The promise

“And this is the promise that He Himself made to us: eternal life.”

This knowing God and remaining faithful to the end of our life, is the essence of eternal life. It is a gift from God that we cannot earn and cannot lose. The promise of eternal life is a gift given when we repent of our sin and put out trust in the Saviour Jesus and all that He has done for us.

The gift is free to us, given from the deepest heart of love from our Father God, but it was not free to Him. Sin is a very serious moral disease and God cannot and will not overlook it. God is holy and will never tolerate any sin. He cannot for His perfections know that that disease ruins everything. We do not easily appreciate that because we are evil and our hearts are used to the sins we commit and we are hardened to their evil. Every sin must be paid for, because God is just and will exercise that justice in every human life. This is why the dreadful place of hell exists, that sin is atoned for. We will all pay for our own sin because we are all responsible for it.

“I tell you that every idle word that men speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.”

Matthew 12:36

Yet, in His great and tender mercy towards us, God has provided a way of escape from the consequences of our sin and has given us a Saviour, His very own Son, to pay that terrible price for us. The good news of the gospel is that it is all paid for and by trusting in that sacrifice of Jesus, we can be free from it. The joy that brings the believer is huge. A great weight is lifted from us and we are given the gift of eternal life. This means the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us forever and will teach us and make us the people we are supposed to be. We get to commune with God in prayer and have His daily provision and protection from the sin that easily infests us. He protects us from all evil, even the evil in our own hearts, and gives us the ability to obey Him and keep His commandments.

“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

1 John 4:10

This quality of life lasts and will keep us in God’s love right to the end of our lives and into eternity. What a joy to be free to relate to our loving Father and to walk every day in the company off the Lord Jesus Christ in the power and victory of the Holy Spirit. This is the destiny of all who will simply accept the free gift and turn from sin.

This is the delight of every believer, that they can rejoice every day in all circumstances that they are destined for heaven’s glory because of their Lord and Saviour. We love Him and enter into the reality of that love as we possess the eternal life that He has given us. To walk in the love of God is eternal life and full of joy. It lasts forever because God’s promise is true and can never be broken.

Remain in the Son

“Therefore, as for you, let that remain in you which you heard from the beginning. If that which you heard from the beginning remains in you, you also will remain in the Son, and in the Father.”

The Apostle John is pressing the Christians in the early church, and also us as the later church, to stay closely tied to the teachings of the Apostles of God, which are recorded in the Scripture for us. They are the concrete evidence of the Word of God and we hold fast to them in the face of opposition, error and many heresies. We never deviate from the exact words and we embrace the truths even if they are a mystery to us, as are doctrines like the trinity. There is so much we do not understand, but we can learn and trust God that His word is true. We let the Word remain in us and follow and obey it.

If we will obey and believe the truth set down for us, we will also remain in God and remain true to Him to the very end of our life.

“But he who endures to the end, the same will be saved.”

Matthew 24:13

We must walk the way of Christ and witness to Him right to the very end of our life. We must persevere in faith and hope and love and follow the Lord Jesus wherever He leads us. He is our portion if we remain in Him and that mean sticking by the Word of God and rejecting all additions and subtractions.

“If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.”

Revelation 22:19

There are many false teachers and leaders today who would lead us away from holiness of life and earnest witness for the Lord, but we stay away from them and keep our way pure. We must know the Scripture ourselves and be able to discern truth from error. Only then will we listen to those who teach us rightly according to the truth of God laid down in Scripture. If we stay close to our Saviour Jesus then we will remain in fellowship with God the Father and live in His love.

The Father also

“Whoever denies the Son, the same doesn’t have the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.”

There are some who seem to want to believe in a God but do not want Christ. We like the security of knowing there is someone bigger and better than us who we believe will look after us no matter what, but we do not want to succumb to a Saviour and be beholden to Him. In other words, we make a God that suits our view point and emotional needs, but of course, it is just an idol and not real.

