The Letters of John Lesson 4

1 John 2:1-6

1My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2 and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

3 Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. 4 Whoever says, “I have come to know him,” but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; 5 but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: 6 whoever says, “I abide in him,” ought to walk just as he walked.

First Impression

• Advocate, Liar, and confusion (from reading on through 11). I tend to think of Christ as my robe of righteousness that I put on during trial, so I tend not to think of Him being my advocate as well. It is good to remember both.

Reading on trough 11 brought some confusion as it speaks of a commandment. While not camping out on the point of the verses (we leave that to next week), we did discuss how The New Living Translation actually spells out this command (love one another) whereas more literal translations of the underlying Greek do not and leave the reader either having to wonder what commandment this is or to assume they already know what it is. This was pointed out not so much to say that The New Living Translation is not a Bible, but that we need to recognize the fallacies that can come into play when trying to word play within a single English translation or on a single view of what the underlying term meant at the time in the underlying language. God speaks to us through His word in whatever the form, but it all has to hang together, or something is not clearly understood.

Note that we also spent too much time on the gender-neutral aspects of the Word of God. When John wrote this, he was not expecting anyone to get bent out of shape because he said brother instead of brother or sister or fellow believer. Satan is at work trying to destroy people and he uses every means he can, no matter how seemingly silly to some. Note that biblegateway.com carries the more recent NIV translation and not the one from 1984.

Student D asked the question “If we all sin, why does it say: “If anyone does sin”? (and no, Student D is not a D student. That is student…)

• This was an excellent question. My answer is that John is telling us it is ok to create a goal of not sinning. Some people think that if they cannot be perfect, they might as well not try. Typically, in school, the best possible grade is 100. Some people shoot for this goal every time. Some people shoot for an A or a 90. Others shoot to pass. Others show up to avoid something worse. School is not a completely irrelevant model of life. Some jobs need 100% accuracy or people die. Some jobs can prevent death if only 90% accurate. Some can even do so with 70% accuracy or whatever the target is. A number of jobs have zero chance of leading to death from doing the job. Certain people are geared towards certain jobs that have these varying shades of accuracy for success. John  tells us to try not to sin all the time; it won’t hurt anything. But he also tells us its ok to fall short of this goal because Jesus is there to make it come out alright.

Another student asked another question. It took forever to stop talking about it. But I asked the same student to answer both questions first and I forget the second question. It had something to do with living as Jesus did. (I remember because the phrase “What would Jesus do?” kept running through my head. I am sure I will remember about three seconds after I finally post this.)

• The just of the conversation was that we do not live to build monuments to ourselves, but to leave an impression in the lives of those who lived around us. We do not ask ourselves if our own lives are producing fruit, we ask ourselves if we are listening for and following the call of God in our lives. If we go around trying to show others our fruit, then we have missed the reason why it is there (to glorify God). That is how Jesus lived, to give glory to His Father in Heaven. That is how we are to live. Memorizing scripture is great. Being able to understand what the scriptures means is great. But the goal is to live it out in our lives. Moment by moment, relationship by relationship, or day by day. Simply live it out. Walk as He walked.