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Dr. Ron Hall, professor and pastor, and Peter Englert, pastor, help you delve into 1 John. Understand the context and background while applying this practical book of the Bible to your life.
1 John - 3-19-24.mov
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Peter Englert
00:00 - 00:53
Welcome to the Reading 1 John podcast. I am here with Pastor and Professor Ron Hall, and today we are going to go through five verses in 1 John 3, 19-24, which I think is a powerful section. So let's just jump right in to use the most of our time. So 1 John 3, 19 says this, Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and we receive from Him anything we ask, because we keep His commands and we do what pleases Him.
Peter Englert
00:54 - 01:13
And this is His command, to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us. The one who keeps God's commands lives in him and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us. We know it by the spirit he gave us.
Peter Englert
01:15 - 01:23
Well, just a regular, you know, standard verse, nothing too much to go. Where do you want to start, Ron?
Ron Hall
01:25 - 01:39
Oh my, there is so much here for all of us to process. And it's so practical on getting our arms around what our hearts tell us. Because Jeremiah 17 says, the heart is deceitful above all else. Who can know it?
Ron Hall
01:40 - 01:56
I, the Lord, I try the reins to give to a man according to his doing. So we have this dynamic taking place of what are our hearts telling us? And what is the Spirit of God telling us? So it becomes a test as to whether or not we are really in the truth.
Ron Hall
01:56 - 02:05
So we'll deal with it again in Chapter 4, but for today, you know, how do we know if we are really genuine believers? That's where we're heading.
Peter Englert
02:06 - 02:31
Where I want to go is I want to talk to you about the audience, because we've talked about kind of the heretics that thought that they were without sin. And it seems that John pivots towards individuals that have a genuine faith. And like many of us that listen to it, we wonder what our standing is before God. Is he trying to hit that group or what do you think he's trying to do?
Ron Hall
02:32 - 02:53
Well, okay, because we've set aside what we've covered, as you just clarified. Those who were sin deniers, that wasn't the case at all. But then, here we are, he's moving for people, whether or not they have an assurance that they're right with God. There must have been people having doubts that were taking place in the congregation at large.
Ron Hall
02:53 - 03:13
Remember, this was written to a people in an area known as Asia Minor. So we think about the Ephesian letter, Colossian letter, Well, in the greater spans of that area, these people are the ones John is addressing. And there are people that were having doubts about the faith. How could they know they're really in the faith?
Ron Hall
03:14 - 03:38
They weren't among those who walked away, but they're having doubts, am I genuinely a believer? And Peter, and to all of us listening, that's something I think that it's normal for us to go through, to have doubts as to what kind of a Christian life I really have. I'm really a believer. And if I'm a believer, why am I having these thoughts?
Ron Hall
03:38 - 03:40
Why am I having these struggles I'm going through?
Peter Englert
03:41 - 03:59
Well, let's jump microscopically to to verse 19. So it's interesting. I've heard truth talked about two ways. Truth is talked about as the wrong, you know, that you believe a lie as like a sin.
Peter Englert
04:00 - 04:19
But then truth is talked about as a lie of I have to earn God's love and favor. And it seems that the second truth is a little bit more of what John's getting at, where he's trying to help people experience that if the truth of the gospel is in you, you can rest in God's presence.
Ron Hall
04:20 - 04:33
Agreed. rather than living our lives in a lie. There's a word called mendacity. It's a person who is given to constant lying.
Ron Hall
04:34 - 05:05
And in the verses preceding this, we dealt with Cain and Abel, and he's really doing the bidding of his father, the devil, following in those evil ways. But now it's the idea of embracing truth. But this is going to bring us to what that truth really is, and that truth is Christ. So we think of truth as a noun, but in this case I'd like us to think of it as an adjective, a descriptor of a person.
Ron Hall
05:08 - 05:23
Ephesians chapter 4 is a good example about embracing the truth. It means truthing, where we're living it out. A good example would be John 14.6. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
Ron Hall
05:23 - 05:29
So truth is personified in Christ himself. Is that what you're thinking in terms of?
