God is truth. So watch out for false gods.

1 John 5.18-21.

The way John’s first letter often wraps up—both in English translations, and some Greek New Testaments—is there’s a paragraph where John discusses the stuff οἴδαμεν/ídamen, “we knew,” “we have known,” or “we already know”; three verses, 18-20, which all start with ídamen. Then the last verse, 21, is a made a whole separate paragraph: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.” 1Jn 5.21 KJV

Someone in my college Greek class pointed out this makes it sound like John was about to go into a whole new discussion, beginning with verse 21… and then he just stopped. Fell asleep while dictating, got interrupted by a young Christian with a question, had to duck out of the house because the Romans had come a-persecuting, or a page was torn off the original papyrus 1 John was written on. It looks like this was an unfinished letter.

True, it kinda does look unfinished. Most letters end with some form of farewell; usually “Everybody says hi; I look forward to seeing you again; God bless you; amen.” 1 John does not, and maybe it is an unfinished letter.

Then again, maybe John occasionally dropped things when he was done. Like he did in his gospel. It doesn’t end with “Then they preached the gospel everywhere, the Lord being with them; amen” like the Long Ending of Mark kinda does. It’s just, “Jesus did many other things, and if they were all written down the world couldn’t hold all the books.” Jn 21.25 And he’s done. There’s not even an Amen at the end, although later Christians added one, ’cause they figured it just doesn’t look right without an Amen. They did the very same thing to 1 John.

Anyway, I’m not sure John was beginning a new idea with verse 21. I think it fits just fine with the ideas in this paragraph. We already know this and that; God wants us to know the truth; now stay away from what’s false.

Or as John puts it:

1 John 5.18-21 KWL

18We already know everyone who was begotten by God

doesn’t sin.

Instead one who’s begotten by God

keeps one’s own,

and evil doesn’t touch them.¹

19We already know we’re from God,

and the whole world lies down for evil.

20We already know God’s son is present,

and gave us understanding

so we might know the truth,

and we’re in the truth,

in his son Christ Jesus.

This is the true God,

and life in the age to come.

21Children, guard yourselves²

from false gods. {Amen.}

Praying for capital and non-capital sins.

1 John 5.16-17.

In going through the Law of Moses, you’re going to notice a few of the sins listed in there are capital crimes; capital meaning “liable to the death penalty.” If an ancient Israeli committed any of those sins, the city’s judges were authorized to sentence them to death. Most of American society figures murder, rape, and treason are the only capital crimes, although way too many of us are pretty murdery and have no problem with killing people for simply being in the wrong neighborhood. Or being the wrong color.

Some years ago I read an English translation of the Septuagint. The bit which in the KJV is translated “that soul shall be cut off from his people,” Ge 17.14, Lv 7.20, Nu 15.30 which we usually interpret to mean ostracizing them from society or banishment, got translated, “that soul shall be utterly destroyed from among his people”—emphasis mine. That certainly doesn’t mean banishment; that means death. I checked the original languages, and yep, the Greek says ἀπολεῖται/apoleíti, “will be destroyed.” But the Hebrew has נִכְרְתָ֛ה/nikhrétha, “must be cut off,” which doesn’t necessarily mean death; it can mean, as we usually mean, banishment. Considering how excessive death appears to be for these crimes, you can see why most of us think it only means banishment.

But clearly the ancient Jews who translated the Septuagint disagreed. They regularly interpreted “cut off” to mean death—which means they saw far more sins as capital crimes. So… having sex with a woman on her period was a capital crime. Lv 20.18 Skipping Passover would be a capital crime. Nu 9.13 Yikes. Good thing the Romans didn’t let the Judeans practice the death penalty!

Because of injustice—like the obvious injustice of Christ Jesus getting sentenced to death and crucified—a number of Christians believe there shouldn’t be any death penalty; our governments clearly can’t be trusted to apply it fairly. Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Anabaptists are decidedly against it. Other sects of Christendom have no problem with it, and their members gleefully reflect the popular culture’s attitudes about executing criminals.

Me, I believe some crimes certainly merit the death penalty… but I also firmly believe in grace, and believe it’s wholly inappropriate to execute a repentant sinner who wants to try to make restitution for their crimes. And I likewise don’t trust the government to execute people fairly. Time and again, people have been found to be falsely accused, unjustly imprisoned, and sometimes unjustly executed. There should be fewer executions, not more. But because of the many bloodthirsty Christianists in this country, some states are most definitely pushing for more.

But enough about them. The apostle John lived in the Roman Empire, where the death penalty was regularly enacted by the Romans. Beheading for their citizens; crucifixion for everyone else. Hence Paul was beheaded and Simon Peter crucified during the Neronian persecution (64–68CE). John himself was exiled, which is how he ended up on Patmos, having visions of the End. Rv 1.9 Their crime, of course, was being Christian; the Romans considered “disturbing the peace” a capital crime, and anything could be labeled “disturbing the peace” if they so chose.

I bring up capital crimes because John brings up capital crimes in today’s passages. Or, as he puts it, an ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον/amartía pros thánaton, “sin unto death.” Roman Catholics have extrapolated this verse into their idea of deadly sins, but no, John is not talking about lechery, gluttony, greed, laziness, wrath, envy, and pride. He’s talking about sins where the legal consequence is the death penalty.

And, in context, he’s talking about boldness in prayer—in being able to come to our Father with our requests, and knowing our Father hears us. And in this passage, fellow Christians whom they can pray for. If they’re committing non-capital sins, go ahead and pray for them. If they’re committing capital sins… well, John’s not talking about that today. I’ll quote him, shall I?

1 John 5.16-17 KWL

16When anyone sees their¹ fellow Christian

sinning a non-capital sin,

one will ask

and God will give them¹ life—

to the one sinning a non-capital sin.

There is such a thing as capital sin;

I don’t say one should pray about that.

17Everything unjust is sin,

and sin which isn’t capital.

Boldness in prayer. ’Cause God’s listening.

1 John 5.13-15.

We Christians can get mighty bold when we approach God. As we should; we’re his kids, and our relationship with him is not a dysfunctional one, where every prayer request has some sort of quid-pro-quo God expects of us in return. True, it can definitely be dysfunctional on our part, where we’ll take God’s grace for granted. And some of us might think God does expect to make some deal with us before he’ll grant requests. But really, none of the dysfunction comes from God’s side. We’re encouraged to “come boldly unto the throne of grace,” He 4.16 and ask God for anything.

And one of the reasons John wrote his first letter was to remind his readers of this:

1 John 5.13-15 KWL

13I write you² these things

so you² might fully know

you² have life in the age to come,

granted to believers

in the name of God’s son.

14This is the boldness we have towards God:

When any of us ask according to his will,

he hears us.

15And when we know God hears us,

whatever we might ask him,

we fully know we have

the request which we asked of him.

