Regeneration, Faith, Love

1 John 5:1-5 1.Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2.This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3.This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4.for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5.Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

The walk of a follower of Christ is a difficult one. The simple fact that we’re saved makes Satan work all the harder to have us slip. All it takes is One Slip to fall off track. Resulting in obsession, addiction, and wallowing in what tempted you in the first place. Staying true to God is an immense feat, ranging from not insulting people to not sleeping with random people, and anything in between and beyond. I guarantee the temptor will make himself easily known when things begin to take a turn for the worse. He will not mask his intentions. You will easily be able to acknowledge the fact that Satan is attempting to stray you from the path of God (A road already narrow to begin with). Even though it will be easily noticed, many will continue to indulge in the sins Satan offers them. A Gentile would care less about what God would think about them. Taking satisfaction during the act, but feeling remorse after fornication…remorse, guilt, displeasure after partaking in the act. A person of the world would have no reason to feel such things. They see that they comand their life and worship the ways of the world. Loving in what pleases them to see, taking satisfaction in what is done with the flesh, and taking pride in what they have…three sins of the world that would, in no way, be surpassable without faith. Faith is the victor that vanquishes the three. Faith and love in Christ. The faith that has us take into consideration what He has done. Applying it to our life because He has commanded it. So why do we follow in what He has commanded? Love. The love that is felt for our Saviour. If you love someone, wouldn’t you do what they say? “I really want to go eat here instead honey, is that okay?” “Sure, why not”. Taking into consideration what your loved one says shows how you feel about them. We follow His commandments because we love Him. There is a lot of fake love out there that consists of one party getting the better end of the deal. Many people would claim God doesn’t deserve it. “Sure, God took my successful business away and I’m suppossed to thank him? Yeah, I’ll get on that.” A man like this was probably only living for himself to begin with. Not many successful businesses run a clean operation. They take out the small prey to obtain more for their own self gain. And Justice For All. He is a Just God, not only Loving. A parent can’t expect to be a good parent if they aren’t just. If no justice is served, then your undoubtfully gonna get a little brat who wants everything hand fed to him. (Sorry, got a little off topic there)

Anyway, we follow His commandments because we love Him. Many do claim to love Him, yet fail to follow the most important commandment (talked about in this passage and throught the whole book). Love the Lord with all your heart. This directs you to love others. Such tasks should be done with delight and not grief. Another passage that has to deal with this is 1John 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. The word that I want to stress is ‘ought’ meaning ‘should’. The word ‘ought’ implying that it is more of a duty. A police officer ‘should’ keep the law, but it is very well known that many form deals with the criminal to for self-gain. People ‘ought’ to treat each other with respect, but you don’t need me to tell you how miserably this is failing. The Brits and French can get along after hundreds of years of rivalery, why can’t America follow suit? The WORLD pardoned the actions of Germany, yet you have every ethnic group viciously attacked by whatever rival. The word ‘ought’ in this passage does not imply that it should be duty, but a nature. As described in an earlier passsage: 1John 4:7,8 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loves is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not does not know God; for God is love. Everyone that is born of HIm loves. That comes with the New Birth (accepting Christ as Saviour). If you know HIm, then it is second nature to love. For when you accept Christ, He abides in you. This results in love being second nature. As a bird’s nature is to fly, a fish’s nature is to swim, a human’s nature is to breathe. Thusly, there should be no grief in the voice of a follower of Christ when asked to serve. Naturally, any person, saved or not, would moan, groan, or complain when performing a task they would rather not do, but sticking with it still shows the love nonetheless.

This post courtesy of Pastor John Piper. This post wouldn’t be made possible without listening to a sermon of his that dealt completely with this, titled “Regeneration, Faith, Love: In That Order”. I do not take full credit for everything in this post for it is mostly a reillustration of what he said, only with a few of my own views of it.

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