The Father sent his Son to reveal a very special kind of love, that will perfectly preserve our fellowship with God and each other for eternity, 1 John 1:2-3. It’s not surprising, then, that God made it possible for us to experience this very special and totally unique love in our lives now.

How? By first of all giving us a clue as to “what this love is” in the life of his Son, 1 John 3:16 – which John could write about having watched Jesus in action, and seen the impact he’d had on people (1:1-3). And in all of it one point had become clear, that in both life and death “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (3:16).  

It was remarkable. In everything Jesus said and did that was his motive. Which in turn had given them a clear picture of God too, that “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1:5). Because in watching Jesus they could see there wasn’t an ounce of darkness in him – no hidden motives, no underlying desire for control, no selfish purpose other than wanting to take away the sins of the world (2:2) so we humans can live happily together in God’s family forever.

To which John adds in 1 John 1:7, that “if we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another,” meaning we can experience the same motives as Jesus in our relationships with each other too – no hidden agendas, no underlying selfish motives, just love and nothing else like him – so we’re already living now what will keep us living happily as God’s family forever.

But again, how does God make this possible? John’s answer is simple: like Jesus “we lay down our lives for our brothers” too (3:16) – which John describes in verses 17 and 18 as doing whatever is within our means to do good for those in need. That was Jesus’ entire motive during his lifetime too (Acts 10:38).

But how can we ever live such a life ourselves? Again, John’s answer is simple: this kind of love – the very special kind of love that will preserve our fellowship with God and each other forever – is “in his Son” (5:11). Not only in his Son’s example and teaching, but also in Jesus “living in us” and us “living in him” (3:24).

But how it it possible for someone to actually “LIVE IN” someone else? Is there a way of explaining it in “Why God created pregnancy”?….(next blog) 

According to 1 John 1:6, we either “walk in the darkness” or “live by the truth.” We walk in darkness, according to John, when we hate a brother (2:9,11), so the opposite to that hate – and the antidote to it too, therefore – is living by the truth.

The “truth” of what, though? The truth of 1 John 1:8, first of all, that “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” To live by the truth, then, is admitting we’re not exactly perfect ourselves, which is a great antidote to hate, because how can we justify hating people for their imperfections when we’ve got imperfections too?

A second truth John mentions to live by, is Jesus being “the atoning sacrifice for our sins – and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (2:2). So how can we hate someone for their sins, when Jesus atoned just as much for their sins as he did for ours?

A third truth from John is that Jesus is taking us all through the same process of “purification from all unrighteousness”(1:9). We can take comfort in the fact, then, that Jesus is on the job dealing with the imperfections of others, sparing us the need to hate them, therefore. Better still, John says we can help the process of purification in others by praying for them, and God promises to answer (5:16).

A fourth antidote to hate is knowing why hate gets started in the first place. What led Cain to hate was “his own actions being evil and his brother’s righteous” (3:12), and his resentment spiralling into hate. A growing feeling of resentment, then, is a great antidote to hate, because it acts like a bright red flashing light warning us to stop it in its tracks before it spirals into hate in us as well.

A fifth truth from John to live by is the example of Jesus himself, who “laid down his life” for people (3:16), even for those who despised him, spread lies about him, plotted to murder him, and refused to believe he’d been sent by God. The fact that he was able to do that is a great antidote to hate for us too, because he promises to live what he was able to do in us, so we can take nonsense from people and not hate them too. 

And in 1 John 2:5, “If anyone obeys Jesus’ word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.” Love, the ultimate antidote to hate. But it requires “A very special kind of love” too….(next blog)

In 1 John 2:8, John is “writing a new command, the truth of which is seen in Jesus and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.”

So what is this “new command”? Is it the “new commandment” Jesus spoke of in John 13:34, that we “love each other as he loved us”? But when John wrote 1 John 2:8 – as much as fifty years later – this command was no longer new. John refers back to it in 1 John 2:7, yes, but now he’s talking about “the truth of it being SEEN” (8) – and the need for it to be seen too, because that’s what conclusively and powerfully shows that “the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” 

But what did John mean by “darkness” and “light”? He explains in verse 10, that “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light,” and in verse 11, “Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness.” John is using light and darkness to contrast love and hate. 

So when John is talking of a new command, he’s still including Jesus’ original command to love each other as he loved us, but what makes it so visible is its clear and obvious contrast to hate. This new command, then, is not just about loving each other, it’s getting at the total eradication of hate too. 

