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1 John Bible Study, Day 21: The Love of God

Today’s passage: 1 John 4:7–12

Focus verse: This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9)

So far in John’s letter he’s already talked a lot about love, building up to this passage in chapter four, where the topic of love becomes the focus. In the rest of chapter 4, John mentions love twenty-seven times. That’s a lot of love.

Building on his encouragement to love one another from the prior chapter, John again reminds us—his dear friends—to love one another.

This is because love comes from God, and he empowers us to love others. When we are born of God and know him, we’re able to love others well. But those who don’t know God aren’t able to love. 

Loving others is the fruit of our relationship with our Heavenly Father; it’s proof of our right standing with him, through Jesus.

Though we love God, he loved us first (1 John 4:19). He proved this by sending his precious Son to earth so that we might live eternally through him. Father God sent Jesus into our world as the sacrifice to atone for our sins (1 John 4:10).

We often think of Jesus’s great love for us. He showed this ultimate expression of love through his willingness to die in our place for all the wrong things we’ve done in our life—and all the wrong that we will do. 

Jesus endured a most painful death, tortured at the hands of his Roman executioners. Dying in our place is the epitome of love, and we celebrate him for making this supreme sacrifice. In turn, we love him back to the best of our ability.

Yet John isn’t talking about Jesus’s love for us by dying in our place. Instead, the apostle is talking about Father God’s great love for us. God showed his immense love for us by sending Jesus to save us.

For those of us who are parents, we don’t want to see our children suffer. We’d gladly stand in their place if we could shelter them from the pain of their struggles.

Our Heavenly Father is no different from us in this regard. How hard it must have been for Father God to send his precious Son into our world, knowing what he would have to endure.

That’s real love. And God’s immense love for us is why we should love one another.

When we do, “God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12).

Questions:

  1. How well do we do at accepting God’s love for us? 
  2. How well do we do at loving others?
  3. Who do we love well enough to die for?
  4. Should our list be longer? Why?
  5. How can we thank God for loving us?

Discover more about God’s love for us in Romans 5:7–10.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Study

1 John Bible Study, Day 20: The Greater Power

Today’s passage: 1 John 4:4–6

Focus verse: The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. (1 John 4:4)

After talking about the Holy Spirit and false prophets—that is, false teachers under Satan’s control—John gives us a comforting truth.

As Father God’s children who believe in Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit (whom John calls the Spirit of truth) living in us. Greater, John says, is the one who lives in us than the one who is in the world.

Many people don’t realize this, and their behavior belies John’s teaching. They view God and Satan as equal and opposing forces. They’re left quaking, wondering which force will win—and praying that they haven’t misplaced their faith. 

Yet this perspective is incorrect. God and Satan are not equal. God, as Creator, made all the angels—including Satan, a fallen angel. The Creator is clearly superior to his creation.

That’s why John can confidently teach us that God—who lives in us—is more powerful than the devil who lives in the world around us.

Yes, God has granted Satan a bit of authority in our world for a time. But our Lord will one day take back that authority and punish the evil one forever.

This victory over Satan began when Jesus died in our place for the wrong things we have done, defeating death and our enemy who specializes in death (John 10:10).

We’ll find the finale of Jesus’s victory revealed in full at the end of time, when Father God ushers in a new heaven and a new earth where we’ll live forever (Revelation 21:1–2).

We must focus on God’s power and Jesus’s victory. John reminds us that we are children of God. As his children, our heritage comes through him. He has overcome evil, and as his children we can overcome evil too.

God is greater than the devil. The battle has already happened, and God has won. We are on the winning side. And God is in us. Through him we can overcome the evil one’s opposition and the evil that is in the world.

We can count on God as the ultimate power and should live confident lives as a result.

Questions:

  1. How can we better embrace God’s spirit who lives in us?
  2. In what ways do our lives show we believe we’re on the winning side? 
  3. When have we placed too much emphasis on the power of our enemy?
  4. What does it mean to you to be a child of God?
  5. How should we respond when we encounter evil?

Discover what else John says about the Spirit of truth (Holy Spirit) in John 14:16–17, John 15:26, and John 16:13.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.

