1 John is kinda like the Sermon on the Mount in that I often find it either life-giving or dread-inducing depending on the mood/spiritual state I'm in. Looking forward to part 2!
Paul says he is writing to them not because they don't know the truth, but because they do know the truth. Specifically that Jesus is the Christ. And he seems to be making an argument about what it looks like to believe/know that Jesus is the Christ. He talks about not sinning while also making the point that you need to admit that you are a sinner. He talks about loving others and not despising others. He talks about listening to your heart and whether it condemns you or not. Believing, knowing, and doing seem to go hand in hand in his description. He seems to be pointing at how you behave in relation to the law, but also in relation to how you treat others, and also an inward regard of your self. It seems his description of "knowing" is multifaceted. I have a concern that your next post is going to over-simplify Pauls notion of "knowing" into something that fits into the evangelical paradigm.
I was the idiot who sat in the front row of my classes the first year of law school and, "EGADS!" was even dumb enough to raise my hand. Almost forty years and a lifetime later, I'm still not too smart, so I'm gonna take a stab at answering yours and John's question, "How do you know [you're a Christian]?" and check tomorrow, if I remember to do so, and see if I'm right.
Note, I'm not looking up the answer because this isn't an "open book" exam, I presume.
"If I'm not a Christian, then I'll be damned! Before I was one, I didn't even care."
Actually, that was me just trying to be a wit. The real answer has to do with "love," the agape kind of self-sacrificing "love," right? If I show others this kind of "love," then I'm a Christian. If I don't, then I'm not. How's that?
But even if I do "love" like that sometimes, I sure as hell don't "love" like that all the time.
1 John is kinda like the Sermon on the Mount in that I often find it either life-giving or dread-inducing depending on the mood/spiritual state I'm in. Looking forward to part 2!
Paul says he is writing to them not because they don't know the truth, but because they do know the truth. Specifically that Jesus is the Christ. And he seems to be making an argument about what it looks like to believe/know that Jesus is the Christ. He talks about not sinning while also making the point that you need to admit that you are a sinner. He talks about loving others and not despising others. He talks about listening to your heart and whether it condemns you or not. Believing, knowing, and doing seem to go hand in hand in his description. He seems to be pointing at how you behave in relation to the law, but also in relation to how you treat others, and also an inward regard of your self. It seems his description of "knowing" is multifaceted. I have a concern that your next post is going to over-simplify Pauls notion of "knowing" into something that fits into the evangelical paradigm.
Dr. Beck,
I was the idiot who sat in the front row of my classes the first year of law school and, "EGADS!" was even dumb enough to raise my hand. Almost forty years and a lifetime later, I'm still not too smart, so I'm gonna take a stab at answering yours and John's question, "How do you know [you're a Christian]?" and check tomorrow, if I remember to do so, and see if I'm right.
Note, I'm not looking up the answer because this isn't an "open book" exam, I presume.
"If I'm not a Christian, then I'll be damned! Before I was one, I didn't even care."
Actually, that was me just trying to be a wit. The real answer has to do with "love," the agape kind of self-sacrificing "love," right? If I show others this kind of "love," then I'm a Christian. If I don't, then I'm not. How's that?
But even if I do "love" like that sometimes, I sure as hell don't "love" like that all the time.
Crap! Now what?