Have you ever been challenged by someone saying, how do you know that the Christian faith is true when you have not tried or tested all the other claims of other religions? How can you be certain you have the truth? This is an interesting challenge. One way that we respond is to say that if man is the ultimate standard of knowledge, then you can never be certain about anything. How could you be certain of anything without testing every possibility? There are branches of non-Christian philosophy that properly end up in total uncertainty – skepticism and nihilism. John in this letter focuses on two aspects that help us answer the question about certainty. John has spoken repeatedly about God's sovereign work in causing us to be given new life. God has fathered us, a verb that John uses 10 times in 1 John. John also writes about the glorious truth of the incarnation – the eternal Son of God came to us in human flesh. There is evidence. There is a rich history. Further we can add, the Christian faith stands alone in terms of showing the incredible rebellion of man and at the same time showing how sinners can have assurance of sins forgiven. Assurance does not dismiss man's sinfulness. And man's great sin is not a barrier to true assurance.
We come to the end of the book of 1 John. What a powerful book this is being only about 2,187 words in Greek and about 2500 words in English. Our final verses contain three points of assurance – what we can know with certainty. And then John provides a summary challenge in verse 21. Praise God that He gives you assurance of His truth and working of grace in your life. In this assurance you must keep yourself from idols.
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