1 John 3:2–To See Him As He Is

1 John 3:2–"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is."

O how I long for this day, when all things will be made right and true as we are brought into the divine presence so that we might see Him as He truly is!  In truth, the very essence of our hope as Christians depends upon Christ and His identity.  It is as we see Him that we are brought to Him.  In my own life, I can attest that my story of faith has always been entirely dependent upon catching a vision of the Lord as He is.  I can then not think of anything greater than the promise to see God as He is!  What a beautiful day that will be!

1 John 1:9–If We Confess God is Faithful

1 John 1:9–"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

The proposition is invariably simple: confess sin and trust in God.  In reality, it is perhaps the simplicity that poses the the great difficulty for humans; we assume that something so profound must be complicated.  But God, while being eternally complex yet effortlessly simple, has made the forgiveness of sin a straightforward ordeal.

The difficulty, then, is not in the transaction of confession and forgiveness but, rather, in the will of the sinner.  Until we recognize the depravity within us we will render ourselves wholly unable to confess that depravity unto God for forgiveness and salvation.  It is not, as it were, an issue of intellect that prevents people from coming to God in faith; it is, and it has always been, a problem of will.

As we ponder the reality of this in our own lives, my prayer is that we would all take a heartfelt and sincere look into ourselves so as to come to God in authentic humility and penitent praise.

1 John 4:2-3–Testing the Spirits

1 John 4:2-3–"By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.  This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already."

I feel it is no understatement to say that nearly every direction one may find a so-called spiritual expert, a man or woman who views themselves and portrays themselves as a spiritual guide or, at the very least, one of the few who know about spiritual matters.  It is this incessant inundation of self-promoting spiritualists that prompts me to deliver this essential passage.  The single test for any spirit, any guide, any guru, or self-proclaimed spiritist is this simple evaluation: do they confess Jesus Christ as the Son of God in the flesh?

1 John 3:18–Loving inDeed

1 John 3:18–"Little children, let us love not in word or talk but in deed and in truth."

"How do you know that I love you?"

I asked this question to my 9-month-old puppy recently.  She stared at me with her big eyes and said nothing.

Of course I replied, "Well, I do love you."

Again nothing, no response.  My puppy simply went back to chewing her rope toy.

It occurred to me, as I am sure it occurs to every dog owner that, despite my best efforts and notwithstanding the few trained responses, my dog does not and cannot speak english.  Because of this, no matter how well I articulate my affections for my pooch, unless I show her that I love her she would never truly know.  But I do show the puppy that I love her: I feed her, pet her, play with her, give her treats, and do all those other loving things that a dog owner should do.

Love, in a sense, is like this.  We can talk and talk and talk about how much we love another person, how desperately we tell them that we care for them, or how eloquently we express our affections, unless we show our love through action, the truth of our fondness could never be seen from the other. It is as we do that we love.

But this is not enough for we also must love truthfully.  That is to say that not every action that we could do for love actually is loving.  For instance, it would not be loving to beat my puppy without any reason and call it 'firm discipline.'  In this way, it needs to be said that we have to show our love in actions that are actually loving.

Needless to say, there is more to say about this but suffice for now to conclude with a simple statement. Our example in this is Christ Jesus who, because of His great love for us, was obedient unto death so as to show the true depth of His love for us.  Let us then always look to Him for our hope, our strength, and our wisdom as we strive to love in deed and in truth.

1 John 4:10–In This Is Love

1 John 4:10–"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

Admittedly, I don't have a whole lot to say about this verse today.  This is not to say that this verse is not brimming full with force and theology.  Instead, all I mean to say is that this verse can, in so many ways, speak for itself.  In truth, this verse is a grand but direct testimony to the reality of our relationship to God in Christ.  And for this reason today this blog will seek to be nothing more than an arrow, pointing your attention to this verse and its truth so that you might contemplate it for yourself.

"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

Amen, and praise be to God!

1 John 2:23–The Son & Father Are Conjoined

1 John 2:23–"No one who denies the Son has the Father.  Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also."

This verse is an important assertion about the intimate relationship between two members of the Godhead, Jesus and the Father.  It is not unique in that it is affirmed and asserted throughout Scripture that one may not possess an honest belief in God the Father save through the Son, and vice versa.  The Son is the gateway to the Father (John 14:6), just as those who are in the Father must possess the Son as well.

Christmas, in reality, is a unique convergence between these two members of the Godhead, completed by the presence of the Holy Spirit who indwells Mary with a son, the Holy Son of the Heavenly Father.

We should not easily forget or neglect the real interconnected intimacy of the Godhead as we seek to worship God in His infinitude this season.