Peter Englert
05:31 - 06:10
Yeah, and I like the way you put it better, not just because you're my professor, but a noun versus an adjective. And I think sometimes when we think about fake news, what is actually truth, there's something freeing about this. And as we think about this verse, you actually point back to Matthew 11, 28 to 30, which is, Come to me, all you weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And there's power in the truth of the gospel that we can actually live the life that God intended us to live.
Peter Englert
06:11 - 06:14
But it's based on a solid foundation.
Ron Hall
06:14 - 06:38
Yeah. And John is saying, you know it's genuine by the love that you have in your life. And he's been already dealing with it earlier in this chapter. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we shall be called the children of God." Right at the beginning of this chapter 3, here he is coming back to that issue of love.
Ron Hall
06:39 - 06:59
And then in chapter 4, how can we say we've loved God when we've not seen Him? We can't love our brother, our sister, whom we have seen. And so there is this dynamic that we're truthing. We are living out this truth because of Christ in us, and it's impacting our entire behavior.
Ron Hall
06:59 - 07:09
And that's why John will do this exchange on dealing with our conscience and loving God and obeying, walking in the truth.
Peter Englert
07:11 - 07:37
So that's a good segue to our next verse because I don't know anybody that's followed Jesus long enough that they haven't experienced this where they feel condemned and we have to delineate. Sometimes it's justified and we can change the wording. I know that people delineate between condemnation and guilt. and how godly sorrow leads to repentance.
Peter Englert
07:37 - 07:58
But I think what this verse is talking about is in the normal human experience, we doubt that we're good enough. We doubt a lot of different things. And what John is inviting us to do is to remove our focus on ourselves to see how God is at work in us.
Ron Hall
08:00 - 08:30
Yes, but not without taking on the importance of the conscience because The conscience, it's being desensitized in our culture. And that's not something unique to where we're at in 2025. We're talking about history. You go back to the 1700s, 1800s, first century, there is the constant attacks of the world system to desensitize us to things that are right with God.
Ron Hall
08:31 - 09:01
So we already dealt with this back in chapter two, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, the love of the, the lust of the flesh, pride of life, those things are of the world. And so John already addressed that, but now he's bringing it into what's going on in the inside. So that conscience is a monitor for our own good. And when your conscience is desensitized, you start calling good evil and evil good.
Ron Hall
09:02 - 09:32
When your conscience is desensitized, you do things that, in a healthy Christian life, you would know that they're wrong and you would experience conviction, but it's desensitized, so what happens? And those of you that are believers that are listening, when you became a Christian, all of a sudden, you started seeing things, because your inner life was illuminated. Oh, I didn't realize that was wrong. Oh, I didn't realize I shouldn't be doing that.
Ron Hall
09:32 - 09:51
because you were sensitized. And so we want to do everything we can to manage our conscience well. And a clean conscience is God's way. And in Hebrews, it deals with Christ coming in order to cleanse our conscience.
Ron Hall
09:52 - 09:55
And so we want to have a pure conscience before God.
Peter Englert
09:56 - 10:27
Well, just to give a practical example, let's talk about marriage. So a conscience that is not sanctified and not growing would say something like, and there's a lot of pastors that have experienced this from people in the church. I feel as though God is calling me to divorce this, my spouse, and marry someone else. as opposed to someone that says, my marriage is on the rocks.
Peter Englert
10:27 - 10:47
I'm doing everything I can. God must be upset with me. And again, I don't want to oversimplify, but one is this is the justification for me to doing something wrong. And the second one is I'm trying to throw everything I have to do what God's called me to do.
Peter Englert
10:47 - 10:49
Is that a good example or would you put something else there?
Ron Hall
10:50 - 11:13
Well, yeah, you picked a thorny one, because we have Malachi 2.11 that says God hates divorce. So God is not going to deliberately tell people a person to make that choice. Thinking about Hosea, he's told to purchase Gomer off the auction block of sin, of prostitution. God wanted to restore that marriage.
Ron Hall
11:14 - 11:24
So I think it's, we have to be careful that we're not looking to justify that I'm taking these actions because I want to be comfortable myself.
