This document contains excerpts from 1 John chapters 1-2 and commentary on those passages. It discusses three tests for teachers and believers: obedience to God's commands, love for others, and affirming Jesus as the Son of God. It warns against loving the world or the things in it instead of God. The final excerpt criticizes modern Christians for being too similar to secular people in their values and priorities, focusing on material goods and status rather than being distinct in following God's agenda.

1. 1 John

2. 1 Kings -
11 lessons followed by
Highlights of OT Wisdom & Prophecy 15 lessons
Daniel -
7 lessons and 9 lessons = 16 weeks
I will need to find 10 more something
Revelation -
24 lessons
JOY 2016

4. 
Anyone who claims to be in the
light but hates his brother is
still in the darkness.
1 John 2:9
Memory Verse

6. Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in
the right way: Keep his commandments.
If someone claims, "I know him well!" but
doesn’t keep his commandments, he’s obviously
a liar. His life doesn’t match his words. But the
one who keeps God’s word is the person in
whom we see God’s mature love. This is the only
way to be sure we’re in God. Anyone who claims
to be intimate with God ought to live the same
kind of life Jesus lived.
1 John 2:3-6
The Message

7. Dear friends, I am not writing you a new
command but an old one, which you have
had since the beginning. This old
command is the message you have heard.
Yet I am writing you a new command; its
truth is seen in him and you, because the
darkness is passing and the true light is
already shining.
1 John 2:7-8

9. 
1. The moral test – Obedience
2. The relational test – Love for others
3. The doctrinal test – Jesus is the Christ, Son of
God, one being with the
Father.
3 Tests for Teachers & Us

11. Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the
world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out
love for the Father. Practically everything that
goes on in the world-wanting your own way,
wanting everything for yourself, wanting to
appear important-has nothing to do with the
Father. It just isolates you from him. The world
and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the
way out-but whoever does what God wants is
set for eternity.
1 John 2:15-18
The Message

13. Whatever commands our time, energy,
and resources commands us. And if we
are honest, we will admit that our lives
really aren’t that different from those of
our secular counterparts. I suspect that
one of the reasons we are so ineffective
in evangelism is that we are so much like
the people around us that we have very
little to which we can call them.

14. We hang around church buildings a
little more. We abstain from a few
things. But we simply aren’t that
different. We don’t even do hedonism as
well as the folks around us … but we
keep on trying. As a result of this
unfortunate accommodation,
Christianity is reduced to little more
than a spiritual crutch to help us
through the minefields of the upwardly
mobile life.

15. God is there to help us get our
promotions, our house in the suburbs,
and our bills paid. Somehow God has
become a co-conspirator in our agendas
instead of our becoming a co-
conspirator in His. Something is
seriously amiss.
Tom Sine, Christianity Today 1989
Christian author, Mustard Seed Associates