Chapters 4: 1-1 John

Fay and Shepherd are to be commended for creating this thought provoking book. The authors persuasively implored Christians to encompass witnessing into their lives, then supported their points with specific biblical guidance. For example, when confronted with an individual who declines to accept Jesus because they believe they will be unable to live a Christian life the authors provided Phil. 4:13 as the scriptural response. They were successful in conveying their deep concern for unchurched and lost souls.

Anthony the Great makes some thought provoking insights in his interpretation of 1 John 4. even though we can do what we want to others, influence their decisions with lavish presents or hurt them, we cannot do anything to God, influence Him with physical gifts, or hurt God. Nevertheless, there are some, who when becoming a Christian, expected to love others naturally. However, when they could not, they judged themselves as failed

In the book by Christopher J.H. Wright, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, the author argues the very existence of Jesus Christ in the New Testament is portrayed within the Old Testament. Wright writes, “the deeper you go into understanding the Old Testament, the closer you will come to the heart of Jesus” (ix). Wright explains many Christians love Jesus, but do not know much about the Scriptures that He read. This is the author’s intention of the book, bringing the readers to a deep understanding of the Old Testament and gaining a greater understanding of Jesus. The purpose of this review is to summarize and critique Wright’s work along with presenting the strengths and weaknesses of the book.

The passage of Jesus giving a new commandment of love to his disciples describes how he exercises his authority as the Son of God, echoing his Christology from chapter one that identifies Jesus as the Word incarnate (cf Brown 119). This passage from John 15:12-17 was written with the historical context of the Johannine community of Ephesus that John traditionally wrote to in 80-110. As a result, I think it was clever that John has Jesus talking about love and friendship in this passage. There was “growing tension between the early Jewish Christian community and the religious leaders of the dominant majority,” so in mentioning love and friendship I think John intends to strengthen the bonds between the community he is writing to. The audience of John’s gospel would likely be familiar with these growing tensions, and as a result, would find this commandment of Christ’s to be necessary, yet challenging.

Christianity, one of the oldest recorded religions of all time, throughout the centuries it has been distorted, mangled, and changed vigorously. Over 21,000 denominations exist, they range from slightly different to wildly conflicting, discrepancies have become a common occurrence. With such a host of diversity, God’s true message has faded and become lost I the sheer number of unique interpretations. Thankfully, at the base of all sects one thing is clear, God’s desire for us to succeed and grow in him, through prayer and study of his nature. He actively seeks out a relationship with us and to reach his kingdom we must reciprocate his love and attempt to show his light through ourselves. With such an insurmountable number of sects, finding the Lord’s true message becomes extremely difficult and seemingly impossible. I believe that the myriad of denominations detracts from the message of God;

“A biblical definition of love starts with God, never with us (1 John 4:9-10).”2 The apostle John makes it clear that “God is love”. The apostle John gives an insight into the very nature of who God is. Arthur Pink in his book, “The Attributes of God”, says, “Love is not merely one of His attributes, but His very nature.3 ” Thus, love was not !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These teachings apply to my life as this chapter showed that I am given a charge to follow and glorify Christ. Instead of forcing

Making disciples is the overarching purpose of the church. However, many churches struggle with understanding and fulfilling the true meaning of Christian discipleship in individuals’ lives. This writing assignment will attempt to expound on several significant aspects of discipleship. The importance of the centrality of Jesus Christ to Christian discipleship will be detailed. Also, obedience to the directives of Christ and submission of particular areas of one’s life will be outlined. Finally, the three stages of discipleship according to Dave Earley and Rod Dempsy will be delineated and expanded upon.

The Book of John, and the life and death of Jesus Christ are key components of the authors evidence to back up his ways of solving the issues of Christian worldviews. Along with this, the author includes testimonials of his friends that specifically dealt with real-life issues in conflict with their Christian views as well.

Johannine literature truly portrays Jesus as God, with the theme of His deity interwoven throughout numerous passages. In this respect, John’s style differs from the other four gospels, as Bickel & Jantz (1998) point out that the other three had been written prior to John’s gospel, therefore, “he wasn’t interested in just retelling the events” (p. 222). Since Jesus is the focal point of Scripture, a scholar of the New Testament with uncertainty concerning Jesus’ oneness with God will fail to perceive the crux of Christianity. Therefore, in spite of its importance, John does not focus on Jesus’ entrance into the

In the New Testament, Almost everyone knows that “ God so loved the world” (John 3:16) and “God is love” (John 4:8), and when love appears nobody can express it better than Jesus. We mainly hear about love in the beginning of the first Corinthians ( 1 CO 13) at wedding ceremonies. As new translation were coming out over the years, the version NIV used love as sex acts in Genesis to express the word rather than KJV and ESV used love as knowing the feeling and NASB used love as strong relations. In the 1 corinthians, Paul created a message saying,” the love of god, the love of jesus christ, and the love that the christian expresses in response to God’s saving action in Jesus Christ (samuel E Balentine). As I was looking into the new testament, the chapter called First John stood out to me because majority of the words are love or something describing love.

commandment us to love one another according to John 13:36 through salvation we can show

The Book of 1 John is a very important book because even thought it was written during the 90 A.D and the authorship of this book has not been discover. It has some meaningful information for the people during that time and is even relevant to the believers and unbeliever of today. The Book of 1 John has many themes displayed throughout this book even though it only has five chapters in the entire book. One of the major themes displayed in this book is love. 1 John 2:7-17 scriptures let us know that God’s greatest command and greatest gift to people is Love. He lets the people of this time that this is not a new commandment because it was required in the Old Testament and it remains in the New Testament. As a believer we must love everyone just as God love us. Another example of love being displayed in 1 John is 3:11-24 when God provided us with a clear example of his love by providing a bad example and a positive example of how love should be. From this example Blomberg mentioned that “We should expect the world to hate us as they hated Christ, but we should lay down our lives for one another if necessary. The next most powerful demonstration of the genuineness of our love comes when we share from the surplus of our material possessions to help those in need (Blomberg. 2006)”. Then lastly, 1 John 4:7-21 talks about love again, that when you love it should be divine and genuine. That love should be displayed in an emotion way but we should also show love to God by obeying

1 John was written by John sometime between 90-95 AD as a personal letter to believers. He is writing concerning the assurance of eternal life as it seems though perhaps some had some doubts as to whether or not they were really saved because of sin. They key word throughout the entirety of the book is fellowship. He discusses some of the hindrances to fellowship, conditions for fellowship, and the benefits of fellowship. He was really trying to encourage the believers to live a Christian life that will lead to assurance. His secondary purpose was to refute Gnosticism and the false teachings related to it that denied some of the aspects of Christ. 1 John 1:5-2:2 is a discussion of the basis for fellowship to emphasize the main objective of

Throughout the ages, many have tried to comprehend the human experience of love and its ineffable and mysterious force that leads us to complete euphoria or utter despair, with songs, paintings, and stories. In Plato’s Symposium, six guest including Socrates, tackle and attempt to define love amongst each other. With each attempt, and our study of Johns gospel, the intertextuality between the symposium and John 15:8-17 helps one better understand the portrait that John portrays of Jesus as the ultimate lover and only way to being fully complete.