Read the next lesson or start at the beginning of this study.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Categories
Bible Study

1 John Bible Study, Day 19: Spirit of God

Today’s passage: 1 John 4:1–3

Focus verse: This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. (1 John 4:2)

The third chapter of 1 John wraps up with a reference to the Holy Spirit, whom God sent to us. John now contrasts the Holy Spirit to other spirits.

These manifest in the form of false prophets—that is, purveyors of wayward doctrine. These false messages come from demons in the spiritual realm. 

The Holy Spirit speaks truth to us. These contrary spirits fill us with lies. They distort who God is and what the Bible says. Many unsuspecting believers fall victim to their twisting of the truth.

This first happened back in Genesis when the serpent (the devil) lies to Eve and misrepresents what God said to her. She foolishly believes him, and Adam passively follows her (Genesis 3:1–7).

Because of Adam and Eve’s failings, resulting from the serpent’s mischaracterization of God’s truth, sin enters our world and God expels Adam and Eve from their idyllic paradise.

John recommends that we test every spirit, that is, to test every prophet and their message. This is because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This implies that they started as part of Jesus’s church.

John gives us a simple test. He says that every spirit—that is, every teacher—who acknowledges Jesus as the Messiah who physically came to earth in human form is from God.

If someone does not recognize this truth, they are not from God. In fact, they are the antichrist—that is, anti-Christ, which is to say they are against Jesus the Messiah. 

These false prophets were in the world two thousand years ago, and they’re still with us today. We must be equally discerning of their error.

In addition to John’s basic test to identify these false prophets, we can also consult the Bible. In the book of Acts, Luke applauds the cautious approach of the believers in Berea in discerning between truth and error.

They eagerly received Paul’s message about the good news of Jesus. But because of their noble character, they examined the Scriptures (the Old Testament) to verify that what Paul claimed was correct (Acts 17:10–15). 

We should follow their example to avoid the teachings of any false prophets who threaten to lead us astray.

Questions:

  1. How does The Holy Spirit speak truth to us?
  2. In what ways must we be more discerning about who we listen to? 
  3. What doctrines have we accepted that we might want to test against what the Bible says?
  4. What are some practical ways to test them?
  5. How can we discern between truth and error?

Discover more about false prophets in Matthew 7:15, Luke 6:26, Acts 13:6–12, and 2 Peter 2:1.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.

Read the next lesson or start at the beginning of this study.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Categories
Bible Study

1 John Bible Study, Day 18: Jesus’s Two Commands

Today’s passage: 1 John 3:21–24

Focus verse: And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. (1 John 3:23)

John teaches us that if we have a clear conscience before God, we can be confident that we’ll receive from him whatever we ask (1 John 3:21–22).

We’ll cover this more in Day 27, but for now, we’ll look at John’s reason why God will answer our prayers. It’s because we keep his commands.

But this doesn’t refer to the Old Testament law and the many directives we find there. Instead, it refers to a pair of commands. That’s right.

Just two commands rise above all others. These are what God expects us to follow. We’ve touched on them in our prior readings. 

What are they? 

The first is to believe in Jesus. The second is to love one another. When we keep these two commands, we live in him, and he lives in us. 

In considering this first command—to believe in God’s son, Jesus Christ—let’s not make the mistake of thinking that Jesus is his first name and Christ is his second.

Though Jesus Christ may roll off our tongues as if it’s his full name, this is not the case. Christ is a descriptor of Jesus, not his name—even though we’ve made it into one. 

Christ means Messiah (John 1:41), as in Jesus the Messiah (Mark 1:1) or Jesus the Christ (1 John 2:22).

Therefore, when we read the instruction to believe in Jesus Christ, it means to believe in Jesus the Messiah, the Savior—essentially to believe in Jesus as our Messiah, our Savior.

The second command of John—to love one another—stands as a recurring theme of his. He’s already covered it and will continue to do so.

We see it throughout the book of 1 John. We’ve also covered this in Day 16 and touched on it in many other days.

God’s two commands—to believe in Jesus as the Christ and to love one another—are consistent with Jesus’s teaching about the two greatest commandments in Scripture (Matthew 22:36–40).

