This is a sermon I preached at Seed Church on July 31, You can listen here. Pastor Brent Rood kicked off the series talking about what this sort of living means for the Christian. Phil Higley followed with a message from James on social compassion and that true religion is to look after the widow and the orphan.
What is the incarnation? Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. Background: The writer of 1 John was a part of a Johannine community that existed around the ancient city of Ephesus. There were two major camps at play within this early Christian community based on the teaching and witness of John.
There were Jewish-Christians who had expressed a commitment to Jesus but also felt a loyalty to Judasim- to the Law. They may have felt it difficult to accept the Messiahship of Jesus. The second group were Hellenistic Christians who had emerged from a pagan religious background and were influenced by Hellenistic ideas of salvation or Gnosticism an early rival of Biblical Christianity. This group would have found it hard to accept the full humanity of Jesus.
