Confidence and Closing
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Scripture: 1 John 5:13–21
Read 1 John 5:13–21 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.
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.
1 John 5:13
That You May Know
We have arrived at the thesis verse of the entire letter. Everything we have been studying across the past eight sessions has been leading to this point. The prologue and the fellowship with the Father and the Son. The walking in the light and the confession of sin. The tests of life: obedience, love, belief. The children of God and the love that defines them. The antichrists and the anointing. The spirits and the confession of Christ. The love of God and the casting out of fear. The witnesses of Spirit, water, and blood. All of this has been pastoral preparation for a single purpose, now stated by John in his own words. 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.
This verse gives our entire volume its title. That you may know. The assurance of salvation (the settled knowledge that the Christian possesses eternal life) is the pastoral heart of the letter. John did not write to make his readers anxious. He did not write to test them. He did not write to expose what they lacked. He wrote so that they might know what was theirs. He wrote so that the faith they had received might be received with settled confidence. He wrote so that the eternal life already given to them might be consciously enjoyed as present possession. In the middle of a pastoral crisis (with false teachers active, congregations unsettled, doctrinal confusion threatening the faith of ordinary believers), John’s aim was not further unsettlement but settled assurance. The God who had called them was faithful. The Christ who had died for them was adequate. The Spirit given in their Baptism was at work. And they might know it.
In this closing session we will examine the thesis verse directly, treating it as the pastoral climax of the entire letter. We will look at John’s teaching on prayer and confidence before God. We will work through the difficult passage on sin not leading to death and sin leading to death, a passage that has generated much discussion and that requires careful handling. We will see the three things John names that we know: we know that we are of God, we know that the Son of God has come, we know that we are in Him who is true. And we will close with the final exhortation of the letter, which comes as a surprise in its directness. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
That You May Know You Have Eternal Life
John states his purpose directly. 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. The verse is worth slow reading. Each phrase carries weight.
I Write These Things
John is gathering up the entire letter. These things (the prologue, the teaching on sin and confession, the tests of life, the love of God, the witnesses, all of it) have been written for a single purpose. The letter is not an anthology of separate teachings; it is a single pastoral instrument, aimed at a specific result. And John names the result explicitly here. If, across our eight previous sessions, we have ever lost sight of what John was doing, this verse brings us back. He was building assurance. Every teaching has served that end.
To You Who Believe
The letter is addressed specifically to believers. Not to the unbelieving world that John hopes to convert, though the Gospel is for them as well. To those who already believe in the name of the Son of God, the baptized, the confessing, the ordinary members of John’s congregations. This matters. The assurance John is offering is for Christians. It is not a promise held out to those who may one day believe; it is a settled reality now available to those who already do.
This is important because Christians sometimes fear the promises of Scripture do not apply to them until they reach a higher standard of Christian life. John cuts through this directly. You who believe: this is you, if you are trusting in Christ. Not the advanced Christian, not the particularly holy Christian, not the Christian who has passed some test of spiritual maturity. The believing Christian. If you confess Jesus as the Son of God, if you have been baptized into Him, if the Gospel is what you are trusting for your salvation, John’s letter is written to you, and its promise of assurance is for you.
That You May Know
The verb is strong. Not, that you may hope. Not, that you may probably have. That you may know. The Greek verb here is oida, which denotes settled knowledge, certainty, the kind of knowing that rests on firm ground. John is not offering his readers an anxious wondering about their salvation; he is offering them the settled confidence of those who know what is theirs.
This is striking in the context of much modern Christian experience. Many Christians live with ongoing uncertainty about their standing with God: sometimes feeling saved, sometimes doubting, never quite sure where they stand. John’s teaching is that this pattern of perpetual uncertainty is not what Christians are meant to live with. Assurance is possible. Settled knowledge is available. And John has written his letter to help produce it. Where Christians feel perpetually unsure of their standing, something has gone wrong, either in their understanding of the Gospel, or in their reception of what Scripture promises, or in the teaching they have received. The right reception of the apostolic teaching produces the settled knowledge John is pointing them toward.
That You Have Eternal Life
And the object of the knowing is clear. Eternal life. The thing John wants his readers to know is that they possess eternal life right now, as their present reality. Not that they might have eternal life if they hold on well enough. Not that they will have eternal life if they successfully navigate the remaining trials of life. That they have eternal life, at this moment, as settled possession.
This is the same present-tense eternal life John has been teaching throughout the letter. The life that is in the Son, which belongs to all who have the Son. This life is the gift that has already been given, received through faith, confirmed by the Spirit, witnessed by water and blood. John’s readers, and by extension every believer who comes after them, may know this is theirs. Not because of their performance. Because of Christ, received by faith, whose life is their life now.
