Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D.
Greer explains how you can know for sure that you're saved. You ask me, are you sure that you will enter into heaven and spend eternity with God? You know what my answer is? Yes. You're like, well, that's arrogant because you think you're better than me?
Nope. It's because all the full weight of our condemnation was put onto the head of Jesus, who now stands as our advocate before the throne of God. And that gives me great confidence before God. Welcome back to Summit Life with J.D. Greer.
As always, I'm your host, Molly Bidevich. Now, I'm guessing sin isn't a very popular water cooler conversation. No one likes being reminded of their failures. And even in Christian circles, the subject of sin tends to get glossed over. It's easier to ask for prayer for an illness or a job situation than it is to admit your deepest struggles and failures. But today, Pastor J.D. explains that the way we think about and deal with our sin is a crucial sign of where we stand with God. He's continuing our teaching series called Assured with the second half of his message titled Three Attitudes towards Sin that give you assurance with God.
Right now, let's rejoin Pastor J.D. in the book of 1 John. How do you know that you know God? How do you know that you know God?
How do you know that what you think about your experience with God is genuine? That is the question that the book of 1 John is written to answer. And what John does is he identifies three signs in the last half of 1 John 1, three signs of somebody that doesn't know God even though they think they do. Let's look at those three.
Let me give you all three of them right here at once. Number one, you don't know God, John says, if number one, you sin. You continue to sin. And by that, he means willfully, habitually.
We'll get to that. Number two, you don't know God if you say you have no sin. And then number three, you don't know God if you have no confidence before God because of your sin. So you don't know God if you sin. You don't know God if you say you have no sin. You don't know God if you have no confidence before God because of your sin.
Let's look at those one at a time. 1 John 1.5, this is the message that we've heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. This is John's way of saying I'm not a Buddhist. God is not ying and yang with a little bit of darkness and light all mixed in there together. God is all light. There is no evil.
There is no wickedness. Nothing comes from him but pure goodness and holiness. If we say therefore, verse six, we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. So number one, you don't know God if you continue to sin. And by the way, I don't mean by that, that you ever sin because all of us sin. For you to say that you don't continue to struggle with sin would be its own problem that he'll deal with in a minute.
What he means if you willfully, defiantly pursue sin, you cannot, John says, say that you love God the light if you continue to seek after the darkness. Can I tell you a few things that I often hear or see in church people that shows that they're still in darkness? I'll give you a few of them. Thinking that you can believe without repenting. That's one. Here's another way. Believers or so-called believers who are casual about or even openly embracing of sin.
Here's one more. Praying a sinner's prayer with no accompanying life change. Verse eight. If we say we have no sin, but we, excuse me, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
Verse 10, go down there. If we say we have not sin, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Number two, you don't know God if you say you have no sin.
See, this is an error on the opposite side. John says that, watch this, being unaware of the sinfulness in your heart is a sign that you don't actually know God. Because one of the first evidences of the light of God coming into your life is you begin to have eyes to see the sin that is in your heart. Listen, when that light of God comes in, you're gonna have one of a few reactions to it.
This is very important. What you do, what you want to do, is you want to retreat back into the darkness. Because darkness, if your eyes are used to it, is comfortable, right? You ever been in a movie theater? And after the movie, usually you walk back out of the, you know, like the hall and then back out in the lobby and then go out, and your eyes have a chance to get accustomed to the light gradually. You ever get out the little exit at the bottom right next to the, you know, the screen?
You ever do that? You're walking out, you're kind of cruising along, you open the door, you know, the light of day just hits you. What do you want to do in that moment?
What do you want to do? You want to retreat back into the darkness because you're comfortable there. That's happening to some of you right now.
You see, you've started to come here and you've never been in the presence of people who just said, this is what the word of God says, and your heart is being exposed. And I know, I've been there. You want to go back into the darkness because it's more comfortable. But you know, remember what happens if you stay in the light? If you walk outside and you stay there?
It's painful, but you give your eyes a minute to readjust and then you can see. And then after you've been in the light for a while, you don't want to go back in the darkness because there's so much more that you can see in the light. There are some people who, that's how they respond to this, they want to retreat. Some people, their response is they get defensive and they get defensive and they want to start insisting on their own goodness. They start thinking, well, yeah, yeah, but you know, I'm better than other people, right?
We do that, right? You know, I'm not as bad as, am I saying yeah, yeah, but not like that guy over there. As long as I've got grades on the curve, I'm going to be okay. Because I'm pretty confident I'm on the north side of the bell curve. Or you start making excuses for it.
Well, the reason I made these mistakes is because I hung out with the wrong crowd or I had bad parents. Let me tell you why that's a bad idea for a couple reasons. One, it calls God a liar.
