Safe in the Arms of Jesus
There is a qualitative difference in one who has been claimed by the faith, by the Spirit. God’s love looks like something; faith looks like something. There is a qualitative difference. “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin” (5:18). One claimed by the faith, the love of God, does not live the way he or she used to, devotedly pursuing his or her darknesses. English evangelical pastor and theologian John Stott says it is “not that [the Christian] cannot ever slip into acts of sin, but rather that he does not persist in it habitually or ‘live in sin’ [. . . .] The new birth results in new behaviour.”[1] The transformation is not entire all at once. It’s slow, we know, and not without trials, temptations, and setbacks, but the transformation is sure because God is in it. Sin happens, yet we’ve been caught up in grace; we’re being purified for glory.
This is the assurance John wants us to receive: “the One who was born of God keeps [those born of God] safe, and the evil one cannot harm them” (5:18). The “One who was born of God”—John means our Savior and Lord, who keeps us safe, safe in the arms of Jesus, as sings that old hymn my grandmother loved. Secure. I shall not be moved: who can pry me out of the arms of Jesus? Stott reminds us, “the truth here taught is not that the Christian keeps himself but that Christ keeps him.”[2] The Lord is my shepherd. Safe in the arms of Jesus. From this table we have this assurance. We hold the bread. We hold the cup, yet they hold us; Jesus holds us, and we are safe: this is the mystery of the Sacrament, the spiritual blessing of Christ’s gift.
What has this letter of John been about? Over these several weeks since our glorious celebration of the resurrection of Christ, I’ve spoken of our purifying fellowship, the call to a life of obedience—the life of Christ; I’ve spoken of life as the imitation of Christ, and of how we are called in Christ to reject the ways of this fallen world, no matter how liberating and compassionate the world wants to convince us its ways are. They are not. They are ways of darkness that lead along paths of darkness; all darkness leads to death.
The darkness of which I have been speaking, of which John writes, is the darkness of the darkened heart. God is light, and He will enlighten our hearts. Enlightened hearts produce enlightened minds, but this enlightenment is not the triumph of Reason over Superstition or Sectarian Dogma, but of God over sin, in Jesus Christ, in us, by the Holy Spirit. John has written to assure us of God’s sure victory in those He has claimed; we shall not be moved. John writes so that we can have full assurance that God has claimed us. Our belief that Jesus Christ is the only begotten, eternal Son of God is assurance. Our love for one another is assurance. Our ongoing, growing rejection of the ways of this fallen world in favor of God’s purifying way in our hearts is assurance. Truly, we are being purified for glory.
His assurance is also here for us this morning, awaiting us, calling us in bread and juice: reminders and signs of Christ’s body and blood, his willing sacrifice of his life to give us life, to cleanse us, to claim us in covenant, so that, in him and only in him, we are indeed children of God. “We know that we are children of God,” John writes, “and [we know] that the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (5:19). The evil one cannot harm those safe in the arms of Jesus (5:18). We shall not be moved, removed, from the love of God.
Oh, we’re hurt in this world, beloved; John knows all about it—he experienced it! He watched Jesus experience it, as John stood near the cross, feeling so helpless and lost, but also found, and loved. Oh, he saw the hurt, heard it, never to be forgotten! “[T]he whole world is under the control of the evil one.” Overstatement? Exaggeration? Is that supposed to make us afraid? John wants to speak the truth and have us hear and receive the truth. This earth is filled with wonders and beauties; this earth still testifies to the power, love, and grace of God—but brokenly, stammeringly, haltingly.
Out in the wastelands, the Tempter “led [Jesus] up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And [the Tempter] said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours’” (Lk 4:5-7). The father of lies does not always lie. The whole world is subject to the evil one; it’s not just John who says so; the evil one himself says so. Authority and splendor—but there is a greater authority, sisters and brothers, and there is, I assure you, a greater splendor awaiting those who wait for God.