In a broad sense, believing in Jesus is the key way we love God, which Jesus says is the greatest Old Testament commandment.

The second is to love our neighbor as ourselves. That is, we should love one another.

Questions:

  1. How clear is your conscience before God?
  2. Have we taken the essential step to believe in Jesus as our Savior? 
  3. Is believing enough? Why?
  4. What can we do to more rightly consider the word Christ as a descriptor and not a name?
  5. How well do we do at obeying God’s second command to love one another?

Discover more about loving one another in 2 Thessalonians 1:3. Contrast this with Titus 3:3.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.

Read the next lesson or start at the beginning of this study.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Categories
Bible Study

1 John Bible Study, Day 17: What Love Is

Today’s passage: 1 John 3:16–20

Focus verse: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. (1 John 3:16)

The ultimate expression of love is to die for another, to sacrifice ourselves for the good of someone else. Jesus exemplifies this highest form of love by dying as a human sacrifice for us—for all people, for all time.

His death covers the penalty our sins deserve, thereby making us right with Father God.

In the same way, we should be willing to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Yes, this may mean to actually die for them so they can live. But in practical terms our call to sacrifice may be less demanding.

John writes that we prove God’s love in us when we have pity on our brother and sister in need. The most direct application is to share what we have with them, to give our possessions to those in Jesus’s church—our brothers and sisters. 

Having pity on them, however, doesn’t always mean giving them our belongings. At times we may need to say no. 

This isn’t a justification to not help them with tangible solutions, but to note that giving them what they lack isn’t always the answer.

Sometimes our generosity could enable them to continue to make the same ill-advised decisions or persist in the same wrong behaviors that caused the situation in the first place.

In these instances, the wise thing is to say no. We offer them tough love. This is how we can best take pity on them.

Another way to take pity on our brothers and sisters in need is to pray for them. As strange as it seems to say, in this case we must ensure that prayer isn’t our default position but a secondary one.

We get this understanding when John implores us to not love with words only but with actions and in truth (1 John 3:18).

In this way we can have a clear conscience, knowing that we responded rightly and can therefore rest in God’s presence.

We must remember that we are not to accumulate wealth for ourselves. Instead, we are to store up our treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19–21).

God blesses us—just as he did Father Abraham—so that we can bless others (Genesis 12:2). Yet we need to balance this with a call to be a wise steward of what God has given us (Matthew 25:14–30).

These passages give us much to contemplate when we consider how to best take pity on our brothers and sisters in need.

Questions:

  1. How can we lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters? 
  2. Who are we willing to die for?
  3. When have we tried to help someone with our words when we should have acted?
  4. When should we love others in prayer?
  5. How can we better help those in need?

Discover more about Jesus’s great love in laying down his life for us in John 10:11–18.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.

Read the next lesson or start at the beginning of this study.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Categories
Bible Study

1 John Bible Study, Day 16: Love One Another

Today’s passage: 1 John 3:11–15

Focus verse: For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. (1 John 3:11)

John tells his audience that we are to love one another. 

It’s not a new command but one we’ve heard from the beginning. He first mentions this in 1 John 2:7–8. And now he tells us what this command is: we are to love one another. It’s that simple.

Saying that we’ve heard this from “the beginning” centers on Jesus. 

When an expert in the law asks Jesus to name the greatest command, he says it’s to love God.

Then he tacks on a second one—which makes it the second greatest command—to love others. In a most effective manner, these summarize everything in the Old Testament (Matthew 22:35–40). 

We are to love God and love one another.

Jesus also talks about the importance of loving one another in his Sermon on the Mount. In that message he tells his listeners to love others in the same way that they love themselves (Matthew 7:12).

He says the same thing, although more succinctly, in his Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:31). 

Though it’s through Jesus that we get this essential command to love one another, we find it throughout the Old Testament. All the commands God gives his people either relate to their relationship with him or their relationship with others.

As we’ve already mentioned, this comes from the Ten Commandments too. We first love God (commandments one through four) and then we love others (commandments five through ten).

