In John 8:29, Jesus said, “I always do what pleases my Father” – and because of it he could say with total confidence in John 11:42, “Father, I know you always hear me.” And it’s the same for us, as John wrote in 1 John 3:21-22, because we too can “have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” 

So, what obedience pleases God most? John answers that in verse 23: “And this is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as Jesus commanded.” 

First of all, then, it pleases God immensely when we believe in his Son, and specifically in his Son’s “name” – Jesus Christ. Because in that name we see what God so dearly loves about him. He is Jesus, “given that name” in Matthew 1:21, “because he will save his people from their sins” – the name Jesus meaning “God saves.”  

John then confirms that in 1 John 4:14, that “the Father sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world by his “atoning sacrifice” (2:2) “purifying us from every sin” (1:7). No wonder God loves his Son and wants us to believe in him as well, because Jesus totally lived up to his name.

He’s also named “the Christ” (2:22) – Christ meaning “the anointed one,” or “Messiah” in Hebrew. According to the woman at the well in John 4:25, “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. And when he comes he’ll explain everything to us.” John confirms that in 1 John 5:20, that the purpose of the Christ’s coming was to “give us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.” The truth of everything we need to know about “God and eternal life” (20), therefore, is what the Messiah was sent by God to reveal, which Jesus also fully did (John 17:3-7).

What pleases God immensely, then, is that we believe what he sent his Son to us for, to be both Jesus and the Christ. Which helps explain why John wrote in the last verse of 1 John 5, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” In other words, don’t look to, or depend on, any other source   other than Jesus Christ to “explain everything.” As Peter said to Jesus in John 6:68, “to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

But which of those “words of eternal life” that Jesus taught is God pleased by most when obeyed? It’s contained in “The message you heard from the beginning”….(next blog)

According to 1 John 1:3-4, we’re on the path to “complete joy” when we’re in “fellowship with the Father and his Son.”

So how does fellowship with the Father and his Son come about? John could answer that, because early on in John’s life Jesus told him how, and again for the same purpose – “so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete,” John 15:11. 

The explanation Jesus gave is in the previous two verses. In verse 9 he says, “I’ve loved you like the Father’s loved me. Hang on to that. Live every day knowing I love you as deeply and always as the Father has loved me.” That’s Jesus’ first key to how fellowship comes about: it’s simply knowing he loves us that much.  

But how is that realization kept front and centre in our minds when life gets rough? Jesus’ answer in verse 10 is just as simple: “If you keep my commandments you will live in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and live in his love.” Jesus’ second key to how fellowship comes about, then, is making it our life’s purpose to obey what Jesus taught, because no matter what happens we’ll always know we’re loved.

Which is where the Holy Spirit comes in, because not only does he keep us sensitive to what Jesus taught (John 14:26), he also keeps us knowing we’re loved (1 John 3:24). The Holy Spirit of God, then, is keeping us on the path of fellowship leading to joy, always confirming Jesus’ promise to us in Luke 11:28, “Blessed (and full of joy) are those who hear the word of God and obey it (put it into practice, 8:21).” 

Which John also confirms in 1 John 3:21-22, that “we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” And that, as John adds in verse 24, is what leads to fellowship with God, because “Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them.” 

Or as Jesus put it in John 14:23, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Working backwards through that verse, then, we have the path to joy: joy comes from fellowship with the Father and Son, which comes from knowing God loves us, and obeying him. 

Since obedience is so important to joy, then, “What obedience pleases God most?”….(next blog)

According to 1 John 4:17, God’s love “is made complete in us so that we’ll have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world world we are like him.” 

To John, then, “the day of judgment” is not a scary thought. He’s totally positive about it – and just as positive in 1 John 2:28 too, stating that “when Jesus appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.”

And rightly so, because, as John also wrote back in John 5:24, Jesus said that “whoever hears what I have to say – and believes in the one who sent me – has eternal life. He does not have to face judgment, since he’s already passed from death into life.” Judgment day has no worries for us because our final destiny has already been decided and sealed.

Why, then, is John still talking about a “day of judgment” for us? Paul answers that in 1 Corinthians 3:13, that our “work (of building on what Jesus began in us, verses 10-12) will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light.” It won’t affect our final destiny but it does affect our reward (14-15) – “For,” Paul adds in 2 Corinthians 5:10, “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what’s due to us for what we did in our earthly bodies, for good or bad.” 

