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Scripture Reading: 1 John 5:16-21
When an author decides to compose a writing, he has some basic thoughts in mind as to what he plans to cover. I believe that when the apostle John wrote this Epistle, the basic matters that he wanted to share were the very items we have covered in the previous chapters.
There was within him this matter of the eternal life. Out of this life is the fellowship, the flowing of this life within us. Within John also must have been the fact of the mutual abiding, then the anointing, and then the spirit, which has been reborn of God. He wanted to remind his readers of the part within them that was not only created by God but also regenerated by His Spirit with the divine life. Then there must also have been the thought of the seed of God, that is, God Himself sown into mankind as the soil. It is of these basic items that John composed this Epistle.
With this chapter we come to the conclusion of 1 John, the last six verses.
“If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask and he will give life to him, to those sinning not unto death. There is a sin unto death; I do not say that he should make request concerning that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not unto death. We know that everyone who is begotten of God does not sin, but he who has been begotten of God keeps himself, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we might know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols” (5:16-21).
John’s conclusion here is also composed of several basic matters. There are five on the negative side and three on the positive. The negative ones are: sin, death, the world, the evil one, and idols. The positive ones are: God, the Son of God, and life.
It is a help in studying the Bible to take note of the main items. If you do not pick them out, you probably will not notice them. Do not hesitate to mark up your Bible. Then the important themes will stand out, and the light will shine. If you circle the negative items in these verses in black and then use another color to circle the positive items, your attention will be drawn to them.
It was the work of the apostle John to mend the broken revelation that had been given to Paul. He surely did a marvelous job! Even in these six verses we can see his wisdom and skillfulness. It is not sufficient for a carpenter to have good pieces of wood; he also needs skill if he is to shape them into fine furniture. In these verses John handled his words in a skillful way.
Like the rest of the Bible, John’s composition is not doctrinal but experiential. He begins his conclusion by directing a man who sees his brother sinning to ask life for him. What John has in mind is not a doctrine but a case. He is speaking about experience. There is no doctrinal flavor to these verses. They are written from the standpoint of experience.
The Bible is surely not composed in a doctrinal way. Systematic theology is a human invention. The revelation in the Bible is not given in systematized doctrines. Genesis begins by telling us, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is not a doctrine. In Genesis 3 we have the account of the subtle serpent who came and beguiled the woman into partaking of the forbidden tree. There is no doctrine of the devil given. The New Testament likewise begins in a way that is not doctrinal. It says, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”
Beware of doctrinal talk. The divisions in Christianity have come about largely over doctrine. If Christians cared more for experience and less for doctrine, there would not be so many divisions.
If anyone sees his brother sinning, John writes, “he shall ask and he will give life to him, to those sinning not unto death” (1 John 5:16). This is the only reference in the Bible to ministering life to someone. How is it possible to give life to someone? I can give him, say, a watch, but what does it mean to give him life? It means that I impart Christ to him. It is of no help to talk doctrines to him. He has sinned because he is short of life. When we are short of the Lord Jesus, we commit sin. Doctrine will not help us to overcome sin. Only one person can overcome sin, and that is the Lord Jesus. If we lose our temper, that is an indication that we are short of the Lord Jesus. We do not need a rebuke. We do not need to be told what we should do or should not do. We do not need to be told that we were wrong. The more we are condemned, the more our temper will rise. A rebuking reduces our measure of Christ. What we need is an addition of Him, not a reduction. We need more of Him imparted into us.
Have you ever realized that you sin because you are short of the Lord Jesus? Why do you mistreat your wife or husband? Have you ever looked in the mirror when you were angry and seen how ugly you were? Yet you had every intention of being considerate and loving toward your spouse. Why is it that you have not been able to live up to your resolves? You are short of the Lord Jesus.
Husbands, do not rebuke your wife. You will simply make yourself and her miserable. Rebuking makes the situation worse. What can you do? You may say that you must love her. Sometimes that may help, but love may corrupt and do damage. Only Christ works. Only life helps. We husbands must minister life to our wives.
Sisters, deep in your heart you may have the intention to subdue your husband. Husbands like to rebuke; wives like to subdue. You will never succeed in subduing your husband; God created man to be over you. The only husband who can be subdued is the clever one; he will merely be tricking you into thinking that he is subdued. Give up your efforts to subdue your husband. What he needs is for you to minister life to him. You must minister a portion of Christ to him. Both husbands and wives need more Christ. Only He saves.
What short simple words John uses! “Give life to him” — a first grader can read this. Yet how marvelous is the expression, found nowhere else in the Bible! Some may protest that the Bible tells us to admonish and rebuke. It does, but this is not the word of the mending ministry here. Why is Christianity so degraded? One reason is that there are many to admonish but few to give life. What can mend today’s broken situation? Only the life-giving mending ministry. Christianity’s poor situation is due to the shortage of life.
In the church life we must learn to minister life. This is what is needed. Do not try other ways. No way of helping is better than that of ministering life.
