Focus: Verse 1-21
Study Notes:
This book is splitting me open at the seams. The fact that the verses are hitting me the way they are tells me that there are millions of us with questions answered here, line by line.
I am struggling over finding the right church. The right place for ME to sit with OTHERS who share a particular LOVE of GOD. The challenge is that churches are at war with each other, or with God. The measure of right and wrong seems to be easier than I was trying to make it. If they confess of Jesus has come in the flesh, they are from God. I believe that Jesus was God in the flesh and that he hung on the cross for me. If a church does not confess Jesus, they are not worth my time.
I have been struggling with a lack of motivation to meet people. My faith in man's capacity for honesty is gone. I have to work on that, but I don't have to feel guilty for it anymore, because I spend my time every day with God; reading, studying, writing, praying. I am not required to spend my time with the lesser good, those who are in the world. Not until I am prepared for them.
I know that my sudden acquisition of faith and love for Jesus is real, because I don't dwell on my past. That is the small sign of proof, the bigger sign is that the time I used to spend resenting everyone and everything is now spent on praying for those very same people. I have been broken, and I don't pray to be fixed, I pray for those who broke me. This just occurred to me.
The most troublesome part of man is no longer his handling of COVID, it is his mismanagement of feelings towards the God who's face we spit in everyday. That is my soul's daily struggle.
There is a fluffy concept written of in the Bible about loving each other. I wonder if we aren't reading this the wrong way. I don't think God, or John, are talking about shallow love for our neighbor. I think they are exposing an irony that will lead to most of us losing in the end. Easy love is not what saves us. It is the hard love that we should seek. Love that comes with a cost. The kind of love that God himself has always been tortured by, one so deep that He will always be hurt by what He receives in return. Yet we can not accuse Him of serving his love on a hope and a dream. Whatever love he gives us, He does so knowing we will deny Him anything close to what we owe him in return. That is the kind of love He wants us to offer our brothers. That is the same kind of love we will never surrender to anyone other than ourselves.
Sadly, it is that same injustice of love that leads delivers many of us into the hands of substance abuse. I think addiction can often be the result of having too much love to give, when there is no one around us worthy of giving it to. That despair is poison for our souls, and if we are deprived of the lesson John is teaching us here, hiding can seem like the only way to survive.
--BSB
Testing the Spirits
4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 By this you will know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and which is already in the world at this time.
4 You, little children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.
5 They are of the world. That is why they speak from the world’s perspective, and the world listens to them.
6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. That is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.
7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9 This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.
10 And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we remain in Him, and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit.
14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.
15 If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
16 And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
17 In this way, love has been perfected among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment; for in this world we are just like Him.
18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love.
19 We love because He first loved us.
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
21 And we have this commandment from Him: Whoever loves God must love his brother as well.