I John Love is an old commandment

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.