I John, 2:28-29
Josiah Matthews · Jan 22, 2006
1 John, No. 16
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262342212486

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So, we're cruising through 1 John, and now we're up to chapter 2, verse 28 and 29. And these are the last verses in chapter 2, so next week we'll start chapter 3. So we'll read these two together. Now little children, abide in him, so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from him in shame at his coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him. So, we'll look at this verse first, 28, and little children. This tatechnion is just the term for a child in Greek, and we've seen it before, but in the New Testament it's used figuratively, so John, of course, isn't really referring to little children, like he's not holding a children's Sunday school class, but it's a term of affection used by a teacher to his disciples under circumstances requiring a tender appeal.

This is a quote from Vine. Christ used it to the twelve disciples right before his death on the cross, and then the Apostle John uses it several times. And again, I'll throw these bullets up there and might not always comment on them. They're just for your reference. Sometimes they're insightful, other times it doesn't matter. Okay, and that is significant. I think that John's the only one who uses that term. It shows up in his Gospel and then in 1 John.

Now little children abide in him. Menno is abide, to continue to be present, it means to remain. I guess Vani has mentioned that Hal's definition was that we would be at home with the Lord or hanging out with the Lord, when it's used in that context, which it is in this case. It's used 24 times in 1 John and is one of the key words of the book, Menno. And it's only used 120 times in the entire New Testament, and over half of those are by John. So this is one of John's favorite words. He uses it a lot.

Now it's present tense, active voice, and imperative mood. And for review, present tense is right now and continuing. Active voice means the individual is doing the action. And then imperative mood we'll look at here a little more. The imperative mood is most commonly used for commands. It can be used for other things as well, but usually it's a command. The imperative occurs frequently with the aorist and the present tense. Rarely with the perfect tense. So, what does that mean, the aorist tense and perfect tense? What's the significance of the two? We'll see that.

With the aorist tense, the force is generally to command the action as a whole. So, if you're doing your Bible study and you see that it's aorist imperative, then it's generally referring to the whole action. One example is, if I can think of this correctly, it's Romans 6, where Paul says, yield yourselves unto God. I believe, if you can check that, that's an Aorist imperative.

And the idea is that it's the whole action. And we'll see why that may be significant. With the present imperative, the force is generally to command the action as an ongoing process. So they could be looking at the same action, but they're just looking at it differently. The present imperative is going to look at the action in progress, whereas the heiress imperative looks at the action as a whole.

So, here, in our verse, abiding in Him is the present imperative, so John is telling them to continue to abide in Christ. He could have used the aorist imperative well, and looked at the whole abiding in Christ and just said, abide in Christ completely, but he didn't. He focused on the ongoing aspect of abiding. I think it's about fellowship, continuing on. Good point. Yeah, and Bible teachers do different things with the Aorist Imperative and the Present Imperative.

Some teachers, when they teach on Romans 12.1, which is yield and present yourself to God, and also in Romans 6.13, I believe, they teach that since it's Aorist Imperative, it means it's only one-time action. You only have to yield yourself one time to the Lord. But it's not so much the timing of the yielding, it's more the... I guess, the Aorist is a summary view of something, whereas present looks at that same process little by little. Hopefully I didn't confuse you too much. Anyway, back to our verse.

Abide is in the present tense, so John is focusing on the ongoing process of abiding. And that's what's important for right now. So, abide also is in the active voice, so the action comes from the believer. In other words, it's something he must do. It is important to avoid muddying the waters. The believer has one responsibility in the Christian life, which is to believe the Lord and His truth.

I think that's good to remember, that that's This is our part here. Abiding, which I'll show you in a minute, is a synonym with trust, faith. So this is our part. This isn't something... I have a couple more bullets here. This faith isn't a gift from God. God doesn't enable the Christian to believe.

He enables the Christian to live the Christian life. He lives through us so that we can glorify Him. It's His very life in us. But the believing part is our part. Also, this faith doesn't flow from the life of Christ in the believer. Faith, the act of believing in the Lord and His truth, is the individual's own choice to make. And then abide is a synonym of trust, believe, and depend, which in this context basically means to rest in one's position in Christ.

