These Things Have I Written

"These things have I written unto you
that believe on the name of the Son of God;
that ye may know that ye have eternal life."
— 1 John 5:13

John did not write his letter to make anyone wonder. He said so, plainly, before he closed it: "these things have I written... that ye may know." Not hope. Not guess. Know. If you have ever lain awake, running back through your own life, looking for the one moment that proves you belong to God, you are running an errand John has already finished for you. He wrote an entire letter so you could stop.

And yet.

Read the rest of that same letter, slower, and you'll find it doesn't only comfort.

"He that saith, I know him,
and keepeth not his commandments,
is a liar, and the truth is not in him"
— 1 John 2:4

"We know that we have passed from death unto life,
because we love the brethren.
He that loveth not his brother abideth in death"
— 1 John 3:14

Those aren't gentler versions of the promise in John chapter five. They're the same pen, a few pages earlier, aimed at anyone who might have picked up the wrong kind of confidence along with the right one. Aimed at those who picked up an idea of "believe" that doesn't obey His commands, or an idea of "life" without love for the brethren.

This is not John contradicting himself. It's John doing something Scripture does more than most readers notice: the very sentence built to settle a genuine heart is the same sentence that unsettles a false one, and it does both on purpose, in the same breath, without apologizing for either. A verse that only ever comforted everyone who read it wouldn't be assurance.
It would be flattery.

John wrote something sturdier than that.

You've probably sung the hymn this book borrows its name from without ever noticing it makes the same claim. "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine." Everyone in the room sings that line the same way, in the same key, on the same Sunday. But the man three pews over who hasn't obeyed a hard word from God in a decade, and the woman beside him who's been quietly dying to herself all year long, are not singing the same sentence, even though it is the same sentence. One of them is describing something real. The other is borrowing words that were never written for him. The song can't tell the difference. That isn't the song's job. It's the difference this book is written to help you find, one way or the other, in yourself.

The Debate Is a Distraction

I want to tell you plainly, once, what this book is not going to do, so you can stop bracing for it.

There is an old argument in the church about how a soul comes to be secure in Christ and what, if anything, could ever threaten that security. The argument is centuries old. Good, serious men have stood on every side of it, each one convinced the other is putting Christ's honor at risk somehow. Some believe real security, once given, can never actually be lost, only ever proven false. Others believe it can be lost, and that Scripture's warnings mean exactly what they say because losing it is a real danger.

Both sides, at their best, are trying to protect the same thing: the honor of a Savior who never fails the people who are truly His. And both sides, at their worst, risk missing the better question that lies just beneath the surface.

I'm not going to referee that fight here.

Not because it doesn't matter. It's a real question, and it deserves a book of its own. Just not this one.

But there's a better question sitting underneath that argument, one both sides keep walking past on their way to winning a debate, and it doesn't require you to pick a side to answer honestly. It isn't "What could theoretically happen to a soul truly joined to Christ?"

It's something closer to home: "Are you, right now, walking like someone who is?"

That's the only question this book is built to help you answer, and it's also the only one that the Scriptures go to great lengths to help us answer directly. I'll say that once, here, and then I'm done saying it. Everything after this page is that second question, asked a different way in every chapter.

Struggles Are Not Defeat

One more thing worth saying before we go any further, because I don't want the wrong reader carrying the wrong weight into what's ahead. If you are in a hard season right now, tired, dry, wondering where God went, that is not what this book is diagnosing. Elijah, a man God had just used to call down fire from heaven, sat under a juniper tree just one day later and asked God to let him die (1 Kings 19:4). God didn't rebuke him for it. He let him sleep, then woke him gently to eat. Real faith has nights like that in it.

A hard season isn't the kind of "coasting" this book is written against, and if you read what's ahead and start applying every hard word to your own honest exhaustion, you're aiming it at the wrong target. Doubt that's still wrestling is not the same thing as a heart that quietly stopped wrestling years ago and started calling the silence peace. This book is for both of you, but it isn't aimed at both of you the same way, and I'd rather tell you that now than let you find out the hard way three chapters from now.

So: "these things have I written," John said, "that ye may know." Not so you could argue about it. Not so you could win a debate you weren't asked to enter. So you could know, the way a man knows his own house, by having actually lived there. That's still the only reason worth writing any of what follows.

Up Next:

The Difference Between Rising and Settled (Chapter 2)