We cannot have the Father without the Son.

1 John 2.22-25.

In my previous article, about antichrists, I pointed out not every antichrist is a radical atheist. Plenty of people totally believe in God… yet deny Jesus is Christ, or Lord, or in any way like Christians describe him. Sometimes they insist he’s not even real.

Jews fr’instance.

And let me preface this with a rebuke against antisemitism, ’cause there’s still a ton of racism out there. Racists want to hassle and exclude anybody they consider different, for stupid and nonsensical reasons. They wanna hassle Jews, and any excuse will do for them. Historically they’ve used “antichrists” as an excuse, and it is not a valid reason.

In John’s definition of antichrist, anybody who actively rejects Jesus the Nazarene as the Christ is an antichrist; plain and simple.

1 John 2.22 KWL

Who’s the liar, if not the one denying this?—

the one saying “Jesus isn’t Christ”?

This is an antichrist:

One who denies the Father and the Son.

So if you worship the LORD God of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, and the biblical prophets—same as Christians—yet reject the son of God, reject Jesus as Christ our Lord, you’d be what John means by “antichrist.” Cut ’n dried, plain ’n simple. Jews, unless they’ve become Christian, unequivocally fit this definition.

Jews don’t believe Jesus is YHWH; they don’t recognize Jesus is their Messiah. If they did they’d be Christian. (Or “Messianic Jews,” if they prefer to call themselves that; still Christian.) If we try to tell ’em otherwise, they’ll blow it off as the ramblings of silly gentiles; if they’re zealous or young or somewhere in the “cage stage,” they’ll even fight us over it. And fighting the idea that Jesus is Christ, means they most definitely fall under the definition of antichrist.

Obviously it’s unwise to accept religious instruction from people who reject Jesus as Christ, same as we’d reject the teachings of any heretic Christian. (And since spouses instruct one another, it’s unwise to marry a non-Christian Jew for the very same reason we ought not marry any non-Christian gentile.) Unwise to worship God with Jews either, since they’re not gonna pray in Jesus’s name. But in every other way, we have no valid reason to discriminate against Jews, and it’s sin to do so.

Yes, antisemitism is sin. Not to mention dumb: Our Lord is a Jew. He chose to be born a Jew, the biological son of a Jewish mother, the adoptive son of a Jewish father. His title “Christ” comes from the Jews. It makes no sense for any Christian to be an antisemite. But as you’re no doubt aware, there’s no shortage of stupid out there.

Odd thing, though: There are a number of Evangelicals who treat Jews as co-religionists—as slightly wayward brothers. Usually for political reasons. Their particular stripe of Christian nationalism teaches them a distorted idea of the End Times which treats the present-day state of Israel as if it’s the ancient kingdom of Israel, and claims all the prophecies of ancient Israel will be fulfilled by a new country less than a century old, which elects irreligious hypocrites to be their leaders, same as we do. These very same Evangelicals also tend to fear and distrust Muslims. But like I said (even though we’d consider both these religions heretic), religious Jews are antichrists, and religious Muslims aren’t. Just goes to show how partisanship can do mighty weird things to one’s theology.

’Cause no proper “co-religionist” of a Christian is gonna deny Jesus is the Christ. No proper “co-religionist” of a Christian is gonna deny Jesus comes from God, and is one with the Father, and is God. And no proper “co-religionist” of a Christian is gonna claim we can have a relationship with the Father but not the Son: God’s a trinity, Jesus is a person of this trinity, and you simply can’t have the Father apart from Jesus. They’re inseperable.

1 John 2.23-25 KWL

23Everyone who denies the Son,

doesn’t have the Father.

One who confesses the Son

has the Father as well.

24What you² heard from the beginning:

Keep it in you!²

When what you² heard from the beginning

remains in you,²

you’ll² remain in the Father and in the Son.

25This is the promise God promises us:

Life in the age to come.

Properly, believing Jesus is Lord recognizes there’s no other lord. We can’t serve two lords, as Jesus pointed out when he talked about God and mammon. Mt 6.24, Lk 16.13 Muslims teach Prophet Isa ibn Maryam (blessings upon him), as they call Jesus, is superseded by Prophet Muhammad (even more blessings upon him). But Jesus can’t be superseded by anyone or anything; that’s idolatry.

