Hello, I'm very happy that you're joining us today for our
podcast. It's a little bit different
format today. We are missing a couple of the
recordings from our series on 1st John.
And so I'm going to be recording these just me talking to the
microphone, talking to you as a listener.
So a little bit different format and I hope this studies as good
for you as it as it was for me since I have this time just me
with a microphone. I want to personally thank you
for listening to our podcast, especially if you're one of the
regular listeners that seeing people listening makes us
encouraged to do this podcast and excited to keep it going and
trying to improve it and make it better for for our listeners.
So thank you for listening. And most importantly, we pray
that that God is glorified and his word is accurately taught.
And let's jump into first John, first John chapter 1.
And we're going to be opening up this letter with a little bit of
introduction, some of the background and what we're, what
we're looking at here in the letter.
First John. First off, this letter is
written in the years from around 60 to 100 AD.
That's when it's believed to be written in that range.
And the author is believed to be John.
Now, the author does not give himself a specific address.
He doesn't mention himself. But we do have a significant
amount of internal and external evidence, evidence from inside
the letter itself, things like the themes that are addressed
and the writing style and those things on top of the external
evidence that we have from, from people who are contemporaries
of, of John, who attributed this letter to John, men like
Irenaeus and even mentions of his close friend Polycarp.
Help us to connect this letter to the, the man John.
And we'll see some, some of the evidence in there.
We're not going to dive too deep into that, but most scholars
agree this is written by the apostle John.
And and so there's our, there's kind of our, our author when it
was written and the purpose. Why was this letter written?
This letter does not have quite a specific audience in mind as
far as a letter to the church in, in Corinth or a letter to
the church in, in Galatia. This letter is a little bit more
general in nature and so is the style with which it's written
and they going along with that. The purpose of this letter is
something we can we can all benefit from as Christians or
prospective Christians. And the first thing he's he
tells us as his purpose is comes out in the 1st chapter.
He says these things we write to you that your joy may be full.
So we don't have to wonder why John wrote these letters.
He often says the actual phrase, we are writing this so that, and
the first one is so that your joy may be full.
That's a letter I want to read, a letter that tells me that it's
going to make me happier, more more joyful person #2 it says
that you I write so that you may not sin.
He says that in chapter 2. And so there's a motivation that
goes along with with that joy. It's not just a feeling we wants
to have. It is it leads into an action so
that you may not sin. The third purpose he says is so
that you may know that you have eternal life.
There it is again that joy, that assurance that is all over this
letter. This letter wants to encourage
and bolster our faith from the inside.
The next one he mentions in chapter 5, he also says, I write
this letter so that you may continue to believe in the name
of the Son of God. And finally, another statement
he makes is I write these things concerning those who try to
deceive you. So there's a lot of
encouragement, a lot of motivation to walk in the light
as he's going to see, as he's going to say, so that we may not
sin. But there's also an underlying
theme of others who are detracting from them and others
who would try to pull them away from the faith and from the
truth that they are learning. So we're going to talk about
those deceivers here. Now, who might this have been?
Well, we know that during this time there was a very popular
school of thought called Gnosticism.
And Gnosticism basically says all matter is evil and that the
creation was really the work of a demigod.
And that demigod wouldn't have. Let me rephrase that.
Jesus did not really come in the flesh because if if all matter
is evil, if everything that was created is evil, Jesus wasn't
really here in the flesh because he was.
It couldn't have been evil. So it starts to undermine the
true work that Jesus did. You can already see that start
to form, and there's a specific branch of Gnosticism called
docetism, and that suggests that Jesus really just seemed to come
in the flesh. It was kind of an illusion, kind
of a mirage, and they would even suggest that he was replaced at
his baptism and never truly suffered.
So these are kind of elements that swim through Gnosticism
that undermine either Jesus's fleshly coming or maybe it it
suggests that he was kind of a, an illusion or that maybe he
didn't really go through with the things that he claimed to
suffer that the Bible records about Jesus work.
Gnosticism would claim that that didn't really happen.
And, and, and this, it's interesting how many times this
comes up when you, when you read it and learn about other
religions. There are other religions who
claim this, who don't claim that Jesus is necessarily the Son of
God and the Messiah, but maybe that he was a prophet and that
God would not truly allow Jesus, if he was a prophet of God to
suffer the way he did. There's religions in the world
that believe that. And so we're already starting to
see if you try to marry Gnosticism with the true
doctrine of Christ, you, you get problems, you get core errors
because if Jesus didn't, did Jesus didn't do what he said he
did, that it undermines so much of his work and his and the plan
of God. So this underlying theme of
Gnosticism that we see prop up is, is a huge problem.