The God revealed in the Scripture is quite different from our viewpoints. He reveals Himself as a holy and upright God who is in charge of everything and has a sovereign dominion over all that transpires. He requires holiness from us, indeed we need righteousness and perfection to enter the kingdom of God and escape the consequences of our sin. We do not like this God. He is too demanding and His perfections do not attract us to Him because we are so sinful.

We are caught between our own delusions and the antagonism against the holy. We will never come to God, because our soul is dead in sin and cannot relate to this living and glorious God. Something has to happen, a miracle of grace, to resurrect our soul and give us desires after God. This involves seeing our sinfulness and facing up to it, bringing it to our Saviour Jesus Christ and bowing our knees to Him in thankfulness and faith. This is a complete heart change and only God can do this for us.

We can see that as we reject the Son, the Saviour Jesus, there is no recourse to the Father. Jesus is our mediator to bring us to God and to give us the necessary righteousness to cover our sinful self.

“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus…”

1 Timothy 2:5

Only through Christ can we know God, for of ourselves we dare not stand before Him without the covering of the shed blood of Christ. Only those who are in Christ are acceptable to God, for Jesus has died for all who are trusting in Him and what He did on the cross at Calvary. Those who believe and confess the Lord Jesus Christ are in the family of God and safely sheltering under the wings of their Saviour and Lord. Without Jesus we face the wrath of God against the folly of our sin and unbelief in the amazing provision of salvation for us.

Beloved, let us believe and be safe in Christ and that we might know the Father as a loving and protecting God from all judgment and fear.

This is the Antichrist

“Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.”

Some lies are easy to spot and some are not. This one is quite straightforward. Anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ of God and the only Saviour of this world, is an Antichrist. It is not just the obvious deniers of the faith or the rampant atheist, but anyone who lives a life separate from Christ and refuses His legitimate dominion on their life.

“He who is not with me is against me, and he who doesn’t gather with me, scatters.”

Matthew 12:30

If we are not in the kingdom of Christ then we are lost people. Lost to God and to ourselves, though we may not know it or feel it. If we are not serving Christ, then we are against Him and therefore are part of the realm of Antichrist. This is a very polarising position, and there is no middle ground, no-man’s-land or fence to sit on. It could not be clearer, that those who entertain lies have no part in the kingdom of God. The very essence of the Antichrist and the spirit of the Antichrist is deceit. The people who come under his dominion are deluded and believe a lie that will lead them down into perdition, namely that they are safe in their worldly mindset and God will overlook sin. This is the lie that brings many into a place where there is no Christ and only the personal repayment of past sins forever.

The loving Apostle warns us of this mindset and the danger of ignoring Jesus our only Saviour and relying on our own faulty judgment. It is our natural inclination to imbibe the spirit of the age and swallow the lies of Antichrist, but we resist this and fly to the only Saviour of our souls, Jesus the Saviour of the world and our Lord and God. We acknowledge Him and repent of our sinful mindset and behaviour and come to Him for the cleansing power of the sacrifice He made on Calvary. Only in Jesus is found true forgiveness and peace in our soul. Only He can cleanse away the sin and guilt and make us right with God. Only He can give us spiritual life and the desire to be holy and the courage to be different from the people of this fallen world. We seek Him and find everlasting life as we walk in a new life to God.

Anything else in against this message and against Christ.

You know it

“I have not written to you because you don’t know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.”

The Apostle John knows that God’s people know the truth for the witness of the Spirit of God within teaches them to discern all truth and untruth. They have been well grounded in the doctrines of the faith and so he is reinforcing what they already know and relating it to the issues of the day, as set out in his letter.

It is logical. If it is not the truth then it is a lie. It is that straight forward. However, it can be very problematic with some issues of the faith, as the water around them gets very muddy. It can be hard to discern a falsehood because of the context in which it is presented or because of the revered person who says it. People change their views on issues and can leave a former belief for another way of thinking. Beloved, we follow the living God and not other men or women.

It is so important to be grounded in the truths of God and not allow error to divert us from correct thinking, especially on the central issues of the faith. We all need to have a godly and proper point of view, for everything does not go!