Nor can Jesus be one master of many. He’s not one guru out of a collection we’ve cobbled together. Not an avatar of God, same as the others before him. Not one of seven major prophets. Not a son of God in the very same way you’re a child of God. Jesus is unique, and uniquely Lord. He’s to be followed and worshiped the same way God is. It’s because of this uniqueness, Christians came to recognize he is God.

If you imagine you can challenge, reject, or oppose the Son—meaning Jesus—and think you’re still good with God, you’re in for a significant surprise. You can’t oppose the Son without opposing the Father who sent him.

Antichrists: When pagans wanna see Christianity gone.

1 John 2.18-23.

In our culture we find four definitions of antichrist:

1. The Beast, Rv 13.7 the lawless one, 2Ti 2.3 who’s popularly called the Antichrist—an End Times figure who attempts to deceive and conquer the world, till Christ Jesus overthrows him.
2. Anyone claiming they’re Christ, and not Jesus the Nazarene. They don’t have to use the title “Christ,” but they nonetheless insist they should be revered, followed, and worshiped instead of (or more than) Jesus the Nazarene.
3. Someone against Christ. They object to Christ Jesus and his authority, and refuse to recognize him.
4. Someone against orthodox Christianity: They reject Christian beliefs about Jesus, and either insist he’s not YHWH or not human. Sometimes that he’s not even historical.
5. Someone against Christians. (Which is a false definition, pitched by misbehaving Christians who don’t wanna be opposed. But when Christians misbehave, even Jesus is against them, and it’d be nuts to say Christ is antichrist.)

Most of the time people mean the first definition, the Beast; Christians and pagans alike. It may surprise yoiu to learn the Beast is never called an antichrist by the scriptures. Oh it’s definitely anti-Christ, but still. Medieval Christians got into the habit of referring to the Beast as Antichrist, and it stuck. But in the bible it’s just the θηρίον/thiríon, “wild animal,” KJV “beast.”

Whereas when the apostles used the word ἀντίχριστος/antíhristos, “antichrist,” they meant the third definition: People who oppose Jesus the Nazarene. People who are literally anti Christ.

You know the type. They’re not simply unbelievers, like the two-thirds of the people on this planet who don’t acknowledge, or very casually acknowledge but don’t mean it, that Jesus is Lord. Unbelief doesn’t make you an antichrist. To become an antichrist you gotta actively oppose Christ. Antichrists aren’t passive nonbelievers: They wanna fight Jesus.

Sometimes they do believe Jesus exists—he’s legitimately God, he’s actually in heaven—but they hate him for one reason or another, so they’re having a tantrum. I’ve encountered this phenomenon. It’s really stupid and futile, but yep, they’re fighting Jesus ’cause they’ve got some grudge against him. Sometimes they snap out of it, repent, and become Christian again; sometimes they never do.

And there are enough of them so that many Christian apologists think all antichrists are like this. In fact a popular apologetics argument is, “If you don’t believe God is real, why are you so angry with him? Sounds like you actually do believe he’s real.” But this is a really weak argument. It’s like telling an angry anti-Mormon, “If you don’t believe the Book of Mormon is real, why are you so angry with it?” They’re angry because they need to work on the fruit of the Spirit; they haven’t let the Spirit show them how to control their emotions. They’re angry because they think it’s okay to be “righteously angry” over false teachings. It doesn’t necessarily have belief and disappointment at its core. Sometmes it does, but certainly not in every instance.

In recent decades, Christians have anxiously pointed to what they fear is an upsurge of “New Atheism”: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher, Michael Newdow, and various vocal antichrists. These are nontheists who gleefully bash religion in general, but they go hard against Christianity with hammer and tongs, since it is after all the prevalent religion in their countries. These Christians fear the militant nontheists may convince more people to reject and fight Christianity, and maybe even try to get it banned in our homelands. First in the public square, then in private.

I have a longer memory than these fearful people. There have always been militant nontheists. Back during the Cold War, when the God-fearing United States was battling the godless Communists, nontheists were looked on with suspicion. They were considered radicals, possibly treasonous, ’cause they were undermining good ol’ fashioned American values and society. The more outspoken a nontheist got, the more backlash they got. But they were most definitely around. Noam Chomsky, H.L. Mencken, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Linus Pauling, Ayn Rand, Gene Roddenberry, Gore Vidal, and others were quite outspoken against religion and Christianity. Ask any nontheist nowadays about their forebears, and they’ll kindly point ’em out to you.

Once the Red Menace was no longer so menacing, militant nontheism went mainstream in the west. These “New Atheists” felt free to be openly critical of Christianity. They still get away with it ’cause nobody doubts their patriotism anymore (although y’notice it’s rare for a nontheist to get elected to public office). Plus God hasn’t struck these guys down with lightning. True, that’s mixing up Jehovah and Zeus… as if nontheists care, ’cause all gods are the same to them.

Nontheists are the most obvious antichrists, but they’re far from the only ones. Don’t forget other religions. Judaism doesn’t recognize Jesus as Messiah either, and sometimes its practitioners attack Jesus lest anyone get the idea Jews can become Christian (you know, like the first apostles). Certain Hindus are outraged at the way Christianity flattens their caste system, so they fight it vigorously. Certain Muslims get offended when anyone (including a growing number of Muslims!) ranks Prophet Jesus higher than Prophet Muhammad, and likewise fight Christian beliefs, and even get downright antichristian. But there remains a big difference between religious and irreligious antichrists: Religious ones often remember to behave with some degree of goodness. Irreligious ones feel no such restriction whatsoever.

John, and first-century antichrists.

In John’s day, in John’s church, antichrists cropped up. They got mixed up in his church… then objected to what he taught about Jesus, left, and shared their heretic ideas with anyone who’d listen. Whether they were influenced by gnostics, or started their own gnostic groups, I dunno.

But John figured they were an obvious sign the end was coming soon. ’Cause Jesus had warned him (and us) there’d be antichrists. Mk 13.6 So this is what he wrote in his first letter:

1 John 2.18-23 KWL

18Children, it’s the last hour.

And just as you² heard, “Antichrist is coming!”

now many antichrists have come.

Thus you² know it’s the last hour.

19They come from among us,

but they aren’t from us,

for if they were from us,

they should’ve remained with us still.

But they left so they might be revealed,

because none of them are from us.

20You² have an anointing from the Holy Spirit

and know all this.

21I don’t write you²

because you² don’t know the truth,

but because you² do know it,

and because every lie doesn’t come from truth.

22Who’s the liar, if not the one denying this?—

the one saying “Jesus isn’t Christ”?

This is an antichrist:

One who denies the Father and the Son.

23Everyone who denies the Son,

doesn’t have the Father.

One who confesses the Son,

has the Father as well.

And we still have this phenomenon in our churches. There are people who dabble in Christianity, who grow up Christian, yet don’t really believe Jesus is Lord and God, and are just going through the motions for now. I’ve met ’em. Tell them Jesus is God, and they’ll reply, “Well no, Jesus is the son of God.” No, they’re not trying to clarify Jesus’s theological definition; they’re trying to claim he’s not God. I’ve actually heard preachers, from the pulpit, discourage Christians from praying to Jesus on the grounds they should be praying to the Father; that the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to pray, “Our Father,” not “Dear Jesus.” But since God’s a trinity, if you pray to any person in the trinity, you’re praying to God… unless you don’t believe the Son and the Holy Spirit are God of God, truly God, coequal to the Father. And these people regularly reveal they don’t believe that.

Some of them can suspend their disbelief forever, but for many the Holy Spirit’s gonna force them to deal with their doubts and pick a side: Believe in Jesus, or not. And sometimes they refuse to believe in Jesus, and spend the rest of their lives quietly slipping their antichrist beliefs into every church gathering they attend. Others refuse to believe in Jesus, grow weary of the façade, leave church, quit Jesus, go nontheist, and start mocking their old phony lifestyle. And that’s the sort of antichrists we see who publicly mock Christianity (or in their case, Christianism): They learned how to fake their religion, and assume the rest of us are doing likewise. They learned to fake the Spirit’s fruit, to fake supernatural acts, to fake prophecy, to pretend to feel God’s presence… and they presume everybody in Christendom does likewise.

Blaming bad Christians.

