Author of the book is, obviously, John
- the closest disciple, the closest human being to Jesus
- the disciple that Jesus loved
- was a hot head (ready to call fire upon the Samaritans)
- was selfish, wanted power but was transformed by Jesus to ultimately become the Apostle of Love
This letter has been termed a Christian photo album. Flip through it, and we get a clear picture of what a born-again Christian looks like. And, as one would expect from the Apostle of Love, this letter places a LOT of emphasis on love.
1 John 1:5-10
We cannot deny our sinful nature. A Christian who walks in sin loses fellowship with God, not salvation. We should thus admit sin and restore fellowship.
1 John 2:1-2
Jesus is our counselor. He has died for our sins, and He is the only reason we can now be in the presence of God. Jesus resides within us, and when God looks at us, He sees His son.
1 John 2:3-6
Those who know God behaves and thinks differently than those who don't. Jesus is our perfect role model. We were told to follow Him, not other Christians. If we know God, we would keep His commandments.
1 John 2:7-14
Leviticus 19:18
Love is both an old and a new commandment of God.
Love became new with Jesus. In the upper room with His disciples, Jesus commanded the same thing. We are to love others as Jesus loved us (1 John, John 13).
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16).
"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how cna the love of God be in him?" (1 John 3:17)
"Let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3:18)
"This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:9-10)
Satan's lures:
Lust of the flesh
Lust of the eyes
Pride of life
These 3 lures keep people obsessed about this world and remain ignorant about the bigger picture.
Eve was lured the same way, and she failed.
Jesus was seduced the same way, but He fought it off. (Hence, Jesus is our perfect example!)
1 John 2:18-26
Be aware of anti-Christ and false teachers. Anyone who teaches a Christ other than the Biblical Christ is a false teacher. For example, Jesus is not a mere man! Yet, there are religions and cults that teach such things. Those who deny Christ, teach a different Christ, offer a figure different than Christ, deny the trinity are all false teachers.
In John's days, those false teachers could be found as one of them. The same thing can be said of today! Founders of Jehovah witnesses, Mormonism, Scientology, etc. were once local church-goers who got disgruntled by what they heard and started their own "club"!
We are therefore encouraged to be on the lookout for false teachers and remain strong in our faith in Jesus.
John said of these people, "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us" (1 John 2:19).
I think the above statement applies especially to apostates. True Christians would receive God's love and understand God's love. Once this understanding is obtained, there is simply no way the Christian would turn away. Hence, those who belonged to us would remain with us. People who claim they were once Christians but now are actively rejecting Christ, according to John, show that they never belonged to us in the first place.
1 John 3
Whoever knows Jesus does not PRACTICE sin.
Practice = Habitually sins
God is love. Because we have received God's love, we should change. We will begin to love others as God loves us. It is simply impossible to say we truly know Jesus and continue sinning the way we have been sinning before we came to know Jesus.
Jesus is the closest thing we have to seeing God. Jesus made the invisible God visible. Jesus is love.
"No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us" (1 John 4:12)
When we sin, we pain God. This is why following His commandments are not burdensome because we love Him and do not want to pain Him.
"This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what it right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother" (1 John 3:10).
"This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out His commands" (1 John 5:2)
1 John 4:1-6
We continue to live as overcomers through faith and are able to test the spirits because God resides within us. Satan first prevents us from becoming a Christian. Once we become a Christian, he prevents us from becoming an effective Christian. Believe in the right Jesus! Believe in the wrong one and there is no salvation!
1 John 5:13-14
How to pray effectively
1) Be children of God
Effective prayer can only happen to those who honestly believes in God. How can we pray to God if we are not right with him, if we do not know him, if we do not have a one on one relationship with him?
2) Ask God consistently, persistently, continuously
3) Pray with extravagant faith
God wants us to pray about anything and everything. Have faith and pray.
4) Pray confidently and boldly
Philippians 4:6-7
Cast ALL our worries upon Him because He will provide
Jeremiah 33:3
The idea is God is telling us, "Call on Me, and I will blow your mind."
5) Pray according to God's will
Prayer isn't about what I want. It is about what God wants.
John 14
We often end prayers with "In Jesus' name". This phrase means "Pray as Jesus would pray"!
In the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), Jesus prayed, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done" not "my" kingdom come or "my" will be done.
We are here to spread the Good News, to do God's work. We will have wants and needs, but if we have God in the center of our world, we will learn to listen to God and be guided by Him. Most importantly, we won't stray away from Him and start idolizing money, power, status... basically, anything but God.
