Free Bible Commentary
“First John 3:23-24”
Categories: First John“This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.”
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At this juncture of the letter, the Apostle John begins his focus on “faith and love”. He had said in the previous verse that we can have confidence in our relationship with the Father through the Son when “we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.” John is either honing in on two distinct aspects of the commandments of the Lord that are vital to his particular purpose in this epistle, or he is summing up the decrees of God in these two, far-reaching imperatives. When we love God enough to obey Him at His every word, and love our fellow man as we love ourselves, we keep the law of God in its entirety (Matthew 22:36-40).
John makes just as exclusive a claim as the Lord did when he wrote that all people “must believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ” (verse 23) in order “abide in” the heavenly Father (verse 24). Friend, obedient faith in Christ Jesus is the ONLY WAY to have a relationship with God the Father, and to have the hope and promise of heaven for eternity (John 14:6). We must believe in “the name” of Jesus, which stands “for all that a ‘name’ implies, of authority, character, rank, majesty, power, excellence, etc., of everything that the "name" covers…” (Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words)
To truly believe in the “name” of Jesus Christ is to profess that He possesses all the power, characteristics and essence of deity, and that He retains the intrinsic authority to make commands of us and reign as supreme ruler over the entirety our lives (Matthew 28:18-20). Also significant in this text is the tense of the verb “believe,” as expressed by Daniel H. King Sr. in his Truth Commentary on “The Three Epistles of John”: “The tense of this use of the word is aorist, signifying an initial, decisive act of believing commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord…” (page 114). To initially “believe” in the “name” of Jesus is to believe that He is the Christ (John 3:16), the Son of the living God, and to commit our loves to Him through confession, repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sin (Mark 16:15-16; Acts 2:38; 16:31-33; Romans 10:9-10).
We can only know for certain that we abide in the Lord, and that He abides in us if we obey His commandments. There is no other way to secure that intimate fellowship with the Lord that He promises to those who love Him and want to please Him in every way (Matthew 7:21-23; 15:8-9; Luke 6:46; John 14:15). To abide in the Lord is to walk with Him in a close union of absolute dependence and reverence through His word, worship and prayer, and, as He abides in us, we draw spiritual strength from Him to accomplish His will and be useful, productive servants in His vineyard/kingdom. As we read John 15:1-8 below, please take note of the importance of Christ’s “words” abiding in us for our fellowship with Him, and the cleansing power of that inspired “word” to further facilitate our ability to do His will.
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”
Please read 1 John 4:1-6 for tomorrow.
Have a blessed Lord’s Day!
-Louie Taylor
