Year 6, Day 235: 1 John 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

It might seem easy to talk about character in this chapter.  In a sense, it is.  After all, God is light.  In Him there is no darkness.  God is wholly good.  That’s really simple to understand.

While that is must certainly true and absolutely important, I want to go a little deeper than that in this blog post.  Let’s look at us.  John tells us that when we say we do not sin we lie.  He says that when we claim to walk with God yet still walk in darkness, we lie.  In fact, not only do we lie, we deceive ourselves!  We convince ourselves of the lie.

So what does character look like for us if God’s character is wholly good?  It is really pretty simple.  When we follow His ways, we walk in the light and demonstrate our God-given character.  However, when we confess our sins, we acknowledge the truth about ourselves and defeat the lie.  When we confess our sins, we break the hold that our deception has over us.  When we confess our sins, God’s forgiving character is bestowed upon us and we also demonstrate our character to Him in response.

Good character is not just about perfection.  God’s good character is perfect, but He is the only such being.  Good character is about trying to do the right thing and acknowledging the truth when we mess it up.

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