Episode 615: TLP 615: Biblical Families, Part 3 | the Continuation

It's not good enough to just be nice, or to be a good kid, good employee, or good citizen.

Our standard can't be that we're better than all the other people around us. Parenting isn't about us.

In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship

God. So welcome to the Truth Love Parent Podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

God the preeminence in their parenting. Welcome back to our family devotional series entitled Simply Biblical Families.

Since it's possible that new listeners could join us at any point, I'll start every session with the encouragement that if this is your first time with us in this series, please start with Part 1 on episode 613.

John's letter builds on itself just like this family devotional series does, so it's very important to follow the flow of the letter from beginning to end.

And this is a good reminder for all of God's people. There's nothing inherently wrong with reading the scriptures in isolated verses and passages.

I'd argue that's definitely better than doing nothing. But reading an entire letter in totality and understanding each of the verses and their context will help you understand the verses so much better.

For example, there are some verses later in 1 John that are very easy to misunderstand, unless you read the verses earlier in 1

John. Anyway, I'm glad your family is returning today for part 3 of this study. As always, you can find notes, a transcript, life work, and related resources in the description of today's session.

So now, let's jump into the continuation of our biblical families. John began his letter by introducing us to the fact that God must be the groundwork of our homes.

He then called us to enter into a saving relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ so that we could be in the light as He is in the light.

And we talked last time about how the light refers to God's righteousness and the darkness to sin. Well, that truth is going to be multiplied today as John takes the next logical step and teaches us what's necessary to continue being a faithful biblical family.

I hope you read 1 John 2, 1 through 6 twice this week, and I hope that you have been asking God to teach you life -changing lessons as we do this study together.

And I hope that today everyone in your family is certain of their standing before God. And best case scenario, I pray that everyone in your family truly is a born -again believer.

Otherwise, those who aren't won't be able to achieve God's plan for them in your family. So let's read 1

John 2, 1 through 6 together. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says,

I have come to know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

But whoever keeps his word, truly in him the love of God has been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him.

The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked. As you can tell,

John is building on the former themes. He's making his point clearer and clearer as he goes, and he's still being really forward about the state of people who are deceived and or deceiving others.

But before we unpack all of this, I want to share with you that Truth Love Family has a number of biblical counselors who would love to meet with you and your family to help you through difficult seasons or to simply continue growing in your discipleship.

Biblical counselors use the Bible to help people better know, understand, and practically worship

God in their lives. Now, that might not sound super helpful, but the reality is that a person who is worshiping

God with their lives will be making more Christ -honoring choices. The ability to answer the hard questions and please the

Lord is a result of spiritual maturity, and that's what we want to help you grow in—spiritual maturity. All you have to do is email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com

or leave a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894, and I or another of our counselors can start meeting with you and offer you personalized biblical counsel.

But for now, there's more we need to learn today from 1 John. Now, we have three points for today, but we're going to move very quickly through the first two so that we can truly meditate on the third.

Number one, we must continue in righteousness. In order to be a biblical family, we must be living according to the scriptures.

That means that according to 1 John 2, 1 through 6, and many other passages, we need to be living righteous lives.

This is a bit of a repeat from last time, but let's quickly consider the verses one more time. He says, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, not for ours only, but also those of the whole world.

And by this we know that we have come to know him. What if we keep his commandments? The one who says,

I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments, he's a liar. Truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word truly in him, the love of God has been perfected.

And then he goes on to say by this, we know that we are in him. The one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked.

I repeat that because it's so important for us to actually see these things in the scripture. John refers to sinning and not keeping his commandments on one hand, that's living in the dark.

But being righteous, keeping his commandments, keeping his word, and walking in the same manner as he walked, that's living in the light.

So if we want to say that we have a biblical family, we need to all be living up to the Bible's expectations for us.

And this passage makes it unavoidably clear that every one of us needs to be living righteously. But like I mentioned last time, even

Christians still possess a sin nature. It's impossible for us to completely stop sinning this side of eternity.

Now, that's not an excuse to sin, that's not permission to sin, but it's still the reality of our earthly existence.

And God knows this. Of course he does. He created us. God knows that we will sin.

And when we do, we're going to have significant questions. If I am truly born again, that means that I know that I need to be living in the light.

But when I sin, I know that I have stepped into the darkness. That should cause me to wonder about whether or not

I truly was born again, because John said, if we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not do the truth.

