Overcoming Falsehood by Incarnating the Love of God

I John 4: 1-6

John was addressing those in Ephesus who were claiming to have grace and continuing in darkness. There was incompatibility between the men and the message. He wanted to decrease the influence of the false teachers by increasing the integrity of the testimony. How would that happen? By redirecting their focus back to Jesus and confronting their deviant theology. First he established the incarnation principle, and second he established the implication of incarnating power.

The incarnation of the Messiah: Jesus has come in the flesh. This is the indicator that the Spirit of God was highlighting. Believing this identifies the true believer. Those who reject that Jesus is from God has been influenced by the antichrist.

John continues to distinguish the Christian by the love for God and others. No love for God means no life from God. Can people love people without loving God? Sure, but it will so different that love that springs from forgiveness, grace, healing and reconciliation. His love initiates. His love is the source of my love. His love is far greater than my love.

If we love one another, love abides. We love because he has given of His spirit. His spirit tells us that God has sent His son. And we believe that God has sent his son to be the Savior of the world. Confessing this theology, that jesus is the Son of God leads to abiding in Him. We have come to know, to believe, and to abide in His love.

He is love is perfected in us and therefore we can overcome the influence of the misdirected, the shame of guilt in judgement, and be the influence on others in the world because as He is, so also are we in the world. Our influence is to remove the fear of punishment. How. We focus on Jesus. We love because he first loved us. Therefore the fellowship is enriched because we should following His command to be loving the brothers.

By defining the categories, John clearly affirms the identity, and enables the disciples to stand up to test the false spirits in the world.

Questions for reflection:

Questions that every believer should answer from I John

In this letter, John addresses ten major questions that each of us need to address if we are to be authentic, genuine, and sincere. Those ten substantial questions are:

1. Who is a true child of God?

2. How are we to think about the riddle of sin?

3. What does it mean to know God?

4. What does it mean to be part of the family of God?

5. What changes can we expect to occur as a believer?

6. What are the essential questions on the spirituality test?

7. How to recognize the work of the devil and overcome his plan to use worldly influences to weaken our love for the Father?

8. What does agape love look like?

9. Who are the characteristics of the false teachers and teaching?

10. What does it mean to have a community that is a testimony to Jesus

Comments about I JN 3 questions

Steven Brookfield said that the most important knowledge teachers need to do good work is a knowledge of how students are experiencing learning and perceiving their teacher's actions. The apostle John must have been paying close attention to the men and women in Ephesus when he addressed them in this chapter. Here are some questions for reflection. Can you answer these questions from the text?

1. How are you experiencing the love of God?

2. What are the blocks for you that keep you enjoying more of God's love?

3. What did John want them to understand about their new fellowship with God?

4. Imagine John asking - What did you learn from my life and testimony?

5. What could John pass on from his experience othat would help them walk with the Lord?

6. What beliefs and understanding would the believers need to act upon in order to overcome the draw to fellowship with the world?

6. What manner of life would they have if they followed John's teaching?

7. What manner of life would they have if they followed the world's influence?

8. How does one unlearn the habits of darkness and replace them with desires for light, holiness, righteousness and an abiding loyalty to Christ?

9. How do you help someone who is leaving the world's system to become comfortable with others who have little experience and empathy with the world's system?

10. How does a community of believers learn to be gracious and nonjudgmental to sinners help coming out of their darkness.

I believe that John was teaching the believers about the love of God so that they would be so responsive to life in Christ and then turn away from their former lives which was based solely on participation in the worldly systems of their cultures.

By emphasizing the great love of God, the believers would find a whole new orientation and reference point for life and relationships. John is establishing a whole new way of living above the world by drawing out the implications of the depth of God's love for those who follow Christ.

John was not all that concerned about competing with the worldly system as much as he was caught up helping believers understand and manifest the new life that we have in Christ. He used the problems of the world as discipling moments to contrast and highlight the privileges new believers can have in Christ.

By being caught up in the love of God the temptation to be caught up in the world would naturally lose its hold on people.

How can that be? John shines the light on the world system and informs them that the world

• does not know them. 3:1
• care about them. Indeed, the world really hates them. 3: 13
• wants us to conform ourselves to its values and beliefs. 2:15,16 (Romans 12:2)
• does not care about the level of sin and darkness. v
• is influenced by the devil. 3:8
• uses deception to keep its own, 3:26
• when deceivers cannot win over people, they walk away 18-20. Why because they do have something that is worth more that the value of knowing Christ.

The evil one tries to overcomes them, but finds the believers overcoming him. I wonder what that evil one learned about messing the Christians? 2:13, 4:4,5

Believers in addition, overcome their previous worldy tendencies through the Holy Spirit. vs. 20 and learn to walk in the light and find joy in fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Spirit and the saints. the world can not compete.

Think for a minute about the world's pull in your life.

What helps us to reduce the pull of the world?

What helps us to reduce the lust of the flesh,

What helps to deal with the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life?

John is laying out His answer. By increasing our enjoyment of the wonder of God's great love and by identifying ourselves with the life to be found in His Son. v5 we escape from the fellowship with the world. We not only escape it, we overcome it because He cahnges our desires. We do not want to be like we formerly were. But we all want to be as He was in the world. As we abide in Him, our desires grow and change. The old desires pass away and new desires become a new reality for us.

The world has its own culture and langauge. They speak from the world 4:5 and the world listens to them. Likewise the Kingdom of God has its own culture and language. Christians speak with the language of grace and love and those who are in fellowship with light listen to them.

But He is not just the savior for Christians. John declares that we are to see Him as Savior for the whole world. And whatever is born of God overcomes the world.

Our faith overcomes the world. He has good news for everyone in the world of darkness. They can change!

John's concern is that his disciples would not be drawn into fellowship with the world and miss out on the greater joy that was theirs in Christ. The fellowship with the world promised an illusion, a caricature of true fellowship. The world offered a place where one could meet with others and stay in the darkness and carry on their dark and sinful habits; the fellowship would also be a temporary one and would pass away. The dark fellowship of the world blinds the eyes to deal with the hatred in the heart and instead maintains the character problems (like hatred) that cause other people to stumble. Their relationships break down because of these stumbling blocks that are brought into the relationships.

Here John affirms that our allegiance is no longer tied to the world, but we are now to consider ourselves as Children of God. We are in Him. We are to abide in Him. We practice righteousness because of Him. We love our brother because of Him. We overcome the world because He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.

The Lord knows how to transform us from the kingdom of darkness and deliver us into the kingdom of light. This is what John wanted for those men and women. this is what God wants for me and you.

Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. John 16:33