The word παρρησία/parrisía in verse 14 is regularly translated “boldness,” and actually stems from the phrase πάς ῥῆσις/pas rhísis, “every [sort of] speech.” The sense is we Christians are able to say anything to God. Anything. Again, he’s our Father.

I used to shock people from time to time by talking to God as if I’m talking to anyone else; as if I’m talking to my dad. Which he is, after all; it shouldn’t shock people. Yet it does. Too many Christians are only comfortable with approaching God formally—with a built-in social distance between them and him, because he’s holy and they’re not. They don’t realize by adopting us as his kids, God’s made us holy too. We just have to act holy, for once—and stop mixing up solemnity or religiosity with holiness, ’cause that’s not what it means.

Anyway they think God should only be approached in a regal manner, with formal titles; he’s “thee,” not “you.” Lots of self-abasement, lots of special Christianese, lots of effort made to create a gap between us and our Father, and in so doing, undo everything Jesus came to earth to do. Jesus came to bring God near. But if you don’t understand what Jesus is all about, of course you’ll be happy to keep him far.

Witnesses to eternal life through God’s Son.

1 John 5.6-12.

Previously I wrote about the Johannine Comma, the textual variant found in the KJV and in the footnotes of current-day bibles, which inserts the trinity into verse 7. It kinda changes this passage substantially; it makes verses 7-8 read like so:

1 John 5.7-8 KWL

7For three are the witnesses {in heaven:

The Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.

These three are one.

8And three are the witnesses on the earth}:

The Spirit, the water, and the blood.

The three are in the one.

The part in brackets comes from the Textus Receptus, which includes the comma—a clause which wasn’t found in Greek New Testaments until the 1100s. Yep, it was added to the bible in medieval times; John didn’t write it. Doesn’t belong there. Even if it does support the doctrine of the trinity; just because God really is a trinity doesn’t mean the comma should be in our bibles. Especially since the comma interrupts what John’s trying to teach.

In verse 5, John stated, “Who’s the winner over the world, if not one who trusts that Jesus is God’s son?” 1Jn 5.5 KWL Then he states Jesus has come into the world:

1 John 5.6-8 KWL

6This Christ Jesus is the one who comes by water and blood.

Not only by water,

but by water and by blood,

and the Spirit is the witness,

for the Spirit is the truth.

7For three are the witnesses:

8The Spirit, the water, and the blood.

The three are in the one.

Jesus is the one who comes by water and blood; and three are witnesses of this—the water and blood, plus the Holy Spirit. And these three are in the one, i.e. Jesus.

Now, insert the Johannine Comma into the text, and suddenly “the one” in verse 8 doesn’t appear to be referring to Jesus anymore. Now it’s referring to the trinity—“the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. These three are one.” John’s trying to make a point about who Jesus is, but the Johannine Comma hijacks his point and makes it about the trinity—and says the Spirit, the water, and the blood testify to the trinity, not to Jesus.

What does water and blood have to do with the Father and the Holy Spirit? They don’t, ’cause neither of these persons of the trinity became human. Only the Word, the Son, the Second Person, became the man Jesus. Only he became incarnate. Only he “comes by water and blood,” which is an ancient euphemism describing childbirth. Jesus didn’t only appear to be human; he is human. Fully human. (And fully divine; I’m not denying that part, but John wants to emphasize Jesus’s humanity here.)

This is why the Johannine Comma doesn’t belong in 1 John. If you love that passage ’cause you can teach the trinity from one verse… well I can understand that; it’s handy. But it’s not what John wrote, and interferes with what John wrote. Teach the trinity from other, legitimate verses. (Jesus is God, Jn 1.1 Jesus’s Father is God, Jn 8.54 the Holy Spirit is God, Ac 5.3-4 and God is One. Dt 6.4) Don’t poke a hole in 1 John just because that verse is so convenient.

Historically, John’s whole water-’n-blood childbirth euphemism went right over Christians’ heads. Still does. So they either assume one of three things:

• It has something to do with the water of Jesus’s baptism and the blood of Jesus’s sacrificial death—the beginning and end of his earthly ministry.
• Or it has to do with the water and blood which poured out of Jesus’s side when the Roman soldier speared him. Jn 19.34
• Or the water refers to the sacrament of water baptism, and the blood refers to the sacrament of holy communion. How, it’s hard to say, but Martin Luther and Jean Calvin really, really liked this interpretation.

But properly, the water and blood testify to Jesus’s humanity. And so does the Holy Spirit, who indwelt Jesus same as he did the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament Christians; who empowered Jesus same as he can the rest of us Christians. These three are witnesses to Jesus’s humanity—the Spirit, the water, and the blood. ’Cause these three were in Jesus. “In the one,” as John put it.

And since the Holy Spirit is God, his witness isn’t a minor witness. It’s hugely important.

The Johannine Comma.

Today I’m gonna discuss a passage which looks very different in different bibles. And it’s not a minor, irrelevant passage; some Christians consider it an important proof text for how God is a trinity. Not that there aren’t other passages in the New Testament which reveal God’s a trinity, but this passage puts it all in one verse, and some Christians are enraged about how they find they can’t find this passage in every present-day translation.

I’ll start by comparing the King James Version with the American Standard Version and the New American Standard Bible. KJV first:

1 John 5.6-8 KJV

6This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. 7For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

This matches what we find in the Textus Receptus, and the Geneva Bible. But once the Revised Version was produced—and its American edition, the ASV—in those bibles the passage now looked like this.

1 John 5.6-8 ASV

6This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. 7And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. 8For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one.

Shorter. Y’notice verse 7 in the KJV is gone. It got replaced by the second sentence of verse 6. Now, when the RV was updated by the Revised Standard Version, and the ASV was updated by the NASB, the verses were reshuffled again: Verse 6 was restored, verse 7 was shortened to “For there are three that testify,” verse 8 was shortened to “the Spirit, water, and blood,” etc.

1 John 5.6-8 NASB

6This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7For there are three that testify: 8the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.

So what’s going on here? Why’d the “Father, Word, and Holy Ghost” get dropped from verse 7? Simply put, John didn’t write it. It was added to the text in the 900s. It’s a textual variant which can’t be supported by serious scholarship.

John didn’t write it, but it’s nonetheless named after him: Scholars call it the Comma Johanneum, or Johannine Comma. No, “comma” doesn’t refer to our punctuation mark; the ancient Greek word κόμμα/kómma means a short clause in a rhetorical argument.

And as I’ve said, it has its fans. Fans who have embraced many foolish theories about why it’s been “edited out of the bible”—complete with conspiracy theories involving liberal theologians, anti-trinitarian textual critics, Satanists, Catholics, and every other boogeyman they fear. I come across such preachers from time to time, and I’d have a little more respect for them if they bothered to quote any of the bible in context. Scholarship just ain’t their thing.