This is the pastoral climax of the letter. Everything John has said has served this aim. And the verse gives the Christian in every age a settled ground for facing whatever she faces. When the world presses. When the conscience accuses. When the future is unknown. When death approaches. When failures mount. When the culture is hostile. When other Christians disappoint. In all of these, the Christian knows, knows, that she has eternal life. The life is in the Son. The Son is hers. Therefore the life is hers. The assurance rests not on her circumstances but on what is objectively true of her standing in Christ. And this is the rock on which the Christian stands, whatever the storms of the particular day.
Confidence in Prayer
John now turns to a consequence of this assurance. And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us. 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.
Parrhesia, confidence, returns. The Christian who knows she has eternal life also has a particular kind of confidence in prayer. This confidence is not that her prayers are magical incantations that force God to do what she wants. It is the confidence that the God who has given her eternal life is the same God who hears her when she asks anything according to His will. Her requests reach a Father who is already disposed toward her in love. Her prayers are not shouts into a void; they are the ongoing conversation of a child with her Father.
According to His Will
The qualifier matters. If we ask anything according to His will. This is not a loophole John is adding to weaken the promise. It is the recognition that prayer is the communion of the Christian with her Father, in which she is progressively learning to want what He wants. The prayer that asks according to His will is not the calculated prayer that tries to figure out what God wants in order to manipulate Him into granting it. It is the prayer of the Christian whose own desires are being shaped, over time, by the Father’s purposes. She prays increasingly for what He wills, because she has been increasingly conformed to His will. And those prayers, which align with what God has already purposed to do, are heard and granted.
This means the Christian who is walking with God will find, over time, that her prayer life becomes increasingly effective, not because she has mastered some technique but because the center of her desires is migrating from self to God, from her own kingdom to His. The young Christian sometimes prays primarily for things that serve her own comfort and convenience. The mature Christian has come to pray increasingly for things that serve God’s glory and the welfare of others. Both are praying; both may be heard at various points. But the maturing pattern of Christian prayer life is the alignment of the pray-er’s desires with the Father’s purposes, producing the kind of prayer that John says receives what it asks.
We Have the Requests
John says the prayer that asks according to God’s will is heard, and if it is heard, then the one praying has the requests she has asked of Him. The verb tense is present. She has them now, even before the granting has been visibly completed. This is the confidence of faith. The Christian who prays according to God’s will can settle into the assurance that the prayer has been heard and the request granted, trusting that the visible outworking will come in God’s time. Not every prayer is answered in the form we expected, but every prayer aligned with God’s will is answered in some form. And the Christian can rest in that, without needing immediate visible confirmation.
Sin Not Leading to Death
John now addresses what is probably the most difficult passage in the closing of the letter. If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life, to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.
The passage raises immediate questions. What is sin leading to death? What is sin not leading to death? Should we refuse to pray for some sinners? Does John mean there is sin God will not forgive? These questions have been worked over by interpreters for centuries, and the passage does not admit of a single confident answer. What we can do is work through the most defensible reading, marking the places where certainty gives way to interpretive judgment.
The Pastoral Context
Remember the situation John is writing into. False teachers have departed from his congregations. They have taken up a teaching that denies Christ. They have drawn some members after them. John has named them antichrists. He has said that their departure showed they were not of us. And now, near the end of his letter, he returns briefly to the pastoral implications for those who remain. If you see a brother (still in the community, still within the apostolic fellowship) committing sins, pray for him. But those who have decisively departed into the antichrist teaching, rejecting the Son of God, are in a different category. Their sin is the sin that leads to death, and John does not say Christians should not pray for them, but he does not command intercession for them either.
What Sin Leads to Death?
The most likely reading, fitting John’s entire argument, is that the sin leading to death is the final, decisive rejection of Christ as the Son of God come in the flesh: the sin of the antichrists. This is the sin John has been calling his readers to test for throughout the letter. Those who make this decisive departure place themselves outside the fellowship in which sin is forgiven, because the One who forgives is the One they have rejected. Their sin leads to death because they have cut themselves off from the source of life.
This is not a pronouncement about any particular individual’s eternal state; God alone sees the heart, and someone who has departed may yet return. It is a statement about the category: the sin that consists in the final rejection of Christ does not come with the promise of forgiveness that attends to ordinary Christian sin confessed and cleansed. The Christian’s confession covers the sins she commits in her ongoing Christian life. The sin of finally and decisively rejecting Christ, persisting in it until death, is a different matter, because it removes the one sinning from the place where forgiveness is received.
