Read with Me
1 John 4:13-16 (HCSB)
This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit. And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world’s Savior. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
Listen with Me
In just a few short sentences here, John lays out the basics of the Christian faith.
First is the fact that God has given the Holy Spirit to those who belong to the kingdom. Before the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was only given to a few select people, usually prophets, judges, or kings. And He was usually active in that person only for a span of time when God needed them to do something extraordinary, or when He needed them to speak a word of prophecy to communicate His will. Then, when the task was done, the Spirit of God would draw back. He would stay nearby, but the power ceased to be actively manifested in that person’s life.
John the Baptist broke that paradigm, becoming a harbinger of what was to come. As Gabriel told his father (Luke 1:15b-17), John was filled with the Holy Spirit from birth. And from the day of Pentecost, when God poured out His Holy Spirit on all those who believed in Jesus, the constant presence of the Spirit has been the birthright of all who trust in Him.
Next is the simple fact that Jesus is God’s Son, and that He was God’s Son even before He was dispatched from heaven to be the Savior of the world. Jesus was not simply a man who was made the Savior after He was born. He was the eternal Son of God who existed with the Father before the universe was created (John 1:1-3, 17:5). He was the Word made flesh and living as a human being, while still remaining God. His overarching task was to save those who are lost (Luke 19:10), all those who believe in Him, by offering Himself as the sacrifice for their sins, the divine Lamb of God (Revelation 5:6-10). All who come into the kingdom of God come only through faith in Jesus, because He is the only legitimate gate into the kingdom (John 10:7-9).
The final basic fact is that only those who acknowledge that Jesus is in fact the eternal Son of God made flesh are in the kingdom. Those who are only willing to accept Jesus as a good man or a great moral teacher, or even as a prophet, cannot be saved. Nor can the Gnostics, who only acknowledged Jesus as a model of divine knowledge, or even as an ascended master who achieved enlightenment, or Christ-consciousness. Even the most exalted of those conceptions of Jesus falls dismally short of the reality of Him as the eternal Son of God made flesh, and thus able to not only provide a model of how to live the kingdom life, but actually able to provide salvation to all who trust in Him and His sacrifice.
Pray with Me
Father, sometimes we make the gospel far more complicated than it needs to be, wrestling over the methodology of the incarnation and trying to dissect the Trinity so that we can analyze it under our theological microscope. But John, and the rest of the apostles as well, understood that the gospel way of salvation is actually very simple. It is so simple that anyone can trust in Jesus and be saved. It is actually so simple that we can then share the good news with all our family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers, no theology degree, or even an evangelism class, required! We were lost in our sins and therefore separated from the Holy God. God Himself came to earth in the person of Jesus, who lived as a real human for nearly thirty-four years without sinning even once. Then He laid down his life on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins that we deserved. Then He rose from the dead on the third day, and now lives forever at God’s side. If we repent of our sins, turn away from that life and toward God, if we trust in Jesus, that His death really did pay for our sins, then our sins will be forgiven, we will have a fresh start, and God’s own Holy Spirit will come to live in us, to remake our lives from the inside out, and to give us power to live for God from now on. Simple, but profound. Thank you, Lord, not only for the gospel message, but also for making it real in my own life. Amen.