Peter Englert
11:25 - 11:43
Yeah. And we don't have time to jump into that, but I, I think you can take. any example, like even gossip where, you know, on one hand, your conscience is seared. You're like, I just vented to 30 people.
Peter Englert
11:44 - 11:59
And then there's someone else where you're talking to your spouse and it's confidential. You're like, Should I have told my spouse that? You know, those are very different. Whereas one, you're justifying, I'm just venting, it's not a big deal.
Peter Englert
11:59 - 12:05
Whereas the other one, you're asking, in my human sense, did I cross the line? Is that valid?
Ron Hall
12:06 - 12:26
Yeah, and I think that's a sensitivity. We don't want to grieve the Holy Spirit, as it tells us in Ephesians 4. So we want to be sensitized, but then we don't want to be living in guilt all the time. So as you said, and I think we've all had it, there's a check in our hearts.
Ron Hall
12:27 - 12:39
I had that recently with the Lord. It prompted me, don't go there with that conversation. And what did I do? You guessed it, I went there.
Ron Hall
12:40 - 13:01
And then afterwards, it was like, okay, it wasn't where I committed some mortal sin, and now I've lost my salvation. I mean, that would be a sad way to live your Christian life. But realizing it was the Holy Spirit that puts a check on it of not going down a certain road. So I think there's a sensitivity here, but bounce back.
Peter Englert
13:02 - 13:28
Well, I actually think this sets us up for verse 21 and 22, because what John is getting at is a heart that's free from condemnation and where our confidence is before God. And this isn't even that situation that you shared. It's not that we're going to be perfect, but are we aware of what God's doing? Are we aware of the maturity that he wants to bring in our hearts?
Ron Hall
13:29 - 14:09
And that's why, going to 21 and 22, but 20, it's being able to solidify that, that God, it says, is greater than our hearts. So John is communicating, saying, whatever it is you and I are experiencing with conviction and condemnation and where our conscience is at, and the conscience, I want to reinforce this, it's a barometer. A barometer functions with pressure. So if you put a bottle upside down, put water in it, in another water, it will adjust according to what pressure it has from the atmosphere.
Ron Hall
14:09 - 14:36
So the same way the conscience is a barometer, it gives us a sense of where we're at, which requires diligence. You know, I'm thinking of Hebrews chapter 5, verse 14. Strong meat is for those who by reason of use have exercised their conscience to discern between both good and evil. So the conscience needs to be exercised.
Ron Hall
14:37 - 15:00
But in the end, Paul said, you know, I can't condemn myself because God is greater than all to the Corinthians. He's the one who ultimately judges me. And John is dealing with the same thing, that God himself is greater than our hearts. So I can say that I'm just fine, but God comes along and his assessment is what really matters the most.
Ron Hall
15:01 - 15:10
So one more thing before I hand it back to you. It's that Jeremiah 17 verse. You know, the heart is deceitfully wicked above all else. Who can know it?
Ron Hall
15:11 - 15:24
I, the Lord, he tries the reins of the heart to give to every man according to his doing. That's a sobering verse for us to remember. But then you could say, well, Ron, then I don't have hope. I mean, where does it lead?
Ron Hall
15:24 - 15:30
No, John is letting us know there is hope, because we can have this assurance that we are in the faith.
Peter Englert
15:31 - 15:58
Well, and something powerful of what you're talking about, going back to verses 21 and 22, I think keeping his commands, we can talk a lot about that. We know the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, but doing what pleases him. And there's a vision of this verse that we're aware of what's happening in us. Some of us were more.
Peter Englert
15:58 - 16:25
We have a proclivity to justify ourselves and others of us have a proclivity to condemn ourselves. And I think what's brilliant is as you think about counselors and anxiety, John's aware of this all the way back in the ancient times. And so in some ways, he's saying, be aware of God's grace and his love, but also be aware of what's happening in you. Be aware of your thoughts.
Peter Englert
16:25 - 16:49
And it says that in Proverbs, you've been resting, Jeremiah, to guard your heart as the wellspring of your mind. And then in other places in the Bible, it talks about take every thought captive. So there's this holistic idea of how faith helps us not only see God, which some of us need to see, but helps us see what's going on inside of us.
