"They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable." 1 Cor 9:25

Whoever Does the Will of God

(1 John 2:17, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, May 29, 2016)

And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

The world that is passing away

In 1 John 2:17 the apostle writes about the Christian hope for those who do the will of God—that we will abide forever. What is the will of God, and how could we be counted as those who do it? Before we can answer these two important questions, we need to understand why “the world is passing away along with all its desires.”

Paul tells us in Romans 5:12, that “sin came into the world through one man,” Adam, “and death through sin.” He says that “death spread to all men.” In fact, he says that death reigned. How could it be that God could allow such a thing? God did not merely allow it. In fact in Romans 8: 20 we learn this: “The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope.” The One who subjected the creation to futility had a good purpose in what He did, something that was worthy of His own perfectly confident expectation about where everything would lead. This is what is meant by God's “hope.” The fact that the existing world is passing away is not a mistake. It is God's justice, and it is a part of a much larger plan.

The world that will abide forever

Even if there was no Word from God for us in Romans 8:20 about futility, it is obvious that we live in a world of loss and decay. Is there anything here that lasts? Yes, that hope that Paul referred to is one of the major themes of the Bible. God has a plan with His Son at the very center of a new resurrection world. That new world will abide forever.

Jesus refers to those things that last and those which will fade away, which John in 1 John 2:17 calls “the world” and “all its desires.” He says in John 12:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” This is first and foremost about Him. He is the grain of wheat that died. He is the seed that has risen again to new life is bearing much fruit.

But it is also about all who are connected to Him. Back to Romans 5:

[1] Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. [2] Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. [3] Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, [4] and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, [5] and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Whoever does the will of God

Now that we see the truth about two worlds, one that was subjected to futility by the Almighty and the other that has begun in the resurrection of Jesus and in the gift of faith for all who belong to Him, we can come back to the two very important questions from 1 John 2:17 that demand some clear answers. What is the will of God, and how could we be counted as those who do it?

Our souls long for eternity. Whoever does the will of God will abide forever in an eternal world of which Jesus is the Cornerstone. As with John 12:24 about the seed that dies and the fruit that eventually follows, this doing the will of God and then abiding forever is first about Him, and then, only through His perfection, about us.

Jesus has done the will of the Father. God's voice declared this from the heavens in Matthew 3:17, 17:5; Mark 1:11, 9:7; Luke 3:22, 9:35; and it was noted again in 2 Peter 1:17. It is also recorded in a parable that Jesus told about Himself in Mark 12:6 and Luke 20:13. “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”

Then for those who are found in Him, this is the work that we are called to do: First we believe in Him, John 6:27-29:

[27] Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” [28] Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” [29] Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

And then His righteousness is counted as ours, Romans 4:1-8:

[1] What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? [2] For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. [3] For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” [4] Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. [5] And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, [6] just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

[7] “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,

and whose sins are covered;

[8] blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

With this confidence that Jesus' perfect doing the will of God for us counts for us, we are called to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices to God as those who are prepared to give ourselves for the sake of a kingdom that lasts forever, Romans 12:1-2:

[1] I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. [2] Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We are rightly moved by the actions of those who gave their lives for kingdoms that have already faded or that will one day be gone. I remember Roland Hanscom's reaction as he related to me a former pastor's Memorial Day Sunday moment of silence. Profound. How much more are we to be moved by those who have given their all for a kingdom that endures forever.

I am inspired by Diane Dickerson, who recently died from cancer after a long battle. She went to Jesus' kingdom above. Her husband writes, “Please continue to pray for all those who were touched in some way by Diane's life. As John 12:24 tells us, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Pray for a great harvest to come from this precious kernel that so recently fell to the ground.” What does Will Dickerson desire? People who hear the Word and live forever. (1 Peter 1:24-25) Amen.

Old Testament Reading—Psalm 145 – Worthy of eternal praise

Gospel Reading—Luke 6:46-49 – A house that lasts

A better boast...

