The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
So That Happened…
This week I am taking a break from the 1 John series in order to talk about something that happened on Tuesday. We were involved in an auto accident in which a big pickup truck veered into our lane, side-swiped one car, hit another head-on sending it flying to fall to the valley floor some twenty feet beyond and eight feet below the road bed, rolled and slid for 150 feet, hit us head-on, and then bounced…..
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1 John, Part 8 – The Love of God
1 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” God uses humans to accomplish His work on earth, but not human character. The character of Christ in us is both exhibited in and poured out through His children to a dying world. As new creatures in Christ we live His character to…..
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1 John, Part 7 – The Character of God
The past two weeks I have submitted to you lists from 1 John of how God calls us to live in terms of assurance of salvation and how the lack of those things in our lives point to a lack of salvation or a true relationship with God. These might appear to some as an exercise in legalism, but they are not. While the Old Testament commandments still stand as the…..
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1 John, Part 6 – The Precepts of True Christianity
When I was a teenager, the cars that I learned to drive had something in the center of the hoods by which I could line up securely with the edge of the shoulder to ensure that I was properly placed in my lane and would not drift into the way of oncoming cars. The 1953 Willies had a crease down the middle of the hood with a hood ornament pointing…..
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1 John, Part 5 – The Unbeliever
After his introduction, John compares the basis of assurance of salvation as opposed to the reasons to suspect that someone is a non-believer. Rather than look at the comparisons as they are written, I divided the listed characteristics of the unbeliever from the characteristics of the believer in order to take a closer look. This form of study is called analysis and it involves separating similar components of the writing in order to…..
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1 John, Part 5 – The Unbeliever
After his introduction, John compares the basis of assurance of salvation as opposed to the reasons to suspect that someone is a non-believer. Rather than look at the comparisons as they are written, I divided the listed characteristics of the unbeliever from the characteristics of the believer in order to take a closer look. This form of study is called analysis and it involves separating similar components of the writing in order to…..
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1 John, Part 4 –The Purpose of the First Epistle of John
This epistle is written in a loosely classical essay format in which the writer tells his audience what he is going to write about, writes about it with at least three subsections of slightly different emphases, and then reviews with his audience what he has written about. The overall theme is assurance of salvation.
Years ago, as a young believer, I struggled with assurance of my salvation as…..
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1 John, Part 3 – Amazing Advocate
I was talking to a friend last week about God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness. These are characteristics that do not come naturally to us humans and so we have difficulty comprehending them in God. It is a good thing Jesus does not require comprehension. He only requires faith and obedience.
1 Peter 2:24 tells us that Jesus, “…bare our sins in his own body on the tree that we, being dead to sins,…..
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1 John, Part 2 – The Battle of Two Wills
1 John 1:5-7 sets the topical pattern for the whole epistle:
“This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as He is in the…..
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1 John, Part 1 – Jesus’ Commandments
Both Matthew 22:37-39 and Mark 13:34 record the scribe’s question, “What is the most important commandment?” Keep in mind that God’s commandments are to be obeyed: they are not suggestions. Jesus’ answer was, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind … And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
As recorded by the…..