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)

God’s purpose in creating us humans and giving us life is that we come to “live in love” as entirely and eternally as he does, which he makes happen in three ways: 

First of all, he tells us he loves us. All through Scripture that message comes through, from making us in his image to being our Father. That’s because, as John writes in 1 John 4:16, “God is love.” Everything he is and does is love. 

But how does God make us aware of that? By the second way: he shows his love for us, which he did by sending his Son, who in everything he said and did would make the love of his Father known (John 17:26).

And isn’t that how it works on our human level too? When a man seeks to live in love forever with a woman, he too does a lot of telling her he loves her – along with doing whatever it takes to show his love too. On our human level too, then, expressing and showing love are essential to making love happen. 

And it never fails in kickstarting billions of marriages. Starry eyed couples fall in love and happily believe that with the kind of love they have for each other they will never fall out of love like other couples they know do. But then they discover to their shock and horror that the realities of day-to-day life in this world can make even their love wear a bit thin. The pressures of work, money, health and family troubles create tension and stress that can turn even their “unending love dial” to an icy cool. 

But fortunately, according to John, God has a third way to keep love alive: it’s by God living his love in us – the same love the Father and Son have together, that has kept their love alive forever. As John puts it in 1 John 4:12, “God lives in us,” because that’s how “his love (the love that lasts forever) is made complete in us.” Whoever has that kind of love, then, “lives in God,” verse 16, “and God in him.” What keeps love alive forever, then, is trusting God to live his love in us. 

But how do we know he’s living his love in us? John answers that in 1 John 3:24: “We know it by the Spirit he gave us,” and in 4:13, “We know we live in him and he in us, because he’s given us of his Spirit.” But how  do we know we have his Spirit? According to John, it’s by “What the Spirit does in us”….(next blog)

In 1 John 4:16, John writes that “God is love,” so we can happily assume that God loves us. But how do we know he loves us? 

John answers that in verse 9: we know because “God showed his love.” He proved it through obvious and loving action. Which makes sense, because how does a wife know her husband loves her? He can say he loves her, sing of his love for her, even write poems to express how much he loves her – just as God tells us he loves us and expresses his love in songs and poems in Scripture too – but the proof of the pudding is in love that’s shown in obvious and loving action. 

So how did God show his love in obvious and loving action? According to John in verse 9, it was by “sending his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” 

In 1 John 1:1 John explains why that was the best thing God could do to prove his love for us. It’s because his Son is “the Word of life,” meaning the source of “eternal life” (2). Back in John 1:4, John had already made it clear that “in him (Jesus the Word) was life,” and in John 3:35, that “The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands,” so that “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (36). 

So when John writes that the Father sent Jesus that “we might live through him,” he meant “live eternally through him,” because in placing everything in Jesus’ hands, it included making Jesus the source of eternal life. In God sending Jesus to us, therefore, his purpose was obvious and loving: it was to bring us eternal life. 

And what better proof of God’s love could there be than that? Nothing could be more practical and comforting in this finite life of ours than knowing eternal life is ours too. Which was exactly John’s message in 1 John 1:2, that “we proclaim to you the eternal life,” and in 1 John 5:11, that “this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” And in verse 12: “He who has the Son has life.”

So for simply believing that God sent his Son to give us eternal life, eternal life is ours already, and that’s God’s proof of his love. Clearly, then, he wants us to grasp that. But how? According to John, it’s by God now “Living his love in us” too….(next blog)

In 1 John 4:16, John boils life down to a simple formula, that “Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” – and this, verse 17, is what God is “making complete (or fully developing) in us.”

God’s purpose in creating us humans and giving us life, therefore, is that we come to “live in love” as entirely and eternally as he does. That’s an amazing goal, so how on earth does he go about making it happen?

According to John, God does it in three ways, the first of which is telling us – as John does in verse 16 – that “God is love.” The starting point to living in love, therefore, is catching on to what God tells us about himself, that from top to bottom and all through his being, he is love.

