Embark on a spiritual expedition with Dr. J. Vernon McGee through the book of 1 John. In this episode, we discuss the importance of keeping God’s commandments and explore the essence of true Christian commitment—beyond legalism and into a deep, abiding love for Christ. Through listener stories and profound teachings, learn how faith and obedience come together to nurture a closer relationship with God. Whether you’re a seasoned believer or new to your faith, this episode offers insights that encourage spiritual growth and understanding.
the foundation ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith
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Is there a difference between the Word of God and the commandments of God? Welcome to Through the Bible, where our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, explores the answer to that question and so many others that he was asked throughout his ministry, including, is it all right for a Christian to dance? What about drinking? What about going to the movies? How about using offensive language? Well, it’s a great study, and I can’t wait for us to begin. So grab your Bible, open it to the New Testament book of 1 John 2, and while you do that, here’s a letter from a fellow listener named Stephen in Tanzania. He says, I have learned a lot by listening to your program. I have been practicing the principle of serving one another with my neighbors, and I hope to improve day by day. Without a doubt, God increases us in His divine love. Please pray I continue to bear fruit as I share this teaching with my family and friends. Well, if you want to share God’s word with those around you, like Steven, we can help. Here are a few great ideas to help get you started. First, you can tell your friends and family about our Through the Bible app, and then consider leaving a positive review in your app store. You know, reviews really do help raise our visibility so that others can discover the app and benefit from this life-changing teaching. And next, you can reach out to us and request some Bible bus passes. I always carry one or two of those in my wallet personally. You can call 1-800-65-BIBLE or email us at biblebus at ttb.org and we’ll send you a 10-pack of business-sized cards that are perfect for handing out. Each one’s got a little QR code linking directly to Dr. McGee’s teachings. Now, another idea is to start your own home group. Here in the U.S., we’re more likely to call it a small group, but it’s really the same idea. You can use our Bible companions to facilitate listening and learning together. First, listen to Dr. McGee’s teaching on your own or together, and then share the synopsis and start a meaningful discussion centered around God’s Word by answering the reflection questions provided at the end of each lesson. And then finally, pray for one another. Amen. Amen. Amen. Make your presence in their lives undeniable. And for those who face persecution, we ask you to encourage, to comfort, and to strengthen them as they boldly live out their faith in Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord, for your Spirit who speaks to their hearts and tells them that they are not alone. It’s in the name of your precious Son we pray. Amen. Now here’s our study of 1 John 2 on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Verna McGee.
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Now, friends, I also hope you have our notes and outlines and following along here because you’re going to find them extremely helpful. And they’re a little more extensive through this section than they are in other places. And we need that help because this is a very wonderful little book. And that’s 1 John now. And we’re in the second chapter. And I’m going to go back and pick up here in verse 3. Now, we have seen in the first part of the epistle, first chapter, God is light. And that went down through the second verse of the second chapter. But now we are looking at God is love. And that’s the very heart of this epistle. And love occurs 33 times here. So there’s a great emphasis upon it. And it begins here with verse 3, and it goes through chapter 4. So this is the very heart of this epistle and makes it very important. Now, as we saw last time, he says, verse 3, and by this we do know that we know him if we keep his commandments. Now, commandments here means the commandments that the Lord Jesus has given to the church. And I’ll make a distinction in just a few moments between the commandments and the Word of God. There is a distinction, and I think we can demonstrate it in just a moment. But the important thing is that this is something we do know, that we know Him. This is not a no-no. This is a yes-yes. It’s something that we do know. And you remember he’s answering all through this epistle the Gnostics. And they pretended they knew something. That is, they were super-duper saints. They had some knowledge that no one else had. In general, it was heresy. By this, we do know that we know him. And the important thing is to know Jesus Christ. Now, how can we have the assurance of it? Well, the great many people, as we’ve said before, believe in the eternal security of the believer, but they don’t have the assurance of salvation. And the reason is obvious. If we keep his commandments, Now, he’s