1 John 2:15–Do Not Love the World

1 John 2:15–"Do not love the world or the things in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

For John, and by extension the Holy Spirit, there is a sharp distinction, a distinct dichotomy between that which is of God and that which is not.  In fact, it could be said that throughout the scope of Scripture this is a major theme that continues to develop as the contrast becomes both more clear while also being more subtle and nuanced.  Because of this, it is of vital importance that we as Christians keep our focus fixed on Christ and not be swayed to the left or the right.

There is a story of Secret Service Agents who are trained in recognizing counterfeit bills.  Instead of spending their time learning the intricacies of the false bills.  No, they become so well acquainted with the real thing that they can instantly tell whether a bill is true or counterfeit.  Similarly, Christians need to become so well familiar with the things of God that there would never be a question about whether something was of God or not; we would just know.

This is our call as Christians: that we would know God so intimately in the depth of our beings so that we could always choose Him over any counterfeit impostor the world could offer!

The Presence and Practice of Piety

1 John 3:9–"No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God."

There is something profound, if not outright provocative here.  John and the Holy Spirit that inspires him are saying at least two conjoined and challenging things.  The first is that the believer, in whom God's seed (the Holy Spirit) abides, no longer has to sin.  Even more so, though, they are saying that the believer cannot keep sinning because he/she has been born of God.  In other words, not only will the one who is born of God no longer make or develop a practice of sinning but they will not even be able to keep sinning because God's seed is abiding in them as they are born of God.  There is so much here, more than the space of this particular blog will provide.  I highly suggest that you take time today to read the whole chapter and see how seriously, how sincerely John exhorts believers that they are no longer sinner but have been transformed into children of God.  It is about identity as much as it is about the practice of piety, which is really about recognizes who we are in Christ.

1 John 2:23: The Father and The Son

1 John 2:23: "No one who denies the Son has the Father.  Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also."

There is, it would seem, an intimate relationship between Jesus and the Father God.  Taken at face value and without much consideration it could be misconstrued to say either they are different or they are the same; both being misunderstandings of the nature of a God, it turns out. But as John points out, one cannot claim to know God or to abide in Him except for through Christ, and it is our relationship with Christ that defines and determines our relationship to God.  This is one of those non-negotiables of Christianity that, if not understood, can lead to great theological deficiencies.

In truth, Christ forms the lynchpin, the cornerstone of all theology as He is the bridge between man and God, having condescended from heaven to take the form of man in order that He might take all sin upon His flesh so as to irradicate the severe barrier that obstructed man's relationship to the Father.  This the Son did as a fulfillment to the promises made to Adam and to Abraham and to David.  Thus whoever has the Son, because of who He is and what He did, also confesses the Father.  You cannot have the one without the other for they are, ultimately One (and though more could be said about this, as well as the presence of the Holy Spirit, I'll choose to leave it there for now).

In the end, this verse, which is echoed all over John's writing, says all we need to know about Jesus' theological primacy in terms of how vital it is that we would confess Christ.  Let us not forget this fundamental assertion of Christianity but let us form our lives around it!

1 John 4:16–God's Love Abiding in Us

1 John 4:16–"So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him."

In our evening service, we have been going through 1 John, one of my favorite books in all of Scripture.  It, like many of the New Testament books, deals with who God is, who we are in Christ, and how Christians should live.  This verse is one of those great verses that is oft mis-quoted.  I mean, how many times have we heard that God is love without hearing the rest. Because of all this, I'm going to leave this blog fairly empty, save a repetition: read it again and meditate on its truth today.

"So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him."

1 John 5:12–Whoever Has the Son Has Life

1 John 5:12: "Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life."

In truth, all theology points to Christ Jesus.  If it does not, to be sure, it will ultimately be found to be anemic and wanting.  What this means, quite plainly, is that our spirituality our and our eternal livelihood rests solely in the Son of God, Jesus of Nazarene.  No other religion of any repute can make this claim, but this is, it turns out, the foundational claim of Christianity: Jesus is God in His very nature.

This is the basis for Christianity.  Thus the irreducible backdrop by which all theology finds its support is not a set of assertions or theological propositions; it is a relationship with the Son of God, Christ Jesus.  Not only should we strive to never forget this truth, we should so let it seep into every molecule of our beings that we would live every moment in praise to the God who His through faith in His Son.

Amen!

1 John 1:8-9–Hiding Sin in Deception or Confessing Sin to be Forgiven

1 John 1:8-9: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us form all unrighteousness."

There is a profound truth asserted in these verses about the nature of mankind's relationship to God.  We are full of sin.  There is no way around this basic, fundamental truth.  We are born into sin.  It is the flaw of humanity and the cause of every hardship and strife that all humanity has ever had to face.  Any worldview, then, that does not address sin is not and cannot be true.  But all that being said, God has been merciful to us in Christ Jesus that if we confront and confess our sin, He is just and faithful to forgive us.  What's more, He not only forgives but He cleanses us too!  There is no greater and more beautiful proposition to have ever been made than this truth.  We are not worthy of this gift but God makes us worthy by His grace.  Amen!