Victory in Jesus… hidden in the Law.

1 John 5.2-5.

In the Council of Jerusalem, Simon Peter got up and rebuked the Pharisees among the Christians—those who insisted before gentiles become Christian, they gotta first become Pharisees, follow the Law of Moses, and undergo ritual circumcision if they’re male.

In his rebuke, he said something which is traditionally translated,

Acts 15.10 NASB

“Since this is the case, why are you putting God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our forefathers nor we have been able to bear?”

The assumption many Christians make is Peter was speaking of the Law: Yeah, you silly Pharisees, why are you making these gentiles follow the Law to be saved, when the Law never did save anyone?

But in context, that’s not what Peter meant. The “yoke” he meant was Pharisaism. The “traditions of the elders,” the interpretations of the Law which Pharisees upheld—and which Jesus regularly violated—were the yoke both Peter, his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and a few more generations back, had been obliged to bear. But not too many generations back: Contrary what you might’ve been expecting, Pharisaism wasn’t that old. They claimed they went all the way back to Moses himself, but nah; more like 150BC or so.

Pharisaism is the yoke. Not the Law. Jesus upheld the Law. Y’know how we Christians say Jesus never sinned? He 4.15 Sin is when you transgress the Law. 1Jn 3.4 Jesus never did. He transgressed the heck out of Pharisee traditions, but never the Law. It is, he said, not passing away; not even after heaven and earth do. Mt 5.18 I should quote him more:

Matthew 5.19-20 NASB

19“Therefore, whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20“For I say to you that unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Christians were always meant to uphold the Law, same as Jesus did. But upholding it before turning to Jesus, as if being Law-abiding facilitates our salvation, is putting the cart before the horse. We’re not saved by following Law, but by following Jesus. We don’t lose our salvation by Law-breaking, by sin. Yep, even great big deadly sins. God saves us by his grace. Nothing else.

But now that we’re saved, now what are we to do? Duh; follow Jesus. And part of following him is doing God’s will. And part of God’s will is obeying his commands. You know, the Law.

1 John 5.2-5 KWL

2This is how we know we love God’s children:

When the we love the Father,

we also do his commands.

3For this the love of God:

We should keep his commands.

His commands aren’t hard!

4Since everyone fathered by God

wins against the world,

this is the win which conquers the world:

Our trust in God.

5Who’s the winner over the world,

if not one who trusts

that Jesus is God’s son?

Obviously plenty of Christians don’t wanna follow the Law, and have come up with every excuse they can to ignore it. And teach others to do the same. Me, I’d recommend we not follow those people who are gonna be the very lowest in God’s kingdom. Stick to Jesus.

If we don’t love others, we don’t love God.

1 John 4.16 - 5.1.

As John famously said in verse 16, God is love. Those who love—legitimately love, and aren’t just using a pop-culture definition of “love,” but are doing the sort of love as defined by scripture—are, whether they know it or not, interacting with God to some degree.

In today’s passage, John adds if we don’t love, particularly if we hate people whom God’s called us to love, we’re not interacting with God. How could we be?—we’re hating the people he loves.

And between loving our family and friends, loving our fellow Christians, loving our neighbors, and loving our enemies, Jesus has pretty much instructed us to love everyone. Indiscriminately. No, not with “tough love,” which is simply anger disguised as love, and also frequently used to justify a whole lot of hateful behavior. Actual love, which is kind and gentle and patient. Which isn’t trying to manipulate people into conforming to the way we think they oughta behave, but bears all things and hopes all things. 1Co 13.7

If we stick to love, actual love, we abide in God and he in us. If we ditch love in favor of society, even Christian society—which, whenever it encourages us to not love, isn’t all that Christian—in what way are we abiding in God? We’re not following him. We’re not fulfilling his love by displaying it to others. We’re not making him known. In fact we’re leading pagans to think the very worst things about the God we believe in. Christians who lack love are monstrous—and the god of monstrous people must himself be a monster, right?

All the more reason we Christians need to exhibit God’s love towards one another, and everyone. And if you’re afraid loving too widely might lead you into error, that’s an irrational fear. Love, done properly, gets rid of that fear. John says that too in today’s passage.

1 John 4.16 - 5.1 KWL

16We knew and believed the love

which God has in us.

God is love,

and one who remains in love

remains in God,

and God remains in them.¹

17This is how love was brought to completion by us:

We can be bold on Judgment Day,

because just as God is,

we also are, in this world.

18Fear isn’t in love.

Instead, a complete love throws fear out,

because fear has negative consequences.

Those who fear

haven’t completed love.

19We love {God}

because he loves us first.

20When anyone says “I love God,”

and hates their¹ fellow Christian,

they’re¹ a liar.

For one who doesn’t love their¹ fellow Christian

whom they¹ were able to see,

aren’t able to love God,

whom they¹ weren’t able to see.

21We have this command from God,

so one who loves God

might also love their¹ fellow Christian.

1All who believe Jesus is Christ

were fathered by God.

All who love the fatherer

also love those¹ fathered by him.

No one has ever seen God. Except 74 ancient Hebrews.

Most of the reason we Christians are pretty sure John bar Zavdi wrote both the gospel with his name on it, and the letters with his name on them, is ’cause the same ideas and themes (and wording, and vocabulary) come up in them. Including today’s bible difficulty, the idea nobody’s ever seen God. John wrote it in both his gospel and his first letter.

John 1.18 NET

No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known.

1 John 4.12 NET

No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

The reason it’s a difficulty? Because people have seen God. In Exodus 24, we have this interesting little story:

Exodus 24.9-11 NET

9Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up, 10and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear like the sky itself. 11But he did not lay a hand on the leaders of the Israelites, so they saw God, and they ate and they drank.

Wait, what?

Yeah, nobody bothers to read their Old Testament, so it stands to reason they’d utterly miss this one. Or any of the other God-appearances in the scriptures.

In the OT, on a regular basis, humans freak out when there was any possibility they’d see God. Jg 13.22 ’Cause a common ancient rumor was if a mortal looked upon the actual face of one of the gods, they’d die. God’s pure, holy awesomeness would consume them like a volcano taking out stupid tourists. Although you do get the occasional dark Christian claim that God would be unreasonably pissed about it, and destroy them for daring to approach his majesty. Pretty sure that second idea only reflects their twisted secret wishes about how they’d like their subordinates to approach them. God’s cool with his kids approaching him. Ep 3.12, He 4.16 But I digress.

Yeah, it was a rumor. And sometimes rumors are true. The LORD himself warned Moses he’d only get to see God’s back, because his front was much too much for the prophet.

Exodus 33.20 NET

But he added, “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.”

Yet we have this story in the middle of Exodus, where apparently 74 people saw God, had lunch with him, and lived to tell of it.