That is likely what was behind some of the the things that John
is writing in this letter. Now Gnosticism basically leads
to two conclusions. Gnosticism says all matter is
evil. So if everything that is out in
the world created matter is evil, then there's basically one
of two conclusions. Conclusion #1 is everything is
evil. So you have to run away from
anything that is pleasurable, Anything that is gives you
pleasure because everything is evil.
Now we've learned from Scripture that God has given us many
things that are good gifts to enjoy.
So we know off the bat that that's not true.
But Gnosticism, that's the natural conclusion is if
everything is evil, then we should run away from anything
that is pleasurable. Or the flip side of that says,
you know what? If everything is evil, then
nothing matters anyway. Go ahead, do whatever you want,
do whatever you feel like doing, because nothing matters anyway.
It's all evil. And so you can see these two
extreme conclusions. Neither one of them hits the
mark. We know from scripture that God
has given us many good things. Not every desire is evil.
And on the flip side of that, we do have meaning.
Our actions do matter and we can't just throw our hands up
and say, well, none of this matters anyway.
So there's veins of thought here that you're going to see.
If we understand what Gnosticism was about and what it was
teaching, then it's going to make John's arguments make a lot
more sense in the things that he is trying to encourage them in
and pull them away from. May we never write off the work
of Christ and His fleshly coming, because it is
unfathomable that the God of this world would do what he did.
That though He came to a world that was full of sin and
problems, He really did do it. And sometimes we can take
something that's unfathomable and undermine it when we should
just be praising it. Praise God that He came and
praise God that He died for us and truly suffered and lived
here. OK, with that background, let's
go ahead and start the first verse and work our way through
this chapter. Verse one says in the new King
James that which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon
and our hands have handled concerning the word of life.
I want to first note this first verse.
You can already start to sense the tone of awe from the writer.
The writer is using every sense to convey this really happened.
And if you're going to give a full testimony of something that
happened, this, this person is saying we saw it, we heard it,
we touched it, it was so real. And we've already, we're already
seeing how this is counteracting those Gnostic ideas.
But this writer is in awe of what Jesus did, the word of
life. The Greeks believed that there
was the logos, the divine reason that was implicit, or we had to
believe it, right? Looking at the cosmos, looking
at the sky and looking at the world's they believed in, they
implied that there was divine reason.
And Jesus is that divine reason that Logos, the word of life,
the thing that was ordering it and giving it order, as we learn
in Colossians. So he opens up with the tone of
awe at these, at the things that they saw.
And he uses all these senses. You you can kind of connect some
of the internal evidence here because this sounds a lot like
John's Gospel. The Gospel of John starts out
claiming very similar things about witnessing the Messiah and
being with him. This is the very similar tone
and style how this letter is opened up here.
Verse 2, The life was manifested and we have seen and bear
witness and declare to you the eternal life which was with the
Father and was manifested to us. Eternal life was brought down,
manifested, manifested to make something real, to make it
evident, though it was hidden in some ways from time past, that
eternal life was was laid out in front of them clearly.
And He is here to serve as a witness, to bear witness and to
teach people who would come after Him.
Verse three, that which we have seen and heard, we declare to
you. He's writing to Christians.
He's writing to us today. He's trying to convince us to
declare to us these truths. We declare to you, verse three,
that you also may have fellowship with us.
And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son,
Jesus Christ. The purpose of sharing what they
have seen is so that others can share in it.
He's creating a triangle of a relationship here.
If you can picture this triangle, there's a direct link
between the writer of this letter and Jesus who came in the
flesh. So we know that this writer was
there with Jesus. We know it was someone who had
that close contact and that and that discipleship with him.
And so if there is a direct link to these people, if we can
establish a link, a link with the writer, then we have a
triangle formed between us, this Christian who's writing this
letter and Jesus that he is claiming to have seen.
And if we establish that we are in fellowship with, with the
writer based on what the writer says, the inspired writer of
God, then we can establish a connection that's called the
transitive property with God himself.
That's his purpose. Now, especially for the people
who are reading this letter soon after Jesus died, there could
have been a real sense of man. You just missed it.
You should have seen it. God came down and sorry, it's
too late now. You, you missed it.
You know, the the brief time he was here, you're almost there.
You were, you played the odds and you were off by just a few
years. No, he doesn't say that they
didn't miss it in the sense that this Messiah came and and you
had your chance to see him and he's gone for good.
No, he's writing this letter with a tone of you can still
enjoy the fellowship and the work of what he did on earth
today. You might not see him in his
physical form right now, but you can enjoy the same relationship
we enjoyed with him, the writer says Today, Whether they were
people 30 years after his death or 2000 years later, like we
stand today, we can still share in this relationship, this
triangle of fellowship. Again, the tone of awe.
This guy was the real deal. This Jesus verse four and these
things we write to you that your joy may be full.
There it is. There's our first and kind of
opening purpose of this letter. It's assurance that your joy may
be full. Now, what could take away from
full joy? If there's things that would
make them not have full joy as Christians, He's trying to give
them full joy. So what could pull them away
from having full joy? Number one, I think not being
sure if these things Jesus claims to be true and the
writers claim to be true are real.
We have so much to be excited about and hopeful in, but we
might not be if we're not sure about those things.
And he's giving them assurance. He's writing this letter so that
they can be for sure about what they're reading.
So that's one detractor from full joy.
I think a second one is not being focused.
So let's say you believe it and you don't have any doubts that
what Jesus claimed to be is real and He did it and he is still
doing it to this day. You can still not have full joy
because you're not focused on it, because your attention is
not illuminated with the light of the gospel.
He's trying to do both of these things in this letter, I
believe, to give us the assurance and to pull our focus
in. So much of life is not about
things that are, that we are proven to be wrong.
It's things we don't choose to focus on, things we don't choose
to spend our time meditating on. And this is a great letter to
marinate and meditate on. Now, I think just to spend a
little bit more time on the implication here, if he's
writing this letter so that their joy could not be full, we
should necessarily kind of imply that it is possible to not have
full joy. And we're going to learn he's
writing this letter to Christians.
And so for you and me, do we acknowledge that it is possible
for us to not have full joy? Life has a way of hardening us.
And sometimes we have the assumption that, you know, we're
going to have full joy just because he said it, because
that's his intent for us. But sometimes life can can
harden US. Jesus describes our hearts as
ground. So I feel comfortable making an
analogy here. I've been doing a lot of work on
my yard lately, and I've learned that I have parts of my property
that are hardened ground. And sometimes that's caused from
the elements, the sun maybe, maybe that some things that are
in the soil or have been put into the soil From around I've
learned that the ground and that the elements can turn ground
hard and fruitless if not properly cared for.
If your soil is not properly amended, the ground can become
hardened. And I think our hearts can be
that way if we're not careful. Yes, as Christians too, our
hearts can be hardened in ways that we don't even realize.
We don't have full joy, and maybe you don't even realize
it's possible, or maybe you've forgotten what it feels like to
have full joy. I'm not that old and I haven't
had many of the experiences that harden people in my younger
life, and yet I can already see that in myself.
I don't know what you've been through, but this writer wants
to assure you that you can have full joy.
Our hearts, like the ground in in my yard, need to be amended.
The soil needs to be amended sometimes and it needs
supplements. It needs.
A certain type of maybe tilling. There are processes that we can
do to heal soil that is hardened and our hearts can be amended.
They can be rejuvenated because our God created our heart,
surely he can change it and surely he can strengthen in ways
that we forgot were possible. So maybe starting this letter by
admitting that is a good place to begin this process of
learning full joy. So His intention is that we can
have full joy. And the the message here is that
we are intended to have full joy.
Sometimes we think about God and the light that is inaccurate,
that we don't fully understand how much good He has and wants
for us. But that we would have full joy
is His goal and is His great priority.
And finally, 1/4 implication from this statement that he's
writing to us. So their joy may be full.
The implication is there are certain sources to turn to for
this joy. You know, I don't know about
you, but I can turn to sources of joy in my life that are, that
are empty. Wells, as the Old Testament
writers often say that they're empty and there are only certain
sources that can give us full joy and there are certain things
that give us a good source of joy, but it's it's small, it's
incomplete without God. And this is what he comes to
bring a complete sense of joy. Verse five.
He goes on to say this is the message which we have heard from
him and declare to you that God is light and in him is no
darkness at all. In this letter there is a
foundational message and uses these three kind of key ideas to
compare God with and to describe God and Jesus with, and it is
that God is light, God is love, and God is life.
This is a foundational principle.
