Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry. We are in the same boat. And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy Marketing for our church Plant the garden. We out here, y'all. They help churches get more actual guests walking through the doors on Sunday without your eye having to stress over ads or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code. Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works. It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience. So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down and show you how to start seeing new faces at your church this Sunday. I'm in the trenches with you trying to grow the church. And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with Church Candy and get our churches full. The glory of Jesus. Let's go. We are in the book of First John. Today we're going to be reading one John, chapters one, two and three. Got three chapters to read. Hey, this is actually one of those books where I'm going to give a challenge. All right, how about Instead of reading 1 John 1, 2 and 3 today and then 4 and 5 tomorrow, how about you just read the entirety of 1st John today, then the entirety of 1st John tomorrow. The more word in you, the better. Right? The reason that you are doing this challenge and reading the Bible every day is to get the word in you. So I used to go to Orange Theory and they would always have like an advanced option and then just like the normal option. So hey, if you got to stick with the normal option, like, that's awesome. Like, I'm proud of you for reading the Bible every day. So if you're going to stick with just what's on the Bible reading plan. Do it. And I'm proud of you. If you already did it, chapters one, two, and three. If you want the advanced option, go ahead, challenge yourself, Push yourself a little bit. Read the entirety of First John today, the entirety of First John tomorrow, and man, your soul's gonna feel good if you haven't done the reading. How about you just pause, stop, chill, go stop this video, Stop the audio, Go do the reading for the day. Because everything that I'm gonna say is gonna make way, way more sense if you've actually done the reading. All right, first, let's jump into our context clue. Context clue. I'm gonna just start reading First John, chapter one, and I actually think that we're going to immediately see a repeated idea, and then that'll kind of give us a clue as to what the context clue even is for the day. Hey, if you're on a streak, I'm so happy. You got 73 days down. I don't know how many days that is to go, but you got 73 days down. All right, let's go ahead. First John, chapter one. Let's dive into our context clue. It says, we declare to you what was from the beginning. Okay, so John has got this beginning language. Remember John chapter one, verse one in the beginning. So we declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life. Remember, for John, Jesus is the pre existing word, okay? He is the word of God incarnate, the Word made flesh, verse 2. This life was revealed. And we have seen it and testified to it and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us. We declare to you what we have seen and heard heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light. Okay, first of all, it's just really, really clear that this is John. Okay? If you're familiar with the book of John, then already we've got words like beginning, we've got words like word, we've got words like light. All of this stuff is very, very reminiscent of the first chapter of the Gospel of John. Second of all, there's an emphasis on heard, seen, touched, seen, seen, heard. These are just the words that I've kind of underlined that are being repeated over and over. Heard. I mean, the word seen is here three times. The word heard is here three times. Touched. This is. John is making an apologetic case that this is not something that they've made up, that they have seen this, they've seen Jesus, they've heard Jesus, they've touched Jesus, they've experienced this. And why would John be making a big, big deal over the physical evidence of Jesus's physical existence? That's right. Because the issue that the church in Ephesus or the churches of Asia Minor are dealing with is Gnosticism. Gnosticism. Gnosticism is a form of Greek dualism that believes that the spirit is good, that the physical world of matter, that the physical world of, you know, soil and sweat, that that world's bad, that that world is evil. Now, that has produced a heresy called Docetism. D O C E D O C E T I C I S M. No. D O C E T I S M. There we go. I'm pretty sure that's right. I just tried to spell that from the dome, okay? So you could Google it, tell me if I'm right or wrong. Which believe that Jesus didn't really have a physical body, which makes sense in a Greek worldview because they believe that the physical world is evil, the physical world is bad. So if God is good and if God is pure, and if God's perfect, there's no way that he would imperfect himself or that he would damage himself or dirty himself or profane himself with a physical body. And so John is adamant right out of the gate. Okay? Let me tell you what we heard, what we saw, what we touched, what we saw, what we saw, what we heard. And then what we heard over and over and over and over and over again. Okay? So that's the big context for really first, second, and third. John, Gnosticism is. You can't escape it. Okay. And I hope that, you know, as you've gone through the New Testament, we're getting close to the end of the New Testament portion of the Bible reading plan. I hope that you're starting to realize just how big of a deal Gnosticism is. Not only was it a big deal then, it's a big deal now. It's a big deal for Christian theology today. There are lots of Christians who have that Greek dualism. They have a compartmentalized understanding of the spiritual world and the physical world where for. For God, man, it's. It's all up. It's all up in a blender. Okay. The physical world is infused with the spirit of the Lord God, and the spiritual world is deeply, deeply physical. This is a consistent Gnosticism got intertwined with Christianity in the first century. The New Testament really does a great job of teaching the truth. But the reality is that once Gnosticism became intertwined with the church in the first century, it has been almost impossible to get the church untwined, unintertwined from gnostic heresies. Bible nerds, I have an announcement. My brand new book Crushing Chaos releases May of 2025 in pre orders