“…knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit.”

2 Peter 1:20-21

There are many in our days who are changing the basic truths of God and watering down the message of the gospel, so that what people put their faith in is not the real gospel, or even the real Lord Jesus. There is so much misrepresentation and unhelpful debate in media land, that it would be better to turn it all off and get alone with God and His Word. Our personal relationship with God is key and the filling of the Holy Spirit in our life is crucial to discern truth from error. We need to spend protracted periods of time in the Word of God and have a deepening understanding of its precepts and commandments. The Apostle is encouraging his sisters and brothers in Christ and bolstering up their grasp of the eternal word as it is revealed in the Holy Scripture. No other book will do and all other books are simply other people’s ideas about the one true book. Best to focus on the Scripture rather than opinion and people’s interpretation. Know the truth and cling to it…

An anointing

“You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.”

The Christian has the ability to make sound judgment and good decisions because the Holy Spirit resides in their person and body, and teaches and instructs the right way to go. It is a holy anointing from God and means the Christian has knowledge and insight that others do not have. They have the wisdom of God to guide them and lead them into all truth.

“However when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak from himself; but whatever he hears, he will speak. He will declare to you things that are coming.”

John 16:14

The Holy Spirit in the life of the believer makes all the difference to their strength, knowledge and stamina. This is an instinctive knowing what is the right thing to do and is built upon the personal walk with God that every Christian knows and lives. It is the knowing and recognising other Christians and being able to discern the things of God and that what is being spoken is of God or not. It is an inner understanding tutored by the Spirit through the deep knowledge of the Word of God. There are no short cuts to this knowing, but it comes through the study and perseverance in the truths of God and the holding on to the doctrines of the faith as taught in the Holy Scriptures.

Only the people who belong to God have this insight and anointing. It is a supernatural knowledge and an understanding of the disposition of the human and the holiness of the Lord. It is a seeing under the surface of the obvious and being able to make wise decisions based in the inner knowledge. Some people have this more than others, but we are entreated to seek it and ask for it. It is an ability that grows with the experience of life in God and the daily walk with the Lord that teaches and motivates us to learn more and more.

If we do not exhibit this quality then our salvation is suspect. If we are foolish and make world-orientated decisions, then we do not belong to the family of faith. The work of the Holy Spirit must be obvious in our life as we obey the Word of God; walk in fellowship and faith; and grown in love for God and others every day. This is the defining mark of the Christian person, that they love as the Spirit of God loves, and have the anointing of that love in their life.

They left

“They went out from us, but they didn’t belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have continued with us. But they left, that they might be revealed that none of them belong to us.”

The Apostle John is identifying the false teachers, heretics and those who apostatise the faith. They show up in the church of Jesus Christ and make a fuss about a new doctrine or a new concept, and then leave. They do not accept the doctrines of the faith as laid down in the Scripture, but try to put new ideas out or re-interpret the old doctrines to suit their own ideas or to gather up a following. They are empire builders who want acclaim and to see their ideas flourish and have people following them. Many people do and we have examples of that in the plethora of churches that have grown up around women and men who seek fame and fortune. Some have found their success and have their reward in this life.

Those who do not love the Lord will eventually leave to find something more suitable for their tastes…

Others sit in churches that are dead and when the life of the Spirit comes they do not recognise it and refuse to respond to the challenges of God to involve ourselves with other people and reach out and identify with the outsider. Error can come in from outside of a church and it can certainly grow within it in the cold hearts towards God and other people. Church becomes a social club really easily of we are not on our guard with evangelism and the clear preaching of the gospel. It is easy to sit in church and atrophy and never get involved in anything challenging or sacrificial. We become tasters of sermons and snobs towards the outsider. We have cold hearts and unloving attitudes, even towards other Christians that we consider different from us. We are intolerant to everything, not just doctrine, but other peoples’ legitimate choices.