That's never a good idea. First John 110, you see it? If we don't acknowledge the simpleness of our heart, we make God a liar. The Bible says that you and I are children of wrath. The Bible says we are sons and daughters of disobedience. The Bible says that we are born in iniquity. We don't sin because we hung out with the wrong crowd. We sin because we are the wrong crowd. In fact, the reason we wanted to hang out with the wrong crowd is because the sin that was in their hearts resonated with the sin that was in our hearts.
That's why we chose to hang out with the wrong crowd because we were more comfortable with the wrong crowd. So it just calls God a liar. Do you agree with God about his statement about your heart that you're worthy to be condemned? Here's the other reason it's foolish is because it shows you're completely blind to the holiness of God because for you to stand before God with sin in your life, it would be like a piece of tissue paper touching the surface of the sun. Grace taught my heart to fear. So when you insist on your goodness, when you want to rest in the fact that you are okay, it just shows that you don't get the concept of who God is and who you are. When you're awakened to God, you become deeply aware of your sinfulness and all you say is, woe is me for I am undone.
Grace teaches your heart to be afraid. The other option is you can come to the light and you can confess it, which is the third thing here. Number three, you don't know God if you have no confidence before God because of your sin. You don't know God if you continue in sin. You don't know God if you're unaware of your sin. You don't know God if you have no confidence before God because of your sin. Look at verse one, chapter two, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, because we all sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for our sins but also for the sins of the whole world. Now there are two very key words in there that you have to understand, understand what he's saying. Propitiation and advocate.
Let's look at this one at a time. Propitiation. Most of you don't use it in casual conversation. And did you know, by the way, there is a school of preaching that says that I should just avoid words like that altogether because they're hard words and they're deep.
It's just like we need to make it accessible for people. So we should just avoid those kind of words because people are going to get confused and they're not going to come back to church because you're using hard words they don't understand. I say, number one, it's my job to teach you those words and show you what they mean because the deepest and most beautiful truths in the Bible are sometimes hidden in those words. Number two, if you can learn drink names at Starbucks, you can learn words like propitiation.
All right, amen. So propitiation. The word propitiation literally means that a claim against you has been satisfied. Literally, in Greek, it means that wrath has been absorbed or ill will has been replaced by goodwill.
Jesus propitiated the holy wrath of God against our sin by suffering, get this, the full penalty of it in our place. God has no more claim against you because of your sin because it's been satisfied in Christ, which leads me to the second word advocate. Advocate's a legal term referring to somebody who argues your case before the bar of justice on your behalf.
We even use that term today. My advocate, it's not common, usually call it your lawyer. They argue for you in a court of law. Now, here's a question. What is your advocate arguing?
This is very important. Your advocate usually argues your innocence, or even if he'll concede that you're guilty, that you're a pretty good person otherwise. In the light of God's justice, the last thing Jesus is arguing is your innocence.
You know what your advocate is arguing? His propitiation. He is standing before the bar of God's justice, and he is saying, my advocate, right now, listen to this. Right now, I have an advocate before the Father, and he is not standing before the Father saying, ah, he's actually a good kid, God, don't worry about it. He's saying, yes, he's guilty, but every ounce of penalty, every ounce, Father, you poured into me. There's nothing left for him. You cannot punish him for that sin because you punished me fully. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Did you know that our greatest joy comes not when we're working overtime to impress God, but when we're serving him from a place of gratitude? It's recognizing that he is the source of all that we're looking for, and that as we pursue him, the other things fall into place. In our current resource, The Gospel Bible Study, Pastor J.D. wants us to see that the difference maker is the gospel itself. This amazing gift that God has given us doesn't merely punch our ticket to heaven, but it actually drives everything that we do as believers.
In other words, the gospel not only shows us the path, but it also gives us the power to pursue the holiness that God calls us to. For your gift of $50 this month, we'll send you this video Bible study that comes with five Bible study guides. Give us a call today at 866-335-5220, or go online to jdgreer.com to reserve this Bible study.
Now let's return to our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. You know, I've told you before that I was seven years old when I learned this concept of Jesus being my advocate before the Father, and I've told you that it never brought me comfort, because I always imagined it going down like this, okay? So here's the God the Father, you got to think like a seven-year-old. Here's the courtroom, and here's Jesus as my lawyer standing up in front of God, and God's like, oh my goodness, J.D., again, seriously? No more leniency for Greer. I mean, that's the 491st time that he committed that sin, and I did the whole 70 times 70 thing, but boom, 491, we're going to drop the wrath on this kid, right?
