For those of you who may be unfamiliar with my history, I grew up as a pastor’s kid. I actually was born during the time my dad was in Bible college and he became a pastor shortly thereafter.  So consequently, I spent most of my early life in church. I grew up hearing the gospel, the stories of the Old and New Testament, singing the hymns, participating in some sort of church service at least three times a week, and sometimes more. But when I was about 21 years old, I left home, pretty much abandoned my faith, and ran

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We have finally come to the last message in the book of 1st John. I’m a little saddened by that. John has a unique style of writing, and a particular message which is absolutely essential to the Christian life. His whole epistle is a series of dogmatic declarations concerning how we may know that we have eternal life. And that theme is summarized here in these last verses by a series of doctrines which he says enables us to know that we are born of God. The theme of the entire letter was summarized in vs 13, which says, “These

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As we enter this last section of chapter 5, John is summing up all that has been said up to this point in what you might call the epilogue.  John’s style of writing is one where he uses repetition to teach us certain doctrines and principles.  And each time he repeats a principle, he usually adds some new dimension to it.  But now that he has reached the conclusion, he makes his final statements regarding these reoccurring themes. Probably the most frequently repeated principle that John makes is the assurance we can have of our salvation.  Not only has he

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As the Apostle John is bringing his epistle to a close he is bringing to a conclusion various streams of arguments that he has made concerning how you may know that you have eternal life. The purpose of this epistle is found in vs 13, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” In that statement, John is saying this is how you may know how to be saved, and this is how you may be assured that you are saved,

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If you watch much television or listen to the radio, or even if you read very much, then you might think that the dominate theme of our culture today is the theme of love.  The world seems to be infatuated with the idea of love. It’s the theme of virtually every song you hear on the radio, and the theme of most books and movies.  If you were to talk to many people, it would seem that love is the supreme goal of life, and happiness and fulfillment are only possible if you experience true love. Interestingly, this epistle of

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We come today in our study of 1 John to a very important passage for the church, and one to which I have referred to in previous messages many times.  It teaches some important principles which were essential for the church of John’s day, and which has been essential for the church ever since, and no less so for the church today.  In John’s day, the church was battling with the teachings of Gnosticism, which professed a superior knowledge of God but which John calls false knowledge, proclaimed by false prophets.  He said they were the spirit of antichrist.  That

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At the end of John’s first epistle, in chapter 5 vs 13  he writes that he has written these things “to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”   That’s the overarching reason for his letter, to assure the Christians in the early church of their salvation.  It would seem that the false teachers who were disturbing them by their false doctrine, were also inferring that they could lose their salvation, or just never be sure of it.  But John says that you can know that

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One of the Apostle John’s favorite instruments in teaching is the use of contrasts.  He also uses repetition as another major instrument for teaching in this epistle.  In the passage we are looking at today, John combines both of these instruments to help teach us concerning either the verification of a believer or the identification of a false believer, or a false teacher. And the two principles that John is going to contrast here are love and hate. John presents love and hate as polar opposites, not only in emotion, but in thinking, and in action.  What John is going

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The section of scripture before us today is one of the most difficult in John’s epistles, if not in the entire New Testament.  Just a cursory reading of this text seems to cause all sorts of conflicting interpretations, and seemingly contradictory interpretations.  I heard someone quote John Knox as saying to Mary Queen of Scots that if you read the Bible and think you find a contradiction, then keep on reading and sooner or later you will find another passage that explains it quite satisfactorily.  So in dealing with some of these statements by John we must compare scripture with

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