And so Hal's definition of being at home with the Lord or hanging out with the Lord fits here in 1 John 2.28 well. So abide in Christ. n alto, it's just a prepositional phrase, and remember that the Greek preposition n, in, means to be entirely in something or someone.

And we've seen this before as well in 1 John. Graphically, we could look at it like this. John is telling the Christians to, he's saying, you all abide where? in, entirely in Him, and Him is in Christ. Remember, we've seen this before, there is one who claimed to be in the light, but in reality, he was in the darkness. In 1 John, was it 1, 6 and 7, I think?

So abide in him, so that, when he appears. And so that is hena, in order that to the end that, and hopefully that helps you remember hena. It helps me remember it. Anyway, let's go. And it's used 19 times in 1 John. And this is just a fact for you that hena plus a subjunctive verb comprises a third of all the subjunctive verbs in the New Testament.

And here's why it's significant. Hena answers the question why. So why should we abide in Christ? And we'll actually answer this in a minute. We'll hold off on this question. We need to get through a couple more phrases before we can answer that question. So that when he appears, Now, when is eon, which is normally translated if. And if, it's usually used with the third class conditional sentence to express an uncertain yet likely action.

But there are several places in the New Testament where eon is used irregularly as an article of time. And this happens to be one of those. Here's the rule, and it's really an exception to a rule. Aeon, with the subjunctive aorist, is used of things which the speaker or writer thinks will certainly take place where hatan should have been used. So hatan is the Greek word for when, and normally the writer would use hatan. but several places in the New Testament they use that on, which normally means if, but here it's translated when.

And I have a couple examples for you. John 12, 23, Christ says, And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. But he was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which he was to die. So, hey! So, there's an example. And another example is one that Roger, you're on next week? Brad's on next week? So this one we'll cover next week. Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears we will be like Him.

I did find some Bible teachers that said, hey we can put if in there and it's not a problem because Because we know, it's just a Greek article, the way the language works. But these guys apparently, some Bible scholars have come up with an exception to the rule. Do they come up with that just by looking at other scriptures, knowing that it's not an if? No, no. They said it was kind of just a way of writing.

It's a regular use. Yeah. It would be interesting to have a parallel in English, it would be kind of a cool thing. Here's a normal usage, but there are irregular uses, so why can't there be irregular uses in Greek? It's a language. Yeah, good point. So that, when he appears. Now, appears is phonerao. to make manifest or visible or known what has been hidden or unknown. And we've seen this one a couple times already in 1 John. It's aorist tense, passive voice. So passive voice, so this is Christ appearing, so He will be made manifest. Used nine times in 1 John.

So a question, I have, is this referring to the rapture or to Christ's second coming at the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom? What do you guys think? From study of the passage or just at first glance, what would you think this would be? If you assume he's talking to believers, That might influence you. Okay. And it did. It seems like rapture. Rapture? They're saying that we may have confidence in not shrinking away. If we're already with him and married and all that stuff, we're not going to be that quick to break. Not to worry him. You guys are tough. Okay.

Yeah, so here's sort of a timeline that shows Christ's different comings. So, of course, His first coming was as a child, and then He died and was resurrected. And the next time He will come will be at the rapture, right before the tribulation. And then the second coming to earth is when He will end the tribulation and start the Millennial Kingdom.

And we'll look at a couple passages which talk about his appearing, where he uses the same word, phanerao. Colossians 3, 4 is the first. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. And this is phanerao in both cases. And this, Colossians 3, 4, is talking about the rapture. And again, you could take a detour and study and determine, okay, why is Colossians 3, 4 talking about the rapture? But it is, in my opinion. And 1 Peter 5, 4 says, when the chief shepherd appears, phonerao, you will receive the unfading crown of glory, talking about the rapture.

1 John 3, 2, Get ready, Brad, next week. Beloved, now we are children of God, but it has not appeared, Phanaro, as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. Same word, two times again.