not saying that we’re not saved, but he’s saying this, that we have an assurance. We know, and you can’t know if you’re disobedient unto him. In other words, obedience to Christ is essential, and it’s the very basis of assurance. You cannot have, or you can bluff your way through, but you can’t have that deep down, way down in your heart assurance. unless you keep his commandments. And so here, he’s dealing with that, and he’s dealing with it in a very, let me say, a very definite way here. We do know, and this is something we should know. Now, in verse 4, he says, “…he that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” Now, I would say that that is very plain talk. I would say that that is very blunt speech. In other words, what he’s saying is this. We do know, verse 3, that is, we know by experience. We know that. And that is in contrast to that esoteric knowledge of the Gnostics. Now, this is the negative. Disobedience to Christ is a proof that we do not know him. This is plain and it’s direct language. Disobedience to Christ on the part of a professing Christian is tantamount to being a liar. In other words, the life is a lie. And this is putting it rather blunt. There are a great many people today that say I’m a child of God. But are they a child of God? It’s one thing to say I’m a child of God and to say I’m a Christian, and it’s another thing to be a possessor of eternal life, to have a new nature that cries out to the Father and calls him Father and wants to obey him and loves his word. You can’t make me believe today that all of these church members, that have no love for the Word of God, and they’re disobedient to Christ. You can’t make me believe that they are really God’s children. I don’t think so. Don’t believe that could be true at all. And just to say I’m a child of God, that’s one thing. But to know the experience of regeneration, that’s something else. And therefore, John’s making it very clear here. We do know that we know him because we keep his commandments. And as we saw, we’re not talking about the legal commandments of the Old Testament, but the commandments that he’s given to the church. And if a child of God does not have a love for those commandments, he’s in the very gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity, as the scripture puts it. The Lord Jesus, when he was here in the flesh, said, I do always those things that please him. Well, I can’t say that. But I can say I want to please him. And I have dedicated my life to that. And I find that I fall and stumble. But my beloved, I want to please him. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. But this corroborates his faith when he’s able to know in his heart, I want to do God’s will. And the natural man never did want to do God’s will. And he puts it here. Oh, boy, is this strong. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments is a liar. Now, I didn’t say that, friends. John said that. And then John would tell you that the Holy Spirit’s the one that prompted him to say it. And the truth is not in him, a man that makes a statement like that. Now, we read here again, “…he that saith, I know him.” And keepeth not his commandments is a liar. The truth is not in him. Verse 5. But whosoever keepeth his word in him verily is the love of God perfected by this know we that we are in him. Now, I want to make a difference here and a distinction that I find that very few expositors make. In fact, I noticed that the New Scofield Reference Bible does not make a good distinction here. And I feel that there’s a difference between the Word of God and the commandments of God. Now, somebody’s going to call my attention down here to the fact that the commandments are the Word of God. Well, the commandments are the word of God, but the word of God is not commandments. It’s more than that. I hope that you see the distinction. There are commandments in the word of God, but the word of God is not commandments. Therefore, here you have just a portion in the commandments of the will of God. In the word of God, you have his complete revelation to us about his will for our lives. Now, we have here, therefore, this distinction. Now, the Lord Jesus made the statement. He says, if ye love me, he says, keep my commandments. That’s in John 14, 15. And then in John 14, 23, he says, if a man love me, he’ll keep my words. Now, what is the distinction there? Well, I think that we could put it like this. Let me give a very homely illustration. Others have used it in a little different way, but let me give it like this. Here is a young boy in a home, and it’s a home in the country. His father’s a farmer. And his father says to his son, the boy’s going to school. He says to the boy, he says, now, son, when you get home from school today, I want you to chop wood and I want you to get the wood on the back porch so your mother can get it to make a fire in the cookstove and for the fireplace. And so when the boy comes home, he obeys his father. His father’s commandment is that he chop wood. And that boy goes out there and for about an hour and a half or two hours, he chops wood after school. Then he spends time bringing it in and stacking it up on the back porch. And I can tell you about a boy that used to do that. And that was a long time ago, and his name