Many have left church for something more real and better because of the falsehood that has infiltrated the organisation. People want real experiences of God and a reality of knowing Him, that He promises in the Scripture.

Beloved, let us keep error out of our Christian walk with God, either outside or inside church.

The final hour

“Little children, these are the end times, and as you heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen. By this we know that it is the final hour.”

If the final hour was identified by the Apostle John, how much closer are we to the Lord’s return? The final hour is the gospel age of Christ were the full and free offer of salvation is given out to the whole world. The offer of mercy and forgiveness is for all who will believe. We surely live in the end of the end times! Many anti-Christ’s were around in John’s day – people who sought to water down the message of the gospel and bring heresies into the church of Christ. We are in this place today, with many false prophets, apostles and people who claim all sorts of things in the name of God. This is how we know it is the final hours of this world’s history.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ in the last book of the Bible, speaks of an Anti-Christ who will lead the whole world against God and the people of God. The world waits for such a one, either as an actual person or as a spirit of the age, which will permeate all of society and bring all citizens under its controlling power. It will bring a time of great tribulation against the people of God, for they will not have the mark of the beast on their lives. Christians are motivated and identified by the love of the Spirit of God, and will set them apart from the rest of the society, bringing down persecution and hatred on them. We can identify a growing intolerance to Christian principles in all societies, even those who identified as Christian at one time. We have flown in the face of the commandments of the Lord and rejected His holy rule on our personal and corporate lives and our communities are now “post-Christian.”

Surely the Lord is coming soon, and His reward is with Him.

“Behold, I come quickly. My reward is with me, to repay to each man according to his work.”

Revelation 22:12

We gain strength and comfort from the Revelation of Jesus Christ, and the power to stand for our Master in these last days. He will give us courage to face all adversity and to comfort each other in the Lord. God is still gathering in His precious people, and when the last saint of God is gathered in, then the end will come. Until that time, we work and pray and speak for our Lord in reaching out to other people around us. We walk diligently in all His ways and purposes and seek to please Him in what we do.

How comforting it is to belong to the household of God and be His children. Not one will be lost or left behind from the coming kingdom. We take joy in His word and trust the royal promises that hold us fast in faith and love.

Remains forever

“The world is passing away with its lusts, but he who does God’s will remains forever.”

It is important to choose the right thing and put your faith and effort into the right cause. It is crucial that our minds and hearts are turned to eternal issues and that we think long term about our eternal destiny in the realm of eternity when this present life is over. This world is not forever, no matter how much ecology and recycling we do, it is going to come to an end one day and there will come into being the eternity of God. We must be ready for that time, for it is coming soon.

Even the state of our planet at present, should alert us to the reality of eternal life, and the witness of our conscience and the Spirit of God, tell us that there is more than the here and now that we experience at present. The state of governments and political posturing shows a distinct lack of integrity at the heart of the leadership in our world. The economic situation, even in so-called rich countries is cycling down into further poverty and ruin for many. Everything seems tainted with the brush of nihilism and we are reduced to laughter at anything and everything. We try to keep our minds out of the tragedies that unfold around us daily, and try to be thankful for what we have and enjoy. But, as this verse says, the world is passing away and all the desires that go along with it will one day register as defunct.

The Lord Jesus has promised to return and take His waiting people home, and that time seems more and more immanent every day that goes past. The signs are all in place for the end times, and we should eagerly expect His return. The world will certainly pass away and the instigation of the eternal kingdom will come into effect.

Only those who are ready and waiting for this time will enter into the joy of that kingdom and place. Only those who are seeking the will of God and not their own interests will be able to live forever in that holy place.

Beloved, are you ready for that great day? Should it be the return of Christ or the death of our body, we will leave this present world behind and enter another dimension of eternity. Are we prepared for it?

We must seek the Lord and put our hope in Him to be ready for that time. Do not be enthralled by the joys of this life, but seek the deeper joys of life with God and knowing His presence with us always. Even when we do not know His closeness we hold to Him in faith and trust Him for the eternal day that is coming.