are officially open. When I began to learn Genesis in its proper context, I learned that the creation account is not primarily about God creating something out of nothing, but rather God bringing divine order to the chaos of the cosmos. That one nugget was a game changer for me because I've been preaching to all the kids in my youth group that peace was a solution for their anxiety. But really, God's solution to chaos is not never peace, but rather order. Peace isn't something that you stumble into. It's something that you intentionally step into and that starts with aligning your life with God's order. I think that this book is a game changer. It's nerdy, it's practical, it provides a very contextual understanding of the book of Genesis. And if you grab a copy, you'll learn why there's a huge dragon on the COVID Head to the link in the show notes to pre order or head thecrushingchaos.com to see the really dope trailer that we made for this book. I think it's time for you to crush the chaos in your life. And that starts with grabbing a copy of this book. Now back to the podcast. All right, that's our context clue. Let's get into our nerdy nugget for the day. I actually want to draw your attention to two passages of scripture. First, John, chapter one, verse eight and nine is what we're going to go to first. And then we're just going to jump two chapters. Okay, so we're going to look at first John, chapter one, verses eight and nine. And then we're going to look at one John, chapter three, verses eight. Nine. Here we go. Let's dig into chapter one. First. It says, if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness so, hey, if you are ignorant enough, naive enough to believe that you're without sin, yo, you're deceiving yourself. You're lying to yourself. And actually, you need to get honest with yourself so that you can start to get honest with God and honest with other people. Because we've. We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And we all sin. Like, not just we've all sinned, past tense, but we all sin. But that's not an issue for God. God says, hey, actually, all you have to do is confess your sin. You don't even need to pay penance for your sin, or you don't need to shed your own blood for the remission of your sin. If you confess your sin, God is faithful and just and he'll forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Now, that's the first kind of stake that we put in the ground. Now let's put another stake in the ground. Let's move two chapters to 1 John, chapter 3, verse 8 and 9. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil. Oh, dang. Okay, this is this. Okay, this seems to contradict what we just read. Okay? Because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. Okay, so Jesus came, okay, to destroy the work of the devil. Which is. Which is sin, which is sinfulness. Verse 9. No one who is born of God will continue to sin because God's seed remains in them. They cannot go on sinning because they have been born of God. All right, so what's going on? K? Chapter one tells us that if we claim to be without sin, we're deceiving ourselves. That actually, that we need to confess. And then chapter three is telling us that there's no way that actually if you're a Christian, you shouldn't be sinning. So these two things seem to contradict. And here's where I'm going to offer what I hope is helpful wisdom. That this is not a problem to solve, but attention to manage that. That Paul, that John is not speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He's actually putting two stakes in the ground to create some tension. Because the highest form of truth is found in tension. So let's try to create that tension. Okay, here's the first thing. The way that I achieve sinlessness is by acknowledging man. I be sinning. I sin. I have a proclivity towards sin. I have a weakness when it comes to sin. So a, let me confess. Because the more I hide sin, the stronger sin gets. The more I pretend as if sin is not an issue, the more powerful sin actually becomes in my life. So the very first thing that John chapter one creates is an acknowledgment of sin, which then leads to a confession of sin, which then, if you're wise, leads to an avoidance of sin. I always say it makes no sense to fight temptation that you should be avoiding. Now, there are moments where I'm going to inevitably end up fighting against the urge to sin. I'm going to fight temptation, but I'd rather avoid sin than fight sin. And that desire to avoid sin before I'm ever in the ring with it, to kind of be, think, have some foresight when it comes to my relationship with sin. That's noble. That's not legalistic. That's just wise. That's good. That's noble. Okay, that's the first tension rod that we have to, like, hang up. The next piece of tension is this. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil. All right, that sounds like, okay, willful, continuous habitual cycles of sin. That. That is unrepentant, unconfessed sin. That becomes an issue. So that's different. That's. We're adding layer and nuance to what the word of God is teaching us about sin. That there's a difference between. Man, I made a mistake. Oh, boy. That's sinful versus the person. That's ignorant sin. It's like, ah, oh, man. Ooh, I shouldn't have done that. Okay. You know, I'm learning. Okay. Versus unrepentant and unconfessed sin. Sin that never gets confessed sin that you've become desensitized to sin that you have a hard heart around. Right. A hard heart is a calloused heart. What happens? My wife plays guitar and her fingers get calloused so that she doesn't feel the pain of the guitar strings. And if you don't feel the pain of. Of hurting God with your sin, then you're desensitized to sin. You've become calloused when it comes to sin. Sin should really break your heart. Why? Because what is sinful is of the devil. The devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's power. The. The devil's power is his ability to tempt and his ability to make us want and desire stuff that really leads to death. Verse 9 of chapter 3, no one who is born of God will continue to sin. I think that's like the powerful part there. Continue to sin. Continue to sin. Like, I think continuous sinful behavior. If you're continuing to sin, I think that, that, that we're starting to get into some dangerous territory where man. I would say these are like lifestyle choices, habits. It's one thing for there to be sin that happens, but there's another thing to, to just to continue down, down the path of sin. I think if you continue down