The world into which the Lord Jesus was born was a dark one. Imperial Rome maintained peace through brutal military control. For decades martial law had prevailed. The gospel of the God who takes on flesh and suffers for the sake of his people’s deliverance had begun to change things however.
Service of the weak, generosity toward those who could never afford to repay, love for those in need: these Christian traits were markers that something different had begun with the invasion of the Messiah into that stable in Bethlehem. John describes the Jesus’s mission in John 12:24–26. There Jesus’s death is the death of a seed that “produces many seeds” (John 12:24). Many will follow him in self-denial, losing what the world grasps so tightly but keeping that which is truly life.
So the question is, how do I know that I am one of the “many seeds” (John 12:24)? Or to ask the same question in a different way: how do we know that “he lives in us” (1 John 3:24)? How do we know that we are “of the truth” (3:19)? Many believers of tender heart throughout the ages have lost nights of sleep to the darkness of soul that these questions can represent. John’s audience may have been deeply disturbed by those who had parted from the Truth and from the small community of saints (2:19). Dealing as it does with our emotional makeup as broken human beings, it’s not always easy to turn on hope like a lightbulb in our souls and dispel all of the attacks of doubt. Nevertheless, John does point to important remedies for the malady.
First, we must remember that God’s unchanging character and his unfailing plan to save us through his Son, Jesus Christ, are the foundation of our assurance. If our hearts condemn us—for instance while we are confessing our sins (1 John 1:9)—we know that our trust is not in our performance. We “believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ” (3:23). This is God’s command for us: “Trust me,” he says, “I’ve got this.”
Second, we also expect the death and resurrection of Jesus to play out in our choices to serve others over ourselves if we’re united to him. Taking the long look over the years of your Christian life, do you see your concern for the eternal or physical welfare of other people waxing as your valuing your own comfort or reputation diminishes? Do you think that your progress in loving people is your own doing (3:23)? Is it merely your effort that has aligned your purposes to God’s and thus opened to you the joy of answered prayer (3:22)? Of course not! Any change toward Christlikeness is because your life is united to God’s, and his life is empowering yours.
The ability to experience assurance through faith and love like this is not a mechanical process. Even this connection can short circuit, and we may find our hearts condemning us again. Thus, John begins and ends with sources of assurance that are outside of us: God’s greatness and omniscience (3:20) and the Spirit that God has given us (3:24). It is in this way that we may have confidence before God.