So, is this referring to the Rapture or the Second Coming? Okay. So, from the immediate context and other scriptures, it is clear that when He appears refers to the Rapture. Do they use fanarato for the other cummings? I can't remember. We're going to look at another word for cumming, which is a different one, and they do use it, parousia, for both cummings, but I can't remember fanarato.

That was a couple days back. OK, we may have confidence, is the next phrase. Echo, to have or to possess. Aorist tense, subjunctive mood, active voice. OK, so that we may have. Echo used 28 times in 1 John, one of our key words there. You're familiar with that by now. We may have confidence.

Confidence is he paracea. a state of boldness and confidence. And this is a pretty neat word in Greek, used four times in John, nine times in the Gospel of John. This word, parasia, originated from the political scene and meant openness and speaking. So first it was a political word, and this is in classical Greek. But it was then taken into the ethical area and closely connected to the concept of friendship. Philo used the word. regarding a slave whose good conscience gave him openness and confidence with his master. So, it's referring then to the openness and confidence you could have with either a friend or, in this case, with one's master. Culturally, Parasia was considered the voice of friendship.

We still have that idea today. I know I do, and some of the people that I'm very good friends with. I can think of times growing up, or even maybe at church. I don't know. Just when you know somebody well, all your guards are down, you're just relaxed. You won't be judged even if they've done things.

So that's why this paresia was called the voice of friendship, and it's translated confidence. But in our context, and even in the way it was used in New Testament times, it's confidence based on one's behavior. So it's a conditional word. It's a confidence that you can have based on condition. So it's not a positional word. It's a word coming from our condition. So it's talking about our condition.

And we'll see that as we go here. It's pretty clear in our verse this morning. But here, look at this. The same word shows up later in 1 John. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world." So here we have confidence, and then we have in the day of judgment, and this is a reference to the Bema Seed, which is the judgment that believers will go through. Let's talk about that for a minute. The Bema Seed. What's that?

The BEMA seat was actually a location in the marketplace where orators or officials could address the public assembly. For example, this is the actual BEMA seat at Corinth. what's left of it, and then this is the bima at Athens. And later the word bima was used in the Jewish synagogue as a raised platform that a teacher would teach from, and even Orthodox churches have a bima. I don't know if Roman Catholic churches have a bima, but it's a platform where people could speak from. It was called that in the synagogues and in some of the Orthodox churches, but I don't know if the Roman Catholics used it as well. This is the Bema historically. That's the actual location.

And so let's see what scripture has to say about the judgment seat of Christ. Hebrews says, therefore do not cast away your confidence, now confidence is the same word, perasia, which has great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise, for yet a little while, and he who is coming will come and will not tarry. So this is talking about reward, and then it's talking about Christ's coming, and again we have confidence associated with His coming and with rewards. Another verse is Romans 14, 10 and 12. But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. So then each one of us will give account of himself to God.

So here's some more insight on the judgment seat for believers. 1 Corinthians 4 says, So it doesn't seem to be a negative event for the believer from this verse. Second Corinthians 5, 9, and 10. Therefore, we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

So then from this verse, we have more information that the judgment seat is a judgment where the believer's works, the deeds done in his body, come into play. And then lastly, when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. So, basically from these verses, what we've seen is that the judgment will occur when the Lord comes, and that it will be a judgment of the believer's works. It didn't say anything about the judgment having to do with the believer's sins, because our sins have been completely paid for at the cross. And then also there is reward associated with the judgment for the believer. And basically, everything that the believer has done by faith in the Lord, he gets a reward for.

And the BMSC judgment is about the burning up of all the chaff, which is everything we've done in the flesh, and what's left is what was done by the Lord's life, and we get reward for it. So that's what this is about. But we still have this conditional, we may have confidence at His coming concept, and we'll talk more about that as we go as well. Okay, we'll go back to 228 here.

And not shrink away from Him in shame. Shrink away in shame, I don't even know if I can say that one, is the feeling of shame arising from something that has been done. Aorist tense, subjunctive mood, passive voice, used only once by the Apostle John. And I found a good yet sad example of this shrinking away in shame concept, and it's from Christ.

