Jesus said: What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and forfeit their life?
That’s Mark chapter 8, verse 36.
It’s a good question. Our society is very good at helping us to add things to our life. Much less clear what life itself is all about.
Which makes Jesus’ question frighteningly relevant. What if someone did manage to gain everything there is to have? But what if they also missed out on life itself?
1 John chapter 5 is about how we can avoid making exactly that mistake.
We’re going to work through this paragraph backwards. We’ll start at the end, and we’ll work back towards the beginning. I’m going to sum up what John is saying in three statements. Three statements that get us to the heart of what life is all about.
There is no life apart from knowing Jesus.
First statement. There is no life apart from knowing Jesus. There is no life apart from knowing Jesus. This comes from verses 11 and 12.
Verse 12 is very stark isn’t it? Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. You can’t get more black and white than that. We sensitive, moderate, English people don’t like things in black and white. We want some space for manoeuvre. The Bible writers don’t always accommodate themselves to our Englishness. It’s really very simple. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
The reason for this is quite simple. Jesus is the life. He created life at the very beginning. John chapter 1 says that in him was life. John chapter 5 says that Jesus has life in himself. And John chapter 17 verse 3 says that eternal life is to know Jesus.
In the Bible, eternal life is about quality of life. It’s about having the best life imaginable. The fullest life. The richest life. Life in 3d. Life in HD. And that comes only through having a personal relationship with the one who is the life. Jesus Christ. It’s true that the person who is this alive will enjoy this for all eternity. If you know Jesus, you are so alive that not even death can take that life away from you. It’s that good.
Which is why John can say: Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
If you have a plant in your garden and it gets damaged. A thin new branch gets bent and the channels inside are broken. That branch is then cut off from the roots. From the source of life. It may look fine. But it won’t look fine for long. For all it looks healthy, it will die.
John is saying that the person who knows Jesus, the Son of God, has life. The person who does not is cut off from the source of life. They may look fine. But they won’t look fine for long.
One of the most sad things is if someone is unconscious. They’re in a coma. Perhaps they’re ill. Perhaps they had a nasty fall. They’ve survived. They’re not dead. But it’s not much of a life either. They’re alive, but there’s no life in them. Maybe they can still hear voices. Maybe they’ll wake up. Maybe soon. But for the time being, they don’t have much of a life.
John says that unless you know Jesus, you are in a coma. You’re alive. You’re not dead. But spiritually you are dead. There’s no life.
There is no life apart from knowing Jesus. And that’s because Jesus is the life.
There is no Jesus apart from the one God tells us about.
Moving back up the passage a little, here’s the second statement: There is no Jesus apart from the one God tells us about. There is no Jesus apart from the one God tells us about.
This is in verses 9 and 10.
We’ve discovered that life comes only through knowing Jesus.
That raises the question: How can I know what Jesus is like?
John’s answer is that God has spoken. Verse 10 the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. God has testified. He’s told us all about his own Son. And the logic is clear. If Jesus is the Son of God, who better to testify to him than God his Father. Verse 9: the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. God has spoken. And he should know.
Now, given God has spoken clearly about his own Son, we are faced with two choices.
Our first option is to believe God. If we do this, we choose to internalise what God has said. We believe it. We make it out own. We live by it. Verse 10 begins: Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.
The other option is unbelief. We don’t believe him. Which means we’re calling God a liar. Verse 10 goes on: Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.
Verse 9 makes the point that we all believe things that other people tell us. Some of us are really quite gullible. We’ll believe anything. Think of the story of the emperor’s new clothes. We believe anything, especially if it’s what we wish to be true.
Others of us are more discerning. We carefully sift what people tell us, and believe some things but not others.
But all of us, at points, take other peoples’ word for it. We have to.
And John says: You believe what other people say. God is far more reliable than anyone else you know. So why would you not believe what he says.
It hurts to be misrepresented, doesn’t it?
One vicar I know had crows nesting in the churchyard that were damaging the fabric of the church. On the advice of the diocese, they used a pest control firm to shoot the troublesome crows. Somehow the Daily Mail got hold of it. Somehow “professional pest control experts preserve much loved churchyard” turned into “Callous vicar shoots cute birds and upsets the local children”
The press can misrepresent someone carelessly or maliciously. They write about somebody. The person they write about shares the name of a real living person. But the person they write about is not someone that any of their friends would recognise at all.
Jesus can be misrepresented to. Sometimes, people speak of someone who shares a name with Jesus Christ. But the person they speak of is not someone that any of Jesus’ friends would recognise. Far more important is whether the Jesus we speak of is one that God would recognise. Far more than any of Jesus’ friends, God his Father knows him perfectly.
There is no life apart from knowing Jesus.
