series: Letters of Love
title: #8 Grace or Guilt?
date: May 27, 2018 (Memorial Day)
teacher: Jacob Bender
scriptures: 1 John 2:28-29, 1 John 3:1-10, Romans 6:1-2, Luke 15:11-32
How is it that some people can read a passage, and it be guilt and condemnation and tragedy… and someone else can read the same passage, and it be life, and love, and hope and grace?
God is working on all of our hearts in different ways, but how we read His scriptures ultimately says more about us than it does about God. The scriptures were not written to guilt us into living a certain kind of life, thinking that it will save us from something that we are trying to avoid. The Bible teaches us that we are CHILDREN of the LIVING GOD.
It is a question of identity...
of "what family are you from?"
How can a person who is the seed of God make a practice of sinning?
They can't.
But its not about guilt. Its about identity.
Who are you?
Whose are you?
Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
…And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.
How is it that some people can read a passage, and it be guilt and condemnation and tragedy… and someone else can read the same passage, and it be life, and love, and hope and grace?
“I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Pastor Austin kicks off our series on the Epistles of John by explaining much of what was going on when John was writing.
How is it that some people can read a passage, and it be guilt and condemnation and tragedy… and someone else can read the same passage, and it be life, and love, and hope and grace?
“I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
“we ought to be supporting people like these”