There’s been a trend among Christians for the past four decades: We claim people turn antichrist (or turn pagan, or stray from Christianity) because of Christians behaving badly. Just like Father Brennan Manning’s spoken-word intro to the 1995 DC Talk song, “What If I Stumble?”:

”The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today are Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

All due respect to Manning, but that’s rubbish. “I’d follow Jesus if it weren’t for all the a--holes who call themselves Christian”? I follow him regardless. Loads of Christians do. This excuse is the same crap the Judeans tried to pull when they told Jesus, “Show us a miracle and we’ll believe.” Jn 6.30, Mt 12.38 No they wouldn’t.

The real cause, as usual, is good ol’ human depravity. People wanna do as we will. If we believe in Jesus, but don’t really wanna follow him, we’ll invent loopholes and do as we will. If we don’t believe in Jesus, we won’t need loopholes; we’ll just be pagan or nontheist, and do as we will. But sometimes these folks run into Christians who wanna evangelize ’em, and in order to get these Christians off their back, the guilt card works great: “If you Christians were only more like Christ, I’d believe.” Again, no they wouldn’t.

Bad Christians are an easy target. They make it easy for antichrists to point to them, and paint all Christians as the rotten fruit of a rotten religion. I gotta agree with the antichrists about hypocrisy and bad religion; they’re not wrong. But that’s not the reason they’re antichrists. Here are the real reasons:

• They were raised pagan. Had no beliefs one way or another about Christ. Till they met militant nontheists who insisted religion is stupid, religious people are fools, and religious leaders (who’d include Jesus, I suppose) are con artists. They fell in, and now proclaim the same thing. But they’re not speaking from any experience. Just regurgitating stuff they’ve heard. Makes ’em feel good to imagine they haven’t been brainwashed by overzealous hypocrites who unquestioningly follow the teachings of a few charismatic preachers… hey, waitaminnit.
• They were raised or influenced by bad Christians who seriously botched their representation of Jesus. The bad Christians were jerks, who claimed Jesus authorized their awful, control-freak behavior, and was kind of a jerk too. The antichrists feel they’re quite right to object to a bad founder of a bad religion. Like the jerklike Christians, they found a few verses they could quote out of context which make Jesus sound overzealous, crazy, or violent, and that’s how they choose to reinterpret him. Or they adopted some of the weirder ideas about Historical Jesus, and are attacking that guy.
• They knew Christians who made really outlandish claims about Jesus. Made him sound like a genie who’d grant every wish. Turns out he’s not that way at all, and once he told them no, they felt betrayed, blamed him… and figured they’d get him back by quitting him. Like I said, many apologists naïvely think every antichrist is bitter at Jesus. Nope. It’s a percentage, but ’tain’t that big.
• Actually they don’t think Christ is awful. But they’ve found when they bash him a little, it really freaks Christians out… and that’s kinda fun. Besides, they figure Jesus is long dead, so who’s it hurting?… other than Christians.
• They joined a religion who sees Christ as competition. I already mentioned a few. They wanna neutralize Jesus’s influence. So they reinterpret him, or even slander him, through that religion’s lenses.

Basically comes down to ignorance, willful or not; or intellectual dishonesty.

Dishonesty’s a pretty common behavior among antichrists. They’ll claim they were raised Christian, but our hypocrisy made ’em quit. The dishonest part is whose hypocrisy made ’em quit: Their own. They never wanted to know Christ, so they never did. I grant they might’ve held some beliefs, or even had personal experiences. But like the Hebrews in the Exodus, none of these experiences sunk in. If they really knew God, they’d leave his bad followers for a better church; nontheism would never be an option. Neither would going antichrist.

Identifying antichrists.

John’s definition of antichrist is very simple:

1 John 2.22 KWL

Who’s the liar, if not the one denying this?—

“Jesus isn’t Christ”?

This is an antichrist:

One who denies the Father and the Son.

Outside our churches, it’s really easy to identify antichrists. They’re the ones boldly bashing Christianity and Christ. But within our churches, they’re a little harder to detect because they’re not overtly being hostile. If they don’t believe Jesus is Lord and Christ, if they reject what the scriptures tell us about Jesus’s relationship to his Father, John calls ’em antichrists.

And if you don’t know how they feel about Jesus… well there’s always fruit. If they lack the Spirit’s fruit, if they act like they’re still in darkness instead of the light, they should stand out clearly.

We need to identify the antichrists among us. For two reasons.

