What does it look like to be gripped by the certainty that you are God’s craftsmanship? It means that from inside of us there is a source that can dissolve or deliver us from the bondage of sin and shatter any power that worldly fear or pleasure might have over us.

If you’re like me, your faith comes under threat. Sometimes it’s my sin that causes me to ask questions about God’s work in my life. “How can a believer sin in this way?” Sometimes my experiences cause me to question the benefits of belief. “Why is my life filled with so many challenges?” Sometimes these internal and external threats to my faith cause me to question the very character of God. “If God is good, why would He allow such things!?”
Whether we have questions about our faith, our situation, or our God—uncertainty is the fruit of a faith under threat. Thankfully, God doesn’t desire that we harvest such “uncertain” fruit. Rather, it’s God’s desire that we harvest the fruit of certainty. This is possible as we rehearse what we know about God’s gracious gifts to us.
I believe this is what the Apostle John is instructing in 1 John 5:13–20. John is writing to an audience with their faith under threat. Apparently there were antichrists and false teachers spreading lies in the church (e.g., 2:22, 26; 4:1). In an effort to combat the uncertainty that such lies would cause, John highlights five of God’s gracious gifts.
God’s Gift of Eternity
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life (5:13)
First off, John wants us to know that we possess—here and now—a present certainty of the life we have received in Christ. This is not a knowledge that John intends for us to grow gradually into. It ought to be fixed permanently in our minds. Believing in the name of the Son of God means we have eternal life (cf. 5:11-12).
Uncertainty has a way of pulling our focus downward. Some of us, like Martha, busy ourselves with serving. We fill our calendars. We take action. But, often our actions are not in faith. Rather, they are our attempts to find certainty in our own strength. Others close their hearts to the needy (cf. 1 John 3:17–18). In a world of uncertainty, we may hold on to tangible things, our goods and possessions. We close our hearts because we don’t know what tomorrow might bring.But by possessing eternity, we don’t need to trouble ourselves with controlling every detail of our lives. We don’t need to worry if things don’t go as planned. With eternity in view, we don’t have to cling to worldly goods. Although we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, knowing that we have eternal life allows us to release the white-knuckle grip we have on our plans and our goods. The gift of eternal life liberates both the controller and the hoarder. It frees us to trust and to give.
God’s Gift of Prayer
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us (5:14).
Having obtained eternal life means we can approach God with confidence. The gift of eternity secures access to God, and we can ask anything according to his will. You and I are free to pray whatever we wish. Yet, the requests to be answered are those that lay not within our will, but God’s. We’re reminded how Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done…” (Matt 6:9–10).
Important as it is to understand that our prayers are answered in alignment with the will of God, John’s main point is more general. John continues, “And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (5:15). If we know he hears us, then we know he has our requests. The point is not that our needs are under debate with God, rather it is enough just that he hears us!
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It’s been said that the gospel is offensive enough without our adding to it. We should make every effort to assure that if someone is offended, it is an issue which needs to be worked out between them and God. It should not be due to our own lack of willingness to get out of the way.

I don’t remember the movie, just this one scene. Some crazy general had put together an unbeatable army. With bags of confidence they were being transported, in clandestine fashion, via big silver oil trucks through the snow. A demonstration of their force was about to be unleashed.
Turns out the snow was over ice; thin ice hiding a deep lake. They never made it to the field of battle. The trucks, and the indomitable, well-trained soldiers inside, crashed through the glassy, frozen veneer to repose insignificantly on the bottom of a nameless body of water. The power was never delivered.
We are often reminded of the power of God in that great flagship passage which ignited the Reformation.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:16, 17).
The gospel is the “power of God.” In this gospel “the righteousness of God is revealed.” Of course, all of this assumes that it is actually delivered. Later Paul will write that “faith comes by hearing” (Romans 10:16b). The apostle will appeal to the very poetic words of Isaiah and Nahum that we might appreciate “How beautiful are the feet” (Romans 10:15) of those who bring this message. Again, this beauty and power assumes the truck makes it to the battlefield—the battlefield for the souls of men and women.
What is the thin ice on which the beautiful feet might unwittingly slip (or crash through)? As we rumble down the road of evangelism, are we reformed Christians aware of attributes in our own personalities which might unnecessarily impede a listening ear, losing a redemptive opportunity or potential convert?
At times I do enjoy the poetic tones of the King James Version. Other times those 1611 words just don’t fit well into the 21st century vernacular. The word peculiar comes to mind. In 1 Peter 2:9 Peter tells Christians they are a “peculiar people.” Some of us in the Reformed community run with that. We understand peculiar to mean odd or strange when it actually meant to be owned by someone-in Peter’s meaning, owned by God. Have you noticed the reformed community has become peculiar by the new definition over the old?
Who knows what it would have felt like to sit in a pub with Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Bullinger or Calvin? I’m guessing in many ways they may have fit right in. These reformers, who carved out western civilization as we know it, had the ears of the people-all kinds of people. So whatever oddities or peculiarities they possessed, it didn’t unnecessarily disenfranchise them. It didn’t unnecessarily remove them from their culture. The operative word here being unnecessarily. No doubt they had run-ins with their culture as Jesus clearly taught good Christians would. But it was a result of the message, not the personalities of the ones delivering it (with the possible exception of Luther).

Plan to work on your godliness. This could mean deciding where and how to serve the church family. It could mean identifying a weakness you currently have and being careful and thoughtful about how you might improve in that area. We all need to pursue the things of God intentionally and repeatedly. Make every effort to be more like Jesus.
When you are trying to change some kind of bad habit or mindset, working on what to stop doing is only part of the story. You need to replace the bad habit with something else. That is why you often find former smokers becoming committed runners. It’s not just about what to stop; it is also about what to start.
Paul uses this logic when he speaks to Timothy about the dangers of greed. While being aware of the problem and fleeing the love of money is important (and see the last blog post on this here), Timothy was also urged to replace this love with something else. We read this in 1 Timothy 6:
But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.                                                  —1 Timothy 6:11 ESV
The instruction here is not only to flee greed, but to pursue the things of God. We all are made to have desires; Paul is not telling Timothy to just stop desiring things. No, he is to desire to serve God and not money. He is to serve one master and not another.
Just as the word “flee” is an active, continuous verb here, so is the word “pursue”. The idea is that active effort be taken to pursue the things of God. And not just once, a decision to follow Jesus made sometime in the past. These kinds of active decisions are required regularly and often. Greed is a real continuous danger and neglecting the things of God is also an ongoing problem for us.
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