Resisting Worldly Affections – Part 3

(1 John 2:16-Part 3, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, May 22, 2016)

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

Pride of life

Not every impulse is from the Father. Some need to be actively resisted. For example, what John calls “pride of life” will not lead to freedom and life, but only to bondage and decay.

John breaks down what he refers to as “all that is in the world” into three categories: “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life.” They have much in common with each other. We are using these three expressions to explore the eager passions of the body, the need to see and know everything, and the drive to own, Today, the third of these three: “pride of life.”

The word translated “pride” here can also mean a boasting arrogance that is unbecoming of someone who is a worshiper of the Almighty. It is only used one other time in the New Testament, in James 4.

[13] Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—[14] yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. [15] Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” [16] As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

The second word, translated “life” here, can also mean “possessions,” and there is a footnote in the ESV to that effect. Three quick uses of this word: In Mark 12:44, the widow puts in her whole life into the offering when she deposits her last remaining coin. In Luke 8:14, a person who gets caught up in possessions may find that this pursuit will “choke” out any progress in spiritual pursuits. In Luke 15:12, the son who squanders his father's estate on reckless pursuits has to return home with nothing except the hope that his father will give him a job as a servant.

One other use in 1 John (3:17) is revealing:

[16] By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. [17] But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

1 John 3:16, John uses the word “life” and “lives,” but this is a translation of a different Greek word, often translated “breath” or “soul.” Jesus laid down His “life” for us, His very breath, His heart, mind, will, soul—all that He had. If someone is following Him and has the world's “goods” and withholds these from someone in need, not allowing his heart to feel the need of his brother in Christ, that is not real love, even if we claim with our words that we love Christ and His church.

So what is “pride of life”? It is a proud, arrogant boasting in the present (or imagined future) of our personal accumulation of the world's goods. Consider this in light of the eager longings expressed in the other two lusts mentioned in 1 John 2:16 and we have an unclean craving to own in order to pump up ourselves in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. What makes this especially unattractive is this: The goods that we use for our boast are the necessities of survival for others who in great need. This is not from the Father, but from the world.

The problem with rejecting “pride of life” is that it is increasingly sought after as a sign of personal worthiness and /or it is despised by those who are envious. Loud voices call us to one side or another and both are wrong. How do we see this for what it really is?

First, such a use of our life and breath is not the way of the Lord Jesus. (Matthew 8:18-20)

[18] Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. [19] And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” [20] And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Second, it is not His leading for His church. (Luke 12:13-21)

[13] Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” [14] But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” [15] And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” [16] And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, [17] and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ [18] And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. [19] And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ [20] But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ [21] So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

You can live on either “side of the tracks” and find peace seeing things God's way. The Lord is not against possessions that are necessary for life, any more than He is against life itself. His plan for the church is that we would take heart from the fact that His Son is sitting at His right hand “until He makes His enemies His footstool.” We should use our goods with an eye toward the fuller life to come, and not with a slavish devotion to our own image in this passing world.

“Pride of life” is a heart issue. So are the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the eyes. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The Lord knew all about our heart problems. He took them upon Himself on the cross. His body was then placed in a borrowed grave. Three days later, He rose from the dead as the emperor over a new, and much more glorious, resurrection world.

Those who have received this life-changing message need to let their lives be changed. We do not need to boast in something so temporary as our possessions. We have a better boast as we join Paul's new heart that rejects the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and pride of life, as he wrote in Galatians 6:14:

[14] Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

One application:

Cultivate the pleasures of non-ownership. Enjoy what you cannot buy. Then use what you do own during your brief stay in this perishable world as a trust. We ourselves have been bought with a price. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

Old Testament Reading—Psalm 110 – Sit at My right hand

Gospel Reading—Luke 6:43-45 – Out of the abundance of the heart

The desires of the eyes

Resisting Worldly Affections – Part 2

(1 John 2:16-Part 2, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, May 15, 2016)

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

The desires of the eyes

Not every impulse is from the Father. Some need to be actively resisted. For example, what John calls “the desires of the eyes” will not lead to freedom and life, but only to bondage and decay.