Which may seem hard to believe with all the horrible things happening to us humans in this world, but it would give purpose to all that’s going on if we could see where it’s all leading – that it’s all been designed by a God whose life is love to help us see that life is love too. Which makes sense, because if we’re going to be living in his world forever where life is love, then life for us in this world must be preparation for it.  

Like, for instance, when we’re born, because even in our messy world millions of babies enter a world of love, in the loving arms of our exhausted mother, in the sparkling eyes of our relieved Dad, and the steady stream of aunts, uncles and other assorted relatives and friends all saying we’re the most beautiful baby who’s ever existed. And it all comes so naturally, so that, even if no one thought it at the time, this incredible little living being is already being given a taste of what God has intended for him entirely and eternally.

And hopefully, “life is love” continues for that child too. Which God also made easy, because he built into parents a deep and lasting love for their children. Which for the parents is marvellous preparation for the life God intends for them too, because as John writes in verse 7, “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” 

The love we experience so naturally, therefore, is God’s way of telling us he’s already “birthed” his very own self in us, so that we’re already on the way to living the life of love he lives, and intends for us forever. But how, then, does God make us aware of his love? According to John, it’s in “How God shows his love”….(next blog)

The power of sacrifice comes in two forms: the first, that sacrifice makes life possible, and the second, that sacrifice makes love real. 

The arrival of a new baby soon proves the first point, because along with the joy of a newborn baby comes the realization that this little creature is utterly helpless. Without the sacrifice of a parent’s time and attention – and sleep – a baby won’t survive. And yet we still have babies, knowing the sacrifices needed to keep our children alive until they’re capable of looking after themselves.

That’s a long but totally acceptable sacrifice to most parents, though, because it’s through sacrifice that love is made real. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:58 that our “labour is not in vain,” and that fits the sacrifices parents willingly make year after year for their growing children, because that’s how children become aware that they’re loved. 

It’s the single parent who works three jobs so a son or daughter can get a decent education, or the Dad who bails his child out of jail for a lapse in his child’s judgment, that builds that vital picture in a child’s mind that he or she is loved.

But how does God make us aware that we’re loved? John answers that in 1 John 4:9, “This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” And how do we “live through him”? By God in his love “sending his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (10).

So it’s in sacrifice that God not only makes life possible, but makes love real too. And it’s in Jesus that he builds that picture in our minds, because Jesus is just like a parent who sacrifices his life and personal dreams and ambitions for his child. Jesus gave up his life as God to become human like us so he could die to save us from death. And now he lives to intercede for us, just as parents live for their kids.

So, just as “We love because God first loved us” (4:19), our children become loving humans because we loved them. That’s the power God  gave to sacrifice, not only in his Son’s sacrifice for all of us, but also in a parent’s sacrifice for a child. Because in sacrifice not only is life made possible, love is made real too. But why does love need to be made real? Because “Life is love”….(next blog)

In 1 John 2:17, John makes an amazing statement, that “anyone who does the will of God lives forever.”

John also wrote in verse 5, that “if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.” So that’s two things on offer for tuning into God’s will and God’s word: life for ever, and a life of love. Or put together, “a permanent world of love.” 

If we’re serious about what God’s saying, then, a new world opens up to us, that’s not like this world. In this world, by comparison, life is only temporary. No matter how brilliant our medicines are, or how well we look after ourselves, our lives don’t last forever. And no matter how hard we try to make the world a better and more loving place, the wreckage caused by evil and selfish desires carries on unabated.

Maybe John had a point, then, when he wrote in verse 15, “Don’t fall in love with that (temporary, self-focused) world, because setting your heart on it means you’ll know nothing of the love of your heavenly Father.” To John, to think that this world is the only world in operation on this planet was tragic, because for seventy years or so he’d based his life “on the love God has for us” (4:16). He knew from long experience, therefore, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us” (3:1). 

John had lived in that world too, which he described as being like a child again, only this time being God’s very own child, because “that is what we are!” (3:1). The process by which “God’s love is truly being made complete in us” (2:5) begins, therefore, with the realization that in God’s eyes we are just like a child in a human father’s eyes.  