When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-44), He knew He was taking on the Sin of the world and was about to take on the fullness of God's Wrath. It is such a arduous mission that Jesus prayed to take the cup away, as a way of asking if there was any other way to achieve salvation for man. Even then, Jesus prayed to have to cup taken away "yet not my will, but yours be done". And it wasn't God's will to take the cup away. Jesus had to go to the cross so that we can be saved! It was the only way. Hence, JESUS IS OUR ONLY WAY TO SALVATION!
Jesus, God's one and only Son, prayed to have God's will be done. Jesus taught us how to pray, and so, we should pray as Jesus did--not our will be done but God's will be done.
Prayer is thus the process of aligning our will with God's will, to do God's will on Earth. True prayer is asking God what God wants to do. It's surrendering ourselves to Him. So, pray confidently but humbly.
How do we discover God's will?
1) Renew our mind by reading and digesting His word consistently
2) Listen to the Holy Spirit
We adopt the characteristics of people we hang out the most with. So, hang out with Jesus more. Let Jesus change us and guide us to discover His will for our lives.
What are some hindrances to prayers?
1) Rebellion, disobedience
"If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened" (Psalms 66:18)
2) Having a lousy relationship with other Christians
Matthew 5:23-24
Jesus' sermon on the Mount told us that before we seek reconciliation with the Lord, be reconciled with others first
1 Peter 3:7
Man's prayer will be hindered if he's not right with his wife
1John 5:16-17
In regards to those who have committed sins that lead to death, we are told that it would be too late to pray for them
The first part is a straight-forward concept. The second part, not so much. How do we make sense of it?
Well, let's start by asking two main questions:
1) When John used the word "brother" in this context, was John talking about true Christians or apparent Christians?
2) When John spoke about "death" in this context, was he talking about a physical death or the eternal suffering in Hell?
Let's first assume John was talking about a true Christian. Can a true Christian commit a sin that condemns him to hell? No. So, death for him is a physical death.
Acts 5:1-11
Ananias and Sapphira were Christians who hindered the work of God. They did not lose their salvation, but because they were more destructive than helpful in the Christian ministry, God removed them from Earth. That is, they died a physical death, but they did not lose their salvation.
The idea here is that some Christians can come to a point where they are sinning so bad, God removes them physically from Earth so that they could no longer negatively affect the works of other Christians.
Next, let's assume John used the word "brother" loosely and included apparent Christians (People who claim to be Christians but do not have Jesus in their heart and do not live with Christian values).
Christians whose faith is not strong or solidly grounded in Jesus can easily be lured by Satan to commit the one sin that leads to not only physical death but also spiritual death as well. Jesus said the only unforgivable sin is blaspheme against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31-32).
Blaspheme is the final total rejection of Jesus Christ. The Pharisees committed blaspheme against the Holy Spirit because they attributed the miracles of Jesus to demons (Matthew 12:24). We won't discuss the lack of logic in their deductive reasoning, but we can be shocked at how hardened their heart was toward Jesus! A person that rejects Jesus over and over and over again, despite the presence of the Holy Spirit can reach a point of no return and committed blaspheme of the Holy Spirit. And this sin is the one sin that once committed will send the sinner straight to Hell.
There is the alternative theory that the sin John is talking about here is the sin of apostasy. However, many would argue that the apostate was never really saved in the first place (1 John 2:19), which would bring the argument back to the sin being the unforgivable sin of blaspheme of the Holy Spirit.
The take home message for me is two-fold.
1) It isn't so much about who we pray for and who we no longer need to pray for, because in all reality, who am I to determine perfectly and correctly who has committed the one unforgivable sin? I am not the judge. Jesus is the judge. Prayer never hurts anyone. And so, I will pray for anyone and leave the ultimate decision in God's hands.
2) Don't test God's patience. God sent out the Holy Spirit to guide us and to protect us. Each time we reject the Holy Spirit, it becomes harder to accept Him. Let us learn from the mistakes of the Pharisees and never harden our hearts.
1 John 5:18-21
3 Common Enemies of Christians
1) Sin
2) Satan
He who keeps himself, the wicked one cannot touch you! Satan cannot attach himself to Christians who keep themselves right on God's way.
3) World system that pulls us away from God
An idol isn't limited to just a wooden figure. An idol can be... Ourselves
Careers
Relationships
Money
Sports...
Essentially, anything or anyone that we place above our love for God is an idol.
1 John 2:28
"And now, dear children, continue in Him, so that when he appears, we may be confident and unashamed before Him at His coming."
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