If God comes into your life, will He ever leave? Give attention to the Word of the Lord in 1 John...
1 John
The Transformative Power of the Love of God
1 John 4:7-8, “7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has...
Discerning Truth from Error
1 John 4:1, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are...
Love God, Love Others
1 John 3:23-24, “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit...
Assurance of Faith
1 John 3:21-22, “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.” Today we see the Apostle John addressing a believer’s assurance of faith. As...
How to Assure Our Hearts When We Doubt Our Salvation
1 John 3:19-20, “19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.” “Doubt” is the perfect word to character my young, Christian faith....
Hospitality and the Believer
1 John 3:16-18, “16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?...
A New World Order: The Kingdom of Love in 1 John 3:1-7
The Apostle John wrote the collection of letters that is known as 1,2, and 3 John. This writer is John, the son of Zebedee, who wrote the gospel of John and was on the Isle of Patmos when he received the revelation of Christ church. The Rev. Dr. Earl Palmer, the...
What Wondrous Love is This?
1 John 3:1-3, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet...
Forgiven For His Name’s Sake
“Your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake” (1 John 2:12). The Bad News The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ begins with bad news. You are a sinner. Your thoughts, your actions, and your words are all tainted with selfishness, pride, and idolatry. You need...
Knowing and Keeping the Commandments of the Lord
“And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may...
When the Gavel Falls
1 John 2:1, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” It has been said that one of the most significant problems that plagues contemporary...
If We Confess Our Sins
1 John 1:8-10, NASB, “8If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we say that we have not sinned,...
The Word of Life
1 John 1:1-4, “1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and...
Festival of Faith
1 John 5:13-21 Recently my daughter and I were throwing around ideas for a possible mission statement for our church, one that would shortly and succinctly state what we, as a church, are purposed to do in our community. In a similar way, John gives us his purpose...
Overcoming the World
1 John 5:1-12 ESV, “1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. [2] By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. [3] For...
The Two Loves
At the heart of the Christian life is love. It’s a specific kind of love – not that generalized anemic definition of love so popular in our culture. It begins with the love God has shown us in Christ, and the love Christ has demonstrated in His sacrifice for sinners....
Testing the Spirits
The heart of God is to welcome us into the fellowship of the Trinity, the very joy of God in God, by faith in his Son and the power of his Spirit. As John writes in 1 John 1:3-4, “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have...
The Cosmos Alternative
Two pitfalls plague every follower of Jesus Christ. The first pitfall involves rules. In an effort to obey Scripture and avoid worldliness, we begin drawing legalistic lines that were never meant to be drawn. We begin to impose our personal convictions on people...
The Three Stages of Spiritual Maturity
1 John 2:12-14 – “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to...
Light, Darkness, Commandments & Brothers
I will confess that as I began to look at writing this article, I read the paragraph in view in 1 John 2:7-11, then expanded to the context of chapter two, then expanded to the context of the whole letter, and kept on expanding further to 2 John, the Old Testament,...
Christ Our Advocate
“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world....
Fullness of Joy
In the summer of 1986, I was a hopeless drug addict. I had been strung out since 1979 when I was only twelve-years-old, and I had reached the point where I wanted to commit suicide. Thanks be to God that I didn’t have the courage to follow through on that desire...