As a new believer I found this passage (and a lot of other ones) totally confusing. I was told salvation was “not by works” yet here Paul clearly says work it out. So what’s up with that? I got a better understanding of what this was all about when I saw one thing and learned another. Continue reading
Category Archives: 1 John
A Mother’s Love
Titus 2:4 makes a strange statement about older women teaching younger women to love their husbands and their children. Admittedly, sometimes men can make loving a husband quite a challenge but don’t mothers automatically love their children? Why would they need to be taught to love their children? We speak of a mother’s love being the closest thing on earth to God’s love. (I’m sure I read that on a Mother’s day card somewhere.) So what is it talking about when it says young women need to learn to love their children?
The Greatest Miracle in the Bible
“So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped … the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not go down for about a whole day.” – Joshua 10:13
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The sun stopped for a day! This is even more miraculous than raising Jesus from the dead. For Moses he stopped some water but here, the sun stopped! Did all the stars and planets stop rotating, too? What of the tides and gravity and all the implications of this complicated cosmic system suddenly grinding to a halt. How about folks on the other side of the planet who had two nights back to back. Absolutely amazing! Why would God do such an astounding thing? Why does it get so little press coverage in the rest of the Bible? Continue reading
Only a Momma could love that.
Titus 2:4 makes a strange statement about older women teaching younger women to love their husbands and their children. Admittedly, sometimes men can make loving a husband quite a challenge but don’t mothers automatically love their children? Why would they need to be taught to love their children? We speak of a mother’s love being the closest thing on earth to God’s love. (I’m sure I read that on a Mother’s day card somewhere.) So what is it talking about when it says young women need to learn to love their children?
Hope and Change
1 John 3:2
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
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This is perhaps my favorite passage of Scripture – a passage that promises great hope and change. A sure hope that in our struggle against sin there is a coming change. Check out the promise this passage makes.
It says right now, this moment, we are children of God – done deal, sealed and sure – we are His. But often I still act like my old self, battling the old nature, struggling, failing and living below what God has for me. If what I am experiencing now is all there is to being a child of God, frankly, it just isn’t that glorious.
Are you crazy?
This is the confidence we have…if we ask …he hears us. – 1 John 5:14
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To Christians it is not surprising that God hears and answers our prayers but I was recently thinking about this passage from the perspective of an unbeliever, the average Joe who thinks there may be a “big guy upstairs” or the intellectual who “knows” religion is just for the ignorant masses. Imagine how our belief in prayer appears to them.
“So you actually believe that when you, this little speck of carbon and water on a small planet in an immense universe, when you speak, all heaven stops and listens?!”
Sounds preposterous doesn’t it? We don’t just hope He will hear us. We are confident of it – no doubt about it. Why? Because we are His children.
“So, now you not only think this far off immeasurable Force takes an interest in your puny life but that somehow you are related to Him – His child no less?”
Sounds crazy, insane, delusions of grandeur and it would be if it were something we made up. But it was His idea to listen to us. It was His idea to encourage us to approach Him with our concerns. It was His idea to adopt us. It was His idea to reach out to us. We could never have known about Him or communicated with Him if He had not made it possible. It was all His idea.
So we must be pretty special, right? No, and this is what makes it all sane and sensible. This is true not because we are so wonderful but because He is so marvelous. His wondrous love reached out to His creation when there was nothing worthy in us. It is all because of Who He is. What a marvelous God! What a glorious grace! What an incomparable Savior!
We can know Him! We can speak with Him! He is concerned about our lives, our successes, our hurts and losses. He cares. We are confident of it.
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Ephesians 3:12
In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Hebrews 4:16
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
1 Peter 5:7 (NLT)
Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.
I can’t stand Christians!
1 John 4:20
Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.
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A statement that irks me like few others is, “I like Jesus. It is Christians I can’t stand.” That statement seems all cool, clever, above the fray, non-judgmental (unlike judgmental Christians) but actually it is a declaration of pitiful ignorance. Why?
If it is a believer saying it, 1 John 4:20 makes it clear it is impossible to say God is OK in my book but I don’t like His people. The Holy Spirit clearly says if you don’t love God’s kids, your brothers and sisters, you don’t truly love God (cannot love God), either.
When unbelievers say they like Jesus but can’t stand Christians they explain it is because Christians are narrrow-minded, judgmental, unloving, intolerant, holier than thou, etc, etc, etc ad nauseam. Jesus, on the other hand, was none of these things. He always walked around with a strange glow encircling His head, flashing the two finger peace sign and kissing babies.
Unlike the ultimate good ole boy that Jesus is, Christians say narrow-minded things like, “you can’t get to heaven unless you follow Jesus.” Where do they come up with these nutty ideas? They say unloving things like “there is a future of eternal torment that awaits those who reject Jesus.” They even say good people like Gandhi or Elvis didn’t go to heaven unless they trusted in Jesus instead of their good works. Get real! Elvis not in heaven?
