1 John (Program #36) – The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Overcome the World, Death, Sin, the Devil, and the Idols (4)

The marvelous book of 1 John stresses the divine birth, the divine life and the fellowship all believers can experience and enjoy in the flow of this divine life.  It is not a book of great doctrine but rather it is a book as is John’s gospel  revealing the living and true God subjectively and experientially to mankind.

Finally in its concluding verses it tells us that above all we now possess the capacity to know Him not just know about Him.

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1 John (Program #35) – The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Overcome the World, Death, Sin, the Devil, and the Idols (3)

The final few verses of 1 John serve as a strong conclusion to a book that stress over and over, the divine birth and the divine life that all believers received at divine birth.  Closely associated with the divine birth are the divine fellowship and the divine anointing and all of the virtues that flow out of the divine birth.  Of course, the source of the divine life is the divine being, God Himself and His Son Jesus Christ.  And part of the heritage that we received at the divine birth is the capacity to know, experience, enjoy and ultimately even to possess God,  not merely in an objective way but in reality.

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1 John (Program #34) – The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Overcome the World, Death, Sin, the Devil, and the Idols (2)

1 John is a book that focuses on the divine eternal life that we all as believers received by faith.  It is the fellowship of this life that empowers and enables us to live the Christian life.  And in 1 John it is unveiled marvelously as well as practically.  John also warns us and instructs us to be on guard concerning those things that disrupt this fellowship of life, such as sin.

In chapter 5, he even instructs us that it is possible, in the Lord to be able to discern the deep spiritual condition of other members of the Body of Christ, to more effectively pray and even to become a channel of the divine life for them.

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1 John (Program #33) – The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Overcome the World, Death, Sin, the Devil, and the Idols (1)

1 John, a book that stresses divine eternal life, reveals that prayer is crucial in maintaining the fellowship of the divine life.  In chapter 5 it particularly shows us that as members of the Body, we need to pray for the other members.  No doubt it’s common practice among believers to pray for healing for someone in the church who may be sick or for financial blessing for those who may be suffering material shortage.  But do we pray as the apostle John instructs us for the Lord to supply the weaken members with life?  Listen to chapter 5:16 “If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask and he will give life to him, to those sinning not unto death… “

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1 John (Program #32) – The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Practice the Divine Love (5)

All of the apostle John’s writings in the Bible stress the divine birth through which the divine life is imparted into the believers.  In his gospel he says you must be born again.  In chapter 3 of his first epistle, John says,  3:9 “Everyone who has been begotten of God does not practice sin.” And once again the stress is on the divine birth.  But in chapter 5 he gets even more specific about not just the fact of the divine birth, but the location of the divine birth. When he says,  5:4 “For everything that has been begotten of God overcomes the world;”

Why does he change everyone in chapter 3 to everything in chapter 5?   The answer reveals very much about the key to overcoming not just sin and the world but all of the negative things surrounding us in our day to day living.

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1 John (Program #31) – The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Practice the Divine Love (4)

In his first epistle the apostle John talks very much about love.  Chapter four particularly places a strong emphasis on love. But if we examine John’s presentation of this most visible virtue of the divine birth we realize that the love spoken of in this book is not a vague or general love nor is it a natural love, a love that finds its’ source in the human heart. It is the love that flows from the divine source from God Himself.  In verse 8 of chapter 4 John puts it this way, “He who does not love has not known God, because God is love.“

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1 John (Program #27) -The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Practice the Divine Love (2) & Proving the Spirits (1)

The apostle John gave us a long word in His first epistle about loving the brothers but right in the middle of his fellowship about love he inserts six verses in chapter four that start out,  “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they are of God,..”

An enlightening program today that makes the connection between loving the brothers and proving the spirits.

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1 John (Program #26) -The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Practice the Divine Love (3)

1 John 3:19-21 say
19 “And in this we will know that we are of the truth, and we will persuade our heart before Him, Because if our heart blames us, it is because God is greater than our heart and knows all things.  Beloved, if our heart does not blame us, we have boldness toward God;“

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1 John (Program #25) -The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Practice the Divine Love (1)

When the believers in Christ are born again at the time of their salvation the divine seed is sown into their being. This seed is the divine life and the divine life has the divine nature.

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1 John (Program #24) – The Virtues of the Divine Birth to Practice the Divine Righteousness (2)

In the epistle of first John there are three main sections. The fellowship of the divine life from the beginning of the book to 2:11. The teaching of the anointing starting in 2:12 through 2:27 and the virtues of the divine birth from 2:28 to the end of the book, 5:21.

The sequence of these three sections is important and it indicates the fellowship of the divine life and the teaching of the anointing bring us into the virtues of the divine birth.

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