Please note: This transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for the most accurate information and meaning.
Sermon Summary
This sermon explores 1 John 2:12-14, challenging believers to tune out the distracting voices of the world and remember their true identity in Christ. The pastor highlights three foundational truths for all Christians: their sins are entirely forgiven through Jesus, they share a deeply personal and intimate relationship with God the Father, and they possess the strength to overcome the evil one because the Word of God lives within them.
Key Points
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Remember Your Identity: In a culture full of external messaging telling us who we should be, Christians must actively remember who Christ has made them to be.
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We Are Forgiven: Forgiveness is not earned through our own actions but is granted freely on account of Jesus’ name and His finished work.
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We Know God: Christianity is not a distant, transactional religion. Through Jesus, believers have an active, intimate relationship with God, akin to a loving father who is ever-present and eager to teach His children.
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We Have Overcome the Evil One: Believers are inherently weak on their own, but they are made strong because the Word of God resides in them. Because Jesus has already defeated sin and death, Christians live in the reality of that victory.
Sermon Transcript
Introduction to 1 John 2:12-14
Well, as we continue in worship, let’s turn our attention to the Word of God, looking at 1 John chapter 2, starting in verse 12, and we’ll read down to verse 14.
Some commentators would say that 1 John doesn’t have a typical introduction. It does have an introduction, but it’s just kind of skipped down into the body of the letter a little bit. As he gets into these couple verses, he’s addressing the congregation. We don’t know what church exactly it is that he’s writing to, but he’s giving reasons for why he’s writing to them. We see the phrase “I write to you” repeated six times. That’s an important indication of the reason he is saying the things he’s saying at this moment. He’s writing these things because of the qualities and characteristics of these individuals.
This is his introduction, his welcome, his greeting to the folks there at the church. As he’s doing that, he addresses three groups of people: dear children, fathers, young men. He’s giving a rundown of basically the entire church. I don’t want you to get caught up on the little children, I don’t want you to get caught up on the old men, and I don’t want you to get caught up on the young men. He is basically saying whatever stage of life you’re in in the church, that’s who I’m addressing, and these things are true of you. These are rhetorical devices being used to describe the totality of the church and that these things described are true of everybody who is in the church.
Because of that, as we consider this passage this morning, yes, it’s presenting John’s reasons for writing, but more than that, it’s identifying who the people in the church are. It’s identifying what is true of those people. Significantly, what is true of those people in relation to the work of Jesus for them. As we consider these couple verses this morning, that’s what I want us to be considering. We must remember who we are in Jesus. We must remember what is most true of us in Jesus. That’s some of the things that John is highlighting about the believers there that he’s writing to. So with that in mind, let’s go to the Word of God.
Scripture Reading & Opening Prayer
“I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, dear 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 lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”
This is the Word of God. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you for your grace to us this morning. You have given us your Word that is holy and inerrant. Lord, we pray that you use it in our lives to bring us to deeper knowledge of Jesus, that you remind us of the beauty of the gospel through it, that you challenge us, and help us to grow into the likeness of Jesus through it. We pray that you would use your Spirit to apply this Word to our lives this morning and to transform and change just as you promised to. We ask all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Remembering Who We Are in Jesus
As we consider these things that are true of us as believers, it’s important that we remind ourselves who we are because we so easily forget in our culture. We have so many voices that tell us who we are, whether it be TikTok, Instagram, ads on the television, or ads we see along the highway on billboards. There is all sort of messaging that we receive on a daily basis that is pumped into our brain and into our eyes that says, “This is who you are,” or “This is who you should aspire to be.” You should aspire to be this type of person, you should aspire to buy a Lexus and to have a Rolex, or you should aspire to be a fly fisherman, or you should aspire to be an influencer, whatever the case may be.
Those voices seep in, they start to draw us in those directions, and we get a little confused and lose sight a little bit of who we are in Jesus. We lose sight of what Christ has done for us, and as He has done it for us, what He has made us to be through His death and His resurrection.
When we’re confused, we become like a boat in the ocean that has lost control of its rudder. We’re just floating, or we’ve lost our mast in a storm. We’re floating around directionless. We have no power to move in the direction we ought to be moving, but instead, we just get swamped and we drift aimlessly.
