Sun 26 Jul

Letter writing is a dying art (or as some call it -  snail mail).  These days, email and text messaging and other forms of electronic communication have overtaken letter writing. But consider, how many or your text messages or do you still have on file from twelve months ago or even ten years back? These last few weeks, we’ve been studying a letter written some 1,900 years ago. Would such a letter survive in the electronic age? We would have given an emphatic “Yes!” to that question if God is the author of it. For as we’ve been reading and meditating on John’s first letter we have to say that God superintended the writing of the letter and saw to it that we have the letter available to us today to read and receive instructions from. John tells us whom and why he wrote the letter. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” This ties back to where we finished past week with the gift eternal life that God has given to His people through Jesus. Keep him writes to Christians, to followers of Jesus to believe in Jesus Christ. And he writes to them so that they may know they have eternal life. John writes to give Christians assurance of the eternal life they have in Christ. Perhaps the lack of assurance stems from a lack of confidence in approaching God or an ongoing sin or the evil one is throwing your mind into confusion. We can be thankful that God saw fit some 1,900 years ago to have a letter written to assure us and other Christians of the eternal life we have been in Christ.