Shrinking away from Christ in shame and Remember Peter when Peter denied Christ I won't read this whole thing, but of course the Lord told Peter that he would deny him And Peter denied that he would deny him, but then later he did On the third time let's skip down here to verse 60 the third time Peter said man.

I do not know what you're talking about and Immediately while he was still speaking a rooster crowed, the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Imagine that moment. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had told him, before a rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.

And he went out and wept bitterly. So, we don't have the same Greek word occurring here, but I think it's the same concept. Peter was fleeing the Lord because he had totally bombed out. But of course Peter was restored and has a happy ending. So it's shrinking away from Him, and Him is referring to Christ, at His coming.

So the shrinking away from Him in shame at His coming, parousia, the presence of one's coming, used only once by the Apostle John. In the New Testament, parousia can refer both to the rapture and to Christ's second coming to begin the millennial kingdom. So when you study, you just have to look at the context to determine, is this talking about the rapture or is this talking about Christ's coming to start the kingdom? And about 50% of the parousia occurrences refer to the rapture, and then there's 5, 6 maybe that refer to the second coming. And then the other of the 22 occurrences are talking about actually the physical coming of St. Paul to a church to visit. Okay, we'll look at some of these.

May the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another and for all people just as we also do for you. So Paul's praying that this would happen. So that he may establish your hearts without blame and holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. And what's interesting, I put a little more context on several of these passages that refer to the rapture because they talk about our condition a bit in the context of the rapture. Of course, All believers are going to go home to be with the Lord, whether or not they're living pleasing to Him at the time He returns for the rapture. But the Lord expresses desire that we would be pleasing to Him all the time, conditionally speaking, resting in our position and having His life live through us. even at the time he returns.

And that's the point, I believe, that John's trying to make in 2.28. But I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, so we'll come back to that in a minute. But I just want to mention that because here in 1 Thessalonians and in some of these others we'll look at in the next couple slides, we see that the believer's condition and the coming of the Lord at the rapture are tied together.

So they relate. They're important to Paul and they're important to the Lord. So he says, He's praying here that God may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints. Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God, just as you actually do walk, that you excel still more. for you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

And this coming is parousia, same word. Also in Thessalonians, For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep, For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we shall ever be with the Lord. So here we see that those Christians in the church who have died first, their bodies will be resurrected first to be with the Lord and then all the other believers will meet them in the air at the rapture.

I paused at that too. I stumbled on that too. Yeah, could be. Here's another in Thessalonians. So Paul to the Thessalonians has a lot to say about the coming of Christ, because there's a lot of bad teaching going on about future events. Paul says, but examine everything carefully, hold fast to that which is good, abstain from every form of evil, Now, may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely.

May your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass." So there we have, pretty neat, we have Paul addressing the believers to by faith watch their conduct and have their conduct be glorified to the Lord. we have the rapture in the same context, and we also have the fact that who's going to do the work here? It's not the believer depending upon himself to crank out the hay that glorifies the Lord, but it's the Lord who will do this in us, and contextually as we trust Him.

Pretty neat. And I think one more here. Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. And this coming is parousia, The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You, too, be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.

OK, so let's summarize verse 28. We'll make some more applications and move on to the next one. So, earlier we noted that John is commanding the Christians to abide in Christ, and actually he's done this two times in the immediate context. Right at the end of verse 27, and then right at the beginning of 28, he tells them to abide in Christ, and here they are.

So, earlier we asked the question, Why? Abide in him, now little children abide in him, so that, and hena, which is so that. Ask the question, why? So back to our original question. Why are believers to abide in Christ according to this verse? So there's, in other words, there are lots of reasons why the believer would want to abide in Christ and why the Lord wants believers to abide in Christ. But according to this verse, why? so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming." The first reason is that we may have confidence when He appears. And the second is that we may not shrink away in shame from Him at His coming.