There’s a great moment in the movie Moana. My pastor in York would use this one, and he’d tear up every time he would tell it. In Moana, there’s this scene where she has finally reached Te Fiti. She’s coming up to that big battle against this demigod, this god of the ocean and lava and smoke. She’s unsure of herself sort of all through the movie. The movie is really about identity more than it’s about the main conflict. About who is she, can she lead, can she show up, can she accomplish the mission in front of her? She gets to that climactic point where she’s toe-to-toe with this giant lava monster thing, and she says, “I am Moana.”
She gains the victory as she recognizes who she is. As you go through the story, you recognize that she’s building this identity of her ancestors, of all these other experiences, her experience of traveling across the ocean to get there. Her identity is not just individualized in herself, but she’s recognizing all these other things that have come before to make her who she is. It’s in that recognition of who she is that she has the power to overcome the reality that’s in front of her.
The same is true for you and I. Although we’re not talking about a giant lava monster in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and we aren’t talking about the evil one who wars against our souls, who prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. We are in opposition and in a conflict against our own sin, our own flesh, and the brokenness of the world. Just like Moana was able to say, “I am Moana, this is who I am,” and interact with that conflict, you and I, as we recognize that we are in Jesus and that these things are true of us that John is talking about, we recognize that we have the power to overcome sin, death, and the devil. Not through our own power, not because it’s just us and our individual experience, but because of what Jesus has done for you and I.
John goes through three major categories as he’s talking to the different age groups in the church.
We Are Forgiven
The first thing he starts with: “I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.”
The first thing we must remember about ourselves, about our identity, is that we are forgiven. Your sins—past, present, future—have been forgiven. That necessarily means you need the bad part of the gospel: that you’re a sinner. You’ve done what is wrong in the sight of God. You’ve missed the mark. You’ve hurt others, you’ve hurt yourself, you’ve sinned against God. Some of us have a hard time reckoning with that reality in our lives. In fact, all of us do. That’s why corporate confession of sin is so helpful for us. Because we know at least one time a week, we’re going to come in this room with a bunch of other people and say that we’re sinners together. That should encourage us! Everybody else here is a sinner, so we can be honest about that reality.
As we’re honest about that reality, we’re also living in the fact in our identity that we’re forgiven. To be forgiven means that we were sinners and that we are sinners. Our need for forgiveness implies the reality of sin.
But it’s not just that we’re forgiven. Sometimes we think about forgiveness and we think, “Well yeah, I need to be forgiven, but the process of forgiveness—especially in our earthly horizontal relationships—starts with our own, not just confessing our sin, but then making it right.” I’m forgiven only when I take care of the mess that I made. I’ll ask for forgiveness, you know, if I hit a car in the parking lot this morning. I’m not parked in the parking lot so I should be good, but if I did, yeah, I could say sorry. But I would kind of recognize that I’m not really going to feel forgiven until I file the insurance claim and insurance makes it right, or I pay out of pocket to make the other person whole.
We have this understanding that with forgiveness, there is still this responsibility that we have to actually make it right, to actually be forgiven, we still have to do something. But as John’s talking about forgiveness here, he says this: “I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.”
On account of Jesus. The sins that you commit are forgiven not based on your account of righteous deeds, not on your account of good stuff, not on your account of making things right, but instead, your sins are forgiven because of the name of Jesus. Because of what Jesus has done for you. That’s where the source of forgiveness comes from.
Which means that every sin, no matter how horrific, no matter how terrible, any of those sins can be forgiven and are forgiven freely and completely because Jesus is God himself. Jesus is the one who created all things. Jesus is the one who lived a perfect life and died the death we should have died, and rose again for our justification so that our sins might not be just partially forgiven, but fully forgiven.
