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

I wanted to highlight this verse alone, because although it concludes the former section and sets up the next, it is a powerful aphorism as well.

Often we forget that we should love one another. This is especially true when we are part of a in-house debate like Arminianism and Calvinism. Often our Calvinist brothers condemn us, saying that we are heretics and Semi-Pelagian and other false accusations. Often we aren't that much better.

Even though we disagree, and disagree strongly, we need to love each other. We need to disagree in love, desiring one another's health, and recognizing that faith in the gospel and alleigance to Christ is more important than the subtleties of doctrine. The context of this verse is the mark of a Christian: that Christians love their brother. Also, that anyone who does not love their brother is not a Christian. .

7Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8He 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. 9No 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. 10This 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.

This is a much bigger section, but I think it is warranted. The text is very clear cut here. Doing what is right is the mark of the righteous, and doing what is evil is the mark of the worldly. Though we are not defined by what we do, and we are not saved by what we do, what we do does demonstrate who we are inside.

5 And you know this: that appeared so that those sins may be taken away. And in Him there is no sin: 6everyone who dwells in Him never sins; everyone who sins has not seen Him nor learnt of Him.

The above is my translation. First we here about “that appeared” (the pronoun being ekeinos not autos) which is reminiscent of verse 2, speaking of the future return of Christ, thus identifying Christ as the subject. However what’s interesting is that which was in the future is not being treated as if it were in the past. Both appeared and taken away are in the simple past tense, and even “to see” later in verse 6 which is also reminiscent of verse 2 is in the perfect past tense. So we have this sense that the hope of verse 3 is in some way realized for the believer.

Hello. Ron Fay is taking a brief vacation and in the meantime, I shall be taking his place. Though I cannot promise to do as well of a job in exegesis of Scripture for you as Ron, I promise you I will do my best. With that said, let us move on to what is truly important, the Word of God:

Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

Know how great the love the Father has given to us, in order that we would be called the children of God, and we are. Through this the world does not know us, because it does not know him. 2 Beloved, you are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet appeared. We know that if he would appear, we will be like him, because we will see him as he is. 3 And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, as that one is pure.

And now, little children, remain in him that when he would appear we would have boldness and we would not be ashamed by him at his coming. 29 If you would know that he is righteous, you know that all who do righteousness have been from him.

John pulls no punches, and this blow is aimed at the gut of all comfortable Evangelicals in the United States.

Do we really have no shame of Jesus?
Do we share Him at every chance?
Do we preach Jesus and the cross fearlessly?
Do we trust enough in God's love for us to overcome our fear?
Do we worry too much about what people will think instead of what God thinks?

I have always thought it was strange that Christians do not share the Truth because of fear of being thought weird. Here we are in America, where there is very little real persecution and we do not share, yet in other parts of the world to share the cross is to literally share in Jesus' death, yet the fear of death does not stop them.

You, what you heard from the beginning, let it remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning would remain in you and you in the Son, you will remain in the Father. 25 And this is the promise which he himself promised to us, eternal life. 26 I wrote these things to you concerning those trying to deceive you. 27 And you, the anointing which you received from him, it remains in you and you do not have need that anyone would teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about all things and it is truth and it is not a lie, and as it taught you, remain in him.

I did not write to you that you do not know the truth but that you know it and that all lying is not from the truth. 22 Who is the liar if not the one who renounces that Jesus is not the Christ? Such a man is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. 23 All who deny the Son do not have the Father, the one who confesses the Son also has the Father.

I think it is interesting here that John goes out of his way to state that all lying is not from the truth, the truth being, of course, Jesus the Christ. Thus, by stating something as true that is not, one shows how Jesus is NOT living in them. Lying is the opposite of being a Christian.