Read with Me
1 John 2:3-6 (HCSB)
This is how we are sure that we have come to know Him: by keeping His commands. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” yet doesn’t keep His commands, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly in him the love of God is perfected. This is how we know we are in Him: The one who says he remains in Him should walk just as He walked.
Listen with Me
John condenses the whole of Christian life into two very short concepts. The first is that everyone who claims to know Jesus must obey his commandments. (The word used here for “know” indicates experiential knowledge, knowledge in relationship, as opposed to intellectual knowledge, or knowledge about Him)
Some may bridle at this, having been taught that no obedience is needed in a relationship with Jesus, and even go so far as to classify belief in a need for obedience as a form of legalism. Instead, they teach that only faith is needed, and that the way that we live is unimportant in the grand scheme of things. But John disagrees.
And he has a very good basis for his teaching that obedience to Jesus’ commands (and there are many of them, including his confirmation of the ethical teachings of the Old Testament) is essential if one is to live as a Christian. And that is that Jesus himself placed obedience to his commands as the only acceptable sign that his followers truly love him (John 14:15-24). And Jesus even included teaching others to faithfully obey everything that He commanded as an essential, though often overlooked, part of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20).
But John goes even further, proclaiming in verse 6 that the proof that someone is really living in relationship with Jesus is that they will live Christlike lives. This includes not only a consistent keeping of God’s commands, but also a life that puts loving God first and loving others next as their top priorities.
Though some say that John is speaking idealistically, not literally, that no one is able to live a genuinely Christlike life, John would again disagree. There is not a trace of the figurative or idealistic in the language he uses here, any more than there is in the language he uses in 1:9 to assure his readers that if they confess their sins, they can not only find real forgiveness, but they can also be purified from all unrighteousness as well.
And that purification from all unrighteousness is really the “secret”. God had long promised that those who receive His Holy Spirit would not only be saved in some abstract theological way, but that they would be transformed from the inside out by having their stony hearts removed and replaced with self with soft, obedient hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:25-27). And with that real transformation solidly in place, it is not only possible to live a Christlike life of genuine obedience, that kind of life becomes the most natural way to live, as John and the other apostles themselves had experienced.
Pray with Me
Father, the sad thing is that so few Christians pursue the new heart that You promise to Your people because they assume or have been taught that it is impossible to live like Jesus instead of simply acting on Your word, what You say is possible through faith in You. Lord, you created the universe and all that is in it in six days. You created the first man from the dirt and breathed Your own divine life into him so that he became a living being with an eternal soul. Why should we disbelieve that You can do the comparatively simpler work of transforming our hearts and helping us to live a genuinely holy life? Help me, help all of us, to believe it and to really start living it out in Your power today. Amen.