HillThread ~ Supporting Missions

1 John 2:20-27

“But you are not like that, for the Holy One has given you his Spirit, and all of you know the truth. So I am writing to you not because you don’t know the truth but because you know the difference between truth and lies. And who is a liar? Anyone who says that Jesus is not the Christ. Anyone who denies the Father and the Son is an antichrist. Anyone who denies the Son doesn’t have the Father, either. But anyone who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

So you must remain faithful to what you have been taught from the beginning. If you do, you will remain in fellowship with the Son and with the Father. And in this fellowship we enjoy the eternal life he promised us.

I am writing these things to warn you about those who want to lead you astray. But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true—it is not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ.”

Now and again a story appears in the news about someone using counterfeit money. Often counterfeit bills are discovered when an unsuspecting consumer tries to use one, not realizing that the money is in fact worth

1 John 2 15-17

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”

The common thread in avoiding “worldliness” is the desire to con form one’s life to the will of God and not to the dictates of the world. Obviously this is a laudable goal. And although the present passage does not give us rules and regulations, it does make plain the incompatibility of love for the world and love for God. But the conception of worldliness in this epistle goes far deeper than the idea of outlawing some behaviors that non-Christians tolerate. We are called to an active devotion to God that shapes all that we are and do. The world is not simply a passive entity, but a rival for the allegiance of every person.

1 John 2:7-11

“Dear friends, I am not writing a new commandment for you; rather it is an old one you have had from the very beginning. This old commandment—to love one another—is the same message you heard before. Yet it is also new. Jesus lived the truth of this commandment, and you also are living it. For the darkness is disappearing, and the true light is already shining.

If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is still living in darkness. Anyone who loves another brother or sister is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble. But anyone who hates another brother or sister is still living and walking in darkness. Such a person does not know the way to go, having been blinded by the darkness.”

To answer the question, What does God want of us? on John’s terms, we also have to answer the question, What do we owe each other? Although response to God is a personal matter, it is not merely a private or internal matter. Jesus made this explicit in talking about the obligation of love that we owe to each other in obedience to his command. Jesus does not require from us what he does not already manifest in his own person and life. In fact his sacrificial death both provides the example of love as well as creates the community in which we are to love one another.

1 John 2:3-6

“We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. 4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.”

Simply put, if we love God, that love will be evident in our lives, in our personality, in our habits, in our speech, in the way we act towards others, and in our obedience to His word. There’s no way around it, and there’s no excuse we can come up with to get out of living our lives as Christ lived.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ. Cheap grace means living as though God ignores or condones our sins. But forgiveness means that sin is real, and must be dealt with. We cannot ignore it, because God does not ignore it. The denial of sin is not grace: it is a lie. Cheap grace means living without the demand of obedience upon us.

Grace wasn’t cheap, it cost a man His life. Don’t cheapen God’s grace by lying to yourself about your sin.

1 John 2:1-2

“My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

God doesn’t want us to be sinful, that’s plain and simple. What’s not so simple is avoiding sin. The good news is that Jesus has died for all of our sin, for the sin we committed before we knew Him as our Savior, and for the sin that we fall to after our salvation.

Now, just like Paul told us in one of his letters, just because we have forgiveness doesn’t mean we should go on sinning. By no means!

In 1 John 2, John assures us that when we do mess us, we have nothing to worry about because Jesus has already paid the price for our sins.

And, he ends verse 2 by telling us that Jesus has died for the sins of the world. Now, it’s our job to go to the world, all corners of it, and make sure everyone hears this beautiful message.

1 John 1:8-10

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”

There is a difference between a person who admits their sin before God, asks for forgiveness, and goes through life trying to live according to God’s word and a person who constantly lies to themselves that they have no sin in their life and that they are fine all by themselves.

When you look in the mirror, do you like what you see? Are you living according to God’s will, or are you wrapped up in sin and lying to yourself?

1 John 1:5-7

“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

So, if we do all these things, are we then doing what God wants? Are we walking in the light? We cannot simply mark these things off on a checklist. For there is a unifying thread woven through the pattern of “walking in the light.” These “expectations” are unified by an under standing of God’s character and of God’s activity in Christ. Thus John begins with an assertion about God, the simple statement that God is light. Everything depends upon and flows from that statement. It is worth examining at some length.