That’s because “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1:5), and because he now calls us his children (3:1-2), we walk in the same light he’s in (1:7) – the obvious goal of which is no darkness in us either, because if that is our goal, “the blood of Jesus purifies us from every sin” (1:7), including the sin of hate. Which is hugely important in showing our poor struggling world so peppered with hate that the darkness of hate is passing and the light of real love is shining, and brightly enough for people to see it and realize it’s truly happening.

It’s by Jesus purifying us from all unrighteousness, and especially from hate, therefore, that he’s given each of us the chance in our own lives, no matter how limited we are, to offer a glimpse of what a human life without hate is like. Not only, then, can we show people through our love for each other what the eternal life God is offering us looks like, we have this “new command” of John to make it even more visible by the eradication of all hate among each other too. With that in mind, then, what’s “The antidote to hate”?….(next blog)

In 1 John 1:1 John opens with “That which was from the beginning,” the time in history when the “Word of life appeared” (1-2), referring to the arrival of Jesus and his message about “eternal life” (2).

From the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry this was his underlying message in everything he taught and did. All of it was meant to shed light on his Father’s plan to open up eternal life to us humans, because that’s what the Father had sent him to us for (1 John 5:11). 

Which is why John reminds his readers to stick like glue to the “old command you’ve had since the beginning.” (2:7). Go back to what Jesus taught and “See that what you heard from the beginning remains in you” (2:24) – which John spells out in chapter 3:11, when he writes, “This is the message you heard from the beginning: that we should love one another.”

Jesus had made that message super clear in John 13:34, when he said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” And in John 15:12, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you,” the goal being that “we may be one as he and the Father are one” (17:22).

But why is loving one another – like the Father and Son love each other – so important to making Jesus’ message of eternal life come alive? To answer that, John takes us back again to “the message we heard from Jesus,” 1 John 1:5, but this time the message is: “God is light.” And why was that important? Because with Jesus’ arrival on this planet that’s when “Light came into the world” (John 3:19).

So with Jesus’ arrival a bright light would begin to shine on what God is all about. But it’s in HOW that light would shine that would make God visible. First of all, it would be in the life of Jesus himself, but John then makes this statement in 1 John 2:10, that “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light.” 

The “light,” therefore, that God is and lives in, and wants to share with us for eternity, has been made visible in the love that billions of Jesus’ followers have had for each other. Because that’s what God and eternal life are all about: love. No wonder, then, that John takes us back to the message of loving each other that Jesus began. But then he speaks of “A new command” too (2:8), so what’s that all about?….(next blog)

In John 8:29, Jesus said, “I always do what pleases my Father” – and because of it he could say with total confidence in John 11:42, “Father, I know you always hear me.” And it’s the same for us, as John wrote in 1 John 3:21-22, because we too can “have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” 

So, what obedience pleases God most? John answers that in verse 23: “And this is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as Jesus commanded.” 

First of all, then, it pleases God immensely when we believe in his Son, and specifically in his Son’s “name” – Jesus Christ. Because in that name we see what God so dearly loves about him. He is Jesus, “given that name” in Matthew 1:21, “because he will save his people from their sins” – the name Jesus meaning “God saves.”  

John then confirms that in 1 John 4:14, that “the Father sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world by his “atoning sacrifice” (2:2) “purifying us from every sin” (1:7). No wonder God loves his Son and wants us to believe in him as well, because Jesus totally lived up to his name.

He’s also named “the Christ” (2:22) – Christ meaning “the anointed one,” or “Messiah” in Hebrew. According to the woman at the well in John 4:25, “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. And when he comes he’ll explain everything to us.” John confirms that in 1 John 5:20, that the purpose of the Christ’s coming was to “give us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.” The truth of everything we need to know about “God and eternal life” (20), therefore, is what the Messiah was sent by God to reveal, which Jesus also fully did (John 17:3-7).

What pleases God immensely, then, is that we believe what he sent his Son to us for, to be both Jesus and the Christ. Which helps explain why John wrote in the last verse of 1 John 5, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” In other words, don’t look to, or depend on, any other source   other than Jesus Christ to “explain everything.” As Peter said to Jesus in John 6:68, “to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

But which of those “words of eternal life” that Jesus taught is God pleased by most when obeyed? It’s contained in “The message you heard from the beginning”….(next blog)

According to 1 John 1:3-4, we’re on the path to “complete joy” when we’re in “fellowship with the Father and his Son.”

