sonship and fellowship

The Word for today:
1 John 1:1--2:2

selah: 1 John 1:9 --
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
(We use 'selah,' a term from the Psalms, to indicate a verse that is crucial to biblical understanding--so crucial that we should not only underline it in our Bibles, but store it in our hearts.)

Those whose sins have been forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ have crossed the threshold into the Father's house.

This was indelibly pictured for us in the Old Testament when the blood of the lamb was applied to the threshold--the door--at Passover, causing the death angel to pass over.

When we turn in faith to Jesus, we become children of God:
To all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12)

As children of God, we have a new nature--the nature of a child of God.

At the same moment, we receive a new position--a son of God. As sons we stand to inherit the kingdom. (Matthew 25:34)

Our new relationship to God as child and heir can never be broken: once a son, always a son.

What can be strained or interrupted is our fellowship with God. Sin interrupts fellowship but cannot change relationship.

Confessing our sin restores our fellowship with God:
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

Confession is more than just reporting our sins to God--as if he doesn't already know about them! Confession means to agree with God about your sins--to see sin as God sees it, and to desire and commit to go and sin no more.

The prophet Amos asks,
Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? (3:3)

You who have placed your faith in Jesus are forever children of God. So begin to exercise that new nature and start to see sin for what it is.

You're in the house, but grounded, until you do--while a lot of your brothers are on an adventure with Dad!