God created the perfect picture of his love for us in the love of a human father looking down at his newborn baby with nothing but love and delight. The baby has no naturally loveable qualities too. It’s a squished up, purple, puffy-eyed creature making odd faces as if battling some intense internal struggle, and it has no control over its bodily functions. But to a father that’s his child, and his child has just entered a permanent world of love.

As babies, though, we were totally unaware of how loved we were. And probably so as God’s children too. So how does God make us aware of his love? As with humans, it’s in “The power of sacrifice”….(next blog)

In 1 John 1 and 2 it’s black and white: we’re either walking in the light or walking in darkness, living by the truth or living a lie, and either living in the light or stumbling around blindly in the darkness. And again in 1 John 2:15, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” It’s either love the world or love the Father. And in verse 17, “The world and its desires pass away, but (in direct contrast again) the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

Two completely different and opposite worlds, one of which comes to a permanent end, while the other one continues on forever. So how do we detect which world is which, and which world is better?  

John’s simple answer is: “Look at the desires each world creates.” In John’s terms the evil one’s world creates “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride” (16) – exactly the same three lusts, or desires, that the evil creature created in Adam and Eve. God said if they ate the fruit it would kill them, but the evil one focused their attention instead on the fruit being good to eat, how good it looked, and how clever and wise it would make them. And all thoughts of God were swept away in the flood of their newly awakened, but entirely selfish, desires. 

With that success so easily pulled off, it’s not surprising to see the evil one trying the same three things on Jesus. First, he tries to get the starving Jesus to turn rocks into freshly baked bread. “That should get him,” the devil must’ve thought, “the old lust of the flesh trick.” Jesus fended that one off, however, so the evil one takes Jesus to a high spot and offers him everything his eyes can take in – the old well-worn and highly successful “lust of the eyes” trick. But – saving the best ‘til last, Luke 4:9 – the evil one appeals to Jesus’ pride. If Jesus truly was the Son of God, he could easily prove it by throwing himself off the highest point of the temple mount and angels would catch him. 

How tempting that must’ve been for Jesus to do too, because it was true, angels would catch him (10-11), and that would put the devil in his place all right. But Jesus resisted, because in satisfying all three of what the devil was tempting him to do, what would Jesus have gained? Nothing, because as John wrote: “That world and its desires pass away” (17). It’s all temporary. But what makes the other opposite world any better? According to John, it’s not temporary, nor is it self-focused. It’s about “A permanent world of love”….(next blog)

John makes this statement – about overcoming the evil one – to “young men,” 1 John 2:14. Which is truly amazing, because John is saying it’s possible for even young people to have power over the devil’s world, and at the most vulnerable time of their lives too, when their emotions are all over the place, and they don’t have the benefit of experience yet either. 

It’s also amazing, because the devil’s world of money and greed feeds off young people. The young are its best clients, because they’re so easily sucked in by the three ‘baddies’: “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (16). Those three are the bad part of the world, in which the evil one takes what are normal and natural, God-given desires in us, and twists them instead into all-consuming selfish addictions to whatever my body wants, what my eyes like to look at, and what makes me look great. And the world feeds on that, broadcasting to the young on every frequency available, that to “eat, drink and be merry” – feeding what self wants – is the best and only goal worth chasing in this life now.

So how on earth do young people break free of that, or never fall for it in the first place?

Did it have anything to do with the “fathers” John was also writing to in verse 13? The “fathers” were the first in line to hear what John was teaching, and the first to learn from John the importance of obeying what Jesus taught (2:3). These older folks, then, had “known Jesus from the beginning” (2:13, 14), which had given them a lifetime of experience and stories they could tell of the power we humans have over the devil’s world that the teachings of Jesus provide. 

Was it then in “fellowship” with these veterans of Christianity, who’d been through the mill, been hit from all angles by the devil and his tricks, and come through them all into a kind of peace and calm about life where very little rattles them, that was now inspiring these younger folks, or younger Christians, to “overcome the evil one” too (2:14)? 

