1 John 2: 9-11 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

John has a tendency to write like the waves on the seashore! A wave comes in – he covers a particular thing – and then goes out, but then shortly it comes back in again – and he uses the same language again. Three times in chapter 1 and now three times in chapter 2 John speaks of light.

His starting point had been, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all,” (1:5) but then he had applied it to our lives: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” (v.7)

Back in his Gospel John recorded Jesus as saying, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” (Jn 3:19-21)

He seems to use ‘light' as good or goodness, purity, holiness. Thus it becomes, “God is good … if we walk in his goodness as he is good… we have fellowship” and “God's goodness came into the world (in the form of Jesus) but men loved bad things rather than goodness …. Everyone who does evil hates goodness and does not come under the spotlight of goodness for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into God's goodness so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” i.e. when we come to God His goodness permeates our lives and reveals Him through us. That's what we saw in the previous meditations.

If we hadn't got the message clearly the first time, John now presses the point home: “ Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.” i.e. if you purport to have come to Christ and are now a Christian, but hate your brother then it is obvious that you are not living in God's goodness but are allowing evil to remain in you.

To emphasise it even more, John looks at it from the positive side: “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” Love is an expression of goodness and so if instead you love your brother you are revealing goodness. One of the things about goodness is that it helps us walk firmly and not be brought down by temptation or sin. While we remain in God's goodness, living it out, there is no room for bad to creep in and so we will not stumble and fall.

But then he bounces back to the negative again: “But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.” Blinded by darkness? That's an interesting analogy, but a true one! A person who has allowed hatred for his brother to either remain or take a hold in their life, is not living in goodness but in bad, and when we are living in the bad, it is genuinely like darkness and we lose our way and can't see where we are going and simply stumble around. We normally speak about being blinded by a bright light, but of course darkness blinds us because in the dark you cannot see. If we allow bad into our lives it brings darkness and in that darkness we start to lose focus, lose awareness, lose sense of purpose and direction.    

Now here is the tricky thing: how many of us have allowed something to either remain in our lives after we came to Christ, or allowed something into our lives since we came to Christ, that actually constitutes ‘darkness'? Remember ‘darkness' is simply wrong, any wrong. John's example of wrong, is hating your brother. Literal brother or spiritual brother or brother in humanity? It doesn't matter. If we have something against a family member, or something against a member of the church, or prejudice against groups within humanity, we have allowed darkness in! But here's the other tricky thing: if we have allowed darkness to reside in us, have we realized that we are, at least, partially blind? What can't we see because we are in darkness in this area, at least, in our lives? Well obviously that the attitude that we hold is wrong, and we are blind to that, but to what else might we be blind? How much does the modern church ‘fail to see' because we tolerate darkness in our lives? It bears serious thought!

1 John 2: 12 I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name .

I don't know if when we get to heaven, we'll meet people we read about in the Bible. If I meet John I want to ask him why he wasn't more clear in these next three verses, having caused commentators to scratch around with a variety of interpretations. Some suggest ‘children' means all Christians and then ‘fathers' and ‘young men' (in the next verse) mean different levels of spirituality. Others suggest all three indicate different levels of spirituality. We'll we're going to meditate on them one by one and see what comes out.

At the start of this chapter John addresses his readers there as ‘dear children', (2:1) which is what leads some to suggest chapter 1 is a general introduction explaining the need for the Gospel while chapter 2 moves on to speak to Christians specifically. Whatever the truth, this aged apostle speaks to his readers there from an elderly, pastoral standpoint, with a heart of concern for all God's people.

Of course in the opening chapter of his Gospel, John wrote, “ to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.” (Jn 1:12,13) Belief, he says, brings about the right to be called children of God, and we are children of God because we are born of His Spirit (see also Jn 3:5) In the beginning of the third chapter of this letter, he writes, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 Jn 3:1) so if you are a Christian, have no doubts, you are a child of God!

Now what is the definition of a child? It is a young, young person, possibly recently born. We have, we have already noted, been born again by God's Holy Spirit; He made us anew when we received His Spirit. Jesus taught, “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." (Mk 10:15). What does that mean? Children are childlike in belief; they find it easy to believe. They are simple and straight forward in their belief. That is how we are to be. Take, for instance, that really challenging verse at the Last Supper: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these.” (Jn 14:12) The worldly, humanistic, rational mind tries to reason how this can be. Simple, childlike faith, says, “Right, if that's what you say, Lord, what do you want me to do?” The apostle Peter was the classic example of this when he stepped out of the boat at Jesus' simple instruction, “Come!” and walked on water. “You can't do that,” the rational mind argues. No of course you can't – unless Jesus enables you to!

