Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 John 1-5.

Those who claim to know God must live as Jesus lived, loving those around them and hating no one.  Hate will blind us to the light of God’s love.  John here presents a variation of what Jesus said concerning serving two masters.  Just as we cannot serve God and money, so we cannot love both God and the world.  Love of the world leads us to lust and away from humility.  Love of God leads us to love those around us and away from sin.  I find what John writes about Believers and sin to be both comforting and challenging.  He writes that if we claim to be sinless we are calling God a liar.  When we do sin, God will forgive us ours sins if we are willing to confess them.   However, that does not mean that we can sin with impunity.  John writes that no one who lives in Christ will just keep on sinning and that no one who continues to sin knows Christ.  I find this comforting because I know that I am a sinful man, but that God will forgive me if I confess my sins.  I also find this challenging because there are some sins I struggle to avoid.  For me the key in understanding this dichotomy comes from the connotations of the word “confess”.   In order for our confession of sin to be genuine it must involve an understanding that what we did was wrong, it must involve a regret that we did it…not a regret that we got caught.  If we truly regret doing something we will strive to not do that something again, we will avoid putting ourselves in the situations where we are likely to repeat the action which we regret.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.