You may have experienced this yourself because most people who struggle with an assurance of salvation or wrestle with whether or not they were ever truly saved do so because they see the sin in their lives and they recognize that it's bad.

This is why 1 John is one of the first letters mature believers will encourage those who are struggling with their assurance to read.

The point is, God knows that he has set a very high expectation. In other passages in the

Bible, he says that we need to be holy as he is holy, but he also knows that we can't do that in our own power and that we will fail.

So, he gives us an advocate. 2. We must go to the advocate when we fail to continue in righteousness.

An advocate is like a lawyer. It's someone who defends you in a court of law. The Greek word translated advocate refers to an intercessor or helper, someone who is called to another person's aid.

Now, most of the time this word is used in the New Testament, it's actually referring to the Holy Spirit. But here, John identifies our advocate as none other than Jesus Christ himself.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Here's how it works.

If you've been saved, Jesus took the penalty of your sin—past, present, and future—on himself.

If you are a Christian, there is no sin you have ever committed or will ever commit for which

Jesus has not already borne the punishment. The word propitiation refers to a sin offering.

Jesus was the perfect sacrificial lamb whose blood really could take away the sin of mankind. So, when we sin, as God knows we will,

Jesus is the perpetual intercessor for us. The Father sees the righteousness of Christ on us.

He sees your sin covered by the blood of Jesus, and you no longer need to fear the eternal consequences of your sin.

Even more than that, Christ's advocacy is one of the perpetual truths that helps us continue in righteousness.

Knowing that Jesus has forgiven the sins we don't even know we'll commit yet, we should be ever more eager to commit fewer and fewer of those sins.

I would argue that someone who says, well, Jesus forgave me for every sin I might ever commit, so I guess

I'll just keep living the way I am, that person isn't truly born again. I say this because this is what

God says. In Romans 5, Paul explains the glories of this truth. I'm going to read it in verse 19.

For as through the one man's disobedience, referring to Adam, the many, referring to us, were appointed sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, referring to Jesus, the many, hopefully us, will be appointed to righteousness.

Now the law came in so that the transgression would increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our

Lord. Then in the first verse of Romans 6, Paul does a really good job fighting against foolish thinking.

You see, some people would be tempted to think that if God gives us grace because we're sinning, then maybe we should just sin more and more so that we can have more and more grace.

But Paul writes, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?

May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

If we are grounded on God, the very light of the world, we need to work through His power to live righteously.

And when we sin, we shouldn't excuse it or do more of it. We should contritely go to Jesus, our advocate, and ask

Him to forgive us. We don't do this because we need to be resaved. We do this because we love

Him and we just did something that grieves Him. And we want to stop doing these things. And we want once again to be clean before Him in the light.

So those are the first two points of our study today. Our biblical family continues being a biblical family as each of us is striving to live righteously.

But when we fail, we can praise the Lord that we have an advocate to intercede for us. We don't lose our salvation.

The advocate stands as a reminder that He covered all of our sin. But those two points, challenging as they may be for many, are not the reason that most of our families fail to continue in righteousness.

Number three, we must understand what God means when He commands us to continue in righteousness.

I am not over -exaggerating when I say that this point right here could be its own series. We could talk about this for a very long time.

But I need to keep it short, so I'm going to try very hard to do a couple of things. First, I want to be concise.

Second, I will assume certain things are biblically true, even though I won't necessarily take the time to biblically defend them.

In these cases, I'll include references for you to continue your study if you have more questions. Third, I'm going to link some resources for you that will dig into this point in a much deeper way.

With that little foundation laid, we need to start with letter A, God defines what is right and wrong.

As with everything else in the world, God is the creator and gets to decide what things are and how they work.

He gets to define humanity, what it means to be a man or woman, what marriage is, what a church is, who a pastor is, and whether or not it's okay to kill.

Mankind can try to redefine these terms and come up with their own beliefs about right and wrong, but they mean nothing when compared to the absolute and unchanging decrees of God.

In order to find out what God says is right and wrong, we need to study the Bible. It's good to go to church, yep, especially when your pastor preaches the word of God carefully and accurately, but it's so much more important for us to study the scriptures ourselves.

When we do this, we're exercising our priesthood and we're able to more carefully tell if what other people are saying about the

Bible is accurate or not. We don't want to be fools who are like dry leaves blown about by every lie and mistake and opinion of the people around us.

The scriptures have made it clear which behaviors and words and feelings are right and which are wrong. It's wrong to be a false witness, but it's right to tell the truth.