Ron Hall
16:50 - 17:14
Well, yeah, it's a balance. Theology class that I'm teaching this past week, they were dealing with the blessed hope, the return of Christ. Now this week, they're dealing with the doctrine of the final judgment. So here you have one, the return of Christ and the blessing of all that means, and then on the other one, you have the judgment.
Ron Hall
17:14 - 17:19
So it is finding a balance along the way.
Peter Englert
17:21 - 17:55
We can come back to that, but let's go to 23 and 24, and then we might be jumping around between that. And he's rooting this all in Jesus Christ's work, and love for one another, and you hinted at that before, and then trying to keep God's commands, and then he even mentions the Spirit. If I could simplify it, I had a pastor that used to tell me, if you're trying to follow God's will, you won't miss it. That's probably the easiest way I can sum that up.
Peter Englert
17:56 - 17:56
What are your thoughts?
Ron Hall
17:59 - 18:16
My wife and I just recently had this conversation. I was saying, boy, I wonder if I missed the God with the decision that I made. Well, were you not praying about it? Well, I was praying about it, but I'm looking back and wishing these life circumstances had turned out differently.
Ron Hall
18:16 - 18:27
And so wrestle with it. We have to have a sense if we're open to the Lord, then he truly will lead us and guide us and direct us.
Peter Englert
18:29 - 19:11
Well, one thought I had, you and I have talked about the book of Job, and I think that there's something about these two verses that go back there, is the friends of Job who condemn Job, and even Job himself, They have no idea what God's doing behind the scenes. Now, there's a whole argument and discussion about God challenging Satan and all of that. But what I think is powerful about this is I think we probably over focus on ourselves and and it's hard because you and I both probably look back and say, should I have said yes here?
Peter Englert
19:12 - 19:25
Should I have said no here? And at the end of the day, we won't know until the other side of eternity. Maybe in some of our worst moments, God was saving us from something. But that's hard.
Ron Hall
19:25 - 19:39
Yeah. And dropping back to the verses 21-22, we're dealing with prayer. So what do we do? We bring the circumstances that we're facing to God in prayer.
Ron Hall
19:40 - 20:02
That doesn't mean he's going to always answer them the way that we want. And Job came to the Lord and he said he cursed the day that he was ever born. But in the end, God had him. He told his four comforters that they were wrong and Job was right, but then he told Job he had to pray for his comforters.
Ron Hall
20:02 - 20:30
And we're not told how Job responded to that. Maybe in the fleshly side, he didn't want to, but nevertheless, that was God's directive along the way. So to To maximize verses 23 and 24, we have to put 21 and 22 in perspective, because it is that idea of what we bring to the Lord in prayer when we're sorting it out.
Peter Englert
20:34 - 20:53
So, as we close, where I want us to go, we've talked about Jesus, but in 24, that talks about, and this is how we know that he lives in us, Jesus, we know it by the spirit he gave us. What do you think John's getting at?
Ron Hall
20:54 - 21:18
Well, that's the mark of a true believer, that It's the Romans 8, the spirit bears witness with our spirit that we're the children of God. So there's an inner witness of a confirmation of our faith. And it's talking about genuine belief. Remember with John, faith is an action word.
Ron Hall
21:19 - 21:47
We talked about the idea of an adjective for truth. We can even turn it into a verb, truthing, and the idea We wouldn't use the word faithing because we think of faith as a noun, but for John, it's more of this ongoing action. So he loves to use the word belief in the Gospel of John and also here. Are we really believing in, and it says the name of his son, the name that's all that Christ represents.
Ron Hall
21:48 - 22:04
And then we can have that assurance that he's living within us. So again, Peter, I like tying this well to the Romans 8, where we know that if the Spirit's within us, he's bearing witness that we are the children of God.
Peter Englert
22:11 - 22:23
Because I think we need something concrete. This is also the fruit of the Spirit. What is God producing when the Spirit is in you? So love, joy, peace.
Peter Englert
22:24 - 22:41
And this goes back to verse 23 about loving one another. You know, if you were to meet pastors and they talk about measuring spiritual growth, You know, they try to find quantitative ways. How often have you read your Bible? How often do you pray?