This is why Jesus says the greatest command is to love God and the second greatest is to love others. Everything else in the Old Testament underscores these two (Matthew 22:37–40).

We find this command to love others hidden in the Levitical law too. Quoting the words of Father God, Moses writes that we are to love our neighbors in the same way we love ourselves (Leviticus 19:18), which Jesus later quotes in Matthew 22:39.

Paul reiterates this in his letter to the church in Rome. He says we should owe no outstanding debt other than the continuing debt to love one another. When we do this, we fulfill the Old Testament commands (Romans 13:8). 

In his letter to the church in Galatia, Paul confirms that we can keep the entire law by obeying the singular command to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves (Galatians 5:14).

This command to love one another as we love ourselves is the essence of the Golden Rule. We are to treat others the way we want them to treat us.

This means doing for them the same things that we’d like to receive ourselves. It also means not doing to them the things we don’t want to receive. The Golden Rule is based on the Bible, going back to Leviticus 19:18.

This idea of loving one another as we love ourselves permeates Scripture. It’s been there since the beginning.

Questions:

  1. What must we do differently to more fully obey God’s essential command to love our neighbor? 
  2. Beyond that, how well do we obey God’s greatest command to love him?
  3. What is an area where your love shines?
  4. What is an area where you need to love better?
  5. Is it wrong to love others more than we love ourselves? Why?

See John’s instructions to love one another in John 13:34, John 13:35, 1 John 3:11, 1 John 3:23, 1 John 4:7, 1 John 4:11, 1 John 4:12, and 2 John 1:5.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.

Read the next lesson or start at the beginning of this study.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Categories
Bible Study

1 John Bible Study, Day 15: Destroying the Work of the Devil

Today’s passage: 1 John 3:6–10

Focus verse: The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. (1 John 3:8)

Our passage for the day is one that troubles most people. It talks about sin. John writes that when Jesus lives in us, we won’t keep on sinning. If we know him, we can’t. By doing what is right, we prove we’re a child of God.

But if we don’t do what’s right, we’re not his children.

Ouch! That’s convicting.

Some well-intentioned teachers try to explain this verse away. They say it doesn’t mean all sin. Instead, it refers to habitual sin or intentional sin.

Yet even with these rationalizations, we may still have a reason to worry. But John doesn’t give us those explanations. He says sin, period. Therefore, it’s wrong to try to reinterpret this passage through our perspective or what we wish it said.

Paul, however, gives us some help. He says we are spirit, soul, and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). That is, we are a spirit, we have a soul, and we live in a body.

When we repent of our wrongdoing (our sin) to follow Jesus, our spirit is immediately and permanently made sinless.

The spirit part of us is sanctified—that is, made right and set apart as holy—as soon as we believe in Jesus as our Savior. Theologians call this positional sanctification. 

Yet this doesn’t address our soul and our body.

Our soul—comprising our mind, will, and emotions—begins to align with our sanctified spirit. This is a process of ongoing sanctification. 

Our body is the last to move toward the sinless condition of our spirit. This is a lifetime process, but through God’s grace we can inch closer to it each day.

Tucked in the middle of this passage, however, is the key to this issue of sin. John reminds us that Jesus—the Son of God—came to destroy the work of the devil. Jesus came to overcome sin.

He sets this in motion when he dies on the cross as the ultimate sin sacrifice. As a result, he takes away our sins—past, present, and future—to make us right with Father God. This is the first phase of destroying the devil’s work.

Yet it won’t become final until we reach the end of time when Satan is tossed into the lake of burning sulfur (Revelation 20:10) so that God can usher in a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1).

The work of Jesus to defeat Satan began two thousand years ago, yet it remains in process today. So too is our sanctification, our moving from a sinful life to a sinless future. God will complete this for us, just as he will one day conclusively deal with the devil. 

God will sanctify us through and through (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

John later writes that when we acknowledge Jesus as God’s Son, he lives in us and we in him (1 John 4:15). John doesn’t mention sin in this verse. This is because through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, sin no longer needs to be an issue for us.