John breaks down what he refers to as “all that is in the world” into three categories: “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life.” They have much in common with each other. We are using these three expressions to explore the eager passions of the body, the need to see and know everything, and the drive to own, Today, the second of these: “the desires of the eyes.”

John is referring hear to something beyond the physical organ of vision. Since he is talking about our eager desires in connection with our eyes, we know that he would direct our attention to most eager longings of our hearts. Paul uses the phrase, “the eyes of our hearts” in Ephesians 1.

People have a strong yearning, more of panic than faith, to know the unknown, to see the infinite. Our problem is that we look for the fulfillment of this desire in all the wrong places. We do not go to the One who formed the eye and ask Him to open the eyes of our hearts. Instead of receiving good eyesight as a gift from the Father, we too often yearn for the kind of sneak peak at the unknown that is a trademark of the heart that cannot find rest in God.

God Himself has perfect eyes. “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:13) He is happy to grant to us a clear vision of that which he chooses to reveal to us, but He does not want us to go around His back in search of hidden matters for which we lust. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” Meanwhile he allows us to see more with the eyes of our hearts according to His own perfect will. Like the blind man in Mark 8 who was healed in two stages, we need a second touch from the Lord throughout our lives.

Since the best kind of eyesight is a gift from the Father, we can ask Him, as Paul did when he prayed for the Ephesian church. He knew that holy eyesight came from a “spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.”

This is the only way that we will have eyes that see the hope of God, the love of God, and the power of God. [Example: Samuel Zwemer] In John 9, Jesus healed a man who was born blind. This was an occasion for some of the Pharisees to display their own blindness. But the humble blind child of Abraham was gently led by the hand toward the best kind of vision.

We do not have to know everything or see everything. But we can know and see today the hope, love, and power of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. No excuse for passing by that heavenly vision.

Old Testament Reading—Psalm 94 – He who formed the eye

Gospel Reading—Luke 6:37-42 – First take the log out of your own eye

The desires of the flesh

Resisting Worldly Affections – Part 1

(1 John 2:16-Part 1, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, May 8, 2016)

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

For (that, because, since)

The apostle John has been insisting that Christian must not be idolatrous, short-sighted, and deceived world-lusters. Instead, as in Psalm 84:1-3, their highest desire is reserved for Another. They are to allow the Word of God to teach them concerning that Best-of-All—God and His kingdom. They are to renew their minds with the love that will always be most worthy.

All that is in the world

The alternative, which we need to always flee from, is to live for—to desire most highly and eagerly—what is plainly fading away under the judgment of the Almighty. It is very natural for us to have worldly affections, but some unbounded passions will not help us to follow Christ. During the next three weeks we will consider what John calls here “all that is in the world.”

What is he referring to? It may help us to remember the distinction between two worlds. There is a new world that is coming into being. John is not speaking of that new creation when he uses the word “world.” John is talking about the old world which is under the sentence of futility (Romans 8:20), and is under the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19).

the desires of the flesh

John breaks down this “all that is in the world” into three headings: “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life.” They have much in common with each other. I will use them to explore the eager passions of the body, the need to see and know everything, and the drive to own, Today, the first of these: “the desires of the flesh.” The word “desires” here used to be “lusts.” Not all “lusts” are bad, and every desire has its place (1 Timothy 4:4). Jesus spoke at the Last Supper about His lust to begin the resurrection world (Luke 22:15). The problem with humanity after the fall is that our lusts are too small and often misplaced. People have eager desires for countless creations and not a lot of time and love for the one Creator. Something is really messed up here. When we view overt love for God as ignorant or extreme and then fall head over heels for created fleeting pleasures, is that supposed to be smart? Misplaced, unbounded affection is from the sinful flesh. It is worldly, and it needs to be resisted. But how?