That's what I thought. Did you notice my advocate is not arguing for leniency? He's arguing for justice. First John 1, see this? If we confess our sins, he is what? Faithful and just, not lenient and kind, but faithful and just. By the way, you ought to underline faithful and just, because those are the two most important words in the whole Bible. Faithful and just to forgive us our sins, which means my advocate, right now, looks at God the Father, and he says, you can't, because you punished me, and it would be unjust, it would be unjust for you to punish him for the same sin that you punished me for. So therefore, there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus, because all the full weight of our condemnation was put onto the head of Jesus, who now stands as our advocate before the throne of God, and that gives me great confidence before God.
You understand that? It gives me great confidence before God, before, here's how we sing it here at the church, before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea. No way the judge can hold me accountable, because my plea is perfect. A great high priest whose name is love, whoever lives and pleads for me. My name is graven on his hands, my name is written on his heart. I know that while in heaven he stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart. You want to know how you find assurance of salvation? You're not beholding you.
You're not like, hey God, look how awesome I am, look how much, look how spiritual I've gotten, look, I'm so much better than everybody else around me. Behold him there, the risen lamb. My perfect spotless righteousness, the great unchangeable I am, king of glory and of grace. One with himself, I cannot die.
My soul is purchased by his blood. My life is hid with Christ on high, with Christ my savior and my God. That is the assurance of the gospel. I know that I am received before God, I know that I am safe before God, not because I am in a position where I can boast about how righteous I am, but because I know my righteousness belongs to another who did it in my place and my plea to heaven is as sure as his finished work. Which is why I would ask you this, if you're not confident, if you're not confident of where you stand with God, if you're unsure about whether or not you go to heaven, I have to ask, do you even understand the gospel? I told you in the first week of the series that I often ask people, are you a Christian?
And the most common response I get is this, well, I'm trying. I'm doing better. I've been to church like, you know, three times in the last four. I've even started to read my Bible. I gave a little money to the church.
I'm listening to K-Love and I feel positive and encouraging like, you know, 90% of the time now. And when somebody says that to me, I know they don't get it at all because they still think Christian is a title that you live up to. But someone who is a real Christian understands that Christian is not a title you live up to, it's a title Jesus lived up to and gave it to you as a gift. You ask me, are you sure of your salvation? Are you sure that you will enter into heaven and spend eternity with God? You know what my answer is? Yes. You're like, well, that's arrogant because you think you're better than me?
Nope. It's because I know that my salvation is now as sure as Jesus Christ's position before the Father. I could no more go to hell than Jesus could lose his position of favored status because he has become my righteousness.
Because I'm no longer depending on what I do to get to heaven, I'm depending on what he has finished. So if you were unsure, see, about this, it shows me you don't get the gospel because the gospel always leads to confidence. In fact, the gospel produces two things in you that no other religious truth, no other truth will ever produce, at least not simultaneously. Watch this. The gospel produces humility and confidence.
Nothing else will produce those at the same time. You see, what you believe about yourself usually produces either humility or confidence. So if you're the kind of person who's failed a lot and you realize how much you mess up, then you have a natural humility and you're like, how could God love me? But if you're the kind of person who has succeeded at your religion, well, you think you're righteous. And so you're really confident before God. You're like, I'm good, I'm better than other people, and I'm on the good side of the bell curve. But you're proud.
And you look down on other people who haven't done as well as you. The gospel, listen, which is that you are simultaneously more wicked than you ever imagined, but also more loved and accepted than you ever dared hope. See, that produces both humility and confidence. Humility because you recognize how sinful you are, confidence because you recognize how complete Christ's work is on your behalf. The sign that you understand the gospel is humility and confidence, not one without the other.
So number three, you don't know God if you have no confidence before God because you're saying you do know God if you rest confidently in the finished work of Christ. So what do you do with this? What do you do with this?
Here are the action steps. Here's what I want you to do with this. Number one, you need to assess. You need to assess. You need to assess which of these are true about you. Because depending on your personality, you probably gravitate toward one or some combination thereof. Are you the kind of person who is, as you get exposed to the light, you kind of, you bow up a little bit, you're sort of rebellious, and you're like, well, I'm not, you're not touching that Jesus.
I'm gonna follow you, but not this. Or are you the kind of person who, when the light of God begins to come in, you almost reflexively start to self-justify and start to insist that you're good because you've always built an identity on other people thinking that you were better than others. There are some of you like that.
You're proud. There are others of you that you could not imagine that God really could be as gracious as the Bible says He is, that He really could love you so much that it would take upon Himself the penalty for your sin that though you deserved hell, He would take it in your place. You see, the gospel requires you to believe two things that are really difficult. You are so bad that Jesus had to die for you, and He was so gracious, He was glad to die for you. That phrase is not original with me, but most people won't go to either side of that because they don't want to think of themselves as that bad, and they don't want to think of the God as that loving.
