Abide: Week 9

Apr 11, 2011 by desiringvirtue

I’m just getting around to putting this up and it is almost 8pm. It’s been a great day; one of those days when you lay down in your bed and know you worked as hard as you could (a little bit of that Proverbs 31 woman feeling!). But before I let my head hit the pillow I will get week 9 in motion!

This Week’s Verses:

1 John 2:5. but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him:

1 John 2:6. whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Thoughts and Musings:

I am not going to say too much on these two verses because they pretty much reiterate verses 3 and 4 (and all the preceding verses for that matter!). It seems like such needless repetition doesn’t it? And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, how often do we need to hear that as Christians we are to walk as Christ walked? I need to be reminded every day, every moment of the day for that matter, so I am thankful for these soul hammering statements from John.

How impossibly high of a standard is Christ and yet we are called to live like him! Over and over and over we are called to the standard of holiness. Not only in this book but in almost every other book in the Bible. It is the standard from which we fell in the garden and the standard to which Christ lived to rescue us from our fall. How sweet to have these words in my mind, these slightly different verses teaching my soul with such slightly different nuances. They are reminding me to live as one who was bought with the blood of Christ and given the grace to live a holy life.

Here we find that the love of God is perfected in our obedience. This means one of two things to me. Either that our love toward God is shown to be perfect through our obedience or God’s love toward us is shown to be perfect through his powerful sanctifying work in our lives. Both are true. Praise God!