Summary

John now begins a sequence of three instances where he uses the words, if we say... You will also find this in 1 John 1:8 and 1 John 1:10. These seem to be statements related to what the people were saying who had left the church. It is the same group that pulls at the believers to believe differently in God; to think differently about Jesus.

These false teachers also say they believe and they claim that they live in fellowship with Christ. They claim to be in relationship with God and that they love the Lord very much. However, they also claim that it is not necessary to do with your body what is written in the Bible. If you believe with your spirit and your feelings, then your hands and your mouth are not so important. That is inferior and what you do with them is not really of any concern to God. As long as you have a relationship with God through your higher knowledge. In this passage the Holy Spirit rebukes this kind of thinking very clearly and radically.

You can speak beautiful words, but if you go your own way (against God’s will) in your life, you are deceiving yourself as well as those around you. Then you have a dead faith, with which you are even trying to tempt others. It is only the devil who loves it when you say you can believe in this way.

To believe means to follow the truth with your whole person: with body and soul. Believing is trusting and acting. Faith is not a matter of the popular motto: deeds not words. Neither is believing a matter of no deeds—just spiritual knowledge. Faith is a matter of words and deeds.

It is the Lord Jesus himself who very clearly calls upon us to do the truth. That means to live from him as the Truth as a child of God and to be a follower of him. He says in John 3:19–21: And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Doing what is true means living in the light of God and always wanting to stay away from the darkness, from what is sinful. It means that you see the real truth in Christ who is the Light of the world. Living by God’s commandments means to live in the Light. In fact, not following the truth, while saying or thinking that you believe, is sharply exposed in the Bible. An example is Matthew 7:21–23: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then will I declare to them, I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

We can deceive ourselves if we see God’s words only as some kind of knowledge that does not really touch life. In that case you are even dealing with a dead faith no matter how beautiful and believable your words may sound. Very clearly the Lord lets us hear this in the letter of James:

·         James 1:21–25: Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

·         James 2:18: But someone will say, You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

·         James 2:26: For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.