The Pastoral Application
What this passage does for the ordinary Christian is confirm the ordinary practice of Christian intercession. See a brother sinning? Pray for him. God will give him life. This is the normal posture of the Christian community: praying for one another in the ordinary failures and struggles of Christian life, confident that God hears and that forgiveness is given. John’s exception concerns the extreme case of decisive antichrist apostasy. The exception does not cancel the rule; it marks its limit. And for the overwhelming majority of pastoral situations the Christian will face, the rule applies. Pray for the brother who is sinning. God will give him life.
This passage has sometimes been used to justify Christians refusing to pray for specific people: those in certain sins, those who have hurt us, those with whom we disagree. This is not John’s meaning. The sin leading to death is a specific theological category, not a general license for Christians to select whom to pray for. The Christian who has someone in mind whose eternal state troubles her (a family member who has walked away from the faith, a friend who is persisting in grievous sin, a loved one who is hostile to Christ) should pray for them. John does not forbid it. He only acknowledges that there is a category of sin, in the final decisive rejection of Christ persisted in to the end, where prayer may not avail. But this is not your call to make about a living person whose final state is unknown. Pray. Trust God with the outcome.
Three Things We Know
John now gives three closing statements that gather the confidence of the letter. Each begins with we know. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Three great statements of Christian knowledge. These are not maybes. They are not hopes. They are known realities. And they gather the teaching of the entire letter into the settled assurance that has been John’s aim.
Known: The Born-of-God Are Kept
The first known thing echoes what we studied in Session Four. The one born of God does not keep on sinning: does not live as a slave to sin, does not have sin as the settled pattern of his life. And the reason is given in the second half. He who was born of God protects him. Christ Himself, the firstborn of God, protects the one born of God. The evil one does not touch him. This is the language of divine protection, covering the Christian against the ultimate assault of the evil one. The Christian can fall. The Christian can stumble into sin. But the evil one does not touch the Christian in the ultimate sense: does not have access to do the lasting spiritual harm he would inflict if the Christian were not under Christ’s protection.
This is reassurance for Christians who feel the spiritual struggle acutely. Your protection is not your own vigilance. It is Christ. The evil one does not have permission to destroy you, because you are in Christ, and Christ guards His own. You may feel assaulted, you may feel oppressed, you may feel the weight of spiritual pressure. You may nevertheless know that the one born of God is kept by Christ, and no one can snatch Christ’s sheep out of His hand (John 10:28). The protection is real. Christ is faithful.
Known: We Are from God
The second known thing. We are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. The contrast is absolute. The Christian is from God. The world, the fallen human order organized against God, is in the power of the evil one. These are the two spiritual realities in which every human being participates. The Christian has been brought from one into the other. She is no longer of the world, though still in it. She is of God, belonging to Him, secure in that belonging.
This statement deserves being sat with. It is blunt. The world around the Christian lies in the power of the evil one. Not metaphorically. Not hyperbolically. As a statement of spiritual reality. The fallen human order is not neutral territory; it is under an alien occupation. The Christian who sees this clearly is equipped to understand both why the world responds as it does to the Gospel and why living faithfully in the world will always involve a kind of spiritual dissonance. The Christian is a resident alien, an outpost of a different kingdom, surrounded by territory still held by the enemy. But she is from God. Whatever the territory, her belonging is settled.
Known: The Son Has Come, We Are in Him
The third known thing is the fullest. We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
The incarnation that has been the theme of the whole letter is named once more. The Son of God has come. Not might have come, not may come. Has come. Historically, really, in the flesh, as we have been teaching since Session One. And He has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true. The true God (distinguished from the false gods of the surrounding culture, the spiritual realities that are not God) is known through the Son who has come. And the Christian is in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. We are located in Christ, who is located in the true God.
And John makes one of his most striking statements in the closing phrase. He is the true God and eternal life. The pronoun He is ambiguous in the Greek: it could refer to the Father or to Christ. Many commentators take it to refer to Christ, in which case John is making an explicit statement of Christ’s deity as the closing note of the letter. Christ is the true God. Christ is eternal life. This is a fitting summit for a letter that has been pushing against those who denied Christ’s full identity. The letter ends with the clearest possible affirmation of who Christ is (true God, eternal life), the one in whom the Christian is now located by faith.
Keep Yourselves from Idols
The letter ends with a final single sentence. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
The ending is sudden, almost abrupt. After all the depths we have traversed (the love of God, the overcoming of the world, the witness of Spirit, water, and blood, the knowing of the true God), John closes with a warning that seems, at first, to come from a different register. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
Not an Afterthought
But it is not a different register. It is the fitting summation of the letter’s argument. If Christ is the true God and eternal life, then anything that competes with Him for our ultimate loyalty is an idol. Whatever we allow to take the place that belongs only to Christ (whether spiritual teachings, cultural values, personal ambitions, material securities, even religious experiences treated as more important than Christ Himself) is an idol. And John’s closing word is that we should guard ourselves from these.
