The Truth About Transformation

Imagine that you've been asked to write a book on marriage. Your publisher says, "We want to target young engaged couples who are considering getting married." What do you want to say to young couples considering marriage?


You begin writing your manuscript, but several weeks later your publisher calls and says, "Change of plans. We now want a book for married couples considering divorce. We've discovered that most people who consider get bad advice from their friends and family – most of the time they encourage them to go through with it. So we want a book for married people in this situation."

The audience and the situation changes everything, doesn't it? Different people in different situations need to hear different advice. The book you write for a struggling married couple is different than the one you write for a young engaged couple. For instance, if an engaged couple says that all of their friends are concerning about their upcoming marriage...you would tell them they might need to listen. If a married couple tells you that all of their friends tell them they should get a divorce, you might encourage them to not listen.

In the same way, 1 John was written for a specific group of people in a specific situation. In order to understand 1 John, you need to understand who these people were. The people John was writing to were not unsaved or unbelieving people. They were not hypocrites. They were born-again, Spirit-filled followers of Jesus Christ. Even though John addresses the heresy of Gnosticism, he isn't writing to the teachers of the heresy. He writes about them, but not to them. John is writing to a group of dedicated and devout Christians who are, most certainly...saved.

This is important because we often try to use the teachings of John in 1 John to answer questions that John was not addressing. 1 John was not written to address the question of "Am I really saved?". It was not written to provide a measuring rod to test the authenticity of our own or other's salvation. John is answering the questions, "How can I change? How can I be more like Jesus? How can I go deeper in relationship with God?", not, "How do I tell if I or anyone else is really saved". 


Again, this is important to understand because this week we are going to explore Scriptures that say things like, "No one born of God will continues to sin because God's seed remains in him; he can't go on sinning because he has been born of God." If applied as a test of our salvational authenticity, this verse can be used in a judgmental manner. If applied as a promise that salvation provides us the empowering victory over sin, it becomes a message of hope.

I hope you will join me this week as we explore The Truth About Transformation!

Obey - Walk - Love

John writes in 1 John 2:7, 9-10: “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning....Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in darkness. He's condemning empty religious talk again. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” It is important to note that these verses come on the heals of the command in verses 5-6: “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”

Walking as Jesus walked begins with loving others. We have tried to make Christianity more difficult than it really is. We've made it about church membership, or having a particular theological persuasion, or being baptized a certain way with exactly the right words being spoken during the ceremony, or using the correct vocabulary. John makes the progression unmistakably clear: We know that we know him if we obey him; obeying him means that we walk as Jesus walked; walking as Jesus walked means that we love others.

This progress has three very practical applications. Three things happen when you begin to love others like Jesus loved others:

1. You Find Yourself Living A Life That Makes Sense.  John says in verses 10-11: "Whoever loves his brother lives in the light...whoever hates his brother walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him." When you love others, it's easy to find the purpose for your life. Loving others gives you direction. Love brings light into your life, as opposed to hatred, which brings darkness. Have you ever known someone so full of hate, so set on revenge than he or she couldn't see straight?
2. You Begin To Experience Stability In Your Christian Walk. Read verse 10 again: “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” Think about this: How much of our sin is the result of not loving others? Greed. Rage. Deception. Sexual immorality. These are the result of not loving others. If you love others, you won't short-change them in business, you won't lash out in anger, you won't lie to them, you won't treat them like a sexual object. When you begin to love others the way you should love others, sin loses its power in your life. Also, when you love others, sin loses its appeal. Here's why. When you sin, you're thinking only of you. Sin is the ultimate act of selfishness. Not only does it drive a wedge between you and God, it drives a wedge between you and others.
3. You Help Others To Experience A Connection With God. When you love others, you create stability in their lives as well, because your actions aren't knocking them down spiritually. There's a sense in which the world, better than the church, understands that the church's top priority is to love people. When we battle it out over insignificant issues, when we define ourselves exclusively by what we're against, rather than the One we are for, they see through our façade. And they're less than impressed. The world doesn't want to hear about our faith unless they can see it, too.

God wants you to know where you stand with him. He wants you to be secure in knowing him. In order to know this, you have to know something else: People matter to God more than anything else in the world. If you want to know God in a life-changing way, then you need to learn to love people the way he loves people. 