You may raise the objection that you yourself are short of life; how can you minister it to others? You may indeed be short of life. Then what should you do? Do not go to admonish or rebuke. Do not even go to the other party. You yourself must turn to the Lord: “Lord, have mercy upon me. My brother is sinning; he needs the supply of life. He lacks life. But so do I, Lord. I don’t have much life either. Have mercy upon us, but first have mercy upon me. I need more life. I must have more life.” You may be so burdened that you will even fast and shorten your sleeping hours in order to pray for more life. I can assure you that you will be supplied. If your car is almost out of gasoline, you can turn into the gas station and stay there to have the tank refilled. After a little while your gas supply will be replenished, and you can continue on your way. When you yourself have the supply, then you can supply others.
We need to learn that when any brother or sister sins, this is a strong indication that he or she is short of life. To be of help, we must first check whether we have life. Do we have a surplus of life? Do we have more than we need? If not, we must wait on the Lord with prayer and fasting until we get the rich supply. Then we can minister from this supply to others. This is the way to go on in the church life during this time of degraded Christianity.
John stresses that this life which we need to minister to others is simply God Himself. It is the Son of God. “This is the true God and eternal life.” Our need is to have a bigger portion of the Lord Jesus. Then we will have a surplus to minister to others, a surplus not of knowledge or doctrine but of God.
Notice that 1 John 5:16-17 speaks of a sin not unto death and of a sin unto death. Sin of course always results in death, but some sins do not bring in death right away. Death in some cases comes later. The children of Israel — during their wilderness wandering — provide us with illustrations of both types of sin. When Korah and his company rebelled against Moses (Num. 16), they died at once. Theirs was a sin unto death. Within a day of their sin they died. Miriam, in contrast, did not die immediately after sinning against Moses (ch. 12). That sin, however, caused both her and Aaron to die in the wilderness before the children of Israel entered the good land (20:1, 28). Sin, then, always issues in death; sometimes it is immediate, and other times delayed.
It is good to avoid sin. We cannot by ourselves overcome it, however. Only life can. First John 5:18 says, “We know that everyone who is begotten of God does not sin.” Life overcomes sin. By overcoming sin, life also overcomes death. Life deals with the source or root of death, which is sin. By overcoming sin, it overcomes death. Every sin we commit kills us a little. Even losing our temper kills us. It not only kills our spirit; it even brings death to our physical body. There is nothing good about sin, but nonetheless we cannot overcome it. We must put our trust in that life which is God, even the Son of God Himself. Trust in life. Since life overcomes sin, it rescues us from death.
Sin is also closely related to the world. We can neither separate the world from sin, nor can we separate sin from the world. If we go shopping and purchase some things we do not need, we are being worldly. At the moment what we have done may not be sin, but it is close to sin. The world is close to sin. In the concluding verses of 1 John there is a cluster of negative things: sin, death, the world, the evil one, and idols. “The whole world lies in the evil one.” When we buy unnecessary things from the world, what we get is from within the evil one. We may think of them simply as purchases from the department store, but those worldly things are from within Satan. The whole world, including modern things and fashionable styles, lies in the evil one.
John says, “The whole world lies in the evil one.” He does not use the word devil or Satan, but rather the evil one. Actually, in Greek the word is evil, but it is clear that evil denotes the evil one. The whole world is lying in evil, or in the evil one. If you get an unnecessary article from the world, you are getting something out of the evil one. In the eyes of God, that thing is an idol.
The last verse says, “Little children, guard yourselves from idols.” From the context we can see that idols are those things of the world that we love. We may choose to purchase a necktie, for example, because we think it is the latest style. To take pleasure in that necktie is to like something from within the evil one. A pair of shoes may be an idol. A car may be an idol. It may be an essential for transportation in our society, but if we go beyond fulfilling that need and love its style, it becomes an idol. Keep yourselves from idols.
This is not to say that we should be sloppy in our dress. But it is one thing to dress carefully and another to care for fashions and select our clothing on the basis of what is in style. To choose our clothes according to the fashion of this age is a sign that we are short of life. Fashionable clothes are then an idol to us.
Read over these concluding verses carefully. Pray-read them. Notice how interrelated sin, death, the world, and the evil one are. Sin issues in death. Sin comes in because we are close to the world. The world is lying in the evil one. What we choose to take out of it is an idol in the eyes of God. We must overcome sin and the world, and we must keep ourselves from idols.
When we sin, we not only need life ministered to us; we also need to realize that we are born of God. We have a part within us that has been born of God. In our prayers we must put our trust in these two things: the life that is God Himself and the part within us that has been born of Him. “We know that everyone who is begotten of God does not sin, but he who has been begotten of God keeps himself, and the evil one does not touch him” (v. 18). Our spirit and the life that is the Lord Jesus Himself ministered to us as a life supply will overcome sin, death, the world, and the evil one. Then, since we are no longer under those things, our idols will be gone. As long as we are under sin, death, the world, and the evil one, we will have many idols.
Your experience will confirm this. When you live in the world, you are under sin, under death, and under Satan, and you have many things that are idols. How are you delivered out of these five negative things? To be brought out of them you must grow with life into God. Then you will be in the three positive things: God; the Son of God, Jesus Christ; and life. You will mature.