We must recognize that our identity as believers, our identity as sons and daughters of God, is that we are forgiven people. Forgiven on account of the name of Jesus, forgiven on account of the work of Christ for us. Not because of anything we’ve done, but solely because of what Jesus has done. As we live in that place of knowing that’s who we are, we then are able to confront the reality of forgiveness in our own lives in terms of a horizontal relationship. As we need forgiveness, we are empowered to then ask for forgiveness because we recognize that we have been fully and overwhelmingly forgiven by the work of Jesus. As we recognize that, we can then give forgiveness freely, recognizing that, “Hey, I’ve already been forgiven. My debts have been wiped clean. My sins have been cast into the depths of the sea. And if that’s true for me, then I am now freed up to grant forgiveness freely to those around me because my sins have been taken care of.”
We can then live with boldness towards obedience to the law of God, obedience to what Christ has commanded, to walk in the light as God is in the light, as we talked about previously in 1 John. Because our sins have been forgiven, we can walk in these ways of light, these ways of obedience, rather than continuing in ways of darkness, because we are forgiven, and we have everything we need in Jesus. It’s been provided for us, so we are free to go. We’re free to give forgiveness, we’re free to receive forgiveness, we’re free to live in obedience.
Because we haven’t just been forgiven, we are those who have been forgiven. Our identity is as someone who has received the forgiveness of Jesus.
We Know God
Sometimes we think about forgiveness as something that’s just a transactional thing. I did something wrong, I asked for forgiveness, the other person gives it to me. And then we just repeat that process every single time it happens. But in Jesus, forgiveness is not transactional, it’s relational, and it’s about our identity. It’s tied to our relationship with Jesus, and now we’re not just people who receive forgiveness, but we are forgiven people. We’re identified by forgiveness itself, because of what Jesus has done for us.
John goes through three major categories as he’s talking to the different age groups in the church. The first thing he starts with is being forgiven. The next section is pointed towards older members: “I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.”
He’s certainly talking about the knowledge of God. They know the factual information about who God is. They know the factual information about who Jesus is. Colossians and Ephesians and other places tell us that Jesus is the one who, by whom and through whom all things have been created. We recognize that reality.
But the word ginosko in Greek is the word for “know,” the verb there. It’s not just an intellectual knowledge, but in this setting, in this context, it’s also speaking of a relational knowledge, an intimacy of knowledge that exists, that’s not just assenting to a set of facts, but instead acknowledging a relationship and a real interaction has occurred.
When it says you have known the one who is from the beginning, he’s not just saying you have right knowledge about God—that you know the Bible, that you’ve gone to church, that you’ve been around the block a couple times and you know where things are in the Bible and you’ve memorized some things. He’s emphasizing you know the one who is from the beginning. You have a personal relationship with the one who created all things. You have a personal relationship with God the Father.
If you remember, as we are forgiven by Jesus, as our sins are removed from us and as we’re given the righteousness of Jesus, as we’re justified before God, we are then able to walk into a close relationship with God through the work of Jesus. Because we’re forgiven people, we can then be people who are known as those who know God, those who have a personal relationship with God.
We must remember that we are forgiven, but we also must remember that we know God. That we have a personal interaction and relationship with God. I’m afraid that many of us, as we approach Christianity, as we approach our devotional life, as we approach reading scripture, as we approach prayer, as we approach going to church, that we kind of do it going through the motions. We do it in a sort of disconnected way, that we’re just kind of like, “Yeah, I’m doing this stuff. I hope this is true. I hope this is right.” I think we all feel that on different days. I hope I’m not just talking to the ceiling right now.
Often times we think about our relationship with God and knowing God in that sort of disconnected way. We think that’s just how it’s meant to be. We kind of think of God as an estranged father, an estranged dad who lives across the country. Yeah, we’ll get a phone call occasionally, maybe once a year we’ll fly out and see him. But that’s about it. He exists, we know he’s over there, maybe we email, maybe we send some letters, maybe we talk a little bit, but there’s this chasm. There’s this lack of knowledge, this lack of intimacy that exists in the relationship.
But our God is not a God who is like a disconnected, not-present dad. Instead, our Father is like a dad who takes us fishing, who shows us how to work on a car, who teaches us how to ride a bike, who teaches us how to throw a ball. Because oftentimes, when I speak with people who have difficult relationships with their fathers or difficult relationships with parental figures in their lives, often times what you end up hearing as they’re adults is, “My dad showed me exactly what not to be as a dad.”