(Special note: The outline above was from Stephen May's The Love Connection). 

The Truth About Love

We are currently in a study called What God Wants You To Know, based on 1 John. In 1 John 2, John helps us to understand that what we know is connected to what we do. In other words, true knowledge is connected to our behavior. John was addressing a particular heresy moving through the church at the time called Gnosticism. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. Gnosticism emphasized that spirituality was a matter of what you know. For the Gnostics, there was a disassociation between the physical world and the spiritual world. They taught that our relationship with God is a spiritual relationship alone that was totally disconnected with what we do with our bodies. They used this to excuse sexual sin, their lack of care for for the poor, the hungry, the widows and orphans, along with other sins. So John wrote to refute the teachings of the Gnostics. And in chapter two John tells us that what we know is connected to, and proven by, what we do. He says in verse 3: We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.

Even though Gnosticism is not prevalent in the 21st century, but some principles are making a comeback. There are those who believe that as long as you know the right things, your behavior doesn't matter.  Jesus never said, "You will judged according to your knowledge of knowlege." He said in Matthew 7:21, "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." 

John reinforces this point in 1 John 2.  The emphasis is that religious knowledge and talk is not enough. John says in verse 4: “The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” Then he goes on to say in verses 5-6: “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”

What does that mean, to walk as Jesus did? We are going to explore that this week. We will discover that he is not talking about sinless perfection. He's talking about imitating Christ, walking as Jesus walked. And we will see that John correlates it to the way we relate to others. That is the truth about love.  Loving God directly impacts our relationship with others. 

What We Maximize and What We Minimize

When we hear about God's generous gift of forgiveness, many people often ask the question, “If God guarantees my forgiveness, does that mean I can commit any sin I want, and God will forgive me?” The answer is a resounding “yes”. His forgiveness is not limited in any measure. His grace is boundless.

However, anyone who views God's forgiveness in this manner is approaching the Christian life from the wrong direction. It's like having a job. Everyone who works is entitled to get paid, but no customer or no employer wants to deal with a worker who is only there for the money. We can probably all agree that this person isn't on the fast track to advancement? The problem is, with our current work culture, far too many people have the mindset, “I just what to know what is the least amount of work I can do here and still get paid?”

None of us want to be served at a restaurant by someone with that mindset. And we wouldn't want someone working for us with that mindset. And yet, many people carry that mindset into their relationship with God. “What's the minimum I have to do and what's the maximum I can get away with?” This week, as we explore 1 John 1, I want to challenge you to think the opposite way: “How can I maximize my relationship with God, and how can I minimize my sinful behavior?”

So while the promise of forgiveness from 1 John 1:9 is eternally true, a proper response to His forgiveness is not to take our sinfulness lightly, but to all I can do to maximize my relationship with Him and minimize my sinful behavior. Because not only is  “He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins...”; but He is also able to “purify us from all unrighteousness.” That is the complete work of His forgiveness in our lives.

The Truth About Forgiveness

I have in my office two children's toys. One is a train engine. It was the last toy my parents gave me as a child. The other is an Etch-a-Sketch. I bought it myself about ten years ago. I keep it prominently placed in my office as a reminder.

Remember as a kid playing with an Etch-a-Sketch. I was never very good at it. I would try to write my name in block lettering, but it never looked right. I would try to draw things, but they never looked right either (unless of course, you count drawing squares and rectangles...I could do those pretty good). I have seen pictures of drawings by others of people and landscapes that were amazing. If they weren't Photoshopped, they are fabulous. I could never do that.

But the great thing about an Etch-a-Sketch was (and still is), if you mess up, all you have to do is turn in over, shake it, and you get a fresh start!

1 John 1:9 is the Etch-a-Sketch verse of the Bible. John says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” It is one of the easiest Scriptures in all of the Bible to understand because it is so straightforward. God's promise is our sins can be forgiven...the only condition is we have to confess them. It almost sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?

But that is one of the greatest wonders of all the Bible. God offers us His great love, forgiveness, and salvation, and all we have to do is confess our sins and ask for His forgiveness.

This week, we are going to explore the Biblical truth about forgiveness. We are going to examine some fabulous truths and experience some great challenges. I hope you will join me each day this week as we explore the truth about forgiveness.