Daily Bread Devotions by Chuck Myer Daily Bread Archive | Sign up for our resources
Certainly if you have been born of God you raise to the new morning with a different attitude then the unsaved person. I know, for I was once lost and I remember how I received the morning, how I conducted myself throughout a day. God changes all that when He causes us to born again of His Spirit (I Peter 1:3).
The apostle John’s first short letter was meant to contrast those who were born of God and those who were not. It is letter meant to challenge the Gnostic heresy that had invaded the church. There were those claiming to be Christians intermingling with those who actually were children of God. It should be noted that such a problem still faces the church today.
So John set about distinguishing the true so that the false would be made evident, would be separated out,
- “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us . . . These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you” (I John 2:19, 26 – NASB)
Seven things John pointed out as distinctives of those who were born of God, so that the church might know who is and who isn’t. As Theodore Epp described them, they are “Tests Of Truth.”
- “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him” (I John 2:29 – NASB) – The true believer is one that continually seeks to “practice” what is right according to God’s Word.
- “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin because he is born of God” (I John 3:9 – NASB) – The true believer is one that does not continually “practice sin” because Christ’s “seed abides in him.” He “cannot” continually live in the “practices” of “sin.”
- “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (I John 4:7 – NASB) – The true believer is evident because he loves the brethren, he loves as God loves, sacrificially and he “knows God.”
- “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God; and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him” (I John 5:1 – NASB) – The true believer continually “believes that Jesus is” the Messiah, and he “loves” God “the Father” who has sent “Jesus” and he “loves” other believers who are “born of Him.”
- “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world: and this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. And who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God” (I John 5:4-5 – NASB) – The true believer, the one who “is born of God,” does not allow “the world” and its ways to control him. He “has overcome the world” because he is “born of God,” and he does not walk according to the course of “the world” nor does “the world” defeat him. Amongst many of “the world’s” ways is that they deny who “Jesus” is, but the true believer who is “born of God,” he “believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”
The term “born again” is used very loosely in these days in which you and I live so one can become a bit confused as to just who is “born of God” and who isn’t. That was happening to the believers that John wrote to, so he made clear the “Tests Of Truth. The Word of God makes it clear who is and who isn’t “born of God.”
Have a god day brethren . . . and as you walk examine yourself (II Corinthians 13:5) against the tests of truth given by God in His Word. Some self-examination is always healthy as long as one does not become obsessed with it.
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