What do you do when your heart is full of accusations and self-condemnation? This week BBCC explores John's comforting truth that God is greater than our condemning hearts and knows all things. Discover how to find peace when guilt overwhelms you.
This powerful message addresses the universal struggle with shame, regret, and that inner voice that tells you you're not good enough for God. Learn how to "set your heart at rest" through understanding God's greater knowledge and love, even when your conscience attacks you.
Perfect for anyone battling guilt, shame, or feeling unworthy of God's love. Discover the difference between healthy conviction that leads to repentance and destructive condemnation that paralyzes faith. Find out how confident prayer and assurance before God are possible even when your heart feels heavy.
Last week John called us to “love with actions and in truth.”
This week he tackles the inevitable question:
“What do I do when my heart keeps saying I’m not good enough?”
Answer: Run to the God who is greater than your feelings, trust His verdict, and keep loving with confidence born of the gospel.
1 John 3:18–20a (NIV) 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us…
1 John 3:20 (NIV): “If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”
“It matters very little what you or anyone else thinks. I don’t even trust my own judgment… It is the Lord himself who will examine me.”
—1 Cor 4:3-5 (NLT)
1 John 3:21–24 (NIV) 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
BBCC Verse of the Week: 1 John 3:23 (NIV) And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.
In this passage John relates the divine and human aspects of reassurance that will put our hearts at rest so we can have a right relationship with God and with those he brings into our lives. He explains that faith in Christ and the impulse to love others by responding to their needs are evidence of the Holy Spirit within a believer (v. 24). While the believer must exhibit both faith and loving acts, both are gifts that originate with God’s Spirit and not with us. Thus, our obedience is itself evidence that we have been reconciled to God and are his children. John teaches that we can still our inner voice that accuses and berates by remembering that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything, especially those things we cannot know. God recognizes that our flawed, inadequate attempts to love others are genuine acts of faith and love. He knows all about the people we attempt to love and the situations that have given rise to their needs. Our attempt to respond to another’s need may be misguided or miscalculated. The person we try to love may rebuff our good intent. Our loving act may actually flow from motives that are not unmixed with selfishness or our own needs. There are many reasons why even our best acts may leave us feeling unsettled, unsure, and confused inside. Love can be complicated, and God knows that; his own love for the world has been misunderstood, rebuffed, and rejected. Still, he continues to love his creation by providing what we need to sustain life physically and spiritually. The apostle knows that his readers need to quiet their hearts in order to continue in their faith in Christ and in their love for others. For a heart that constantly accuses us of disappointing God will erode our resolve to love, and it will keep us from enjoying our relationship with our heavenly Father. Feelings of inadequacy will impede our prayer life by making us shy away from God. John’s remedy for quieting a restless heart is surprisingly simple to state, but possibly difficult to achieve: trust God, who knows all things and who knows us better than we know ourselves. Trust God’s regenerative power working within. Trust God’s knowledge of how his Spirit has transformed you and continues to do so throughout your life, even when your own spirit grows weak. Don’t turn away from faith in Christ or from loving others. Remain in him. Karen Jobes
The heart of John’s appeal is seen in verse 23. We are given a twofold command: “believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ,” and “love” fellow believers. Here is the first use of “believe” in the letter. When John says we are to believe in the “name” of God’s Son, the use of “name” for Jesus is a literary device called metonymy, which means using the part as a reference for the whole. Here Jesus’ “name” is a reference to his whole person. Trusting in the name of Jesus suggests trusting in all that name implies. The only right faith is that which embraces Christ as he is preached in the gospel. When John speaks about “his commandments” in verses 22c and 24a, in both places the phrase is placed in the forefront in the clause for emphasis. The content of the command contains the full name “Son” and “Jesus Christ.” Since the word “commandment” is singular, a shift from the plural “commandments” in the previous verse, John is combining both the concept of believing in Jesus and loving the brothers into a single action. What we have is one command with two parts: believe and love. – David Allen
However firmly grounded the Christian’s assurance is, his heart may sometimes need reassurance... the suggestion seems to be that it may not be either an unusual or an infrequent experience for the Christian’s serene assurance to be disturbed. Sometimes the accusations of our ‘conscience’ (as the NEB legitimately renders heart) will be true accusations, and sometimes they will be false, inspired by ‘the accuser of our brothers’ (Rev. 12:10). In either case, the inner voice is not to overcome us. We are rather to set our hearts at rest in his presence, that is, we must be able to do so in the sight of God. It is implied that we shall be able to do this only if we know that we belong to the truth. It is the mind’s knowledge by which the heart’s doubts may be silenced. But how can we know this? What is the meaning of the this is how with which the verse begins? Usually in this letter the phrase looks on to what follows, but here (as in 4:6) it seems to refer back to the preceding paragraph about love. It is ‘everyone who loves’ who ‘has been born of God and knows God’ (4:7). Love is the final objective test of our Christian profession, for true love, in the sense of self-sacrifice, is not natural to human beings in their fallen state. Its existence in anyone is evidence of new birth and of the indwelling Spirit (3:24; 4:12–13), and it shows itself ‘with actions’. ‘There are actual things we can point to—not things we have professed or felt or imagined or intended, but things that we have done’ (Law). If we thus love ‘in truth’ (18), we may indeed have full assurance in our hearts. ‘The fruit of love is confidence’ – John Stott
For next week – Read 1 John 4:1-6 Pastor Samuel Sutter // sam@BBCCOnline.org
