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• Overview posted last night

The author is never stated, but it is obvious. 🧐

Verse 1:That which was from the beginning….⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. ⁷ 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.

Sound familiar?  Look back to his book: John (Gospel):

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

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Chapter 1-sets the stage for the rest of John’s letter. The concepts of truth vs. falsehood, light vs. darkness, and rightness vs. self-deception are spoken throughout the book. John was an eyewitness to Jesus (see overview).   The book dives right in with how serious this subject is.

You may notice the phrase “If we proclaim…” these are the rebuttals to the false teaching that is being spoken.

• If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness,
• If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
• If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar, and his word is not in us.
• If anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness.
• If anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going because the darkness has blinded them

Chapter 2:

²¹ 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. ²² Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.

This verse spoke dearly to me:

²⁶ I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray.

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I know some of you are in catch-up mode, so I will keep this short (ish).  It can be confusing when you read a chapter like this to think that we aren’t measuring up.  I read it at first and thought, “Good Grief! “I am from the devil!!  Such as:

⁶ No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

⁷ Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. ⁸ The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. ⁹ No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. ¹⁰ This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

I am not trying to “free you up,” but reflect on this :

¹⁸ Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

¹⁹ This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰ If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹ Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²² and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. ²³ And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴ The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

 

“If”- you are under conviction of the Holy Spirit and repent….  Something to reflect on.  Or do you keep sinning?

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 I just read chapters 4 and 5, and my head exploded.  Did yours??  If you ever don’t know what to read in 2022- put your bookmark at chapter 4 and just sit quietly and read it.

I would LOVE to just study 1 John verse by verse one day.