Friday, December 24 ~ tammi

Today's reading from the One-Year Bible Chronological Reading Plan is 1 John 1:1-4:6.

John's first epistle is a letter to Christians with a two-fold purpose ~ to give believers assurance of their salvation, and to get them walking the "straight and narrow" again. My Life Application Bible says:

By the time John wrote this letter, Christinaity had been around for more than a generation. It had faced and surived severe persecution. The main problem confronting the church at this time was declining commitment: many believers were conforming to the world's standards, failing to stand up for Christ, and compromising their faith. False teachers were plentiful, and they were accelerating the church's downward slide away from the Christian faith.


John wrote this letter to put believers back on track, to show the difference between light and darkness (truth and error), and to encourage the church to grow in genuine love for God and for one another. He also wrote to assure true believers that they possessed eternal life and to help them know that their faith was genuine ~ so they could enjoy all the benefits of being God's children.

Hmmmm, declining commitment?  Compromising faith?  Conforming to worldly standards?  Any of this sound familiar??!  Man, this sounds just like our current, post-modern church!  Maybe we need more messages preached from 1 John!

John first starts out by listing his qualifications to say what he's about to say.  He was an eyewitness to Jesus' ministry and so his readers could trust the accuracy of his words.  Without much preamble, he launches into an assault on the false teachings that were plaguing the church at that time ~ and still do today:

1. That we can have fellowship with God and go on living in spiritual darkness.  John says no one can claim to be a Christian and still live in evil and immorality.  It simply isn't possible.  Obviously, Christians still sin because they're human, but patterns of sin shouldn't exist.
2. People have no natural tendency towards sin.  How like the devil to try and make us believe sin isn't the problem God makes it out to be!  Even Christians need to walk in continuous repentence.  This isn't to say we always need to be remorseful and all woe-is-me, but we need to be ready and willing to repent when conviction hits.
3. That people's conduct doesn't even involve any sin ~ it's all relative.  (guess not wanting to believe in absolutes has been around for quite a while!!)  But John reminds us that we're all born in sin and that if we claim to be without sin, we're only deceiving ourselves.

John takes on the tone of a loving father or grandfather, and urges his readers to love each other the way Christ loves the Church and points out that this is the distinguishing factor between believers and non-believers.  He goes on to warn against false teachers, how to test their message, and then to describe the lavish love of God the Father and then back to testing spirits.  His message always returns to love ~ God's love manifested through our actions towards others ~ which is obviously the main point he is trying to get across.

John's first epistle is sort of a checklist for believers for the assurance of their salvation and the best way to demonstrate our new nature to others. It's LOVE ~ HIS love ~ that makes us visibly different from the world.

Do "they" know we're Christians by our love?







Tomorrow's passages: 1 John 4:7-5:21, 2 & 3 John