First we want ’em to meet, get to know, and follow Jesus! We never want ’em to become those apostates who claim they went to church for years but never authentically encountered Jesus: Make sure that yes, they did indeed. Sometimes it’ll stop their apostasy dead in its tracks. Hate to tell you, though: Sometimes they’ll leave anyway, and ruin themselves all the more by denying what they truly saw. Either way, we did our job of actually introducing them to Jesus.

Second, we need to make really sure they never ever slip into leadership positions. ’Cause they can. And do. All the time. A nice guy becomes the music pastor, or youth pastor, or small group leader, or Sunday school teacher… and he has doubts, or she has heretic ideas, or he’s fruitless and graceless and backbiting and unkind (but talented!), or she’s checking out which boys in the youth group she could get away with nailing (but she’s the pastor’s daughter!). It’s every church’s worst-case scenario, and it happens way too often. These folks get found out, kicked out, and spend the rest of their lives bitterly denouncing Christianity and Christ. How’d they slip past us? Because we were looking at their façade, not their fruit.

Watch out, John reminded us. Don’t fall for any good-looking, impressive-sounding Christian. Test ’em. 1Jn 4.1-6 Check for humility. Make sure they actually do know Jesus. Look for fruit. When in doubt, nudge ’em towards God-encounters. Make it impossible for them to stagger in any antichrist direction, ’cause they know Christ. Make sure of that for yourself, while you’re at it.

Don’t love society.

1 John 2.15-17.

The Greek word κόσμος/kósmos usually gets translated “world.” That’s what it meant in bible times; that’s what it means now. But, same as English, “world” can mean many different things. It can mean

• our planet, or other planets;
• part our planet, like the English-speaking world, the ancient world, the world of academia, my world of influences;
• human activity, like the ways of the world, the world of society, the secular world, and of course the Christian world;
• or instead of narrowing our scope, it could mean everything in the world—or, simply, everything. The universe. The cosmos itself. The Greek word for it is kósmos after all.

So when we talk about the world, we gotta talk about which world we mean. Or which world the authors of scripture mean. Get the definition wrong, and we wind up teaching the wrong idea.

Because God so loves the kósmos, he gives his only-begotten son for it. Jn 3.16 So he loves the world, and he wants us to love our fellow Christians, our neighbors, and our enemies—which means pretty much everyone in the world.

And this appears to contradict today’s passage, in which John tells his readers not to love the kósmos:

1 John 2.15 KJV

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

The only way this avoids turning into a massive bible difficulty, is by recognizing Jesus and John were obviously talking about different things; about different definitions of kósmos/“world.” In context, Jesus means humanity. God so loves humanity he gave his son for us. Whereas John lists three things he sees in the kósmos, and they’re not good:

1. ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκὸς/i epithymía tis sarkós, KJV “the lust of the flesh.”
2. ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν/i epithymía ton ofthalmón, KJV “the lust of the eyes.”
3. ἡ ἀλαζονία τοῦ βίου/i aladzonía tu víu, KJV “the pride of life.”

I’m gonna translate them with present-day words which mean the same thing. And yeah, they’re things you find on the planet, the people on it, our culture, ancient culture—and not in the age to come. So let’s narrow down our definition of kósmos to something more appropriate to the context, and translate it like so:

1 John 2.15-17 KWL

15Don’t love society,

nor anything of society:

When anyone loves society,

the Father’s love isn’t in them.¹

16For all these things are found in society:

Valuing whatever feels good.

Valuing whatever looks good.

Emphasizing one’s lifestyle—

one which isn’t based on the Father, but on society.

17Society, and its values, are passing away.

Doing God’s will, remains in the age to come.

Because it’s not the world that’s the problem. God created the world and declared it good—even though we’ve mucked it up a lot, and he’s gonna have to undo and redo a lot of things. One of the things in it that’s gonna have to go, is the structure of human society. Right now our society is based on human depravity: On material wealth and the amassing of it (i.e. materialism), the rule of the influential instead of Christ Jesus (i.e. oligarchy), living for pleasure first and others a distant second, if at all (i.e. hedonism), and peer pressure to conform to these expectations.

A startling number of people, particularly those who claim to be Christian, are gonna insist all these things are the way God wants ’em and made ’em. Which only goes to show how very little they know God.

Stages of Christian maturity.

