“Some useful tests”
Meditation – Monday, April 24, 2023
1 John 3:19-4:6 (Forward, p. 85) CEV p. 1288
I guess that it is probably fair to say that I am somewhat ‘addicted’ to murder mystery or police crime shows. And, what I find absolutely fascinating, especially in the more modern British series is the extremely large role that forensics or surveillance cameras play in getting to the bottom of seemingly unsolvable or intractable cases. In ‘the Bay’ or ‘Vera’ or ‘Sister Boniface Mysteries' it is often traces of blood or fibre samples or chemical analyses or camera footage that crack open the case. In each, the investigators rely on such tests, useful tests, to arrive at the facts or the truth of what happened.
In a sense, the apostle John is suggesting the very same idea in today’s Scripture passage. Here he mentions three ‘useful’ tests that his readers might employ:
a) The first is feelings. Three times in our first view verses he uses the phrase ‘we feel at ease’, at least in my present translation (CEV). He mentions a couple of benefits of this:
-we will have the courage to come near him;
-and, we will have confidence that He will answer our prayers (He will give us whatever we ask.) But then, he goes on to state the obvious, namely that our feelings can be quite unreliable, and that God is greater than our feelings. Nevertheless, he then states that there are certain things, actions on our parts, that can serve to back up our feelings:
-if we love others (in practice and not just in word, he later states);
-if we obey Him and do what pleases Him. That is, if we obey His commandments. (This way, we will stay one in our hearts with Him);
-if we have faith in God’s Son Jesus Christ.
b) The second reliable test is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
As he states in verse 24b, “The Spirit that he has given us is proof that we are one with him.” To my way of thinking, this suggests that there is some objective, some tangible way, of knowing that we have or don’t have the Spirit, and certainly the testimony of the early Church would affirm this. When Paul arrived in Ephesus and met some new believers there they were quite certain that they had not received the Holy Spirit (see Acts 19:1-7). (Obviously, there was some way of knowing one way or another.) And then there was the situation in Samaria earlier on. There was a host of new believers there, who believed and were baptized, but for some reason—and this, seemingly, was quite apparent, had not yet received the Holy Spirit, such that the apostles from Jerusalem had to come up and pray for them to receive this gift (see Acts 8:14-16). And so, what I am arguing for is some tangible way of knowing.
And even verse 4 backs this up. In the Contemporary English Version (CEV) it reads “God’s Spirit is you and is more powerful than the one that is in the world.” The NRSV makes this less definite in saying, ‘the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world’, but it still leaves an open question as to how they would know this as fact, as a reality, if not for some tangible evidence.
c) The third reliable test is whether the person accepts the truth about God, particularly the truth that God had come in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ--in other words, that Jesus had a truly human body. If people listen to us and agree with us, when we state this fact, then we can know that they are truly of God and know God.
Otherwise, they are of the world and are enemies of Christ.
So, as I came to the conclusion of my ‘time’ with this passage, I had to ask myself just what message the apostle John was intending to send to this group of believers. In answer to this, what came to me was they were somehow uncertain of where they stood with God, uncertain of their salvation, and so John wanted to bolster this, to prop this up a bit, with some ‘useful tests’. Their feelings, though helpful, weren’t that reliable, so they needed to check up on their actions and see if they indicated that they really did belong to God. Then, to see if there was really evidence of the Holy Spirit being alive in their lives and actively at work there. And then, to check if they were really living the truth of who Jesus is.
I think that these ‘tests’ are useful to all of us. Our feelings are certainly rather unreliable, being adversely affects from a whole range of things, from the weather to the current news to all sorts of other things. So, what are very good ‘backups’ are our behaviours (are we really trying to follow Christ and obey Him), the witness of the Spirit in our lives (this is something that I am very, very aware of), and our adherence to the truth about Jesus. In all these, we can have unflappable, unbeatable confidence in where we stand with God. Amen.
Forward notes: “The spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (verse 6b).
“I’m not one who enjoys admitting when I have made a mistake. I know I am prideful that way. I am trying to trust the Creator to guide me and help me get out of my own way, so I can more closely follow God’s will and not my own.
“But I have been guilty of holding onto things for too long, because I was sure that if I just tried hard enough, I could force things to work. Again, this is my own hubris. I have always hated the phrase, ‘Let go and let God,’ because I wanted to do things my way!
“Needless to say, my way was not always life-giving. When I stopped trying to force what I wanted and instead surrendered myself to what God wanted, things got easier, and my path became clearer. This is not to say there are no longer challenges, but when I recognized the spirit of truth, it made it clear that I had been operating in the spirit of error—not out of malice or intended disobedience but out of stubbornness. God never misleads us but will lead us into the spirit of truth if we allow it.”
Moving Forward: “How are you at letting go and letting God? What steps might you take to surrender to God’s desires for your life?”