In 1 John 3, the Apostle John is contrasting the themes of love and hate.Today, we come to v.19-20, which reads "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, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything."
In 1 John 3:19-24, John introduces the idea that love does three very important things for the Believer: It exposes a
doubting heart, it gives confidence and effectiveness to prayer, and it
gives evidence that the Believer is being filled with the Spirit. Today, we will consider the first of these three: Love exposes a
doubting heart.
For the first six months of my Christian experience, whenever my Pastor gave an alter call, I would go down. On one occasion, my Pastor asked me, "why do you come down every Sunday?" I responded, "because I sinned this week." I did not understand that the moment that I trusted the Lord Jesus to be my Savior, His perfection was deposited into my Justification account before God. Justification means to be made right before God. And when the Lord Jesus died on the cross and I received the free gift of salvation, I was made perfect in the eyes of God. I did not understand that Jesus plus nothing equals everything including His perfection.
When we begin to understand that we have never, nor will we ever earn God's favor, it is then that we begin to understand His love for us. In v.19, John writes, "This is how we know that we belong to the truth..." This means when we give ourselves to the Lord Jesus who is the truth, we will see that our struggle for God's acceptance is over. It is then that we are freed from a condemning heart. It is then that we are freed to respond to His pure love with a pure love of our own. It will never be a perfect love, this side of heaven. But, it will be a pure love because it comes from a heart that has been reshaped by the Perfect One.