Questions:

  1. What is your view of sin?
  2. How can we better deal with our struggle with habitual or intentional sins?
  3. How should we let God’s Word inform our perspective about sin? 
  4. What are we doing to allow the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit move us toward sinlessness?
  5. What does sanctification mean to you?

Discover more about sanctification in John 17:17–19, Romans 15:16, 1 Corinthians 6:11, and 1 Peter 1:1–2.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.

Read the next lesson or start at the beginning of this study.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Categories
Bible Study

1 John Bible Study, Day 14: Jesus Takes Away Our Sins

Today’s passage: 1 John 3:4–5

Focus verse: But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. (1 John 3:5)

John reminds us that anyone who sins breaks the law. He’s talking about the law of Moses. Sin is something we all do. We’re all guilty of breaking God’s law.

The Old Testament of the Bible—especially the first five books—tells us in immense detail what to do and what not to do.

A failure to follow these rules is a sin, be it a sin of commission (doing the wrong thing) or a sin of omission (not doing the right thing).

No one can obey every one of these Old Testament rules. This means that everyone has sinned and falls short of meeting God’s expectations (Romans 3:22–24). 

To address this, God gave them an annual rite, a ceremony to symbolically take away the people’s sins. This solution was temporary; it needed to be repeated each year.

As such, the annual animal sacrifice gave only a partial response to take away the people’s sins—to make atonement (amends) for their mistakes (Leviticus 16:34).

Each year the people sinned—every one of them—whether in big ways or small. Even the tiniest slipup made them guilty of breaking the entire law (James 2:10).

Each year, everyone fell short of what the law decreed. Each year the annual sacrifice would cleanse them from their sins for the prior twelve months.

Then they’d repeat the process one year later. This continued year after year, throughout their entire lives, giving them only brief reprieves from the guilt of their sins.

This is why Jesus arrived here on our planet over two thousand years ago. Our Savior lowered himself to come to earth and walk among us, his creation. He became God in flesh and lived among us (John 1:14).

He did this to offer a permanent solution to the problem of our sins. He died as the ultimate sin sacrifice—not an animal sacrifice, but a far pricier human one.

In this way Jesus permanently took away our sins. It served as a final act, a conclusive sacrifice for our sins.

Jesus came to earth so that he could die in our place to take away our sins. His once-and-for-all sacrifice removes all our guilt, both past and present—the mistakes we have committed and the mistakes we will commit. 

Questions

  1. What is your attitude toward sin?
  2. When we see someone else sin, how well do we do at offering them the grace and mercy that Jesus gives us?
  3. How should we act, knowing that Jesus took away our sins? 
  4. Although Jesus freed us from our sins, in what ways do we let them continue to weigh us down?
  5. How can we better thank Jesus for taking away our sins?

Discover more about the law and sacrifice for our sins in Romans 5:20–21 and Hebrews 10:1–18.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.

Read the next lesson or start at the beginning of this study.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Categories
Bible Study

1 John Bible Study, Day 13: Children of God

Today’s passage: 1 John 3:1–3

Focus verse: See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! (1 John 3:1)

The Bible says that Jesus is God’s one and only Son (John 3:16–18 and 1 John 4:9).

However, God also calls us his children. How can we be God’s children if he has only one Son?

The Bible is full of paradoxes, but this isn’t one of them.

Scripture gives us two explanations for this seeming contradiction.

The first is adoption. 

In another letter, Paul writes that, through the Holy Spirit living in us, we’re adopted as children into God’s family. We can call him Father, Abba, or even Papa (Romans 8:15).

Parents of biological children accept whatever God blesses them with.

Parents of adopted children make a conscious decision to accept them and bring them into their family. They are children by the choice of their adoptive parents. They are chosen.

In the same way, God chooses us to be his children. He adopts us into his family.

Another truth builds on this, giving us a second way to understand how God can have only one Son yet many children.

The other metaphor to aid us in our understanding of our relationship with God is that of a bride and groom, with Jesus being the groom and we, the church, being his bride.

By virtue of this holy, spiritual union, Jesus, the only Son of God, brings the church into his family through marriage. This makes us, his church, the children of God through our union with the Lamb of God, that is, the Son of God.

