Author Archive for: meiling

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is 1 John 4:7-12.  Let’s go!

1 John 4:7-12 (NIV) 
7  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him…….

On verses 7-12:  This is my favourite passage in 1 John, so much so that when Sharleen and I got married this was the passage we chose to be read at our wedding.  This passage is not just beautifully written; more importantly, it is one of the best summaries you will find in the Bible of what Christianity is all about:

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is 1 John 4:1-6.  Let’s go!

1 John 4:1-3 (NIV) 
1  Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2  This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
3  but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

On verses 1-3:  Why is John telling his readers to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (v1)?  It’s because in John’s day false prophets were spreading ideas that contradicted the gospel message that Jesus Christ the Son of God came into this world, died for our sins, and rose again.  According to early church writers, there was a man called Cerinthus who taught that Jesus was not divine and that he was not supernaturally born of a virgin but that he was the naturally born son of Joseph and Mary.  Cerinthus taught that the only reason why Jesus had any connection with God was because at his baptism he received a spirit from heaven called the Christ and that this spirit left him at his crucifixion.   According to Cerinthus, Jesus and the Christ were two separate beings, implying that Jesus was not God, but a man who temporarily possessed a special spirit for a few years.

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is 1 John 3:9-17.  Let’s go!

1 John 3:9-11 (NIV) 
9  No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 
10  This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. 
11  This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
 
On verses 9-11:  John puts it in such black and white terms: 

Those who do what is right belong to God.  Those who sin don’t belong to God.  (v9-10)
Those who love their fellow brothers and sisters belong to God.  Those who hate their fellow brothers and sisters don’t belong to God (v10b-11).
So say you’re someone who has trusted Jesus as your Saviour.  You believe you are a child of God based on John 3:16 and other Bible verses.  Yet you know for a fact that from time to time you still sin and you still don’t love others as you should all the time.  How are we to take these verses from 1 John 3:9-11?  

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is 1 John 3:1-8.  I used to think that 1 John was an easy book to read.  While there are still parts of 1 John that I find very clear and easy to understand, there are other parts of 1 John that come across to me as a little cryptic and that require us to meditate deeply in order to grasp the deep truths that John is communicating.  So let’s break down this passage verse by verse to uncover what John is talking about.

1 John 3:1a (NIV) 
1  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

On verse 1a:  When our sin had disqualified us from God’s presence and we had no right to have anything to do with God, God lavished His love on us when He sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross.  It is through Jesus Christ that we too can be called children of God.   That’s the identity changing love of our God.  Because of His love, we’re no longer the same.  We go from sinners to saints, from excluded to included, from being orphaned to being part of His family.  It’s not because of anything we have done but because of His grace.