1 John 5:14-15–Confidence to Come Towards God

1 John 5:14-15: "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 Him."

This is an amazing passage but it is often misrepresented.  We hear the "whatever we ask, we know that we have," but we neglect the more important, "if we ask anything according to His will He hears us.  In case you missed it (I am, of course, speaking to myself too), the pertinent part of our asking is that it is according to His will.

While we can easily ignore this it is the most important part of coming to God with requests: that our desires and appeals that we bring before God run according to His will.  This is essential.  We can not and should not expect that God would condone or even support sinfulness in any sense.  This includes, at the very least, greed, lust, wantonness, et al.

It is as we are being sanctified that the utter requests of our heart begin to run inline with the will of God.  This is what sanctification is all about and there is nothing more beautiful than that!  Amen that God would see fit to provide us the desires of our hearts as He transforms our hearts' desires to be His!

This is Love: 1 John 4:9-10

1 John 4:9-10: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

The social networks are currently abuzz over current legislative affairs with slogans like "love is love."  Love has been reduced to a subjective ordeal, removed of all its substance and weight.  In this relativistic world love has been deified while God has been reduced.  The truth, however, is that a god-less love is no more love than a water-less pool is a lake.  We must be clear that love apart from God is, in fact, not love; it is a counterfeit.

By definition, given us throughout Scripture but especially and directly here in 1 John, is a theological matter.  There is no escaping this reality.  And while this is an inescapable truth, we must also add that love is an active theological reality.  It is God's love for us that, it turns out, affects and empowers our ability to love for it is God's love shown for us in His Son that perfectly exemplifies true love.

Jesus is the utter and ultimate love.  It is His life and death that stands as the quintessence of love in the finest most profound sense.  God did through His Son what no man could due for him or herself: He redeemed us from sin and saved us unto eternal life.  Love defined is thus both self-sacrificing as well as wholly compassionate.  In other words, love is doing for another what that other could not be able to do while not expecting any sort of recompense in return; purely out of love.

Hence, when we speak of love with an eye on its highest order we should not ever remove God and what Christ has done for it is Christ who has defined love for us.  Love should not be allowed to wander Christ-less as if it is a singularly human endeavor, lest we forget that the human version is but a shadow of the eternal one.

Love Laid Down

1 John 3:16: By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."

When confronting this verse my immediate thought is: "what does it mean to lay my life down?"  While this may seem an obvious answer, I am not so sure.  Perhaps it is because I only think of laying down in reference to sleep or, in the ultimate, to that final sleep of death.  So when John, empowered and influenced by the Holy Spirit, says that we should lay down our lives it must encompass a certain sobriety.

I think of a toothpaste container being emptied.  As the paste is expelled from the tube it shrinks.  The tube is squeezed and pressed and rolled up to siphon every last bit of toothpaste from the container.  When I think of laying down my life for the people I love, this is what I think of: I am the tube, my love the paste.

However, the irony of this whole ordeal is that for every bit of love that is squeezed out of me, God refills my stores with a grander, greater, truer love.  It turns out that for me to be filled with greater love, I need to rid myself of all the love I have.  Additionally, as a balloon swells to ever increasing sizes, God continually enlarges our capacity for love and to love.  This is the utter beauty of Christianity and one of its unique features among the so-called world religions.  Praise God for its truth!

1 John 1:9: God is Just and Faithful

1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

This verse is prone to misconception because it appears as a conditional statement, as in, God is only faithful if we confess our sins.  But this cannot be the case: God is faithful apart from any confession on our part.  However, throughout all this, John is clear that God is faithful to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness as a by-product of the confession of sin.

But it needs to be stated that confession of sin is but a function of repentance and belief.  When we come to Christ in repentance, we do so confessing our sin believing that God truly is faithful and just to forgive us from sin and cleanse us from sin; it's a package deal.  This is a wholly beautiful scenario, and we should never forget that God is in control and He is always faithful to complete all that He has promised.  Praise God!

Made Alive in Christ: 1 John 4:9

"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him."  (1 John 4:9).

It is by God's love for us that He has shown through Christ Jesus that we are made alive.  In this, we are made alive to grace, to faith, to obedience, and to covenant relationship that is the Church. Christ Jesus has brought us to life, He has caused us to be reborn by His grace in baptism and we who were once far off have been brought near by the shedding of His blood.  For this reason, we should always remember the goodness of His grace and the awesomeness of the gift that His Son has given as the substitutionary atonement for the sin of mankind.  Today, on this day, praise God for being made alive in Christ Jesus.

1 John 4:19 and Love

This is from 1 John, chapter 4, starting at verse 7-10 and skipping to verse 19:
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be propitiation for our sins…” Truly, “We love because He first loved us.”             