Well, that may be a great confidence builder for those who’ve done a lot of good in their lives, but not so much for those who feel they’ve lived a rather ordinary and uneventful life. It’s confusing too, because isn’t being good to get a reward encouraging selfishness? And does it mean we could be stuck for eternity with a lesser reward than others get? 

But the reason John gives for us having confidence on the day of our judgment back in 1 John 4:17, is not based on our good works, or our religiousness. It’s based on “God’s love being made complete in us.” As Paul wrote in Philippians 1:6, God wants us “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” 

That’s the path God has us on, based on him growing and maturing his love in us, and if that’s the path we’re choosing to walk on, there is a reward – both now and forever – because it’s also “The path to joy”….(next blog)

Becoming a “restless wanderer on the earth” was the punishment God inflicted on Cain for hating and murdering his brother (Genesis 4:12). For the rest of his long life Cain would be stumbling around in the dark, never feeling settled. And according to John in 1 John 2:11, “whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he doesn’t know where he’s going, because the darkness has blinded him,” so the punishment for hating one’s brother is still the same: stumbling restlessly and blindly around in the dark. 

On the outside, however, it looks like the hateful person is doing just fine. Cain for instance, went on to have a wife and kids, and he even built a city, Genesis 4:17. And five generations of Cain’s descendants later, up popped Lamech whose three sons in just one generation changed their world dramatically for the better, each of them pioneering an essential part of life that we appreciate today – the raising of livestock, the creation of music and musical instruments, and the forging of metals for tools (20-22). 

But Lamech was also stumbling around in a terrible darkness, because in verse 23 he insists his two wives listen to his tale of killing someone who’d injured him – which in itself was a vicious and over-the-top thing to do – but he went on to say in verse 24, that “If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech should be avenged seventy-seven times.” 

Lamech actually believed that he, not the victim, should be avenged. He refers back to God telling Cain he’d avenge Cain seven times over if anyone killed him (4:15). But Lamech told his wives that he deserved being avenged seventy-seven times over. Not only did he have no feeling of remorse or guilt at having murdered a man who’d only injured him, he also felt justified in calling for further violence on top of the murder. Somehow, Lamech had got it in his head that he was the victim who deserved justice and revenge. 

No wonder John writes in 1 John 2:9, that “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.” He can think he’s doing fine, but if he’s into hating in any way, and justifying it, he’s heading for the same darkness as Cain and Lamech. It’s in the prayer of a concerned brother, however, that God has provided – and promised – to get him back on the path of life again (5:16), and back to the relief of forgiveness – and having “Confidence on the day of judgment” too….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:16, “If anyone sees his brother committing sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life.” Which ties in nicely with verse 14, “that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us,” and verse 15, “we have what we asked of him.”

So it’s totally within God’s will for us to pray for a brother caught up in some “wrongdoing” (17), and totally in God’s will to answer our prayer too – so long as the brother’s sin is not one that leads to death. So what would “a sin not leading to death” be?  

John provides a clue in 1 John 1:9, that “If we (or ‘he’ – the brother) confesses his sins,” those sins do not lead to death, but rather lead to Jesus “forgiving the sins and giving the brother a totally fresh start” (9).

To John, then, the willingness to admit the sin (or “wrongdoing”) is the key, because once a sin is done, it’s done, and there’s no getting out of it, getting away with it, or being released from the guilt or discomfort of it by “claiming to be without sin” (8). Nor is there any point in trying to hide it, ignore it, excuse it, justify it, or dismiss it as “not being that serious really” – or blaming someone or something else for causing it, or being resentful of the person who exposed the sin in the first place – because the person who says, “I know Jesus,” but “does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (2:4). 

That may be hard to admit, but totally worth admitting, because when there’s a contrite, penitent heart that fully accepts “I really blew it by how I behaved,” God is “faithful and just” in his promise to forgive (9). And a prayer for a brother to grasp that so God can get him fully back on the road to eternal life again, is a prayer guaranteed an answer.

That prayer is also hugely important because, as Paul pointed out in 2 Corinthians 2:7, when it suddenly dawns on a sinning brother how weak, stupid or ignorant he’s been – along with the grief he’s caused other people too – he could then become so devastated and discouraged and “overwhelmed with excessive sorrow” (7) that nothing we say or do can console him. It’s God’s will that we try – by “reaffirming our love for him” (8) – but what seems to break through the gloom best of all is simply saying to him, “I’ll pray for you,” just as Jesus did for his disciples to prevent Satan getting at them too, which, of course, God answered (Luke 22:31-32). Which God loves to do, because he doesn’t want us “Stumbling around in the dark”….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:16, John speaks of “a sin that does not lead to death,” but also of a sin that does lead to death. So what’s the difference?

