Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2006 : May 21, 2006

Theme: In Search Of...the Perfect Christian

Church year occasion: Easter 6

Twenty or so years ago there was a TV show that could make everyone in my family stop what they were doing and watch almost breathlessly for an entire hour, like Lost and 24 do today in some families. It wasn't Dallas when everyone was trying to figure out who shot J.R.; it wasn't the last episode of M*A*S*H either; it was In Search Of ... With Leonard Nemoy. Some people just have a way of presenting something that makes it come to life, and Leonard Nemoy had that ability. Whether that week you were in search of the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot or the Abominable Snowman, by the end of the show he had you believing that all those things existed, even though you knew better.

This morning I want us to go in search of something as well -- the perfect Christian. You might think no such being exists because every Christian is a sinner. Every Christian has particular problems with particular sins, no matter how holy of a life they lead. So you'd have as much luck finding a perfect Christian as you would of finding Bigfoot. But, after we look at what John tells us, we might be surprised as we go In Search Of...the Perfect Christian.

Now, if we were in search of Bigfoot, what would we be looking for? A big, furry animal with big feet, right? We'd try to find clues, evidence that would lead us to where Bigfoot lives. Well, if we're in search of the perfect Christian, we have to do the same thing. John tells us two characteristics of the perfect Christian. Let's try to figure out the first one in the first six verses before us. John begins, "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world." When John speaks of testing the spirits here, he explains what he means later in the verse. He's talking about prophets; today we'd call them religious teachers. Some are good, and some are bad. A good example of this is The DaVinci Code. You've been hearing a lot about it recently and you might see the movie that opened up worldwide two days ago. It raises a lot of questions. Were there other gospel accounts not included in the Bible that would change our idea of Jesus? Are those other accounts more reliable? Is everything we've heard about Jesus wrong, a big cover-up for the real truth, as the book and movie claim? Does the Bible correctly show who Jesus was and what he taught, or does The DaVinci Code?

That's precisely why John tells us to "test the spirits." The Holy Spirit gives us two ways to distinguish between a false prophet and true prophet. The first is mentioned in verses 2-3: "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world." The federal government recently made new $20, $10 and $5 bills to cut down on counterfeiting, since color printers and computer technology have made the old bills too easy to duplicate. The new bills, however, have special features that cannot be duplicated on just any computer. On the $20 bill, for instance, you can see a faint image of Andrew Jackson off to the right side and on the left there is a thin plastic strip embedded within the fibers. Both of them are visible when you hold the $20 up to the light. The same is true with what you believe. God wants you to be able to determine easily if he sent the teacher you are listening to or if he's lying to you, by carefully examining what he teaches and preaches with God's Word itself, which is described as a lamp to our feet and a light for our path. God wants you to be an expert of Christ's teaching so you know who is feeding you God's bread of life or who is shoveling out to you the devil's deceptive refuse.

In John's day, the Gnostics were a heretical sect that denied Jesus was true man when he died, and that is what John specifically refers to in our text. Do you know what Dan Brown, the writer of The DaVinci Code, believes? Gnosticism. The Gospel of Judas that just came out a few weeks ago which denies the Bible's account of Judas and turns him into a hero, and one that Jesus couldn't have saved the world without -- it's Gnostic also. All this stuff has been around for thousands of years already. Gnostics believe some things very similar to Eastern mysticism and Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and flat out paganism. We need to test their teachings according to the Bible. When we do, it's obvious that they are false -- and then we stay away from those teachings.

John gives another way that the Christian can always be testing for the truth -- by seeing who is listening to what the false teacher says. John says, "They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood." Don't let the devil suck you into the idea that bigger is always better. If people are flocking to some new religious thing, be skeptical. Perhaps they're selling simply what the world likes to hear, like, "Don't worry about doctrine -- it really isn't that important." Many Christian churches have gone that way these days, and people love it. Books on Gnosticism are flying off the shelves these days -- that's what the world wants to hear -- that there's some secret knowledge you need to be saved that the Bible is trying to keep from you. A seminary professor said often that it is amazing what people will believe as long as it isn't in the Bible. And how true that is! But God wants you to be a testing Christian. Be skeptical, like the Bereans in Paul's day -- hold up a teacher's teaching to the light of the Scriptures, and when you find a church that teaches the truth, even when it teaches things the world doesn't like to hear, join it.

We are In Search Of...the Perfect Christian. Can he be found? The first characteristic of the perfect Christian is that he is always testing for truth because the truth matters to him. John tells us one more characteristic of a perfect Christian -- he is also always looking for love.

That phrase "looking for love" might bring to mind a country song that talks about "looking for love" but it's "in all the wrong places." That kind of "love" is a false love and really a lack of love. It's actually a characteristic of an unbeliever: "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." There is only one place to look for love and find it as it was meant to be, and that is with God himself. The Christian knows this, but the person who doesn't know Jesus can never know what real love is because he doesn't know the only One who can bring that love to him, who is God himself. This love is not the kind of love that Hollywood portrays in the movies or that people usually talk about when they say they love someone. This is love that only God himself is capable of perfectly -- self-sacrificing, unconditional love, that only looks to do what is good for another, regardless of cost or consequence to self.

When we think about this search that we are conducting for the perfect Christian, we look at ourselves and have to be ashamed at what we find. Have we always tested for truth and stood up for that truth, or have we thought at times that a little false doctrine isn't all that bad? We're looking at what God says in his Word about the different roles of man and woman as we formulate our constitution. Are we looking to skirt around God's Word because it isn't very popular today, or will we let Scripture speak as we listen and follow? We need to be testing for and holding onto and teaching the truth. But we can also go to the opposite extreme. Have we at times arrogantly said that we have the truth and no one else does, and we can look down our long noses at those who hold to false teaching? In looking at the roles of man and woman, have we gone too far and pushed things that Scripture hasn't said? That's just as bad -- and not loving at all.

There's a tendency to go to one or the other extreme. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians how to steer between the two extremes: "Speak the truth in love." Thankfully, when we've failed to do both and showed ourselves to be anything but a perfect Christian, Jesus stayed the course. He never backed down from the truth, even when it cost him his life, and that was the greatest act of love this world has ever seen. John says, "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." When we failed to be the perfect Christian God wants us to be, God punished not us, but Jesus, with our sin, and damned him in our place. But by doing so, our lack of testing for truth and our lack of looking for love were washed away forever. And Jesus gave us the perfection the Father desires to see in all his children.

So can we ever find the perfect Christian? Yes. First, it is Jesus himself. And secondly, God declared us to be perfect also simply by trusting in Jesus for our salvation. Through faith in Jesus, we and every Christian are the perfect Christians we've been seeking. Our search is over. But living as that perfect Christian will never be over. We always test for truth; we always look for love. And when we fail, we always look to Christ and rejoice in our forgiveness and the perfection he's given us. Amen.