But sometimes children worry. They don't have the big picture and so they worry. Young Christians sometimes worry because, like Peter on the Lake when he took his eyes off Jesus, he began to sink. It's a major learning curve being a young Christian, but young Christians also need reassurance about their behaviour, which is why John emphasizes, for “children”, your “sins have been forgiven.” Young Christians need to be taught and then reminded of the basics of faith and the most basic and fundamental issue of the Christian faith is that Jesus has died for all our sins, past, present and future, and we have been forgiven. This came up earlier in 1 Jn 1:9 with the assurance that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and ( will ) purify us from all unrighteousness.” That is the fundamental heart of our faith and it opens the door up for us to fellowship more fully with the Father and not give up when we fail, but to pick ourselves up, confess our failure, receive afresh the forgiveness and cleansing that comes through the Cross, and then get on with what He next has for us.

The young believer has to learn that it's not a case of getting up and trying to be a better person in our own strength or trying to impress God with how good we are. No, instead we are honest about our weaknesses or vulnerabilities and recognize that we need the ongoing working of the Holy Spirit within is to enable us to walk out in faith – as children of God.

It is all about relationship with the Father. John continues a few words on, “I write to you, dear children , because you have known the Father.” (2:13c) Not only have we been born of the Father but now our life is one of knowing Him. That, we as Christians, may take for granted, but the rest of the world does not know it. Appreciate it!

It may be worth distinguishing between ‘children' and ‘sons' for often in the New Testament we are called ‘sons' (women included). The reason behind this is that culturally in Israel , a son (and especially the oldest son) took on the work of the father, carried on the family business. ‘Children' is just a recognition of our basic relationship to God our Father. When we start talking about ‘sons' and ‘sonship' we are talking about coming into a mature relationship with the Father whereby He shares his heart with us and we enter more fully into the ongoing relationship with Him whereby we perform the works of the kingdom, carrying on His business, as He leads us by His Spirit. That is the wonder of what we have entered into. We start out being little children, but the whole New Testament teaching is that we learn and we grow and we enter more and more into the purposes of the Father. Hallelujah!

1 John 2: 13,14 I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one…..I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

So we have thought a little about children and then about fathers, and so now we come to the third group in these strange verses in John's letter, young men. Before we get to the two verses themselves, what do we know about young men? Let's put aside some of the features of modern Western males and just consider them worldwide. What do we tend to see? We see young people pushing boundaries. They have life and vitality and are bursting to be themselves, unique individuals not in the mould of their parents. They dare things others would not dare. They dream dreams that have not yet been tempered by life. They have enormous optimism and self-confidence, and these days they often travel the globe in search of adventure. They are also often compassionate and caring and get angry over lacks of justice. The want to change the world!

So let's look at what John says; “I write to you, young men.” He could have written to girls, to husbands, to wives and so on, i.e. anyone else, but he chooses young men in the church (it is a letter to believers probably read out in church congregations). Imagine them sitting among the larger crowd as a local leader reads out John's letter. It's a letter for adults and then, suddenly, no it's not, it's for us! What is he saying about us? “We have overcome the evil one”.

So what does that mean and why does he say it to young men? Hasn't every believer actually overcome the evil one (Satan) when we turned to Christ and God “ rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son.” ? ( Col 1:13) Yes, but perhaps sometimes the battle to overcome doubts, fears etc., is greater in some to come through to Christ than it is in others.   Young people, and especially young men are a classic example. We said the young man naturally has self confidence and so much more that they are easy prey for Satan to play on all those things and keep them from coming to Christ. But these young men in the church have overcome his wiles and his temptations and have come through to a place of surrender to Christ, despite all else they naturally feel.

It is interesting to observe different people in different groups or professions or whatever else it may be, battle through the ways of the world and the wiles of the enemy to come to faith and what is especially interesting is that so often those who have come out of certain backgrounds are particularly strong in their faith once they have broken through. Oh yes, they were still sinners who needed the Holy Spirit to bring conviction, but nevertheless there are certain people who once they have come through appear to be more all-out for God. Perhaps this is the reason that John now says to these young men, “I write to you because you are strong.” For a young man to break free from his culture and his friends and all his natural instincts, and surrender his life to Christ, it does require a certain sort of determination. This is the human aspect of the human plus divine parts of the equation that bring about salvation.

The apostle Paul might be an example of this. He had been a young man who was all-out for God in a religious way and had everything going for him religiously, but then he had his encounter with Jesus and was then as equally all out for God as a committed Christian – and was he committed! Read 2 Cor 11:23-27 to see this!

These young men are commendable, and if we have them in our midst we need to commend and encourage them . “You are strong.” Yes of course they are; they had to be to have overcome the world and to now stand for Christ. “The word of God lives in you.” Yes it does; yes he does! The word of God and the Spirit of Jesus living in them makes them strong. I'm sure John, if he had been with them, would have balanced it with, be careful not to get over confident: “if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.” (1 Cor 10:12,13) but we don't have to dot every I and cross every T; we can just be encouraging and John is being that for these young men. Do we do that for our young men or do we worry about their vulnerability all the time? Encourage them, bless them!

