1 John Series – Calling God a Liar

Jesus is everything about who we are as Christians.  John was the last living disciple of Jesus, and he could have turned following Jesus into some sort of power play, but they didn’t.  What they did was demonstrate that everything that God promised has come true!  And that promise was made true in the person of Jesus.

And we can describe this through the example of the parent/child relationship.  A child is powerless to obtain the position of being a child.  It is the parent that gives a child their position.  And it is God’s power to make people his children.

Everything that God promised, fulfilled in Jesus, is amazing.  And everything God did through Jesus was for you and for me.

There is a lot of debate regarding the “water and blood” described in this verse.  It could be a description of how he died since John was present for Jesus’ crucifixion.  But others believe that it was an example of the Eucharist.  But perhaps the best way to see this is to relate this to when Jesus was baptized.  When Jesus came out of the water, Father God declared, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” ()  And just as Jesus rose from the water, he also rose from the grave.  From water to blood, from baptism to resurrection, Jesus fulfills all that God had planned.

God was very specific when he declared his plan for salvation.  He had a plan, and that plan was going to work through the very specific person of Jesus.

We can weigh the struggle of accepting God’s plan, but as soon as we reject the evidence of God’s work and the person of Jesus, you are in essence calling God a liar.  There are so many reasons that people reject Christianity.  And their reasoning might be that there are hypocrites in the church, that it is just a set of rules, or that religion is repressive.  But the decision is not against us, but against God.  It is ultimately a statement saying God is a liar.

This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  Whoever has the Son has life, and whoever does not have the Son does not have life.  Where is the middle ground?  There is none!  You either accept or reject.  There is no accepting some things and taking out the stuff you don’t like.

Why do people take things they don’t understand to reject the things that are understandable?  When a parent tells a child not to do something that might hurt them, the child might not understand why not to do something.  But the choice is this:  do they reject the reality that their parent loves them and wants the best because they cannot fully understand the ramifications only for them to choose something else?

God wants the best for us.  We don’t want to make God out to be a liar.  He has placed in front of us his finished work for salvation, and it is up to accept it as truth or to reject it as a lie.