Changed by His Love
1 John 3:23: And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.
The writer had declared that a confident and effective prayer life is founded on obedience to God’s “commands” (v. 22). Now those commands are summed up in a single command consisting of faith and love. The phrase believe in the name of His Son contains the epistle’s first direct reference to faith. The Greek here contains no word for “in” so the expression could be rendered “believe the name of His Son.”
In this context it certainly includes the faith in Christ’s name which true Christian prayer involves. First John 3:23 furnishes a kind of climax to the paragraph beginning in verse 18. As a Christian actively engages in deeds of love (v. 18) and as he achieves boldness before God in prayer (v. 21), he is doing what God commands: living a life of confidence in the name of Christ which is undergirded by love. Since faith and love, thus conceived, go together, this kind of life is seen as obedience to a single “command.” 1
Loving Him
Read 1 John 2:3, 3:23-24, and 5:2-3. What is His command, and how do you keep His command? What is the consequences for disobeying this command? How can faith and love becoming more evident in your life?
Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” John 6:29
Loving Others
Belief without obedience will never produce a living faith.
Make Me Like You
Lord, thank You for teaching us what obedience to the point of death looks like.
1. Walvoord, J. F., & Zuck, R. B., Dallas Theological Seminary. (1985). The Bible Knowledge Commentary.