1 John 2: 15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

John now issues an instruction that really needs thinking about. World, in Scripture has at least three different meanings. The first meaning is the globe on which we live. For example, “Tremble before him, all the earth! The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved,” (1 Chron 16:30) or “you loved me before the creation of the world.” (Jn 17:24).

The second meaning is the people on the world: “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech,” (Gen 11:1) or “Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel,” (1 Sam 17:46) or “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16)

So is John saying don't love the planet or the people on it? No, definitely not, for a number of the laws of Moses clearly indicate a respect, care and wise use of the world on which we live. Similarly God wouldn't instruct us to love our neighbour and then tell us to hate them. So what is the sense that John uses here for the word, ‘world'?

The clue to the answer comes in the following verse: “ For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not from the Father but from the world.” (v.16) There he describes, “everything in the world” with three things. Those three things are vital to our understanding.

First there is “the cravings of sinful man” i.e. the yearnings of the self-centred, self-pleasing mankind that is just concerned for personal pleasure. Also sinful mankind is not overly concerned whether it is good or bad, just that it brings pleasure. Thus drug or alcohol abuse is an extreme example, but then so is unrestrained eating, or sexual activity outside marriage. “I like it, and I want it” becomes the arbiter of sinful man, with little thought to the consequences. It's a way of ‘the world'.

Second, there is “the lust of the eyes”. Which is expressed as, “I see it, I like it, I want it”, again often with little thought of whether it is good or bad or of the consequences. No wonder advertising is such a massive industry! The result is often bulging wardrobes, as a result of a fashion industry that tells women how they look is all important and you cannot look the same this year as last. Another result is homes bulging with goods that we rarely ever use. Yet another result is bank balances heavily in debt. It's another way of ‘the world'.

Third, there is “the boasting of what he has and does.” Self worth has come to be measured by possessions or experiences. Conversations are often made up of tales of new things bought or new places visited. Pleasurable buying and pleasurable experiences have become the measure of a person. What is sad is that these things in themselves are not bad. God has given us a wonderful world to enjoy and He's given us the ability of make, to invent, and to explore, and so much of the fruits of this are the things we have today and the places we are enabled to go. In themselves they are good, but if our self-worth is only achieved by these things and experiences, we are poor indeed. Our danger, even as Christians, is that in the midst of this God-given enjoyment of life, we can forget those who do not have these things and who actually struggle to stay alive. This self-centred focus on personal pleasure must be tempered for Christians by God-awareness and thankfulness, and a care, compassion and giving for those in need.

But, John goes on, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Again and again we have used the words self-centred and that is opposed to God-focused. A godly person is not self-centred, but seeks the will of the Father, including how to spend their money and how to reach out to the rest of the world.

To conclude the paragraph John adds, “The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” (v.17) It is a reminder to us that all ‘things' pass away. Many of our goods ‘pass away' into Charity Shops as we try to make space for more clothes or more goods. But the bigger truth is that as we age, these things pass away from interest. How many elderly people have clothes they no longer wear, and things they no longer use? And an even bigger truth – you can't take any of these things with you when you die. If we could only see our families emptying out our homes when we've gone! All the things we once held dear, now just being dumped in a skip!

I suspect that for those of us who live in the Western world and who are tolerably well off, these are uncomfortable verses when we think about what they say. They could trigger a whole new approach to life if we let the Spirit speak to us through them. Reread this meditation and see what He says.

1 John 2: 20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.

Observe the starting word here – ‘but'. John is now contrasting the Christians with those he has just been speaking about. He has been speaking about people he calls antichrists, people who started off with the truth, but became deceived and accepted variations of the Gospel that ended up with them being against Jesus and the Gospel. These people are deceived. You, by contrast, says John, know the truth. You know what is true, what is right. Why? Because you have an anointing from God Himself.

Now that is interesting language. We don't usually speak about Christians generally being anointed; we do talk about leaders, preachers or ministries being anointed, but we don't usually think about ordinary Christians as being anointed. So what does John mean when he speaks like this?

Let's see the use of the word anoint or anointing in the Bible. Well, first of all it referred to pouring oil on a priest to consecrate them: “ Take the anointing oil and anoint him by pouring it on his head,” (Ex 29:7), but the same thing was done to consecrate a king: “The LORD said to Samuel,…You are to anoint for me the one I indicate….. So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the LORD came upon David in power." (1 Sam 16:1,3,13) In the Old Testament period it was a pouring of oil over the head of a leader – a priest or a king – as a sign of him being set apart to God for the task given to him, which he would fulfil with the enabling of the Holy Spirit.