So how does fellowship with the Father and his Son come about? John could answer that, because early on in John’s life Jesus told him how, and again for the same purpose – “so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete,” John 15:11. 

The explanation Jesus gave is in the previous two verses. In verse 9 he says, “I’ve loved you like the Father’s loved me. Hang on to that. Live every day knowing I love you as deeply and always as the Father has loved me.” That’s Jesus’ first key to how fellowship comes about: it’s simply knowing he loves us that much.  

But how is that realization kept front and centre in our minds when life gets rough? Jesus’ answer in verse 10 is just as simple: “If you keep my commandments you will live in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and live in his love.” Jesus’ second key to how fellowship comes about, then, is making it our life’s purpose to obey what Jesus taught, because no matter what happens we’ll always know we’re loved.

Which is where the Holy Spirit comes in, because not only does he keep us sensitive to what Jesus taught (John 14:26), he also keeps us knowing we’re loved (1 John 3:24). The Holy Spirit of God, then, is keeping us on the path of fellowship leading to joy, always confirming Jesus’ promise to us in Luke 11:28, “Blessed (and full of joy) are those who hear the word of God and obey it (put it into practice, 8:21).” 

Which John also confirms in 1 John 3:21-22, that “we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” And that, as John adds in verse 24, is what leads to fellowship with God, because “Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them.” 

Or as Jesus put it in John 14:23, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Working backwards through that verse, then, we have the path to joy: joy comes from fellowship with the Father and Son, which comes from knowing God loves us, and obeying him. 

Since obedience is so important to joy, then, “What obedience pleases God most?”….(next blog)

According to 1 John 4:17, God’s love “is made complete in us so that we’ll have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world world we are like him.” 

To John, then, “the day of judgment” is not a scary thought. He’s totally positive about it – and just as positive in 1 John 2:28 too, stating that “when Jesus appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.”

And rightly so, because, as John also wrote back in John 5:24, Jesus said that “whoever hears what I have to say – and believes in the one who sent me – has eternal life. He does not have to face judgment, since he’s already passed from death into life.” Judgment day has no worries for us because our final destiny has already been decided and sealed.

Why, then, is John still talking about a “day of judgment” for us? Paul answers that in 1 Corinthians 3:13, that our “work (of building on what Jesus began in us, verses 10-12) will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light.” It won’t affect our final destiny but it does affect our reward (14-15) – “For,” Paul adds in 2 Corinthians 5:10, “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what’s due to us for what we did in our earthly bodies, for good or bad.” 

Well, that may be a great confidence builder for those who’ve done a lot of good in their lives, but not so much for those who feel they’ve lived a rather ordinary and uneventful life. It’s confusing too, because isn’t being good to get a reward encouraging selfishness? And does it mean we could be stuck for eternity with a lesser reward than others get? 

But the reason John gives for us having confidence on the day of our judgment back in 1 John 4:17, is not based on our good works, or our religiousness. It’s based on “God’s love being made complete in us.” As Paul wrote in Philippians 1:6, God wants us “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” 

That’s the path God has us on, based on him growing and maturing his love in us, and if that’s the path we’re choosing to walk on, there is a reward – both now and forever – because it’s also “The path to joy”….(next blog)

Becoming a “restless wanderer on the earth” was the punishment God inflicted on Cain for hating and murdering his brother (Genesis 4:12). For the rest of his long life Cain would be stumbling around in the dark, never feeling settled. And according to John in 1 John 2:11, “whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he doesn’t know where he’s going, because the darkness has blinded him,” so the punishment for hating one’s brother is still the same: stumbling restlessly and blindly around in the dark. 

On the outside, however, it looks like the hateful person is doing just fine. Cain for instance, went on to have a wife and kids, and he even built a city, Genesis 4:17. And five generations of Cain’s descendants later, up popped Lamech whose three sons in just one generation changed their world dramatically for the better, each of them pioneering an essential part of life that we appreciate today – the raising of livestock, the creation of music and musical instruments, and the forging of metals for tools (20-22). 

But Lamech was also stumbling around in a terrible darkness, because in verse 23 he insists his two wives listen to his tale of killing someone who’d injured him – which in itself was a vicious and over-the-top thing to do – but he went on to say in verse 24, that “If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech should be avenged seventy-seven times.” 