The lack of intimacy led to: “I’m doing things way differently than how he did it.” But then oftentimes, on the opposite side, if you have a dad who’s really close to you and who has taught you things and who has maybe brought you closer to Jesus, or shown you how to live life and has supported you and loved you and been there, then you’re like, “Yeah, my dad showed me what to do, and I’m going to try to model and be as good of a dad as my dad was, or to be as good of a mom as my mom was.”
You see the difference of relationship that exists there. Sometimes we think, and we live most of our Christian life, I’m afraid, in some contexts, in a place where we think God is just disconnected, He’s out there, we’re related, but not sure how. But what the scriptures call us to is a deep knowledge of God, that He is present with us, that He is omnipresent, that He is all around us, that He’s always with us, that His angels are always ministering to us. Whenever two or more are gathered, there He is also.
He is our ever-present help in a time of need. If that’s true of God, God is here. And what’s missing in our daily experience is our leaning into His presence. We are the ones who know God, yet we often live our lives in this place of spiritual lethargy. But we have what we need. We have the scriptures, we have the Word of God, we have public worship, we have fellowship with other believers. Oftentimes, God is just inviting and calling and waiting for us, like a patient father, to return to Him and to look to Him and remind ourselves He’s always there.
There’s a story I heard my senior year of high school. I was at a school retreat sort of thing, and the speaker shared a story about talking to an older man who was turning 99 or 100. He had been a Christian for the majority of his life, and he asked him the question, “What’s it like being a Christian for 90-plus years?” And his response was, “Jesus is closer to me than the air that I breathe.”
It was just this statement of over my life, I’ve become more and more aware of the closeness of Jesus. That God is not far, but He’s near. Especially as you get to an advanced age like that, you start to realize nothing else really matters. Everything else is fading fast. When you’re young, you have the illusion that it’s not, but as you get older, you start to realize it’s all going to go. We don’t take any of it with us—our health, our bodies. But the one who remains is the Lord Jesus. The one who remains is God our Father and the Spirit that indwells us. He’s closer to you than the air that you breathe. That’s true of the hundred-year-old, that’s also true of the five-year-old. That’s also true of the twenty-year-old and the forty-five-year-old. That’s true of all of us as we rest in Jesus.
We Have Overcome the Evil One
So we must remember that we are ones who know the one who is from the beginning. We are ones who know the Father. And then third, we must remember that we are ones who have overcome the evil one.
At the end of verse 13, it says this: “I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.” And at the end of verse 14, it says, “because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”
If we put those things together, we see that as he’s addressing the young men, but again referring to the entirety of the church, he’s emphasizing the reality that as we’ve been forgiven by Jesus, by the work of Jesus on our behalf, as we have come to know God through that work of Jesus, we are then known and identified in the reality that we are strong, and the Word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one. You are strong. We just sang a song a little bit ago that we are weak, and we are weak. Because left to our own realities, we’re very finite, feeble creatures. Our physical reality is weak, our mental reality is weak, our spiritual reality is weak.
When we hear “strong,” you might be thinking this morning, “I don’t see much that’s strong in me.” And that’s true! In and of yourself, you are not strong. You’re weak. Because you are strong, and the Word of God lives in you. There’s a loose connection there to the Word of God that lives within you.
Surely we can say that’s true about Jesus. Oftentimes, especially in the writings of John, when you hear the Word of God, that’s referring not just to the Bible but to the person of Jesus Himself. But it also certainly includes the Word of God, maybe this letter or maybe the Gospels, whatever parts of the New Testament these folks would have had at this point. But saying that you are strong not because of who you are, but you’re strong because of what God has revealed to you, and specifically even more than that, you’re strong because of the Lord Jesus who is within you. You are strong because of what Christ has done. You are strong because your sins have been forgiven. You are strong because you have a personal relationship with the Father that you didn’t have before.
We must remember that we have overcome the evil one not through our strength, but through the strength of Jesus. Another name for the evil one—Satan, whatever you would like to use—he’s known as the accuser of the brethren. Oftentimes we see Satan at work in our lives or at work around us the most particularly as believers when we get to a spot where we’ve sinned.
