Read with Me
1 John 3:21-24 (HCSB)
Dear friends, if our conscience doesn’t condemn us, we have confidence before God and can receive whatever we ask from Him because we keep His commands and do what is pleasing in His sight. Now this is His command: that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commands remains in Him, and He in him. And the way we know that He remains in us is from the Spirit He has given us.
Listen with Me
John’s criteria for our hearts not condemning us before God is very simple, and harks back to the whole of chapter 3 that comes before, and flows through the end of this chapter. These criteria are obedience to God’s commandments, belief in Jesus as the Messiah and Savior, and self-sacrificial love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. If those things are present in our lives, then there will be nothing in our lives that can condemn us.
As John points out, with those signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and with the sure knowledge that there is nothing in our lives that will separate us from God, we can have confidence before Him, and we will receive from Him anything that we ask. This is the same confidence that Jesus Himself had before the Father, because He had no sin in His life, He walked before God in perfect obedience, and He demonstrated pure agape love in all His dealings with others, even with those who had set themselves against Him.
The final sign that a person’s heart is right before God is the Holy Spirit working in and through him or her. This is not merely about signs, and wonders, and miracles, although those can and do happen with those who are living in God. It is about what Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit, or the natural outgrowths of the Holy Spirit being in residence in a person’s life. And when those fruit, love, joy, peace, patience (or long-suffering), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, (Galatians 5:22-23), are evident in a person’s life in ever-increasing measure (2 Peter 1:5-9), that person need never fear God’s condemnation. They are living in God, in His Spirit, and in vital connection to Jesus, the Vine, and they will continue to bear much fruit for God’s kingdom (John 15:1-5).
Pray with Me
Father, many people today seem to want our qualifications for Your kingdom to be all about feelings or experiences. But John is very practical, just as Jesus Himself was. It is about fruit, how we live our lives, and how You are able to work through us by the power of Your Holy Spirit. If there is no fruit, regardless of our feelings, there is no connection to the vine, and no reasonable confidence before You. But Lord, if we will simply seek You with all our hearts, if we will repent of any wrongdoing or self-sufficiency, we have Your promise of full restoration, of being made completely righteous before You (1 John 1:9), and of bearing much fruit, all those listed above, the greatest of which is agape love that controls them all and makes them function in Your service. Lord, help me to walk with You, to live in You, today and every day, not in my own strength or righteousness, but in the power and purity of Your Spirit, so I can be confident before You always. Amen.