Today Our Daily Bread 1 John 4

1 John 4:1-21
Love for God and One Another
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God:
Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 3and every spirit that does not confess that F12 Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. 4You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5They are of the world.
Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them.
6We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us.
By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
Knowing God Through LoveR7
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Seeing God Through Love
12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. 13By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
The Consummation of Love
17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 19We love Him F13 because He first loved us.
Obedience by Faith
20 If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can F14 he love God whom he has not seen? 21And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

Footnotes - F12: 4:3 NU-Text omits that and Christ has come in the flesh. F13: 4:19 NU-Text omits Him. F14: 4:20 NU-Text reads he cannot.
Show cross-references - R7: cf. John 3:16

~ Lena’s Journlin’~
It is really important that we understand what is being said when we read God’s word… This is why we use study tools, to open the word up to us in ways we’d not have seen it if it were closed up to our understanding. The world has led us to think of our words in certain terms and everyday words that once had one meaning now have others as new discoveries are made and times change. This is why Strong’s concordance is useful, because it breaks the words down for us English speaking folks and takes us back to what was said when it was said, oh, about 2,000 years ago. Since I’ve learned what “confess” means, and that it does not mean what immediately comes to mind in present day USA talk, which is “to recite over and over”.
I am compelled to write so you will also know.
Here’s a definition from Strong’s Greek Lexicon:
to say the same thing as another, i.e. to agree with, assent, to concede, not to refuse, to promise, not to deny, to confess, declare, to confess, i.e. to admit or declare one's self guilty of what one is accused of, to profess, to declare openly, speak out freely, to profess one's self the worshipper of one, to praise, celebrate.
If you read this passage and thought that confess meant “recite 100 + times”, you now see it does not mean what you thought. Do you see it really means that you give your life over to it? Confessing is more like living and demonstrating outwardly.
Remember, we are spirits, who have souls and live on earth in bodies. Are we confessing the Lord Jesus Christ? Also Heb. 1 says there are ministering spirits who are ministering to those who are heirs of salvation. Who do you think they minister to and how do you think they know to “minister” to certain ones and not others? They know full well, who’s are either His or destined by prayer and the intent of those who are His, by the confession of their mouths and of their lives. It’s IN or OUT, there’s no in between, unless you are “on the way”, by God’s drawing grace on your life and the mercy of those He’s led to pray for you. By those who refuse to let you go and be swayed by evil and the evil one. Know that those who, through the confession of their lives, and the preaching of their faithfulness to God, are set around you to draw you into God’s kingdom and its work.
Anti-Christ spirit? That is any force, whether in bodied or not, that is against God and His earthly work- period!
The love that is being written of here is agape(o). It is the love that comes from God. It is without conditions. It loves because it is love. It extends even if no return is expected. Of course there is delight in return, but it loves even if there is none. The word “knoweth”, means to understand. Anyone who loves like this by a decision of his free-will, understands God. Through the exercise and freewill choice of the exercise of this type of love, the person has become intimately acquainted with God. How could he not, God is love. When one chooses to act as God in this manner, he has become one with God’s spirit, who IS love.
Please listen. This is a decision- period. Period! PERIOD!!!.
It is not based on how the persons act, or how deserving they are or any merit they might be able to display. It does not mean they are at all lovely in outward appearance or ever will be. It means the Lover, the giver of love, decides to love- period! That is exactly how God loves us, exactly how he drew us, exactly how He set us up to come to Him. His love drew us to Him, because we could not deserve it.
Did Jesus decide to love us? Yes He did. We also, in response to His great sacrificial love demonstrated on earth in His flesh, should now have the great desire stirred up inside of us to do the same in demonstration for others. We know that does not mean get nailed to a cross, it means love the co-worker who is a pain in the neck daily. It means say yes to help someone, when it costs you something you could have bought for yourself, or take time out to listen to someone who needs your ear when you’re the one who really needed the ear to listen to you. Those are the sacrifices we are speaking of and more.
When the world sees this in daily demonstration they will “know” Him, through us. What a sign and a wonder in our world when someone will choose to love you, no matter your merit. When that “Christian” becomes the church in daily demonstration, rather than just goes to church on Sundays. What a sign when they don’t just tell our world how they should act, but they decide to be living examples of the lord Jesus Christ everyday, even at work! Even when it’s excruciating to not “let go” on someone else, but rather take that frustration to the Lord allowing Him to perfect us in love and give us direction on how to handle those who belong to Him. ( for, the earth is the Lord’s and the people and all who live in it- Ps 24:1) This IS the ultimate sacrifice that we would, daily wherever we are set, demonstrate Him, by laying down our own wills and comforts and expressions based even on our past experiences and hurts, and lay down all that life’s experience compels us to do, for the sake of the salvation, that someone may actually see Christ and be saved. (There’s no greater love than this that can be demonstrated- than a man lay down His (self) life for another, who could be a potential friend of God!) [Jn 15:12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you…]
Love that is being perfected takes our fears away, takes our walls of protection that really have been erected to keep God out by keeping His people out.
All you “perfectionists”? Love perfects us. Deciding to love others perfects us. In loving others we are perfected in our love for God. Like being perfect? Choose to love! Be love as God is love, that’s perfection! Pointing out an imperfection is NOT love in demonstration, unless the identification is inside of one’s self to bring ones’ self towards change, so that love may grow greater still. That pinpointing was meant by God, to take out of our own lives what could harm us or keep us from God and the sense of His great love. Seeing imperfection was meant to steer us towards prayer and towards being the answer a person needs to be led towards truth. As I see my own hindrances and point them out and am willing to have God help me to change them, I’m empowered by God’s Spirit to be the example of a changed life to others. If I constantly point out the imperfections of others and I myself do not change the things God is dealing with me on (such as pointing out others’ faults!), I am very religious and hypocritical and my life does not invite others to change. This is what can be laid down for the benefit of another. No greater love….
This is what rocks the world! Your world, the world as a whole and even the atmospheric world around earth. Turn it back right side up – towards God! LOVE- BE LOVE!

Romans 16:19-20
19 For your obedience has become known to all. Therefore I am glad on your behalf; but I want you to be wise in what is good, and simple concerning evil. 20 And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

Acts 17:6
6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, "These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.