Walking in Light | Live Like a Child | Week 4

Redeemer Weekend Sermons

Teacher: Adam Barnett

1 John 2:28-29; 3:1a
And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

John 1:12-13
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

To be “born of God” specifies the origin of our identities, impulses, motivations, and attitudes.

1 - God’s children do not live in sin

1 John 3:6, 9
No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.

6 No one who lives (Greek: menōn = to remain, abide, stay) in him keeps on sinning.

2 - God’s children love one another

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

"A failure to love others is symptomatic of a failure to love God."
-Karen Jobes

1 John 3:16-18
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. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

To lay down your life is to express love through sacrificial and compassionate actions.

3 - God’s children are confident before the Father

1 John 3:19-24
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

“John says that we can set our hearts at rest whenever they condemn us… for God understands us better than our own hearts know us, and in his omniscience, he knows that our often weak attempts to obey his commands spring from true allegiance to him.”
-Howard Marshall