EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/28/2024 8:23 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Test Started”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 John 2:3
Message of the verse: “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.”
Tonight we begin to try and understand this verse
and I think that it will take me several SD”s to get through this, and I begin
by looking at the first two words “By this,” as this is a transitional phrase
that John used to introduce a new set of tests that verify salvation and also
encourage assurance, something that we have been looking at for some time
now. John is presenting his readers with
some additional ways they could verify that they were indeed walking in the
light and had a genuine relationship with God.
It is with certainty that John states the case, as he
does not say something like “we hope” or perhaps “we think” or even “we wish”
but he says “we know,” meaning he is certain about what he is writing. John MacArthur writes “We know translates the
present tense form of the very ginosko, and
means to continually perceive something by experience. Assurance comes from obeying God’s commandments
in Scripture. Those who fail to do so
will and should wonder if they are converted and the Holy Spirit is truly
leading them. But obedient believers can
be assured that they have come to know Him (Christ). The perfect tense of the verb ginosko (have come to know) looks back
on a past action (savingly believing in Jesus Christ) that has continuing
results in the present.” I think that
the phrase “Once you are saved you are always saved” comes into play hear.
John that John is sharing here is not the mystical “hidden”
knowledge of Gnosticism “(which promoted a secret, transcendent knowledge whose
possessors were members of an elitist religious fraternity), the rationalistic knowledge
of Greek philosophy (which taught that unaided human reason could unlock the
mysteries of the universe, both natural and supernatural), or the experiential
knowledge of hedonism (which claimed that ultimate truth was discovered through
experiencing the pleasures of the physical world). Instead, it is the saving knowledge of Christ
that comes from being in a right relationship with Him. John’s point, then, is
that external obedience provides evidence for whether or not an internal,
transforming reality—that of coming to know Jesus Christ in salvation—has taken
place,” writes John MacArthur.
9/28/2024 8:45 PM
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