Thought For The Week

THOUGHTS FROM JOHN’S LETTERS

GOD KNOWS OUR HEARTS – 1John 3:20

As Christians, we live in a state of tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ – already God’s children, but not yet without sin. John has drawn our attention to this by saying ‘whenever our hearts condemn us’ and ‘God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything’ in 1John 3:20. We can see this already/not yet tension in the following:

In Matthew 26: 29, 31-35, 41b, it is obvious that Jesus knows that these eleven men are people of genuine faith in him. He looked forward to the day when they would be with him ‘in my Father’s kingdom’ (26:29). But he also knew their weakness (verses 31 – 35 & 41). He knew that in their ‘spirit’ they were committed to him, but that there would be times when they would not follow through with that commitment; times when their love and their observable faith would fail.

In Romans 7:13 – 8:2, Paul describes his personal, inner conflict/tension between what he really wanted to do, and what he ended up doing: ‘in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind ... What a wretched man I am! (verses 22 – 24). But even knowing this extreme tension, he knows also that God has rescued him from the accusations – ‘there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ (8:1).

Paul again, in Philippians 3:12-14, says that ‘forgetting what is behind’ (which included the things his conscience would condemn) he presses on, secure in the righteousness of Christ credited to him, secure in his knowledge of Christ – 3:7 – 9, and secure in the truth that God has called him ‘heavenward in Christ Jesus’ – 3:14. He does not for a moment doubt his salvation. He does not conclude that it’s all too hard, and give up because he is not perfect. Rather, he is amazed that such a person as himself has been freely given in Christ the promise of eternal life. The certainty and the immensity of the promise far outweighs the pain of his knowledge of his past and present sin.

Jesus, in John 21:15 – 19, talks to Peter. Peter’s three responses to Jesus’ question ‘do you love me ...?’ indicate Peter’s understanding of Jesus’ knowledge of his heart: ‘you know that I love you ... you know all things, you know that I love you’. Despite his three denials of Jesus, despite the feelings of guilt with which his conscience would have been plaguing him, Peter has a strong, underlying confidence: Jesus knows that he loves him. And that strong confidence meant that, despite his weakness and failure:

It was Peter who, with John, ran to the empty tomb – John 20:3 – 5.
It was Peter who went into the tomb first – John 20:6.
It was Peter who jumped out of the boat and swam to the shore in his eagerness to be with Jesus – John 21:4 - 7.

His condemning heart did not keep him away from Jesus in fear and guilt; rather his strong faith in Jesus’ knowledge and understanding of his true heart drew him eagerly towards Jesus.

So John writes: ‘if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything’. For this reason ‘we can set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us’ -1John 3:19, 20.

God knows whether or not our love for him and for others is ‘with actions and in truth’, or mere words (3:18). The person who knows God knows this. As John will point out in his next chapter, the person who knows God and knows God’s love has no fear of God’s judgement (4:18). The person who knows God by knowing Jesus Christ – who is our Advocate with the Father, and the atoning sacrifice for our sins – has confidence in the presence of God – confidence of forgiveness, confidence of cleansing from sin and unrighteousness, as John has stressed earlier in this letter.

So John says: we know that we belong to the truth when the destructive accusations of our accusing hearts (regardless of their cause) are silenced by the truth: by our knowledge of God and of the salvation he has given us in Christ.

John’s reassurance here is a repetition of his earlier reassurance:

‘If anybody does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father - Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins...’ – 2:1,2.

‘This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything’ – 3:19, 20.

Our sins, our self-condemnation, might suggest to us that we are not saved, that we do not ‘belong to the truth’, but God knows differently. He knows us. He knows that we love him. He knows what he has accomplished for us through the work of Jesus Christ.

© Rosemary Bardsley 2022