First we need to understand the lusts of the flesh more specifically. There are several places where the New Testament uses the words “desires” and “flesh” together. Here they are:

Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:13-14; context 13:8-14)

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.... And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:16, 24; context 5:13-26)

… among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:3; context 2:1-10)

so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. (1 Peter 4:2; context 4:1-5)

and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, …. For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. (2 Peter 2:10, 18; context 2:1-22)

These seven verses in five passages have interesting and informative contexts that can be easily summed up: The desires of the flesh are those impulses that are against God and His Word. The defining mark of these eager longings is not that they are physical, sexual, pleasurable, or popular. This all may be true, but that is not the root problem. It is that they are hateful toward God and toward others, and therefore are not from faith, but are against the law of love.

Just one example from the passages above in order to see the love/hate issue in many of them:

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. (Galatians 5:13-15) followed by one of the seven verses above: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:16)

Not from the Father but from the world

Not every impulse that can captivate a human soul is necessarily from the Father. Some are from this dying world. Those need to be actively resisted. People who push the lusts of the flesh are haters. They “promise freedom … but they themselves are slaves of corruption.” (2 Peter 2:19)

We should admit that the desires of the flesh can be very powerful. Impulses and actions that lead to sexual immorality, drunkenness, and all types of over the top comfort-seeking of body and soul will not lead to freedom and happiness but to bondage and misery.

What should we do to resist the desires of the flesh and those pushing them on us?

1. Don't just put off the sinful desire. Put on an eager affection for God. Pray for it. It will come. Study God. Come to Sunday School this next few weeks. “Of God” (WCF 2).
2. Redirect any wandering passions back toward obedient pathways. For example, check out 1 Corinthians 7 and follow Paul's advice in favor of marriage.
3. In light of God's inexpressible gift of Jesus (2 Corinthians 9:15), give thanks. God is not against the physical or the pleasurable. He invented it. He is against entangling sin and idolatry. Keep Him first with a rigorous habit of giving Him thanks in everything.
4. When all else fails do what Jesus did for you on the cross, choose love, even for your enemies. God loves love. Desires of the flesh move people toward hate. Those kinds of impulses are against the Lord. You don't need more hate in your life. Choose love.

Old Testament Reading—Psalm 84 – Loving what lasts rather than what fades away

Gospel Reading—Luke 6:27-36 – Be merciful

Incompatible Loves

What or Who Is Our Treasure?
(1 John 2:15, Preaching: Pastor Nathan Snyder, May 1, 2016)

Do not love the world or the things in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Lord willing we are going to be focusing over the next month on verses 15-17.  John gives the children of God a command not to love the world or the things of the world.  Why?  Because love for the world and the love of the Father are mutually exclusive.  In verses 16-17 John gives further explanation of what he means by the things of the world, as well as further motivation for renouncing world-love.  So the command in verse 15 is the point of verses 15-17.  In John’s mind it is desperately urgent for us to heed this command.  Out of all the books of the New Testament, 1^st John includes the least percentage of commands per total words.  There are only 10 direct commands in the letter, and this is one of them.  So we ought to take note.  Furthermore, John concludes his letter with a similar command: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”  If these are John’s concluding words, the matter must be big on his mind.  Yet we need look no further than 2:15-17 to see why this command is so urgent.  A person must either love the world or love God, and it is not possible to pursue both loves.  As Jesus said, you cannot serve two masters.  Then in verse 17 John makes clear that our eternal destiny is inseparably tied to whether we love the world or God.  The stakes could not be higher.  How you and I spend eternity will be determined by whether in this life we have embraced love for the world till the day of our death, or whether we came to renounce love for the world in order to embrace the love of the Father.  The stakes could not be higher.  (See also Rom. 8:28; 1 Cor. 2:9; 16:22; Eph. 6:24).

Love for the World

When John tells us not to love the world or the things in the world, let us first be clear what he does not mean.  For one thing, John is not forbidding us from loving the people in the world.  It was John himself who wrote, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16).  And in First John he writes, “[Jesus] is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (2:2).  Then in 4:9 and 14, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him…  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.”  If God has loved a sinful world enough to send his Son to redeem lost sinners such as ourselves, clearly he wants us to love the people of this world as well, with a heart of compassion and a desire that others might come to know the Savior.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus commands his disciples to love even their enemies.

