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| Jesus' love for people shows. He lived it, therefore He preached it. |
“And we can be sure that
we know him if we obey his commandments. If someone claims, ‘I know God,’ but
doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the
truth. But those who obey God’s word truly show how completely they love him. That
is how we know we are living in him. Those who say they live in God should live
their lives as Jesus did” (1
John 2:3-6, NLT).
Apostle John now move on
to a more positive theme here: two keys assurances and confidences that the
believer can have. The first assurance is that we can know God by obeying what He has told us to do. This tells us
that our faith is practical. There are people who sit around and talk about God
in an abstract, philosophical way. And there are others who seek to feel some
emotional ‘high,’ as if the only place where God can be found is in our feelings.
John is saying that our thoughts and our feelings need to combine in action –
action based on obeying or following what God wants us to do. In other words,
talk alone is cheap. What we do with what we believe is a vital test. We need
to move beyond having accurate information about God to becoming personally
acquainted with God.
To obey doesn’t
necessarily mean that we are able to obey all of God’s Word perfectly. Again,
that is humanly impossible. There are many values and needs, feelings and
thoughts that can make this task difficult. But relying on the Holy Spirit and trying
to obey God and His commandments is what is important. We, at the same time, need
to study and understand God’s Word – the Bible – to the best of our abilities
in order for us to rightly obeying God. Obeying God is not supposed to be a
burden for us. It is our joy to love His commandments. We must move from have-to
to want-to obey His statues. Always stay faithful with God through thick and
thin, telling God on a daily basis that we love and want to serve Him, no
matter what happens. Through daily testing of our faith, we will desire for God
more and wanting to stay close with Him. In this way, we “truly show how completely [we] love him.”
Another key thought is
reflected in the last verse: we are not
only to think and talk about faith, we are to live it. The more we are
involved with living our lives for God, the more we find ourselves getting over
bad habits, untangled unbiblical thinking an behaviours, and the easier we’re
to obey God’s Word. And how are we to live? John tells us that not only is
Jesus our Saviour, He is also our example. We are to behave, think and feel as
He did while He was on earth (see John 13:15; and 1 Peter 2:21). When it comes
to the specifics of how Christians are to behave, we have a graphic guideline –
the example of Jesus Himself. Now, that’s God in actions.
THINK BIG.
START SMALL. GO DEEP.
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