Confidence in the Spirit

John uses I John 3: 23-24 to summarize what he has been talking about. This daily devotional looks at how God abides in us and us in Him reassures our hearts.

Nuggets

  • To reassure our hearts, we have to love God and love others.
  • We remain in God when we obey His laws and commandments.
  • We know God abides in us when the Holy Spirit is present.

To read devotions in the At the Heart Level theme, click the button below.

Devotions in the Reassuring Our Hearts before God series

John packed a lot of instruction in the four verses we have discussed so far. He summarizes what he was saying in the next two verses.

Let's Put It into Context #1

Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.

Let's Put It into Context #2

The heart houses our inner moral character and our conscience.

Our conscience is the part of our nature that pronounces by God’s authority everything in His name and impacts our moral decisions as it points us to what is right and gives us pain or pleasure depending on the choice.

This Is His Commandment

“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” (I Jn. 3: 23 ESV)

To reassure our hearts, we have to love God and love others.

To summarize what he was saying in the I John 3: 19-22, John started with restating the greatest commandments. “‘And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mk. 12: 30-32 ESV).

Glossary

In order to gain salvation, we have to believe in Jesus. Period.

Gibbon said there are three concepts wrapped up in the act of believing.

  • We have to know Who Jesus is.
  • We have to accept that as fact.
  • We have to trust in God.

Believing the name of Jesus is believing He is Jesus Christ our Lord. We believe He is the Son of God and our Savior.

We believe Jesus is the only way we are going to gain access to God. “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (Jn. 14: 6 CSB).

Faith is a duty. It isn’t an option for being a child of God. We are commanded to believe.

Why is that so important? Belief in Jesus is the way that we receive forgiveness for our sins.

Forgiveness is, when we ask, the act of God pardoning us because we have shown repentance for breaking His laws and commandments, which allows us to become holy as He is.

  • Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to changing ourselves through obedience so that we no longer do the wrong things.
  • Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
    • Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
      • Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
      • Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
      • Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.

Sins are actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.

  • Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.

Glossary

It is only through the forgiveness of our sins that our hearts become pure.

Spurgeon put all of this into perspective. He wrote, “The true believer … turns with loathing from all trust in his own obedience and lays hold with joy upon the hope set before him in the one commandment …”

Resource

Loving God isn’t the only requirement. We have to love other disciples.

The Essex Remembrancer noted that love includes esteem, complacence, compassion, and benevolence. We have to encourage them in their time of need.

Resource

We cannot gloss over the fact that love for others has to start with love for Jesus. Love for others does not negate the commandment to love the Lord.

Love God is righteousness + Love people is mercy = perfection/godliness

We are commanded to do both. That is how we gain perfection.

Jesus said that all the other laws and commandments can be fulfilled by keeping the two greatest commandments. Gibbon felt that was because “faith working by love is the spiritual unity of all commandments, and unbelief is therefore the root of all sins.

Resource

Our faith has to stem from our love of God. That has to spread to others.

One thing I hadn’t thought about before is what Mark 16: 15 really says. “… ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation’” (Mk. 16: 15 CSB).

Does it say we are to preach only to those who want to hear? Does it say only to sinners? Sinners are all people who have not made a genuine profession of faith — who have not sincerely ABCDed.

The ABCDs of Salvation

If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.

A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord

D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us

The Disciple’s Job Description

No. It says everyone — even other believers.

Abiding in God

“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” (I Jn. 3: 19-24 ESV)

We remain in God when we obey His laws and commandments.

There is a whole lot of abiding going on in this verse. They are really similar and definitely connected.

But we are going to look at them separately.

Our obedience brings a great reward. God abides in us.

No, we don’t lose our personality when we abide in God. We are still us.

This is a willing obedience. It begins from within us, not from outside in our environment.

We know we abide in God when we keep His commandments.

By the Spirit Whom He Has Given Us

We know God abides in us when the Holy Spirit is present.

God abiding in us can be a difficult concept for some to grasp. As a spirit, God knows no boundaries.

We’ve talked before about the Holy Spirit’s duties when dwelling within us. He is there to help shepherd us to obedience.

Glossary

The Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts. We bond to Christ through Him. We gain God’s nature through the Holy Spirit’s work.

Garbett described what our obedience entails. He wrote, “The obedience which is the proof of the Spirit’s presence is not a holiness finished or perfect; otherwise it would belong to none of us on this side heaven; it would be a hope of the future, not a blessing of the present. It is not a finished holiness, but only a holiness begun. … It is, further, a holiness not complete, but progressive. Every day brings its struggle, but brings likewise its victory. Further yet, this Christian obedience is not partial. Christian obedience accepts and follows the whole law.”

Resource

To me, that describes sanctification. Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration, gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.

  •  Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal requickening in us that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
    • Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin. The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.

Glossary

That is what it is all about. We have to love God and believe in Jesus. Then we navigate the Sanctification Road to become more like God.

confidence-in-the-spiritPin

Making the Connections

We cannot believe that Jesus is God’s Son but think we can save ourselves. Only God can free us of our sins.

We cannot earn our way into salvation. Neither can we earn our way into perfection. Only God changes us.

How Do We Apply This?

  • We ABCD.
  • We navigate the Sanctification Road.
  • We love others.

Father God. Our hearts are reassured when You dwell within us and we dwell in You. Lord, we want to be obedient to You. Amen.

What do you think?

Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.

If you don’t understand something and would like further clarification, please contact me.

If you have not signed up for the email daily or weekly providing the link to the devotions and the newsletter, do so below.

If God has used this devotion to speak with you, consider sharing it on social media.

Leave a Reply