This was not a term of belittlement. It was a term of endearment and also of order. Those who are saved need to be mindful of our dependence upon the true God for everything. We will never come to the place of being independent. In the physical life, God taught that a man is to leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife. The man needs to take the things he has learned at home and move out and build his own home with his wife. He can still seek advice from his parents, but he is accountable for his own household. In the spiritual realm, once we are saved, we will always be dependent upon our heavenly Father in all things. We are accountable for our choices, but we can trust God to guide us in making wise choices. We need God to guide us.
We are also reminded here of the importance of abiding in him. “Him” is Jesus Christ. He is coming back for His saints. “He shall appear”. We do not know the day nor the hour, but we can be confident that He shall appear.
God wants His children to look forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He does not want His children to be ashamed at Jesus’ coming. We need to be busy serving the true God and living in expectation of His soon return. I remember as a boy being given assignments from my father. We lived on a farm and in the summer there was hoeing to do in the fields. I had three brothers and together we were to go and hoe in the field. Dad worked out and when he would come home from work he would come and check up on us. He had a way of sneaking up on us and as boys we would sometimes be caught playing around rather than working. Dad was not pleased with this and we were ashamed to be caught not doing what we were told to do.
That was just in regard to earthly things. God the Father equips His children with His gift of salvation. He provides the Holy Spirit to indwell each of His children. He also provides the local church as the place to gather for learning and for fellowship. We can be faithful servants of His if we are saved. God does not sneak up on us. He tells us that He is always watching over us. He knows our every thought and our every action. The day of Christ’s appearing is not known to us, but if we are faithfully serving Him, we will not be ashamed at His appearing.
We know that every born again Christian will meet the Lord at the “judgment seat of Christ”. We will not be judged there as to whether we enter heaven or not. That is determined in this life. That is based on whether we trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation or not. After we are saved we are called upon to serve the Lord with joy. We can do this and we can enjoy the blessing of doing so.
In verse 29 we are reminded that Jesus Christ is righteous. His demands of His children are not unreasonable. He changes the heart of the saved person and thus we can and will find joy in serving Him. We will not see this as a burden or something that robs us of blessings.
True Christians will know that Jesus Christ is righteous. Thus we can also know that every person that does righteousness is born of Him. John has been talking about antichrists in this chapter. He has also talked of the fleeting nature of this world and its philosophies. It is important for God’s people not to be deceived by the lies of the antichrists. We need to have a genuine love for the Lord and for the brethren. We will be able to identify those who are true saints by their works. A fraud can put on a show for a time. It generally does not take very long to identify the fraud.
I listened to a few minutes of a recording of a man who professes to be saved but wanted to prove that alcoholic consumption is justified for Christians. He wanted the listeners to believe that Jesus turned water into alcoholic wine.
The man proved himself to be a fraud very quickly. He claimed to be a Greek and Hebrew scholar but was clueless in his use of those languages. I did not need to waste much time listening to him. Maybe I will have opportunity to meet him some day, but if he just wants to carry on with his deceptive ways, that meeting will not be very long. We need to witness to the lost, but we certainly cannot fellowship with them. We have nothing in common with them.
God wants us to fellowship with fellow saints. He wants us to be blessed by those who love the Lord and are seeking to know Him more and serve Him more faithfully. He provides us with those type of people if we will let Him lead us.
Pastor Bartel