Sermon Notes, October 27, 2013
Fruit of the Spirit: Goodness and Faithfulness, I john 1:5-2:8
Truth. “If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.” We’re going
to do something pretty ambitious. We’re going to take a look at two of the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit are listed
in Galatians 5:22ff. They are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness—then we get on to meekness and
self-control.
We’re going to look at goodness and faithfulness together. The main reason is because goodness and faithfulness are
awfully interrelated. They really both have to do with integrity. They both have to do with living honestly, living by the
truth.
The word integrity is related to the English word integer. An integer is a whole number as opposed to a fraction. A
person of integrity is someone whose life is unified by the truth and who is not two-faced. You’re not living in a fractured
way.
Today we live in a fragmented world in which in one area you have one set of values, and in another area you have
another set of values. For example, modern culture tells you if you’re a Christian, if you’re one of these born-again types,
well that’s sort of okay. That’s okay for your private life, but do not try to get that out into your public life. Do not try, they
say, to legislate morality. Don’t try to get your morality out in your public life where you’re imposing it on everybody else.
On the other hand, they don’t see when they say that that they’re doing it to you. When they say religion is relative; it’s
for your private life, and don’t bring it out into your public life, don’t impose it on other people, they are imposing their
view of religion on you. That’s called relativism. The problem is the modern way of thinking has no integrity to it, because
modern man doesn’t believe in truth that fits into every area of life.
Goodness and faithfulness are two fruit of the Spirit, and they’re very close together.
Goodness has to do with consistency and sincerity. Goodness has to do with sincerity. A sincere person’s heart is like a
clear lake that you can see all the way to the bottom. What you see is what you get. A sincere person.
Whereas faithfulness has to do with dependability, follow-through, responsibility, someone who keeps promises.
So we’re going to see what the Bible teaches about truth, and then what the Bible teaches about getting the truth into
your life, becoming a person of goodness and faithfulness. Verse 5 of the passage says, “God is light; in him there is no
darkness at all.”
That is a very profound verse, out of which we can draw many things. A teacher of theology named John Murray wrote
this. It’s a profound thing and I know when we first read it you’re going to say, “Boy, that’s heavy and I have to chew on
that.” Let’s chew on it. John Murray is talking about what John means when he talks about truth.
“We should bear in mind that ‘the true’ in the usage of John is not so much the true in contrast with the false [though it is],
or the real in contrast with the fictitious [though it is]. It is the absolute as contrasted with the relative, the ultimate as
contrasted with the derived…the substantial in contrast with the shadowy. God is ‘the truth’, truth absolute, ultimate,
eternal, in contradistinction from all that is relative, derived, partial, and temporal.”
Now be patient. Keep following here.
“When we speak, therefore, of the sanctity of truth, we must recognize that what underlies this concept is the sanctity of the
being of God as the living and true God… This is why all untruth or falsehood is wrong; it is a contradiction of that which
God is. And this is why God cannot lie. To lie would contradict Himself and He cannot deny Himself. It is his perfection to
be consistent with himself … This attribute of God is often expressed as his ‘faithfulness’ and is exemplified in the
certainty and immutability of his promises …”
Now that’s deep theology, but it’s also extremely important. The idea of honesty arises from one of His perfections: that
He’s absolutely consistent with Himself. He cannot be other than what He is. He cannot contradict himself. He cannot say
one thing one place and then contradict Himself another place. Whatever He says in one context is also true in another
context. The whole idea of truth & honesty is absolute consistency. That’s the reason why John Murray is pointing out the
idea that God is light and in him is no darkness at all is the basis for understanding of truth.
What does that mean for us? We’re going to see. It means to be consistent with reality and it means to be consistent
with what you said in the past and it means to be consistent from place to place and with person to person and in public and
private. That’s what integrity means. That’s what truth is. That’s what goodness and faithfulness is.
1 John 1:10: “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar …” The problem with the human heart is
not just that we are dishonest; our dishonesty comes from, is rooted in, the accusation that God is a liar. Real dishonesty in
our lives starts when we distrust God. Adam and Eve were very happy people. They lived in perfect relationship with God.
Along comes the Serpent, Satan, and the first temptation has to do with truth. What Satan did was insinuate against
God’s veracity, against God’s truthfulness. The first temptation and the first sin was not eating the apple. The first sin was
to believe God was a liar. Man’s dishonesty starts the minute you mistrust God’s honesty. You become a liar the second
you believe God is a liar. But if you believe God and trust God you will become trustworthy and honest yourself.
