Devotions
Rev Gav
Divinity
1 John 2.18–21
Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and you know that no lie comes from the truth.
Reflect
Some straight-talking from John! It seems that within the congregations to which he was writing, some had purposely left the church, ‘going out from us’, and were making a counter-claim to Christianity (the person of Jesus Christ). Seeing as Christianity hangs on the divinity of Christ, he wrote that, essentially, anyone who opposes the divinity and way of Christ is un-christlike or the opposite of Christ — an antichrist.
I remember, once, leading an 8am Anglican Prayer Book service with a small, conservative congregation. I thought I gave a rather innocuous sermon on the divinity of Christ, but afterwards an older couple confronted me. The wife was apoplectic! How dare I suggest that Jesus was and is God? I gently assured her, as best I could, that it was a basic tenet of Christianity. She then revealed from whence her anger came, stating, “My son is a buddhist,” the inference being that as he denied the divinity of Christ, so did she, and well, if you deny the divinity of Christ then you are not a Christian. I did not get a chance to talk further with her as she and her husband stormed off, leaving me wondering how I could patch things up.
I totally understand and get that not everyone believes or trusts in the divinity of Christ; however, this is a foundational truth that (whether in this life or the life to come) cannot be abolished, avoided, or ignored.
The thing about recognising the divinity of Christ is that it means we cannot avoid then, the teachings of Christ, our sanctification, the infilling of the Holy Spirit, and so on. If Jesus Christ is sovereign, then that means Christ is sovereign over our lives too. We are no longer free to do what we want, when we want, and how we want. To many, this sounds like a complete nightmare, but nothing could be further from the truth! Coming under Christs’s sovereignty frees us to commune with God and become the people God created us to be, or as Jesus described it, we attain life in all its fulness in the here and now and forever.
The truth is, we all serve someone or something — whether it is ourselves, our dreams, passions, lusts, acquisitions, other people, religions, politics, trendy churches, or philosophies; however, the Christian serves Christ. We do our best to follow a different way to the world — the way of love and acceptance. It might not be popular, but it is more precious than anything else in all the world.
Photo by Sam Tsonis on Unsplash
Pray
Holy God
I recognise the divinity
of your Son, my Saviour,
Jesus Christ.
Help me to put Christ
first in everything,
before my own
needs and wants,
and anything that
would distract me
from being the person
you created me to be.
Thank you for the
freedom I have in Christ.
This day and forever.
and then