Who Were You Reading It As

Yoni heard the word in a sermon on a Sunday and by Wednesday he was awake at two in the morning.

The sermon was fine. It was not extreme and the man preaching it was careful and warm and said the thing in about four sentences and moved on.

Yoni went home and read.

Properly, the way he does everything. He read chapters. He read three long articles and then the sources they cited. He got into a forum thread at half past midnight that ran to two hundred replies, most of them by people who were not being unkind, and some of whom clearly knew a great deal.

And he came out of it with one question that he has not been able to put down since.

How would I know?

That is all. Four words, and they have been running underneath his life for about seven months.

And it has done something specific and horrible, which is worse than the question itself.

He has started reading his own life as evidence.

Every flat morning is data. The Tuesday he did not want to pray and did not pray goes into a file. The flash of temper at his brother in law goes in. The fact that he sat through the whole service last week thinking about a job goes in, and the fact that he noticed himself thinking about it goes in as well, on the wrong side, because a person who really had this would surely not.

He is his own prosecutor and he has given himself an unlimited brief and there is no defense counsel in the room.

He took it, eventually, to Ephraim, who is seventy-six and has taught this material for four decades and is the most technically careful man Yoni knows.

He was expecting a technical answer. He had his questions written down.

And Ephraim listened for about ten minutes and then asked him one thing.

"When you were reading it. Who were you reading it as?"

Yoni did not understand the question.

And Ephraim said: "You read it as a judge examining a defendant. Every one of those pages was written to a defendant who had already been acquitted, to tell him so."

Now let me ask you the same question, because it is the whole of this article.

When you read about this, who were you?

Written so that you may know

John finishes a whole letter and then tells you, in one sentence, why he wrote it.

These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.1 John 5:13

Take the purpose clause seriously, because purpose clauses are the most useful sentences in the Bible.

So that you may know.

Not: so that you may examine yourself. Not: so that you may find out whether. The stated aim of the document is certainty, in the person reading it, and John says so in his own words at the end.

And notice the address. To you who believe. He is writing to people who are already in, about something they already have, and the entire letter exists to move them from wondering to knowing.

Now here is the thing I most want you to have, and it is a fact about the Bible that you can check yourself.

Every single time the New Testament writes about God choosing, it is written to believers, in the second person, as comfort.

Paul tells the Thessalonians he knows their election, in a paragraph of thanksgiving. He tells the Ephesians they were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, in the middle of an outburst of praise. Peter opens his letter by calling scattered, frightened people chosen, before he asks them for anything at all.

Not once is it used to sort a congregation. Not once is it handed to a person as a test to run on themselves. It is always the pastor's arm round the shoulder of somebody who needs holding, and it arrives in the same breath as therefore, be encouraged.

So hear this said over you, at two in the morning with eleven tabs open. This doctrine belongs to you as comfort and it was never a question put to you, and seven months of examining yourself has been you running an instrument that was never built to be pointed inward. That is written into the purpose clause John put at the end of his own letter, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, which means the certainty you have been trying to reach by reasoning is given rather than reached.

Now let me say the practical thing, because it is what will actually get you back to sleep.

You cannot examine yourself into assurance.

Not because self-examination is wrong. There is a place for it and the New Testament has one, and it is short and it is aimed at conduct.

You cannot do it because of the mechanics. The instrument you are examining with is the same instrument that is unwell. A frightened man will find evidence for being frightened, in himself, indefinitely, because he is the one grading the paper and his hand is shaking.

And your file has a fault in it that you have not noticed. You have been entering evidence on one side only. Seven months of prosecution and not a single entry for the defense, and if you kept that file on anybody else you would consider it dishonest, and you would be right.

You woke at two in the morning because this matters to you more than anything. That is not in your file.

The word says that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion, which puts the finishing on the same hands as the starting. And the Spirit of God is the one who cries Abba, Father in a person, and Paul's whole argument in Romans 8 is that the crying is the evidence and the Spirit is the one doing it.

Look at where assurance actually comes from in that chapter. Not from the quality of your Tuesday. From Christ, who died, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who intercedes for us. Four things about Him, and then Paul asks who shall separate us, and answers his own question with a list of everything in creation and the word nothing.

That is the direction assurance comes from. Outward. This tradition has always said the ground of it is outside you, and that is not a cold doctrine, it is the only place a frightened man can stand, because he cannot get underneath himself.