John's Poem

Strong in the Lord
(1 John 2:13c-14, Preaching: Pastor Nathan Snyder, April 24, 2016)

I write to you, children, because you know the Father.  I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.  I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

In this letter John continually makes sharp contrasts between those who truly know Christ and those who do not.  There are those who have come into the light and those who remain in darkness.  The underlying premise from which John reasons is that “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” (1:5).  I know it is possible that a Christian who is discouraged by their own ongoing sinfulness could read some of John’s statements in this letter and despair, thinking “Clearly I remain in darkness and my faith in Christ is a sham.”  Yet John’s intent is not to tear down genuine believers and leave them hopeless.  Quite the contrary.  His purpose is to build us up.  At the end of the letter John explicitly states, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13).  John wants to make clear the marks of a true believer so that those that are believers would have a solid assurance that they are in fact children of God who possess eternal life in Christ.  Such assurance leads to greater power in the fight against sin, which is also a primary purpose in John’s writing this letter.  He says in 2:1, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.”  Sin is the enemy of love, and John strongly urges throughout this letter that believers love one another, because God our Father is love and has first loved us.

If John’s intent is to assure believers of their salvation so that they will have greater power to grow in holiness and love, then the last thing he wants is for a struggling Christian to hear or read his letter and despair.  John does want to disturb those trying to live with one foot in the light and one foot in the darkness.  But his main purpose is to strengthen believers in faith, hope, and love.  It is to this end that he writes the poem we see in 2:12-14.  John, with a pastor’s heart, expresses to his readers the motivation behind his letter.  His motivation is the glorious reality of what he knows to be true of his readers because they are in Christ by faith.  John’s poetic address to his readers comes in a pair of three parallel statements.  We have looked at the first set of three statements in detail over the past three Sundays.  Today we conclude our study of John’s poem by meditating on the second set of three statements.

Throughout these verses John addresses his readers with terms of affection and respect: children, fathers, and young men.  Pastor Steve has already talked in more detail about how we might interpret these three terms and why John directs certain statements to each group within the church.  I want to focus today on what I see as being in common between the reasons John gives to each group for why he is writing to them.  Each time, John says that he writes because… and then he states something that is already true for believers.  He never says he is writing so that these things might become true, but because they already are true.  Children, you know the Father.  Fathers, you know him who is from the beginning, referring to God’s Son (cf. 1:1-2).  Young men, you are strong, the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.  John knows these are true facts for believers and he writes because he wants Christians to have confidence that these things are true and as a result strive in that gospel confidence for greater obedience to God and love for each other.

At this point I should defend my statement that what John says to each group here is something that is true for all believers.  This is obviously true of what he says to children and fathers.  All true believers know the Father and the Son.  Yet is it also true of what he says to young men?  Are all believers strong?  Does the word of God abide in all believers?  Have all believers overcome the evil one?  Clearly Christians possess varying levels of strength when it comes to spiritual warfare and battling temptation.  Yet all believers have overcome the evil one in that they have come out of his kingdom and into the kingdom of Christ.  We may give into Satan’s temptations at times.  We may foolishly believe his lies and accusations at times.  Yet we no longer belong to him.  We still battle the devil, but our final victory is secured because in the most fundamental sense we have already overcome him.  And this is not in our own strength.  We have overcome through Christ who defeated Satan by his death and resurrection.  Thus John writes in 4:4, “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them [referring to the antichrist spirits behind false prophets], for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”  And in 5:18-19, “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.”  It is because we have overcome the evil one in Christ that we will finally win in our struggle with the temptations of the world.  John says in 5:4-5, “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.  And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.  Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”  Are you an embattled Christian?  Do you wonder whether you will have victory?  If you are in Christ, then the battle’s final outcome is secured because Jesus has already defeated the evil one.  You have therefore overcome him through your union with Christ.  We battle sin and temptation therefore from the position of victory, not from a position of defeat.

Now what does John mean when he says, “the word of God abides in you”?  By the word of God I believe he is specifically referring to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the message the apostles had preached, and Christians had received and believed (cf. 2:23-27 where John contrasts the truth which had been proclaimed about Christ with the lies of false teachers).  John likes to use the word “abide” and I take this to refer to the truth of the gospel taking up residence in one’s heart.  The truth about Jesus has become a wellspring of life inside a person as they live by faith in that word.  Again, this is true of every genuine child of God.  John wrote in part because false teachers were spreading false ideas about Jesus.  As a result of false teaching, some had even left the church (2:19).  John writes to those that remained because they were sticking with the truth.  He sees this as evidence of the genuineness of their relationship to Christ and he is urging them to continue in the truth.

So when John says to “young men” that the word of God abides in them and they have overcome the evil one, he is stating truths about them that really apply to all believers, just as all believers know the Father and the Son.  By extension, I think John’s statement that young men are “strong” is something that he could have said to all believers.  Why?  Because as weak as a Christian might be in many ways, every Christian’s real source of strength is not in themselves anyway but in Jesus.  Our strength is in the Lord and the strength of his might.  Greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.  John is writing to believers new and old, and he is writing to encourage us to press on his holiness and love with the confidence that we know the Father, that we know Jesus, that the word about Jesus has taken up residence in us, and that through Jesus we are strong and have overcome the evil one.  Do we battle sin?  Yes.  Do we battle weakness?  Yes.  Are we at war with the world, the flesh, and the devil?  Yes.  But the victory is already secured in Christ and thus we fight from a position of strength, not weakness.  O, our flesh is weak.  It always wants to pull us in the direction of sin and unbelief.  But if we are looking to Christ in faith, then we must not give in to discouragement, but press on in the Lord’s strength.

In pointing out that the truths John declares in this poem apply to all believers, I wouldn’t want to miss the fact that John has reason for saying specific things to “children”, to “fathers”, and to “young men”.  New believers, you need to know that you have come into God’s family now.  You know God as your Father and you are his beloved child.  Whatever life you have lived, that is who you are now.  Fathers and mothers in the faith, never forget that your maturity comes from your knowledge of Christ who is from the beginning.  Never try to grow beyond him, and always point younger believers to Christ.  He is your hope and he is theirs.  Young men and women in the faith, you need to know that you possess strength and victory in Christ through his abiding word.  So press on in in faith and ministry despite whatever obstacles you face.  All of us can press forward with hope of assured victory because we have already come to have God as our Father and Christ his Son has already won the decisive victory on our behalf.