Note the three elements there: a) being set apart, b) for a task and c) with the enabling of God's Holy Spirit. Jesus was referred to as ‘the anointed one. In the prophetic Psalm 2 we find, “The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One.” (Psa 2:2) The early church applied that prophecy when they prayed and then referred to Jesus – “your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.” (Acts 4:26,27) Preaching to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius, Peter declared, “You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached-- how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.” (Acts 10:37,38)

The emphasis was not there on Jesus' being (as the New Testament testifies to again and again) but to the fact that it was by the power of the Spirit that the human being, Jesus, who was the Son of God from before birth, actually operated. He did what he did because he was God or, if you like, because the power of God was manifested through him. In the synagogue in Nazareth took the Isaiah scroll and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” (Lk 4:18) The whole point was to emphasise that he was sent by God, set apart by God, to perform a task and to do it in the power of the Spirit.

So now we come to us, to John saying we have been anointed. Elsewhere we are told that we are now indwelt by the Spirit (e.g. 1 Cor 3:16) but the emphasis that John now places on this is that we have received the Holy Spirit to set us apart for the task of revealing God (hence the earlier references to revealing His love through who we are and what we do), and to doing it through the enabling and power of the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul said a similar thing: “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” (2 Cor 1:21,22) God has put His Holy Spirit upon us and in us. We live and stand firm by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit.

John is going to say a lot more about this a bit later on in this chapter but for now he just introduces us to the idea. He does it to emphasise how different we are from the antichrists that he has spoken about. They were into deception but we are into truth because we have been anointed by and are indwelt by the Spirit of Truth (Jn 14:17, 15:26, 16:13). Of course John had described Jesus as being “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14) and so if we are expressions of Jesus, we too will be expressions of truth, but we will see more of that in the following verses. For now, let us remind ourselves, we have been set apart by God to represent or reveal Him and to do that by the enabling of the Spirit who he has put within us when we came to Christ. Amen? Amen!

1 John 2: 20,21 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 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.

We have started to touch on the issues raises here in the previous meditation. Now we need to consider more fully the verses together. We considered how John describes us as anointed because we have been called by God and set apart for a task by the imparting of His Holy Spirit upon us and within us.

Now when we speak of God we consider both His being, and His character that is expressed by that being. For instance we have considered many times in these meditations that “God is love” as John himself writes in chapter 4 of this letter. That is who He is in His very essence and we know that because whenever He expresses Himself by word or deed to us, we see it is an expression of love.

Now I say this because we started to consider in the previous meditation that the Holy Spirit is also referred to as the Spirit of Truth. In other words, His very being is truth, everything about Him is truth and so whenever He expresses Himself truth is expressed. Now we have Him indwelling us and so when John says we know the truth, it is not merely that we have access to a certain amount of data, but that we have within us the very epitome of truth, the Holy Spirit of Truth and it is because He is there, we have this assurance, this conviction, that what we know and what we have experienced is the truth. When we became a Christian and God put His Holy Spirit within us, it was His presence who brought us this reassurance – we suddenly ‘knew' that what we had come to believe and what was happening to us was real, it conformed exactly to what is. Never before had we known or experienced such a sense of reality, of newness of being real.

So when John says “you know the truth” he means that we know both Him who is the Truth and we know that all we have been told of the Gospel – our lives, God's love and activity on our behalf – is true. We have intellectual truth but even more we have experiential truth. That is true of every Christian which is why he says, “ all of you know the truth.” Possibly we've never thought about this before or taken note of it, but every one of us who is a Christian has entered this state.

Now here is where it comes to what you may think is the odd part. Normally in the New Testament, one of the apostles when they are writing, writes to teach or inform his readers because there is knowledge that they do not have, but ought to have. In other words, they write because we do not have the truth, but John says the opposite. He starts out by saying, “ I do not write to you because you do not know the truth .” No, he says, it's not because you don't have the truth that I'm writing this to you, but instead “ but because you do know it.” What? You write because we have the truth? So why are you writing if we already have it? He's got the answer: “because no lie comes from the truth.”

What is he saying? If we (and he) are indwelt by the Spirit of Truth, whatever we teach under His inspiration is going to be the truth. Because we have the Spirit of Truth living within us, He will enable us to discern the truth, discern whether what we hear is true or false. When it is false, we may simply find ourselves with an inner disquiet. This is Him conveying to us the truth of what we are hearing. Check it out; check it against what you know of the New Testament teaching. We are not to be constantly looking for “reds under the beds”, i.e. being suspicious of everything and critical of everyone, but we are to be alert to the promptings and warning of the Spirit within us, for He will react against untruth.

