A Word in Season: The Circle of Love (1 John 5:1)

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What is a Christian? At root, a Christian is someone who believes that Jesus is the

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Christ. Now that's not merely a notional confidence, it is what you might call an experiential or experimental confidence.

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It is that trusting in Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God who came into the world to suffer and die in the place of sinners.

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It's rolling the weight of your soul and all its sin upon Him to save you and to make you and keep you right with God.

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It is grasping Him as God's true Messiah. It is knowing

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Him as He is revealed in the Scriptures and accepting and entrusting yourself to Him as such.

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And whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ, whoever believes that Jesus of Nazareth, that man who was born in Bethlehem of a virgin, who lived the life described in the

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Gospels in the Scriptures, who died that awful death under the curse of God upon the cross but rose again on the third day and ascended up into heaven and will one day come again for His people, whoever believes that that Jesus is that Christ is born of God.

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That faith, that confidence is the fruit of the Holy Spirit's work in our hearts making us new creatures.

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Faith is in one sense the first and great evidence of regeneration, that new life that God is pleased to give to those upon whom

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He has set His love. It is the first cries, if you will, that cry of faith and repentance that comes from the soul of someone who now has the life of God in them by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. And when someone believes in Jesus Christ having been born of God, when this new life and this real faith spring forth, love is always the consequence.

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The Apostle John in chapter 5 and verse 1 of his first letter has been explaining already this reality of love that binds together

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God and His people. And now he tells us that whoever believes that Jesus is the

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Christ is born of God and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves

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Him who is begotten of Him. We have this new life because God has loved us.

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God is our Father and He is the one who has made us His sons. And so we now love

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Him. Love is always together with true and saving faith and it is directed toward the

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God who has loved us and has shown that love in making us His children and bringing us out of darkness into light and giving us this life which before we did not have, being lost in death and darkness.

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But it's not just upward that our love goes. Everyone who loves Him who begot also loves

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Him who is begotten of Him. In one sense this is eminently spiritual and in another it's entirely natural that the love which we have for God because He has begotten us will extend in some way also towards others who share the same relationship with their

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Heavenly Father. It is perfectly right and proper. In fact it is necessary that those who are loved by God should both love

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God and love others who are loved by God. Now we are not lovely in ourselves and those whom

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God has loved are not lovely in themselves but God loves them nonetheless.

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And when we understand that bond that brings us together, that blessed tie that binds our hearts in Christian love, when we appreciate that dominant relationship that we have all together been begotten by God, that we share this same faith because we share this same new life, then we will delight in our brothers and sisters in Christ on account of what

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God has done in them and on account of what they now are in themselves to God and to us.

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And so when we gather together to worship the God of Heaven it ought to be a worship that is marked by faith, faith because of the life that is in us.

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And with that faith there must be then a lively expression of love, love to the

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God who has begotten us individually and congregationally, every true believer uniting in lifting their heart in holy happiness toward the

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God of their salvation, but also that love spreading out toward, first of all, everyone else who knows and enjoys that same life, that same blessing of faith, and that same privilege of being called a son of God.