I'm wondering if it's, I'm thinking of like our daughter, who wasn't sure of the Christians, because she accepted the Lord of her own free will when she was little. Now she's told us she just doesn't even believe. She's not living the way she should be. So I wonder if it's more a person like that. And I know we all sin every day, but I mean I'm really looking forward to His coming. But I wonder if he's talking about someone like that or not. I mean, because I can see how they would be ashamed.

Yeah. And only for a moment. I mean, you know, for a moment. Because all believers at this, after this moment of his return, I mean, that the flesh gets discarded immediately, and so it's, you know, for a moment. But I'm sure that's... But I wonder if it's more with talking about people like that. A person in prolonged... I really like the word, the meaning of confidence, freedom of speech, openness.

It seems to me even believers, every believer, wants to be walking with the Lord, but we don't. We don't walk with the Lord. So what I think what he's saying is that that we can be open about that. We know that we do fail, but we know that he wants us to abide with him. So, I don't know, I see that applying to every believer, too, in a sense. The funny thing is, if he comes back at any moment, we could be in sin that very moment and have that shrinking away into him. But he's abiding him, so that doesn't happen.

Exactly. But it would have to apply to both groups for sure, and maybe one more than the other. But still the idea is that whether it's a person who's living in a prolonged sinful lifestyle, who's out of fellowship with the Lord for, say, five years, versus a person who's out of fellowship with the Lord for half an hour. It still applies to both groups, I feel.

I mean, even for a minute you're in sin, you know that's not going to be pleasing to God. You're not going to be happy about it. One of the important things is you don't take that confidence to mean a loss of confidence, a lack of confidence in your salvation. Some people will take that verse and they'll say, see? They point back to it and they don't... And that, unbelievable, totally different way to look at that, isn't it? You're out of luck. That's sad.

This morning, Solid Rock, it had a verse, Oh may I then and him be found. So I was laughing like, oh, we're going to sing that. Like a whiff. And I thought, is that position or condition? Oh may I then and him be found. I didn't know, I thought. I don't know if that's right or not. It means condition, I guess.

In fact, it's even a word relating to intimacy. Mike Doyle likes to talk a lot about our intimacy with Christ, and this is sort of a synonym to that. It has that idea of having confidence with someone, having intimacy with someone, boldness. Paul in Hebrews talks about having boldness to approach the throne of grace in time of need. Different words, but a similar idea. Basically, it's just a strong encouragement to walk with the Lord day by day, moment by moment.

So that, you know, that won't be an issue. I mean... And that's John's point, right there. That's it. But then I could fear that, though. I could be afraid of that. But I'm not abiding every single minute. You make it into a law, too. And I'm going to be ashamed. And that's not the intent. Well, I'm just trying. Yeah. Don't do that. Don't do that. Yeah. Don't do that. And at the same time, we can't just throw it out and go, well, It's, you know, rely. Don't take it seriously.

It's God's Word. I mean, this is the truth. Well, isn't that the moral of John? Your actions are important. Yeah. That's all 1 John is just like it. Your actions are important. It is. That's right. They matter. You can't do this and do that. You just can't do it. Don't fool yourself. We could kind of put that down a bit. Don't worry about it. Yeah. Yeah, that's why it's such a value to study the whole Word of God. Because if we just studied Ephesians chapters 1-3 only, we would miss out on some of these passages. So, it's good.

So, another follow-up question is, what are we doing when we are not abiding in Christ? If Paul is telling, admonishing his readers to abide in Christ, what's going on when we're not? Is that too easy? Sinning! I mean, if we're not depending upon the Lord, His life in us, then we're dependent upon our sin nature by default. And the result is that we sin.

Therefore, John wants his dear brethren in Christ to abide continually in Christ so that the rapture and subsequent judgment seat of Christ would be a joyous occasion versus a shameful one. One more observation. We have the reasons given for abiding, and do you notice anything about the structure of the two phrases? Okay, so we've got, we may have confidence, and then we have, we may not shrink away in shame. Aren't those saying the same thing, just with different words? So John's repeating himself, and then he has, when he appears, and from him at his coming. Same concept. It's a Hebraistic poetic pattern, as Vern would say. What? Well, John was a Jew. Yeah, John was a Jew and it was part of the way that they would communicate and write. It does show up in the New Testament as well.