When that habitual sin that we keep saying we’re going to kick, we’re not going to do that anymore, when that rears its head again and we ask for forgiveness, but even as we ask for forgiveness and confess our sins to God, we still feel the stabbing guilt and the accusations of, “See, you’re not a real Christian. See, you don’t know God. See, your sins aren’t forgiven.”
Those are the attacks of the evil one to accuse us and to say that you aren’t who you say you are. You aren’t a son or daughter of God. You aren’t forgiven by the blood of Jesus. You aren’t one who has known God.
But through the power and the work of Jesus, as we remember who we are, as we remember what Christ has done for us, we overcome the evil one because we recognize also, if you read to the end of this book you all have, this Bible, as you read to the end, Jesus wins. The evil one is vanquished. And even now, he has been vanquished. Even now, he has been overcome and overpowered through the work of Jesus.
We live in that place of the “already but the not yet.” Jesus, in His death and His resurrection, finally, once and for all, destroyed sin, death, and the devil. And yet, we’re still waiting for the final reality of that to come to full fruition. We’re waiting for that day to come where we’ll fully experience it ourselves. But right now, even though we can’t fully experience it, right now, even though we still see sin and decay and death and the evil one at work, even though we still hear the accusations of the evil one, those accusations of the evil one—sin and death—those things cannot harm you.
Those things cannot overcome you. Those things are more like flies buzzing around that we swat away. They’re annoying, we know that they’re there, but they can’t harm you because of the work of Jesus on your behalf, because you’ve been forgiven, because you know God. Because He has given you all that you need to overcome the evil one and his accusations.
At the final day, when you stand before the judgment seat of Christ, the reality is you are not going to be judged for the things that are true of you. Because that’s the thing with the evil one: he knows what’s true. He knows what your sin is, and he throws it at you. And we think, “Yeah, that’s true. That is what I did. That is who I am.”
But in Jesus, those sins have been forgiven. It’s only half the story. Satan loves to twist scripture, he knows scripture, he knows what’s true of us, he twists reality, but it’s always just a half-truth. The reality is, in Jesus, yes, it’s true that we’re sinners. Yes, it’s true that we were once enemies of God. Yes, those things are incredibly true. But that’s only half the story, because now, through the work of Jesus, we’re forgiven. Through the work of Jesus, we know God. Therefore, because of Jesus, we have overcome the evil one. We have overcome sin, we have overcome death, we have overcome the devil through the work of Jesus.
Therefore, we can live free. Recognizing that God is not rejecting us because of what we’re hearing from the evil one. God is not rejecting us because of the reality of our sin, but instead, we are established in the forgiveness of Jesus. We are established in our knowledge and our relationship with God, and we have everything that we need.
We can live confidently and boldly. As the accusations come, we say, “Yeah, like Charles Spurgeon would say, when somebody would accuse him of something, he’d be like, ‘You don’t even know the beginning of it. You haven’t even scratched the surface of the reality of my sin.'” And that’s true of all of us! But we’re afraid to talk about that reality. But in Jesus, we can talk like Spurgeon did. You don’t know the half of it, guys. I am far greater of a sinner than you can imagine, and Jesus has paid for each and every one of those sins. Therefore, I can live in confidence in what Christ has done for my sake, and I have overcome the evil one, not because of my power, but because of the strength and the power that comes from God Himself.
So friends, as we consider who we are day to day, as we walk through lives that are filled with sorrow and troubles and death and sin and the realities of a broken world, we can remind ourselves that this is not the end. This is not our final reality, but our final reality is with God. And that final reality with God is bought by the blood of Jesus that gives us the forgiveness of sins, that makes us right with God the Father, and gives us the strength to overcome the evil one. So friends, we must remember who we are in Jesus.
Closing Prayer
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your grace that you love us, remind us of these truths, that we are forgiven, that we have right relationship with you through the work of Jesus, and that we have overcome the evil one, not through our own effort, but through the mighty work of Jesus on our behalf. That we are free from his condemnation and his accusations. May that give us lives of joy and satisfaction as we pursue holiness, as we pursue loving you and loving others. We ask all these things in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.