John seems to think so, because it’s fellowship with God and each other that he’s focusing on, and the gifts the Holy Spirit has given to each group to help the others. With one other great gift the older folk have to offer as they age, the realization that “The world and its desires pass away”….(next blog)

The evidence of the Holy Spirit being “poured out on all people” in Acts 2:17, would be “young men seeing visions” and old men “dreaming dreams,” both of which would be attached in some way to “the last days,” when the age of the Kingdom of God would begin.

At that time the Holy Spirit would fill the old and the young with dreams and visions of that Kingdom, inspiring in their lives the evidence that it was already happening. In the old folk it would create a lifetime of following Jesus’ teachings, which form the foundation of the Kingdom of God and how the whole world will be living for eternity. It’s why the Holy Spirit inspired them to live that way, so that clear evidence of what the Kingdom of God is based on, and the effect it has on people, can be seen in their lives. And isn’t that what we older folk dream of and live for too? 

But what about the young? They can’t depend on a lifetime of living by Jesus’ teachings as evidence of the Kingdom of God already in operation on the planet. But what the Holy Spirit does in them instead is give them a vision of the world as it could be, and they want to gear their lives to that.

Which is a great gift the Holy Spirit has given us as a human race, because isn’t it the young we all depend on so strongly to take the fight to evil? In wartime, for instance, it’s always the young who are on the front lines. They’re the ones with the energy – and the heart to put their lives on the line. It is extraordinary how young people – with everything to live for in life – will give themselves to serving the needs of others, and even giving up life itself.

And what makes it even more extraordinary is that they may not attend any church, or profess any religious bent, or even mention God, but they have a good moral compass, they’re capable, confident, wise, good living people who love to serve, work hard, and they are honest and respectful in all their dealings – and aren’t they grand people to be around too?

Their glory (as John puts it in 1 John 2:14) is their strength, which either consciously or unconsciously has come from “the word of God living in them,” where the Holy Spirit is inspiring them for all our sakes to make our world liveable, and prove to us all that, no matter what age we are or what stage of our Christianity we’re at, we really do have “Power over the devil’s world”….(next blog) 

According to John in 1 John 2:14, it’s possible for “young men” to “overcome the evil one.” He tells them, and us, how it’s possible too: it’s because “the word of God is living in you” (same verse).

But how did that happen in them, and not in Adam and Eve and the Israelites? Simply put: it was “the effect of the Holy Spirit.” When Jesus ascended to his Father to ask him to send the Holy Spirit, the Spirit would open up a completely different relationship with God, where we humans, even as “young men,” could “obey Jesus’ teaching” out of love for him, John 14:21 – just as Jesus obeyed his Father out of love for him (31). 

But there was more too, because when the Holy Spirit was then sent as Jesus promised in Acts 2, Peter “stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice,” verse 14, “and addressed the crowd” with “what was spoken by the prophet Joel” (back in Joel 2:28-32).

“In the last days,” Peter begins in Acts 2:17, quoting Joel, “God says I will pour out my Spirit on all people.” To a Jew hearing “the last days” it meant the new age of the Kingdom of God, the one great dream they’d all had for centuries when God would “restore the kingdom to Israel” (1:6), and then through Israel bless the whole world as God had promised to Abraham back in Genesis 12:3 (and Isaiah 49:6).

Was Peter saying, then, that this time had finally come? Well, they’d know if it had, because, as Peter continues in Acts 2:17, “Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.”  

Visions and dreams about what, though? About the Kingdom of God being set up on this planet, now that the time had come for it to happen. And who is it going to show up in the most? According to God in the book of Joel, it’s going to be the “young men” and the “old men.” 

Which John tells us later is exactly what he’d seen happen. The old men, or the “fathers” as he calls them in 1 John 2:13, “have known him who is from the beginning.” They’ve been rooted solidly in the teachings of Jesus for years, because their “dream” (Acts 2:17) is to see the whole world at last living by those teachings, as promised. But what about the effect on the young? According to Joel, ““Your young men will see visions”….(next blog)