In the Shadow of the Cross

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February 2011

So you say you’re a Christian! How do you know?

John’s first epistle helps us with that question. The epistle is full of assurance language, language that helps the Christian rest assured of their status in Christ. Chapter five is filled with “we know’, so that as Christians we can know what it is that sets us apart and what we need to do to continue to please God. In this epistle, John reminds us of our place in Jesus and with our God. It was written to remind us whenever we doubt about our salvation, that we do indeed belong to God and we are His children, if we walk in obedience in Him; as we walk in the light; as we ignore the world and its systems; as we reject the false teachers –who are ever present- and we continue to love each other, we can then rest assured and be confident and know we are Christians.

Walking in the light is the same as walking with God. Similar to a small child holding their parents hand, and going wherever that parents directs them. In fact, small children don’t know their destination they only know that they are holding onto their parents hands and are content in being there. Small children are utterly dependent upon their parents and yet with complete innocence and blind trust they go where they are led. In this case Christians similarly walk with God, where God is pure light and sin is pure darkness. But we walk still in our sinful skins. We don’t go on sinless- to say that we are sinless makes God a liar and in doing so we do not walk in the light. So yes, we do sin. But sin is not a primary function, it doesn’t control our lives, we are no longer slaves to our sin nature, it’s no longer continuously occupying our minds. As Christians however, when sin is seen and recognized we are to confess immediately and turn our backs on it as quickly as it enters our lives. At the point of conversion we believe in Christ’s atoning death for our sake and this is -positional forgiveness -and it makes us acceptable as a member of God’s family. Our sin however hinders and strangles our fellowship with God, but not our relationship, so we strive as true Christians to confess our sins continually, daily and moment by moment so as not to offend our Holy Father. This is -continual forgiveness- and it restores our fellowship with God. So as Christians, we realize that we are not sinless, but we are not strangled by it, we are not carried forward in it, and we are not slaves to it. But rather we see it for what it is pure darkness and we quickly confess and repent from it. This continual confession of sin strengthens our desire to be sanctified, strengthens our commitment and our repeated surrender to our Master and Lord Jesus Christ and our Father. It also strengthens our confidence, our knowledge and our salvation assurance in Christ.

We are confident we are God’s children. As we read in 1 John:
“ Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him”
(1 John 3: 21-22 NIV)
Those who obey Him commands live in Him, and He in them. And this is how we know He lives in us. We know by the Spirit He gave us.
(1 John 3: 24 NIV)
So we live in the light and truth, truth as opposed to lies. Satan is the father of lies and Christ is the Author of truth and light, and we obey His commands. “We know that we came to know Him if we obey His commands”
(1 John 2:3 NIV)

We reject the world and false teachers. Do you ever stop and think about the world we live in and how corrupt people are and how worse things seem to be getting. It seems as if more and more bad things are happening. This is because the world is getting worse. Satan is hard at work destroying lives, bringing anything to the attention of people that will take their minds and hearts off of God and His Son our Lord Jesus. This can be anything, anything at all that is put into the place of God It can be sports, money, power, prestige, social status, materialism, recreation, anything that will take our attention and place it elsewhere (other than Jesus). This works out just fine for Satan. To add to the confusion and the chaos, let’s add false teachers. They been around for centuries, in fact they are spoken of often in the New Testament, and for good reason, we are to reject them!! The biblical warning is a true warning. This topic is a subject of a separate article of itself, but as we read in 1 John, we are to reject any and all false teachers… anyone who does not teach and preach Christ and Christ crucified, risen from the dead and sitting at the right hand of God. Anyone who teaches or preaches that Jesus is not God in human flesh and that He did not come to pay our sin debt with His atoning death on the cross, and that He is not our Lord AND Savior – is a false teacher.

True Christians love one another it is a sure sign of our conversion. This takes a complete stripping of selfishness and self-centeredness and shifts it to be a consuming attitude of sacrificial service and self denial. It is a rejection of materialism, of self-importance and self-aggrandizement.
“Dear children let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and truth. This is then how we know that we belong to the truth: and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence wherever our hearts condemn us” (1 John 3” 17-20 NIV)

Chapter 5 in 1 John as I stated earlier has many “we knows”

“ … we know that we love the children of God; by loving God and carrying out His commands… through faith we overcome the world”
(1 John 5: 2-4 NIV)

“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything in accordance with His will, He will hear us. And if we know that He hears us- whatever we ask- we know that we have what asked of Him.
(1 John 5: 13-15 NIV)

We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin, the one who was born of God keeps him safe and the evil one cannot harm him. We know that we are children of God and that whole world is under the control of the evil one. We know also that the Son of God has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true. And we are in Him who is true-even His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 5:18-20 NIV)

We know, we know, we know. This epistle is full and rich with assurance and reminders so that we can know with great confidence of our place with Christ. We also are confident in our relationship with our God and His Son Jesus because of what John reminds us – through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So we can rest assured and know that we are Christians.

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