Grace Chapel Pickwick
For by grace are you saved through faith….Ephesians 2:8
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Sunday Worship & the Word
October 15, 2023 @ 10:00 am - 11:00 am
Pastor Don Elliott
10:00 am @ Freddy T’s
BASIC CHRISTIANITY
Maybe the most basic thing about Christianity is that we are sinners. The Apostle John confronts this distressing truth at the very beginning of his first epistle and it confronts us with some truths that must be faced if we call ourselves Christians.
Matthew Henry, a Puritan pastor who wrote a commentary on the whole Bible, wrote this about this passage on sin:
“The Christian religion is the religion of sinners…The Christian life is a life of continued repentance, humiliation for and mortification of sin, of continual faith in thankfulness for and love to the (Savior) and hopeful joyful expectation of a day of glorious redemption in which the believer shall be fully and finally acquitted and sin abolished forever.”
The old Apostle helps us understand “sinners and the Savior” in our passage this week.
I love the way John begins this second chapter: “My dear children…” This
s so John!! Throughout this epistle, he uses terms of endearment for his readers: “little children,” “children,” and “beloved.” What I find so powerful about this is that he uses terms that Jesus used for his disciples.
s so John!! Throughout this epistle, he uses terms of endearment for his readers: “little children,” “children,” and “beloved.” What I find so powerful about this is that he uses terms that Jesus used for his disciples.
John 13:33 (in the Upper Room after he had washed the disciples’ feet)
“My children, l will be with you only a little longer…
Where I am going, you cannot come.”
“My children, l will be with you only a little longer…
Where I am going, you cannot come.”
So John, the 90 year old original and last apostle, uses the same term of endearment for his disciples. John was expressing here his pastor’s heart that he first saw in Jesus.
So John pastorally and lovingly deals with matters he considers most important to disciples and worthy to be considered part of Basic Christianity He wants to be clear about sin and the Savior.
John will teach us all some things about sin that maybe we don’t easily see and then he will teach us three names for Jesus that uphold the Savior as the only one who could save sinners.