Here, look at this. I just came across this in a study book. I didn't find this. Proverbs 3, 5 says, an ungodly man is ashamed and does not have confidence. It's like almost identical to what we're talking about. Of course, the context in Proverbs isn't the rapture, but the confidence and then the shame shows up.

It's pretty neat. Yeah, so it's a way of writing where the author would repeat himself for emphasis and clarity. Okay, verse 29. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him. In my opinion, John's turning a corner here. Verse 29 doesn't seem to relate to verse 28 much, other than it's talking about conditional righteousness, righteousness being manifested in us through Christ's life.

But other than that, in my opinion, John just turned a big old corner. He's now writing the believers about something else. And it does that a lot in 1 John. And we tried to break those up as much as we could when we divided up the verses, but John does it so much that we have one here today. So we're going to start talking about 29, and it's not going to talk about the rapture at all.

So if you know that He is righteous, If you see, for those who study Greek, if you see eon, you know right away that your conditional clause is either third or fifth class, because it's only used in third or fifth class. This is a fifth class conditional sentence. What's that? Well, in a fifth class, But the condition is present and general.

So the condition here is, if you know that he is righteous. It's true, presently, and it's just a general truth. Now, the fulfillment of the condition, which we'll see, it's the next phrase, I don't have it up here yet. Oh, I do, right here. I'm sorry. The fulfillment of the condition is also realized in the present time.

And in our case, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him. So that's what's going on here. Larry usually likes to know what class and sentence it is, so I have to pass these on to him. If you know. You know is oida, to know, to have knowledge of. perfect tense, but remember this is an irregular verb. It's used as if it's in the present tense.

Gnosko frequently suggests inception or beginning or progress in knowledge, while oida suggests fullness of knowledge, complete knowledge of something. OIDA is used 17 times and shows up as one of our keywords. And by the way, I had to update our keyword list again, sorry. POIEO, here I go, I'm studying through and find that POIEO is used 12 times and it wasn't on the keyword list, so I had to add it to the keyword list.

Okay, if you know that He is righteous, He is, is Amy, and this is our very familiar verb we've seen quite a bit in 1 John. It's an essence verb which in this context describes the very nature of Christ. So it's describing the nature of Christ, He is righteous. And it's our chief word. 99 times. It shows up again here. Amen. Present tense. Right now and continuing. He is right now and continuing. Righteous. Righteous is dikaios. Actually, it's an adjective here.

Used six times in John. And righteousness is an attribute of God. And here, these references are the 1 John references, which talk about the Lord being righteous. I pulled one from Psalms. The Lord is righteous. He loves righteous deeds. It's part of his character. Holiness relates to God's separateness, whereas righteousness to his justice. God's righteousness is seen in two ways. He is a righteous person and he is righteous in all his ways.

Okay, so the next is, you know that everyone also. You know here is Gnosko. So we just had Oida and now we have Gnosko, two knowledge words. To know, to understand, to perceive, to have knowledge of. Present tense, active voice, indicative mood. It's used 25 times in 1 John. Another key word here.

OK, so we looked at this just a moment ago because it addresses now both Gnosko and Oida. Gnosko frequently suggests inception or progress in knowledge, while Oida suggests fullness of knowledge or complete knowledge. So why did John use Oida in the first clause and now Gnosko in the second clause? And here, I had to pick bronco colors. So know that he is righteous, Oida, and then you know, Gnosko, that everyone who practiced righteousness is born of him. So here they show up right beside each other.

I think the answer is the way that you know completely that He is righteous. We know that entirely, that the Lord is righteous. And now we know perceptively that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him. So now we know, as we're going, that He's practicing righteousness. And if it's true righteousness, then it comes from him.

So that seems to be the reason why John chose to use the two words there, back-to-back. And Vincent, whom Kenneth Weiss gets a lot of his Greek insights from, says, if you know absolutely, entirely, that he is righteous, then you perceive that everyone who does righteousness is born of him. Well, you basically see Christ living his life out through believers. That's it. Entirely. Yeah. That's absolutely it. That's right.