And it’s not the only instance! Abraham had lunch with God too. Ge 18.1-7 Well, more like served him lunch. Isaiah and Ezekiel saw God on his throne. Jeremiah even experienced God touching him. Jr 1.9

Whenever I point out this rather vast discrepancy, Christians flinch, then usually respond one of two ways. Either they dismiss the passages where people got to see God, or they dismiss the passages where seeing God should get you struck down. The authors of the bible must not really have meant what the text clearly says.

So John didn’t literally mean nobody’s ever seen God. What he meant was nobody’s ever known God; at least not to the level Jesus knows God, ’cause Jesus is God; “The only one, himself God, who is in closest relationship with the Father” and all that. After all, since Jesus is God and humans have seen Jesus, logically people have seen God. Jn 14.9 But have they known God?—there’s the quandary.

Or nobody has literally seen God: The 74 Hebrew elders didn’t really see him. They saw the pavement beneath his feet, and that’s all. Somehow they knew his bronze feet Rv 1.15 were on this pavement, but didn’t really see the feet; maybe he had really nice boots on, though that’s unlikely because you don’t wear shoes on holy ground. Ex 3.5 Anyway, not actually seeing God is why the Exodus passage emphasizes the sapphire pavement—it’s the only thing they could see. But they never saw his face.

So if Christians were taught to believe in inerrancy, this is how they achieve inerrancy: One of these passages must be wrong must not be literal. Which idea would you rather was true? Embrace that one, and put aside t’other.

Interacting with God’s love.

1 John 4.11-16.

If we’re gonna call ourselves Christians or Christ-followers, naturally we need to do as Jesus teaches, and follow his example. And since Jesus loves us with God’s love, naturally we need to practice God’s love—his gracious, indiscriminate, compassionate love. Especially towards one another, since Jesus told us to love one another.

In today’s passage John brings up another way we know God’s in us: We practice God’s love. His love can be seen in the world because Christians are actually, visibly loving people. God may be invisible, but when his love is visible, he’s technically visible. It’s our job—really our duty—to make him visible.

1 John 4.11-16 KWL

11Beloved, if this is how much God loves us,

we’re obligated to love one another.

12Nobody had ever seen God;

when we love one another,

God remains in us

and his love is brought to completion by us.

13This is how we know we remain in God

and he in us:

By God’s Spirit

whom he gave us.

14We saw, and still witness

that the Father sent the Son

as savior of the world.

15Whoever confesses Jesus is God’s son,

God remains in them¹ and they¹ in God.

16We knew and believed the love

which God has in us.

God is love,

and one who remains in love

remains in God,

and God remains in them.¹

True, John is practicing some circular reasoning in this passage. In verse 13 he states, “This is how we know we remain in him and he and us: By his Spirit whom he gave us.” How do we know God’s in us? Because he’s in us. Yeah, I can’t help that John’s not really following the dictates of Aristotelian logic like westerners would prefer. But John’s not giving us a logic lesson; he’s explaining what authentic, lived-out Christianity looks like. The only way we can know God’s in us is when he’s in us; the only way we can know God’s love remains in us is when we remain in God’s love. We gotta do this stuff. Once we do, we recognize God’s in it.

How God shows us his love.

1 John 4.7-10.

You might’ve noticed when I translate bible, I split it into clauses and format it like poetry. Largely it is poetry; the Hebrew sort, which repeats ideas instead of sounds.

I actually got the idea from Peter Marshall. (The Senate chaplain, not the game show host.) In his wife Catherine’s biography of him, she included some of his sermons. He wrote them out by clauses—likely so they’d be much easier for him to follow while preaching. She noted it made them look more poetic. I thought so too, and started writing out my own sermons the same way. And whenever I quoted bible verses, I wrote them out the same way too.

I noticed other bible translators, like Everett Fox, doing that with scripture, and figured I should just do it too. So I do. Again, much easier to follow.

Now, in today’s passage, the editors of the UBS Greek New Testament already put John’s lines into this format. So I’m just following along with how they did it. (Although I’d break up verse 9 a little differently.) Here it is:

1 John 4.7-10 KWL

7Beloved, we should love one another,

for love is from God,

and everyone who loves was fathered by God,

and knows God.

8One who doesn’t love, doesn’t know God,

for God is love.

9This is how God’s love is revealed in us,

for God sent his only-begotten Son

into the world so we might live through him.

10This is how love is—

not that we loved God,

but that he loved us,

and sent his Son

as a sin-offering for our sins.

Now, what John meant by it.

Personally, I consider this a significant scripture, because God’s love is the lens I use to understand both Christianity and the scriptures. God and love are so interconnected, one can legitimately say, as John does in verse 8, God is love. Our definition of love comes from a proper understanding of God, and a proper understanding of God requires us to recognize nothing he does lacks love.

Admittedly this makes some parts of the bible really hard to understand.

Lying evil spirits, and society.

1 John 4.4-6.

In the previous passage I mentioned how evil spirits like to feed us false information to drive us away from God’s kingdom. And thus far, John points out, his audience has overcome these evil spirits, and overcome the fake prophets they encouraged to proclaim false things. His audience does know Jesus, and knows better than to fall for the false teachings of people who claim Jesus isn’t human, isn’t Messiah, isn’t Lord.

1 John 4.4-6 KWL

4Children, you’re² from God.

You overcame the fake prophets,

for the Lord among you² is greater

than anyone in the world.

5They’re from society;

this is why they speak of society

and society listens to them.

6You’re² from God.

Anyone who knows God, listens to us.

Whoever isn’t from God, doesn’t listen to us.

From this, we know the spirit of truth

and the spirit of error.

The second half of verse 4, which the KJV renders, “because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world,” gets quoted a lot. And commonly misinterpreted: Christians figure “he that is in you” is Jesus, who lives inside our hearts; and “he that is in the world” is of course the devil, who got thrown down to earth after it fought Michael and lost, Rv 12.9 and ever since has been harassing Christians. Rv 12.17

I translated it a little differently. There’s no “he” in these verses; there’s the determiner ὁ/o, which usually indicates a subject noun. But when there actually is no subject noun—like we have here—it becomes the subject noun, and now it means “the one.” Which one? Well, you gotta figure that part out from context. The writers of the KJV decided to not figure it out, and go with “he,” since o is after all a masculine-form word. And like I said, Christians figured “he” refers in the first instance to Jesus, and in the second to Satan.

I have to keep reminding Christians that the person of the trinity who actually does indwell us is the Holy Spirit. “I have Jesus in my heart” is a metaphor representing how Jesus has my allegiance, obedience, trust, and love, but Jesus isn’t physically in me; he’s at the right hand of the Father. Ac 2.33 Meanwhile the Spirit is actually within us, working on us; and we Christians are collectively his temple. But rather than pedantically insert “Holy Spirit” into verse 4, I figured “Lord”—because the Spirit is Lord, same as Jesus; they’re coequal with the Father—works too.

