{"id":13026,"date":"2024-05-22T06:46:48","date_gmt":"2024-05-22T12:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theclarion.org\/?p=13026"},"modified":"2024-05-22T06:49:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-22T12:49:16","slug":"thoughts-from-the-bible-166","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/?p=13026","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts from The Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whose Family Do You Belong To?<\/strong>
\nby Sarah Wootten\u201c Corinth Missionary Baptist Church<\/em><\/p>\n

By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother,\u201d (1 John 3:10, ESV).As we read today\u2019s verse, we see how John is clearly putting us into two different groups based on whose family we belong to. We have the children of God and the children of the devil. And just as members of our earthly families tend to act in similar manners, so God\u2019s children and the devil\u2019s children act in similar manners. For example, I have three siblings. While we do have different personalities and interests, we were taught to be rule followers. If there is a rule, we usually don\u2019t ignore it. We know there\u2019s a reason why people aren\u2019t supposed to enter through the exit doors at Walmart, so we go out of our way to enter through the correct doors. But we all know a lot of you reading this go through the wrong door without batting an eye.<\/p>\n

Similarly, these two \u201cfamilies\u201d that John draws attention to have similar actions and characteristics. God\u2019s children make a practice of doing what is right and loving other people, while the devil\u2019s children make a practice of walking in rebellion and serving their selfish desires. The reason these two families act like this is because of the character of their respective fathers.<\/p>\n

Consider a blackberry vine. What does it produce? Blackberries. Why does it produce blackberries? Because it\u2019s a blackberry vine. If strawberries popped up on the vine, then it wouldn\u2019t be a blackberry vine. It would be a strawberry plant. It\u2019s simple logic. The fruit is determined by the type of the plant that it was grown on. Such it is with God\u2019s children and the devil\u2019s children. 1 John 3:9 tells us that God\u2019s children do not make a practice of sinning because they have been born of God. They reflect the character of their Father because they belong to His family. Because He is righteous and selfless in His love, His children grow in righteousness and in selfless love. The same is true for the children of the devil. The devil is not concerned about following God\u2019s law; instead, he opposes and hates it. Therefore, the children of the devil will not follow God\u2019s law and instead oppose it.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been following along with these articles for a while, you probably think I am sounding like a broken record. Yes, I understand. 1 John is very repetitive. In fact, this is my third time in eight months to write about how people are known by the fruit of their lives. But clearly, John really wants his readers to understand this point for a reason. So let\u2019s recall why John is writing this letter. He\u2019s writing this letter so that we may know if we truly have eternal life (5:13). He\u2019s writing so that we may not be deceived by false teachers (2:26). He also wants us to grow in Christlikeness (2:1) and have completed joy (1:4). I\u2019m convinced that understanding the principle that people\u2019s actions reflect which \u201cfather\u201d they belong to (either God\u2019s family or the devil\u2019s family) helps accomplish these four purposes of John\u2019s writing. And if you\u2019ll take some time to consider John\u2019s four purposes in light of 1 John 3:10, then I think you\u2019ll be convinced too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whose Family Do You Belong To? by Sarah Wootten\u201c Corinth Missionary Baptist Church By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother,\u201d (1 John 3:10, ESV).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tho"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13026"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13029,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13026\/revisions\/13029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}