With that, he's going to build on verse 6.
If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in
darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
So there's the contrast. God is light and there's a way
that we can walk in darkness, and it's from a fake commitment
or a fake statement that we have fellowship with Him when we
really do not, when we don't practice the truth.
So what is walking in darkness? He's going to use this this
phrase, walking in darkness or walking in the light.
And the walk is our life. The walk is our habits.
And if we walk in light, we are walking in the ways of the one
who brings light. And if we're walking in
darkness, it's the exact opposite.
It's without light. And he calls us a liar and says
we do not practice the truth, verse 7.
But if we walk in the light or practice things that are of the
light, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have
fellowship with one another in the blood of Jesus Christ.
His son cleanses us from all sin.
He's John writes this letter in kind of a high view.
He doesn't get into all the details of all the nitty gritty
and, and and situations. He's talking from a, a high
level overarching view. And the statement is that if we
walk in the light, then there's that is fellowship with with
John the writer. And by extension, that's
fellowship with Jesus. And sometimes I can over
complicate my relationship with God.
I can over complicate what it takes because it seems so simple
sometimes and yet sometimes it can be very difficult to walk in
the light with all of our ways. But we can take peace in this
statement that it is as simple and as complicated as walking in
the light. And when we do that, he says the
blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.
He doesn't say, you know, if you mess up, then you've then you've
really lost it. Now you've you've ruined it.
No, he says, as we walk in the light, there is a a cleansing
that continues to happen. That word cleanses is in the
present tense, the present active.
He cleanses us from all sin. So as we walk in the light,
there's still going to be a need for a continual cleansing.
May that both humble us and encourage us that we are not
above mistakes, improvement or any of that.
But at the same time, you can know that you still walk in the
light even when you mess up. You can still be somebody who is
making it their habit to walk in the light.
And I had some discussions recently with people after this
lesson where you can feel like if you continue to struggle, am
I even really a Christian at all now?
There's a point at which if we are not taking the steps to grow
like, like James says, confessing our faults to one
another, if we're not confessing and being transparent with
ourselves, with others, with God, then we can ask ourselves
that question, am I really walking in the light?
Because what does it take to walk in the light?
And that's kind of a, that's a whole conversation in itself.
But just know that if you still make mistakes, that doesn't mean
you're not walking in the light because Jesus's blood is perfect
and continually cleansing. Verse 8 If we say that we have
no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
The proverb says the heart of man is deceitful above all
things. I don't know about you, but the
older I get, the more wrong I find, the more areas in my life
I I learned that I I didn't realize how how much selfishness
I have in my life, how much pride.
I didn't realize how much I've lacked love.
There are so many ways I find continual areas where I need to
work on. I may have cleaned up some some
more obvious downfalls, but don't you 2 find the roots of
some of the sins in in your life of bitterness, selfishness,
pride? But you know what the truth
does? The truth convicts our hearts
and shapes us for good. If we don't see our sin, it is
clear that we are unaffected by the truth.
And that's why that's why he says, if we have no sin, the
truth is not in US. Why is that The truth can't be
in us? Because if it was really in US,
it would be showing us that we have sin.
So if we don't say we don't have sin, the truth must have not
been in us. Because when it is working on
us, we're going to continue to find things that are going to
shape us and prune us. I'm so glad for the way that God
convicts us because you know what?
If I saw everything it was wrong with my heart and my myself on
day one as a Christian, I may have just given up right there
because it would seem so overwhelming.
All of all of the burden of of what I was and what I was not.
But by the grace of God, we often see our areas for
improvement one piece at a time. And he teaches our spirit where
where change needs to happen one step at a time.
And so you and I can't fix ourselves completely on day one,
but usually there's an area that our conscience becomes aware of,
an area that we need to grow of a way that we need to change.
And so we take that step one and we let it convict us and shape
us as His truth convicts our hearts and the truth lives in
US. And that is a sign that you are
alive and well, not a sign that you are forever lost because you
made a mistake. Verse 9.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our
sins, forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. So this is very similar to that
passage in James we just mentioned.
Part of how we practice walking the light is we show
transparency and we are willing to confess it.
He doesn't say who to confess to.
We'll talk about that in a minute, but he says to confess
our sins. That is transparency.
Because if I admit it to myself, then it's more real.
Now, if I admit it to someone else, it's even more real.
It's even more evident. The light is shined on it to
where we see it for what it really is.
