, chances are that this statement seems pretty basic to you. But, even if you are a Christian, the thing you have to remember is how rare this kind of faith is and how profound its promise is.
John was writing this letter at a time when Jesus was not universally regarded as the Son of God, even in Christian circles. In fact, there was a group of Christians in John’s day who were very enthusiastically suggesting that Jesus was just a man. He was inspired by God. He was blessed by God. He was God’s chosen spokesman. But he was just another man.
What would that do to your faith, if you didn’t know for a fact that Jesus was the Son of God? If Jesus was just human like you and me, then he would be sinful like you and me. He would be capable of error and mistake. We couldn’t trust him when he says, “I tell you the truth…” We would have to corroborate his claims with what other people said, and maybe correct him if other people seemed to contradict him.
Worst of all, though, if Jesus were just a sinful, error-prone human like you and me, then what would that mean about his death on the cross? If Jesus were just a human, his death might have been symbolic; it might have been a martyrdom that inspired other people to do something, but Jesus’ death itself wouldn’t have accomplished anything.
But if Jesus really is the Son of God – as he claims and as you believe – then that changes everything. Then we can trust him and believe what he tells us, but even more than that, it would mean that his death on the cross is far more than symbolic; it did actually accomplish something. John tells us what that “something” is:
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.[2]
This is God’s promise to you. This is what God wants you to know – not to think or wish or hope. He wants you to know that you have eternal life. And notice the way John puts it, “…that you have eternal life,” not that you will have eternal life – not that you could have eternal life if you live this life right, not even that you have to wait for Judgment Day to receive it – but that it is yours right now.
Your eternal life has already begun! The moment you believed in Jesus you received a life that will never end. Because of his sacrifice on a cross 2,000 years ago, you will live with him forever in heaven. Your life will never truly end even though you may die. That is a certainty and a confidence that God wants you to know in your heart.
It is also a truth that the devil wants you to doubt. There are events in our lives and voices in our minds that make us question even a fundamental Christian truth like this.
You attend the funeral of a family member and see their lifeless body in the casket or a box of ash on a stand and you wonder, “What happened? Where did they go? What happens after death?” You go to school or you listen to most of the voices in society and you’ll hear a lot of people believe that this life is it; when you die, it just fades to black. You might even hear some of your friends scoff and make fun of you for believing in life after death – as if you are a child believing in fairy tales. They want you to believe that it’s a waste of time to think about the afterlife. You should be focusing your attention on this one.
And that’s true, to a degree. We don’t want to be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. But the promise of having eternal life even now drastically effects the way we live this life. If I know that I have eternal life, then that makes me just a little less afraid of the things that threaten my life.
A pastor in Milwaukee just a few years older than me died this week on his morning commute into the office. Life can be cut short in a second. We are not guaranteed anything. And yet, because I know that I have eternal life in Jesus, I won’t be disappointed if my race ends early or if a family member’s does, because they’ll be in heaven where someday we will not only be reunited, but we will live with our God in safety and peace forever.
If I know that I have eternal life, then that makes me just a little less afraid of the things that threaten to make my life less enjoyable. Sickness and disease are temporary – a tiny, infinitesimal fraction of our eternal timeline. Discomfort and depression are too, and so are poverty and pain and problems, socially, physically, emotionally. Because I know that I have eternal life in Jesus, there’s light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dark it may be today.
It's such a simple sentence and one that we could gloss over in a second, but it’s also a truth that we will know and we will enjoy forever:
I write these things… so that you may know that you have eternal life.[3]
John’s next two “know” statements are related:
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.[4]
If it wasn’t enough to know that you have eternal life, Jesus also gives you the confidence to know that God hears you when you pray now and to know that he gives you whatever you ask according to his will.
Does this mean that we should stop our service right here and all pray to become billionaires and that God promises to make it happen? Does this mean that all we have to do is to name what we want and claim it in prayer and God will be compelled to give it to us?
At first glance it might feel that way, but that’s not quite the promise God gives you here. He says, “if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”[5] In other words, if we ask for something that God wants, then he will give it to us. The trick is knowing what God wants.
Christians can spend their whole lives searching out God’s will for specific situations in their lives. Whom should I date/marry? What career path should I choose? Which house should I buy? What medical decision do I make? The problem is that God never answers those questions specifically.
You can flip through every page of the Bible, but you will never find a passage that tells you specifically who to marry. You can analyze every sentence, but you will never find a hidden message that tells you the secret to financial success.
What you will find, though, if you read every page of the Bible, is the kind of person you should marry and the kind of person you should be in your marriage. What you will learn, if you analyze ever sentence, is the secret to contentment regardless of the balance of your bank account.
God may never give us specific answer for the specific circumstances of our lives, but he does give us guidelines and parameters; he does give us direction and tells us what not to do. And he promises here that he will not withhold any good thing we ask for according to his will. To put it another way, God will always give you everything you pray for that he knows is for your good.
So, when I’m worried about the kinds of things that could threaten my life or threaten to make my life less enjoyable, not only do I have the promise of eternal life, I have the promise that God is listening and that he cares about what I’m going through right now and that I can turn to him in prayer and know that he will give me exactly what is best for me in that moment.
There are so many things in this life that we do not know. There are so many reasons to be afraid or anxious or apprehensive. John gives you three reasons to be courageous, convicted and confident: you know that you have eternal life, you know that God hears you when you pray, you know that God gives you whatever you ask according to his will.
So seek out God’s will in his Word. Accept his invitation and pray, about anything and everything. But above all, believe in the name of the Son of God and know – don’t wish, don’t hope, know – that Jesus loves you and he always will. Amen.
[1] 1 John 5:13
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] 1 John 5:14,15
[5] 1 John 5:14