It's right to be kind to others, and it's wrong to murder people. It's right to feel peace knowing that God is in control, and it's very wrong to fear since God is in control.

God also makes it clear that in order to do the right thing, it must be done the right way. Growing up,

I used to hear the following idea quite frequently. It's never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right, and it's never right to do the right thing the wrong way.

For example, if I have to mow the lawn before Friday, it's not okay for me to do a really good job on the lawn on Friday afternoon.

I needed to do it before Friday. I didn't do it the right way. It's not okay for me to help my neighbor take out his trash if I do so with a bad attitude, and it's not okay for me to do a partial job either if making my bed means that my pillows aren't allowed to be on the floor, then it doesn't matter if the sheets and blankets are perfect if the pillows are in the middle of the room.

But did you know that doing the right thing in the right way isn't always right? You see, this is where the members of most biblical families have the biggest issue.

I know this is where I struggle the most. But before we go to the next point, I encourage you to look at the description of this session.

There you will find links to a couple resources. One of them is called Teach Your Children to Obey. Another is called

The Meerest Christianity. Those two resources contain so much vital information about these biblical truths we're discussing right now.

They walk us through each reality and show us from the scriptures how God would have us understand and live in light of these truths.

So, since doing the right thing in the right way may still be living in the darkness, letter B, God commands that our hearts be righteous.

The world wants us to believe that the heart refers to our feelings, but in the Bible, the heart refers to the core of our person, the very center of our decision making.

In short, the heart refers to the beliefs we have to inform every decision we make. We could call this our motivation for what we do.

We could call it the reason we do what we do. Some people are very nice to their neighbors for only one reason.

Later on, when they ask to use their neighbor's pool, they want the neighbor to remember how nice they were and say yes.

Some people work very hard in school for no other reason than they want to do their best. Some people do community service simply because it makes them feel good.

You see, all of these motivations have one thing in common. They're self -focused. They aren't being done to glorify

God. They're being done for purely selfish reasons, and that's not living in the light. Living in the light requires that we be founded on God.

His glory, his praise, his motivations are the foundation of our life choices. Proverbs 16, 2 says that all the ways of a man are pure in his own sight, but Yahweh, that refers to God, weighs the motives.

In Psalm 24, 2 through 4, David is looking for someone to praise the Lord and he asks, he who has innocent hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to worthlessness and has not sworn deceitfully.

In Matthew 5, 8, Jesus says that we need to be pure in heart, and in Acts 8, we meet someone named

Simon. The passage tells us that Simon listened to the gospel being preached and that he believed what he was being told.

Then later, Simon sees the apostles calling down the Holy Spirit onto the new believers, and in verse 19,

Simon says, give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the

Holy Spirit. That seems like a good request. Wouldn't it be awesome if there were more people who could enable others to receive the

Holy Spirit? But Peter could tell that Simon's desire for this good thing came from sinful motivations.

That's why Peter replied, May your silver perish with you, because you suppose you could obtain the gift of God with money.

You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Therefore, repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray earnestly to the

Lord that, if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of unrighteousness.

I want to show you one more example of this from the Gospel of Luke because I know it can be hard to understand. I'm doing the right thing in the right way.

How could this possibly be wrong? Well, Gabriel the angel was sent to deliver a message to two people in Luke 1.

Gabriel was going to tell both of these people that someone was about to get pregnant. The first person he told was

Zechariah. He told him that his wife Elizabeth was going to have a child. The second person Gabriel told was

Mary. The content of Gabriel's message was very similar. He was foretelling that these births would be miraculous, and Zechariah and Mary both had an outwardly similar response to the proclamation.

Zechariah asks, How will I know this, for I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years?

Mary asked, How will this be, since I am a virgin? They both asked the same question on the outside.

How is this possible? And they both provided a reason that this should be impossible. Zechariah said he recognized that his wife was very old, and Mary recognized that she had never been with a man.

But Gabriel's response to these nearly identical encounters is very different. In Mary's case, he simply explains what's going to happen.

He says, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for that reason the Holy Child shall be called the

Son of God. But listen to how Gabriel responds to Zechariah, I am Gabriel who stands before God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.

And behold, you shall be silent and unable to speak until the day when these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their proper time.

Whether by his own angelic abilities or God telling him, Gabriel knew that the simple question

Zechariah asked was born out of a heart of doubt and disbelief, and he knew that Mary's question grew out of a heart of curious belief.

