Please Show Me!

 Psalm 119: 1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
    who walk in the law of the Lord!
2 Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
    who seek him with their whole heart,
3 who also do no wrong,
    but walk in his ways!

9 How can a young man keep his way pure?

    By guarding it according to your word.

10 With my whole heart I seek you;

    let me not wander from your commandments!

18 Open my eyes, that I may behold

    wondrous things out of your law.

19 I am a sojourner on the earth;

    hide not your commandments from me!

Many of you know that Psalm 119, the longest psalm and chapter in scripture, is made up of 22 sections of 8 verses each, an acrostic, with each section beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew Alphabet. The three passages above come from the first three sections of the Psalm. Notice the exclamation points. The psalmist has a deep desire to know and live by God's commandments. His passion is to seek after God, His Word, and His will and to stay on His path, and to not wander from it. May that be our aim today!

Bad Guys; Good Guys

 3 John 1:9 I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. 10 So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church. 11 Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God. 12 Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself. We also add our testimony, and you know that our testimony is true.

This brief letter from John answers one overriding question from both that day and ours: What does love really look like? As we have seen in his first two letters, we know someone had received the love of God in Christ by their obedience to his Word and by their love for fellow saints.  But does that love mean that we allow them so say or do anything without correction or rebuttal? First, on the positive side, hospitality is a mark of truth faith; lack of hospitality makes the sincerity of said faith questionable. Second, when we hear someone say something contradictory to the Gospel, it is not "loving" to say it is okay. Third, actions prove the sincerity of our words.  We cannot proclaim to be His, then do what He has proclaimed as evil. 

Going too far...

 II John: 6 And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it. 7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. 8 Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. 9 Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 

John is truly the Apostle of Love, as we saw in his first letter.  That theme comes out again. Obedience - walking according to Christ's commands - is the sign that we have received the love of God in Christ. What obedience does not do is replace Christ.  Many false teachers then and now "go on ahead", adding to Christ as Savior and Lord. This devalues the person and work of Christ, making Him less than Who He is.  We must beware those who go to far, adding to the simplicity of Christ, or making too little of Who He is.

We Know

 I John 5:1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

It's a crazy world out there, with all sorts of wild thoughts about what is and is not true.  It's nothing new. As John wrote to fellow believers at the end of the first century, the world was full of lies, being held under the influence of the evil one. But as followers of Christ, we can have assurance and confidence in what is true: the one who believes in Jesus Christ as the victor over sin and death, who trusts in Him as God's sent Savior, and therefore obeys His commands - that person has eternal life and can live in victory over sin.  In this chapter John hits it from every angle, repeating the same truth different ways.  In Christ Jesus truth, love, and life all come together, and we can know we have God's presence now and forever. 

A Lot of Love

I John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

John has often been referred to as "the apostle of love."  After all, he uses the word 14 times in this paragraph alone.  But this love is not the shallow kind spoken of so often in our society.  In the opening paragraph of this chapter John warns that such shallow love has nothing to do with Christ, but rather is from deceiving spirits.  Real love - the kind John is talking about here - is connected to Christ, Whose very coming to earth demonstrated that love and sin have nothing to do with one another.  John then goes on to say that because we understand the connection between real love and Christ's death for our sins, we in no way want to have any connection with the old sinful life nor the judgment it brings.  Let us settle for nothing less than the love of God in Christ.