Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. 1 John 2:6 NIV
I am a daddy’s girl. I can say that unashamedly. Not because he was perfect, but because he was the most loving man you could ever meet. Everyone got it, and as his girl, I witnessed and experienced his love up close and personal. After he accepted God’s gift of salvation and began to follow Jesus at about 27 years old (he had been in the Army for all of his twenties, serving before and all during World War II), he was determined to love and live like Jesus to the best of his ability. He memorized the book of 1 John to guide his life. The book of 1 John is frequently referred to as a definitive biblical treatise on love, centering on the theme that because God is love, His children must reflect that love to the world. It defines God's love, not as a passive feeling but as an active, sacrificial, and at times difficult action.
In this letter, John doesn’t tell us how to get saved; he gives us clear evidence that we ARE saved, born again into God’s family.
First, we are no longer able to be casual about sin. “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning” (1 John 3:6 NIV). One Sunday morning I was teaching a room full of people at varied stages of spiritual growth. A young lady who had been saved for a few months and was really on fire came in late that morning, sobbing. We were all concerned about what could possibly be wrong. She burst out, “I’m not saved anymore! I fell into sin so bad last night!” Then she told the whole group that she was so lonely that she fell back into a night with an old boyfriend. She was inconsolable.
An older man jumped into the conversation and with the wisdom of his years following Jesus, he called her by name and said, “Let me ask you this: If this would have happened before Jesus, would you have cried? What would you think back then?”
She said, “Oh, no. I wouldn’t have cried. I would have patted myself on the back and said, ‘Girl, you still got it!’ We couldn’t help it. We all laughed aloud, and she smiled a little smile too.
Then this gentleman explained, “My dear, that right there tells you that you DO belong to Jesus. You can’t sin anymore and feel OK about it. Ask His forgiveness and keep walking.” He was so right. It’s not that sin never happens, but when we do sin, we don’t excuse it. We don’t explain it away. We are convicted. It’s not normal for us anymore and we are miserable until we get it right. The first evidence that we are saved is that the Holy Spirit in us convicts us, and we have to make it right.
- Holy Spirit, convince me when I start to stray. I don’t want to be OK with the sin Jesus died to free me from.