09.07.12
1 John 1.6 6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship
with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the
truth. NLT
Today marks day 21 in my forty day cleanse through the
letter of 1 John. I am trying to use different translations each time I read
through these five short chapters in order to get a different flavor as I spend
these days thinking and praying about what I read. For 10 years I have read
through the Bible every year and the New Testament twice every year. This is a
change for me and depending on where these cleanses go, I may return to my
daily reading in the mornings and spend the evenings participating in the Cleanse.
What does one expect in a cleanse? I expected, expect, and am expecting change. I expect old
thoughts and perspectives to be washed away by the purity of the word and then
replaced or redeemed as I go forward with new thoughts or better thoughts. I
expected just what the name Cleanse implies: cleanliness. And I haven’t been
disappointed. 1 John is packed with so much, forty days doesn’t do it justice.
One of the beauties of 1 John is how much is unpacks the Gospel of John. That
was a bonus I didn’t expect.
I didn’t expect to see myself in the light I now do – and
this is hard: I see myself as pathetically weak (not beyond remedy, but weak).
I don’t suppose I am all that different from most others: I seem to have a
rather high regard for myself and go along thinking my ways are fairly sound
and functional. And I think I am original…foolish, foolish boy! I think I
practice the truth because I outwardly avoid certain things and for years have
masterfully put on the façade of: I’ve
made it. So, stopping long enough to read and evaluate has been good for
me. I need to see where I am still failing and where I am still hiding “in the
cool of the day.” (Genesis 3)
The Bible is marvelous in its beauty and its brutality;
its kindness and severity (Romans 11.22). The danger is getting caught up in
the comfort of the beauty and kindness and failing to see the brutality and
severity in which God deals with sin and unbelief. 1 John helps me be honest
with the brutality and the severity. 1 John helps me be honest with the fact
that though I publicly call myself a “follower of Christ” I don’t do a very
good job of following at times. And His love is not fully formed in me.
But here’s the bottom line: I want to see what God will
do. I hang in there because I believe there is wisdom and life in the Word of
God that I desperately need and I want to hang in there with the kindness and
beauty as well as the brutality and severity because I want to see what God
does with this pathetically weak “follower of Christ.” John speaks of a joy
that accompanies the ones who follow Jesus Christ and I want that joy – not for
joy’s sake but for Jesus’ sake and for my own.
If God is who He say He is then I want all I can get and
I’m willing to be beat upon however frequently or infrequently, however severely
or brutally, it takes to get me to get it. Here’s what I do know: when I
compare what I have in this world with what the Bible promises about God’s
Kingdom and eternal life: I’ll take God! I don’t want to end up being called a
liar by claiming fellowship with God and ignoring the fact that I might be
walking in spiritual darkness. I need the light of His word!
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