Scripture: 1 John 5:6-21; 1 John 1:1-4; 1 John 3:2 Series: 2020
Preached on 1 John 5:6-21 (Trinity Sunday season, May 30, 2020), this sermon explores what it means to ‘have the Son’ and thus have eternal life. Using the image of a child pretending to be a pirate who holds together a real and unreal world, Pruitt argues that faith is not pretending but seeing the deeper, more real world beneath this one through the testimony of water, blood, and Spirit and the logos of the cross. Drawing on 1 John’s concrete language of hearing, seeing, and touching the Word of life, he contrasts the world’s zero-sum economy of scarcity and possession with God’s non-exclusive economy where having the Son is not possession but living now as a citizen of God’s kingdom. The believer is invited to see as God sees, to refuse the pretense that evil is all there is or will last forever, and to receive God’s love offered here and now, guarding themselves from idols.
Illustrations: child-pretending-pirate, real-life-minecraft-hunter, house-ownership-scarcity, possessing-car-watch-cat
May 30
Children’s
Who likes their birthdays?
“This is the one who came by water and blood: Jesus Christ. Not by water only but by water and blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. The three are testifying— the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and the three are united in agreement. If we receive human testimony, God’s testimony is greater, because this is what God testified: he has testified about his Son. The one who believes in God’s Son has the testimony within; the one who doesn’t believe God has made God a liar, because that one has not believed the testimony that God gave about his Son. And this is the testimony: God gave eternal life to us, and this life is in his Son. The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have God’s Son does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of God’s Son so that you can know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence that we have in our relationship with God: If we ask for anything in agreement with his will, he listens to us. If we know that he listens to whatever we ask, we know that we have received what we asked from him. If anyone sees a brother or sister committing a sin that does not result in death, they should pray, and God will give life to them—that is, to those who commit sins that don’t result in death. There is a sin that results in death—I’m not saying that you should pray about that. Every unrighteous action is sin, but there is a sin that does not result in death. We know that everyone born from God does not sin, but the ones born from God guard themselves, and the evil one cannot touch them. We know we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. We know that God’s Son has come and has given us understanding to know the one who is true. We are in the one who is true by being in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols!” 1 John 5:6-21 CEB
Pretending I’m a pirate Hunter Real life Minecraft
The child who pretends he is a pirate balances two possible worlds: one real, the other unreal.
It is not just a matter of pretending. The child knows he is not a pirate. He is pretending. But for a child pirate, a stick is a sword, a box is a mighty sailboat, a t-shirt is a jolly rogers flag.
Faith transforms how we see the world and how we live in the world. John urges the believer to be other than he is, to accomplish in himself an alternative possibility. To live the same life but to live it differently. But it is different than pretend.
Under the shape of this world is another possible world that we see by faith through the logos of the cross, that we see by water and blood and spirit.
This is what we have with the whole of 1 John.
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make oura joy complete.
You have been loved in concrete ways by God and you have been transformed by God’s mercy. In ways that we can hear and see and touch. The entire letter of 1 John is filled with a progressively intensifying set of dichotomy, concluding here in chapter 5: “The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have God’s Son does not have life. “
But we are left with the final question: what does it mean to have God’s Son? What does it mean to have Jesus? We can’t possess Jesus as we can possess a car or a watch or a cat.
The world with which John over and over again contrasts the life of God, our world is filled with haves and have nots. Our world is filled with scarcity. There are a finite amount of resources. Because resources our finite, there have been a lot of debates and governments and wars around who gets what in society. Whether resources are accrued based on who deserves it or based on some other factor.
Now, I don’t really want to go into the pros and cons of different methods of political economy on a Sunday Night. What we need to remember throughout these dichotomies in John and throughout our own experience with God and faith is that the economy of God is not zero-sum. The economy of God is not based on scarcity.
For instance, if you own your house, that means your neighbor does not. But to be with God is non-exclusive.
We get back to this question: what does it mean to have God’s son?
This is to live in the world but as a citizen of a different world. As John says in his Gospel, “Here and now we are God’s children. What we shall be has not yet been revealed.
So we come back to the child pretending to be a pirate who occupies two possible worlds. What Christ offers us not a pretend life, but a more real life. A deeper life that we can live today. God’s love is offered to you. You can see now as God sees. The letter for John is not about other people or universal concepts but right here and right now, God is love and God’s love is offered to you. You don’t need sin. You don’t need darkness. You don’t need to pretend that the evil of this world is all there is. You don’t need to pretend that this evil will last forever. “We know that God’s Son has come and has given us understanding to know the one who is true. We are in the one who is true by being in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. “
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy SPirit. AMen.