Monday February 23, 2015

Coming Up this Sonday 

1 John 3:11-24   An Old But Fashionable Command 

Key Bible Passage: 1 John 3:1

1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

1 John 3:11–15 (NIV84)

11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.

13 Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.

14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.

15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

It’s cliché, almost bland. It rattles off our tongue without even touching our heart. What is it that I’m talking about? Being a child of God. The reality of being a child of God can waft over us and pass by before we ever have the privilege and the joy of seeing it for what it really is. Think about it in every day terms. How often do you praise God in the light of 1 John 3:1? How often do you thank God and praise God for lavishing you with the privilege of being a child of God? The Bible does not pull back the punches. In many places it tells us that we are deserving of condemnation and judgement because of our rebellions against God and our treatment of Him. If you’re struggling with this concept of being “sinful” or unrighteous before God, just read the Ten Commandments and think honestly about how you have broken several of these commands.

But God in His love sent His one and only Son into the world. The same writer, John, also wrote John 1:10-14. Jesus came into His world, the world that He created but the world didn’t recognise Him or received Him. Rather, they rejected Him and nailed Him to a cross. The Bible makes it clear that this cross was the means by which you and I could be adopted as children of God. Think about it like this. God loves you so much that He willingly sent His one and only Son Jesus into our world to rescue you from your sins. Jesus came and put that rescue plan into action. It involved dying on the cross for the sins of the world – which means that He was punished by God and wore the anger of God for every sin ever committed. Mathematically, it means that if I sin 5 times a day, then in a life of 70 years I’ll have sinned 127,750 times. Jesus suffered the punishment for each one. Given that there are about 6.3 billion people in the world, we need to multiply 127,750 by 63 billion. But that’s only for today’s population. If we want to get a true identification with what Jesus took upon Himself at the cross we have to multiply this new total by the number of people who have ever lived since Adam and Eve and then multiply that by a guestimate of how many people will live up to the time Jesus gets back. Needless to say it’s going to be a big big big figure.

Now just because we say Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, that doesn’t automatically mean that everyone gets into heaven or that everyone is a child of God. God calls each one of us to repent and believe this good news if we want to be a child of God. Are you a child of God? Have you personally told God that you are sorry for your sins and asked Him to be your Lord and Saviour? If you haven’t, do it now.

Everyone who takes this step is assured that they are a child of God – it’s a privilege that looks back to the past (to the cross), is enjoyed and lavished upon us in the present (eg in answered prayers, love, blessings etc) and has a future certainty, namely life eternal in God’s paradise.

Now here’s the pointy end of the stick. If you are a child of God then you are NOT and never can be an only child of God. When you become a child of God you join the largest and most powerful family in the universe. You immediately inherit brothers and sisters from every tribe, nation and tongue.