And from Scripture, we know that we are to confess to, you might
say, these three groups of people #1 the, the involved
party. If we make if we sin and we
messed up, the first person we need to be talking to is the
person we send against the person that we have wronged.
We need to confess our wrongs to people, and we'll often get a
lot more respect from them from doing that, even if it might be
a hard conversation to have. We need to confess our sins to
the involved party #2 We need to confess our sins to an
uninvolved party. When you are trying to overcome
something, it is good to talk to somebody who is not involved in
the situation because they maybe have a clear mind about it.
They have maybe they're not don't have that sense of maybe
there is judge mental of you because they're separate from it
and they're not focused on the hurt, but they're able to give
you that clear perspective on the situation to confess and
work through. And there are things that I have
to work on that I confess to those who are close to me and
tell them what I need to be better at, what I need to work
on, how I need to change because talking to those people is a
safe place to grow and to work through some things.
So confessing things to an uninvolved party from the
situation maybe you might be involved in is is huge.
And thirdly, and maybe most importantly, we need to confess
our sins to the involved Father. God wants us.
The Father wants to help us succeed.
He wants His Word to have a good work in US.
Confession is vital to know that we're really walking in the
light because the first thing that darkness wants to do is
hide. Darkness wants to hide the sin
and confession puts it out in the open and says I can deal
with what I can see and if I see an error, I'm going to work past
that by the grace of God and by the strength of God.
Verse 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar
and His word is not in US. We might not always realize our
own mistakes, but when? This.
But when the risk is that big that I would be calling God a
liar, maybe I'll think twice before I place myself on any
kind of moral pedestal because I am not the Holy 1 He is.
And far be it from me to make him a liar by speaking things
that are not truth. Now we're going to dip our toe
into chapter 2 before before our next study.
So let's just read a couple more verses.
Chapter 2, verse 1, He says, my little children, these things I
write to you so that you may not sin.
All those things we just said is.
And so many things in this letter are to help us stay pure
and holy in him and to have a close walk with him that is not
separated from him by sin. The second big purpose of this
letter is to have hope in our fellowship with him that
motivates us to walk in the light goes on to say in that
verse, verse one. And if anyone sins, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
There is that continual cleansing he mentioned, but now
he kind of phrases it a little bit different and says that we
have an advocate. An advocate is somebody who's
going to speak on your behalf. Jesus speaks on our behalf with
the father. And this analogy probably
doesn't work in every in every respect.
But suppose there's a courtroom scene and Jesus stands to answer
for our charges. Maybe he is our our defending
attorney and when the prosecution, the devil who's
called the accuser of the brethren, accuses us of all of
these sins and all of our wrongs, our defending attorney,
Jesus affirms every charge. He affirms the crime and the
penalty that goes with it. He says you're right, this
person, Wade Branch did do this and this and this and that was
sin and the penalty is just. The Bible says that we deserve
condemnation because of that and the devil and Jesus affirms that
the devil, the devil's criticisms are valid of us.
But then Jesus approaches the bench with the devil, the
accuser of the brethren, for a sidebar, and the devil is
laughing and he is pumped to hear this condemnation.
The defending attorney just admitted that we were guilty.
But Jesus simply leans in and says, Dad, this one is mine, I
paid for him. So Jesus affirmed all of our
guilt and the consequence of our sin.
But then he leans in to the Father and says, this one is
mine. I paid for him.
And the gavel sounds, the slam of the gavel and and God says,
Son, you said this one belongs to you.
I release him into your care. Case closed.
We have an advocate with the Father.
Jesus stands at the right hand of God as our mediator and as an
advocate on our behalf. And we have a good advocate
because he knows what we've been through, because he did it too,
and more. Jesus Christ the righteous.
Now that like I said, that analogy does not stack up in
every, in every way, but he is pleading on our behalf.
May we honor the advocate. May we respect our advocate
Jesus, because how sad is it to think about him doing this for
us, advocating for us, standing before the Father for us, and
then US turning around and willfully sinning, doing what we
know to be wrong, making our advocate look bad.
May we never disrespect him that way.
I've been in work situations where someone stuck their neck
out for someone else to give them an opportunity.
You know, they, they, they vouched for somebody to give
them an opportunity that they would have gotten otherwise.
But when the rubber hit the road, the person who got the job
because of the person who vouched for them, when the
rubber hit the road, that person didn't come through.
That person maybe wasn't a good or a trustworthy worker.
And that left their advocate, the person who vouched for them.