So what is John saying in all this? I'm coming to you with teaching that you already know is true, and if you didn't, the Spirit of Truth within you will confirm that this is the true apostolic teaching that conforms to all other of God's word. We need, he implies, to be aware of all we hear, of all that is going on around us, so that we learn to distinguish between truth and lie, truth and deception, truth and wrong teaching. The truth will always conform to the New Testament teaching. Deception twists that teaching and distorts and changes it into something slightly different that becomes something greatly different. You won't hear such things every day, but every now and then you'll hear negative teaching that is a perversion of the truth found in the New Testament. I've found in my Christians walk, that every few years something ‘new' is being spoken out in Christian circles that is not the truth. Beware such things! Check them out and resist them. Don't let them take hold in you or in others around you. Resist them. You DO know the truth!

1 John 2: 22,23 Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist--he denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

John is an upholder of the truth. He has reached old age and probably he is now the only remaining one of the original twelve apostles. The Gospels have been written but time has passed by and the enemy has raised up a variety of forms of Christian truth but which are not the truth; they are heresies. There is a battle going on and John still wants to play a part in it. He has declared that he is an eyewitness to the Son of God (1:1-4), he has reminded us that there is a difference between light and darkness and that affects our behaviour as Christians (1:5-7) , he has reminded us that confession and forgiveness are at the heart of our faith (1:8-10), he has reminded us that Jesus is there interceding for us when we get it wrong (2:1,2), but he has challenged us to realise that obedience is at the heart of faith (2:3-6). This obedience is vital and is an expression of our love for God (2:7-11). As spiritual children, fathers and young men, we've experienced God and His love in a variety of ways, which act as anchors for us. (2:12-14) The ways of the world are foreign to us (2:15-17) but they are expressed in those who are anti-Christ in this world who distort the truth (2:18,19). Yet we Christians have received the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth and so we will know and hold to the truth (2:20,21)

In all of this John is battling against the enemy who seeks to destroy the truth, and John does it by declaring boldly the truth and encouraging us in it. When there are disagreements over principles, doctrine or truth, accusations are made, challenges are brought. Who IS the one speaking the truth? If two people declare opposite ‘truths' one of them must be wrong. It is in this vein that John now speaks.

“Who is the liar?” This isn't being unkind but someone in such a situation is not telling the truth, i.e. they are lying about the truth, they are wrong! So in this climate, where new versions of the truth are springing up all over the place, who is speaking the truth and who is telling lies? John's standard of measurement, in this latter area at least is, “ It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ.” If you have some theologian or philosopher who denies that Jesus is the Christ, the One sent by the Father to redeem the world, then he is the liar. He is not speaking what is truth. He denies what is true. Be quite clear, there were such men around at that time and they had started in the church and now they were declaring that Jesus was a mere man and that the incarnation had never occurred.

If you didn't take it in the first time, he repeats it in another form: “Such a man is the antichrist--he denies the Father and the Son.” Yes, he's also referred to many anti-christs coming and he simply means anyone who is against Christ. If you deny Jesus is the Christ, the messiah, the anointed one of God, then you are against Christ – you are an anti-christ – and, says John, you therefore deny God as well as the Son.

In his second letter John says the same thing: “Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.” (2 Jn 8,9) Do you see in both letters the link between Father and Son? Jesus came so clearly revealing the Father that if you deny that Jesus is the Son of God, you also deny who God is. Now we may take for granted who God is as revealed in the Bible but if you investigate other world religions you will find that their ‘God' is portrayed very differently.

The whole point of Jesus coming was twofold: to reveal the Father and to redeem the world. Of the former task, Jesus declared, “the very work that the Father has given me to finish, and which I am doing, testifies that the Father has sent me,” (Jn 5:36) and “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father,” (Jn 10:32) and “Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, `I am God's Son'? Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” (Jn 10:36-38) Again and again Jesus explains that he has come to reveal the Father through the things he does, and these things in turn testify to who Jesus is.

It is a hard hearted person who can read the Gospels with an open mind and not marvel at who Jesus is and at the things he did, and subsequently see who the Father is and what He is like.

When you come to that place of seeing and realizing who Jesus truly is, then you come to a place of calling on the Father, and out of that comes the relationship that Jesus died to bring. Thus it is that John can then say, “ whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.” The Father and Son are inextricably tied together. This is the truth that John declares and anyone who says to the contrary, he says, is a liar. Strong words but needed to counter the distortions of thinking that were coming about then, and which still appear today!

1 John 2: 24,25 See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us--even eternal life.

Remember the context: John is encouraging the believers to resist the deception of lies and distorted teaching that was arising in the first century. He has reminded them that they have the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, who has both anointed them and indwelt them, and He will help them remain in the truth. But the fact is that we as individual believers still have free will and we can make choices and we can choose how we will live. We can choose to be Christ-like in attitude, in word and in action. We can choose to obey God's commands. Choice still plays a large part in our lives. We can choose to pray – or not. We can choose to read the Bible – or not. We can choose to go to church – or not. We can choose to worship – or not. We can choose to be a witness – or not. Oh yes, at every turn the choices are ours and God will not force us. It is a mystery why one person chooses to be all out for God and another chooses to be half-hearted (yes, we even choose that.)

