Welcome

to a new life. A new lifestyle which is unknown to the worldly

minded people i.e. the unbelievers. Even though they don’t  know it, they

despise it.

 

This inexperience about life in Christ hardens and confuses the unbe-

lievers. Because, they don’t have the real peace and joy in their own lives,

but see it in the believers. They don’t know  what a holy life consists of.

Their denominations have given them only a form of godliness without

God’s power as a foundation (2. Tim. 3:5).

 

I am so sorry for my fellow German speaking countrymen, friends and

relatives. This is a real terrible eternal tragedy. A situation that screams for

an awakening to God’s Truth. Would you, dear Reader, please think about

your personal relationship with Jesus the Lord again and again before it is

forever to late!

 

Now to those of us who want to obey Christ’s New Covenant or have

done so already. A short sermon.

 

After a baby is born it has to learn how to live. Often, the first thing it

learns is how to roll over on his stomach and how to use its hands. It has to

learn how to walk and talk. If it is a healthy child it will learn all the traits of

a grown up person. Every new trait it learns brings much joy to its parents

and also to the child.

 

Our text is out of 1. John, 2: 29; 3: 1-6.

      John has just stated the fact, that true believers are people who have been

conceived by the Holy Spirit. People who are “born of him”, i.e. Jesus, who

have done “what is right” in His sight. So it was natural for John to speak

about the life of God’s family.

Our text starts with this vers, “How great is the love the Father has

lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we

are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”

(1. Jn. 3:1)

 

         We need to stop and think about this verse. How great is His love? How

and why did we become His children? Why doesn’t the world know us?

 

         Those of us who lived all our lives in the same town, not only know and

identify ourselves with our own family, but also with most of the families in

our neighborhood. In most small towns or villages we even know and

identify with the parents and grandparents of the towns people. We have

lived and associated with them in good and bad times. In periods of  war and

peace. In family tragedies and in the birth or death of a family member.

 

That is the same with redeemed people. They identify themselves with

Jesus and with each other as God’s family. Not just with words but also with

their lives deeds.

 

       Why does John ask us to stop and see what this text has to say? He wants

to show us what God has given us.

 

What great love does He have for us? It is a breathtaking, astounding,

exiting and always joyful love. A love that is always so fantastic, that the re-

deemed are considered foreigners in this world. A strange people. The unbe-

lievers  can’t relate or identify with their lifestyle, because the love that

strengthens them is not from this world. It is the love that comes from God.

 

When the storm on the sea of Galilee obeyed Jesus’ command, His

Apostles asked themselves, “What kind of man is this.” They found Him

breathtaking, astounding, exiting, always joy bringing in one word fantastic.

                                                                                                        (Mt. 8:27)

 

The Apostle Peter admonishes the redeemed to allow the Holy Spirit to

bring out these peculiarities in their lives. Especially in the time while we

wait for the Lord Jesus to return. (2. Pet. 3:11-13)

 

         This lifestyle and purified converted mind-set through the New Cove-

nant, makes a person a part of God’s very own people (Tit. 2:11-14).  A na-

tion of strangers in the eyes of the worldly minded (Hebr. 11:13; 1. Pet. 1:1,

2; cf. 2:11). A people again created by God, in His image, like Adam and