They prefer this mushy middle where you're a pretty good person, and God's kind of like a benevolent Santa Claus who doles out blessings. And the Bible turns both those on their head and said you are worse than you think, but God is better than you think, so your salvation will have nothing to do with you, and you will boast not in your righteousness for the rest of eternity. You will sing salvation belongs to our God.
Because you know what that's going to do to you? It's going to mean that you no longer negotiate with God about how much of your life He gets to have. And when you understand the gospel, you no longer think like what do I have to give to God, you start to say things like the hymn writer said, we're the whole realm of nature mine, that we're a present far too small, love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. If you ever get grace, surrender becomes natural, because you're like where would I be apart from grace?
The ones that miss God, three categories, you see it, the rebellious, the proud, and the unbelieving every time. Don't be one of those people. Don't let your rebellion take you into eternity apart from God because you think you're smarter than Him. Don't be proud and just refuse to let the light come in because you built your identity on how other people think that you're awesome. It builds your identity on the fact that He loves you and gave Himself for you. That's better than being awesome. It's safer than being awesome because it's dependent on His grace that never changes.
And don't be unbelieving, don't be the kind of person that doubts that God really could be as good as God says He is because He is infinite in love and as high as the heavens or above the earth, that's how great is His love for His children. So you just need to assess. Here's the second thing I want to tell you to do real quick.
You need to learn to love. You need to learn to love and cherish conviction and repentance. Most people don't like conviction. That's why when somebody tells you, oh, it's a good sermon today, you come in nervous. You're like, oh, what's he going to talk about?
What's he going to talk about? How am I going to get convicted? Because you think repentance and conviction is like a trip to the woodshed where God hauls you out back and just starts wailing on you. Repentance is not a trip to the woodshed. Repentance is like a bath where God is washing away from you all the darkness that is keeping you from joy in Him. And He does so in love and it becomes pleasant, it becomes sweet because it is administered in love. That what God is doing is He is removing the things from you that keep you in darkness and He's taking that darkness out of you and He's bringing you into light and you begin to cherish it and you begin to say, God, search my heart and know my ways and see if there's any wicked way in me because these are the things that are keeping me from having joy in you. Learn to cherish and love repentance. Lastly, keep coming toward the light. It's like I told you a minute ago, right?
Remember this? Some of you, your eyes are hurting. I understand that.
I was there once. Keep coming. Let your eyes adjust because as your eyes adjust, you will find the glory of God's grace is so much better than any of the false glories that the world put in front of you. So keep coming.
Stay here. Listen and let God the Holy Spirit adjust your eyes so that you begin to be comfortable in the light because it's so much better, I can tell you, than the darkness. There is nothing you have done that can make God love you less and nothing that you could do that would make Him love you more. Life Giving Truth here on Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer and a message from our teaching series called Assured. J.D., right now, one of the resources that we're featuring this month is based on something that we call the gospel prayer.
Can you tell us a little bit about that? A lot of churches, you hear about the sinner's prayer. That's a prayer where you repent of your sin and ask Jesus to come into your life and be your savior and talk about the Lord's prayer, where basically Jesus gives us an outline that we can kind of use to guide our prayer time. The gospel prayer is attempting to take what Paul teaches and Jesus teaches throughout the New Testament of what it means to be in Christ. What does it mean to be centered on the gospel? How does the gospel form your identity, how you see yourself, how you see God, how you see the world?
And then through four phrases, it encapsulates that idea of being in Christ. Not only they became so transformed in my life that I had to teach it to the Summit Church, and these things resonated so much with the Summit Church that I turned it into a book, one of my first books called Gospel, Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary. And then we turned that into a gospel Bible study kit to help people be able to saturate themselves in these concepts and also teach them to others. And so now a new tool that we've developed, it's a gospel prayer catechism.
It's just a short book of questions and answers to help the truth of the gospel grip your heart. We're going to give a copy to all of our gospel partners this month, and we would love to have you. We'd love for you to be one of those and have you join our team of monthly donors. So take a look at jdgrier.com.
Let's focus our vision and refine our mission as we live out the gospel every day and in every way. Visit jdgrier.com today to support Summit Life with your generous donation. Or if you'd rather call, our phone number is 866-335-5220.
That's 866-335-5220. I'm Molly Vidovitch, and I am so glad that you joined us today. Be sure to listen tomorrow as we continue to learn more about how we can have deeper assurance of our salvation. Join us again Thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
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