But I guess they use the second one, because maybe not. I mean, we don't know for sure sometimes. It's experience over experience. I think we observe that in the body. We see people and their actions. And maybe because it's progressive, because we keep meeting more people. But it's not one thing. You don't know entirely who's of the Lord and who's not. You get to know that by, in time, getting to know people. who practices.

Okay, ha-poi-on, this is a participle, a verbal adjective or a verbal noun, and we'll see how it's translated here. Present tense, so the one who's practicing right now, active voice, he's practicing. And it's translated, The One Who is Practicing. That's how you would translate, usually, that is how you would translate a participle.

The One Who is Practicing Righteousness. Poieo is used 12 times in 1 John, and it's now one of our new keywords of the book there. Righteousness. Heidikaiasune. Tongue twister. Dikaiosune. Righteousness or doing what is right. The one who practices righteousness. Used three times in 1 John. It's not a very common word to John. I'm sorry. Paul talks a lot about righteousness, but John doesn't use it very often.

1 John 3.7. The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. Very similar to our verse this morning. And then 3.10, anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God. Just the converse. Okay, so everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him. Is born, ganao, to be born, is just a word describing physical birth.

You know, in the genealogy in Matthew, where it lists this one begat this, and that's not anywhere, kids, by the way. Pull it off the internet. That one? No. That'd be scary. Anyway, it's a word that naturally just refers to a physical birth, but then John uses it metaphorically in his writings, "...of the gracious act of God, and conferring upon those who believe, the nature and disposition of children, imparting to them spiritual life." So that's how John uses it.

Now note, it's perfect tense. Passive voice, indicative mood. We certainly didn't bore ourselves, bear ourselves, The Lord did it. And it's perfect tense, we'll talk about that in a minute, presently. Perfect tense is completed past action with abiding results into the present. So it happened in the past, we were born in the past, and it has results into the present. In this case, the future, but the perfect tense in Greek only is talking about abiding results into the present.

Now, here's Wiest's expanded translation focusing on this perfect tense. Having been born in the past with the present result that you are a child of God by birth." Pretty good. This is used ten times in 1 John. Now, we're born of Him. X is a preposition showing source, origin, or cause. Who did it? Where did it come from? It came from God. He did it. A couple places where this shows up.

1 John 1, 12 and 13, As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, same word, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Same message, born of God. And then in 1 John 5, 1, it will show up again, Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him, who begot, Also, that's the word I should use, begot. Also loves him who is begotten of him. So here it shows up three times. We'll get to that in June. Okay, so we'll do a little summarizing here.

Isn't this another way of saying that all righteousness exhibited in the lives of men comes from God? In other words, there is no zero zilch righteousness manifested that doesn't come from God. If it's righteousness, really righteousness, then it came from God. And you'll see unbelievers and even carnal Christians who seem to exhibit righteousness, but we know from Scripture that that's not real righteousness. It's something else. God is the only source of righteousness according to Scripture.

At the moment of salvation, God's righteousness is imputed to the individual. And we didn't really talk about that this morning. That's sort of a related teaching. We didn't talk about that. But God's righteousness is imputed to the individual. It's positional. And thereafter, God's righteousness is manifested in the individual by the Holy Spirit as he walks by faith.

And that's the conditional aspect which we're talking about this morning. And it shows up here in Paul's prayer for the Philippians. And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that you may approve things that are excellent, that you may be sincere without offense till the day of Christ." Again, look at that.

Here we have the day of Christ, and we have our condition being talked about, and then look, but it's being filled by the fruits of righteousness. It's His life, it's His fruit, which are by Jesus Christ, under the glory and praise of God. By the way, righteousness isn't one of the fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5, but it's of course mentioned here. Just another aspect of Christ's life that He lives through us.

All right, let's pray. Dear Lord, please continue to teach us as we study Isaiah upstairs and give us wisdom this week with our family relationships and our job relationships and relationships with the local church. And thanks for your grace and for these truths we got to study this morning in 1 John, in Jesus' name, amen.