As for the devil being the other o, I don’t know that it is. Really the other o could be anybody in the world; any malevolent person, whether evil spirit or evil human. Does it matter? The Holy Spirit can overcome them all.

Test spirits. See whether they’re antichrists.

1 John 4.1-3.

Years ago, a pagan who believes in angels asked me, “Do you talk to your angels?”

I don’t, actually. I talk to the Holy Spirit. Nothing against my angels—assuming I have angels specifically assigned to me like Secret Service agents. The jury’s still out on whether the bible teaches such a thing, although Christians who believe in guardian angels seem to believe really hard in ’em. And some of ’em do pray to them. Michael and Gabriel probably get tons of prayers from Roman Catholics. But since they’re not infinite like God, I’m not sure how many of those prayers they hear.

Besides, I pointed out to the pagan, how do I know the angels I’m talking to, are even good angels? They might be evil.

She was kinda stunned by this idea. Evil angels?

Well yeah. A lot of pagans have a massive blindspot when it comes to evil spirits. Most assume, same as Plato and the ancient Greeks did, that if you’re pure spirit you’re beyond good and evil; that those things are either the inventions of our society, but these spirits live on a higher plane than mortal human society. Or that all our evils are tied to being material, and as spirits they’re not material, and any evil which used to be in ’em is gone now. So if the ghost of Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest appears to you and offers advice, don’t worry about him being a vile, treasonous domestic terrorist; he’s on a higher plane now! (Though I’m fairly sure he’s on a much, much lower one.)

But outside of Greco-Roman paganism, most religions recognized there were such things as evil spirits. Ancient Hebrews and Christians did too. The devil has some angels on its side. Mt 25.41, Rv 12.7, 9 Devil’s evil; its angels are evil. Angels are likely spirits, and evil spirits often come up in the bible; Jesus kept having to throw ’em out of people. Once a whole legion of them.

So I’m not gonna be so naïve as to presume any angel who appears to me, is gonna be one of the good ones. (Especially if it encourages me to start a new religion. That’s happened once or twice that we know of.)

Just after John, in his first letter, told his audience 'we know God remains in us because he gave us his Spirit, 1Jn 3.24 he immediately points out we need to test those spirits which claim they’re from God. Certainly not all of ’em are!

1 John 4.1-3 KWL

1Beloved, don’t trust every spirit!

Instead test the spirits—

whether it’s from God.

For many fake prophets went out into the world.

2This is how you² know God’s spirit:

Every spirit which confesses

Christ Jesus came from God in the flesh.

3Every spirit which won’t confess Jesus—

which says he’s not from God—

this is a spirit of antichrist.

You² heard it’s coming,

and it’s in the world right now.

A legitimate spirit from God is gonna be orthodox in its theology. It’s gonna know God, and gonna correctly describe him. Whereas a phony spirit, an evil spirit, is gonna mess with our understanding of God, and lead us astray. Partly to drive us away from God, and render us as useless as possible to God’s kingdom… and partly because it’s such evil fun to mess with people.

Hence John’s really simple test. Is the spirit orthodox? Then it’s likely from God. Is it heretic? Then don’t trust it.

How do you follow God? Obey him.

1 John 3.22-24.

The previous passage was about how we know whether we’re following God. Today’s passage relates to that: How do we even follow God? Duh; we obey him. We do as he told us. The LORD gave a bunch of commands to Moses, and Jesus taught his students a bunch of things as well. Do that.

1 John 3.22-24 KWL

22Whatever we might ask,

we should receive from God,

for we keep his commands

and we do pleasing things before him.

23This is God’s command:

We should trust the name of Christ Jesus his son,

and we should love one another,

just as he gave the command to us.

24One who keeps God’s commands

remains in him,

and he in them.¹

This is how we know he remains in us:

By the Spirit whom he gives us.

Problem is, whenever Christians talk about God’s will for our lives, we nearly always don’t talk about God’s commands or Jesus’s teachings. Nor the prophets’ exhortations, nor the apostles’ instructions, nor the sages’ wisdom. We talk about “God’s special plan for my life.” We wanna know that. Phooey on all that other noise.

Which, once you’ve read the bible and think about that a bit, is insane. Noise? Didja read how important the prophets and apostles and Jesus and his Father considered those commands? Didja read how upset the LORD got when the Hebrews not only ignored the commands, but defied them? Even deliberately did the opposite of them, just to give the LORD the finger? Didja notice Jesus had to die a horrifying bloody death just so he could atone for all that sin, and restore our relationship with himself? God’s revealed will for humanity, in those commands, is not noise.

“But we’ve been freed from the burden of the Law!” True, but I don’t think the people who raise that objection, understand what the “burden” actually is. It’s not the burden of obeying it. It’s the burden of suffering the consequences when we don’t obey it. It’s the burden of having to pathetically attempt to atone for ourselves, through inadequate ritual sacrifices. It’s the burden of a fractured relationship with God because we’ve been taking him for granted and treating him as irrelevant—until we need something from him, and then we try to make deals, and promise to be good from now on, and usually break those promises same as (and about as fast as) our New Year resolutions.

Christians act as if the “burden of the Law” is the Law of Moses itself, and forget: Y’all wanted to know what God’s will is. Well, here it is. Right there in black, white, and red if you want Jesus’s spin on it. But the average Christian response is, “Eww, I don’t mean that. I mean what his plans are for me personally. Me specifically. What does he want me to do?”

Again, it’s already been revealed in the bible! But when they say, “What does he want me to do?” they’re not at all talking about a godly lifestyle to adopt. They want a walkthrough to life.

Gamers know what a walkthrough is: It’s how to work your way through a video game so you can win. When you’re wandering a deserted castle, don’t go into this room or that room, or some bad guy will smite or kill you. Instead, go into that room and this room, where you’ll find treasure and potions, and weapons so you can more easily defeat the unexpected bad guys in future rooms.

Aren’t walkthroughs a type of cheating? When you’ve not played the game before, and haven’t learned this stuff on your own, yes they absolutely are. But people who want walkthroughs don’t wanna play the game; they wanna win the game.

And that’s what these Christians want from God: They don’t want to go through life, depending on God day by day. They wanna win. They don’t see inheriting God’s kingdom as the win; they see wealth and success, as defined by the very society God doesn’t want us to love, as the win. A personal relationship with God isn’t the goal; wealth and success is. They don’t wanna be Christians; they wanna be Mammonists.

We gotta rebuke that self-seeking attitude, and steer ’em back to the proper goal: That relationship with God. And if you legitimately do wanna remain in God, and he in you… do as he said!

How do you know you’re following God? Use your brain.

1 John 3.19-22.

More than once, the apostles talk about how we gotta follow our personal convictions. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” Ro 14.5 KJV Don’t just follow the crowd; or in the context of 1 John, don’t just follow the dictates of society; don’t just succumb to peer pressure. Decide for yourself.