The New Testament is full of instructions that require us to make a response. Again and again we see such instructions and we should imagine them having the word ‘You' in front of them. For example, “(You) Be joyful always; (you) pray continually; (you) give thanks in all circumstances.” (1 Thess 5:18) That would remind us that such instructions are written to us individually and individually we need to respond to them.

Thus now, we find John giving such an instruction that we might render, “(You) See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you.” Another way of putting that might be to say, hang on to all you have heard of the Gospel and of the apostolic teaching, and make sure it genuinely remains the expression of the active outworking of your lives.

This sounds such a simple exhortation, yet it is such a fundamental and important one. To the church at Ephesus , the first of the seven churches in Revelation 2 & 3, Jesus declared, “You have forsaken your first love.” (Rev 2:4) They were no longer what they once were. This happens because we change our thinking. The word ceases to be alive to us as it once was. We no longer hold to the truths we were taught as young Christians and are more laid back in our appreciation of them. In such ways we fail to hang on and ensure we hold to what we “have heard from the beginning,” so that no longer does it remain in us in the same way. It is so easy, as we see the passing of years, to let this happen. It is a vital call that John brings here, one that we all need to heed. So, let's ask the question: are we ensuring that what we have heard from the beginning still remains in us? Is it alive and as vibrant as it was when we first received it?

John then says something which is seriously challenging: “If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father.” The implication is that if we don't hold on to the truth we don't remain “in the Son and in the Father.” Put aside arguments about whether or not you can lose your salvation, is it possible for you and me to lose contact with Jesus and with the Father, and thus cease to commune with them? I believe the answer is undoubtedly yes. How many people that you come across, started out so strongly and were wonderful examples of all-out-for-God committed Christians, yet as the years passed, times with God early in the morning got squeezed out with the busyness of life and awareness of the Lord's presence faded? I am not pronouncing on your eternal destiny but I am asking about the reality of our daily walk with the Lord? Is it still like it once was? The most terrible of the indictments of the seven churches of Asia Minor, was that of Laodicea : “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!” (Rev 3:15)

Half-heartedness is the greatest bane that can settle on the Church. It is so easy to let it settle on you in this materialistic age, in this age that is so busy and active. It is so easy to let it settle when we start getting jaded with modern church life that so often lacks reality. How easy it is to become cynical and then we step back and instead of letting our feelings stir us to challenge the church and the world, we let them neutralize us and we become ineffective, church life becomes repetitiously boring, and the world is untouched by us.

John has something more to add: “And this is what he promised us--even eternal life.” When the true life is flowing in us it is eternal life, it is the very life of Jesus, of his Holy Spirit, and that life brings life and activity that is not merely following rules or performing rituals, it is responding to the prompting and energizing of the Spirit within. This goes with the thoughts about communing with the Son and the Father. When we commune with them, we are open to them and the Spirit is able to energise, guide and direct us. THAT is life.

1 John 2: 28 And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.

John has, in this letter, been encouraging the church to stand firm in the truth, obeying God's commands, expressing God's love, resisting the spirit of the world and the distorted ‘truths' of those who have left the truth and formed their own doctrines that were different from the apostles' teaching. Above all he has been encouraging them to stand firm in their relationship with the Lord, fellowshipping with the Father and the Son. The Christian faith is to be a mix of responding to the will of God as revealed in His word, and responding to His will, as the Holy Spirit prompts, energises and guides and teaches us. This latter element comes out of the fellowship with have with the indwelling Spirit, the presence of God within us.

Now it is that John gives us another reason to hang on in there, resisting the world, sin and the enemy. We will never know when Jesus is coming back but we must always be ready for it. Let's just focus on his Second Coming for a moment.

In his general teaching Jesus told a parable about the owner of a vineyard who went away, had dealings from a distance with the tenants he left in charge of the vineyard, but then eventually returned (see Mt 21:33-41) But he also taught more specifically about it: “as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man," (Mt 24:27) and “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory,” (Mt 24:30) and “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory.” (Mt 25:31) The same thing was stated very explicitly by the two angels when Jesus ascended: “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11)

It was also taught by the early church, for example, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God,” (1 Thess 4:16) which is in the context of Jesus' words about his coming again. In his second letter he also wrote, “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come.” (2 Thess 2:1,2)

