When talking of the Spirit, Jesus says in John 14:17, “you will know him, for he lives with you and in you.” Clearly then, the Spirit will be doing some very noticeable things in our lives.
Which John goes into more detail about in 1 John 4:2, when he writes: “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: it’s acknowledging that Jesus came as a human being,” And why is that important? It’s because of who the human Jesus was, and why he came to us in human form.
And John was in a position to explain that, having rubbed elbows with Jesus in his human form, and realizing, having seen and heard Jesus personally, that Jesus was “the Word of life,” 1 John 1:1 – meaning the one who’d lived forever with the Father, and to whom the Father had given the power to give eternal life to us (2).
So how did John grasp that? Well, again in his own experience, he realized it had been given to him, because he knew a lot of other people (“many antichrists”) who had no clue who Jesus was (2:18), some of whom also vehemently opposed the idea “that Jesus is the Christ” (22) sent by God to “forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1:9), so that we can have eternal life (2:25). The contrast was so huge, it was obvious to John that something special happens to those who realize (and believe) who Jesus was and why he’d come in human form.
John puts it down to “an anointing from the Holy One” (2:20). And while that “anointing you received remains in you,” verse 27, “you won’t need anyone to teach you because you’ll have all the truth you need.” And in saying that, John was simply quoting Jesus himself, who’d said that, “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).
The truth about what, though? The truth about Jesus himself: “the Spirit of truth will testify about me” (John 15:26), so we’d “know with certainty that he’d been sent by the Father” (17:8). But sent by the Father for what purpose? John 17:26 – “in order that the love the Father has for Jesus may be in us, by Jesus now living that love in us,” which he does through the Spirit (1 John 4:13).
What the Spirit’s doing, therefore, is making God’s love real in us. But how do we “know with certainty” that we have God’s love in us? According to John, it’s by “The love we have for one another”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 