5 January 2026 - greater is he

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

We receive from him whatever we ask,
because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

When we live according to the commandments our lives are well ordered. We recognize that the one who has given us the commandments is good and has done so that we may flourish. Therefore we have confidence to know that our Father desires to give us good things. We also have wisdom that comes from living in the light that causes us to know what good things we request. The law tells us we ought not chase after excesses of power, pride, or sensual pleasure. It tells us that we should pursue love of God and love of neighbor above all. When our goal is to do what pleases God we rise above motives of selfishness and fear that cause us to not receive what we ask "because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions" (see James 4:3). We don't earn answered prayers by accumulating commandment points. While it is true that willful sin can be a hindrance to prayer, answered prayer is always a gift. But normal Christian progress should mean that we grow in confidence about the Father's desire to give us this gift as we come to realize more and more that all that he does is designed to make us thrive.

Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them,
and the way we know that he remains in us
is from the Spirit whom he gave us.

We keep his commandments and thus remain in him. Yet the way that we can be sure that we keep his commandments is not by keeping a meticulous checklist to ensure our fidelity. Rather, it is through relationship with his Spirit who guides us and empowers us that we know that we remain in him. The commandments are not a project for us to complete through effort and gritted teeth. It is instead the Spirit who teaches what we ought to do and also him who gives us the strength to do it. The possibilities for failure when we try it alone are endless, including despair and self-deception. But the Spirit guides us like a personal trainer who has seen every possibility of failure and every hidden secret of success. He knows us better than we know ourselves and is thus able to help us to avoid self-sabotage and to keep us motivated to reach our goal.

Beloved, do not trust every spirit
but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God,
because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

There are, however, other spirits who promise much, but who would sabotage are efforts. These spirits try to masquerade as the Holy Spirit in their efforts to make us believe their bad advice and destructive ideas. Since we have seen how necessary the Holy Spirit is for doing life together with God  we need to be sure that we can remain in contact with the Spirit in spite of imposters. We need to remain grounded in the truth when we are surrounded by a thousand lies.

This is how you can know the Spirit of God:
every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh
belongs to God,
and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus
does not belong to God.

In one way John is simply saying that the Spirit will never contradict the basic core doctrines of the faith. But he is also saying more. He shows us a way to interrogate spirits to determine, not what they say superficially, but their ultimate motivation. Do the ideas they espouse lead to acknowledging Jesus, or not? This is similar to what Paul meant when he wrote to the Corinthians, saying "no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit" (see First Corinthians 12:3). We can thus perform a mental exercise where we imagine whether or not the personification of things we have been discerning would be willing to make this claim, or whether they have other, less noble priorities. This by no means discounts other, more charismatic interpretations of the verse, but is intended for anyone who has yet to find those helpful.

You belong to God, children, and you have conquered them,
for the one who is in you
is greater than the one who is in the world.

The reason we need not be afraid of the spirit of the antichrist, that was in the world at the time of John, and is perhaps even more prominent in our own, is not because of who we are in ourselves. It is rather because the one who is within us is greater than any opposition we could face, physical or spiritual. When we rely on his presence within us there is no force that can take us from his hands and nothing that can prevent us from remaining, from abiding in him.

Peter Furler - Greater Is He