Assurance in uncertain times

During summer 2022 we will be working through the 1st letter of John. 

How do you feel about Standing out against the crowd? There will be a small percentage of us that don’t mind, they are the people who say ‘Only dead fish go with the flow’. However, most of us find it unsettling to stand out against the crowd and be in the minority. But it can be even more unsettling when some within the minority move away. The letter of 1 John is addressed to people like us who live in a time when Christianity was in the minority, which was unsettling in its self, but even more so when people within the same church decided to move away from the Apostolic teaching.

Sadly, those that had left the church were claiming:

• to have power over sin that those left behind didn’t have
• to have knowledge of God that those left behind didn’t received
• to have victory over evil that those left behind didn’t have

This was extremely unsettling for the church and inevitably some of them were wondering whether they should have listen to them and left too.

This is what makes this letter such a contemporary letter because in the world of celebrity preachers and the pressure to compromise the gospel in our culture, makes it incredibly hard to stand firm as the minority. John the writer of this letter wants to bring them then and us today confident assurance in the gospel of Jesus Christ so that we may know that we have eternal life. So we may have assurance in uncertain times.

Jon Reeves

Final service in this series: