Rebound revisited, part 4. 1Co 11:28; 1Jo 1:8-10; Eph 4:17; 2Ti 2:25

Title: Rebound revisited, part 4. 1CO 11:28; 1JO 1:8-10; EPH 4:17; 2TI 2:25.     

 

1.Judge yourself throughout, separating divine thoughts from sin and human good, 1CO 11:31.

 

2.Acknowlege the sin, evil, wrong, error, human good, etc.

 

1JO 1:5 And this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

 

“darkness” - skoti,a[skotia] = darkness, secrecy.

 

The darkness is referred to in the scripture as the world without faith in Christ, the unbeliever, and the Lake of Fire.

 

The believer is given the title “a child of light, or a son of light” and therefore can never be darkness again, however the scripture is clear that he can walk or abide in darkness and it is extremely important that he recover from that status and return to walking in the light.

 

Walking in darkness is being out of fellowship with God, or having a mental attitude that is opposed to Him. Walking in the light is being in fellowship with God, filled with the Spirit, and thinking the thoughts of God, i.e. the word of God.

 

We can withhold ourselves and our wills from God and we can in that sense also give them. Wills that we would never have if God did not first give them.

 

What is His by right and would not exist for a moment if it ceased to be His, He has nevertheless made ours in such a way that we can freely offer it back to Him.

 

Yet don’t ever think for a second that God loves you and gives to you because you are lovable or pious or that He admires something in you outside of what He has imputed in gift at salvation. God loves because He is love.

 

The light that we walk in is reward enough for in light there is prosperity of soul of every kind for it is directly the thoughts and ways of God and only a son of light has the privilege to walk in it.

 

One cannot even see light. We only know if from what it illumes. I cannot in this life see the light directly, but I can see what it illumes and reveals and not one part of that isn’t marvelous, including the realization that without supernatural help from all members of the Trinity you couldn’t see light at all!

 

A failure to recognize your own neediness is dashed away by the grace of God, for grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence.

 

We are at all times in constant dependence on the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the word of God, or the mind of the Son. I cannot do the simplest things on my own. So to say that any decisions, and words, prayers, services, works or anything from me adds one iota to the cross of Christ or the plan of God for you or the ages is delusional and ludicrous.

 

We don’t add. We simply make choices in the areas of knowledge, wisdom, virtue, and power.

 

The question from God to His children is not, “When will you walk in the light so I may be pleased with you?” but “When will you like and enjoy the light more than the darkness?”

 

Darkness - fear, worry, anxiety, revenge motivation, inordinate ambition and competition, gossip, maligning, slander, lusts in all areas, over sins, human credit, human viewpoint, etc.

 

And the purpose of the light, why is it that God is so emphatic that we walk in it? In it the believer comes to recocognize, utilize, and maximize faith, confidence, power, and love so that, in God’s predestined outcome, he overcomes all opposition to God and thus reflects and brings glory to God.

 

Do not be fooled. In these things, in their maximum predestined outcome there is suffering, loss, and death (the greatest love is to lay down your life), but not only those, but also freedom and victory, for you do not find your life unless you lose it. We must be manifested into the image of His Son, no one but  complete fool would believe he could do this at all without 100% of God’s power in light basked in by a regenerated child of light!

 

1JO 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;

 

“darkness” - skoto,j[skotos] = darkness, secrecy.

 

This is an older version of skotia, which John uses 18 times, but only here does he use skotos. They mean the same thing.

 

 “fellowship” - koinwni,a[koinonia] = fellowship, partnership, participation, sharing.

 

The root word means “common.” Since the scriptures always emphasize the word of God above all else, then we can confidently say that this word refers to common words or common thought.

 

1JO 1:7 but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

 

Walking in the light makes us constantly aware of our position in Christ. This is who we are now. We are no longer darkness but light and all sin is forgiven and cleansed. Therefore it is fruitless to yield our free will to the mastery of the old nature since it has been crucified with Christ.

 

John is saying that if you walked in the light then you would be occupied with the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all sin and so the body can be used as an instrument of righteousness, ROM 6:13.

 

Gnosticism was a heresy far more subtle and dangerous than any that had appeared during the early years of the church. It became so widespread that by the beginning of the 3 rd cent. A.D. most of the intellectual Christian congregations throughout the Roman Empire were to some degree infected by it. [International Standard Bible Encyclopedia; Revised]

 

[Continue quote] Except perhaps in 1 Tim 6:20, where Paul warned Timothy against "what is falsely called knowledge," it is not mentioned in the NT. The leaven was at work, however, and very soon its baneful influence became only too apparent. In the 2nd cent. the movement "spread with the swiftness of an epidemic over the Church from Syria to Gaul" (Law, p. 26). It is not easy to give a proper and complete account of this potent anti-Christian influence, for Gnosticism was not a homogeneous system of either religion or philosophy, but em-braced many widely diversified sects holding opinions drawn from a great variety of sources. [end quote]

 

[Quote from ISBE Revised] To the Gnostics the great question was not the intensely practical one, "What must I do to be saved from sin?" but "What is the origin of evil?" "How is the primitive order of the universe to be restored?" In the knowledge of these and of similar questions, and in the answers given to these questions, lay redemption as the Gnostic understood it.

 

The following may be regarded as the chief points in the Gnostic systems: (1) a claim on the part of the initiated to a special knowledge of the truth; a tendency to regard knowledge as superior to faith and as the special possession of the more enlightened, for ordinary Christians did not possess this secret and higher doctrine;

 

As always, Satan’s false doctrines appeal to the arrogance of mankind.

 

GEN 3:5

"For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

 

(2) the essential separation of matter and spirit, matter being intrinsically evil and the source from which all evil has arisen;

 

(3) an attempt to solve the problems of creation and the origin of evil by postulating a demiurge, i.e., a creator or artificer of the world distinct from the deity, and emanations extending between God and the visible universe (the demiurge for the Gnostics being the God of the OT, an inferior being infinitely remote from the Supreme Being who can have nothing to do with anything material);

 

(4) a denial of the true humanity of Christ (Docetism); a docetic Christology which considered the earthly life of Christ and especially His sufferings on the cross to be unreal;

 

(5) the denial of the personality of the Supreme God, and also the denial of the free will of mankind;

 

(6) the teaching, on the one hand, of asceticism as the means of attaining spiritual communion with God, and, on the other hand, of an indifference that led directly to licentiousness;

 

(7) a syncretistic tendency that combined certain more or less misunderstood Christian doctrines and various elements from oriental, Jewish, Greek, and other sources;

 

(8) ascription of the OT to the demiurge or inferior creator of the world.