1 John 2
Letters of John • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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God has given us everything we need to be formed into who He is calling us to be
God has given us everything we need to be formed into who He is calling us to be
But sometimes we forget what grace looks like and how to walk.
Do you think about all the things that influence and form you daily? Or even minute by minute?
I noticed this the first time I taught my oldest son how to drive. I am now teaching my oldest daughter how to drive and it is reminding me all over again.
I have been driving since the age of 16, for the last 28 years. I have been driving for longer than i haven’t.
And so driving is just a part of wht I do. If you have been driving a long time, it’s the same for you.
I don’t think about all the things that I need to do when I drive, I mostly just do them. I don’t think about how to turn or when in an intersection, I have, over time, just made it a habit.
And you don’t realize how much it is a habit until you are called on to describe what it is you are doing.
It is very difficult to think about the steps you take to doing something you do all the time. It takes mental energy to really process how to explain how it is I drive or how I make the decisions that I do regarding driving.
We get into modes where we do things and are influenced by what we do and we don’t think about how we got there.
Just like driving, you and I are being formed by things all the time. We are formed by conversations, by our surroundings, by the people around us and even by our environments. We become like the things and people around us.
I’m sure you have heard the phrase, “practice makes perfect.” While that is not entirely true. It’s not that practice makes perfect, it’s that but practice makes permanent
What is being made permanent in your life?
But we don’t always ask the question, are you being formed in the way you want to be?
Are you being formed in the way that God is calling you to be?
We become whatever it is we do the most
We become whatever it is we do the most
we are all looking to something ahead of us and aligning our actions to be able to get there
We become what we do, and so how we are formed, how we live, the way in which we walk, matters.
If my picture of what is good is always about security, then I will do what it takes to feel secure, even if that hurts you.
Our understanding of the good, that means, isn’t always good.
Maybe what you find is good has hurt a lot of people.
Maybe your definition of what is good can’t hold up much more.
The stuff we do over and over (our orientiation to the world) that forms us Augustine says that the law of sin is the violence of habit.
our habits form us but that isn’t always the way we want to be formed. So that creates a gap
. It creates a dizzying effect between reaching for what is too high and then failing to reach that, getting turned around and trying again. It just feels like we're constantly in circles and we need someone to reach out at a stop us and we could not.
Have you ever been so dizzy you would give anything for it to stop?
In the spin ride in Oregon. Almost raised my hand to stop. But the ride stopped. The dizziness was appeased.
I needed someone to end the turning.
This is why we are warned about the structures that the world has set up. Look at how John describes these kinds of love
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
This is a dizzying list.
This is not a list of do’s and don’ts as much as it is a list of loves.
Notice what John is pointing to.
DOn’t love the desires of the flesh or the eyes.
He is not saying don’t love other things. He is saying your love either forms or malforms things. What we desire can make something better or it can make things much much worse.
he is not saying don’t love other things. He is saying don’t love other things because of what you can get out of them. It’s not love for them it’s love for desire of the flesh, you. Or desire of the eyes, you. Or the pride of life, you.
this is a form of love that makes demands That you set.
when we love things for our sake, that love is bent. Love for desire or pride when it is threatened becomes controlling and manipulative. Because you think you need to do everything you can to protect that love. That is not love .
There is a caution to be careful with what you do with what you have.
Because our sense of the good doesn’t always match. And our sense of the good may not always actually be good.
How we carry out that good then, may be breaking our relationships. IT could be waht the Bible calls sin.
because we take what is good and bend them to carry out our desires upon them.
ikea bookshelf. Bending to fit in a car. It will break but it will fit
Your practice with your desires is making permanent. And you are being formed to points that may not be healthy. The orientation you move toward may start well, but desire easily malforms and you end up further down the road than you wanted.
But we don’t have to live lives where we are being formed to what won’t last or what won’t be enough.
But John gives us both a definition of the good and a way to walk in it.
And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
We know Christ if we keep His commandments. We know his commandments are to love God and love others.
this is why it’s important to talk about habits. Because we are formed by what we have around us. So how do we respond if Christ has given everything to us for our lives? That means that all of God has been offered for us to form around Him
And if we have trusted Christ to save us we have everything that He has given
And if we have trusted Christ to save us we have everything that He has given
What happens when we are formed to something we end up finding was not what we had hoped it was?
We’ve all been in those spaces before, committed to something that hasn’t formed us in the way that we wanted.
We were hoping for a sense of security but got more lost, we were hoping to forget the past but came slamming into it.
We often, like missing a turn on the expressway, get turned around. And when that happens, we have a hard time finding our way back.
missing a major exit on the expressway. The way back often takes a lot more effort than you would have normally expended. You have to turn around. Then you have to find a way to turn around from where you turned around.
Christ has offered an always way back.
A way to be formed by something greater, eternal and more loving than any promises that have been made to you
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
John says, I hope that you don’t sin. That you don’t get turned around. That you don’t get dizzy.
But you will
Maybe you are.
When that happens. There is a centering point. A place to focus.
Christ’s forgiveness is the center of Christian action
Christ is the one who is the “propitiation” for our sins. Meaning that all that was wrong, all that was made wrathful, all that was broken, is appeased.
Christ appeases our sin. Heals our broken relationships.
This is the end of all dizzying.
Christ does that. He restores, appeases what is broken in us.
He cares enough to act on it in a way that we can be formed around him.
Have you ever wondered how figure skaters or ballet dancers spin and spin and spin without getting dizzy? If you watch them, their head spins at a different speed than the rest of their body. It is because they are locating a fixed reference somwhere near them. As they spin, if they can keep their eyes on one thing, they won’t get dizzy. They focus on a fixed reference.
We are always oriented to a fixed reference. It can be the things of the world that keep moving and never stay still and diminish,
or they can be Christ, who has appeased all sin through His sacrifice and resurrection and does not move. We know who He is and where He is.
He is the better fixed reference.
This is how we walk as He walked
but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him:
We have to orient Christ in such a way that we are formed by Him. And Christ is how we know God. We are formed to God because of Christ and live our our lives by doing the stuff that He did.
we are being formed by all sorts of things in the world. Minute by minute. Are you being formed in a way that is what you are hoping for? Are you being formed in a way that God is calling you to?
What is one area that you want to stop spinning in? An area that you are being formed but not toward Christ, you are forming relationships that are breaking or scattering. Instead of forming relationships with a fixed reference that pulls things together.