        That last verse is so simple, pithy even.  “We love because He first loved us.”  It’s not long, not complicated but we should not mistake that for plain or basic.  “We love because He first loved us.”  It is profound, full of theological import and significance that not only encourages us with its brevity but challenges us with its meaning.  “We love because He first loved us.”             

John, the writer of this, is saying two intensely difficult things: that Christ is to be both the reason we love, but, even more so, He is the manner with which we love, He is the why, but He is also the how.   “We love because He first loved us."

Now, through faith in Christ Jesus, confession that He is Lord and belief that God has raised Him from the dead, we may enter into right, redeemed relationship.  Our frailty is replaced with strength, our brokenness is mended, and our infirmities our healed by Christ, in Christ, and through Christ. The love that He first loved us with at the cross now lives within us, guiding us, and empowering us to live and love as as Christ.  “We love because He first loved us.”

It was Christ’s perfect work at the cross that has enabled us to love.  He has empowered us with the ability to love.  And this is not love like the world thinks, like some emotional whimsy, or daffodil capriciousness of "he loves me, he loves me not."  No.  This is the real, serious love that can only come from Him who is living within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Remember: “We love because He first loved us.”

This love is selfless, not self-seeking; it is pure, not tainted by our flippancy.  It is not an "I'll scratch your back you scratch mine," type of relationship.  No.  This love is altogether other, stemming from the deepest depths of our beings and welling up through our pores for us to lavish upon those we love.  Above all, it is a gift from God given through Christ to all those who call on Him as Lord and Savior.  This is a beautiful, easily memorable verse, but as we pull back the layers, as it unfurls, we begin to see the density behind it.  “We love because He first loved us.”

Christ’s love is not just an example for how we should love.  It is the very ability, the source within us to love.  In order for us to love as He has loved us, we must always keep our focus fixed, our gaze set upon the cross, which is the sole cornerstone of why and how we love.  It is at the cross that we see ourselves as we truly are.  And it is at the cross that we see who God is, and it is in this revelation that true love is made possible at all.  This is why "We love because He first loved us."

Love is rooted, ultimately, in God.  The why and the how of love is based in the life and work of Christ Jesus, who has set us free when He saved us at His cross.  At our cores, we are broken fragments and frail egoists as a result of sin’s pervasiveness in our lives.  Yet God, who is rich in mercy, condescended to us, emptying Himself through the incarnation of His Power into the human form of His Son, Christ Jesus, who lived a perfect, sinless life.  Yet He was tried for His innocence and found guilty of no punishable crime, though He did claim to be God’s only Son and, by that virtue, the rightful King of the World . 

For that, He was beaten, flogged, stripped, spat upon, and marched through the streets of Jerusalem carrying the cross of our shame and the instrument of His death.  He was then crucified naked alongside the main roads just outside the city gates.  He was murdered, not for anything He had done, but because it was God's will to bestow grace and love to humanity by taking on the sin of mankind in His own flesh and nailing it to the cross.  But three days after His death and burial, the stone that sealed His grave was moved and He was found risen.  He rose from the grave, confirming that He was and is the Messiah, the Son of God.  “We love because He first loved us.”

Now, through faith in Christ Jesus, confession that He is Lord and belief that God has raised Him from the dead, we may enter into right, redeemed relationship.  Our frailty is replaced with strength, our brokenness is mended, and our infirmities our healed by Christ, in Christ, and through Christ. The love that He first loved us with at the cross now lives within us, guiding us, and empowering us to live and love as as Christ.  “We love because He first loved us.”
           
It was Christ’s perfect work at the cross that has enabled us to love.  He has empowered us with the ability to love.  And this is not love like the world thinks, like some emotional whimsy, or daffodil capriciousness of "he loves me, he loves me not."  No.  This is the real, serious love that can only come from Him who is living within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Remember: “We love because He first loved us.”
            
This love is selfless, not self-seeking; it is pure, not tainted by our flippancy.  It is not an "I'll scratch your back you scratch mine," type of relationship.  No.  This love is altogether other, stemming from the deepest depths of our beings and welling up through our pores for us to lavish upon those we love.  Above all, it is a gift from God given through Christ to all those who call on Him as Lord and Savior.  This is a beautiful, easily memorable verse, but as we pull back the layers, as it unfurls, we begin to see the density behind it.  “We love because He first loved us.”
            
Christ’s love is not just an example for how we should love.  It is the very ability, the source within us to love.  In order for us to love as He has loved us, we must always keep our focus fixed, our gaze set upon the cross, which is the sole cornerstone of why and how we love.  It is at the cross that we see ourselves as we truly are.  And it is at the cross that we see who God is, and it is in this revelation that true love is made possible at all.