Why do Christians get such a bum rap when everybody loves Jesus? Because those who say they like “Jesus” but think the church is too judgmental, narrow-minded, unloving, etc, are in love with a “Jesus” that they created in their image. You see, it is (narrow-minded) Jesus who said no one can come to God except through Him. (John 14:6) It is (intolerant) Jesus who warned an eternity of torment awaits those who reject Him. (Matthew 25:46) Judgmental Christians who say Gandhi or Elvis (or you and I) can’t get to heaven based upon our own efforts are simply stating what God’s Word says. (Ephesians 2:8, 9) It is even (holier than thou) Jesus who, when he forgave the woman caught in adultery, told her to go and change her lifestyle – “sin no more”. (John 8:11)
Granted, there are people who claim to be Christians but do not live like Jesus. They give Christianity a bad “image”. But, those followers who truly echo the words and the attitudes of Christ are not very popular either. And it is certainly true that some Christians can be a bit harder to love than others (my guess is they were also “love challengers” before they began to follow Jesus). But it exposes blatant ignorance to say we love God but not His kids – ignorance of Scripture but, even more critically, it usually also betrays ignorance of who God truly is – His nature and character as He has revealed Himself in His Word.
It is a package deal. You want Jesus? He comes with His still flawed, still imperfect, still in process family – the family of God. Gotta love ’em.
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To live above with the Saints we love,
Ah, that is the purest glory.
To live below with the Saints we know,
Ah, that is another story!
Hope and Change
1 John 3:2
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
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This is perhaps my favorite of all passages of Scripture – a passage that promises great hope and change. A sure hope that in our struggle against sin there is a coming change. Let’s look at it.
It says right now, this moment, we are children of God – done deal, sealed and sure – we are His. But often I still act like my old self. I still battle that old nature and get tired of struggling, failing and living below what God has for me. If what I am experiencing now is all there is to being a child of God – wrestling against the flesh, sometimes winning, too often losing in a seemingly endless battle – well, it just isn’t that glorious.
But this passage tells me I have a brighter future. One day, one glorious day, I will see Him and that will produce a most marvelous result – a change – I will be like Him! The battle will be over! I will obtain the goal for which I have been running – I will see Him (the ultimate prize) and I will be made sinless, pure, holy – like Him! What a fantastic promise, to know that I will win this battle, the old nature will be defeated. I will be free! I will see Him and will be able to approach him not just positionally pure because of His work on Calvary but fully purified, like Him, free from the grip of temptation and sin.
Right now I am free from the penalty of sin. Day by day I am becoming free from the power of sin. And one very glorious day I will be free from the very presence of sin! In the meantime, I am a child of God – right now. I don’t have to work for it, try to earn it or wish it were true. I am a child of God.
Knowing I won’t fully defeat sin until He appears should I just give up the fight, accept my failures and sin, since I know they will be with me until the day He appears? Certainly not, as the next passage tells me.
“All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” (1 John 3:3) This hope is supposed to lead me to change, to purify myself, move in that ultimate direction, though I know the full attainment will be His work and not mine. I want to live pointing my life toward that goal. I want to live in a way that pleases my Heavenly Father, though I will often fail and falter in that goal. But when I get knocked down, beaten up by sin, the flesh or the devil, I don’t have to wallow in the mud of hopelessness. I can get up, run back to Dad, like the prodigal son, and realize I will not be like this forever. One splendid day Jesus will appear. I will see Him and I will be changed, I will be like Him! Such glorious hope and change!
Knowing this gives me courage to get up, get back in the race and run to win – knowing that ultimately I will win because He has already won.
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As God’s children we have already been set free from the penalty of sin.
As we grow in our conformity to His image we are being set free from the power of sin.
One most marvelous day we will see Him and be set free from the presence of sin.
How to identify a Christian
John 13:35 “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
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We have developed lots of ways to let the world know we believe in Jesus. Bumper stickers proclaim our faith. Scripture passages on checks, greeting cards and refrigerator magnets; profile descriptions on Facebook; jewelry with crosses, a fish and WWJD all tell the world we are followers of Jesus. Jesus said there would be another way they would know but this seems a little strange to me. Let me explain.
Jesus says the identification badge that will convince the world that we are His followers is our love for one another. Notice He didn’t say it would be how we love the lost – though certainly other passages say we need to love, pray for and bless them. He said they would know we are His disciples by how we treat other believers. I find that strange but actually quite a relief.
It should be much easier to love other believers than it is to love unbelievers. After all, some of “those people” are actually enemies of the cross. Some might actually hate or despise us for our faith. Some would ridicule or reject any expressions of love. How nice that all we have to do is love one another to demonstrate we are followers of Jesus. That should be easy. Right?
Unfortunately the evidence is that we often don’t even do an excellent job of loving, forgiving, caring for and ministering to each other. From the very start of the church we “bite and devour one another” (Galatians 5:15), “there is jealousy and quarreling among” us (1 Corinthians 3:3) and we are experts at “passing judgment on one another” (Romans 14:13). We say we love everyone but the most basic sign we are His followers is that we simply love other Christians. Let’s at least start there.
Is there something you can do today to demonstrate to the world that you are His disciple?
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1 John 3:14
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.
I have decided to follow Jesus … or have I?
Most problems in the church today are due to the fact that so many Christians are still trying to decide if they want to be followers of Jesus Christ.
When I first read this quote (which I actually paraphrased above) it left me thinking, “Huh?” But I quickly realized what was being said. I understood it because I know I often have to decide “do I want to be a follower of Jesus” in this situation. Obviously, that wording doesn’t go through my head but essentially, when I am trying to decide how to respond to an offense, a temptation, an opportunity to be less than honest, a less than lovable person or a thousand other daily decisions, I am deciding, “Do I want to be a follower of Jesus at this moment?”
Of course, since I am a pastor, I always make the right decision. LOL!!! Forgive me, but I can’t help but Laugh Out Loud even typing that. What a ludicrous and totally hilarious thought.