I John
Love is an old commandment
Keep it new and fresh
It is always the right “Choice”
John recognizes the stages of believers.
Children, know the Father and
have their sins forgiven.
Young men, are strong they have God’s
Word in them and have overcome evil.
Fathers have the age old wisdom.
Knowing God is not a new thing, but
has been the same from the beginning.
The commandment of love
is old, it is what we start with.
Love the lord your God
with all your heart
and love your neighbor
as yourself.
We must keep this commandment
of love new and fresh.
Hate for another person causes the light to go out.
The light of love keeps our language
and actions from stumbling.
When the light of love grows dim, our care
for others slips and we become offensive.
John also draws a line through love.
On one side of love is our love for the Father.
The other side is the love for the world.
John 3:16 is very clear…
“God
so loved the world”.
It is very clear we should have a love for
people, a love that wants the best for them.
That best is the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of this world has no true north.
The unbeliever’s moral compass
does not have a true north.
There are magnetic
pulls of…
“the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life”
1 John 2:16 NKJV
The sinful cravings keep people lost
in the kingdom of this world.
John talks about commitment.
He says there are those who left them.
“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
There was not a total commitment to Christ.
So often we find things of God’s
kingdom that are very attractive.
But after we get in involved we
struggle with the whole package.
Our commitment will be challenged to
find out if it is a total commitment.
This is seen in the parable of
the “Sower and the seed”.
Whether you believe a person
can lose their salvation, or a person
was never fully committed.
The person who does not endure to
the end will not be saved. Matthew 24:13
Our commitment to love
must be a total commitment.
Scripture Reading
1 John 2:7-19 NIV
7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an
old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the
message you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen
in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already
shining.
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother
is still in the darkness. 10 Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and
there is nothing in him to make him stumble. 11 But whoever hates his brother
is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he
is going, because the darkness has blinded him.
12 I write to you, dear children,
because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
13 I write to you, fathers,
because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you have overcome the evil one.
I write to you, dear children,
because you have known the Father.
14 I write to you, fathers,
because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you are strong,
and the word of God lives in you,
and you have overcome the evil one.
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone
loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the
world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of
what he has and does — comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The
world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives
forever.
18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have
heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This
is how we know it is the last hour. 19 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.
