?¨Who??s Your Daddy Now!?Æ April 30, 2006
1 John 1:1-2:2 Pastor Mark Nieting

Maybe it??s just me, but is anyone a little tired of the direction that our culture seems to be going? I??m not anywhere near a fan of the National Basketball Association, but last fall, Commissioner David Stern pushed through a dress code for his players, something most of us know as ?¨business casual.?Æ 

Can you imagine how well that went over with the majority of the highly paid egos in the NBA? Some of them were very vocally opposed, suggesting that Stern was biased against the hip-hop culture and was denying the players their right to express themselves. Stern defended himself, saying, ?¨No way?ñyou can bag, sag, zig and zag all you want, but not when you??re at work!?Æ It??s the same rationale that applies to the dress code found at many Christian schools?ñif we dress ?¨up,?Æ we don??t ?¨act up!?Æ 

This was just another round of what seems to be an almost endless discussion of the decline of the values in our society, evidenced by acts of road-rage, jet-plane-rage, bad language, aggressive assertion of individual rights, underwear that??s not worn under our wear, impatience and even hostility towards those who have differing opinions. There seems to be more shouting, pushing, shoving, demanding, asserting, posturing, condemning?ñ.and that??s just Congress! One blogger suggested we ought to return to the old English custom of High Tea every afternoon, just to slow us down and re-teach us some manners?ñ..so, 2 PM at my house?

I doubt there??s a single one of us here today who doesn??t bemoan the demise of civility and decency in our country and long for kinder and gentler days. I see it even in the change of dress for worship?ñ.I miss people dressing up out of respect for God! Am I alone here? I doubt it. Most of us miss the values of what we call ?¨the good, old days.?Æ And that, my dear Christian friends, is literally the entire message that God has woven into this text through the disciple John in his first letter. The First Letter of John is like a spiral. It returns repeatedly to the same ideas, yet continually builds on them to construct a forceful argument for the loving behavior of the Christian community, love because God loves us.

Jesus had a tremendous affect on John??s life?ñand John wants to pass on to each and every reader both what Jesus did in HIS life and what being a child of God does for each one of us. The opening, which we read just a moment ago, almost parallels the opening of John??s Gospel, both of them testimonies to the LIGHT and to the JOY that Jesus brought into the world.


First, let??s examine a bit of background on 1 John. John was the brother of James, one of the sons of Zebedee. He was close to Jesus, and the one to whom Jesus entrusted the care of His mother Mary at the crucifixion. John wrote his Gospel around 85 AD, after which came his 3 epistles and finally, his Revelation (no ?¨s?Æ here?ñ John had one revelation, albeit a long one!) Much of this letter was written to stimulate love within the Christian community?ñthat we may love, as God first loved us through Jesus Christ.

1 John was also written to combat the onset of Gnosticism in the church. This was a heresy which taught that the spirit was entirely good and that matter and body were entirely evil. Thus from this basic premise came the belief that salvation was NOT found in Christ, but rather in an escape from one??s (evil) body through special knowledge?ñthe Greek word is ?´gnosis,?? hence Gnosticism. The Gnostics denied Christ??s true humanity in two different ways: some said that Christ only seemed to have a body (Docetism..from the Greek dokeo, to seem) and others said that the divine Christ merged with the man Jesus at his baptism and then left him just before he died, a view called Cerinthianism after it??s founder, Cerinthius.

The Gnostic belief system also led to abuses of the body, since the body was inherently evil, it could?ñand should be abused; as well as to the throwing off of all moral restraints, since matter was seen as evil and not the breaking of God??s laws. This seems, I know, paradoxical, but it was how the Gnostics lived. I have posited before that we seem to be living in an age of modern gnosticism, where the body can be abused and there are no moral standards whatsoever, especially among people who call themselves ?¨enlightened!?Æ 

Thus John writes this letter with two basic purposes in mind: first, to expose the false teachings of the Gnostics, and second, to give believers an assurance of their salvation through Jesus Christ. John also is very concerned that people understand the divinity of Christ, all the way back to the moment of His incarnation. 

The central message of 1 John is this: people who are loved behave differently from those who aren??t. This is also the first of two points in today??s message. John referred to himself as ?¨the disciple that Jesus loved.?Æ While modern writers may denigrate what that means by attaching other language to it, John meant it in the most basic and purest way: God loved him and sent to him a Savior, who was Jesus Christ?ñ.who loved him deeply, personally, and sacrificially. John knew it?ñ.and knows it is also true of you and me?ñ..and wants US to know it, and to live it.


Therefore, what John teaches us?ñ.and Paul, for that matter?ñis that we, being loved by God, are called upon to love others. It affects us to the very core of our being. While we once thought we may have been something special in the eyes of the world, now we can and must know that we are special in the eyes of God, simply because He loves us and sent Jesus to die for our sins. And now that that has happened, we are called to live by a new and different setoff rules than those that governed us when we were NOT in the faith.

Therefore: -we love our neighbors as ourselves.
-we listen for God??s voice, not our own voice.
-we consider ourselves to be subject to each other.
-we practice kindness and charity.
-we bear each other??s burdens.
-we forgive, rather than bearing a grudge.
-we want others to know THEY too are loved!

Sounds like a list that needs to be on every refrigerator, doesn??t it? 

Jesus Christ came as our Savior because of the Trinity??s love for each one of us. Love was, and still is, the message of Jesus Christ?ñthat we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind, and love our neighbor as ourselves. It is the central tenet to the commandments?ñ..and the golden rule as well. What could be more Christian than, as Jesus put it in Matthew 7:12, ?¨In everything do to others as you would have them do to you!?Æ 

So, if you want people to be kind to you, be kind to them. If you don??t want to be cut off in traffic, don??t cut people off. If you want civil treatment at Ingles, BE civil at Ingles. If you keep your cool, maybe the next guy will as well!

Finally, and this is point number two, people often express the qualities and tendencies of their parents. It??s the old ?¨apple-doesn??t-fall-far-from-the-tree?Æ concept, taken one step farther than bloodlines. It??s the answer to the question of the day, ?¨Who??s Your Daddy??Æ Is it God?ñ.or is it someone or something else?

Through baptism, as we celebrate with Britni Bucker in HER baptism today, we become children of God. This implies that, by the nature of WHO now lives within us, we will ACT like children of God. We will live to express the nature and the tendencies and the qualities of God, who has come to live within each one of us. This is a direct 180 from the Gnostic belief that the body?ñand even the person?ñis inherently evil. In fact, what John reinforces is that now that God is present within us, by faith we CAN and should do Good Works?ñ.not because they can save us, but simply as a reflection of God within us. It??s not that we are perfect and sinless, not at all?ñ.and John points that out clearly in the text. It??s that God sent His Son to love us and forgive us and make us His!


Therefore, if we behave in a typically non-loving, non-forgiving, non-repenting, non-merciful manner, our very relationship with Christ Jesus is called into question?ñ.certainly not the witness we want to bring to the world around us. Our witness should be just the opposite?ñ. Bringing the love of Christ to the world around us that cannot know true love without Him!

Indeed, people who know God, people who are God??s children, LIVE like it, every single day! 

And to that, the people of God say, AMEN!