To Encourage You

1 John 4:11 “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

One of the sayings many children hear from their parents is “You know better than that!”  What this is typically referring to is that because a child has been told the consequences of certain behaviors – whether good or bad – that knowledge should have a great impact on their actions.  It’s an admonition that children need to hear, including the children of God. 

God has filled His Word with knowledge of truths that we would otherwise be ignorant of. He’s told us about the consequences of certain actions, whether good or bad, and that knowledge should greatly impact our behavior.  He’s also given us knowledge of the things He has done and is doing for us, and that knowledge should likewise have a great influence on how we live our lives.  Throughout the Scriptures God has included the little word “since,” and by it tied the knowledge He has given us to the effects this knowledge should have on us. One such example is found in the verse above from 1 John 4.  Here we are told that God has “so loved us.”  It’s referring to the preceding verses that tell us that “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” With this teaching God wants us to know how vast His love is for us.  As we are told in Ephesians 3:18, it’s a love that is “wide and long and high and deep.”  It’s a love that expressed itself most fully in the act whereby God sent His only begotten Son into the world to bear the punishment for all of our sins against Him by dying on a cross.  He reminds us that “one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8).  Over and over again God has told us about the depth of His love for us. It’s a knowledge that should motivate us to love one another, for to do any less is to act in direct conflict to what we know as believers. To do anything less should bring the admonition “You know better than that!” 

Since we know many other things as well (or we should, anyhow, if we are reading God’s Word) those things should likewise affect how we live.  We are to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).  We’ve been taught, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-25).  And from Colossians 3(NIV), “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory . . .  Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. . . Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” 

And then this from 1 Thessalonians 5: “But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,  who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” 

It’s everywhere you turn in the Word of God: knowledge from God that should affect how we think and live.  May God help us to live in a way that glorifies Him, since to live in any other way is to do nothing but harm to us, and because He has given us His precious Word, anyone who knows Him most certainly “knows better than that!” It’s such a very simple truth, yet so profound and for our own good: “(Since) you know these things, blessed are you if you do them John 13:17).”