It left them looking foolish because they vouch for this
person. They stuck their neck out for
them to their boss, got them a job, and it made them look
foolish because the person they recommended didn't didn't come
through. It kills me to think about doing
that to Jesus now. No, there's obviously nothing
that I can do to take away from the glory and majesty and
imperfection of Jesus, but it kills me to think about him
standing up for me, and me in a sense, spitting in his face with
the way I might choose to make decisions.
May we respect our advocate and walk in the light.
May we show appreciation for Him with the way we live.
Because that's the theme of this letter.
It's about how we live. It's about who we are as we
claim to have fellowship with the Father.
Finishing up here, verse 2. And he himself is the
propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for
the whole world. That word propitiation was a
word used to mean giving something to appease righteous
anger. It was a popular idea during the
time that their gods, you know, that were really unrighteous
gods for the for the Greeks, their gods needed appeasing and
so they would give, they'd be given a gift.
Basically, something was something was needed to be given
on their behalf. And our God is not that unjust
judge that maybe they're that they're that they're Greek gods
were but something needed to be paid for our sins.
And Jesus is our propitiation. He is our advocate and our
offering of reconciliation. Having your advocate in court be
the same person who paid the debt for you makes it so
powerful. He has every right to advocate
for us because when there's a family in the audience of a
courtroom that's been wronged by a crime, those people need to
have be represented. And Jesus is the one who was
hurt for us. Jesus is the one who my sins
crushed on the cross. So he is it's right for him to
be the one to be able to claim my freedom because he has a say.
He is represented in this court. And if he says so, what a
powerful defense on our behalf. Verse three.
Now by this we know that we know him.
If we keep his commandments, sometimes we can overcomplicate
it. Like we said earlier, do you
keep his commandments? Because that's how you know
you're in him. That's how I know I'm in Him.
Verse four, He who says I know Him and does not keep His
commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever
keeps his word. Verse 5, Truly the love of God
is perfected in Him. By this, we know that we are in
Him. The Word of God is perfected in
us. How?
It creates a change of heart. That change of heart then
creates a different goal, a change of goals.
And when our goals are different, what we're working
towards is different. Our actions are different.
And this is a complete cycle of our love for God changing our
heart, changing our motives and our goals, and then producing
actions that back that up. It's not we don't have to wonder
if there's some magical Nirvana moment where you become so
enlightened that you know God is living in you.
It's our actions, he says by this the universe 5.
We know that we are in him. Sometimes it helps in studying
Scripture to do the emphasis exercise and, and, and here's
what I mean by that. You can read this passage and
put emphasis on different parts of the verse.
So when he says by this, we know that we are in him.
The emphasis is on the we know God, knowing that we are in him
doesn't always make our hearts at peace and joyful, right?
Because God may know that I'm in Him, but it's possible for me to
not truly be assured and know that.
But He's assuring us. We do know that.
We know that we are in Him, and He wants us to know that.
So it's not just, well, God knows it, but we live a life
miserable with ourselves. We live a life that is unsure
and miserable. He doesn't want that.
He wants us to know that we are in Him piece that we're doing
the right thing, that we're on the right path and we're having
bound. You could also put the F
emphasis on by this. We know that we are in him.
He started all this by saying that they had seen him and know
that they are in him and they wanted to confer the same
relationship and he's saying we are he's using we you who are
listening to this letter. John says you and me, we're in
him. By this we know that we are in
him. Or you could read this 1st and
maybe all these are valid. By this we know that we are in
him, in him, in the King himself.
We share an identity with the King.
And I'll just leave you with some considerations from this.
A Christian no longer has the same relationship with sin.
A Christian no longer loves sin as he once did.
A Christian no longer brags about his or her sin as they
once did. A Christian no longer plans to
sin as he once did. A Christian no longer fondly
remembers his sin as he once did.
A Christian never fully enjoys his sin as he might have in the
past, and a Christian no longer as comfortable in habitual sin
as he once was. That's part of the theme here.
It's not you made a mistake and so you're not one of his own.
It's if you are making a habit of this sin, if that is your
practice of your life, if we, it's how we walk, right?
That's the the analogy you use. It's a walk.
If we are walking in making a habit of sin, he says you're not
in him. But a true Christian will no
longer be comfortable walking in a habit of sin and making that
the habit of their life. Instead, a Christian will seek
and strive to walk in the light, make new habits that reflect a
new Master and Lord of their life.