Son

God sent his only Son because only his Son could be our Saviour

Read: 1 John 4:7-21

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9)

This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: 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. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. (1 John 4:13-15)

Reflect:

This Easter Sunday I rejoice once again that God sent his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, into the world. God did this as a demonstration of his love whereby he ensured that I may live through Christ. Hallelujah! What a Saviour!

I celebrate once again that I have the assurance of the Spirit within me, by which I testify, together with John, that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is divine, an inseparable member of the Trinity, God himself, Immanuel.

Jesus was not some sleight-of-hand magician, not some Vegas-Style-hypnotist, not a circus show freak. Nor was Jesus merely a man like any other. Jesus was and is and ever will be the one and only Son of God.

God sent his only Son to us because only God could open the way to eternal life. Only God would demonstrate true love on a cross. For this end, God would love us by living with us and for us, by rising again to life.

Crux:

God sent his only Son because only his Son could be our Saviour.

Respond:

LORD God Almighty,

You are the Holy Creator, utterly different to your sin-stained creation. Yet you sent your Son, your very own Son, your one and only Son – essence of your essence – into the world to be our Saviour, so we may live just as he was raised to life.

This is such good news, such glorious news! Thank you.

Thank you for a Saviour who is perfect in every way, who demonstrated divinity to us, dwelling among people yet not just a person.

Thank you for a Saviour who is kind, gentle, compassionate, just, wrathful, deeply grieved by sin and its effects.

Thank you for a Saviour who knows me, sees me, hears me, cares for me and reaches out for me, walks with me.

Thank you for my Saviour, Jesus Christ, your one and only Son.

Amen.

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Fellowship

I have fellowship with Christ and his Church through John’s words

Read: 1 John 1:1-7

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. (1 John 1:3)

If we walk in the light, as he [God] is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)

Reflect:

John, together with the other apostles, was an eyewitness to Jesus Christ. John names him “Word of Life… the life… the eternal life.” John and the other apostles proclaimed what they had seen and heard, testifying about Jesus just as Jesus had predicted they would with the Spirit’s help (John 15:27).

It is through hearing/reading and believing John’s proclamation that I and other Christians have fellowship with John. We have become fellows, sharing something in common; or rather, sharing someone in common. Through John’s witness I have fellowship with God the Father and with God the Son, a truly amazing thought.

This fellowship extends to the whole church as we “walk in the light.” 1 John 1:5 tells me, “God is light” so this gracious fellowship extends to the church as we live godly lives. Yet it is not my godly life that makes me pure and sin-free; this is what the blood of Jesus, shed for me, has achieved: to cleanse me from my sin.

Crux:

I have fellowship with Christ and his Church through John’s faithful proclamation of what he saw and heard.

Respond:

LORD God Almighty,

It continues to amaze me that you should choose to make a way for there to be fellowship between us, for plain ordinary me to have a relationship with you, the God of the Universe. Especially on days like today, when it has been almost a week since I last spent time privately meditating on your word in a deliberate effort to deepen our relationship. You never went away from me, waiting patiently for me to open the covers of my Bible and listen again to your word. Forgive me for only meeting with you in public, with your people, and not in private, just the two of us.

Thank you for choosing me and calling me, for making a way for us to have fellowship through the incarnation of your Son and through the apostles’ faithful proclamation of the truth about what they saw and heard: Jesus Christ.

Thank you for revealing yourself: God, you are light and in you there is no darkness! Thank you for relaying this through the apostles.

LORD, You are light: truth, beauty, purity, perfection, excellence, illumination, instruction. You are wondrous in all of your ways.

May I walk in your light all my days. Thank you for the blood of Jesus, which purifies me and sanctifies me from all my sin.

Amen.