Exploring 1 John: The Assurance that Love Brings
1 John 3:19-22 - Jesus guides us on the path to trust, obedience, and love.
“We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.”
1 John 3:19-22 NASB1995
This next passage is a little tricky because of the grammar and the way things are stated in a run-on sentence. John must have written this after listening to Paul or reading something he wrote (hah!). The “by this” is also tricky in the NASB translation - most of the commentators I read in Precept Austin (which uses the NASB 1995) believe that this relates back to verse 18 where John asks the little children to love not just with word or tongue, but through deed and truth. By having this type of love we will know we are of the truth and will be assured before him in whatever our heart condemns us. Word study time!
First, let’s look at assure: This comes from the Greek word πείθω or peíthō with the following Biblical usages; Strong’s G3982 is used 52 times in the New Testament:
persuade
to persuade, i.e. to induce one by words to believe
to make friends of, to win one's favour, gain one's good will, or to seek to win one, strive to please one
to tranquillise
to persuade unto i.e. move or induce one to persuasion to do something
be persuaded
to be persuaded, to suffer one's self to be persuaded; to be induced to believe: to have faith: in a thing
to believe
to be persuaded of a thing concerning a person
to listen to, obey, yield to, comply with
to trust, have confidence, be confident
So being assured means to be persuaded, to trust, obey and to be confident in God.
Now, let’s look at condemns us: This comes from the Greek word καταγινώσκω or kataginṓskō, with the following Biblical usages; Strong’s G2607 is used only 3 times in the New Testament, 2 times in 1 John 3:
to find fault with, blame
to accuse, condemn
So the way I interpret this is that we can be persuaded and trusting of God (who is greater than our own heart), even though we condemn ourselves in our own hearts. Let’s see if I’m right. Here’s commentary from Enduring Word:
Assure our hearts: When we see this love at work in our lives, we can know that we are of the truth – and this brings assurance to our hearts before God, that we are standing in Him.
Gayle Erwin tells a wonderful story about a man he knew when he was a boy. The man’s name was Jake, and he was the meanest, drunkest, man in town. He would come to church from time to time, but that was only to beat up the elders. One Wednesday night, Jake came to church – but not to beat anybody up. Remarkably, Jake gave his life to Jesus. He walked down the aisle of the little church and kneeled down at the altar. The next night there was another meeting at the church, and the pastor asked if anyone wanted to share what God was doing in their lives. Jake stood up, and said: “I have something to say. Last night when I came here, I hated you people.” Heads nodded in agreement. “But something happened to me and I don’t understand this, but tonight I love you.” And even though he only had one tooth, he smiled really big. This is a wonderful assurance that we are born again.
Assurance is essential – who wants to wait until it is too late to know if they are really saved or not?
And shall assure our hearts before Him: Our assurance is two-fold. First, God already knows everything about you and He loves you, He cares for you, He desires you; second, God knows all things, and knows who we truly are in Jesus Christ. If we are born again, then the real self is the one created in the image of Jesus Christ.
For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things: But what if we have been walking in love, yet our heart still condemns us before God? John assures us that God is greater than our heart, and so reminds us that we cannot base our relationship with Him purely on how we feel in His presence.
Condemnation can well up inside us that has nothing to do with our standing before God. It may be the work of the enemy of our souls (who, according to Revelation 12:10 accuses the brethren), or the work of an over-active conscience. At those times, we trust in what God’s Word says about our standing, not how we feel about it.
“Sometimes our heart condemns us, but, in doing so, it gives a wrong verdict, and then we have the satisfaction of being able to take the case into a higher court, for ‘God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.’” (Charles Spurgeon)
This is truly marvelous! Sometimes, when studying these scriptures (like verses 1 John 3:4-18) or hearing a sermon by our gung-ho senior pastor who raises the bar of expectations for us above the summit of Mount Everest every week, I feel condemned or less than worthy because I certainly don’t model the perfect Christian love and selflessness that Jesus had nor do I have the focused and narrow commitment of a saintly nun cloistered in a monastery. When I first came back to faith, I was of the lowly opinion that I was not worthy of salvation and had to really stumble and fight my way through to an understanding of God’s mercy and grace.
John in these verses is taking us back to the fact that we have believed and accepted Jesus (our justification) and now are being sanctified and our real self becomes more like Him. Here’s more from Precept Austin quoting British pastor David Legge (Preach the Word):
It may be that we are His, we are [a] child of God, but we have failed Him. Whilst it may not be a lifestyle of constant failure and habitual sin, there has been a blip and a blot on our testimony. Because of that, whether we consider it to be a small hiccup or a large fall, we have a bad conscience toward God - and it causes us from time to time, or maybe constantly, to doubt our salvation. I would have to say after our study last week in verses 10 to 18, reading and studying in depth that portion, it would be easy to come away and say: 'Am I saved at all? How guilty I have been of being an unloving Christian, an uncaring Christian! I have not laid my life down for the brethren the way that John is exhorting us to do. I have shut up my emotions when I have been faced with the needs of others, my brothers and sisters in Christ and those outside the church. I have been guilty of loving in word, loving in language, but not loving in deed and in truth'.
