Another Bible study

Kenya is infested with a terrible counterfeit Christianity which would better be called God-anity, or perhaps God-inanity. It uses lots of the words and concepts of Christianity - God, forgiveness, repentance, sin, blessing, etcetera. But it has the not particularly minor defect of having little to say about Christ, the only one through whom we can have or know these things. This disease has affected many true believers, and if you ask them a direct question about what they believe about Christ you'll get a good answer - but if you just ask them about their spiritual experience or understanding in general terms, you'll be quite unlikely to meet Him in their reply. Hence today's Bible study...

1 John 1v1-2v2 – Salvation in Christ

Who is John talking about in verse 1? How do we know that this is who he is talking about?

What are the different ways in which John describes Jesus in verses 1-4? (There are at least four!)

1.
2.
3.
4.

Why is the apostle John telling us these things? (Two main reasons)

1.
2.

What does John say about God in verse 5? What does this really mean? (Notice that John says that this is part of “the message” he had been commanded to pass on).

What does this tell us about how to spot a true Christian?

If God is pure light, then how can we walk with him, according to John? What are the steps that he tells us we must take?

How, according to 2:1-2, is it possible for Jesus to be able to take away our sins? There are two things to notice, one in each verse:

1.
2.

In 2:1 our translation says we have “one who speaks ... in our defence”. In fact in the original the phrase is just one word, and says “we have an advocate”. In other places the Bible uses the word “mediator” (e.g. 1 Timothy 2:5-6). We need to understand this idea. We need to understand how important Jesus is to true Christianity. Christianity is not just about “me and God”. We have no access to God or knowledge of or fellowship with God, apart from in and through Christ.