John

    By His love we are called His children. Not by our world. Not by the people in it. Not by the things in it. Or by the things we love and consider our passions. We are called His by His love. He is the ultimate example for us. If we never had Him as the very first example then we would have nothing to go off of except for this world. People go off of this world only, a lot of the times but where are their lives leading?

                                                   

“See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.”

    It sounds kind of snobby right? People that don’t believe in Christ don’t see our faith? I saw this verse in a light of how much we are truly transformed by Christ. Yes there is a truth that those that don’t believe do not have that other world a part of their lives. They are missing out on several things but it’s the point that they don’t know that because they don’t know any differently. This just seems to be a really weird and touchy topic to bring up. Because either way you say it, it sounds like we are above those that ‘just don’t get it’. In this lesson we are going to look directly at how the love of Christ is the central message. Notice that the beginning of this chapter starts off by telling us that the God of the universe loves us so much that He literally claims us! And having that seal of awesomeness adds a whole new dimension to our lives. We go from a person of this world to a child of God. Both types of these people are special and made in their own ways but the depth of each differ by a lifetime.

^“Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.  And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure.”

    You didn’t think I was going to let you act all cocky did you? That you have the longer end of the stick being a child of God? Well you do. You have the eternity of God’s love which is something that this world could never buy. But notice that you still don’t have all the details being His child. There are a good bit of nonbelievers that think we have it all together and that we know what tomorrow holds. The end has not come yet and the new beginning hasn’t either so how can we predict what He is fully like and what we are fully like?

“We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.  If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person? Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God. Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything.”

    Our hearts and minds have the ability to push Christ out of the picture. That is pretty scary to think since we are also told how much power we have in comparison to the holder of the universe. Our hearts, when filled with hate or jealousy or greed or anything of this world, can and will push Christ right out as if He never belonged there in the first place. When we allow the wrong feelings into our hearts they fill us up and they will eventually set themselves as the foundation. Once this is rooted into our hearts then where does Christ have to go? It won’t allow Him to survive in us.     

“This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous.  So don’t be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.

If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.”

~Lesson based off of the book of 1 John 3~