Lamech actually believed that he, not the victim, should be avenged. He refers back to God telling Cain he’d avenge Cain seven times over if anyone killed him (4:15). But Lamech told his wives that he deserved being avenged seventy-seven times over. Not only did he have no feeling of remorse or guilt at having murdered a man who’d only injured him, he also felt justified in calling for further violence on top of the murder. Somehow, Lamech had got it in his head that he was the victim who deserved justice and revenge. 

No wonder John writes in 1 John 2:9, that “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.” He can think he’s doing fine, but if he’s into hating in any way, and justifying it, he’s heading for the same darkness as Cain and Lamech. It’s in the prayer of a concerned brother, however, that God has provided – and promised – to get him back on the path of life again (5:16), and back to the relief of forgiveness – and having “Confidence on the day of judgment” too….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:16, “If anyone sees his brother committing sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life.” Which ties in nicely with verse 14, “that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us,” and verse 15, “we have what we asked of him.”

So it’s totally within God’s will for us to pray for a brother caught up in some “wrongdoing” (17), and totally in God’s will to answer our prayer too – so long as the brother’s sin is not one that leads to death. So what would “a sin not leading to death” be?  

John provides a clue in 1 John 1:9, that “If we (or ‘he’ – the brother) confesses his sins,” those sins do not lead to death, but rather lead to Jesus “forgiving the sins and giving the brother a totally fresh start” (9).

To John, then, the willingness to admit the sin (or “wrongdoing”) is the key, because once a sin is done, it’s done, and there’s no getting out of it, getting away with it, or being released from the guilt or discomfort of it by “claiming to be without sin” (8). Nor is there any point in trying to hide it, ignore it, excuse it, justify it, or dismiss it as “not being that serious really” – or blaming someone or something else for causing it, or being resentful of the person who exposed the sin in the first place – because the person who says, “I know Jesus,” but “does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (2:4). 

That may be hard to admit, but totally worth admitting, because when there’s a contrite, penitent heart that fully accepts “I really blew it by how I behaved,” God is “faithful and just” in his promise to forgive (9). And a prayer for a brother to grasp that so God can get him fully back on the road to eternal life again, is a prayer guaranteed an answer.

That prayer is also hugely important because, as Paul pointed out in 2 Corinthians 2:7, when it suddenly dawns on a sinning brother how weak, stupid or ignorant he’s been – along with the grief he’s caused other people too – he could then become so devastated and discouraged and “overwhelmed with excessive sorrow” (7) that nothing we say or do can console him. It’s God’s will that we try – by “reaffirming our love for him” (8) – but what seems to break through the gloom best of all is simply saying to him, “I’ll pray for you,” just as Jesus did for his disciples to prevent Satan getting at them too, which, of course, God answered (Luke 22:31-32). Which God loves to do, because he doesn’t want us “Stumbling around in the dark”….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:16, John speaks of “a sin that does not lead to death,” but also of a sin that does lead to death. So what’s the difference?

John makes the difference rather clear in 1 John 3:14, when writing that “Anyone who does not love remains in death,” compared to the first part of the verse that “we’ve passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.” And to make that difference even more clear in verse 15: “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.”

To hate a brother, therefore, is a sin that leads to death – “death” to John meaning “no eternal life.” To John we’re either on the road that leads to eternal life or the road leading to no eternal life, one obvious difference between the two being how we view and treat our brothers. 

This became a serious issue for John too, because he was up against people who “claimed to be in the light but hated their brothers” (2:9). These were people who put on a good show of love – “loving with words,” as John put it in 1 John 3:18 – but, verse 17, “How can the love of God be in them if, on seeing a brother in need and they’ve got the material possessions to help him, they show no pity on him?”

In other words, they’d rather watch a brother starve than help him, which could lead to that brother literally dying. Love – the very essence of eternal life that God sent Jesus to create in us – is totally absent in them. No wonder John calls such an attitude “a sin that leads to death,” because not only could it lead to the physical death of a brother, it’s also the death in an individual of what God got started in him through his Son in 1 John 4:19, that “We love because he first loved us.”

It’s because God had pity on us that started us on the road to eternal life, of being able to love as he loves. So a person who says, “I love God, yet hates his brother, is a liar” (19). He’s not on the road to eternal life at all. Instead, according to John in 1 John 2:22, “Such a man is antichrist,” because he’s not living the life of love that Christ came to make possible in us. As such, John says back in 1 John 4:16, there’s not much point in praying for him, because it looks like he was never with it in the first place (2:18-19).

But what about the “Sin that doesn’t lead to death”?….(next blog)