Recently, I was asked to lead a three-week study on 1 John for a group of young American missionaries. I wasn’t sure where they were theologically, but was told that they would almost certainly lean towards a Lordship Salvation view of the book. Free Grace people know that this view of 1 John seriously distorts the book’s meaning. If John knew how the Lordship camp was explaining the words he wrote all those years ago, I think he would rise from the dead–if he were able–and shoot some Bible teachers!

This is because Lordship Salvation teachers say that 1 John was written to cause believers to question whether they are eternally saved or not. John gives a number of tests that are supposed to help the readers determine whether they have enough fruit to provide some level of confidence that they will be in the kingdom. These tests include: Do you love others? Do you hate the world? Do you confess your sins? Do you continue to sin? Do you love the Lord?

If you don’t love others and you don’t hate the world, then you aren’t saved. The same is true if you don’t confess your sins. If you continue to sin after you believe, then your faith is not real.

You don’t have to be a Greek scholar to see where this leads. How can we measure such things? Which one of us passes these tests? Not surprisingly, it is common that those who are taught that this is what 1 John teaches live in almost constant fear that they are going to hell. They live their lives motivated by this fear. They want to do good works, confess their sins, and perhaps even feign love for others in order to salve their guilty consciences.

The study I was involved in with these missionaries was short. I don’t know how much they enjoyed it, but I know what my favorite part was. We were looking at 1 John 2:3-9. In those verses, John speaks about keeping the Lord’s commandments. He says that if we do, we have “come to know Him.” God’s love has reached its goal in such a believer. That believer “abides” in Christ. The same thing that we saw in Christ is seen at work in that believer. One commandment is particularly important: loving our fellow believers. If we do that, we are walking in the light of God’s truth.

I explained to the group that these are not tests to determine whether you will live with the Lord forever. All these phrases deal with being in fellowship with Christ. They are saying that if we walk in obedience to the Lord, we will come to know Him more intimately. We will become more and more like Him. Christ will feel at home with us (abides). John is telling his readers that they have the awesome opportunity of experiencing all these things.

The reason this was my favorite part of the study is because of what a young couple said as we discussed these verses. Both the husband and wife said that they had heard 1 John taught in a completely different way. They had been told that if they did not keep God’s commandments, then they would go to hell. It left them doubting whether they had eternal life or not. They said it was clear that John was not saying that.

Then the wife gave a great summary of what all this meant. She said, “This is so much better.” She described how the other way of understanding these verses is an attempt to motivate believers to live godly lives out of fear. However, what we saw is that we are motivated, instead, by the grace of God that offers us an abundant experience of being closer to the Lord. We already know we will be in the kingdom. That alone is a powerful motivator to serve Him. Here John adds another motivator: In our daily lives we can see more of Christ at work in us.

Of course, that wouldn’t matter if it were not what the NT actually teaches. Fortunately, it teaches exactly that. We can look at 1 John. But we can also look at our Savior. Who could gaze at Him in the Scriptures and conclude that He would not want us to live in constant fear that we do not measure up to unmeasurable and unattainable standards? Wouldn’t He, instead, want us to live our lives by His grace so that we come to love Him more deeply?

Not only can we say, “This is so much better.” We can say that it is better because it is true.