Securing God's Commands

Intro: Theme - I can know that I have eternal life.

Themes of 1 John:

I believe the Bible is the word of God.

I take responsibility for my sin.

Being close to God in the ancient world.

Classical Greeks - they could arrive at God by the sheer process of intellectual reasoning and argument.

Later Greeks - emotion

The untion of the divine in the form of passion plays.

They were founded on a god who lived, suffered terribly, suffered painful death, and lived again.

The intiate was give a long course of instruction, He was made to practice ascetic discipline. He was worked up to an intense pitch of expectation and emotional sensitiviry. he was then allowed to come to a passion play in which the story of the suffering, dying, and rising god was played out on the stage. Everything was designed to heighten the emotional atmosphere. The story wsa played out and the worshiper identified himself with the experiences of the god until he could cry out, “I am you and you are me.”He then thought that he had shared in the god’s suffering, but also in his voctory and immortality.

Jewish/Christian:

God is known by His own revelation.

God orevealed Himself as a holy God.

His holiness brought the obligation to the worshiper to be holy.

John can conceive of no real knowledge of God which does not issue in obedience.

True knowledge of God cannot be proved outside of obedience to God.

True faith in God does not neglect intellectual effort and emotional experience. They must combine to issue in moral action.

Three proofs of obedience:

I. A Proof Based upon Truth

True faith will be replaced by sight.

Faith is not eternal.

It will end when that which we have faith in happens.

2 Corinthians 5:6–7 ESV

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.

Faith ends = second coming of Christ.

If we have eternal klife, we are going to experience som of it now.

That is, many things wheich we saw in faith will progressively become sight.

We do know… = there are 2 common words for “Know.”

oida