was Vernon McGee. Now, I don’t know that I could use myself in the rest of the illustration that I’m going to give. Now, the father said to the boy, says, now, when I get home from the field, I’ll milk the cows. Now, one day, the father says, well, I don’t feel good today. The breakfast table, he says, I feel so bad, I don’t think I ought to go out and work in the field today. But he goes on out. Now, when the boy comes home, his commandment is to chop wood. So he chops all the wood. Now, he knows his father is sick, and he knows it’s his father’s word. that he doesn’t feel like milking the cows. So the boy goes up and milks the cows. Now, that he was not commanded to do. He did that because he loves his father. Now, a child of God wants to obey not only the commandments, but he wants to obey the Word of God. That is, he wants to please the Father in everything that he does. I get the impression from some Christians, the way they talk, is this, well, how far can I go in my conduct and still be a Christian? They ask questions like this, and I never would answer them for young people. Is it all right for a Christian to dance? Is it all right for a Christian to go to the movies? Is it all right for a Christian to do this, that, and the other thing that used to be the no-nos for the Christian? I never would answer them because they’re asking the wrong question. What is the right question to ask? The right question is, what can I do to please my heavenly Father? What can I do to please Christ? You see, a child of God wants to please him. And I always suspect these people that are trying to live right on the margin and right on the very fringe of the Christian life. And they want to go as far as they possibly can. I know that there are Christians today that they like to feel they’re broad-minded and they have beer and they have wine against alcohol, apparently. That is whiskey, but not this other way. And so they feel like they’re very broad-minded and they feel like I’m very narrow-minded. Well, may I say to you, it’s not a question of whether this is right or wrong. I hope that you are above that plane today, Christian friend. I hope you’re at the place today where you say, I want to please my heavenly father. I want to do the thing that will please him and will bring joy to his heart and joy to my own life. And I can have fellowship with him. That is the thing. And we’re to do this on the basis of love. If you love me, keep my commandments. Then he says, if you love me, you will keep my word. You go farther than the commandments. You’re going to just do something very extra for it. I think that a great many folk confine themselves to sins of commission and forget about sins of omission. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it’s sin. There are a lot of things that I know that I should do and I don’t do them because I don’t do them reveals the fact that it’s a sin of omission. And those sins are just as bad, I think, as the other. Now, let me keep reading here again and let me get verse 5 before us again because it’s so Important, he says, but whosoever keepeth his word in him verily is the love of God perfected or perfected, however you want it. By this know we that we are in him. Now, here we have keepeth his word. The word of God then is perfected in him. He’s gone past the commandments and he just wants to please God. And that’s what a child of God ought to do. What is your attitude towards sin? It’s not that you have sinned. But what is your attitude toward it, Christian friend? Don’t tell me you don’t sin because I know you do. And I don’t even know you because I know myself. Now, what do you do when you sin? Does it hurt you? Does it trouble you? Does it break your fellowship with the Father? And does it cause you to cry out in the night? Oh, God, I’m wrong. I want to come to you and confess this. I’ve been wrong. I want fellowship with you. And may I say that on that basis, he’ll restore fellowship with us. And then that’s the way assurance comes to our heart. And now let me read on down here in verse 6. He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk even as he walked. In other words, the Lord Jesus is our example. And we can’t perform miracles. There are many things we can’t do that he did. But we can at least want to do the Father’s will. And that is the thing that the Lord Jesus put uppermost in his heart and in his life. And so when he says here that when Christ is manifest in the believer, when he keeps the word of Christ, And I hear a great deal today about the word commitment. Do you want to commit your life to Christ? What do you mean by that? I hear that so much today. Well, let me tell you what it means here. Full commitment is to love Christ. And if you love Christ, he says that you’re going to keep his word. You can’t help it. You want to please. the person that you love. You don’t like to offend the person that you love. You want to please them. That’s the reason every now and then I send my wife a dozen American beauty roses. That’s the way I started off with her, because I had to… sidetracked a couple of other fellas way back yonder. And so I started out doing something they hadn’t thought of doing. I sent a dozen American Beauty roses. I want to please the one I love. Now, the question is not, are you committed? But do you love Christ? That’s the important thing today. Do you love Christ? And that is the thing that’s all important. Now, I’ve come to a very important verse here. Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Now, what word was it they heard from the beginning? Well, let’s go back and look at this for just a moment. The beginning here in 1 John is the incarnation of Christ. It began in Bethlehem, and it worked itself out in a carpenter shop, and then three years of his ministry, ending on a cross. And not really ending there. Because he was put in a grave and it didn’t end there. And he came forth the third day. And so what we have here is a commandment that goes back. And it means the commandment that he gave. Because he’s saying, I’m not giving you anything new. You heard this from the very beginning. And if you go back to John 13, you’ll hear the Lord Jesus speaking there. He says, “…a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” And then if you drop over to the 14th chapter, verse 21, I read there, He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I love him and will manifest myself unto him. Then go on over to the 15th chapter at verse 10. He says, If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. Now, this is the old commandment. Now John says, this old commandment is what I’m giving to you. It’s what the Lord Jesus said. It’s what he taught when he was here upon this earth. Now he says, again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past and the true light now shineth. Now why is it a new commandment to believers today? who were regenerated and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Why? Because that was given on the other side of the cross and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Now, on this side… It’s new. This is something new today. And believers are to do the will of God. And the will of God primarily, first of all, is to love Him. Oh, how important that this is here. And this is something that identifies a believer. A believer is one that delights in the will of God. And a believer ought to be able to say, because the true light, the darkness is past and the true light now shining. Day by day, moment by moment, I ought to be able to say I’m getting to know the Lord better. I’m understanding his will more perfectly. That ought to be the experience. Schiller, the great German poet, said, I see everything clearer and clearer. And that ought to be the experience of every child of God today. That day after day, you ought to be growing. And you can’t grow apart from the Word of God. There’s no way. It’s food. And He’s the bread of life that’s revealed here. He’s the water of life. You’re going to perish. You’ll famish. if you don’t feed upon Him. And the problem, the great problem today is that a great many are trying to follow a few little rules and regulations. And again, let me say it, they’re programmed like an IBM computer. And they feel like if they run through all those little things, do them, everything will work out. My friend, you’re a human being. If you’re a child of God, you’ve got a new nature. And you still got that old nature. But as Paul says, I know within my flesh dwelleth no good thing. But Paul says, I want to do his will. Is that the thing that’s in your heart and life? Now, I can point the verses of scripture to you for your assurance. But my friend, you will never experience until you’re willing to do his will. Until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
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Are you willing to do His will? If you’ve yet to make a commitment to God, then this is your day. If you want to know more about what it means to give your life to Jesus Christ, we’ve got a few free booklets and resources that we’d love to share with you. You can download them, you can read them, or listen to them immediately when you go to our app or ttb.org and click on How Can I Know God? If you’d prefer we send you a few of these resources by mail, then give us a call at 1-800-65-BIBLE. And for those who’d like to go a little deeper in their study of God’s word, well, we’ve got an entire virtual library of resources available to you. The easiest way to view them is to go to ttb.org. Or if you’re looking for something in particular by Dr. McGee and you need some help finding it, just call us 1-800-65-BIBLE is the number. And when you’re in touch, I suggest you sign up to receive our monthly ministry newsletter. It’s filled with great information to help us apply what we’re learning from our studies to our lives and more teaching from Dr. McGee. It’s really one of our most requested resources. And the best part is, it’s free. In our next study, Dr. McGee answers the question, what’s the test of genuine faith? I hope that you’ll hop aboard the Bible bus and join us. I’m Steve Schwetz, and I look forward to meeting you back here as we make our way through the Bible next time.
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Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left the crimson shade, he washed it white as snow.
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Our journey on the Bible bus today is supported by the prayers and gifts of fellow passengers as we travel through the Bible.
