Sometimes in life, you just have to accept the facts. The facts slap you in the face and you must acknowledge them. There is no getting around them, or explaining them away. They are just there.
Like the snow in the northeast. At its worst, it was yards deep, burying everything in sight. You could act like it wasn’t there, but you still got nowhere when you try to travel. The fact of the snow stopped you in your tracks. There was nothing you could do to avoid it except stay indoors. And even then, your heating bill at the end of the month told you something was going on outside.
There are certain uncompromising facts about the character and nature of God that must be accepted. The first one is that He does exist. Acting as though He doesn’t exist won’t make Him go away. He won’t melt when the spring temperatures arrive. He won’t change because we want Him to change.
Lying about the facts doesn’t change them either. Even if we convince everyone we know to agree with our lie, the facts are still the facts. We can tout the low unemployment rate as a sign of a recovering economy, but that still doesn’t change the fact that more people have stopped looking for work than have found jobs. Fewer people are working! Fact.
Our text today points out several facts that John’s antagonists try to hide. They lie about the relationship between the Father and the Son. They want to create a less then Jesus. They want either a fully human part God Jesus, or fully God part human one. To deny the essential nature of Jesus is to deny Him.
But that is not all. Since the Father and Son are both deity, three persons one God, then they end up denying the Father as well. You can’t change the nature of Jesus without changing the nature of the Father. To put it another way, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a package deal. You either take them all, or you don’t get any. There is no BOGO offer. And you certainly can’t get one free without buying one.
But if you accept the nature of the Son, you accept the nature of the Father as well. But what does that mean for our relationship with God? For John, and by extension us, denying this truth turns you into a liar and an antichrist. Remember, not all lies have the same consequences. John highlights this lie because the consequences strike at the very heart of the Gospel. If Jesus is not fully God and fully man, then what He did on the cross is much less than redemption. He might as well be a labeled a fool and dismissed. His death means nothing. He was a psychopath who thought He was something He wasn’t, and deceived His followers in the process.
For John, denying the Son is a death nail to the Gospel. Because you can’t have partial truth, once you get rid of Jesus, you are now believing a lie. But when you accept Jesus, you are believing the Truth. Everything hangs on Jesus.
The Arnold Journey 