Another thing John is not forbidding here is the enjoyment of the natural world, which is God’s good creation, and the enjoyment of the many good physical pleasures it contains.  John is not urging aestheticism, although some have misinterpreted his words here in that way.  Remember, it is John’s Gospel that records the first miraculous sign Jesus performed: turning water into wine at a wedding celebration.  Jesus clearly enjoyed the pleasures of God’s good creation.  The Apostle Paul warned Timothy of false teachers, inspired by demons, “who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.  For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:3-5).

            John is not forbidding loving the people of the world.  Neither is he forbidding the grateful enjoyment of God’s good creation.  What then does he mean when he commands us not to love the world or the things of the world?  John uses the word “the world” frequently in both his gospel and this letter, and often he is referring to the realm of sinful humanity which is in rebellion against God and under the sway of the devil.  Listen, for instance, to the following verses from 1 John:

“Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.” (3:13)

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world…  Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.  They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.” (4:1-5)

“We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” (5:19)

I take John’s command not to love the world as a command not to treasure all that godless humanity treasures.  John is not saying, “Do not love people who remain in rebellion against God.”  Rather he is saying, “Do not set your heart to pursue what people in the world are pursuing.  Do not treasure what they treasure.  Do not worship what they worship.”  John goes on in verse 16 to define more specifically what he means by “the things in the world”, which Pastor Steve is planning to look at in more detail over the coming weeks.  For now, let us note that love for the world involves being allured by the promises of world.  We are told we will find happiness in academic achievement, business success, money and the toys money can buy, sensual pleasures, popularity, political power, or even being respectable or religious.  Many of these things are harmless in themselves.  But if we pursue them as our source of happiness or self-worth, we are in love with the world.  We are idolaters.

Love of the Father

            John warns that to love the world is to push out the love of the Father.  The reverse is also true.  To embrace the love of the Father is to push out love for the world.  These two loves are mutually exclusive.  As the pre-Christian, Jewish writer Philo put it, love for God and love for the world are like light and darkness.  The presence of the one means the absence of the other.

The phrase “love of the Father” could potentially be interpreted in two different ways.  This is true in Greek and the ambiguity carries over into English as well.  It might refer to the Father’s love for us, or it might refer to our love for God as our Father.  Both possible meanings would fit here and it is quite possible John has both in mind.  We come to love God only because God first set his love on us (4:19).  If we have truly received God’s love and become his children through faith in Jesus, then God himself puts in our hearts a new love for him that we did not have before.  This is the work of God’s Holy Spirit.  This new Spirit-produced love for God is antithetical to love for the world.  It is indeed like light shining, which dissipates the darkness of idolatry in our hearts.  The promises of the world are seen to be empty when our hearts long to know God.  We begin to see that God alone is worthy of our worship.  He is a treasure worth selling everything else in order to gain him.

Is John saying that the presence in us of any inclinations toward worldly pursuits is evidence that we have no love for God and have not received his love for us?  I do not believe so.  Any sin we commit is an act of love for the world and hatred toward God, and John has made it quite clear that we are still sinners (1:8-10).  Yet John makes black and white statement throughout his letter to show that since there is no darkness in God, who is pure light, we who are his children must not compromise with darkness in the least.  Furthermore, when he contrasts those who have come into the light with those who remain in darkness, he is contrasting the overall trajectory of a person’s life.  So we must ask ourselves, what or who is the treasure that we are seeking in life?  It is either God or it is something else.  If your heart is set on God, you will have him forever in purest joy.  If your heart is set on anything else, you will lose it in the end, and you yourself will be lost forever.  There is no middle ground.  Let us all repent of our idols and cultivate love for God as he himself gives us strength through his Spirit.  And let us flee from all worldly inclinations in our hearts and see them for what they are, nothing but remnants of the darkness, full of empty promises that will never satisfy.  If we are in Christ, God is our Father now.  He has loved us at infinite cost to himself to gain us as his children.  Let us give ourselves daily in love to him for only in him do we have life.  Only in him will we find the joy that is so elusive outside of him.