Sermons on I John

1 John 5:1-5 The Gospel is big enough and powerful enough to make us lovers of God and of every single sibling in our new family. If you’re sitting there wondering, am I really doing this? John says, “Look at your life. Look at your decisions. Look at your commitments. Look at all of it to see if you are living for God and obeying all of His commands. If you’re loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and…

1 John 3:11-24 Comparison leads to jealousy. Jealousy leads to hatred. If it reaches hatred, according to God, we’ve murdered. We’ve taken life. This is not the stuff of the family of God. This is not what Jesus did. He didn’t take life. He gave life away. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16) Here is the purest most direct biblical…

I John 2:18-29 What if God doesn’t want to be abstract, but rather concrete, clearly defined, absolutely knowable? How would He do that? God’s answer to that question is Jesus. “The image of the invisible God.” “Immanuel: God with us.” In this world, we love to talk about spirituality. We love to talk about God. We love to talk about love. We use these abstract words and are comfortable with them because it keeps God out there, undefined, where we…

1 John 2:12-17 Each of us has two options when it comes to the thing, or Person, we choose to center our lives around. We can either love the world or we can love God. What is the world? John answers that question by describing the world’s drives or values, “For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions – is not from the Father but…