Way back near the end of our Bibles there are three small letters of great importance, well four if we count Jude. These three letters from John and the letter of Jude are easily skipped as people head towards Revelation, looking for signs and making themselves feel spectacular with thoughts of skipping all the pain of humanities sinful marriage to Satan.
I imagine the Apostle John, after watching his fellow Apostles drop like flies to Jewish hatred and Roman government, thinking to himself he better make sure some information is set in stone before he is dead and it gets lost forever. This is how I imagine John taking pen to paper because he knew his time was running out and after he was gone, the last remaining Apostle would be dead and there would be nothing but frauds and charlatans trying to change the Gospel.
John hits a handful of very specific elements in his first letter, which I will just touch on. I urge you my faithful reader to head straight away to your Bible and read the text in its entirety. It is short. You will not miss the time lost reading it because you will have gained a better insight into eternity. So what are some of Johns key points he wants to convey in this letter?
+ Chapter 1: Jesus is eternal life manifested in the flesh and in Him we have life. This point refutes so many of the heretical belief systems out there. John is giving believers ammunition.
+ Chapter 2: We are all sinners, but Jesus stands before the throne of God as our Advocate. This frees us from shame so we can walk, talk, and live righteous lives and know when we stumble, Jesus is there.
+ Chapter 3: We will be perfected in the future. This builds on the prior point. We are not perfect now, but we will be made perfect in Jesus. We are also called to love our fellow believers and practice righteousness and we need not doubt our eternal gift, and this is one of those conditional statements about keeping the commandments of God. What are those commandments John is thinking about right here? Loving God and loving other believers and our lives should reflect this.
+ Chapter 4: Jesus is divine and came in the flesh. Again, this is a major point to refute those who would claim Jesus is not divine and human and any who would deny this we know are not from God, but are instead false prophets and false teachers. John is continuing the equipping of the church to refute fakes and arming them so they can spot the difference.
+ Chapter 5: Everyone, let me repeat that word again, everyone who believes Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God is born of God. In other words, you are grafted into God's family through Jesus. And then John says his purpose in writing this letter is to inform all who read it may believe in Jesus and trust they have eternal life. This is a great letter and if ever there was a letter someone might want to remember and keep at their recall as necessary, it is this letter.
I want to point out the final sentence though, because John tacks it on and we might think it is just an afterthought. John adds a warning to Christians to stay away from idols. It is easy to skip and ignore this sentence because it is right at the end and there is not any added commentary in this letter about it. I would like to add the entire history of Israel is a commentary on idolatry and like Israel, we ignore it to our own folly.
Next weekend falls right before July 4th and almost every church in the United States will pledge allegiance to a flag. Almost every church will sing nationalistic hymns to the United States government. Almost every church will clap and cheer veterans in the congregation and those who are still in the Armed Forces. Most churches will hear a message affirming the US government while ignoring the blood on its hands from the very moment it was founded until today. People will leave their church and go eat hotdogs and shoot fireworks and they will not think for a minute how they are worshiping idols in their church instead of Jesus.
"Little children, keep yourselves from idols." Please listen to John. We cannot keep getting this wrong and win souls at the same time.