If your friends talked to you the same way you talk to yourself, would they still be your friends? Think about that for a minute. If your friends came up to you and said, “You’re ugly. You’re stupid. You’re a loser. You’ll never be a success. Nobody loves you,” you would be upset with them to say the least. You would probably break off your friendships with them. But when you say the same things to yourself, you believe them.
1 John 5:9 says, “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son.” God reminds us in this verse that it doesn’t matter what men say about us. It doesn’t even matter what we say about ourselves. What matters is what God says. 1 John 5:11-12 explains God’s testimony about us: “And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life.”
Throughout the Bible, God reveals his testimony that John summed up in these verses. He recognized that we were lost, hopeless, and in need of a Savior, and he sent his only Son to fulfill that need. Now, whoever has the Son has life. Whoever has the Son is righteous in the eyes of God; their old sins have been washed as white as snow.
So, in good Lutheran fashion we ask: what does this mean? John also has an answer for this question in verses 14-15. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” Because we have the Son, we are righteous like the Son. Jesus prayed to his Father with confidence, and we can do the same, knowing that he hears us. And not only does he hear us, he answers us with the same love he offered to his Son. We can rest assured that when God speaks to us, he speaks with love, for his testimony is about nothing else.