In this part of his Epistle, John is assuring Christians that we have God’s grace and love through faith, and that we mustn’t let the devil trick us into thinking that if we sin, we have fallen from that grace. Remember that your sins were paid for by Jesus on the cross. Through Jesus, your heart and your conscience are clear.
21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.
The context of the Christian heart is forgiveness. And a believing heart will not ask God in prayer for anything that isn’t in step with his will. God’s will is always that we have what is best for us, and although that can be and is tainted by our sins or by the sins of other people, we still look to his will to guide us.
The next verse can be misunderstood even by a seasoned theologian, and I beg your pardon to talk about it in terms of John’s original Greek text:
23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.
In the Greek language as in English, there is a subjunctive mood. The subjunctive expresses a possibility or a wish, and is common in phrases like “God bless you,” “If I were a rich man,” “if need be,” etc. There are two subjunctives in this verse. The first is “believe…” and the second is “love…” But there is a difference between the two.
If there were no difference at all, we might be led to think that “to believe” (to have faith) is a labor we perform all the time, and that faith itself is something accomplished by the believer. We might think that faith is a good work we perform to get into heaven. But that’s not what the rest of the Bible says. For example, in Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul clearly calls faith “the gift of God” and that we are not at all saved “by works, so that no one can boast.”
Here, the difference isn’t in the Greek subjunctive mood, but in the tense of the two verbs. The second verb, “love…” (Greek ἀγαπῶμεν, agapomen) is present tense, which here indicates a continuous, lifelong activity of loving one another and showing that love. However, the first verb, “believe…” (Greek πιστεύσωμεν, pisteusomen) is the Greek aorist tense, which simply shows an action as being a fact some time in the past. In other words, John is telling us that the will of God is that we come to faith (which we know is a gift from God) and then that we show that faith throughout our lives with our love for one another and our love for God. John will expand on these two ideas in the first half of chapter 4.
24 Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. (NIV)
John finishes this chapter by showing us that it isn’t just faith which is a gift, but the Holy Spirit himself, who is “the Spirit he gave us.” The Holy Spirit enters into our hearts through baptism, through which we also receive the forgiveness of our sins, we are brought to faith in Christ, and we are renewed as God’s children and made heirs of eternal life. The simple act of applying water along with the word of God does all of this, as Paul says so perfectly: “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom we poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5-7).
Baptism comforts us because it assures us that we are born again as justified, forgiven children of God, and that we are heirs of eternal life. That wonderful knowledge makes us want to serve our God, and show our love for him with our lives and our love.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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