1 John 4:15
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God.
This verse starts our Whoever; It means it’s open to anyone. The word here for confesses means to confess, to acknowledge. Confession is not claiming something is true but admitting it to be true. We are His, to identify with Him, to regard, obey, and commit to Jesus. We’re talking about justifying faith. We see justifying faith in the life of Abraham, as recorded in Romans 4:16–22.
Abrahams Confession of Faith Justified Him
We see the example of Abraham’s justification by faith in Romans 4. We see in Rom 4:13 13 For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. It lets us know that relationship with God is by God’s grace, through our faith. Our confession that God’s promises are true, that we can trust Him, no matter the circumstances, MUST come by faith. We Christians are Abraham’s descendants, not necessarily by blood, but by having the same Faith and confession of God that he had.17 (as it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations”) in the presence of Him whom he believed, that is, God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that do not exist.
Our response in salvation is faith, but even that is not of ourselves but is the gift of God. Faith is nothing that we do in our own power or by our own resources. In the first place we do not have adequate power or resources. More than that, God would not want us to rely on them even if we had them. Otherwise salvation would be in part by our own works, and we would have some ground to boast in ourselves. Paul intends to emphasize that even faith is not from us apart from God’s giving it. The same God that In Acts 3, Peter preaches to those around the temple, after healing a lame beggar saying 16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see. We sometimes look at faith as an imposition, as something that we are forced to have against our will by God, or something that stretches us uncomfortably sometimes. But every person lives by faith. When we open a can of food or drink a glass of water, we trust that it is not contaminated. When we sit in a chair, or go across a bridge we trust it to support us. But, for eternal salvation, specific faith in the author of Eternal Life is required. We must put our faith in God for the preservation of our souls in in the redemption that Jesus Christ has accomplished for us on the cross.
Abraham chooses to stand on the gift of God, faith, and consider God’s promise to outweigh and overcome all of these difficulties and circumstances. He then responds with hope—not some vague hope or wish, but a hope based in a solid trust in the God who made the promise to him of a son. What is our contribution? Just believe. When the crowd asked Jesus what work that they could do in John 6:28 28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” 29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” Thus this confession is not an action, but a conviction, that saves. Our faith is walked out in our lives as an open confession to everyone by what we say and do, by our walk in the light, as He is in the light.
Heb 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. And, in doing so, we find that we have the confidence in God to be assured that He will get us through impossible circumstances. And as we have this confidence in Him, we find that we have assurance in these circumstances, and God gets us through what we should not be able to get through, and would not in our own strength.
God remains in him, and he in God.
Right confession leads to life with God. But, the remaining, abiding is a continual confession of Jesus as Lord and Savior. The essential point to abiding is having our identity in Jesus, the Son of God, who as only-begotten Son of His Father could reveal the Father to men. Those who are truly in Christ “confess” Him as their Great Shepherd, the guiding force in our life and actions, and we have assurance of the truth of this fellowship with God through Jesus because of the witness of the Holy Spirit within us.
The essential meaning of our active abiding in Christ is receiving and trusting all that God is for us in Christ.
Jesus points out the necessity of remaining in fellowship with Him, abiding in Him, in John 15:4-5 4 Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself but must remain in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If a branch remains or abides attached to the vine in such a way that it is receiving all that the branch has to give, then that is a picture of what John means by believing or trusting in Jesus. If a grape branch, is broken off of the vine can only shrivel and die, and the fruit dry up—so we must continue in our mutual abiding relationship with Jesus, and we will find that HE gives us all that we need eternal life. We depend on Him for our nourishment. This is what he says in John 6:35: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
If we abide, we will obey
And how do we remain in Jesus’ love, as He has commanded us to? He answers in verse 10: obedience. He says 10 If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. So, we have fellowship with Jesus through obedience to Him, abiding in His love. And not only does this fellowship with Jesus, give glory to God, and produce fruit for God, and for us to be rewarded for in eternity, it changes us.
If we abide, we will be delivered from judgement
John 15:6, “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Throughout the New Testament, fire is used to depict the torments awaiting those who stand under God’s judgment for sin. An important example is Jesus’ parable of the weeds in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus said that He has planted His good seed in his field, but the evil one has come and planted weeds there also. The weeds in that parable present false professors and correspond to the fruitless branches in John 15. In Matthew 13:39-42 Jesus speaks here of God’s judgment not on sinners generally but on professing believers who did not possess His saving life and bear good fruit. Think of Judas Iscariot as the classic example of a false professor who was first removed and then condemned by God. If we are saved, we can be sure that God will produce good works in us. That’s why James wrote in James 2:17, “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works is dead.” He didn’t mean that we are saved by a combination of faith and works, but rather that saving faith is always a faith that goes on to bear the fruit of good works, along with a changed life.
If we abide, we will produce fruit in keeping with repentance—A changed life
It will produce Power in Prayer
Another result is that abiding in Christ leads to power in prayer. John 15:7, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Jesus says that we must pray with His Word abiding in us in order to receive assurance of answered prayer. According to Jesus’ promise, whenever we pray for the priorities He taught in Scripture, we should pray with an absolute certainty of divine answers. We should pray for grace to believe, for compassion on a lost world so that we will witness, and for the courage to stand against the pressures of the world and of sin. If we wonder why we do not seem to enjoy greater power in prayer, perhaps our lack of power in prayer stems from a lack of abiding in Christ and His Word. F.B. Meyer writes, “If you abide in Christ in daily fellowship, it will not be difficult to pray aright, for He has promised to abide in those who abide in Him; and the sap of the Holy Spirit securing for you fellowship with your unseen Lord, will produce in you, as fruit, desires and petitions similar to those which He unceasingly presents to His Father.” (F.B. Meyer, The Life of Love (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1987), 296). The secret to power in prayer is to live close enough to Christ that our own desires, expressed in prayer, have been molded by His Word.