As John portrays the matter, “[the world] is not represented as struggling actively to be free but as quietly lying, perhaps even unconsciously asleep, in the arms of Satan.”[3] Sleepers, awake, is not first of all a resurrection call; it is a call to changed life, wakefulness, repentance. To repent is to desire the way God shows. God has enabled you to see and feel God’s way for what it is: love, truth, grace, light, life. To repent is to want to reject the fallen ways of the darkened world, the fallen ways of darkened hearts; this desire also comes from God. “World” all along has meant the human heart. The heart has been fallen a long time, almost from the very beginning. The heart is so accustomed to darkness, its native fallenness, that God’s call back to the heart’s first love, its first life, sounds alien, undesirable, unpleasant. It’s difficult to be different, not only because of the hostility we encounter out there, but also because of the deep reluctance and stubborn resentment we still encounter, in here.
Control of the world has been given to the Evil One; it does not originate with him. This control is for a time; behind it, above it, is a greater purpose far beyond his reach or power. He can hurt us—he does, in this life, yet he cannot harm us: we are safe in the arms of Jesus. God is calling His people to Himself out of the world, out of the grip of the Evil One and every evil power. God calls us into His wide-armed love for us. We are safe, truly safe, in those arms.
John writes much about what we in Christ know. He wants us to know we truly do know. We struggle, stumble; we fear. John offers knowledge for our assurance, for confidence. When we do not know, we are not confident. Knowing is not a matter of the head, in this case, but a matter of the heart. What assures the heart? What calms the heart? Confidence comes with faith, opening us to the truth of God’s love. John adds, “We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true” (5:20). He has come. He has died. He has risen. He is at the right hand of the Father, praying for us. With your heart, see, hear Jesus praying for you, for your loved ones, for us all! What the Son asks of the Father, the Father does for the Son, whom He loves. As we receive this bread and juice, this broken body, this blood shed for us, freely, willingly, Christ prays for us. He prays that this Communion would have good effect in us for progress in faith, progress in love. William Barclay rightly pointed out, “Christianity is progress in love.”
Jesus wants us to know the Father: he who is true invites us into communion, koinonia, this blessed, purifying fellowship, with Him who truly is. We know the Father when we know Jesus. We know God when we understand the truth of the human situation, the truth about the world, and the truth about God. People long for an experience of the transcendent, something so much higher, deeper than themselves. We understand this is an experience of God, to be in God. How are we in God? John tells us, “we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” (5:20). “Without [the Son],” Stott adds, “we could neither know God nor overcome sin.”[4] We wouldn’t want to. To want this bread and this juice is to want to know God, to want to be in God, to want to be in Christ. To want to know God is to want to overcome sin, including the sin we are so reluctant to name, the sin we don’t want to name sin. You do not overcome your sin; I do not overcome my sin. You and I do not overcome sin: God overcomes sin, through Jesus Christ, among us, within us, through us, the Church, together.
Be in Christ; Christ here invites you, each of you, all of you, to have him in you, not by a taste of bread or a sip of juice, but by the faith that causes this bread and this juice to be Christ in you, with you, for you. The believers to whom John was writing had gone through a time of painful division that had left them shaken, sad, confused, and in great need of great healing. The Church today finds itself in a time of painful division that can leave us feeling shaken, sad, confused, and in great need of great healing. Beloved, what greater healing is there than that offered to us freely from this table?
“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols” (5:21). Idolatry was all around those believers as the social and cultural norm. As for our times? John is not introducing a new subject in his last sentence; in this one word, idols, he sums up all he has been warning us about: false belief, false righteousness, false love. Stott quotes a fellow student of the Bible, who suggests that John is saying “Do not abandon the real for the illusory.”[5] People are very susceptible to the illusory, our virtual realities, wish realities where we can have God and our sin: the fawning falsehoods that promise to fulfill our fallen hearts. Reality, Truth, is harder to find, to hold; the Good News is that Truth finds us; we are held, safe, in the arms of Jesus.
Now, to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.
[1] J. R. W. Stott. Epistles of John. Tyndale NT Commentaries. London: Tyndale, 1964. 192.
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