Peter Englert
22:42 - 22:58
But the vision that John and Paul, and you take Romans 8, that if you know that the Spirit is with you, it's producing fruit that's making you look like Jesus. It translates to how you treat other people.
Ron Hall
22:59 - 23:25
And remember, we were dealing with that our last time together, dealing with Cain and Abel and the hatred. And we reflected on how much hatred is in the world. That's one of the things that can be so toxic to listen to the news, because there's everything that's wrong with both sides and the constant feeding of hatred that creates tension within us. And here John comes along and really reinforces the message of Jesus.
Ron Hall
23:25 - 23:43
By this will all men know you're my disciples. if you have love one for another. So here in the context, we're talking about the conscience, and the conscience is kept clean and refined by how we are treating other people. And that's huge for us.
Peter Englert
23:45 - 24:22
And one last thing, and you've brought this up in your notes, and I'm thinking about it because I just touched on it in a sermon. When the Bible talks about obedience, it's not a manipulative form of making people robots. I think that this passage, when it says, follow Jesus's commands, following the Ten Commandments, obedience is actually this gift to experience life the way that God intended to it. And maybe there's a better word someday.
Peter Englert
24:22 - 24:35
I like to use the word maturity. But I think all of this is summed up, not just the condemnation, Jesus' spirit, but there is a freedom and a joy in obedience.
Ron Hall
24:36 - 24:58
Oh, there is, and that's what John is after for us to experience. We don't like tribulation, but Jesus said, in this world you have tribulation, but be of good courage, for I've overcome the world. And so John doesn't see obedience as something that's cumbersome. He's going to refer to that in chapter 5.
Ron Hall
24:59 - 25:10
And his commandments are not cumbersome. In other words, he's saying they don't weigh us down. That's what we're having some sessions down the pike here. So there's obedience.
Ron Hall
25:10 - 25:31
There can be joy in obedience. It means we're doing it God's way. God knows what's best, and by submitting ourselves to his Word and his guidance, we'll be much better off. Choose our own road, and we live with the consequences of that.
Ron Hall
25:31 - 25:35
So obedience, though, is the mark of a genuine believer.
Peter Englert
25:38 - 26:20
It just makes me close, because as we think about this—and I hope I'm not making it to surface, but I think about the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. He has an old chapter on Rick Warren, and he talks about these habits of developing prayer and attending church and reading your Bible. He actually, as someone that's not from a Christian perspective, is he's painting this picture of spiritual growth. Like we don't ask people to do that, to check this box, to make them more self-righteous or to condemn them.
Peter Englert
26:21 - 26:47
But it's actually within these practices that you reframe the way that you see your life, you reframe the way that you see others. And so I think that that's what we're talking about here in this passage is the commands are not a burden. And even engaging the Bible is not to confuse you or make you scared or make you kind of rate yourself compared to others, but it's actually to experience the life that God has.
Ron Hall
26:47 - 27:10
And that's good. And as I was reviewing for today, I was thinking about the books called Habitudes. And I think it was Tim Elmore, and it was how to set up the new habits in our lives, similar to what you're referring to. And so we have these, these habitudes, these, it became weighted where when you read them, though, it felt like, oh, now I have to do this, now I have to do that.
Ron Hall
27:12 - 27:42
Our pastor, I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the pastor here does a come alive, it's called, And Monday through Friday, there are prompts for people. Four o'clock in the morning, they're available, and you pull up your email, and he either reads it so you hear his voice or you read through it. Right now, he's in the book of Zechariah. And his whole take is that what you start the day with makes all the difference for how you end the day.
Ron Hall
27:43 - 28:09
So if you start the day with your news feeds, if you start the day with social media, that habit will impact how you end the day. So obedience is, we know that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Okay, it's the idea that God's word is food for us. So why not in this walk of obedience start in the right place?
Ron Hall
28:09 - 28:17
We get up in the morning, we meet with the Lord, and it's, you know, it's, God, what are you up to today so we can be a part of it?
Peter Englert
28:20 - 28:29
Well, that's a great place to close chapter three. We're going to start with chapter four next time, and thank you so much for joining us.