2002-01-01
Good Morning Dear Ones,
People my age were raised to be experts in guilt. I don’t hold this against my parents, because their parents raised them the same way. It’s all they knew. When the sixties came along, people swung in the opposite direction, that of not taking responsibility for one’s actions and not having a conscience. What is missing in this entire construct was clarification from God. It was always there, but too few people consulted the Scriptures to find it. Today’s passage, 1JN 3: 19-24, deals directly with God’s slant on this important subject, the courage we can have before God. “This [real love], then, is how we will know that we belong to the truth; this is how we will be confident in God’s presence. If our conscience condemns us, we know that God is greater than our conscience and that He knows everything. And so, my dear friends, if our conscience does not condemn us, we have courage in God’s presence. We receive from Him whatever we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him. What He commands is that we believe in His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as Christ commanded us. Whoever obeys God’s commands lives in union with God and God lives union with him. And because of the Spirit that God has given us we know that God lives in union with us.”
It is wholly appropriate to raise the issue here of fear of the Lord. By using the word, fear, I mean reverence and not fright. We should always have reverence for the Lord. There are many places in the Scriptures in which we are told to do this. LV 19: 14 is a good example. “Do not curse a deaf man or put something in front of blind man so as to make him stumble over it. Have reverence for Me; I am the Lord your God.” It is significant that this command came so early in the Scriptures. When we understand God’s will, we also understand that without reverence for the Lord, we are unlikely to listen well to and take seriously anything He tells us. God’s desire to see as many people come to faith as possible can be seen throughout the Scriptures. But He is realistic enough to know that some will reject Him. Those shall be deemed “guilty” in the court of last judgment and will suffer the wages of sin, which is death (RO 6: 23). JOEL 3: 19 demonstrates this principle in the OT, so we can see the consistency of God’s attitude. “Egypt will become a desert, and Edom a ruined waste, because they attacked the land of Judah and killed its innocent people.” OBAD 1-9 is the prophecy of Edom’s doom and OBAD 10-14 gives the reasons for it’s punishment. Visitors to its once capital city, Petra (now in Jordan), know Edom no longer exists as a nation. RO 3: 26 explains that when a lifestyle of sin and unbelief is chosen, God must take action to punish, because He has to demonstrate His righteousness. When sinning is a habit, we have to know there will be negative consequences.
What God really wants for us is to know that when we are not condemned by our consciences, we can have courage, even comfort, in God’s presence. That is what it was like for Abraham, who because of his faith, was deemed acceptable (justified) by God and had righteousness imputed to his account [GN 15: 6]. This is also discussed in RO 4: 3 and 9. We are given a deeper understanding of what it was about Abraham that led to his justification in RO 4: 5, “But the person who depends on his faith, not on his deeds, and who believes in the God Who declares the guilty to be innocent, it is his faith that God takes into account in order to put him right with Himself.” Paul’s discussion of Abraham here is in no way an indication that Abraham was the only person who could enjoy this privilege of being deemed acceptable (innocent) by God. It was quite the opposite, to encourage us that if our faith is like Abraham’s, this blessing is available to us too.
In JN 14: 11, we learned, [Christ speaking] “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. If not, believe because of the things I do.” JN 15: 26 contains Christ’s promise that the Holy Spirit will be sent to believers to reveal God’s truth to them. JN 15: 13 makes the point that the Holy Spirit will not speak on His own authority but on what He hears and of things to come. His message, Christ’s, and God’s are all from the same source-God! When we are living “in Christ,” the Holy Spirit is indwelt, as a gift of God’s grace, in our souls. The connection between God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and ourselves is completed. That is why Paul could begin RO 9: 1 by saying, “I am speaking the truth; I belong to Christ and I do not lie. My conscience, ruled by the Holy Spirit, also assures me that I am not lying …” These Scripture citations support John’s assertion in 1JN 3: 24, “Whoever obeys God’s commands lives in union with God and God lives in union with him. And because of the Spirit that God has given us we know that God lives in union with us.” We have been given a reason to feel confident and courageous about our beliefs and actions when we know that we are living according to God’s Word. The manifestation of the courage we are allowed to have is the peace that goes beyond human understanding that we experience when we trust and obey God. PHIL 4: 7, “And God’s peace, which is far beyond human understanding, will keep your hearts and minds safe in union with Christ Jesus.”
PRAYER: O Lord, You have given Your Son the authority to be the final judge. Because You are entirely righteous and the bond between You, Him, and the Holy Spirit is eternal and unbreakable, we can rest assured that we will be judged with that righteousness. When the Holy Spirit was given to us because of Your grace, we were given a conscience and a hunger to also be righteous. You established that life-giving bond in us. While You have always commanded us to be humble and reverent toward You, You also welcome us to feel confident and comforted when our consciences don’t condemn us. Because You love us, You give us a foretaste of the heavenly reward we shall one day have while we are still right here on earth. That is the peace that goes beyond human understanding when we have made a good decision and taken right action on it. Only a Parent With remarkable love and compassion for His children would extend us such a privilege. For that and so much more that You are in our lives, we humbly express our adoration, praise, worship, loyalty, and trust to You. We dedicate ourselves to obeying You. In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, we will look at 1JN 4: 1-3, the first part of a section on the difference between the True Spirit and a false one. Our Father in heaven showers us every day with the most extraordinary love when we study His words and pray to Him. He does this to show us a model for the kind of love we should feel and exhibit. He also does this because His love for us is genuine and consistent. It is there so we should know that we don’t have to spend our lives feeling guilty and second-guessing everything we do when we know that we are living “in Christ.” That kind of confidence is not lacking in humility or unacceptable to God. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn