I am writing to you, children,
because your sins have been forgiven for his name’s sake.
John wanted to remind his readers of what was true of them in Christ. He knew that the enemy would try to make them doubt what Christ had done for them. The seed of the truth of what Christ has done for us must be planted deeply or it will be stolen or choked off by weeds (see Matthew 13). We must not only receive his word but keep it if it is to be efficacious in our lives.
In John's letter we discover both a blueprint of the enemies attack strategy and rehearse our protection against that strategy.
The enemy will try to convince us that we are not forgiven. It will not be some concrete grave matter consciously chosen about which he assaults us. It will rather be a vague sense of guilt, that there was something, we're not sure what, that we ought to have done. He'll want us to feel that for some reason, we're not sure why, we aren't right.
The enemy will try to make us doubt that our relationship with God is real. He will try to convince us of this by any means he can. He will try to convince us by making us feel inferior to those atheists that seem to be pinnacles of worldly knowledge and success. He will try to make us doubt our own ability to know and hear from God. He will say of times when God was speaking to us that they were merely the naive results of overactive imaginations.
When these strategies fail the Evil One will at least try to convince us that there is no hope for us. He will allow that perhaps we were forgiven, that we did meet God, as long as we don't come to believe that we can share God's victory over the evil one.
The main defense we have against the lies of the Evil One is the truth. This is why John wrote to remind his audience of things that they knew, to help them better understand the truth of things which were in fact the case for them, even if they only dimly understood it. These same things are true of us. We need to believe them and repeat them when the devil tries to make us doubt.
1: your sins have been forgiven for his name’s sake.
2: you know him who is from the beginning.
3: you have conquered the Evil One.
4: you know the Father.
5: you are strong and the word of God remains in you,
We can rephrase these into affirmations that we can keep at hand as weapons against the enemy.
1: I am forgiven and I am right with God.
2. I do know and hear from God.
3. I have victory in my life. The devil can't stop me from enjoying all that God has for me.
4. I have an intimate and personal relationship with God.
5. I can do whatever God calls me to do. I love and keep his word.
The devil is nervous for us to even read those words. His only power over us comes when we choose to believe lies instead of revelation. It doesn't seem like it would be very easy to tempt us to believe his lies, lies which make us feel so much worse than God's truth. But if we love the world and the things of the world more than God we will not love these truths enough for them to be transformative in us. If they get lost in a sea of worldly words they can be drown out entirely.
Do not love the world or the things of the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
Our lives must not be at odds with the truth of God's word. Everything we do does not need to be explicitly religious. But nothing we do should be at odds with God's word. At no point should it feel awkward for us to pause and affirm who God is and who we are in him. This is how we can be in the world but not of it.
Yet the world and its enticement are passing away.
But whoever does the will of God remains forever.
The prophets are good examples for us of how to bring the words of revelation into the circumstances of life. Anna had not only understood and appreciated Jesus when he came to her, she used her words to give thanks and to speak the truth about him to anyone who would listen.
And coming forward at that very time,
she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child
to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.
In some ways we Christians still act as though we're awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem. We imagine that we are waiting on some future victory, forgetting that we are already more than conquerors in Christ (see Romans 8:37). We forget that our faith itself is already "the victory that has overcome the world" (see First John 5:4). So let us remind ourselves and each other: we are more than conquerors! We can do all things in Christ! (see Philippians 4:13)
Say among the nations: The LORD is king.
He has made the world firm, not to be moved;
he governs the peoples with equity.
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