The first temptation was to doubt God’s veracity. Satan accuses God of deception, deliberate falsehood. The first sin
directly results from their belief that God is a liar. Since then, the sin of doubting God’s Word, or his truth, is basic to all
other sins. Distrust in the integrity of God immediately destroys the integrity of man. Every sin, including our own
dishonesty, comes from doubting God’s faithfulness and His promises. Every sin arises from believing lies instead of the
truth.
Now, the Bible teaches us that the root need of every human being is to worship something. Since all of us are born in
sin, that means all of us are born wanting to worship something besides God. Eventually at some deep level we all come to
believe something besides God will satisfy us. That is the big lie in our lives. Every human being has a “Big Lie” operating
at the bottom, underneath everything else, that drives you.
It roughly goes like this.
Why is it that some of us are so incredibly scared that people will reject us?
Why are we so destroyed when we find that people don’t like us?
It’s because there’s a Big Lie operating down underneath that says that if people love you, if everybody thinks you’re
terrific, then and only then will you have a worthwhile life; then you’ve made it.
Why are some other people driven by the need for money and success?
It’s because there’s a Big Lie operating in them. The Big Lie is, unless you make a lot of money and get ahead in your
career you’re nothing, you’re dirt. There’s a lie down there operating. You’re worshiping the success, or you’re worshiping
people’s approval, or you’re worshiping pleasure. You’re worshiping something and the worship takes the form of a lie,
and it expresses itself in your psyche and controls you that way.
Now, it’s one thing to believe in God; it’s another thing to believe God. It’s much harder. Abraham believed in God, but it
also tells us in Romans 4 he believed God so he didn’t waver at the promise. He didn’t stagger at what God said. He didn’t
say, “That’s too good to be true.” He said, “It must be true.” God said, “I’m going to bring this into your life.” And
instead of Abraham saying, “I don’t believe that,” he said, “Okay, I’m going to act on the basis of that.” So he began to act
on the basis of the truth. When you act on the basis of the truth you don’t feel sorry for yourself anymore.
Thomas Brooks in 1652 wrote a book called Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices. What Brooks does is he goes
through and he shows all the different ways in which your life can be absolutely demolished by a lie that Satan not only
injects but keeps stirring up. As an example, he says one of Satan’s devices is he keeps people in a sad, doubting,
questioning condition to make their life a hell by causing them to be thinking and musing more on their sin, and
consequently their problems, than upon their Savior. They go around constantly in doubts and in guilt and in anxiety and in
fear and in depression.
So he says, “What do you do about that?” He says the first remedy for weak believers who are feeling like this… Let
me just read this. It’s King James English, but listen. The first remedy is to consider what we’re told in Romans 8,
“There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And he writes, “The law cannot condemn you. It’s there, the
sin is present, but the sin cannot condemn you. It cannot push you away from God. It says, “The law cannot condemn a
believer, for Christ has fulfilled it for him; divine justice cannot condemn him, for that Christ has satisfied; his sins cannot
condemn him, for they in the blood of Christ are pardoned; and his own conscience, upon righteous grounds, cannot
condemn him, because Christ, that is greater than his conscience, has acquitted [pardoned] him.” Now what is Brooks
saying?
He’s saying you have to argue the truth down into the center of your being. The reason you’re full of guilt, the reason
you’re cast down, is because you’re believing a lie. So what is Brooks doing? All the way through here he says essentially
every one of our problems comes from believing lies, and that means believing that God is a liar; not believing something
He says in His Word. All of our problems come from believing God is a liar, and every day we are acting as if He is. A life
of integrity begins when we stop treating Him as a liar. It was the first temptation and we haven’t gotten over it yet.
One other thing I should say. At the personal level, the heart level, to doubt God’s truth is the cause of all our problems.
It’s also true the dynamic works at the intellectual level. If you do not believe in the Bible, if you don’t believe that God has
spoken in the Bible and that it is His revelation, if you don’t believe the truth of the Bible, there’s no way to know any truth
at all.
If you doubt God’s integrity, it destroys your integrity. That’s the personal level. At the intellectual level, if you doubt
God has given absolute truth, then you lose the ability to have any truth at all. That’s why we’re able to say here that if you
don’t believe there’s a God’s truth, we can’t know truth at all. Everything is subjectivism and we can know nothing for
certain.
Or to put it that way the Apostle John puts it: “If anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This
is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” Christ Himself exemplified God’s
love by demonstrating His self-giving love for us. He fulfilled the law of love in a way never before seen. But more, Jesus
has enabled this love to be realized by those of us who follow Him every day! Therefore the truth of God and His love is
seen in Jesus and in us! So live every day in that truth!