As such, we are indeed God’s children. Scripture confirms it. 

This first occurs when God adopts us into his family through the Holy Spirit. The second will occur when we, as God’s church, marry his Son. Our marriage to the Son makes us children of the Father.

We are first adopted into God’s family and will later marry into it, doubly confirming us as children of God.

Questions:

  1. How can we find comfort knowing that Father God chose us and adopted us to be his sons and daughters? 
  2. What are the similarities between your earthly father and your Heavenly Father?
  3. What are the differences between your earthly father and your Heavenly Father?
  4. How has your earthly father helped you to better understand God?
  5. What are the implications that we will one day spiritually marry God’s Son?

Discover more about our adoption in Romans 8:23, Romans 9:3–4, Galatians 4:4–5, and Ephesians 1:4–6. Read about us being Jesus’s bride in Revelation 19:6–8.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.

Read the next lesson or start at the beginning of this study.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Study

1 John Bible Study, Day 12: Holy Spirit Anointing

Today’s passage: 1 John 2:26–29

Focus verse: The anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. (1 John 2:27)

Our verse for today contains two words that we’ve already read in 1 John 2: anointing and remain

In verse twenty, John reminds us of the fact that we received the anointing from the Holy One, that is, the Holy Spirit (1 John 2:20). John builds on this truth in today’s passage.

The other word is remain. John has encouraged us—implored us—to hold on to what we’ve heard from the beginning, to ensure it remains in us. In this way we’ll remain in the Son and the Father so that we may receive the eternal life Jesus promised (1 John 2:24–25).

Now John ties these two thoughts together. 

He wants to make sure that the anointing we received—the Holy Spirit—remains in us. This anointing is real and not fake. We can count on it. We need to remain in him just as we need to be certain this anointing stays with us.

The reason to remain in Holy Spirit anointing is in the middle of this passage and is easy to pass by. But don’t skip it. It’s important.

When the Holy Spirit’s anointing remains in us, we do not need anyone to teach us. Instead of needing human instructors, the Holy Spirit will tell us all we need to know.

I repeat, through the Holy Spirit we do not need anyone to teach us. The Bible says so.

Most people who go to church do so for the music or the message. For the latter, they go so they can hear a professional member of the clergy teach them about God. 

Yet John makes it clear that when we have the anointing of God’s Holy Spirit, we don’t need ministers to teach us. We need to teach ourselves—to feed ourselves—not depend on someone else to do it (1 Corinthians 3:2, Hebrews 5:12–14, and 1 Peter 2:2–3).

This isn’t to suggest that listening to sermons is bad. But we shouldn’t depend on other people as our only source of biblical teaching. Instead, we should rely on the Holy Spirit as our principal source of spiritual truth. Teaching from others should come secondary, if needed at all.

Jesus confirms this. 

He promises that Father God will send to us the Holy Spirit, who will teach us all things and help us remember what Jesus said (John 14:26). The Holy Spirit arrives at Pentecost, just as Jesus promised. And the Holy Spirit is still in our world today, teaching us what we need to know.

As we read, study, and meditate on Scripture, we should do so in tandem with the Holy Spirit. We should seek his guidance to help us understand the Bible. Some things he reveals right away, and other things unfold over time. And when we struggle to recall a passage of Scripture—especially the words of Jesus—the Holy Spirit will remind us of the text.

Questions:

  1. What does Holy Spirit anointing mean to you?
  2. How is the Holy Spirit at work in your life?
  3. How well do we do at relying on the Holy Spirit to teach us? 
  4. If we depend on others to instruct us, while excluding the Holy Spirit, what must change?
  5. What is your practice to read, study, and meditate on Scripture?

Discover more about God sending us the Holy Spirit in John 6:63, John 14:16–17, and John 15:26.

Tips: Check out our tips to use this online Bible study for your church, small group, Sunday school class, or family discussion. It’s also ideal for personal study. Come back each Monday for a new lesson.

Read the next lesson or start at the beginning of this study.


Discover practical, insightful, and encouraging truths in Love One Another, a devotional Bible study to foster a deeper appreciation for the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.