Three things I didn’t like about this book: Baier tells about an event that happened less than a year after the assassination attempt on Reagan when he threw out the first pitch on opening day of the 1982 MLB season at a Baltimore Orioles game. He says that Reagan showed how well he’d recovered from […]
John moves on from his celebration of our status as the children of God to discuss the ramifications of that status. This passage on first reading appears to set a standard of perfection for the believer that is hard to reconcile with John’s statements about sin at the end of Chapter 1. How can we […]
After taking on the heretics directly in 2:18-23 and reassuring believers in 24-28, John pauses for the second time in the letter to celebrate our standing before God. In 2:12-14 he reminded us that our sins are forgiven and we know God and have overcome the evil one. Here he rejoices with us that we […]
I knew very little about Rocky Marciano before I read this book. I knew he was the only undefeated Heavy Weight fighter (49-0), I knew Larry Holmes threatened his record in the eighties before losing his 49th fight to Michael Spinks (and I remember rooting for Spinks because Holmes was classless in how he disparaged […]
For the first time, John confronts the heresy within the churches directly. Up to this point he has mostly defended the faith and discussed tests of the faith that the heretics fail. He now directly addresses the teaching and actions of the ones who have attacked the gospel and disrupted his churches. We get to […]
This is a unique book in that it’s a biographical novel. It’s a biography – with all the facts and dates and actual people associated with the subject – Michelangelo. But it’s also a novel, which means the author included dialogue, motives and thoughts. It made for fascinating reading and I really enjoyed it. It […]
Something I’ve noticed about the trials that God brings into my life is that they aren’t very explosive. He doesn’t often bring hurricanes or eruptions as much as He sets rain clouds over my life that just seem to park for long periods of time and slowly drench everything. The rain isn’t even all that […]
I read this book because I read an article on the FIRE movement (Financial Independence Retire Early) that referred to it as the Bible of the lifestyle. It was originally written in the early nineties and spawned a whole movement of people who decided they didn’t want to work 9-5 jobs their whole life but […]
After encouraging his readers by listing the privileges they have in Christ, John now gives them the first direct exhortation of the letter. Their sins are forgiven and they know God and they have overcome the evil one; consequently, they cannot and must not love the world. He not only tells them they are not […]
These verses are at first difficult to understand. John addresses what looks to be three groups of people and commends/exhorts them for three different aspects of Christianity that are true of each. He then repeats the process while slightly altering the commendations. Why he does this at this point in the letter and who exactly […]
thegamutblog 