Skeptical pagans like to claim that’s the very opposite of what Christians do. Unfortunately these pagans ain’t wrong. There is so much conformity in Christendom. It’s even encouraged.

Peer pressure, as I discovered back when I was teaching middle school, is such a useful way to get the kids to behave! Get the popular kids to do as you want, and most of the rest will fall in line, which is way easier than working on all of ’em individually. Thing is, are the kids who are doing as I want, doing the right thing? I certainly hoped and believed so… but I know I’m hardly infallible; I know better than to not second-guess myself. Other Christians never second-guess themselves. Too many Christians in leadership never second-guess themselves. They could be—and occasionally are—woefully wrong. But, like me, they’re trying to use peer pressure to make their flocks behave as they want, and the sheep are following right along.

And that’s actually not what God wants in his kingdom. He wants us to follow Jesus, not some wolf in sheep’s clothing who’s manipulating us for fun and profit. And how do we know they’re secretly wolves? Well, if you talk to your average Christian, they’re gonna know better because they “felt a check in my spirit”—their gut told them something was amiss, and they know to follow their gut. But if you talk to Jesus, he’s gonna tell us to use our brains, and look at their fruit.

Matthew 7.16-20 KJV

16Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Following your gut isn’t as effective as you imagine. Your gut usually consists of your emotions, and your emotions are easily manipulated. If an unscrupulous church leader realizes you’re getting wise to him, he’ll quickly pivot to things that’ll trigger your emotions. Fear, usually. Fear’s easy to invoke, and automatically shuts most people down, ’cause they’re too afraid to think, and run on instinct instead—either fight, flight, or freeze, and an unscrupulous leader prefers any of those things to an actual reckoning.

In any event, God didn’t give us our guts so we’d be led by them. He gave us an organ to actually think with. We know it as our brain, though in biblical times people believed it was the heart, which is why I sometimes gotta translate καρδία/kardía, “heart,” as “mind.” He expects us to use our minds—to be wise—and figure out whether something’s legitimately a God-thing, or isn’t. Is it fruitful? Then it’s probably God. Is it fleshly? Then it’s likely not. Does it feel good? Doesn’t matter; that’s your gut, and your gut’s part of your flesh, and stop following your flesh and pretending it’s your spirit. Or worse, the Holy Spirit—you realize that’s skirting blasphemy, right?

John advises likewise. Are you not sure you’re actually following God? Well, use your head. That is why God put a brain in your body. It’s not just to memorize pop songs.

1 John 3.19-22 KWL

19This is how we’ll know

we’re acting out of truth;

how we’ll be persuaded in our mind

before God:

20When the mind condemns us.

God is greater than our mind,

and knows everything.

21Beloved, when our mind doesn’t condemn us,

we should be bold for God.

22Whatever we might ask,

we should receive from God,

for we keep his commands

and we do pleasing things before him.

If you don’t love fellow Christians you’re a murderer.

1 John 3.13-18.

True, that’s a clickbaity kind of title. But it’s exactly what the apostle John wrote in his first letter. To quote the King James: “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” 1Jn 3.15 KJV I also coulda titled this piece, “If you don’t love fellow Christians you’re going to hell.” Just as valid.

Now yes, the word I keep translating as “fellow Christians” is ἀδελφοί/adelfí, “brothers, siblings.” In context it means sister and brother Christians; fellow adoptive children of God; fellow Christians. John’s addressing Christians. And also addressing the way Christians behave towards fellow Christians—right after he told ’em to reject society because society’s rejected God. And if society encourages us to reject our fellow Christians, we should all the more reject society.

This includes “Christian” society. Really, Christianist society—it pretends to be Christian, pretends to love Jesus, but it has its own set of values which have more to do with prestige and wealth and prejudices and nationalism—and way too often, white supremacy. It’ll encourage Christians to reject and shun and disavow their fellow Christians who are poor, who are “sinning” (whether they’re legitimately sinning or not), who have different politics, who do anything they might disapprove of for the pettiest of reasons. Christianists, like hypocrites, only care about how things look. Not about the sort of grace we need to extend to everybody—and fellow Christians especially.

In John’s day, in the Roman Empire, not helping out somebody who’s in a bind might have dire consequences. Results which might lead to their death. Your fellow Christian might be deathly ill, or starving and have no way to get food, or their debts were gonna get them sold into slavery and you never know what sort of slaveowners they’d get—and there’s a good chance they’d be awful people who worked their slaves to death. Little acts of compassion might save a life. Big acts would definitely save a life. But apathy? It’s still true that apathy kills.

So nope, it’s not hyperbole when John says hating your fellow Christian makes you a murderer. And it’s totally valid to wonder whether Christians who lack compassion are even Christian, are even destined for eternal life. That lack of grace in ’em? That suggests they never accepted the grace of God. They’ve nothing to pay forward.

1 John 3.13-18 KWL

13Fellow Christians, don’t be amazed

if society hates you².

14We knew we passed over from death to life,

for we love our fellow Christians.

One who doesn’t love fellow Christians

remains in death.

15Everyone who hates their¹ fellow Christian

is a murderer,

and you² knew no murderer has life in the age to come

remaining within them.¹

16This is how we knew love:

That man Jesus laid down his soul for us.

So we’re obliged to lay down our souls

for our fellow Christians.

17Whenever one might have a life in society,

and might see one’s fellow Christian having need,

and might shut off one’s compassion towards them:¹

How does God’s love remain in that person?

18Children, we ought not love in word nor speech,

but in work and truth.

Pentecost.

Our word Pentecost comes from the Greek τὴν ἡμέραν τῆς πεντηκοστῆς/tin iméran tis pentikostís, “the 50th day” Ac 2.1 —the Greek term for שָׁבֻעֹת֙/Šavuót, which falls 50 days after Passover. It’s also called the Feast of Weeks; it’s when the ancient Hebrews harvested their wheat. Ex 34.22 On 6 Sivan in the Hebrew calendar, they were expected to come to temple and present a grain offering to the LORD. Dt 16.9-12 Oh, and tithe a tenth of it to celebrate with—and every third year, put that tithe in the community granary.

Why do Christians celebrate a Hebrew harvest festival? (And have separate “harvest parties” in October?) Well we don’t celebrate it Hebrew-style: We consider it the last day of Easter, and we celebrate it for a whole other reason. In the year 33—the year Jesus died, rose, and was raptured—the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus’s new church on Pentecost. Happened like so:

Acts 2.1-4 NRSVue

1When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

The speaking-in-tongues part is why the 20th century Christian movement which has a lot of tongues-speaking in it, is called Pentecostalism. Weirdly, a lot of us Pentecostals never bother to keep track of when Pentecost rolls around. I don’t get it. I blame anti-Catholicism a little. Anyway, Luke goes on:

Acts 2.5-13 NRSVue

5Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Christians like to call this “the first Pentecost.” Obviously it wasn’t; the first Pentecost, or Šavuót, or Feast of Weeks, was after the Exodus. It’s when every devout Jew on earth was bringing their grain offerings to temple on that very day, 25 May 33. And suddenly a house full of Galileans broke out in every language they knew—spoken to as if to them personally.

