Learning to Love Week 3

Accepting God's Love for Us

1 John 2:28 - 3:10

We have looked at the Gift of Love, and have thought about how we are to Love God, this week we will talk about Accepting God's Love For Us. Sometimes I have a problem accepting God's love for me because I know how unworthy I am. We are going to look at 1 John 2:28 - 3:10 to see what the Bible says about God's wonderful love for us, and how we should accept that love.

1 John 2:28 - 3:10

28 And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. 29 If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. (Chapter 3) 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. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears,^[a]we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. 4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. 7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. (NIV)

In 2:28 we are given a reinforcing reason for our wanting to practice righteousness: That we should not be ashamed at our Lord's return. Both our Lord's first appearance and His second should spur us onto righteousness and good works.

We walk in the light because of our fellowship with Christ, and because we know Him. Why else are we to be righteous? We are born of God through Christ's finished work. If we are born from above, we will be more like Adam before the fall. (Made in the image of God.) "Like father, like son."

That we should be called the children of God. Such a love is so amazing that it causes this outburst of 3:1.

There are two "Unknowns" given in verses 1 & 2 of Chapter 3. First = The world cannot really know or understand what we are like or what it means to be born from above. What it means to be a child of God. Second = We, ourselves, cannot really know or understand what it will be like after our Lord returns and we are perfected in righteousness. But some things we do know! We will be like Him and we will see Him just as He is. Without sin and in a glorified body with no aches, pains or decay.

Verses 4-10 are all about sin. What do we call someone who habitually breaks the civil law? A criminal. So what do we call a person who habitually breaks God's moral law ? A sinner is a spiritual criminal. The purpose of our Lord's coming was to take away our sins. Do we want to try and defeat our Lord's purpose? In practicing sin we side with the devil and against Christ. We should want to be like our Lord. Please Him. Honor Him.

A person who is badly allergic to bee stings must stay away from bees and cannot afford a sting or he will swell up and die. Christians are allergic to sin in almost this same way. We are born of sinless seed and this seed abides in us.

By our fruits we shall be known. According to verse 10, one great evidence of who is and who is not a true Believer is their attitude toward sin. Are they indifferent toward sin? Their own and others? Does sin bother them really badly? Do they truly repent? Do they ask for forgiveness from God and man and truly desire it and then do works that evidence sorrow for that sin?

THINK ABOUT IT

What kind of feeling would you have it Jesus returned right now?

How does it make you feel to know that followers of Christ will one day "be like Him"?

As you get older, do you find the old sinful desires easier or harder to resist?

Who is most difficult for you to love - God, orhters, or yourself?