In the immediate context, the idols would have included specifically the teachings of the false teachers: the alternative Christs who were being offered, the alternative spiritualities, the alternative confessions. Guard yourselves from these, John says. Do not replace the Christ you have received with the supposedly higher Christ being offered. Do not chase after the new teachings that promise more. Stay with the true God you know in the Son.
For the Christian in every age, the warning translates directly. Idols continue to arise in every culture and every generation. Sometimes they take religious forms; sometimes they do not. Sometimes they promise spiritual depth; sometimes they promise material success; sometimes they promise social acceptance. Whatever form they take, the warning is the same. Keep yourself from them. Guard what you have. Do not let anything displace the Christ who is the true God and eternal life. The whole letter’s argument comes down to this single practical exhortation. Stay with Him. He is enough. He is everything. Guard against whatever would pull you away.
Gathering the Threads
The letter is ended. John has written so that his readers may know they have eternal life, and he has given them every resource they need for that knowing. The Word of life who has been heard, seen, and touched by the apostles. The fellowship with the Father and the Son offered through their witness. The walking in the light and the confession of ongoing sin. The tests of life by which they may know they are in Him. The identity as children of God, the love that flows from the new birth, the testing of spirits and the Christological confession. The love of God demonstrated in the propitiation of His Son. The threefold witness of Spirit, water, and blood. The victory that overcomes the world. The eternal life that is in the Son, possessed now by those who have Him. All of this has been for one purpose. That you may know that you have eternal life.
For the Christian who has walked through this letter carefully, the result should be the assurance John has been aiming at. Not the artificial confidence of self-assertion. The settled confidence of receiving what has been given. The Christ who was proclaimed is the Christ who is received. The Spirit given in Baptism continues to testify. The means of grace continue to bear the water and the blood. The witness of God concerning His Son stands, and is confirmed by the Spirit in our own hearts. We have the testimony. We have the Son. And because we have the Son, we have life. This is what John wrote to produce in his readers. And if the letter has done its work in us, this is what we have.
For the Lutheran Christian, the whole letter has been deeply congenial territory. The emphasis on what God has done rather than what we do. The anchoring of assurance in objective reality rather than subjective feeling. The connection of the Spirit’s work to the means of grace. The distinction between justified and sinner being simultaneously true. The centrality of the incarnation and the cross. The simplicity of faith and the natural expression of it in love. All of this has been Johannine before it was Lutheran, and the Reformation recovered what was already here in the apostolic witness. Receiving 1 John well is one of the ways Lutheran Christians stand continuously in the apostolic teaching.
Next week we close the volume with a single session on 2 John and 3 John, two brief letters that give us a last glimpse of the same apostle, handling particular pastoral situations with the same love and theological clarity we have come to know. These short letters are worth hearing, and they make a fitting capstone to our study.
For Discussion
The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.
I write these things to you who believe, that you may know that you have eternal life. What has it meant for you, across this study, to hear John’s aim so directly? Has your assurance grown?
The Christian’s confidence in prayer is grounded in asking according to God’s will. How is your own prayer life being shaped, over time, to ask more and more for what God wants?
The passage on sin leading to death is difficult. How do you understand the distinction John is drawing? How does this shape the way you think about praying for specific people whose spiritual state troubles you?
‘The evil one does not touch him.’ What would it mean, practically, to live with settled confidence that Christ’s protection of you is real, and that the ultimate assaults of the enemy are excluded from your life?
‘We are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.’ This is a strong statement. Where have you felt the truth of it? Where does it change how you see the world around you?
‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols.’ What are the idols most tempting you right now? Where does John’s closing exhortation come to you most directly?
Looking Ahead
Next week we close the volume with 2 John and 3 John, two short letters that give us our last sight of the aged apostle, handling particular pastoral situations in particular congregations. We will also reflect on what the whole volume has been for us, and on what comes next in the continuing Christian life.
Before next session, read 2 John and 3 John; both letters can be read in less than five minutes, and reading them several times is worthwhile. Notice the situations John is addressing, the way he handles them, and the echoes of 1 John in the shorter letters. These are the final words of one of the last surviving apostles to the Church he had served, and they deserve to be received with the attention their brevity and depth call for.
Closing Prayer
Father, we thank You for Your apostle John, who wrote so that we might know we have eternal life. Confirm in us what we have heard. Seat the assurance of Your Gospel in our hearts, not as temporary feeling but as settled knowledge. Give us the confidence that belongs to those who are in Your Son. Teach us to pray according to Your will, to trust the protection of Your Son against the evil one, and to keep ourselves from every idol that would draw us from You. In the name of Your Son Jesus Christ, who is the true God and eternal life. Amen.