Got their attention.

Satan’s excuses precede lawless Christians.

1 John 3.7-12.

Many of the verses from today’s passage tend to be yanked out of context.

• “Let no one deceive you” 1Jn 3.7 —used to refer to anything which might trick or mislead Christians, from heresy to the latest internet conspiracy theories.
• “The Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” 1Jn 3.8 —treated as though it’s the only reason Jesus came to earth, so certain dark Christians use it to justify their fixation on demonology instead of good news.
• “Everyone borne of God doesn’t sin” 1Jn 3.9 —used to condemn Christians who do sin, instead of encouraging them (really, all of us) to go back into the light.
• And of course those folks who wanna interpret the Cain and Abel story to make Cain an irredeemably evil person… instead of recognizing the LORD and Cain had a conversational relationship, Ge 4.9-15 and God obviously wanted to redeem Cain, not destroy him. (Otherwise he’d have destroyed him!)

All right, best I jump into the text before unpacking it.

1 John 3.7-12 KWL

7Children, let no one deceive you:²

Doing what’s proper is right,

just like Christ is right.

8Doing sin is of the devil,

because the devil sins from the very start.

This is why God’s Son appeared:

To undo the devil’s works.

9Everyone reborn by God doesn’t do sin,

for God’s seed remains in them.¹

They¹ can’t sin,

because they’ve¹ been reborn by God.

10This is how God’s children

and the devil’s children are identified:

Everyone who doesn’t act properly,

who doesn’t love their fellow Christian, isn’t of God.

11This is the message you² heard from the beginning:

We should love one another.

12Not like Cain,

who murdered his brother Abel out of evil.

Why did Cain murder him?

Because Cain’s works were evil.

The works of his brother Abel were proper.

John wrote this right after he defined sin as violating the Law. Parts of the Law are still totally valid. (The ritual sacrifice and ritual cleanliness parts are redundant, and the rules for native Israelis and Israel’s descendants don’t apply to nonresidents and gentiles.) Following those valid parts is still what God expects of a saved people: Now that we belong to Jesus, be like Jesus. He didn’t sin; we shouldn’t sin.

So John went on to say his readers shouldn’t let themselves get tricked into thinking otherwise. ’Cause plenty of us have been deceiving ourselves for years. Like the Christians who are anti-Law, who think Jesus nullified God’s Old Testament commands and therefore nothing’s a sin anymore. John cuts right through this rubbish: If you don’t resist sin, if you don’t behave as God’s children ought, you’re not one of his children. “Everyone reborn by God doesn’t do sin.” 1Jn 3.9 He doesn’t, so we shouldn’t.

No, this doesn’t mean Christians never ever sin. Of course we do. Hence grace. The proper idea, reflected in some translations, is N.T. Wright’s “Everyone who is fathered by God does not go on sinning.” 1Jn 3.8 NTE We don’t continue in a lifestyle of sin; we don’t wanna live that way. We want to follow Jesus!

And people who legitimately wanna follow Jesus, crack open their bibles and find out what Jesus taught so we can follow him. What they’ll invariably find is Jesus took the Law, expounded upon it, and closed all the Pharisee loopholes. We’re not to follow the letter of the Law, like any lawyer, politician, or activist judge; we don’t twist it till it suits us. We’re to follow the original intent of the Law, “the spirit of the Law,” the will of the One who gave it. How does Jesus interpret it? ’Cause we do that.

Those who don’t really wanna follow Jesus, but only look like they do: They prefer loopholes. The bigger the better. They like to quote “Christ is the end of the Law,” Ro 10.4 but they don’t mean, as Paul does, that Christ expresses it better than the Law does itself; they mean Christ ended it. Or “He taketh away the first [Law], that he may establish the second [Law],” He 10.9 not just updating the old covenant with the new, but abolishing it altogether, so that breaking the Law is no longer sin, 1 John 3.4—

1 John 3.4 KWL

Everyone who commits sin also violates the Law.

Sin’s against the Law.

—notwithstanding.

No, this passage isn’t about perfectionism either. John isn’t claiming Christians don’t sin anymore. He already objected to that idea in chapter 1. What he’s stating, is real Christians try not to sin. We no longer consider a lifestyle of sin to be acceptable. “Not perfect, just forgiven” simply isn’t good enough! We have God’s seed in us, the Holy Spirit within us, leading us away from sin and selfishness, and towards Jesus. If we’re following him, we recognize sin is the opposite direction. We don’t make excuses for it any longer!

And if we do make excuses for it… well we’re not God’s children. Really we’re Satan’s.

If you think it’s okay to dismiss the Law, you clearly don’t know Jesus.

1 John 3.4-6.

And now we get to the parts of 1 John which really bug Christians.

1 John 3.4-6 KWL

4Everyone who commits sin also violates the Law.

Sin’s against the Law.

5You² knew Jesus was revealed

so he could take away our sins,

and there’s no sin in him.

6Everyone who remains in Jesus doesn’t sin:

Everyone who sins has neither seen him, nor knows him.

“Violates the Law” is my translation of τὴν ἀνομίαν ποιεῖ/tin anomían piheí, literally “does the anti-Law.” (KJV has “transgresseth… the law”; NIV “breaks the law.”) I capitalize Law because John wasn’t writing about Roman law; plenty of Roman laws encouraged if not committed sin. John meant the Law of Moses, the Hebrew Law, the תּוֹרָה/Toráh. The stuff God commanded the Hebrews at Sinai and thereafter. It’s the formal part of the relationship between the LORD and Israel, the backbone of Hebrew culture, the foundation of the Old Testament, the basis of the commands and interpretations Jesus himself presented to his students, and the backdrop of the Christian religion we practice to facilitate our own relationship with the LORD through Jesus.

The Law warned the Hebrews if they didn’t stick to it, the LORD would remove his hand and their enemies would have at ’em. And history has recorded they really didn’t stick to it. Time and again the LORD had to let Israel’s enemies crap all over them; then when they finally returned to him, he rescued them. The whole point of the Pharisee denomination was to break this cycle once and for all: Create schools which taught the Law to every Hebrew in every generation, make ’em experts in it, and they’d never break it again.

Problem is, some Pharisees missed the point, and thought following the Law saved them. After all, it broke the cycle and kept their enemies back! But that’s not how salvation works. The LORD already saved his people; that’s what the Exodus is about. And now that you’re a saved people, how ought you live? Good question; the Law is the LORD’s answer. Live like this.

