I’m reading through John, which at one chapter per day, has more content than I can address. I’ll pull some highlights beginning with a startling observation in chapter 1, confirmed in chapter 3:

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. (John 1.9 – 11, ESV)

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (John 3.19, ESV)

Jesus said later, “I am the light of the world.” We’ll look at that in a few days. But for now, here is the light, but people reject the light. Again, from John 1.9 – 11:

• The true light, which gives light to EVERYONE, was coming into the world.
• But the world did not know him. He made the world, and the world did not know him. Today, people don’t even believe that God made the world. The world doesn’t know its God.
• But neither did God’s own people know God in the flesh when they saw him. Might that be true even in our churches today? Churches have Jesus’ name on them, but do the members know Jesus? And receive Jesus? And embrace his way of life?

Church people, Christians(!), rejecting Jesus’ way of life? Perhaps. More tomorrow.

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother...We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3.11 – 15, ESV)