I wish I could spend more time on this point, but I cannot. This is why I will once again encourage you to listen to the

Mirror's Christianity series and the Teach Your Children to Obey series. Each of those resources goes into much more detail about this truth, the importance of our motivation.

The point is though, it's incredibly more important for our hearts to be righteous than for our words and actions to be righteous.

Why do I say that? Because righteous -looking words and actions can grow out of an unrighteous heart, but a truly righteous heart will always produce righteous thoughts, words, feelings, and actions.

Jesus said that a good tree bears good fruit, and sweet water comes from a sweet spring, and never the other way around.

So, let us see. True righteousness is much more than just being a quote -unquote good person.

It's not good enough to just be nice or to be a good kid, good employee, or good citizen.

Our standard can't be that we're better than all the people around us. Our standard must be

God and His Word, and He says that we need to be holy as He is holy. 1 Corinthians 10 31 says that everything we do needs to be done for His glory, not our own.

This means that if we are grounded on God and living in the light, our heart motivations for why we do what we do must be in the light.

Our motivation for all we do must be to please the Lord. Sure, our good choices may have a beneficial impact on us, but it's also true that obeying

God may make our lives very uncomfortable. But those secondary consequences must never overshadow that we are called to glorify

God with our lives, and He is not glorified when we do the right things in the right ways for the wrong reasons.

With this in mind, let's review our passage for today with renewed minds. 1

John 2 1 through 6. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

And by this we know that we have come to know Him. If we keep His commandments, what we do, what we say, what we feel, what we think, what we believe, all the way down to our motivations.

And then He goes on to say, the one who says, I have come to know Him and does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in Him.

But whoever keeps His word, truly in Him the love of God has been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him, the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

And yes, Jesus did the right things in the right ways for the right reasons. In fact,

He came to this earth for one reason. You may think He came to save us, and that is one of the reasons.

However, the deeper motivation for His coming is revealed in passages like John 4 34, John 5 30,

John 6 38, and John 14 31, where Jesus says things like this, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.

Jesus's main motivation during His entire earthly ministry was to accomplish the will of His Father, to glorify

Him, to please Him, the Heavenly Father, God the Father. So too must be the motivation of our family if we are going to continue being a biblical family.

A biblical family is in the light and lives in the light. That means that we are being a biblical family when we live righteously as God has commanded, doing the things in the right ways for the right reasons.

Now, if you or anyone else in your family has questions about this, if you want to understand it better, please reach out to us at counselor at truthloveparent .com.

We will be honored to help you understand and apply God's truth to your family. Of course, that's really why

Truth Love Family and the Truth Love Parent podcast exists. Every episode of our podcast, every book we write, every resource we create is designed to help you better glorify

God as a family. So definitely listen to the resources linked in the description and be sure to do your life work in preparation for our study next week.

1. Read John 2, 7 -14 at least two times. 2.

Continue to ask God to reveal the darkness in your life so that you can become more righteous. 3.

Identify at least two things in this coming week that looked righteous but weren't because your motivation was sinful.

Doing this life work will require a few things. First, it requires honesty to admit that we are sinners.

None of us get through a day without sinning at least one time, and I would guess that we sin far more than that. I know

I do. And John already told us that if we say we haven't sinned, we're calling God a liar. Second, it requires humility to do what

James 5 commands us to do and confess our sins to each other so that we can pray for each other and build each other up. If we're too prideful to acknowledge our sin with our family members, we're definitely not living in the light.

Third, it will take careful introspection. Far too many of us just kind of feel our way through life and have no idea why we're doing what we're doing.

We need to be wise and discerning. This will require careful thought and possibly conversation with our family members to get their thoughts about our motivations.

I recommend you share these two things that looked good on the outside but were bad on the inside as soon as they happen.

After confessing that sin, ask the people around you to forgive you and then ask your advocate, Jesus Christ, to forgive you.

Remember, this isn't so that you can be re -saved. This is so that you can honestly please the Lord by admitting your sin and working to change it.

We have another shorter resource called Teach Your Children to Apologize that will be helpful in understanding why we need to ask forgiveness.

If my statements about that perhaps confuse some of you. And lastly, please share this family devotional with a friend so that we can all be part of a biblical family that lives in the light by living righteously before God.

And I'll see you next week when we get even more specific about what it means to be righteous as we discuss the preeminence of love and hate.

I'll see you then. Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship

God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study God's Word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness.

And remember that TLP is a listener supported ministry. You can visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more.