A Light to All

Intro:

If you think back to last week, we saw that we must walk in the light as Christ is in the light, we learned that God is light and therefore we must walk in the light. We learned that we must not deceive ours into thinking that our sin is not that important because our sin will separate us from God and his family. And we learned that we must live in the light through a posture of repentance towards our sin.

John continues this same train of thought in the next 5 verses of chapter 2. Read along with me.

We must not Sin

Little Children is a term of endearment

You may not sin

Everything that is written by John was so that his people would keep from sinning

John cared deeply about his people, he wasn't writing to tear the down or make them look bad, he was writing to warn them, to encourage them closer to Christ. To keep them from falling away from their faith, from their savior

We to must not tear each other down, we are here to hold each other accountable yes, but accountable so that we can all flourish together, not so we look better than our friends, or can consider ourselves to be better christians than another person.

But if anyone does sin....

Advocate - Someone who acts as a go between, like a lawyer, or a spokesperson

Again, John is not saying that it is possible to not sin, but rather he is saying, when we do, we have someone who is going to stand up for us, we have someone who is going to fight for us. Who is going to stand before the Father, stand before God and plead our case. Not based on what we have done, but based on what He has done. Christ is our advocate. he is in our corner, he goes to battle for us every time we sin.

Propitiation - The means of appeasing the wrath and gaining the good will of the person offended. In other words, the sacrifice for our sin so we have good standing before God.

This is not only paying the price for our sins, taking the wrath of God that was meant for us, but also declaring that we not longer have to pay that price and are now free to stand before the Father.

We must keep God’s Commandments

How do we know if we are a child of God? We keep his commands!

John shows us how we can have assurance. Now i know you are probably thinking, well if we are saved by grace through faith, wouldn’t this mean that this would mean we are saved by obeying?

Yes we are saved by grace through our faith, but true faith produces fruit.

True faith should produce an obedient heart.

John again shows the opposite of this as well, those who do not obey his commands, they do not truly believe. Guys, this is a great test to measure our lives by, do we keep God’s commands? do our lives reflect his word? If not, then we need to seriously consider our relationship with God.

We must Abide in Christ

Abiding requires deliberate attention to following and submitting to God’s commands

That was a mouthful. But John tells us that we should walk in the same way that he walked.

In our society, it our culture, it is kinda cool to be considered a rebel, to stand out, to go against the flow, to not submit to authority. But this idea is contrary to the one that John is telling us here. If we look to Christ’s example, he submitted to the will of the father even though it meant certain death.

If we are to follow his example, then we to should submit to the will of God, and you know sometimes we read things in the Bible that we don’t fully understand, or do not make sense, or maybe we just don’t like them, but to abide, means to follow, means to obey, means to follow the example of Christ.

Abiding requires submission.

Do you find it hard to obey God’s commands?

What do you think it means to submit to the will of God in your life?

How can we encourage one another to abide in Christ?