Now, let's be honest with one another, and honest with God: all of us, at some time or another, have been guilty of these things. Whilst we agree that these ought to be exceptions rather than the rule in the Christian life, we are all guilty of being unloving towards our brethren in Christ. But here's where the problem arises: if you have an oversensitive conscience, you can read passages of Scripture like this and listen to preaching that we've been hearing week after week, biblically based, and you can begin to say to yourself, 'I'm not truly saved', or 'There's a cause for doubt' - when there is no cause for doubt because you're a child of God. Your sensitive conscience can actually begin to do the devil's work for him. Some of you, perhaps, are having self-incriminating doubts, and it makes you feel condemned in your heart. It's wrong, because God has not condemned you if you're one of His children! Maybe even that bad conscience, that condemning heart is preventing you from approaching God. You feel unworthy to such an extent that you feel that you can't come into God's presence, even though it is not God who has condemned you, God has not barred you from approaching Him, but it's your own heart that makes you feel that way.
It works even better if our hearts do not condemn us- meaning we are more like Jesus and less like the old miserable full-time practitioners of sin- and then we can go to God in prayer with all of our confidence! First comes believing (being persuaded, having trust in Him), then comes obedience, leading to that love of others that isn’t influenced by our fleeting negative thoughts and knee-jerk emotions. We ask and receive because we believe and we obey His commandments to love. I like this commentary from Precept Austin quoting Pastor Timothy Peck from the Life Bible Fellowship Church in California:
All of us go through times of doubt in the spiritual journey, seasons where it seems like we don’t really know God like we thought we did. It’s a normal part of the spiritual journey for us to struggle with doubts about our faith, doubts about whether we’re truly following Jesus Christ or not. If you’ve struggled with those kinds of doubts, that’s probably a pretty good indication that you are following Jesus, because people who don’t follow Jesus Christ really aren’t all that concerned about it.
These seasons of doubt cause our hearts to condemn us, our feelings accuse us of not being Christians, of being failures, of not measuring up, especially when we hear sermons like today’s call to walk with each other in love. God’s invitation to love so radically impacts us and we realize how far short we fall, and often our hearts become anxious and even condemning, and we wonder if we truly know Christ the way we thought we did. So John wants us to put that struggle in proper perspective, that it’s not whether our feelings are at rest or whether our feelings condemn us that determines whether or not we’re on this spiritual journey, but it’s whether God has received us through our faith in Jesus Christ.
You see, God is greater than our feelings, he is bigger than our emotions of doubt or assurance, and what God thinks carries more weight than what I’m feeling at the moment. So how do we set our hearts at ease? By remembering that our assurance doesn’t rely on our emotions but on God and then by pressing forward to obey God’s commands. John sums up God’s commands in the words 'believe' and 'love.' The order is vitally important, that we first trust our lives to Jesus Christ, we place our faith in him to forgive our sins and to bring us into a relationship with God built on grace. Then once we do that, we launch on a spiritual journey of loving other followers of Christ, to walk together on this journey we’re on. Believing comes first, then belonging. We first establish a personal relationship with God through belief in Jesus Christ, and then we find ourselves on this journey the bible calls church, of walking this journey together.
This will bring us to doing things that are pleasing in His sight. He knows your own heart better than you do, so lean on our beloved Savior first and He will gently set you down on the right path! That path may be challenging but your hand is always in the Hand of the One who created and saved you.
One last short commentary from Enduring Word:
It is sobering to look at our lives and see how much we do to please ourselves and how much we do to please the Lord. We shouldn’t think that the two are opposites; God is glorified when we enjoy His goodness and His good things. Yet, the godly life will have special focus on just pleasing God, even if it doesn’t particularly please us at the moment.
My next devotional examines 1 John 3:23-24 - The commandments of Jesus. These are the last two verses in 1 John 3.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - I am persuaded by and have confidence in Your Love and Salvation and that You know my heart better than I do. Help me to move further and further away from self-condemnation and towards love and obedience. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
The Blue Letter Bible was accessed on 5/22/2024 to review the lexicon for assure and condemn.
Enduring Word commentary by David Guzik is used with written permission.
Precept Austin was accessed on 3/21 and 3/22/2024 to review the commentary for 1 John 3:19-22.