But I should point out, same as other comparative religion scholars have pointed out, most Pharisees knew better. Paul was a Pharisee, Pp 3.5, Ac 23.6 and properly articulated the Pharisee view: Nobody’s saved by the Law. That’s not its purpose. That makes people think we’re saved by good deeds and good karma—and unsaved by bad deeds and bad karma. The Law doesn’t save; God does. His grace does. And grace forgives when we slip up and break the Law from time to time. Don’t break the Law; but when we do, we have Jesus. 1Jn 2.1 Our relationship with the LORD is more than merely the Law. It’s not contractual obligations: “I did such-and-so, and now you owe me salvation.” No he doesn’t. But he wants to save us.

So what was Jesus’s beef with Pharisees? Cherry-picking which commands they wanted to enforce, and which ones they’d create loopholes to slip through. Inconsistency. Hypocrisy. You know, all the stuff we Christians commit too.

And contrary to what the scriptures teach, many a Christian claims a giant loophole in the Law: They claim Jesus did away with it. The New Covenant wholly cancels out the old one. Because we’re saved by grace not Law, it’s okay to ignore the Law; even willfully break it.

So when John writes stuff like “Sin’s against the Law,” such Christians’ visceral reaction is to ignore John. Or explain him away, till he means nothing—same as they figure the Law means. They don’t wanna follow the Law. They don’t wanna quit sinning. Much easier to claim nothing’s a sin, or claim God’s reduced all the commands to the ten… plus abortion, homosexuality, and anything else which bugs them personally. Funny how their idea of God only hates the things they do.

Making Christians like us, like God.

1 John 3.2-3.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul, Silas, and Timothy wrote that we’re gonna get raptured at Jesus’s second coming: Dead Christians will be resurrected, living Christians will be transformed into our resurrected selves, and all of us will meet Jesus in the air. 1Th 4.15-18

These sinful sacks of meat we currently carry around: They get swapped for something eternal, to match the eternal life God always meant for us to have. They no longer have the same self-preservation instincts we currently do, ’cause they last forever… and therefore these instincts won’t go overboard and become self-centered and depraved. Our first impulse won’t be to do the selfish, sinful thing; it’ll be to do as Jesus does. Christians call this “the new nature.” Human nature is considered selfish and fallible, but this’ll become the new human nature: Selfless and Spirit-led.

Plus we can finally see Jesus as he really is. Without freaking out, Mk 9.2-8 passing out, Rv 1.17 or going blind. Ac 9.4-9

This is what John refers to in today’s 1 John snippet:

1 John 3.2-3 KWL

2Beloved, we’re now God’s children—

and God’s not yet revealed what we will be.

We’ve known once he reveals it, we will be like God:

We will see him as he is.

3Everyone who has this hope in God:

He cleans them like he is clean.

Now the bit about becoming like God: This tends to weird out certain Christians. Partly ’cause a number of us misinterpret it and think we’re gonna become gods. Lowercase-G gods; we certainly won’t be the God, like Jesus is. But uppercase or lowercase, the idea of us having any form of divinity strikes em as disturbing.

Society doesn’t know what to make of Christ-followers.

1 John 3.1.

John didn’t write any of his books and letters with chapters and verses. Medieval Christians added them. They gave every line in the bible an address, so we could more easily find it. It’s so useful! But every so often, it splits a sentence, paragraph, or train of thought, right where it ought not. As a result Christians tend to lose the train of thought, if not miss it altogether.

• Don’t love society, which is passing away. 1Jn 2.15-17
• Don’t be misled by antichrists; you know better. 1Jn 2.18-23
• Hold on to what you learned in the beginning. 1Jn 2.24-29
• After all, society doesn’t understand us, or God, anyway. 1Jn 3.1
• Meanwhile clean yourselves up. Jesus is coming! 1Jn 3.2-3
• And stop sinning, wouldya? 1Jn 3.4-6

And so on. But today’s bit is gonna zero in on that bit about society not understanding us Christians.

The word from 1 John I translate “society” is κόσμος/kósmos, which the KJV and other bibles translate “world.” That’s imprecise. In context, John means the social order of the world, which is why I’m translating it that way, as I’ve explained elsewhere. Ideally, our social order should be harmonious like God intended, but people are inherently selfish and ruin that order. You’ve seen it aplenty.

1 John 3.1 KWL

Look at the kind of love the Father gives us:

We can be called God’s children!

And we are!

This is why society doesn’t understand us:

It doesn’t understand God.

The Textus Receptus deleted καί ἐσμεν/ké ésmen, “and we are.” John Wycliffe (who translated his bible from the Vulgate) somehow learned these words oughta be included it, but he rendered them “and be [his] sons.” 1Jn 3.1 WYC But the Geneva Bible, following the Textus, dropped ’em—as did the King James.) John included it ’cause it makes clear we’re not merely called God’s kids, as if it’s an honorary title: He adopted us. We legitimately are his kids. And he’s legitimately our Father.

Yeah. We are. Us scumbags. Many a Christian is in utter denial about being scumbags, but the cold hard truth is we totally don’t merit adoption by God; we merit hell. But God loves us so much, he graciously offers us a route out of hell, a place in his family, a room in his kingdom, his presence (he himself!) to live within us and empower us to do mighty things in his name. It’s a hugely disproportionate response to humanity. It’s a massive act of love.

And society doesn’t get this at all. Because society doesn’t do grace. It does karma.

Whenever we get anything resembling grace from our fellow human beings and our governments, society insists there be some level of merit and reciprocity as part of the package. If you’re getting food stamps you darned well better deserve to get food stamps, and how dare you buy “luxuries” with those food stamps, like beef and soda and name-brand breakfast cereals. Meanwhile billionaires get all their taxes forgiven: We should only give freebees to deserving people.

The only exception society recognizes, is inheritance: If a billionaire begets a kid, the kid inherits the billions. Doesn’t matter how utterly useless and stupid this kid might grow up to be, and European royal history (and, for people who don’t know squat about history, reality TV shows) has shown us time and again they can be profoundly stupid and useless. Doesn’t matter how dangerous it can be to put a mighty estate into the hands of a moron. He might hire immoral managers for his companies, and create poisonous products instead of healthy ones. She might implode her newly inherited companies, destroy jobs, and ruin lives. Even so, inheritance is largely accepted by society; if a rich mother wishes to indulge her prodigal daughter, people shrug and say, “Well it’s her money.” But if that same woman wishes to adopt some ill-behaved stranger, make her a daughter, and enrich her? Society will figure she’s lost her mind.

Well, our heavenly Father is lost-his-mind gracious to us. And likewise, society doesn’t get this. They think any religion with sense should make us earn our spots in God’s kingdom, not just get ’em for free. (And the gnostic groups of John’s day didn’t just make their followers earn heaven: They had to pay out the yin-yang for it too.) Free, unlimited grace?—you gotta be nuts. Buncha liberals.