So John is speaking into familiar teaching: Jesus will come back – so when he does, ensure you live in the way I have been speaking about “so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him.” It is very similar teaching to that of Jesus when he said on one occasion, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Lk 18:8) Living in this fallen world is often confusing. Things happen and we wonder why. Things go wrong, people get ill, have accidents, even die and we wonder why. Injustice occurs and we wonder where God is. People come with strange teaching and confusion hangs in the air. The fact of the matter is that God is working in His world all the time but often it is not possible for us, it seems, to discern what He is doing. Do you remember Jesus said, “My Father is always at his work to this very day,” (Jn 5:17) and of course the apostle Paul wrote, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,” (Rom 8:28) which suggests that the Lord is always working on our behalf. But the truth is that we may not be able to see what He seems to be doing in our circumstances sometimes. So all around us things happen which often involve us, and the big question always is, how will I respond to this? If Jesus returned in the middle of these trying circumstances, how would he find us acting? Will he find us holding on in faith, refusing to give way and live like the rest of the world, grumbling and being all out for self, or will he find us doing the things the Spirit has been leading us to do?

I'm not sure if it is a good illustration but it comes to mind in this context. One of the funniest examples of being caught out by Jesus when he turns up occurs in John 21 when the disciples had been told by Jesus to go to Galilee and wait for him there. So they go and they wait … and wait… until eventually impatient Peter says, “I'm going out to fish .” (Jn 21:3) Some of the others join him and they spend the night catching nothing. Come the morning Jesus appears on the shore and tells then to throw the net out on the other side and they catch a great haul. When they get to the shore they find that Jesus has already made a fire and he's already cooking fish!!! Jesus calmly instructs them to pull their catch in and come and eat and it is not until after the meal that he helps Peter confront his recent past.

What I like about that illustration is that he didn't chide them for their impatience but instead he blessed them with a big catch and then fed them. Will Jesus find me doing my own fishing – or his fishing, when he returns? I hope it will be doing his works but I'm sufficiently aware of my own shortcomings that I have to say that I know it will need to be with his grace. May we be “confident and unashamed” when he returns!

1 John 2: 29 If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him

In John's writings, a number of times he shows that he is not only concerned for the Christians that they will know and live in the truth, but also that they will be discerning towards one another and towards others. Because the Christian life is not a life of isolation but a life all about relationships, it is important that we understand the truth that John has been speaking about, not only in relation to ourselves, but also in relation to others. The present verse is one of those that provides a generalisation that applies to others and enables us to assess them in relation to God, Jesus and the Church.

He starts out by considering God Himself: “If you know that he is righteous.” Because this is a meditation we can reflect on this in a wider way. Do we know that God is righteous? There are many who have doubts about God when things go badly in life. Is this the work of a capricious, spiteful God, is what we would like to ask if we were able to be honest?

Now ‘righteous' simply means right acting or right behaving, and of course before that come right thinking and right speaking. If God is righteous then everything He thinks, says or does is right. Now this is a massive theological and philosophical pond to be swimming around in. If some action is right, what does that actually mean? Well the only way to make sense of it is to see it in a Biblical context and suggest that ‘right' behaviour is behaviour that conforms to the way the Designer-Creator has designed us to ‘work' so that we work best, so that we don't breakdown, self-harm or harm others.

Now we can only come to that conclusion when we also observe the Bible teaches that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8,16) and love always looks for the best for another. God's design for us before the Fall, must surely be that He has made us to enjoy being, to live in peace and harmony and to be safe and secure and free from self-harm and harm of others. Of course the Fall has changed that and sin-led humanity now acts in a self-centred and godless manner with little thought for the consequences. But that was not how God designed us to live.

So if God is righteous, we know that everything He thinks, says, and does will be right. I genuinely believe that, if when we get to heaven, God allows us full access to all knowledge so that we can fully see and understand everything that has gone on, we will never be able to criticise Him for anything that has happened in existence.

So let's check out what the Bible says about this. Before he died, Moses prophesied about Gad, “he carried out the LORD's righteous will,” (Deut 33:21). So God's will or intent is always right. Deborah and Barak sang of those who sang, saying, “They recite the righteous acts of the LORD.” (Judg 5:11) i.e. God's deeds are right. Samuel challenged the people, “I am going to confront you with evidence before the LORD as to all the righteous acts performed by the LORD for you and your fathers.” (1 Sam 12:7) He was saying that they could never blame God for anything in their history because everything that God had done was right. Even after the Exile, Ezra the scribe declared, “O LORD, God of Israel, you are righteous!” (Ezra 9:15) Likewise other leaders after the Exile, also looking back in their history, declared of the Lord, “You have kept your promise because you are righteous.” (Neh 9:8) Thus again and again, the testimony of Israel, in light of their history, was that God did all thing right.

