"For all the law
is fulfilled in one word,
even in this: 'You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.'"
Galations 5:14
********************
Good morning all, let's seek the Lord......
"Holy Father God our Lord and Savior. Thank You, Father, for Your mercy and grace in giving us the First Epistle of John so that we may know that we have eternal life. Thank You that we can know how to please You and that we are Your children.
I ask forgiveness of my sins this day and ask for Your cleansing. I pray that You will renew my mind through Your word and cleanse me with Your blood. I pray that You will renew my and give me a clean pure heart like Yours, Lord, that I may serve You.
I pray for each lady reading this study today. I lift her up to you in prayer. I ask that she be filled with the knowledge of Your will for her life in all wisdom and spiritual understanding (Col. 1:9-14) and that she would walk worthy of You. I pray that together we will be partakers of Your divine nature (2 Pet 1:1) and partakers of Your holiness (Heb 12:8).
In Jesus name.....amen."
********************
In our last study together, we finished looking at the first 3 verses in chapter 3 which dealt with assurance of our inheritance through Jesus Christ. These verses end with a statement of our purity: that if we hope in the revealing of Jesus, then we purify ourselves just as He is pure. Now we segue to what that purity entails....
1 John 3:4
"Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness."
John puts it very succinctly and bluntly: sin is lawlessness.
By ending the beginning of this "sin chapter" with the hope of purity, John now leads his readers into what true righteousness is in Christ: being pure as He is pure. We cannot know what purity is until our sin is dealt with.
Earlier, we looked at the many different Hebrew words and some Greek words that defined "sin" in scripture. John wants us to know the seriousness of sin so much so that he repeats it several times in this chapter alone and leads us into what love truly is. But first, let's look deeper into what living as a true believer means. Remember, John wrote First John to warn his fellow believers about the Gnostics and other false teachers. He wanted his beloved friends to be able to look at how these false teachers lived and know they were not true believers in Christ.
Please read:
1 John 1: 6
If we say that we are followers of Christ but do not live by the standards of the Bible, then we are liars. God's truth, His word, is not in us.
John deals first with the seriousness of sin: the nature of sin and then the origin of sin.
Remember how we looked at the origin of sin: Satan.
Now think about the nature of sin.
John begins with, "Whoever commits sin commits lawlessness...." It is in our very nature to sin since the Fall of man. We cannot NOT sin. It is within us to lie, cheat, steal, and kill.
As my son's science teacher introduced the teachings of evolution to her class, she made the point that all humans are animals. We are no different that all the animals. This bothered my son. I explained how his teacher was wrong because we are separate from the animals by one thing: moral law.
God gave us the ability to abide by moral law. Animals have no morals. If we were truly like the animals, then rape should not be against the law since animals rape each other constantly. Murder should not be against the law either since animals kill one another all the time.
Moral Law
Rom 13:8-10
How do we fulfill the law of God?
Matt 7:12 & 22:39-40
Lev 19:18
God gave us these commandments for a very important reason: protection.
Humans took the idea and created laws for themselves called the Code of Hammurabi.
Enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, this code contains many laws against crimes and suggested punishments for said crimes. Written in 1870 B.C., these laws were respected and followed his people. (Wikipedia, 2008)
But what separates these laws from the Lord's law is this: the Code of Hammurabi only protects man from man. But the Lord's laws protect man from God as well. This is what makes God's laws so perfect: by following them, we can have presence with God.
Gal 5:14
It's All Greek to Me!
The Greek words used in the New Testament for sin are:
Hamartia- this word means missing the mark.
Adikia- this means iniquity or unrighteousness and is found in Ro 1:18 & 29 as well as Luke 16:8
Paraptomah- this means an offense done outside the bounds of God.
Anomia- this word means transgression of the law (having no law).
(The Epistles of John, 2006. pp. 122-123)
All sin is anti-God. Only faith in Jesis can remove sin and remove the desire to sin from His children. There is nothing we can do to stop sin.
Ro 3:9-11
1 Kings 8:46
Ps 10:4
Ps 14:1-3
Ps 53: 1-3
Prov 20:9
Ecc 7:20
God is the Lawgiver so when we transgress the law, we are transgressing Him. We commit treason to God.
Ro 3:21-26
But there is that hope: through faith in Jesus Christ we have redemption. All have sinned, but we have been justified by His grace and redeemed.
This is the message that John wants us to know!
2 John 4-6
He rejoiced that there were still some walking among the false teachers who held true to the faith. They were obeying the commandment to love one another. Praise God.
**********************
2 John 8
As we read further into this chapter, we will look deeper into what sin is and what it does to the believer. We have to remember what sin is and what the hope in the Lord is. We can no longer be slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness in Christ:
Rom 6:17-23
So now, Paul commands us to present ourselves as slaves of righteousness for holiness because now we are free and we have the fruit of holiness and everlasting life awaiting us. Amen.
***********************
Life Application
Please read:
John 8:42-47
"He who is of God hears God's words...."
Jesus, speaking to the Pharisees, tells them that they are not able to listen to His words because they are not of the Father. Only God can give us the ability to hear His words....to understand what Jesus is saying.....and to obey those words.
Ladies, if you are reading God's word and are understanding it, stop and praise Him today because He has opened your eyes and your ears to His understanding.
Col 1:9-14
This is my prayer for you: that you will be filled with the knowledge of His will in wisdom and spiritual understanding that you may grow more and more in Him. This is what I pray for myself as well. To know God is to have wisdom and true understanding.
As we walk today, pray that He will continue to reveal more and more about Himself to You through this study of His word. As we learned last time, we are partakers of His inheritance! We are now called Children of God!
As we learn more about sin, we need to constantly live in the hope of His coming. That one day soon we will see Him as He is and we will be like Him......this one HOPE will purify us for that day. Just as He is pure.
I pray that today we all will walk worthy of the Lord.
***********************
Until next time.....
"Christ bears the stroke of justice, and the course of the law falls fully on Him. Christ bears all the vengeance that belongs to the sin that has been committed by him, and there is no need of its being borne twice over. His temporal sufferings by reasons of the infinite dignity of His person, are fully equivalent to the eternal sufferings of a mere creature. And then His sufferings answer for him who flees to Him as well as if they were his own, for indeed they are his own by virtue of the union between Christ and him. Christ has made Himself one with them."
-Jonathan Edwards 1703-1758 (Altogether Lovely, 1997, p. 87)
Blessings,
Ruth
No comments:
Post a Comment