1 John 4 - Love God and love each other

04/12/24 • 41 min

"Love or selfishness" forms an interesting axis.

It might seem strange not to contrast love with hate, but the book of 1 John spends a lot of time on the relationship between love and a focus on what is best for others. It is quite a stimulating perspective on love and its role in the revelation of God. We realise that love can have many "opposites", each of which represents a somewhat "great controversy" that we each must navigate in the particulars of life.

"Love or selfishness" forms an interesting axis.

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Genesis 2 - God put the tree

This new season will explore "the Great Controversy", and so we start with some of the biggest questions about good and evil.

It is easy to get tied up in knots with this sort of thing, ending up squeezed into a rhetorical corner that sounds like God is responsible for bad things in the world. In a way that's the whole point of this theme and exploration - searching for a way to express a deep conviction that God is good and just even while we acknowledge pain and suffering. We definitely have more questions than answers, which is perhaps appropriate for this introductory episode of the season.

Next Episode

John 17 - Teach them your word

Why is it so hard to accept an incarnational nature of scripture?

Christians take that name because of their belief in Jesus as God incarnate - the whole point is that He had to become human in order for us to better understand who God is (and what we mean to Him). It seems reasonable to encounter the Bible in the same way: inspiration but through genuinely human authors.