1 John 2.12-14.

John already stated in previous verses he wrote this letter so his joy might be full, 1Jn 1.4 and so his readers won’t sin. 1Jn 2.1 Here he gives a few more reasons for its composition—along with the people he attached to his particular reasons. This letter is to τεκνία/teknía and παιδία/pedía, children and invants; πατέρες/patéres, parents; and νεανίσκοι/neaníske, young people. (And since adulthood back then began when you were 13, these’d be teenagers.)

1 John 2.12-14 KWL

12Children, I write you²

because your² sins are forgiven in God’s name.

13Parents, I write you²

because you² knew this from the beginning.

Youths, I write you²

because you² conquer evil.

14Infants, I wrote you²

because you² know the Father.

Parents, I wrote you²

because you² knew this from the beginning.

Youths, I wrote you²

because you’re² strong,

and God’s word remains in you,²

and you² conquer evil.

The repetition is Hebrew-style poetry, where you repeat ideas instead of phonemes. Sometimes the very same idea, ’cause John wrote twice that he’s writing parents because they knew this already, and that he’s writing teenagers because they conquer evil. The first three statements are in present tense (γράφω ὑμῖν/gráfo ymín, “I write you”). The second three are in aorist tense, which is a tense we don’t have in English; it’s set in neither past, present, nor future, so it’s timeless. Translators tend to make it past-tense (ἔγραψα ὑμῖν/égrapsa ymín, “I wrote you”) but perhaps it’s better expressed as “I wrote you, write you, and will keep on writing you.” The first three are about why John’s currently writing to his readers, but the last are why John would always write such stuff.

The new command: Stay in the light!

1 John 2.7-11.

In John’s gospel, Jesus gives his followers a new command. The way he talks about it, kinda suggests it’s not just a personal directive from their master, nor a commentary on the Law of Moses like he does in his Sermon on the Mount. This is a new command, meant to be added to all the other commands of the bible, followed just as intently.

John 13.34-35 KWL

34“I give you² a new command

so you² can love one another!

Same as I love you²,

you² can love one another.

35This is how everyone

will come to know you’re² my students:

When you² have love among one another.”

Like all the other things Jesus teaches, and possibly more so, Christians have sought any loophole possible for not obeying him here. Typically by claiming other Christians aren’t real Christians. Because they have different doctrines. Now, heresies I can understand, but we’re too often arguing over differences that are really slight, and insist we’re not merely nitpicking; this is a profoundly vital difference. Fr’instance full-immersion baptism, and absolutely not sprinkling: This has somehow attained the level of “profoundly vital.” You can read Christians’ articles on why this is so, and look at the ridiculous conclusions they eagerly, willingly jump to. Hopefully you’ll recognize their argumentativeness for what it actually is: Jesus wants us to be one, Jn 17.20-23 but the devil doesn’t, and it’s successfully convinced them it’s okay for them to oppose Jesus.

Following the devil’s lead, we nitpick away, and disqualify people from Christianity over these things. Slightly different doctrines, slightly different rituals, slightly different sins. They revere the wrong Christian leaders and teachers, and play the wrong worship music, and vote for the wrong candidates. They’re too young or too old, too formal or informal, too white or brown (although let’s pretend racism isn’t really our hangup; let’s pretend it’s politics again). Pick your favorite excuse.

Anyway. In today’s discussion on 1 John, we got John writing about a new command. And a number of commentators have decided John is writing about “the new command,” Jesus’s command in John 13 about loving one another.

Because, they figure, the author of 1 John and the Gospel of John is the same guy. Probably has the same audience. Probably the audience read the gospel, and knows John’s references to “new command” are about that new command. Plus, would John dare to issue a new command on his own?—he’s not God, not Moses, definitely not Jesus, and has no business declaring commands on his own initiative.

I would remind you it’s not wise to just assume the readers of 1 John have read John. If John really is a wise, Spirit-inspired author like we believe him to be, he wouldn’t make that assumption either; he’d make it clear he’s talking about Jesus’s “Love one another.” Is that what John’s doing in today’s passage? It looks like he’s actually not. Yes, loving one another is part of it, but the command actually isn’t loving one another; it’s “Stay in the light!”

It’s kinda obvious when we read today’s soundbite:

1 John 2.7-11 KWL

7Beloved Christians, I write you² not a new command,

but an old command which you² had since the beginning.