Now all that is really just the preliminary part of what John is saying. God is the arbiter of what is right and anyone who (genuinely) does what is right, must be someone born of God. The key is the phrase, “what is right”. We said earlier that ‘righteous' refers to living according to the Design of God, the Creator. We also said that humans lost that ability with the Fall, and so anyone who has been restored to living according to the Design of the Designer, has to be someone who has encountered God and who has been born again of His Holy Spirit. It is, in fact, only by living according to God's commands (that John spoke of earlier) and under the direction of the Holy Spirit, will anyone live in any way that could possibly be called ‘righteous'.

So, if you look around you and see people who are clearly living according to God's word and are clearly being led by God's Spirit, i.e. righteously, these people are obviously ‘born again', born of God. Remember John picked up this concept of being ‘born of God' in his Gospel: “children of God-- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God ,” (Jn 1:12,13) and “no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again…. no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” (Jn 3:3,5). Thus, to conclude, you see people living out the will of God? They are the Christians, made new by God! Conversely you want to know who are genuine Christians? They are the ones living out the will of God by obeying His commands and responding to His Spirit. Simple, isn't it!

1 John 3: 1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

We have considered this earlier in this letter but it does bear considering again more fully. The focus is on us being ‘children of God'. Now nine times in this little letter John addresses us, the readers, as “Dear children”. This is simply, first of all, a sign of his elderly, fatherly, pastoral heart. Godly fathers look on their children with concern and affection. They understand what it means to very young. A good father doesn't expect too much of its child. It knows the child is immature, he knows the child is subject to childish irresponsibility. He is aware of what it means to be a child and a good father is there to protect and provide. Bear all this in mind when you think of God as our Father.

But, beyond that, he also speaks of us as children of God, which is a far bigger thing. It will occur again later in the letter but for now he simply stamps this designation on us. Isn't it wonderful, he says, that we should be called children of God. I have a feeling if we said to our next door, unbelieving neighbour, “I am a child of God,” they would think negative things about us – but that IS the truth. Yet there is that division between our unbelieving neighbour and us; it's just that we don't like to accentuate it with such words.

Yet this is the thrust of these words in this verse, that it is wonderful being a child of God and it reveals to us how wonderful God's love is that we should be so called. The apostle Paul helps us realise how wonderful it is by first focusing on what we once were: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” (Eph 2:1-3) That's what we were like before God rescued us. We were spiritually dead, living out a life characterized by transgressing, breaking or ignoring God's law, and therefore full of sins, a prey to the wiles, directions and temptations of the evil one, who was encouraging our disobedience, encouraging us to just focus on our own personal desires with little thought of the consequences. That was the mess that we were in previously.

Then Paul says similar things to John: “because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ… raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2:4-7) There you are, that's what God did – He made us spiritually alive, gave the experience of the heavenly realms so that He could go on and on, throughout our lives here on this earth, pouring out His blessings on us.

And why did He do it? It was His great love and mercy. As John says, He lavished it on us. ‘Lavished' is a very descriptive word. It means He poured it out in great abundance on us. There was nothing skimpy about God's salvation. It fully dealt with all our sins, it fully cleansed us from the effects of them all, it put His Holy Spirit within us, it called us children of God and sons of God and friends of God, and it entered us on a course of blessing that would continue on throughout our time here on earth. It would mean that again and again God would forgive us our individual failures, again and again He would pick us up and restore us to Himself, again and again He would take us and use us again, and give us the joy of working within His master plan. And why? Because He loves us! It is that simple! Amazing!

But as we pointed out earlier, by the very nature of all of that, it provides a chasm between us and our unbelieving neighbours: “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” Unless the Holy Spirit is working in them, drawing them to Himself, when we try to share these things with them, they look at us wondering whatever we are going on about. They may feel we are weird or freaky, certainly strange, and we show them up, for we have something they don't have: peace, assurance and joy. Our unbelieving neighbours struggle on, often pretending they are coping, but stress, tension, opposition, anger, frustration, upset, hostility etc. etc. are words that describe their lives – just as previously they described our lives. But they don't know, they haven't ever come to Him in surrender and so both He and we are strangers to them.

But at some point we came to the end of ourselves and surrendered to Him and suddenly there was a transformation. If we were part of an unbelieving family, as many of us were, we sensed a division between us and other members of our family who just thought we had ‘gone religious'. None of this is intended to put them down, but it just shows the reality of the wonder of what we have now received and what they haven't received. The truth is, of course, that it is there to be taken and received by them if they will heed Him, but for the moment, so often, that isn't happening yet, and we have to learn to live with a new grace that still loves them and accepts them as they are, as we wait for God to do what only He can do, by drawing them, helping them question and face what they are and what they have, and be dissatisfied with it, until they too can come to the point where they say, “I believe, please forgive me, please make me anew, please take my life and lead it from now on.” Then, and only then, will the gulf between us be removed. Pray for that!