Jesus is God

John says we know that the Son of God has come. What a profound statement. The eternal, preexistent Son has come (past act with current application).

Jesus is God

"And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life."

(1 John 5:20)

John says we know that the Son of God has come. What a profound statement. The eternal, preexistent Son has come (perfect tense, pointing to a past act with current application). Jesus Christ left heaven, and in the miracle of the incarnation He was born of the virgin Mary and took upon Himself human flesh. These are treasured doctrines of the Christian faith that believers cherish but others ridicule, as the Gnostics did in the first century.

But true followers believe and adhere to these truths. This was John's doctrinal test. If you did not believe these basic, fundamental teachings of the faith, then you were not of God. What you believe truly matters. It has temporal and eternal consequences. Jesus has given His people an "understanding," which one writer defines as "the power or capacity for knowing" (See Stott, The Letters of John, p. 194). Jesus came to reveal and declare the true God to us so that we can know Him not only in an intellectual way but also in a personal, experiential way.

Verse 20 also says, "we are in Him who is true." We are of God (verse 19), and we are in God. The only way that we can be in Him and of Him is to know Him through (notice how He is described) "His Son Jesus Christ." The eternal Son of God is Jesus Christ. He is fully God and fully man, He is the final and complete revelation of God. Knowing Him means we live abundantly and eternally.

You may ask, but how can you speak with such certainty and authority? The resurrection is the key to understanding that Jesus is who He says He is.

Notice the last sentence in verse 20, "He (autos) is the true God and eternal life." Here is one of the clearest statements of Jesus' deity and divinity in all the Word of God. Jesus made similar statements in John 8:58, "Jesus said to them, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.'"

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Podcast of the Week

Evangelizing Mormons, and More, with Dr. Clint Scott

Pastor Danny welcomes to the show his friend, fellow pastor, and DFEA board member, Dr. Clint Scott, lead pastor of Hilltop Baptist Church in Green River, Wyoming. Dr. Scott shares about evangelizing Mormons here in the USA, his missions work in Ethiopia, staying grounded as a pastor through hard times, and more!

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