Today’s passage: 1 John 2:15–17 Focus verse: Do not love the world or anything in the world. (1 John 2:15) John reminds his audience to not love the world or anything in it. Loving what the world offers is incompatible with loving God, as Jesus commands us to do. We can’t have the world’s love and the […]
Today’s passage: 1 John 2:7–11 Focus verse: Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. (1 John 2:10) John launches into a discussion about an old command and not a new one. Then he pivots just as quickly to talk about a new command. […]
Today’s passage: 1 John 2:3–6 Focus verse: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. (1 John 2:6) Today’s passage talks about knowing God and keeping his commands. If we claim to know God and don’t do what he says, we’re only deluding ourselves from the truth, and our claim is false. But when […]
Today’s passage: 1 John 2:1–2 Focus verse: But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. (1 John 2:1) John’s desire for us is that we do not sin. That’s one of the reasons he writes his letter. Yet if anyone does sin, he reminds us that we have an […]
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 […]