the path of willful, unrepentant, and unconfessed just disobedience long enough, I think you get really close to moving away from God because God's seeds remain in them. They cannot go on sinning. What is John saying? He says sin bothers the real believer. If you're really a child of God, sin begins to bother you. You gotta tell somebody about it. You gotta repent. You. You have to confess, you have to repent. There's. There's a conviction that you begin to feel. And a lot of times when I'm pastoring people, the thing that lets me know that somebody is in a healthy place isn't perfection. It's not that they don't sin. It's just that there's a contrite brokenness. There's a. There's a repentance, there's like a softness. There's a brokenness when it comes to sin that's present. And there should be a brokenness like our sin should break our heart because it breaks God's heart. And I think that's the tension. I think our Western mind wants to go, okay, which one's true? Is it First John chapter one, or one John chapter three? But clearly John wrote both of these passages of scripture. And I think it's designed to create some tension. And instead of asking which verse is true, we should be asking, how do these passages correspond with each other? How do they compliment one another? Hopefully I've helped us kind of orient our thinking so that we can. So that we can reconcile these verses with each other, so that we can get nuance and layer. All right, so we've done a context clue that was our nerdy nugget. Let's do our timeless truth. So there's this loop that you begin to see every in. In chapter one. And these themes are going to get repeated. So one of the things that you need to know about First John specifically is that it's not linear. These ideas are, are in a loop. Okay. And so John is just going to keep coming back to the same basic set of, like, three ideas, but he's just going to do it in loop, loop, loop after loop. And each loop, he kind of digs a little deeper, digs a little deeper, digs a little deeper, digs a little. And so there's. There's two that you really need to know. The first is that fellowship, light and truth kind of all go together. That being in fellowship with God means being in the light, which means not being in the darkness, which then means truth. The light means that I'm not living a life of sin, but I'm. I'm actively living a life of truth. Okay? So that loop is going to happen over and over and over again. And then the last, the second one, is this link between commands and obedience. And that loop is going to spiral over and over and over again. We're going to begin to see that. And that is timelessly true. What happens with guilt is that sin caused me to feel guilty, which caused me to run away from God and hide from God, which means I have less of his power to stand up against the enemy the next time I get tempted, which means I'm caught in this cycle of sin. Grace also has a moment of sin or weakness. But instead of running away from God, I run towards God. Why? Because I'm in fellowship with Him. And when I realize that there is something that I've done, that is darkness, I immediately run into the light. I get into the light. And what does it mean that I get into the light? It means that I. I'm honest, that I have a. A spirit of confession, of honesty. And because now I've decided to walk in fellowship with the light, you can hear a lot of John 15, like, remain in me and my words will remain in you. Because I've decided that we are going to be in fellowship with each other. That now I'm actually, I begin, I get stronger as a result of running towards him when I sin, not away from him when I sin. So really, what John wants to teach us here is that man, shame will make you stay in the darkness, but humility will cause you to come into the light and be honest and confess and be transparent and be vulnerable. And man, that's counterintuitive, but actually, the person who's transparent, the person who confesses, the person who's honest about their sin, gets strength from God. Because that's what happens when you're in relationship with God, when you're in fellowship with God, when you're. And now the enemy comes to tempt you again, and now you're stronger. You can actually resist the enemy. So you see how guilt keeps you stuck in sin. Grace is not an excuse to keep sinning. Grace is actually a system or a pattern of reacting to sin that actually gets you out of sin. It's not a get out of jail free card. It's actually breaking out of the cycle, the habitual cycle of sin. And that, man, that's timelessly true. I want you next time you struggle with something, next time you sin, next time you fall short. Instead of guilt causing you to not pray and not seek God and not confess and not invite other people in, instead of guilt causing you to hide and run, how about you realize, man, I'm forgiven, I'm loved, God accepts me. And right there, that grace doesn't mean that. That sin doesn't matter. Grace just means I can actually go to the one person or the one being who can heal me, who can get me stronger so that I can actually resist sin. Grace isn't excuse or license to sin. Grace is actually a method to get me out of habitual sin. So that's timelessly true. And of course, the other loop that John is going to hammer home over and over and over is that commands and obedience are linked together. But we'll get into that tomorrow. All right, I Hope that day 73 was helpful for you. 1 John is an incredible book. It's not linear. It's super cyclical. It loops around and around and around. And each time it loops around, it kind of pulls you deeper and deeper and deeper into the same theme that John introduced in. In a previous chapter. And so it's a fun book. But if you're used to more Pauline writing styles, then John will kind of, you know, it'll take you for a loop, you know, because it's literally just kind of like looping around. It feels a little bit like James in that regard, but amazing, amazing book of the Bible. And I can't wait to dive into John first. John, chapter four, five with you tomorrow for day 74. I'm proud of you. Hey, if you're on a streak, don't break it. If you've been watching these videos every day and you've been reading your Bible every day, I'm so proud of you. I believe that this is going to genuinely transform your life, and I'm glad I get to be a part of this journey with you. All right, until tomorrow, friends. I love you so much. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment if you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.