First thought for your weekend.

“Concluding remarks of a witness of Jesus.”

The best friend of Jesus on earth was the great apostle John who wrote letters with his heart in one hand and a pen in the other about Jesus. John writes his, “concluding remarks” in such a way that no one has ever written like him in genuine love and admiration for Jesus the Son of God, “His beloved friend.”

For John, Jesus is God in the flesh “Period.”

For John Jesus is Love in human form. John says that the Gospel is a person to be known and love and not merely a concept to be taught as an information to be delivered or even a good news to be heralded but a real person who died and raised again from the dead with pierced hands and feet and wounded side named Jesus.

For John Jesus is the message of God.

John speaks about Jesus in a very sweet and tender and respectful way that only a true friend who knows him best can speak in such a way. John’s writing more that anything else to me is his testimony of a witness of Jesus.

Though John speaks of him having touched Jesus with his hands, seen with his own eyes and heard with his ears, John falls short in persuading me to see the same thing he has seen in Jesus.

John touching Jesus, seeing Jesus, hearing Jesus was his personal testimony and experience and I appreciate him for sharing that with me.
But what touches me 2000 years later is how Jesus touch, spoke and loved a fisherman from Galilee named John and altered the life of a man known as “the son of thunder.”

A transformed life and his PRESENT TESTIMONY is what Jesus uses today to touch other men like us. There is no substitute for personal faith, love and devotion when it comes to lifting the name of Jesus and brings about the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.

When a man is persuaded by the words of another man there will be a third man that can dissuade him with other words such was the case of Eve who was dissuaded by listening the serpent.

But the personal testimony is unquestionable.
You either believe or you don’t believe that Jesus is alive in the witness and his testimony or not.

Emanuel is God with us.

God within us.

God above us.
God around us.
God underneath us.

God in front of us.

God behind us to the very end of the ages.

It is Jesus in us that is the hope of glory. Jesus in us is a transformed life that cannot be faked. Teach not with your mouth only but by testimony because you are a witness of Jesus. Information is not the way to make disciples. What everyone needs the most is your testimony more than anything else. Anybody can talk few lines about the life of Jesus for others to see.

John speaks about Jesus with burning passion and that is the evidence that persuaded my heart. Only Jesus can do that to many “sons of thunder” such as us.

But the closing remarks of 1 John 5 are written almost in a breathless manner when John warns about sin unto death and sin not unto death. John seems to keep us guessing until he writes his last sentence and all things become clear.

“We know also that the son of God has come and is given us understanding so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true- even in his son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Dear children keep yourselves from idols.”

The last sentence, “keep yourself from idols” is in my view the heart of John’s concluding remarks. From the beginning of time idolatry has been the greatest reason for the fall.

God has given us understanding and knowledge of the truth in Jesus, but the power to make others understand is the Jurisdiction and work of the Holy Spirit that without his help the pure waters of the truth will slide down as a drop of water from a duck’s back.

Unless we go back to the predisposition of the Garden at the cool of the day before the fall, I am afraid we dealing with Teflon when it comes to the power to communicate the truth.

It is to us who are so “Prompt to wander away from the God that we love” that John wants us to be on guard about Idolatry. Beware from the thousands of ways how Idolatry visits us every day of our lives on this side of Heaven. Idolatry is a grave sin and sin unto death.

Gerry Gutierrez.