John makes the difference rather clear in 1 John 3:14, when writing that “Anyone who does not love remains in death,” compared to the first part of the verse that “we’ve passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.” And to make that difference even more clear in verse 15: “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.”

To hate a brother, therefore, is a sin that leads to death – “death” to John meaning “no eternal life.” To John we’re either on the road that leads to eternal life or the road leading to no eternal life, one obvious difference between the two being how we view and treat our brothers. 

This became a serious issue for John too, because he was up against people who “claimed to be in the light but hated their brothers” (2:9). These were people who put on a good show of love – “loving with words,” as John put it in 1 John 3:18 – but, verse 17, “How can the love of God be in them if, on seeing a brother in need and they’ve got the material possessions to help him, they show no pity on him?”

In other words, they’d rather watch a brother starve than help him, which could lead to that brother literally dying. Love – the very essence of eternal life that God sent Jesus to create in us – is totally absent in them. No wonder John calls such an attitude “a sin that leads to death,” because not only could it lead to the physical death of a brother, it’s also the death in an individual of what God got started in him through his Son in 1 John 4:19, that “We love because he first loved us.”

It’s because God had pity on us that started us on the road to eternal life, of being able to love as he loves. So a person who says, “I love God, yet hates his brother, is a liar” (19). He’s not on the road to eternal life at all. Instead, according to John in 1 John 2:22, “Such a man is antichrist,” because he’s not living the life of love that Christ came to make possible in us. As such, John says back in 1 John 4:16, there’s not much point in praying for him, because it looks like he was never with it in the first place (2:18-19).

But what about the “Sin that doesn’t lead to death”?….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:15, John writes, that because “we know God hears us – whatever we ask we know we have what we asked of him.” 

It’s like being king Solomon in 1 Kings 3:5, when God says to him in a dream, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you” – and what Solomon asks for pleases God so much he replies in verse 12, “I will do what you have asked.” 

God hasn’t changed since then too, because in 1 John 3:21-22, John writes, “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” 

The only obstruction preventing that from happening is our own hearts condemning us (20). Which is understandable, because we’re constantly faced with our weaknesses, wrong desires, and the endless feeling that we’re not quite with it when it comes to what God wants of us. But John dealt with that in verse 20, because he writes, “whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” 

And the “everything” God knows is that he sent his Son to “set our hearts at rest in his presence” (19). He wants us feeling as free as Solomon, to ask for whatever we want. So what would please God so much that it’s a pleasure for him to answer us?

John gives us a clue in 1 John 5:16, that “If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life.” Well, that pleases God all right, because just as “Jesus laid down his life for us,” we’re now “laying down our lives for our brothers” (3:16). And loving our brothers (3:23) ties in perfectly with asking “according to God’s will” as well (5:14). 

It’s in what we’re asking for that pleases God too, because here we are praying for a brother that “God will give him life,” which is exactly what God sent his Son for, “that we might live through him” (4:9). So we’re asking God to get a brother back on the road to eternal life, when we can see (but he can’t) that he’s stumbling into enemy territory. 

Stumbling we can pray for and God will answer, but not for “a sin that leads to death” (4:16). So what’s the difference between “Sins that do/don’t lead to death”?….(next blog)

According to 1 John 5:15, it’s possible for us to “know God hears us” – with three reasons from John as to how we know too.  

The first being 1 John 3:22, that God hears us “because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” In which case, of course God hears us, because thanks to Jesus’ atoning sacrifice for our sins (2:2), all our imperfect obedience to God’s commands and not always doing what pleases him, are totally forgiven and “purified” – decontaminated of all imperfection (1:9). In his Son, therefore, the Father reassures us that the air waves are totally clear of all obstructions between us and him. He hears us all right, loud and clear. 

John’s second reason for knowing God hears us is that Jesus is constantly “speaking to the Father in our defence” (2:1). It’s amazing that God set it up this way, but it gives us a picture in terms we can grasp – of a court where Jesus is our champion presenting our case to the Father, and the Father in all his splendour giving his Son his full attention, because this is his Son speaking.

So that’s two reasons for knowing God hears us, both supplied for us in his Son. That’s why his Son is the Father’s personal testimony or witness to us (5:11), because in what Jesus did for us in his sacrifice, and in what he’s doing for us right now, we have the Father stamping his absolute guarantee – on everything we come to him for – that he hears. 