The old command is the message you² heard.

8Yet I do write you² a new command,

true for one and all:

The darkness is going away,

and the true light is shining already.

9One who says they’re¹ in the light

while hating one’s fellow Christian:

They’re¹ in the darkness right now.

10One who loves one’s fellow Christian

lives in the light,

and isn’t triggered by them.¹

11One who hates one’s fellow Christian

is in the darkness, walking in the darkness,

and doesn’t know where they’re¹ going

for the darkness blinds one’s eyes.

The whole purpose of John’s letter, plainly stated, is to keep John’s students away from sin. 1Jn 2.1 How we go about doing that, is we stay in the light which God is. This is John’s new command.

And it’s not all that new, as John pointed out. Every Christian’s heard it, in one form or another. Shun evil; stick to what’s good. Follow Jesus, walk like he did, and teach everyone what he taught. Mt 28.20 “What would Jesus do?” like the T-shirts say. The assumption one usually makes when they embrace a guru, is the goal of being just like that guru. The term “Christian” itself means “little Christ,” or Christ-follower. Does this really need to be spelled out?

But then again it is a new command. Following Moses’s teachings didn’t turn the Hebrews into people who asked themselves, “What would Moses do?” Especially since the scriptures record Moses’s screw-ups as much as his accomplishments. So really you don’t follow Moses; you follow the Law. Whereas in being Christian, we do follow Jesus, ’cause he never secrewed up. We obey Jesus’s commands too, but Jesus personifies his own commands to a level Moses never even approached. Following Jesus is following his commands. Following him is a command in itself.

So while it’s not new, it kinda is. There’s never been a guru we could follow to the level we follow Jesus. And frankly, if we’re not willing to follow Jesus to that level, we suck as Christians.

The point of following Jesus, as stated in verse 8, isn’t because “the darkness is past,” as the KJV puts it. Παράγεται/parághete is a present-tense verb, which means the darkness is currently passing. It’s not gone yet. We gotta work at it! When we follow Jesus and walk in the light, we’re helping to drive darkness out. The more of us that are in the light, the fewer places there are for dark to be. Christianity spreads, darkness recedes. And on New Earth, darkness will be utterly gone.

Disobedient Christians.

1 John 2.1-6.

I’ve known various Christians who get really outraged by the phrase “cheap grace.” Grace, they insist, isn’t cheap!

Well of course it isn’t. But “cheap grace” doesn’t mean we think grace is cheap; it means others treat it as cheap. They take God’s forgiveness for granted. They figure Jesus took out a trillion sins by his death… so what’s one more?

Heck, what’s a thousand more? God’s given us a blank check of forgiveness! We can sin ourselves raw, and he forgives all! So why go to all the bother of cleaning ourselves up and sinning no more? Self-discipline is so hard. Easier to just do as comes naturally—and remain the same bitter, selfish wankers we’ve always been. But we’re forgiven just the same! And still go to heaven!

Hence the popular bumper sticker:

Also found on window stickers, buttons, hats, or T-shirts, at many a Christian website or bookstore.

Now yes, this message can be used to describe just how expansive and generous God’s grace actually is. You don’t have to be perfect to come to Jesus. He came to treat the sick, not the healthy; Mk 2.17 he saves sinners, not paragons. Taken that way, it’s not a bad message.

But that’s definitely not the way Christians mean it. What we typically mean is, “Yes I’m a raging a--hole, but it’s okay if I’m an a--hole, because Christians don’t have to be perfect. It’s not a requirement!”

Wrong. It is a requirement. Goodness is a fruit of the Spirit. Goodness is expected to be noticeably evident in God’s children. If you’re sinning, we can’t tell you belong to your Father, and it’s entirely reasonable to assume you don’t. So stop, for the love of God!

True, we don’t enter God’s kingdom by first becoming sinless and perfect. We get in through God’s grace. But the kingdom isn’t for sinners! It’s for people whom God makes sinless and perfect. He’s trying to transform us. And either we’re on board with his program… or we have no business calling ourselves Christian, because we’re actually not.

Obviously I’m basing this rant on 1 John, so here’s the relevant bible quote:

1 John 2.1-6 KWL

1My children, I write these things to you²

so you² don’t sin!

And when anyone sins,

we have an aide with the Father, Christ Jesus.

