1 John 3:19-24 ESV
“By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”
If we are loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and
strength, in practice, and if we are loving our neighbors as ourselves, or as
we would want to be loved, and therefore we are walking in holiness and in
righteousness and in truth and in obedience to our Lord, and not in sin, then
we can expect not only that the world will hate us, but even that other
professing Christians will hate us and will come against us, and definitely
that Satan will hate us and so he will be on the attack against us.
But we are to willingly lay down our lives in like manner as
Jesus laid down his life for us (v. 16), in that we will willingly die and
suffer hate and persecution from other humans in order to share with them the truth
of the gospel for their salvation from sin, and in order to encourage the body
of Christ with the encouragement of the Scriptures, for their spiritual growth
and maturity in Christ. For Jesus told us that if we follow him with our lives
that we are going to be hated and persecuted as he was.
But one of Satan’s major ways that he comes against us is in
our minds and in our hearts. And he uses other humans against us, too, to try
to instill fear within our hearts and minds, and in order to condemn us, in
hopes that he will be able to silence us. Now we are not perfect people, and we
won’t be perfect people until we get to heaven, if heaven is indeed our eternal
destiny. So Satan will try to hone in on any area of our lives, past or present,
when we were less than perfect, but still walking in obedience to our Lord.
And he will amplify that beyond reason, and he will grind
away at it, hoping that he can get us to give up the fight and to desert our
calling. And he will keep poking and trying to get us to be afraid and to give
up until we get the victory over him and his accusations against us. So, we
have to look at his attacks against us and pray them through to make certain
that our consciences are clear before God, and then we can move forward in
confidence before God, for God knows what is truly in our hearts.
Now, let me say this here, because there are people who are
deliberately and habitually and premeditatedly sinning against God and against
other humans without conscience or conviction or remorse, and yet they call
themselves Christians. And so to alleviate their guilt, many of them are being
trained to just “claim who you are in Christ,” which is a whole list of
supposed character traits of those who are truly “in Christ.” And this is
supposed to alleviate their feelings of guilt.
This is absolutely NOT what this passage of Scripture is
talking about. If we are guilty of willfully and actively and habitually sinning
against God, we are to forsake those sins, die to sin daily, and follow Jesus
in obedience and in surrender to his will. Sin is to no longer be our master,
but Christ is to be our only Lord (Owner-Master) of our lives. But Satan likes
to attack the minds and hearts of the godly to try to make them feel guilty
when God is not convicting them of any sin, and that is where we need to seek
the Lord.
If the Lord points out an area of our lives where we need to
repent of sin, then we need to repent, or where we may need to make things
right with people, and then we need to do that. But if our consciences are clear,
and we know we were not doing wrong, in practice, but that we are walking in
holiness and in righteousness and in obedience to our Lord, then we need to
reject Satan’s accusations against us and move on. It doesn’t mean we have
never been at fault, but we are now loving others in deed and in truth.
And by this we know that we are of the truth and reassure
our hearts before God whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than
our hearts, and he knows everything. We do need to be careful, though, that we
do not reject true conviction of the Spirit of God when the Lord is trying to
correct us, but that we are willing to be shown our faults, and that we are
humble before God and we are willing to conform to the Lord and to his
standards and always willing to cease from any wrongdoing to obey our Lord.
But if our consciences are clear before God, and we know
that we are walking in obedience to his commands, and that we are not
deliberately nor habitually sinning against him, and that we are doing what
pleases him, in practice, then we can rest at peace. And when those voices come
at us to try to condemn us, we can reject those voices and we can rest on the
truth of God’s Word and what it teaches us. For he says that it is whoever
keeps (obeys) his commandments (New Covenant), in practice, who are those who
abide in God, and God in us.
My Sheep
An Original Work / June 24, 2012
Based off John 10:1-18 NIV
My sheep hear me.
They know me.
They listen to my
voice and obey.
I call them and lead
them.
They know my voice,
so they follow me.
They will never
follow strangers.
They will run away
from them.
The voice of a
stranger they know not;
They do not follow
him.
So, I tell you the
truth that
I am the gate, so
you enter in.
Whoever does enter
Will find
forgiveness and will be saved.
Nonetheless whoever
enters
Not by the gate;
other way,
He is the thief and
a robber.
Listen not, the
sheep to him.
Oh, I am the Good
Shepherd,
Who laid his own
life down for the sheep.
I know them. They
know me.
They will live with
me eternally.
The thief only comes
to steal and
Kill and to destroy
the church.
I have come to give
you life that
You may have it to
the full…
They know my voice,
so they follow me.
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