Archive for category: GAMEtime Sharing

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is 1 John 5:13-21.  Let’s go!

1 John 5:13-15 (NIV) 
13  I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
14  This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
15  And if we know that he hears us–whatever we ask–we know that we have what we asked of him.

On verses 13-15:  John writes so that his readers would have confidence in their salvation (v13) and confidence that God hears their prayers (v14-15).  As those who believe in the name of the Son of God, we can have the same confidence as well.

1 John 5:16-17 (NIV) 
16  If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that.
17  All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is 1 John 4:13-21.  Let’s go!

1 John 4:13-14 (NIV) 
13  We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
14  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

On verses 13-14:  In other words, the faith that John and his fellow apostles preach is not merely about believing in abstract ideas.  Rather their faith comes with a real experience of God’s Holy Spirit (v13), and their testimony is based on having actually seen this Jesus who was sent from the Father to be the Saviour of the world (v14).  In other words, Christian faith is not simply a bunch of philosophical principles and metaphysical ideas.  Rather, the Christian faith is grounded in historical fact and is accompanied by a real, life-changing experience of the Holy Spirit.

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 2:18-29.  Let’s go!

1 John 2:26 (NIV) 
26  I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray.

What is going on in these verses?  The apostle John is warning his readers about false teachers.  These false teachers were originally part of the church that John led, but they left the church (v19) and were now teaching that Jesus is not the Christ (that is, not the Messiah that the Jews were waiting for nor the Saviour that we all need) (v22). 

These teachers were likely telling the people in John’s church, “You do not know the truth” (v21), accusing John and the other apostles of lying to them.  In response, John reassures his people that “you have an anointing form the Holy One, and all of you know the truth” (v20).  With more reassuring words, John writes, “I do not write to you because you do not know the truth but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth” (v21).   He urges them to continue in the faith and not to feel insecure just because these false teachers were saying “You’re missing something!” (v27-28).