He does right by us too.

2Jesus is the solution for our sins.

And not only for our sins,

but also for the whole world.

3We know that we know Jesus this way:

We keep his commands.

4Saying we know Jesus

and not keeping his commands:

It’s a lie,

and there’s no truth found this way.

5God’s love is truly completed

by whoever might keep Jesus’s word.

We know we’re in God this way.

6 One who says they¹ abide in Jesus

is obligated to do this:

Just as Jesus walked,

they¹ themselves¹ are to walk like this.

If a person’s not even trying to keep Jesus’s commands, they’re not Christian. They’re not “in God,” not in the light, have no relationship with him. Might think they have a relationship with him, ’cause they go to church and quote bible and said the sinner’s prayer once. But when they treat God’s safety net of forgiveness like a bounce house, they clearly don’t give a wet fart about Jesus. They’re not following him, trappings aside. Not Christian.

So if you’re not keeping Jesus’s commands, repent and start keeping ’em.

The National Day of Prayer.

In the United States, it’s the National Day of Prayer, held the first Thursday of May.

Various articles are gonna say the National Day of Prayer began in 1952. It didn’t really. Congress and various presidents have called for national days of prayer, starting with the first Continental Congress in 1775. They just haven’t been consistent. Ten presidents never bothered to call for any such days.

What did happen in 1952, was Billy Graham held a rally on the steps of the Capitol, which spurred Congress to unanimously pass Public Law 82-324, signed into law by Harry Truman. It says,

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President shall set aside and proclaim a suitable day each year, other than a Sunday, as a National Day of Prayer, on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.

Truman scheduled the first National Day of Prayer for 4 July 1952, and next year Dwight Eisenhower scheduled it for the same day, 4 July 1953. Then it started moving round the calendar. Mostly it happened Wednesdays in late October. In 1972 there were two.

PRESIDENT	DATES
Harry Truman	4 July 1952
Dwight Eisenhower	4 July 1953 26 October 1955 2 October 1957 7 October 1959	22 September 1954 12 September 1956 2 October 1958 5 October 1960
John Kennedy	4 October 1961 16 October 1963	17 October 1962
Lyndon Johnson	21 October 1964 19 October 1966 16 October 1968	20 October 1965 18 October 1967
Richard Nixon	22 October 1969 20 October 1971 18 October 1972	21 October 1970 16 February 1972 17 October 1973
Gerald Ford	18 December 1974 14 May 1976	24 July 1975
Jimmy Carter	15 December 1977 3 October 1979	7 October 1978 6 October 1980
Ronald Reagan	19 March 1981 5 May 1983 2 May 1985 7 May 1987	6 May 1982 3 May 1984 1 May 1986 5 May 1988

In 1988, Public Law 100-307 fixed it to the first Thursday in May, and that’s what it’s been ever since. (In fact, as I was looking up the dates for the previous National Days of Prayer, my search engine kept insisting it took place the first Thursday of May of that year. Nope. Bad search engine.)

Largely the National Days of Prayer were left up to the presidents until the 1980s. In 1974 the International Congress on World Evangelization was held in Lausanne, Switzerland, and on their return to the States, the American delegation decided to create Mission America to enact some of the plans they’d made in Lausanne. Part of Mission America was the National Prayer Committee, founded in 1979 and headed by Vonette Bright, one of the founders of Campus Crusade for Christ International (now Cru). They met in Washington D.C., started coordinating with the White House about National Day of Prayer events, and held their first joint event in 1983 in Constitution Hall.

What does the event look like? Well, y’know: Speeches from politicians and clergy. Prayers. Sometimes presidents let the National Day of Prayer Task Force take the lead; sometimes not. Sometimes they’re good reminders about the importance of talking with God; sometimes they’re a bunch of platitudes which say little. Some politicians have no prayer life at all, and it shows when they talk about it. (Disturbingly, some clergy members are the very same way.)

But what does this National Day of Prayer thing do? Well, it’s a reminder to pray for our homeland, which is something we oughta be doing regularly. A reminder to pray for our leaders; something we oughta also be doing.

And for Christian nationalists, it’s a not-subtle-at-all way to remind people of the political strength of Christian voters. We are legion, and we vote, so get in line. But I’m not gonna discuss the nationalists today; their godless motives aren’t about prayer anyway.