First John

I John 2:24-29, Christ and God

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: I John 2:24-29, Christ and God.

Genre: Sermon

Lesson: 6 of 16

Track: #6

Year:

Dictation Name: RR308C6

[Speaker] Let us worship God. Oh Lord open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise, for Thy desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offering, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart oh God Thou wilt not despise. Let us pray.

Our most good and glorious and God and heavenly Father we praise you for all good things that we enjoy. We thank you for your salvation that we enjoy because of your Son Jesus Christ. It is by Him and through Him that we have fellowship with You, and He is the focus and the meaning of history, and of our lives and of all eternity. We praise you for your grace to us in bestowing this undeserved grace upon us. We thank you that it brings us together, it gives us a community of faith far stronger than any other ties that will bind us, for they bind us for all eternity, we thank You for the meaning it gives to our lives, the direction, the purpose, that it gives to them, we thank You for the fulfillment that it gives to us. We pray that You would help us to live our life in terms of our faith, give us a greater understanding of our faith and our role in terms of what we know and what we believe. We pray that you would encourage us this day, and this coming week, we thank You for the opportunity we have to rest from our labors secure in the knowledge that You care for us far more than we care for ourselves. We pray that you would encourage us in our families, we pray that You would encourage us in our effort to keep our loved ones close to You, and in a covenant walk with You, we pray that You would encourage us in our vocations, give us a sense of purpose and fulfillment in doing things as to the Lord. We pray that You would encourage us in this situation of the world around us, help us to understand that by living for you, and for standing for your righteousness in our own life, in our own callings, in our own churches, communities, that we stand for your kingdom. Help us not to be discouraged by the evil that we see about us. Bless now this time we have together in Your word, and may it strengthen us in grace and in our understanding of our responsibility to You, we ask this in Jesus, our Savior’s name, amen.

The scripture for this morning’s sermon is First John, chapter 2, verses 24-29. I John, chapter 2, verses 24-29, and the title of the sermon is “Christ and God.”

“24 Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.

25 And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.

26 These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you.

27 But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

28 And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming.

29 If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.”

[Rushdoony] As we have already seen in part, John deals extensively with the doctrine of Christ, who is He? Now over the centuries that has been the question least faced sometimes by the church, but the problem is that trinitarianism requires us to believe in the full equality and oneness of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. And yet it is common place in all those areas, all those theological positions, to say “we do believe in Jesus Christ, we are Trinitarian” But in practical thinking they will give Jesus a lower place, and yet the stipulation scripture makes, and about which John is very emphatic, is thoroughly Trinitarian. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three persons, one God, and all are equal the one to the other, while different. If we begin to weaken the doctrine of Christ we soon lose our trinitarianism and our Christianity because dramatically weaker.

Now, with all the churches currently claiming to be Bible believing and thoroughly Trinitarian in their Christology, with all such churches, Catholic and Protestant, in actual practice such a belief is on the side of scarcity; and the result is that today Christianity is a fading religion. Fading even though it claims to be growing, and is from a point of view. I was discussing with Mark an interesting fact today, in San Francisco some years ago the churches were meeting every year at Easter time, sunrise Easter, at mount Davidson. And because it was so widely a popular thing the city allowed the churches to build a huge cross, which can be seen in various parts of the city. But what happened a few years ago was that the ungodly felt that it was an establishment of religion to have that cross and the whole thing was about to be destroyed when the church of Armenian purchased the property and the cross continued. But what is happening is that less and less is there any mention of it at Easter time in the media.

Now, I bring that up because there are supposedly more evangelicals now then when the cross was built, but what’s the difference? They don’t know their Bible, they believe in Jesus Christ, if you say He is the Son of God and that a full equality of all three persons in the trinity, they will assent without knowing what they are assenting to. The doctrinal element in Christianity grows weaker and weaker. Well, we are not line with the Biblical faith if Jesus Christ is not very God of very God and very man of very man, if He is not truly and fully God as well as being truly and fully human. This is why John begins this text by saying “24 Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.” From the very beginning the faith taught to you, the earliest of Christians, has been that Jesus Christ is very God of very God as well as very man of very man. If you abide in that faith then you are truly Christian, he says, then you are truly in the Father and in the Son, then you truly have the Holy Spirit.

“25 And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.” God is eternal, we are not. But if we truly believe in Jesus Christ we have the promise even of eternal life. This is by God’s grace, not a natural fact. The Bible does not speak, except with reference to God, about the immortality of man. In fact it tells us that God alone hath immortality dwelling in light unapproachable. We don’t have it, we live, we die. We have life after death eternally by God’s grace because we are in Christ.

“These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you.” Those who are the most seductive, John says, are not the ungodly, but those who present you with a false doctrine of Christ. How many of the churches in California and the United States call themselves Christians, and are Modernists? And how many call themselves evangelical, or fundamental, or reformed, and yet their doctrine of Christ is a rather subordinate one. They have a form of Godliness, we are told, but they lack the power thereof.

“27 But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing” Well if you believe Him to be the very God of very God that scripture teaches, you shall abide in him forever. Naturally we do not abide in God, naturally we do not have eternal life, naturally we are sinners. But super naturally the contrary becomes true of us, because we are in Christ we are a privileged people, and we are in Christ when we know Him to be God our creator. That it was God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, that in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, that in the beginning was the word and the word was God.

And so, we are told:“28 And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming.” Little children, that seems strange to us and in fact it does, because it is a Biblical usage that has fallen out of use. It does not mean of course, as we have already seen, that we are children not yet of age; it does mean that we are children and not mature until we fully see Jesus Christ as very God of very God, until we fully understand that the mature faith is one of an acceptance that when we turn to Jesus we are dealing with God incarnate. This is not an intellectual attainment, it is a matter of belief, of knowing. There’s so much we know that we cannot explain. Supremely we know that Jesus Christ is God the Son, we cannot explain it, but we shall not be ashamed before Him at His coming. We fully know how little we know about the Bible, although we have read it from cover to cover. We fully know how hard it is for us to comprehend the vast body of knowledge in scripture, but we know that we shall not be ashamed before Him at His coming. Because, we say, “I don’t know why it is so, I don’t understand all the aspects of the Godhead, but I do know that Jesus Christ my Savior is not only truly man, but truly, fully, completely, equally, with the Father, God.

“9 If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.” If when you look at the Jesus of scripture you know Him to be the very righteous God, the incarnation of Righteousness. Now there’s a difference we can say of one of us “he is a good man or a good women” But of Jesus Christ He is God and therefore He is goodness, righteousness, incarnate. “Then if ye know that He is righteous, ye know that ever one that doeth righteousness is born of Him” We are now a new creation in Christ. We do righteousness because we are born of Jesus Christ, therefore we are a new creation. Old things are passed away, all things are become new, and we have the privilege of living with Him eternally. Let us pray.

Our God we thank Thee for the Glory and majesty of Thy word. We thank Thee that by Thy grace we are Thine, not by our wisdom, not by our works or righteousness, but by Thy mercy and grace. We pray our Father that day by day Thou wouldst watch over us and sustain us in all our ways. Bless us and our loved ones, in Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Well if there are no questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father how great and marvelous art Thou, and how great and marvelous are all Thy ways. We know how great is Thy mercy to us, that we who cannot comprehend the majesty and glory of Thy word and of Thy being, still can know these things, know them in all our being, because of Thy mercy and grace. Make us strong in Thy service, joyful in Thy providence and in all things at peace because of Thee. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.