TUESDAY 21st
1 John 4:13-16
‘By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.’
In today’s devotion we will consider the phrase, ‘. . . because he has given us of his Spirit.’ When we consider the goodness of God, it is important that we do not forget that with everything that he has given us, in the spiritual, physical and natural, he has also given to us his Spirit. We often thank him for Jesus and for our salvation, for the spiritual and material blessings, food, raiment, housing, friends, family etc. but how often do we thank him for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
If you re-word what John says you will see that he is saying that God gives the Spirit to those who abide in him. This means that once we come to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to remain in him, continue to abide in him. Jesus taught in John 15 of the need to abide in him as the true vine, so our need to abide is two-fold, in Christ as the vine and in God as our heavenly Father. It is a re-echo of what we have already heard from John about fellowship. Remember 1 John 1:3 ‘. . . so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’.
Can I carefully suggest that if we feel that we are lacking in the things of the Spirit, then we need to examine as to whether or not we are truly abiding with God and in Christ in the manner to which we should be as the children of God.
We need to daily come to the place of ensuring that we are truly abiding in real fellowship with the Father and the Son so that we can draw the strength we need from the Spirit who God gives to us. In reading this epistle we need to keep in our minds the various instruction or advice that John is giving to his readers, and as I considered the thoughts I am sharing today, I recalled what John said earlier in in 1 John 2:15-16, turn to it and read it, what he is saying although I am putting it in my own words, that we cannot abide in the things of the world and still expect to be abiding in God. It must be one or the other, and it is only as we abide in God that he gives us the Spirit.
I mentioned in the previous devotion about how many times John uses the word love, the word ‘abide’ is another word that he uses a lot, love and abide. He realises that we need to love because God has loved us and we need to abide in God again because of the deep love that he has made manifest to us through his Son.