Today’s passage: 1 John 1:8–10 Focus verse: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9) As a young teen, I had a Sunday school teacher who claimed he sometimes would go an entire day without sinning. Granted, he didn’t claim […]
Today’s passage: 1 John 1:5–7 Focus verse: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5) As John continues in his letter, he moves from fellowship and joy, to talking about the light. God is light. That is, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit give us light. In their light there is […]
Today’s passage: 1 John 1:4 Focus verse: We write this to make our joy complete. (1 John 1:4) John uses the pronoun we a lot in this letter, over forty times in its short five chapters. Later we’ll see him use we as inclusive language to embrace all those who follow Jesus. Yet other times, especially in […]
Today’s passage: 1 John 1:2–3 Focus verse: We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. (1 John 1:3) Building on the phrase Word of life, John continues by saying that the life appeared—that is, Jesus appeared—whom John has seen and testifies about. He proclaims Jesus’s life […]
Today’s passage: 1 John 1:1 Focus verse: This we proclaim concerning the Word of life. (1 John 1:1) We notice many similarities between the beginning verses of 1 John and the opening passage of the gospel of John. We don’t know which one John wrote first, but we sense that one informed the other. It could be that […]
Some refer to the book of John as the gospel of love because he mentions the word love thirty-nine times, more than Matthew, Mark, and Luke combined and more than any other book in the New Testament. In all the Bible, only the lengthy 150-chapter book of Psalms uses love more often. In John’s much […]
The apostle John (not to be confused with John the Baptist) is one of Jesus’s twelve disciples and part of Jesus’s inner circle, along with his older brother James and his friend Peter. But there’s more. In his biography of Jesus, John refers to himself as the disciple Jesus loved. Imagine that. Consider that Jesus […]
Today’s passage: John 21:12–25 Focus verse: Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” (John 21:17) As Jesus wraps up his stint on earth, he spends time with the disciples he trained for three years. They must carry on without him, albeit under Holy Spirit direction. He wants to […]
Today’s passage: John 21:1–11 Focus verse: They were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. (John 21:6) The book of Luke has a story of Jesus. It’s early in his ministry. In this account, he tells a couple of fishermen to go out to deep water and cast their […]
Today’s passage: John 20:19–31 Focus verse: Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28) The Bible writes that faith is having confidence in the things we hope for and assurance in what we don’t see (Hebrews 11:1). Today this definition of faith applies to us. We cannot see Jesus, so we must […]