Remain in Him

Questions:

How do you see people denying The Son and not The Father?

Most obviously: Judaism. The Jewish religion holds to the old testament and believe they worship the God presented in the old testament, but their denial of Jesus reveals that they worship a different God.

Other religions: by believing in some form of deity, people are in some way attempting to find God, but are wrong. They deny God by not knowing The Father or The Son.

General universalism/ Syncretism. This is the most important for our students. the fast growing understanding in society is that belief that each person can define for themselves who their god. There is usually no understanding of an afterlife in this system of belieF, and all religion is considered to be a therapeutic exercise, with no real deity who can be oFFEnded or honored, so there are no consequences to mixing diFFErent belieFs together. Whatever helps each individual get through liFe.

Universalism: the belief that all people will go to heaven regardless of what they believe.

Syncretism: the act oF combining belieFs From diFFerent religions and schools oF thought.

When thinking oF eternal liFe, what do we typically Focus on, and how does it diFFer to what John Focuses on?

Our Focus

Typically we Focus on eternal liFe as the ultimate goal or prize. As iF the point oF our Faith is to go to heaven or to escape hell as opposed to the worship of God.

We tend to Focus on what heaven might look like or seeing relatives who have died.

John’s focus

Eternal liFe is a promise oF God.

belieF in God. John barely mentions eternal life as iF it were of little importance compared to belieF in the Gospel and who Jesus is… because it is. (Fear not, he will say more about it later, but his Focus will still be Fundamentally diFFerent than ours.

How does our anointing, The Holy Spirit, help us? (context: “those trying to deceive you”are the False teachers John is writing this entire book to correct seem to have been telling people that in order to obtain eternal liFe, people had to submit to their teaching that comes From a higher knowledge that normal people didn’t have.)

The HS helps us discern between the truth and lies

The HS intercedes (goes between) us and The Lord. It gives us direct access to God, we need to priest to make sacriFice For us, or to take our conFession, or to go into the Holy oF holies.

Ultimately the HS helps us by helping us believe. He helps us look at conFusing portions oF scripture and do the hard work oF trying to understand instead oF the lazy option oF saying the Bible must be wrong. It helps us look at hrd situations in our lives and believe that God has not deserted us, but is working through those situations.

The Hs teaches us to remain in Christ. so remain in Christ. v.27