But we need to know the right Jesus. There is no Jesus apart from the one God tells us about.
God testifies to the Jesus who died to save us.
But this raises a third question. What does God say about Jesus?
That brings us to the third statement. Summing up verses 6 to 8: God testifies to the Jesus who died to save us. God testifies to the Jesus who died to save us.
According to verse 7, God has testified to his Son by means of 3 witnesses. 3 witnesses speak God’s word about his own Son.
They are the Spirit, the water and the blood.
No doubt this was clear as anything to the Christians John wrote to. Probably, these were familiar terms in the debates that were raging in their church. John uses the labels they were all using in their arguments. He says: You are all discussing whether Jesus came by water, or by both water and blood. Let me settle the argument for you. It’s both.
The trouble is, we aren’t in their church. So we read this, and we think “what on earth is he on about?”
Let’s take the Spirit first, because that’s the easiest of the 3. The night before Jesus died, he promised that he would send his Spirit. The Spirit’s job was to testify about Jesus. The way he would do this is through the 12 apostles. The Spirit would remind them of all that Jesus had said and done. And the Spirit would make sure that they could understand it all correctly.
This is why the early church preserved the New Testament. The writings of Jesus’ first apostles. They were the ones that Jesus had promised the Spirit would work through in this unique way. The 27 books of our New Testament are the Holy Spirit’s testimony to Jesus.
But what about water and blood? Down the centuries, 3 views have been the most popular. I’m not going to go into the arguments for and against each of them. It would be too easy to get bogged down. Ask me later if you’re interested.
Of those 3, there’s one I find far more persuasive than the others. John is talking about the two moments in John’s Gospel when Jesus is invested with God’s power, authority and glory. Those are his baptism and his crucifixion. At the start of this ministry, he was baptised in water. At the end of his ministry, he shed his blood to deal with our sins.
Now, it seems that everyone agreed that Jesus came by water. John and his readers agreed that Jesus’ baptism was significant. We need the Jesus who lived among us as one of us. But John needs to insist that Jesus came by water and blood. Not everyone would agree that Jesus’ death was equally significant. We need the Jesus who died to save us.
And so John says we need God’s testimony about his own Son. And he points us to three voices through which God speaks. The Spirit, as the apostles wrote of the real Jesus for us. The water, as Jesus came and lived among us. And the blood, as Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins.
And of those 3, the controversial one in John’s day was the blood. Which is why the third statement I gave us is that God testifies to the Jesus who died to save us.
Now, perhaps you’re thinking that this last statement is all lost in the mists of history. Nobody today would think that Jesus coming to live among us was more important than his death to save us. Would they?
Well it’s true that the exact heresies John is countering are not around today. But John’s not far off the mark.
Let’s look within the church first. Sometimes Jesus’ death is played down. His life is more important. One of the warning signs to my ears is if we think that Easter Day is more important than Good Friday. We only need Good Friday to put Jesus into the tomb. Good Friday makes sure he’s in the right place on stage for the main act. But that’s all.
Now, in one sense, Easter does trump Good Friday. If Good Friday had been the end, death would have won. We need Easter to prove that Jesus defeated death. We couldn’t have Good Friday without Easter. But that doesn’t give us permission to play down Jesus’ death. John picks the blood of Jesus, not the empty tomb, as God’s witness to his own Son. It was his blood that paid for our sins. It was as he hung on the cross that he shouted “it is finished”. Jesus’ work was done by 3 O’clock on Friday afternoon.
Even if we within the church aren’t tempted to play down Jesus’ death, consider this: Take Good Friday and Easter together for a moment. John is saying that Jesus’ death, and resurrection, are just as important as his arrival on earth to live among us.
Last Christmas we had nearly 1000 people through our doors. Last Easter, we had about 200.
In 2009, 21.9 million Easter cards were sold in the shops in this country. That’s one for every 3 people. That may sound like a lot. Until you realise that the number of Christmas cards sold was 950 million. That’s 45 times as many, or 15 per head of population.
Nobody today would think that Jesus coming to live among us is more important than Jesus dying to save us. Would they?
Conclusion
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and forfeit their life?
John gives us two options to choose between.
You can reject the Jesus God tells us about. God’s told us about Jesus through the water of his baptism, through the blood of his atoning death, and through the words of his first, Spirit-inspired followers. You can reject the Jesus God tells us about. If you do that, you’re calling God a liar. You don’t have a life.
Or you can receive God’s testimony. You can trust Jesus. More precisely, you can trust this Jesus. If you do that, you have him. You possess him. You know him. And to have Jesus is to have life. So you have eternal life. And you will enjoy it for all eternity.
God has spoken concerning his Son. He has said that eternal life is found in him.
What you do with that is up to you.