So far so good, then – but – we’re still stuck with a conscience that has us flagellating and condemning ourselves for every wrong thought and action. And we may have grown up in a version of Christianity that had us worrying if we’re praying enough, or studying enough, or being good enough for God to hear us. So what has God done to deal with that?

According to John in 1 John 5:10, “Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this personal testimony of God to us in himself.” In other words, John’s third proof for us knowing God hears us, is that we simply found it in ourselves believing God hears us, and for nothing we did to make it happen. We didn’t even need to ask him for it – if we even thought of asking him – because it was God who set up all three of these proofs himself so we know he hears us.

So now we know that God hears us, we’re into the second part of 1 John 5:15, “Whatever we ask”….(next blog) 

In 1 John 5:13, John wants those “who believe in the name of the Son of God to know you have eternal life” – because what comes with knowing it “is the assurance we have in approaching God” (14). 

The Greek word for “assurance” is parresia (pa-REEZ-ee-ah), meaning confidence – with ‘an air of boldness’ attached to it too – because the same word is used in Ephesians 3:12, that “through faith (in what God has done for us in his Son, verse 11), we may approach him with boldness and freedom.” And again in Hebrews 4:16, we can “boldly approach the throne of grace for help in our time of need.”

In using that Greek word, therefore, all three writers are talking about this new relationship with God we’ve got, in which we can speak openly, plainly and boldly, and in total confidence and freedom that it’s fine with God too. Because that’s exactly what he sent his Son to create for us, taking into account that this is the essence of eternal life, our relationship and “fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:2-3). It’s living with a loving God forever. But since we have eternal life now we’re already in that relationship with him.

God also gave us a clue as to the kind of relationship he meant it to be, and again through his Son, because look at how free and bold people were in approaching Jesus when he was here. When they saw Jesus in action and how much he cared, they were all over him. And talk about bold too, in one case ripping the tiles off a roof to lower a paralyzed man right down in front of Jesus (Luke 5:18-19). And the blind man too, who wouldn’t stop shouting for Jesus to have mercy on him (Mark 10:46-49). And in both cases Jesus happily responded with healing.  

When people realized it was totally in Jesus’ power and will to heal, they followed him everywhere, to his home, to the quiet spot where he wanted to pray, to where they thought he was headed, or to simply touch his clothing. And Jesus listened and responded to them all. So when John writes in 1 John 5:14 that “if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us,” it’s no different to what happened when Jesus was here. 

There was one difference, though: they knew Jesus heard them, because he was with them in person, so they could ask him face to face, see him listening, and get an answer from him there and then. But we don’t have him with us like that today, so “How do we know God hears us?”….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:7-8, John writes that “there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood, and all three are in agreement” – as to what they testify to as well, that “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (11), the goal being that “we know we have eternal life” (13).

So what part does “the water” play in that? There’s a clue in John the Baptist “baptizing people with water for repentance,” Matthew 3:11. Repentance is what happened too; people came pouring in from the countryside and towns to grab the chance John was offering to bury their sloppy attitude to God in the waters of the River Jordan and get serious about obeying God instead.

Which got them firmly on the road to eternal life, because in Matthew 19:17, Jesus said, “If you want to enter life (eternal life, verse 16), obey the commandments.” The “water,” therefore, tells us how God gets us started toward knowing we have eternal life: it’s in our obvious change of attitude to him, in very much wanting to obey him.

But what about “the blood”? God clues us in again through John the Baptist, by having him “preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” Mark 1:4. It resulted in people openly “confessing their sins” (Matthew 3:6), which also put them firmly on the road to eternal life, because “In Jesus,” Ephesians 1:7, “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” The “blood,” therefore, tells us how God takes us to the next stage of knowing we have eternal life: it’s in finding ourselves seeking forgiveness – and totally knowing we’ve got it in Jesus’ sacrifice.

And “the Spirit”? Again, God clues us in through John, who spoke in Mark 1:7-8 of one who would come after him who would “baptize with the Holy Spirit.” The purpose of which John himself experienced, because in John 1:32, he “saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and rest on Jesus.” And John’s reaction in verse 34 was: “I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.”

The part “the Spirit” plays, therefore, in helping us know we have eternal life, is in our recognition of who Jesus is too. That he’s God’s Son, sent by God to make what John the Baptist preached come to life in millions of us since. But come to life in what way? According to another John, it’s in “A new relationship with God”….(next blog)