Summary of passage: Believers are children of God and unbelievers do not know us because they don’t know God. When Jesus appears again we shall be like him. Jesus takes away our sin and if we live in him, we do not continue to sin. If you do what’s right, you will be righteous. Jesus appeared to destroy the devil’s work. If you do what’s right, you are children of God. Love your brother. The world hates you because of this love.
Jesus sacrificed his life for us, defining love. Love with actions and truth. If we obey God’s commands and do what pleases him, He will give us anything we ask for. He commands us to believe in his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another. If we obey his commands, He lives in us through the Holy Spirit.
Spirits that acknowledge Jesus is God in the flesh are true; all others are false. God is greater than the devil.
Questions:
9) Personal Question. My answer: We are God’s children. God has purified us, taking away our sins permanently.
10) Personal Question. My answer: Love is life. Anyone who loves one another is of God. Jesus defined love by laying down his life for us. So we are to do for others with actions and truth. God commands us to love one another and if we do, the Spirit will guide us and give us all we ask.
11) Just that: That Jesus is God’s Son in the flesh. That he came down in human form. That he is God. That he took away our sins with his blood. Many religions now and then doubted either Jesus was human or Jesus was God’s Son. To do so is to die eternally. Gnostics, a popular religious movement at the time, taught Jesus was not human. They denied a pure God could take on a physical body, which they believed to be intrinsically evil. This led to immoral living as Gnostics believed they could not be tainted by earthly sins. John is emphasizing this point. Jesus is God in the flesh. Period. Believe it or die.
Conclusions: Wow! A ton here! Good job to BSF for bringing it all out. Love one another is a command from God no matter how hard it is. Love defeats all. Actions speak louder than words. Love with deeds. And believe Jesus is real. If you do these two simple things (believe in Jesus Christ and love one another) we will walk with God by the Holy Spirit, receive whatever we ask, and live forever with Him. Awesome!
End Notes: John is asking for us to just pause and ponder the great love the Father (God) has for His children (believers). NOTE: We have more than Adam ever possessed albeit he walked with God. It is an error to think of redemption as a restoration of Adam; it’s much more than that! Christians are strangers to the world and should expect to be treated as Jesus was. We cannot be like the world no matter how hard we try.
God’s ultimate goal in our lives is to make us like Jesus, and here, John speaks of the fulfillment of that purpose. We will never succeed in being like Jesus on this side of heaven; this will only be fulfilled when we get there or when Jesus comes. Those who don’t want to be like Jesus get what they want: they go to hell.
We will see God! Can you imagine? What makes heaven heaven is God’s presence–not our loved ones, the streets paved in gold, or angels.
Our hope is in Him as we strive to be more like Jesus here on earth.
Sin is a disregard for God. Jesus is here to take away our sin.
Verse 6: According to the verb tense John uses, “does not sin” means does not live a life style of habitual sin. John has already told us in 1 John 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. In 1 John 1:8, the grammar indicates John is speaking about occasional acts of sin. The grammar of 1 John 3:6 indicates that John is speaking of a settled, continued lifestyle of sin. John is not teaching here the possibility of sinless perfection, which is impossible.
You don’t know Jesus if you are living a lifestyle of sin. How do you react when you sin? Are you repentant? Or indifferent to where you keep on sinning? This is a good question to ask ourselves when we sin.
Do not excuse your sin. Confess it so it won’t be a lifestyle.
Righteous is right standing with God. Perpetual sinners are of Satan.
1 John 3:5: Jesus came to take away our sins.
1 John 3:8: Jesus came to destroy the devil. If we have Jesus, we have no need to fear the devil. In fact, the devil fears us because our walk with Jesus destroys the devil’s works.
Here we see where “born again” came from in verse 9. A change comes over us as we obey Christ and bury sin.
You are either a child of God or a child of the devil. You either do right and love your brother or you do wrong and hate your brother. Period.
It’s not just about you. It’s about your love for others as well.
If you have faith in God, love Christians, and are righteous, you are a true Christian.
What is love? The ancient Greeks had 4 words for 4 different types of love:
1)Eros was one word for love. It described, as we might guess from the word itself, erotic love. It referred to sexual love.
2) Storge was the second word for love. It referred to family love, the kind of love there is between a parent and child, or between family members in general.
3) Philia is the third word for love. It spoke of a brotherly friendship and affection. It is the love of deep friendship and partnership. Philia love might be described as the highest love that one is capable of without God’s help.
4) Agape is the fourth word for love. It described a love that loves without changing. It is a self-giving love that gives without demanding or expecting re-payment. It is love so great that it can be given to the unlovable or unappealing. It is love that loves even when it is rejected. Agape love gives and loves because it wants to; it does not demand or expect repayment from the love given – it gives because it loves, it does not love in order to receive.
The epitome of love is Jesus’s death on the cross, removing our sins from us. Loving other Christians in a sacrificial manner is what John is saying here. Say no to your life to let others live. It’s an action.
This is not one, big sacrificial moment like in Jesus’ case. For most of us, God calls us to lay down our lives piece by piece, little by little in small, but important ways every day.
When we love others, we are assured and God knows us. We experience answered prayer. We are so in tune and fellowship with God that we ask for what is on God’s heart, not on ours. This is when we receive. Thy will be done. Those things that please God. Ask yourself how much do you do to please yourself? How much do you do to please God? God is glorified when we enjoy His goodness and His good things.
Verse 23 is one commandment: Believe in Jesus and love Christians. To believe in the name of Jesus means to trust in Him, rely on Him, and cling to Jesus. It isn’t about intellectual knowledge or understanding, it is about trust. John will develop the first part in 4:1-6 and the second part in 4:7-12.
Knowing that Jesus is in us is having the Holy Spirit. Someone who loves God should act like it. Period.
John talks much about the devil here in this short letter. He is called the devil and the evil one. He has been sinning from the beginning. He is the instigator of human sin and those who continue to sin belong to him and are his children. He is in the world and has the whole world of unbelievers under his control. He cannot lay hold of believers to harm them. In fact, Christians will overcome him and destroy his work.
1 John 4 starts with a warning: beware of false prophets and test them. See if what they say lines up with what God says. Their words. Their actions. God will never contradict Himself, which is His word.
In John’s day, the issue was about if Jesus had truly come in a real body of flesh and blood. Many Gnostic-influenced teachers said that Jesus, being God, could not have actually become a flesh and blood human being, because God could have no partnership with “impure” material stuff.
Docetism also taught that Christ was a spirit. Cerinthians taught that the divine Christ came upon the human Jesus at his baptism and then left him at the cross so that it was only the man Jesus who died.
Many today deny that Jesus is really God (such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and Muslims). But way back in John’s day, in this time closest to the actual life and ministry of Jesus on this earth, people didn’t have a hard time believing Jesus was God. They had a hard time believing that he was a real man. This false teaching said Jesus was truly God (which is correct), but really a “make-believe” man.
The antichrist both opposes Jesus and comes as a substitute. He does not want you to believe in the true Jesus. The Holy Spirit inside of us is greater than Satan and will over come him. We have nothing to fear.
John uses the simplest language (barely 300 different Greek words) to express the Gospel, using contrasts to help us understand.
