The biggest threat to the church isn’t atheism, persecution, or other religions. It’s people who claim to know Jesus but live a double life. John writes 1 John 2 to show what actually marks a real Christian.
Three hallmarks to look for:
1. Knowing Jesus
2. Trusting Jesus
3. Obeying Jesus
The passage
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
— 1 John 2:1–6 (NIV)
Before anything else: grace, not works
You’re not made right with God by behaviour. You’re saved by grace alone, through Jesus’ finished work on the cross. Obedience flows from salvation, not into it.
Think of a stick grafted onto an apple tree. You’re on the tree because someone placed you there, not because you earned it. But now you’re there, fruit is the natural result.
1. Knowing Jesus
Three things from verse 1:
- Christians still sin – John doesn’t pretend otherwise. The text expects it.
- Jesus advocates for us – while we sin, not just after we’re done.
- He pleads his own righteousness, not our innocence – We’re guilty; he isn’t; his rightness absorbs our wrongness.
It does not say – “If any man do not sin we have an advocate;” but “if any man sin we have an advocate,” so that when I have sinned, and come creeping up to my closet with a guilty conscience and an aching heart, and feel that I am not worthy to be called God’s son, I have still an advocate, because I am one of the any men that sin. I sin, and I have an advocate.
— Charles Spurgeon
A Christian is someone who knows this Jesus. Not a moral teacher. Not a nice figure from history. The Righteous One who pleads our case while we’re still in the middle of failing.
2. Trusting Jesus
Verse 2 resolves the puzzle of how a guilty person walks free:
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
— 1 John 2:2
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, … and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
— Isaiah 53:6
Two technical words help fill this out:
– Propitiation – God’s righteous anger at sin is diverted onto Jesus and satisfied by his death. The wrath we deserved fell on him.
– Expiation – sin, guilt, and shame are removed. Erased. Dealt with.
Both happen at the cross. Which is why Paul can say:
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
— Romans 8:1
A Christian is someone who trusts this is enough.
(Footnote on “the sins of the whole world”: this phrase is debated. I take a Reformed evangelical view — I read “the whole world” here as John signalling to a largely Jewish audience that the atonement extends to non-Jews too. Happy to chat about it if it troubles you.)
3. Obeying Jesus
We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands… Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
— 1 John 2:3–6
This isn’t perfectionism. Christians still sin (see point 1). It isn’t earning either – your salvation is already secure in Christ.
It’s trajectory. The Christian life moves, slowly but surely, in the direction of looking more like Jesus.
Real signs of that trajectory:
- A growing hunger for Scripture
- A growing intimacy with prayer
- An increasing disgust at sin in your own life
- A relationship rooted in Jesus’ completed work, not in feelings or experiences alone
The German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing in 1937:
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without corporate confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock… It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life… Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son.
But obedience isn’t a burden. C. S. Lewis on what Christ asks of us:
Christ says, “Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it… Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked — the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”
That’s the hallmark of a Christian – a new self.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
— 2 Corinthians 5:17
Three honest questions
– Do you know who Jesus is?
– Do you trust what Jesus has done?
– Are you obeying Jesus?
If no to either of the first two – find a Christian you trust and ask them honestly. If you don’t have anyone like that in your life, find a healthy church near you. We’re less scary than we look.
If no to the last – which should be all of us: find someone you trust this week. Confess your weakness (no need to give details). Ask them to pray for you to grow.
If yes to the last – pray Jesus would move you to repent of your arrogance 😬
